in our own power; and the grand mistake of the Stoics was their
viewing all good and evil whatever in the same light.

It is an essential part of human liberty, to permit each person to
form and to indulge these sentiments or caprices; although a good
education should control them with a view to our happiness on the
whole. But, when any individual liking or fancy of this description is
imposed as a law upon the entire community, it is a perversion and
abuse of power, a confounding of the Ethical end by foreign
admixtures. Thus, to enjoin authoritatively one mode of sepulture,
punishing all deviations from that, could have nothing to do with the
preservation of the order of society. In such a matter, the
interference of the state in modern times, has regard to the detection
of crime in the matter of life and death, and to the evils arising
from the putrescence of the dead.

6. The Ethical End, although properly confined to Utility, is subject
to still farther limitations, according to the view taken of the
Province of Moral Government, or Authority.

Although nothing should be made morally obligatory but what is
generally useful, the converse does not hold; many kinds of conduct
are generally useful, but not morally obligatory. A certain amount of
bodily exercise in the open air every day would be generally useful;
but neither the law of the land nor public opinion compels it. Good
roads are works of great utility; it is not every one's duty to make
them.

The machinery of coercion is not brought to bear upon every
conceivable utility. It is principally reserved, when not abused, for
a select class of utilities.

Some utilities are indispensable to the very existence of men in
society. The primary moral duties must be observed to some degree, if
men are to live together as men, and not to roam at large as beasts.
The interests of _Security_ are the first and most pressing concern of
human society. Whatever relates to this has a surpassing importance.
Security is contrasted with Improvement; what relates to Security is
declared to be Right; what relates to Improvement is said to be
Expedient; both are forms of Utility, but the one is pressing and
indispensable, the other is optional. The same difference is expressed
by the contrasts--Being and Well-being; Existence and Prosperous
Existence; Fundamentals or Essentials and Circumstantials. That the
highway robber should be punished is a part of Being; that the
highwa