554 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



I do not mean to assert that the promotion of happi- 

 ness should be itself the end of all actions, or even of 

 all rules of action. It is the justification, and ought to 

 be the controller, of all ends, but is not itself the sole 

 end. There are many virtuous actions, and even virtuous 

 modes of action (though the cases are, I think, less fre- 

 quent than is often supposed) by which happiness in the 

 particular instance is sacrificed, more pain being produced 

 than pleasure. But conduct of which this can be truly 

 asserted, admits of justification only because it can be shown 

 that on the whole more happiness will exist in the world, if 

 feelings are cultivated which will make people, in certain 

 cases, regardless of happiness. I fully admit that this is 

 true : that the cultivation of an ideal nobleness of will and 

 conduct, should be to individual human beings an end, to 

 which the specific pursuit either of their own happiness or 

 of that of others (except so far as included in that idea) 

 should, in any case of conflict, give way. But I hold that 

 the very question, what constitutes this elevation of character, 

 is itself to be decided by a reference to happiness as the 

 standard. The character itself should be, to the individual, 

 a paramount end, simply because the existence of this ideal 

 nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any 

 abundance, would go further than all things else towards 

 making human life happy ; both in the comparatively humble 

 sense, of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher 

 meaning, of rendering life, not what it now is almost univer- 

 sally, puerile and insignificant but such as human beings 

 with highly developed faculties can care to have. 



8. With these remarks we must close this summary view 

 of the application of the general logic of scientific inquiry to 

 the moral and social departments of science. Notwithstanding 

 the extreme generality of the principles of method which I 

 have laid down, (a generality which, I trust, is not, in this 

 instance, synonymous with vagueness) I have indulged the 

 hope that to some of those on whom the task will devolve of 

 bringing those most important of all sciences into a more 



