ve nature in any degree, the doctrine of utility
must be so transfigured that it becomes altogether different and loses
all simplicity.

But why, since there are different characters among men, should we not
allow them to envisage morality accordingly, and be thankful to the
great men who have provided for all of us modes and instruments of
thought? Would the world have been better if there had been no Stoics or
Kantists, no Platonists or Cartesians? No more than if the other pole
of moral philosophy had been excluded. All men have principles which
are above their practice; they admit premises which, if carried to their
conclusions, are a sufficient basis of morals. In asserting liberty of
speculation we are not encouraging individuals to make right or wrong
for themselves, but only conceding that they may choose the form under
which they prefer to contemplate them. Nor do we say that one of these
aspects is as true and good as another; but that they all of them, if
they are not mere sophisms and illusions, define and bring into relief
some part of the truth which would have been obscure without their
light. Why should we endeavour to bind all men within the limits of a
single metaphysical conception? The necessary imperfection of language
seems to require that we should view the same truth under more than one
aspect.

We are living in the second age of utilitarianism, when the charm of
novelty and the fervour of the first disciples has passed away. The
doctrine is no longer stated in the forcible paradoxical manner of
Bentham, but has to be adapted to meet objections; its corners are
rubbed off, and the meaning of its most characteristic expressions is
softened. The array of the enemy melts away when we approach him. The
greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great original idea when
enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a generation and has left its mark
on thought and civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it
had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he
would have denied that pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness
he meant anything but pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his
thoroughness. The 'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other
hands; and now we seem to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want
of exactness while assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness,
its paradoxical explanation of several of the virtues. No philos