utiful or more exalted
developments of human nature any other ethical system can be supposed to
foster, or what springs of action, not accessible to the utilitarian,
such systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.

The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be charged with
representing it in a discreditable light. On the contrary, those among
them who entertain anything like a just idea of its disinterested
character, sometimes find fault with its standard as being too high for
humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people shall
always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of
society. But this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of
morals, and to confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is
the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test
we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive
of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine
hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly
so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them. It is the more
unjust to utilitarianism that this particular misapprehension should be
made a ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moralists have
gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive has nothing
to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the
agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally
right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his
trouble: he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a
crime, even if his object be to serve another friend to whom he is under
greater obligations.[B] But to speak only of actions done from the
motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle: it is a
misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as
implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as
the world, or society at large. The great majority of good actions are
intended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals,
of which the good of the world is made up; and the thoughts of the most
virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond the particular
persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that
in benefiting them he is not violating the rights--that is, the
legitimate and authorized expectations--of any one else. The
multiplicat