fact, be hardly felt at all by the community, or at all events only in a
very small degree. And therefore my choice is not that of the sailor's
in the shipwreck. It does not lie between saving my life at the expense
of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of mine. It lies
rather, as it were, between letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking
my own arm.

It will appear, therefore, that the general conditions of an entirely
undefined happiness form an ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance
individual temptation or, to give even willingness, let alone ardour, to
the self-denials that are required of us. In the first place the
conditions are so vague that even in the extremest cases the individual
will find it difficult to realise that he is appreciably disturbing
them. And in the second place, until he knows that the happiness in
question is something of extreme value he will be unable to feel much
ardour in helping to make it possible. If we knew that the social
organism in its state of completest health had no higher pleasure than
sleep and eating, the cause of its completest health would hardly excite
enthusiasm. And even if we did not rebel against any sacrifices for so
poor a result as this, we should at the best be resigned rather than
blest in making them. The nearest approach to a moral end that the
science of sociology will of itself supply to us is an end that, in all
probability, men will not follow at all, or that will produce in them,
if they do, no happier state than a passionless and passive
acquiescence. If we want anything more than this we must deal with
happiness itself, not with the negative conditions of it. We must
discern the highest good that is within the reach of each of us, and
this may perhaps supply us with a motive for endeavouring to secure the
same blessing for all. But the matter depends entirely on what this
highest good is--on the end to which, given the social health, the