they are just or
generous, or the contrary, and with no reference to happiness or
unhappiness. In answering this argument, he confines himself to the
case of Justice. To be morally approved, a just action must in itself
be peculiarly pleasant or agreeable, irrespective of its other effects,
which are left out: for on no theory can pleasantness or agreeableness
be dissociated from moral approbation. Now, as Happiness is but a
general appellation for all the agreeable affections of our nature, and
unable to exist except in the shape of some agreeable emotion or
combinations of agreeable emotions; the just action that is morally
commendable, as giving naturally and directly a peculiar kind of
pleasure independent of any other consequences, only produces one
species of those pleasant states of mind that are ranged under the
genus happiness. The test of justice therefore coincides with the
happiness-test. But he does not mean that we are actually affected
thus, in doing just actions, nor refuse to accept justice as a
criterion of actions; only in the one case he maintains that, whatever
association may have effected, the just act must originally have been
approved for the sake of its consequences, and, in the other, that
justice is a criterion, because proved over and over again to be a most
beneficial principle.

After remarking that the Moral Sentiments of praise and blame may enter
into accidental connection with, other feelings of a distinct
character, like pity, wonder, &c., he criticises the use of the word
_Utility_ in Morals. He avoids the term as objectionable, because the
_useful_ in common language does not mean what is directly productive
of happiness, but only what is instrumental in its production, and in
most cases customarily or recurrently instrumental. A blanket is of
continual utility to a poor wretch through a severe winter, but the
benevolent act of the donor is not termed useful, because it confers
the benefit and ceases. Utility is too narrow to comprehend all the
actions that deserve approbation. We want an uncompounded substantive
expressing the two attributes of _conferring_ and _conducing to_
happiness; as a descriptive phrase, _producing_ happiness is as
succinct as any. The term useful is, besides, associated with the
notion of what is serviceable in the affairs and objects of common
life, whence the philosophical doctrine that erects utility as its
banner is apt to be deemed, by the unthinking