ent, as in other respects.
He warns strongly against making moral generalizations except under
analogous circumstances of knowledge and civilization. Most men have
the rudimentary feelings, but there is no end to the variety of their
intensity and direction. As a highest instance of discrepant moral
sentiment, he cites the fact that, in our own country, a moral stigma
is still attached to intellectual error by many people, and even by men
of cultivation.

He now comes to the important question of the test or criterion that is
to determine which of these diverse sentiments are right and which
wrong, since they cannot all be right from the mere fact of their
existence, or because they are felt by the subjects of them to be
right, or believed to be in consonance with the injunctions of
superiors, or to be held also by other people. The foregoing review of
the _genesis_ of moral sentiments suggests a direct and simple answer.
As they arise from likings and dislikings of actions that cause, or
tend to cause, pleasure and pain, the first thing is to see that the
likings and dislikings are well founded. Where this does not at once
appear, examination of the real effects of actions must be resorted to;
and, in dubious cases, men in general, when unprejudiced, allow this to
be the natural test for applying moral approbation and disapprobation.
If, indeed, the end of moral sentiment is to promote or to prevent the
actions, there can be no better way of attaining that end. And, as a
fact, almost all moralists virtually adopt it on occasion, though often
unconsciously; the greatest happiness--principle is denounced by its
opponents as a _mischievous_ doctrine.

The objection that the criterion of consequences is difficult of
application, and thus devoid of practical utility, he rebuts by
asserting that the difficulty is not greater than in other cases. We
have simply to follow effects as far as we can; and it is by its
ascertainable, not by its unascertainable, consequences, that we
pronounce an action, as we pronounce an article of food or a statute,
to be good or bad. The main effects of most actions are already very
well ascertained, and the consequences to human happiness, when
unascertainable, are of no value. If the test were honestly applied,
ethical discrepancies would tend gradually to disappear.

He starts another objection:--The happiness-test is good as far as it
goes, but we also approve and disapprove of actions as