This object is not merely the quantity of happiness enjoyed by individuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in which it should be distributed among them as social beings.  It is not enough, if such a coincidence can be conceived as possible, that one person or class of persons should enjoy the highest happiness, whilst another is suffering a disproportionate degree of misery.  It is necessary that the happiness produced by the common efforts, and preserved by the common care, should be distributed according to the just claims of each individual; if not, although the quantity produced should be the same, the end of society would remain unfulfilled.  The object is in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a social being.

The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called virtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only true object of all voluntary actions of a human being.  Benevolence is the desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the manner in which good ought to be done.

Justice and benevolence result from the elementary laws of the human mind.

CHAPTER I ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE

Sect. 1.  General View of the Nature and Objects of Virtue.—­2.  The Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on the Elementary Principles of Mind.—­3.  The Laws which flow from the nature of Mind regulating the application of those principles to human actions;—­4.  Virtue, a possible attribute of man.

We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like ourselves, upon whose happiness most of our actions exert some obvious and decisive influence.

The regulation of this influence is the object of moral science.  We know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or pleasurable impressions of greater or less intensity and duration.  That is called good which produces pleasure; that is called evil which produces pain.  These are general names, applicable to every class of causes, from which an overbalance of pain or pleasure may result.  But when a human being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing happiness, the principle through which it is most effectually instrumental to that purpose, is called virtue.  And benevolence, or the desire to be the author of good, united with justice, or an apprehension of the manner in which that good is to be done, constitutes virtue.

But wherefore should a man be benevolent and just?  The immediate emotions of his nature, especially in its most inartificial state, prompt him to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion.  He desires to heap superfluities to his own store, although others perish with famine.  He is propelled to guard against the smallest invasion of his own liberty, though he reduces others to a condition of the most pitiless servitude.  He is revengeful, proud and selfish.  Wherefore should he curb these propensities?