tition is between a
man's own interests and those of his neighbours. We applaud generosity;
we censure meanness: but there is a large intermediate class of acts
which can neither be designated as generous nor mean. It will be
observed that, in my enumeration of the classes of acts to which praise
and blame, self-approbation and self-disapprobation attach, I have
carefully drawn a distinction between the invariable connexion which
obtains between certain acts and the ethical approval of ourselves or
others, and the only general connexion which obtains between the
omission of those acts and the ethical feeling of disapproval. Simply to
fall short of the ethical standard which we approve neither merits nor
receives censure, though there is a degree of deficiency, determined
roughly by society at large and by each individual for himself, at which
this indifference is converted into positive condemnation. A like
neutral zone of acts which we neither applaud nor condemn, of course,
exists also in the case of acts which simply affect ourselves or simply
affect others, though it does not seem to be so extensive as in the case
where the conflict of motives is between the interests of others and
those of ourselves.

In determining the cases in which we shall subordinate our own interests
to those of others, or do good to others at our own risk or loss, it is
essential that we should take account of the remote as well as the
immediate effects of actions; and, moreover, that we should enquire into
their general tendencies, or, in other words, ask ourselves what would
happen if everybody or many people acted as we propose to act. Thus, at
first sight, it might seem as if a rich man, at a comparatively small
sacrifice to himself, might promote the greater good of his poor
neighbours by distributing amongst them what to them would be
considerable sums of money. If I have ten thousand a year, why should I
not make fifty poor families happy by endowing them with a hundred a
year each, which to them would be a handsome competency? The loss of
five thousand a year would be to me simply an abridgment of superfluous
luxuries, which I could soon learn to dispense with, while to them the
gain of a hundred a year would be the substitution of comfort for penury
and of case for perpetual struggle. The answer is that, in the first
place, I should probably not, in the long run, be making these families
really happy. The change of circumstances wou