be the result to society, if _this sort of action_ were generally
allowed. This point is well put by Paley (_Moral Philosophy_, bk. ii.,
c. vii.: all three chapters, vi., vii., viii., should be read, as the
best explanation of the Principle of General Consequences):

"You cannot permit one action and forbid another, without showing a
difference between them. Consequently the same sort of actions must be
generally permitted or generally forbidden. Where, therefore, the
general permission of them would be pernicious, it becomes necessary
to lay down and support the rule which generally forbids them.... The
assassin knocked the rich villain on the head, because he thought him
better out of the way than in it. If you allow this excuse in the
present instance, you must allow it to all who act in the same manner,
and from the same motive; that is, you must allow every man to kill
any one he meets, whom he thinks noxious or useless: ... a disposition
of affairs which would soon fill the world with misery and confusion,
and ere long put an end to human society."

My contention is, not with the Principle of General Consequences,
which has a certain value in Ethics, and is used by many writers other
than Utilitarian, but with the two stated above, n. 2, which are
called the Greatest Happiness Principle and the Principle of Utility.

4. Against the Greatest Happiness Principle I have these complaints:

(1) Utilitarians from Paley to John Stuart Mill aver that their
teaching is no bar to any man hoping for and striving after the
happiness of the world to come. They say that such happiness cannot be
better attained than by making it your principal aim to improve all
temporal goods and dissipate all temporal evil. Their maxim in fact