conception of Morality as a science, is conveyed in the
following passages in a letter written by him to Mr. Mill; repudiating
the title anti-utilitarian, which Mr. Mill had applied to him:--

'The note in question greatly startled me by implicitly classing me
with Anti-utilitarians. I have never regarded myself as an
Anti-utilitarian. My dissent from the doctrine of Utility as commonly
understood, concerns not the object to be reached by men, but the
method of reaching it. While I admit that happiness is the ultimate end
to be contemplated, I do not admit that it should be the proximate end.
The Expediency-Philosophy having concluded that happiness is a thing to
be achieved, assumes that Morality has no other business than
empirically to generalize the results of conduct, and to supply for the
guidance of conduct nothing more than its empirical generalizations.

But the view for which I contend is, that Morality properly so
called--the science of right conduct--has for its object to determine
_how_ and _why_ certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain
other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be
accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of
things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to
deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what
kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds
to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be
recognized as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective
of a direct estimation of happiness or misery.

'Perhaps an analogy will most clearly show my meaning. During its early
stages, planetary Astronomy consisted of nothing more than accumulated
observations respecting the positions and motions of the sun and
planets; from which accumulated observations it came by and by to be
empirically predicted, with an approach to truth, that certain of the
heavenly bodies would have certain positions at certain times. But the
modern science of planetary Astronomy consists of deductions from the
law of gravitation--deductions showing why the celestial bodies
_necessarily_ occupy certain places at certain times. Now, the kind of
relation which thus exists between ancient and modern Astronomy, is
analogous to the kind of relation which, I conceive, exists between the
Expediency-Morality, and Moral Science properly so-called. And the
objection which I have to the c