character of acts, whether by ourselves or by others.  But this would implicate two facts, neither of which we can be conscious of:  (1) a law binding on a certain person, and (2) his conduct as agreeing or disagreeing with that law.  Now, I can infer the existence of such a law only by representing his mind as constituted like my own.  We can, in fact, immediately perceive moral qualities only in our own actions.

2. The Moral Standard.  This is treated as a branch of Ontology, and designated the ‘Real in morality,’ He declares that Kant’s notion of an absolute moral law, binding by its inherent power over the mind, is a mere fiction.  The difference between inclination and the moral imperative is merely a difference between lower and higher pleasure.  The moral law can have no authority unless imposed by a superior, as a law emanating from a lawgiver.  If man is not accountable to some higher being, there is no distinction between duty and pleasure.  The standard of right and wrong is the moral nature (not the arbitrary will) of God.[25] Now, as we cannot know God—­an infinite being,—­so we have but a relative conception of morality.  We may have lower and higher ideas of duty.  Morality therefore admits of progress.  But no advance in morality contradicts the principles previously acknowledged, however it may vary the acts whereby those principles are carried out.  And each advance takes its place in the mind, not as a question to be supported by argument, but as an axiom to be intuitively admitted.  Each principle appears true and irreversible so far as it goes, but it is liable to be merged in a more comprehensive formula.  It is an error of philosophers to imagine that they have an absolute standard of morals, and thereupon to set out a priori the criterion of a possibly true revelation.  Kant said that the revealed commands of God could have no religious value, unless approved by the moral reason; and Fichte held that no true revelation could contain any intimation of future rewards and punishments, or any moral rule not deducible from the principles of the practical reason.  But revelation has enlightened the practical reason, as by the maxim—­to love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself—­a maxim, says Mr. Mansel, that philosophy in vain toiled after, and subsequently borrowed without acknowledgment.

JOHN STUART MILL.

Mr. J.S.  Mill examines the basis of Ethics in a small work entitled
Utilitarianism.

After a chapter of General Remarks, he proposes (Chapter II.) to enquire, What Utilitarianism is?  This creed holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.  By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.  The things included under pleasure and pain may require farther explanation; but this does not affect the general