the happiness of others—­on the improvement of mankind.’  The same thing is being told us on all sides, and in countless ways.  The common name for this theory is Utilitarianism; and its great boast, and its special professed strength, is that it gives morals a positive basis in the acknowledged science of sociology.  Whether sociology can really supply such a basis is what we now have to enquire.  There are many practical rules for which it no doubt can do so; but will these rules correspond with what we mean by morals?

Now the province of the sociologist, within certain limits, is clear enough.  His study is to the social body what the study of the physician is to the individual body.  It is the study of human action as productive, or non-productive, of some certain general good.  But here comes the point at issue—­What is this general good, and what is included by it?  The positive school contend that it is general happiness; and there, they say, is the answer to the great question—­What is the test of conduct, and the true end of life?  But though, as we shall see in another moment, there is some plausibility in this, there is really nothing in it of the special answer we want.  Our question is, What is the true happiness?  And what is the answer thus far?—­That the true happiness is general happiness; that it is the happiness of men in societies; that it is happiness equally distributed.  But this avails us nothing.  The coveted happiness is still a locked casket.  We know nothing as yet of its contents.  A happy society neither does nor can mean anything but a number of happy individuals, so organised that their individual happiness is secured to them.  But what do the individuals want?  Before we can try to secure it for them, we must know that.  Granted that we know what will make the individuals happy, then we shall know what will make society happy.  And then social morality will be, as Professor Huxley says, a perfectly legitimate subject of scientific enquiry—­then, but not till then.  But this is what the positive school are perpetually losing sight of; and the reason of the confusion is not far to seek.

Within certain limits, it is quite true, the general good is a sufficiently obvious matter, and beyond the reach of any rational dispute.  There are, therefore, certain rules with regard to conduct that we can arrive at and justify by strictly scientific methods.  We can demonstrate that there are certain actions which we must never tolerate, and which we must join together, as best we may, to suppress.  Actions, for instance, that would tend to generate pestilence, or to destroy our good faith in our fellows, or to render our lives and property insecure, are actions the badness of which can be scientifically verified.