Under the Fixed Idea, may be ranked the acquired sense of Dignity, which induces us often to forfeit pleasure and incur pain.  We should not choose the life of Plato’s beatified oyster, or (to use Aristotle’s example) be content with perpetual childhood, with however great a share of childish happiness.

10.  The Ethical end that men are tending to, and may ultimately adopt without reservation, is human Welfare, Happiness, or Being and Well-being combined, that is, Utility.

The evidence consists of such facts as these:—­

(1) By far the greater part of the morality of every age and country has reference to the welfare of society.  Even in the most superstitious, sentimental, and capricious despotisms, a very large share of the enactments, political and moral, consist in protecting one man from another, and in securing justice between man and man.  These objects may be badly carried out, they may be accompanied with much oppression of the governed by the governing body, but they are always aimed at, and occasionally secured.  Of the Ten Commandments, four pertain to Religious Worship; six are Utilitarian, that is, have no end except to ward off evils, and to further the good of mankind.

(2) The general welfare is at all times considered a strong and adequate justification of moral rules, and is constantly adduced as a motive for obedience.  The commonplaces in support of law and morality represent, that if murder and theft were to go unpunished, neither life nor property would be safe; men would be in eternal warfare; industry would perish; society must soon come to an end.

There is a strong disposition to support the more purely sentimental requirements, and even the excesses of mere tyranny, by utilitarian reasons.

The cumbersome ablutions of oriental nations are defended on the ground of cleanliness.  The divine sanctity of kings is held to be an aid to social obedience.  Slavery is alleged to have been at one time necessary to break in mankind to industry.  Indissoluble marriage arose from a sentiment rather than from utility; but the arguments, commonly urged in its favour, are utilitarian.

(3) In new cases, and in cases where no sentiment or passion is called into play, Utility alone is appealed to.  In any fresh enactment, at the present day, the good of the community is the only justification that would be listened to.  If it were proposed to forbid absolutely the eating of pork in Christian countries, some great public evils would have to be assigned as the motive.  Were the fatalities attending the eating of pork, on account of trichiniae, to become numerous, and unpreventible, there would then be a reason, such as a modern civilized community would consider sufficient, for making the rearing of swine a crime and an immorality.  But no mere sentimental or capricious dislike to the pig, on the part of any number of persons, could now procure an enactment for disusing that animal.