speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every
individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the
whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a
power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in
the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own
happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own
happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and
positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes: so that not
only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to
himself, consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also
that a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every
individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the sentiments
connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place in every human
being's sentient existence. If the impugners of the utilitarian morality
represented it to their own minds in this its true character, I know not
what recommendation possessed by any other morality they could possibly
affirm to be wanting to it: what more beautiful or more exalted
developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to
foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian,
such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with
representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among
them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested
character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for
humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall
always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of
society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of
morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is
the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test