138 ' 
I am therefore persuaded it must have regard to “ common 
language " in order to be intelligible. We may hail, there- 
fore, with great satisfaction the further announcement that 
Utilitarians “ desire, for example, virtue, and the absence of 
vice, no less really than pleasure and the absence of pain." 
All this is very hopeful ; as also is the plain admission that all 
pleasures are not real pleasures, or conducive to happiness. 
After all, “ the lovers of pleasure " which throng the crowded 
circles of “ vanity fair 99 will find little to please them in Mr. 
Mill's essay. The moment a qualification becomes necessary 
as to ivliat pleasures conduce to real happiness, the definition 
of utilitarianism shows itself imperfect. These words, virtue 
and vice, are like the small end of a wedge of truth, and 
once admitted and pondered and fairly understood, only re- 
quire to be driven home and logically applied, in order to make 
an end of Utilitarianism. The moment mankind is furnished 
with a higher motive than “ Pleasure," or “the Greatest 
Happiness Principle;" and when words like virtue and vice, 
good and bad, are introduced as ideas (which are intelligible 
enough under the Christian system, as well as under that of 
the Stoics and the systems of all theistical moral teachers), the 
Theory of Utilitarianism falls to the ground, and its very name 
remains but a “ modern barbarism," as defined in some of our 
dictionaries. 
* Here I might stop ; but before I conclude I am anxious to 
show, by some additional extracts from Mr. Mill's book, 
how the teaching of Christianity can be coolly appropriated 
by moral theorists, whose object is to substitute something 
else for Christianity ; and who, it seems, can get on satisfac- 
torily, and, as they think, produce “the power and efficacy of 
a religion," even “ without the aid of belief in a Providence " ! 
Mr. Mill says : — “ The desire to be in unity with our fellow- 
creatures is already a powerful principle in human nature, and 
happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even 
without express inculcation, from the influences of advancing 
civilization." It pleases him, it will be observed, to ignore 
the fact that, even if the world is still in a “ comparatively 
early state of advancement," there has, nevertheless, been 
time enough within “the historical period" for various 
developments of civilization to take place, but which never 
did happen to develop into “a desire to be in unity with our 
fellow-creatures," till “that powerful principle" was enun- 
ciated to human nature as the express inculcation and teaching 
of the religion of Christ. Again, our author says : — “ In an 
improving state of the human mind, the influences are con- 
stantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each indi-. 
