(4) There is a gradual tendency to withdraw from the moral code, observances originating purely in sentiment, and having little or no connexion with human welfare.

We have abandoned the divine sacredness of kings.  We no longer consider ourselves morally bound to denounce and extirpate heretics and witches, still less to observe fasts and sacred days.  Even in regard to the Christian Sabbath, the opinion is growing in favour of withdrawing both the legal and popular sanction formerly so stringent; while the arguments for Sabbath observance are more and more charged with considerations of secular utility.

Should these considerations be held as adequate to support the proposition advanced, they are decisive in favour of Utility as the Moral Standard that ought to be.  Any other standard that may be set up in competition with Utility, must ultimately ground itself on the very same appeal to the opinions and the practice of mankind.

11.  The chief objections urged against Utility as the moral Standard have been in great part anticipated.  Still, it is proper to advert to them in detail.

I.—­It is maintained that Happiness is not, either in fact or in right, the sole aim of human pursuit; that men actually, deliberately, and by conscientious preference, seek other ends.  For example, it is affirmed that Virtue is an end in itself, without regard to happiness.

On this argument it may be observed:—­

(1) It has been abundantly shown in this work, that one part of the foregoing affirmation is strictly true.  Men are not urged to action exclusively by their pleasures and their pains.  They are urged by other motives, of the impassioned kind; among which, is to be signalized sympathy with the pains and pleasures of others.  If this had been the only instance of action at variance with the regular course of the will, we should be able to maintain that the motive to act is still happiness, but not always the agent’s own happiness.  We have seen, however, that individuals, not unfrequently, act in opposition both to their own, and to other people’s happiness; as when mastered by a panic, and when worked up into a frenzy of anger or antipathy.

The sound and tenable position seems to be this:—­Human beings, in their best and soberest moods, looking before and after, weighing all the consequences of actions, are generally disposed to regard Happiness, to some beings or others, as the proper end of all endeavours.  The mother is not exclusively bent on her own happiness; she is upon her child’s.  Howard abandoned the common pleasures of life for himself, to diminish the misery of fellow creatures.

(2) It is true that human beings are apt to regard Virtue as an end-in-itself, and not merely as a means to happiness as the final end.  But the fact is fully accounted for on the general law of Association by Contiguity; there being many other examples of the same kind, as the love of money.  Justice, Veracity, and other virtues, are requisite, to some extent, for the existence of society, and, to a still greater extent, for prosperous existence.  Under such circumstances, it would certainly happen that the means would participate in the importance of the end, and would even be regarded as an end in itself.