nd a right on the part of some
one, which right ought to be enforced by society. If it is asked why
society _ought_ to enforce the right, there is no answer but the
general utility. If that expression seem feeble and inadequate to
account for the energy of retaliation inspired by injustice, the author
asks us to advert to the extraordinarily important and impressive kind
of utility that is concerned. The interest involved is _security_, to
every one's feelings the most vital of all interests. All other earthly
benefits needed by one person are not needed by another; and many of
them can, if necessary, be cheerfully foregone, or replaced by
something else; but security no human being can possibly do without; on
it we depend for all our immunity from evil, and for the whole value of
all and every good, beyond the passing moment. Now, this most
indispensable of all necessaries, after physical nutriment, cannot be
had unless the machinery for providing it is kept unintermittedly in
active play. Our notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our
fellow-creatures to join in making safe for us the very groundwork of
our existence, gathers feelings around it so much more intense than
those concerned in any of the more common cases of utility, that the
difference in degree (as is often the case in psychology) becomes a
real difference in kind. The claim assumes that character of
absoluteness, that apparent infinity, and incommensurability with all
other considerations, which constitute the distinction between the
feeling of right and wrong, and that of ordinary expediency and
inexpediency.

Having presented his own analysis of the sentiment of Justice, the
author proceeds to examine the _intuitive_ theory. The charge is
constantly brought against Utility, that it is an uncertain standard,
differently interpreted by each person. The only safety, it is
pretended, is found in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakeable
dictates of Justice, carrying their evidence in themselves, and
independent of the fluctuations of opinions. But so far is this from
being the fact, that there is as much difference of opinion, and as
much discussion, about what is just, as about what is useful to
society.

To take a few instances. On the question of Punishment, some hold it
unjust to punish any one by way of example, or for any end but the good
of the sufferer. Others maintain that the good of the society is the
only admissible end of punishme