128 Explains Moral Law. 



justice is right, that benevolence is a duty, that 

 stealing or lying is wrong, we do not attempt to 

 demonstrate these propositions by means of others, 

 but directly and immediately assent to them as 

 carrying their own self-evidence. It is instinc 

 tively felt that no reason can be given for them, 

 any more than for the axioms of geometry. And 

 the unsophisticated sense of the plain man is 

 shocked by the suggestion that moral precepts 

 stand or fall with their conduciveness to pleasure, 

 and still more by the suggestion that virtue, 

 which he takes to be the end of life, &quot; is natu 

 rally and originally no part of the end,&quot; but merely 

 a means to something else to pleasure as final 

 goal. And it was very difficult for Mill and his 

 predecessors to explain how in theory men had 

 been duped into accepting ethical precepts solely 

 on their own credentials, and how in practice they 

 had been hoodwinked into realizing them disin 

 terestedly, for their own sake, and without the 

 slightest reference to ulterior consequences. But 

 the example of the miser did valiant service in 

 their psychology ; and it was argued that, if mon 

 ey, originally only a means to what it purchases, 

 could through association of ideas come to be de 

 sired for itself, and that, too, with the utmost inten 

 sity, virtue might undergo a similar transforma- 



