of which the former, we are told, gives us the desire for the good, and
the latter instructs us how to attain this desire by action. So too
Professor Huxley, once more to recur to him, says that that state of man
would be '_a true_ civitas Dei, _in which each man's moral faculty shall
be such as leads him to control all those desires which run counter to
the good of mankind_.' And J.S. Mill, whose doubts as to the value of
life we have already dwelt upon, professed to have at last satisfied
himself by a precisely similar answer. He had never '_wavered in the
conviction_,' he tells us, even all through his perplexity, that, if
life had any value at all, '_happiness_' was its one '_end_,' and the
'_test of its rule of conduct_;' but he now thought that this end was to
be attained by not making it the direct end, but '_by fixing the mind on
some object other than one's own happiness; on the happiness of
others--on the improvement of mankind_.' The same thing is being told us
on all sides, and in countless ways. The common name for this theory is
Utilitarianism; and its great boast, and its special professed strength,
is that it gives morals a positive basis in the acknowledged science of
sociology. Whether sociology can really supply such a basis is what we
now have to enquire. There are many practical rules for which it no
doubt can do so; but will these rules correspond with what we mean by
morals?

Now the province of the sociologist, within certain limits, is clear
enough. His study is to the social body what the study of the physician
is to the individual body. It is the study of human action as
productive, or non-productive, of some certain general good. But here
comes the point at issue--What is this general good, and what is
included by it? The positive school contend that it is general
happiness; and there, they say, is the answer to the great
question--What is the test of conduct, and the true end of life? But