Mill considers that the existing moral rules are all based on our estimate, correct or incorrect, of Utility.

JOHN AUSTIN. [1790-1859.]

Austin, in his Lectures on ‘The Province of Jurisprudence determined,’ has discussed the leading questions of Ethics.  We give an abstract of the Ethical part.

LECTURE I. Law, in its largest meaning, and omitting metaphorical applications, embraces Laws set by God to his creatures, and Laws set by man to man.  Of the laws set by man to man, some are established by political superiors, or by persons exercising government in nations or political societies.  This is law in the usual sense of the word, forming the subject of Jurisprudence.  The author terms it Positive Law.  There is another class of laws not set by political superiors in that capacity.  Yet some of these are properly termed laws, although others are only so by a close Analogy.  There is no name for the laws proper, but to the others are applied such names as ‘moral rules,’ ‘the moral law,’ ‘general or public opinion,’ ’the law of honour or of fashion.’  The author proposes for these laws the name positive morality.  The laws now enumerated differ in many important respects, but agree in this—­that all of them are set by intelligent and rational beings to intelligent and rational beings.  There is a figurative application of the word ‘law,’ to the uniformities of the natural world, through which, the field of jurisprudence and morals has been deluged with muddy speculation.

Laws properly so called are commands.  A command is the signification of a desire or wish, accompanied with the power and the purpose to inflict evil if that desire is not complied with.  The person so desired is bound or obliged, or placed under a duty, to obey.  Refusal is disobedience, or violation of duty.  The evil to be inflicted is called a sanction, or an enforcement of obedience; the term punishment expresses one class of sanctions.

The term sanction is improperly applied to a Reward.  We cannot say that an action is commanded, or that obedience is constrained or enforced by the offer of a reward.  Again, when a reward is offered, a right and not an obligation is created:  the imperative function passes to the party receiving the reward.  In short, it is only by conditional evil, that duties are sanctioned or enforced.

The correct meaning of superior and inferior is determined by command and obedience.

LECTURE II.  The Divine Laws are the known commands of the Deity, enforced by the evils that we may suffer here or hereafter for breaking them.  Some of these laws are revealed, others unrevealed.  Paley and others have proved that it was not the purpose of Revelation to disclose the whole of our duties; the Light of Nature is an additional source.  But how are we to interpret this Light of Nature?