There is, however (and this brings us to the third point), a very large
part of the world that, as a fact, no matter what it professes, really
sets upon morality no true value whatever. If it has ever realised at
all what morality is, it has done so only partially; it has been more
impressed with its drawbacks than with its attractions, and it becomes
practically happier and more contented, the more it forgets the very
idea of virtue. But it is implied, as we have seen, in the usual
language of all of us that, let the vicious be as happy as possible,
they have no right to such a happiness, and that if they choose to take
it, it will in some way or other be the worse for them. This language
evidently implies farther that there is some standard by which happiness
is to be measured, quite apart from its completeness, and from our
individual desire for it. That standard is something absolute, beyond
and above the taste of any single man or of any body of men. It is a
standard to which the human race can be authoritatively ordered to
conform, or be despised, derided, and hated, if it refuse to do so. It
is implied that those who find their happiness in virtue have a right to
order and to force, if possible, all others to do the same. Unless we
believed this there would be no such thing as moral earnestness in the
propagation of any system. There could, indeed, be no such thing as
propagandism at all. If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred to
be a contented pig rather than a discontented Socrates, we should have
no positive reason for thinking him wrong; even did we think so we
should have no motive for telling him so; even if we told him, we should
have no means of convincing him.

Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of action, and the one key
that can unlock for each of us the true treasure of life, who talk of
things being noble and sacred and heroic, who call our responsibilities
and our privileges[13] awful, and who urge on a listless world the