132 



species. During all that time mankind have been learning 

 by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience 

 all the prudence as well as all the morality of life are depend- 

 ent". 1 History is accumulated experience. Some actions 

 which represent judgment are not expressive of character, it 

 is often said, meaning thereby that individual feeling gives way 

 to the control, that is, the judgment, of reason. " It is truly 

 a whimsical supposition, " Mill remarks, "that if mankind were 

 agreed in considering utility to be the test of morality, they 

 would remain without any agreement as to what is useful, and 

 would take no measures for having their notions on the sub- 

 ject taught to the young, and enforced by law and opinion. 

 There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever 

 to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with 

 it; but on any hypothesis short of that mankind must by 

 this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of seme 

 actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus 

 come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and 

 for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better." 1 

 In the above discussion Mill seems to be in close agreement 

 with the position of Immanuel Kant. In referring to the 

 "Metaphysics of Ethics by Kant", Mill says: "This remark- 

 able man, whose system of thought will long remain one of 

 the land-marks in the history of philosophical speculation, 

 does, in the treatise in question, lay down a universal first 

 principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation; it is 

 this: 'So act that the rule on which thou actest would admit 

 of being adopted as a law by all rational beings'. 3 But when 

 he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties 

 of morality, he fails to show that there would be any contra- 

 diction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the 

 adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously 

 immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the conse- 

 quences of their universal adoption would be such as no one 

 would choose to incur." 4 



Kant also draws a distinction between feeling and judgment, 

 but in his case, feeling has no place in the determination of 

 moral rules. This distinction is between subjective ends as 

 based upon natural inclination and objective ends, which 

 spring from motives that hold for all rational beings. 5 The 



1 O.C. p. 34. 

 O.C. pp. 34-5. 



8 See "Kant's Theory of Ethics", translated by T. K. Abbott, 4th ed., 

 1889, p. 39. 



4 " Utilitarianism " p. 5. 



*" Kant's Theory of Ethics" pp. 45-6. 



