ad said, is the same in
itself, whether it leads to stealing a loaf or to eating your own
loaf. He agrees with Godwin that morality means the 'calculation of
consequences,'[231] or, as he says with Paley, implies the discovery
of the will of God by observing the effect of actions upon happiness.
Reason then regulates certain innate and practically unalterable
instincts by enabling us to foretell their consequences. The
reasonable man is influenced not simply by the immediate
gratification, but by a forecast of all the results which it will
entail. In these matters Malthus was entirely at one with the
Utilitarians proper, and seems to regard their doctrine as
self-evident.

He notices briefly one logical difficulty thus introduced. The
'checks' are vice, misery, and moral restraint. But why distinguish
vice from misery? Is not conduct vicious which causes misery,[232] and
precisely because it causes misery? He replies that to omit 'vice'
would confuse our language. Vicious conduct may cause happiness in
particular cases; though its general tendency would be pernicious. The
answer is not very clear; and Malthus, I think, would have been more
logical if he had stuck to his first theory, and regarded vice as
simply one form of imprudence. Misery, that is, or the fear of misery,
and the indulgence in conduct which produces misery are the 'checks'
which limit population; and the whole problem is to make the ultimate
sanction more operative upon the immediate conduct. Man becomes more
virtuous simply as he becomes more prudent, and is therefore governed
in his conduct by recognising the wider and more remote series of
consequences. There is, indeed, the essential difference that the
virtuous man acts (on whatever motives) from a regard to the 'greatest
happiness of the greatest number,' and not simply from self-regard.
Still the ultimate and decisive criterion is the tendency of conduct
to produce misery; and if Malthus had carried this through as
rigorously as Bentham, he would have been more consistent. The 'moral
check' would then have been simply a department of the prudential;
including prudence for others as well as for ourselves. One reason for
the change is obvious. His assumption enables him to avoid coming into
conflict with the accepted morality of the time. On his exposition
'vice' occasionally seems not to be productive of misery but an
alternative to misery; and yet something bad in itself. Is this
consistent w