between two opinions. Her votaries, like other mortals, may often be in
doubt as to accomplished facts; but, provided these be clear, their
course is in general equally clear; there seldom remains aught to
embarrass them. If they sincerely desire to ascertain what is due from
them, they can seldom err, except on the right side, and they will never
dream of disputing that whatever is due from them it must be their duty
to do, without respect of consequences. These they will leave to the
supreme controller of events, if they believe in one, and will leave to
take their chance, if they do not so believe, feeling all the more
certain in the latter case that to control events cannot, at any rate,
be within their power. They never stop to calculate how much good may
perhaps ensue if evil be done. Simple arithmetic, apart from faith,
satisfies them that to add wrong to wrong cannot possibly augment the
sum total of right. The prime article of their creed is the absolute
obligation of paying debts--a piece of unworldly wisdom more than ever
now to Jews a stumbling-block, and to Greeks foolishness, but not the
less to all, whether Jews or Gentiles, who will accept it, a light to
show through the mazes of life, a path so plainly marked that the
foolishest of wayfaring men cannot greatly err therein.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The distinction here drawn is not merely verbal. The greatest
happiness of the greatest number may mean either the largest total of
happiness in which the largest possible number of those concerned can
participate, or a still larger total, which, if some of the possible
participants were excluded, would be divisible among the remainder. The
largest aggregate of happiness attainable by any or by all concerned,
means the largest sum total absolutely, without reference to the number
of participants. Writers on Utilitarianism seem to have sometimes the
first, sometimes the second of these totals in view, but more frequently
the second than the first.

[2] I do not form a separate class of pleasures of the affections,
because these seem to me not to be elementary, but to be always
compounded of two or more of the other five kinds.

[3] 'On Labour,' p. 135.

[4] 'Fortnightly Review,' June, 1868.

[5] See the No. for June, 1869.

[6] 'On Labour,' p. 93.

[7] 'Fortnightly Review' for June, 1869, p. 683.

[8] See 'Fortnightly Review' for June, 1869, pp. 687-8.

[9] 'Utilitarianism,' by J. S. Mill, pp. 64-8.

[10]