supporters (Mill's
Utilitarianism):--'That which alone makes actions either right or
desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote the happiness of
mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the
world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as
well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior in quality is
incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness,
which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of others,--of our family, of
our country, of mankind. The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of
our own interest to that of other men, may become a passion to a rightly
educated nature. The Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this
virtue and for every other.'

Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end
of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and
in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be
explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do
not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the
greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general
they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is
proved, as in Aristotle's time, so in our own, by the universal fact
that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the
social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some
degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened.
So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness
principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more
reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures?
and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working
together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of
the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a
conception.

But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,'
it seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,'
'the happiness of others principle'--the principle not of the greatest,
but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own
immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation.
Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external
circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness
in this, and the meaning o