hough, then, if due distinctions and admissions be made,
the tendency to produce, in the long run, the greatest amount of
happiness or misery, pleasure or pain, may be taken as the test of the
goodness or badness of an action, the phraseology is so misleading, and
so liable to frustrate the practical objects of the moralist, that it is
desirable, if possible, to find terms not equally lending themselves to
misinterpretation and perversion. Let us now, then, consider whether we
are supplied with such terms in the phrases 'perfection' or
'development' of 'character.' It is a noble idea of human action to
suppose that its end is the perfection of individual men, or the
development of their various capacities to the utmost extent that is
available. And yet, as the phrases 'pleasure' and 'happiness' are apt
too exclusively to suggest material well-being and the gratification of
the more animal parts of our nature, so the phrases 'perfection' or
'development' of 'character' are apt altogether to keep out of sight
these necessary pre-suppositions of a healthy and progressive condition
of humanity. Unless there were some standard of comfortable living, and
a constant effort not only to maintain but to improve it, and unless
some zest were given to every-day life by the gratification of the
appetites, within reasonable limits, and the endeavour to obtain the
means of indulging them, men, constituted as they are, would be in
danger of sinking into sloth, squalor, and indigence, and, to the great
mass of mankind, the opportunity of developing and perfecting their
higher nature would never occur. We seem, therefore, to require some
term which will not only suggest the highest results of moral endeavour,
but also the conditions which, in the case of humanity, are essential to
the attainment of those results. Moreover, to a greater extent even than
the words 'pleasure' and 'happiness,' the expressions 'perfection' and
'development' of 'character' are in danger of being supposed to imply an
exclusive reference to self. It is true that we cannot properly develope
our characters, much less attain to all the perfection of which they are
capable, without quickening the moral feeling and giving larger scope to
the sympathetic emotions; but, in the mere attempt to improve their own
nature, men are very apt to lose sight of their relations to others. The
phrases ought, however, to be taken, and usually are intended to be
taken, to include the