30 MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS. 



sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been 

 made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and 

 Experience have been construed in senses much too nar 

 row. Utility, convenient a word as it is from its com 

 prehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading 

 implications. It vividly suggests uses and means and 

 proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, 

 positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and 

 which, in the ethical meaning of the w r ord, are alone con 

 sidered ; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of 

 means and ends implies the deliberate taking of some 

 course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its 

 ordinary acceptation,, connotes definite perceptions of 

 causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, 

 and is not taken to include the connections formed in 

 consciousness between states that recur together, when 

 the relation between them, causal or other, is not per 

 ceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I 

 habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every 

 one who reads the &quot; Principles of Psychology ; &quot; and it is 

 in these widest senses that I have used them in the letter 

 to Mr. Mill. I think I have shown above that, when they 

 are so understood, the hypothesis briefly set forth in that 

 letter is by no means so indefensible as is supposed. At 

 any rate, I have shown what seemed for the present 

 needful to show that Mr. Hutton s versions of my views 

 must not be accepted as correct. 



HERBERT SPENCER. 



