t the purpose of virtue should become
independent of pleasure and pain, were it not that the influence of the
pleasurable and painful associations which prompt to virtue is not
sufficiently to be depended on for unerring constancy of action until it
has acquired the support of habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit
is the only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because of the
importance to others of being able to rely absolutely on one's feelings
and conduct, and to oneself of being able to rely on one's own, that the
will to do right ought to be cultivated into this habitual independence.
In other words, this state of the will is a means to good, not
intrinsically a good; and does not contradict the doctrine that nothing
is a good to human beings but in so far as it is either itself
pleasurable, or a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.

But if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility is proved.
Whether it is so or not, must now be left to the consideration of the
thoughtful reader.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY.

In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the
reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion of
right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of Justice, The powerful
sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with
a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to the
majority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things; to show
that the Just must have an existence in Nature as something
absolute-generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and,
in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in
the long run, disjoined from it in fact.

In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments, there is no
necessary connexion between the question of its origin, and that of its
binding force. That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not
necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice might
be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts,
to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we have
intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as well
as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is
no necessity that the former should be more infallible in their sphere
than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judg