amount of moral rectitude which is necessary for this outward peace
and preservation of the commonwealth, and the perpetuity of the human
race." (Suarez, _De Legibus_, III., xi., 7.) This is all the good that
the Utilitarian contemplates. He is satisfied to make a good
_citizen_, a good _husband_, a good _father_, for the transactions of
this life. He has no concern to make a good _man_ up to the ethical
standard, which supposes the observance of the whole natural law,
duties to God, and duties within himself, as well as duties to human
society, and by this observance the compassing of the everlasting
happiness of the man's own individual soul.

Against the Principle of Utility I find these charges:

(1) It takes the sign and indication of moral evil for the evil
itself, as if the physician should take the symptom for the disease.
It places the wickedness of an act in the physical misery and
suffering that are its consequences. This is, I say, a taking of the
indication for the thing indicated. An act is bad in itself and by
itself, as being a violation of the rational nature of the doer (c.
vi., s. i.), and being bad, it breeds bad consequences. But the
badness of the act is moral; the badness of the consequences,
physical. There is an evident intrinsic irrationality, and thereby
moral evil, in such sins as intemperance, peevishness, and vanity. But
let us take an instance of an act, apparently harmless in itself, and
evil solely because of the consequences. Supposing one insists upon
playing the piano for his own amusement, to the disturbance of an
invalid who is lying in a critical state in the next room. Do the mere
consequences make this otherwise innocent amusement evil? Yes, if you
consider the amusement in the abstract: but if you take it as _this
human act_, the act is inordinate and evil in itself, or as it is