ing in favour of
withdrawing both the legal and popular sanction formerly so stringent;
while the arguments for Sabbath observance are more and more charged
with considerations of secular utility.

Should these considerations be held as adequate to support the
proposition advanced, they are decisive in favour of Utility as the
Moral Standard that _ought to be_. Any other standard that may be set
up in competition with Utility, must ultimately ground itself on the
very same appeal to the opinions and the practice of mankind.

11. The chief objections urged against Utility as the moral Standard
have been in great part anticipated. Still, it is proper to advert to
them in detail.

I.--It is maintained that Happiness is not, either in fact or in
right, the sole aim of human pursuit; that men actually, deliberately,
and by conscientious preference, seek other ends. For example, it is
affirmed that Virtue is an end in itself, without regard to happiness.

On this argument it may be observed:--

(1) It has been abundantly shown in this work, that one part of the
foregoing affirmation is strictly true. Men are not urged to action
exclusively by their pleasures and their pains. They are urged by
other motives, of the impassioned kind; among which, is to be
signalized sympathy with the pains and pleasures of others. If this
had been the only instance of action at variance with the regular
course of the will, we should be able to maintain that the motive to
act is still happiness, but not always the agent's own happiness. We
have seen, however, that individuals, not unfrequently, act in
opposition both to their own, and to other people's happiness; as when
mastered by a panic, and when worked up into a frenzy of anger or
antipathy.

The sound and tenable position seems to be this:--Human beings, in
their best and soberest moods, looking before and after, weighing all
the consequences of actions, are generally disposed to regard
Happiness, to some beings or others, as the proper end of all
endeavours. The mother is not exclusively bent on her own happiness;
she is upon her child's. Howard abandoned the common pleasures of life
for himself, to diminish the misery of fellow creatures.

(2) It is true that human beings are apt to regard Virtue as an
end-in-itself, and not merely as a means to happiness as the final
end. But the fact is fully accounted for on the general law of
Association by Contiguity; there being many other