obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in
the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal
conduct. They are overcome practically with greater or with less success
according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can
hardly be pretended that any one will be the less qualified for dealing
with them, from possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting
rights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of
moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when
their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standard
may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems,
the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common
umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedence
one over another rest on little better than sophistry, and unless
determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged influence of
considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the action of
personal desires and partialities. We must remember that only in these
cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that
first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral
obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and if
only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in the
mind of any person by whom the principle itself is recognized.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The author of this essay has reason for believing himself
to be the first person who brought the word utilitarian into use. He did
not invent it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt's
_Annals of the Parish_. After using it as a designation for several
years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything
resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name