truth and falsehood, are questions of observation and experience. But
both hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and the
intuitive school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is a
science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a list of the _à
priori_ principles which are to serve as the premises of the science;
still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those various
principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. They
either assume the ordinary precepts of morals as of _à priori_
authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those maxims,
some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maxims
themselves, and which has never succeeded in gaining popular acceptance.
Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one
fundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there
be several, there should be a determinate order of precedence among
them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the
various principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident.

To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been
mitigated in practice, or to what extent the moral beliefs of mankind
have been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any distinct
recognition of an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey and
criticism of past and present ethical doctrine. It would, however, be
easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency these moral beliefs
have attained, has been mainly due to the tacit influence of a standard
not recognised. Although the non-existence of an acknowledged first
principle has made ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men's
actual sentiments, still, as men's sentiments, both of favour and of
aversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to be the effects
of things upon their happiness, the principle of utility, or as Bentham
latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has had a large