131 



thing on which human happiness on the largest scale depends; 

 we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule 

 of such transcendent expediency, is not expedient, and that 

 he who, for the sake of a convenience to himself or to some 

 other individual, does what depends on him to deprive man- 

 kind of the good, and inflict upon them the evil, involved in 

 the greater or less reliance which they can place in each other's 

 word, acts the part of one of their worst enemies." 1 



Mill insists "that the happiness which forms the utilitarian 

 standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own 

 happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own 

 happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be 

 as strictly impartial as a disinterested spectator. In the 

 golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit 

 of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and 

 to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal per- 

 fection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the 

 nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin first, that 

 laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or 

 (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every 

 individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest 

 of the whole. " 2 



Evidently in the above, Mill has in view the members of 

 society as the component parts of an organic state, and also 

 the consequences of the actions of each, as to whether they are 

 consistent with the happiness of the whole. All members of 

 the social organism are to act together for the good of the whole. 

 Laws and social arrangements, education and opinion, are the 

 embodiments of judgments, not of feelings, in the interests of 

 the general welfare. Such 'judgments' are made in view 

 of the fact that human beings live together in society, and 

 hence there is implied an element of control which is wanting 

 in immediate feelings. The individual member of society 

 does not, or at least should not, act merely from feeling. He 

 may feel angry with his neighbour, but he restrains that feeling 

 and its possible action, in the interest of a higher good, namely, 

 the general welfare. 



It is objected to the latter position that "there is not time 

 previous to action for calculating and weighing the effects of 

 any line of conduct on the general happiness". 3 But, Mill 

 replies, "the answer to the objection is, that there has been 

 ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human 



iQ.C. p. 33. 

 2 O.C. pp. 24-5. 

 3 O.C. p. 34. 



