CHAP. V] DUTY AND PLEASURE. 105 



thing which he shall not do ; he shall not compel me to 

 worship him. I will call no being good who is not what I 

 mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures ; and 

 if such a being can sentence me to hell, to hell I will go.&quot; 



This is unquestionably an admirable sentiment on the 

 part of Mr. Mill (with which every absolute moralist will 

 agree), but it contains a complete refutation of his own 

 position, and is a capital instance of the vigorous life of 

 moral intuition in one who professes to have eliminated any 

 fundamental distinction between the &quot;right&quot; and the &quot;ex 

 pedient.&quot; For if an action is morally good, and to be done 

 merely in proportion to the amount of pleasure it secures, 

 and morally bad, and to be avoided as tending to misery, and 

 if it could be proved that by calling God good whether He 

 is so or not in our sense of the term we could secure a 

 maximum of pleasure, and by refusing to do so we should 

 incur endless torment, clearly, on utilitarian principles, the 

 flattery would be good. Mr. Mill, of course, must also mean 

 that in the matter in question all men would do well to act 

 with him. Therefore he must mean that it would be well 

 for all to accept (on the hypothesis above given) infinite and 

 final misery for all as the result of the pursuit of happiness 

 as the only end. 



It must be recollected that in consenting to worship this 

 unholy God, Mr. Mill is not asked to do harm to his neigh 

 bour, so that his refusal reposes simply on his perception of 

 the immorality of the requisition. 



It is also noteworthy that an omnipotent Deity is supposed 

 incapable of altering Mr. Mill s mind and moral perceptions ! 



Mr. Mill s decision is right, but it is difficult indeed to see 

 how, without the recognition of an &quot; absolute morality,&quot; he 

 can justify so utter and final an abandonment of all utility in 

 favour of a clear moral perception. 



These two ideas, the &quot;right&quot; and the &quot;useful,&quot; being 

 so distinct, a greater difficulty meets us with The origin of 



* the concep- 



regard to their origin from some common source tion &quot; s ht -&quot; 

 than could arise from merely considering difficulties as 



