moral blame if, without just cause, he disappoints that expectation.
Through this principle the domain of moral duty is always widening.
When what once was uncommon virtue becomes common virtue, it comes to be
numbered among obligations, while a degree exceeding what has grown
common, remains simply meritorious.

M. Comte is accustomed to draw most of his ideas of moral cultivation
from the discipline of the Catholic Church. Had he followed that
guidance in the present case, he would have been less wide of the mark.
For the distinction which we have drawn was fully recognized by the
sagacious and far-sighted men who created the Catholic ethics. It is
even one of the stock reproaches against Catholicism, that it has two
standards of morality, and does not make obligatory on all Christians
the highest rule of Christian perfection. It has one standard which,
faithfully acted up to, suffices for salvation, another and a higher
which when realized constitutes a saint. M. Comte, perhaps
unconsciously, for there is nothing that he would have been more
unlikely to do if he had been aware of it, has taken a leaf out of the
book of the despised Protestantism. Like the extreme Calvinists, he
requires that all believers shall be saints, and damns then (after his
own fashion) if they are not.

Our conception of human life is different. We do not conceive life to be
so rich in enjoyments, that it can afford to forego the cultivation of
all those which address themselves to what M. Comte terms the egoistic
propensities. On the contrary, we believe that a sufficient
gratification of these, short of excess, but up to the measure which
renders the enjoyment greatest, is almost always favourable to the
benevolent affections. The moralization of the personal enjoyments we
deem to consist, not in reducing them to the smallest possible amount,