rianism assumes them to be, one and the same
thing. Clearly, that the just should suffer for the unjust, the innocent
for the guilty, is diametrically opposed to the welfare of society;
wherefore, according to utilitarian principles, by consenting so to
suffer, the just becomes unjust, the innocent renders himself guilty.
But can there be a better proof that utilitarian principles are unsound
than that this should be a legitimate deduction from them? Can there be
better proof that utility and morality are not identical, but two
absolutely distinct things? Plainly, there can be no meritorious or
commendable immorality; neither can there be any virtue which is not
meritorious and commendable. Is there, then, no merit, nothing
commendable, in accepting ruin or in volunteering to die temporarily, or
to perish everlastingly, in order to save a fellow-creature from ruin,
or death, or perdition? Does not such conduct, considered independently
and without reference either to its utility or its hurtfulness, command
our instantaneous and enthusiastic admiration? But how, being so
admirable, can it be immoral? how other than virtuous? What else is it,
indeed, but the very perfection of that purest virtue which, content to
be its own reward, deliberately cuts itself off from all other
recompense? Without changing the immemorial meaning of the most familiar
words, there is no avoiding the obvious answers to these questions. If
virtue and morality, right and wrong, are to continue to mean anything
like that which, except by Utilitarians, has always been considered to
be their only meaning, it is not simply not wrong, it is not simply
right, it is among the highest achievements of virtue and morality to
sacrifice your own in order to secure another's happiness, and the
disinterestedness, and therefore the virtue, is surely the greater,
rather than less, if you sacrifice more happiness of your own than you
secure to another. So much follows necessarily from what has been said,
and something more besides. It follows further that Utilitarianism is
not less in error in declaring that actions calculated to diminish the
total sum of happiness must necessarily be wrong, cannot possibly be
allowable, still less meritorious, than it had previously been shown to
be in declaring that actions calculated to augment the sum total of
happiness must necessarily be meritorious.

There is but one way in which Utilitarianism can even temporarily rebut
t