clash with one another: he did not degrade his intellect to the
sophistical office of finding reasons for a policy arising from mere
emotion, nor did he permit it to run waste in barren speculations,
which might have excited admiration, but never could have done any
good. This is the reason why so many persons have been unable to
understand him as the prophet of utilitarianism. A man of such
exquisite feeling, of such pure conscientiousness, of such
self-denying life, must surely be an advocate of what is called
absolute morality. Utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard
unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more subtle moral
influences. Such is the view natural to those who cannot dissociate
the word "utilitarianism" from the narrow meaning of utility, as
contrasted with the pleasures of art. The infirmity of human
language excuses such errors; for the language in which controversy
is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well happen
that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the death about
the word. We need the support of such reflections when we recall
the history of such a word as "pleasure." To pursue pleasure, say the
anti-utilitarians, is a swinish doctrine. "Yes," replied Mr. Mill, "if
men were swine, and capable only of the pleasures appropriate to that
species of animals." Those who could not answer this argument, and at
the same time cannot divest themselves of the association of pleasure
with the ignoble, took refuge in the charge of inconsistency, and,
finding there was not less but more nobility in Mr. Mill's writing
than their own theory, accused him of abandoning the tradition of his
school. Mahomet would not go to the mountain, and they pleased
themselves with the thought that the mountain had gone to Mahomet.
Such a charge is really tantamount to a confession that popular
antipathy was more easily excited by the word than by the real
doctrine. Nevertheless Mr. Mill did an incalculable service in showing