for one single opinion, not a set of opinions--to denote the recognition
of utility as a standard, not any particular way of applying it--the
term supplies a want in the language, and offers, in many cases, a
convenient mode of avoiding tiresome circumlocution.]

[Footnote B: An opponent, whose intellectual and moral fairness it is a
pleasure to acknowledge (the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davis), has objected to
this passage, saying, "Surely the rightness or wrongness of saving a man
from drowning does depend very much upon the motive with which it is
done. Suppose that a tyrant, when his enemy jumped into the sea to
escape from him, saved him from drowning simply in order that he might
inflict upon him more exquisite tortures, would it tend to clearness to
speak of that rescue as 'a morally right action?' Or suppose again,
according to one of the stock illustrations of ethical inquiries, that a
man betrayed a trust received from a friend, because the discharge of it
would fatally injure that friend himself or some one belonging to him,
would utilitarianism compel one to call the betrayal 'a crime' as much
as if it had been done from the meanest motive?"

I submit, that he who saves another from drowning in order to kill him
by torture afterwards, does not differ only in motive from him who does
the same thing from duty or benevolence; the act itself is different.
The rescue of the man is, in the case supposed, only the necessary first
step of an act far more atrocious than leaving him to drown would have
been. Had Mr. Davis said, "The rightness or wrongness of saving a man
from drowning does depend very much"--not upon the motive, but--"upon
the _intention_" no utilitarian would have differed from him. Mr. Davis,
by an oversight too common not to be quite venial, has in this case
confounded the very different ideas of Motive and Intention. There is no
point which utilitarian thinkers (and Bentham pre-eminently) have taken