the cause of the cause.
Mill relies chiefly upon one argument. The same conduct will produce
the same consequences whatever the motives. That is undeniable. It is
the same to me whether I am burnt because the persecutor loves my soul
or because he hates me as a rebel to his authority. But when is
conduct 'the same'? If we classify acts as the legislator has to
classify them by 'external' or 'objective' relations, we put together
the man who is honest solely from fear of the gallows and the man who
is honest from hatred of stealing. So long as both act alike, the
'consequences' to their neighbours are alike. Neither is legally
punishable. But if acts are classified by their motives, one is a
rogue and the other virtuous; and it is only then that the question of
morality properly arises. In that case, it is idle to separate the
question of motive and consequences, because the character determines
the motive and therefore the action. Nobody should have seen this more
clearly than Mill as a good 'determinist.' Conduct and character are
related as the convex and concave of the curve; conduct is simply the
manifestation of character, and to separate them is absurd.

Why did he not see this? For reasons, I think, which illustrate his
whole method. From a scientific point of view, the ethical problem
raises the wide questions, What are the moral sentiments? and, What
functions do they discharge in regard to the society or to its
individual members? We might hold that morality is justified by
'utility' in the sense that the moral rules and the character which
they indicate are essential to the welfare of the race or its
individual constituents. But to Mill this proposition is interpreted
as identical with the proposition that conduct must be estimated by
its 'consequences.' We are to consider not the action itself, but its
effects; and the effects are clearly independent of the motive when
once the action has been done. We may therefore get a calculus of
'utility': general rules stating what actions will be useful
considered abstractedly from their motives. The method, again, might
be plausible if we could further assume that all men were the same and
differed only in external circumstances. That is the point of view to
which Mill, like Bentham, is always more or less consciously
inclining. The moral and the positive law are equally enforced by
'sanctions'; by something not dependent upon the man himself, and
which he is incli