therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made
out its title as _one_ of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of
the criteria of morality.

But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the sole criterion.
To do that, it would seem, by the same rule, necessary to show, not only
that people desire happiness, but that they never desire anything else.
Now it is palpable that they do desire things which, in common language,
are decidedly distinguished from happiness. They desire, for example,
virtue, and the absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and the
absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as
authentic a fact, as the desire of happiness. And hence the opponents of
the utilitarian standard deem that they have a right to infer that there
are other ends of human action besides happiness, and that happiness is
not the standard of approbation and disapprobation.

But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or
maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It
maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be
desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of
utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is
made virtue; however they may believe (as they do) that actions and
dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than
virtue; yet this being granted, and it having been decided, from
considerations of this description, what _is_ virtuous, they not only
place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to
the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the
possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without
looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right
state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most