In this chapter I propose, without any attempt to be exhaustive or systematic, to give some examples of the manner in which the test of conduct may be applied to practical questions, either by extending existing rules to cases which do not obviously fall under them, or by suggesting more refined maxims of conduct than those which are commonly prevalent.  In either case, I am accepting the somewhat invidious task of pointing out defects in the commonly received theory, or the commonly approved practice, of morality.  But, if morality is progressive, as I contend that it is, and progresses by the application to conduct of a test which itself involves a growing conception, the best mode of exhibiting the application of that test will be in the more recent acquisitions or the more subtle deductions of morality, rather than in its fundamental rules or most acknowledged maxims.

I shall begin with a topic, the examples of which are ready to hand, and may easily be multiplied, to almost any extent, by the reader for himself—­the better realisation of our duties to society at large as distinct from particular individuals.  When the primary mischief resulting from a wrong act falls upon individuals, and especially upon our neighbours or those with whom we are constantly associating, it can hardly escape our observation.  And, even if it does, the probability is that our attention will be quickly called to it by the reprobation of others.  But, when the consequences of the act are diffused over the whole community, or a large aggregate of persons, so that the effect on each individual is almost imperceptible, we are very apt to overlook the mischief resulting from it, and so not to recognise its wrongful character, while, at the same time, from lack of personal interest, others fail to call us to account.  Hence it is that men, almost without any thought, and certainly often without any scruple, commit offences against the public or against corporations or societies or companies, which they would themselves deem it impossible for them to commit against individuals.  And yet the character of the acts is exactly the same.  Take smuggling.  A man smuggles cigars or tobacco to an amount by which he saves himself twenty shillings, and defrauds the state to the same extent.  This is simply an act of theft, only that the object of the theft is the community at large and not an individual.  So far as the mischief or wrongfulness of the act goes, apart from the intention of the agent, he might as well put his hands into the pocket of one of his fellow-passengers and extract the same amount of money.  The twenty shillings which, by evading payment of the duty, he has appropriated to his own uses, has been taken from the rest of the tax-payers, and he has simply shifted on to them the obligation which properly attached to himself.  Sooner or later they must make up the deficit.  If many men were to act in the same way, the burden of the honest tax-payer