tends
to make him wish to be in harmony with his fellow-creatures. The
feeling may be, in most persons, inferior in strength to the selfish
feelings, and may be altogether wanting; but to such as possess it, it
has all the characters of a natural feeling, and one that they would
not desire to be without.

Chapter IV. is OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY is
susceptible. Questions about ends are questions as to what things are
desirable. According to the theory of Utility, happiness is desirable
as an end; all other things are desirable as means. What is the proof
of this doctrine?

As the proof, that the sun is visible, is that people actually see it,
so the proof that happiness is desirable, is that people do actually
desire it. No reason can be given why the general happiness is
desirable, beyond the fact that each one desires their own happiness.

But granting that people desire happiness as _one_ of their ends of
conduct, do they never desire anything else? To all appearance they do;
they desire virtue, and the absence of vice, no less surely than
pleasure and the absence of pain. Hence the opponents of utility
consider themselves entitled to infer that happiness is not the
standard of moral approbation and disapprobation.

But the utilitarians do not deny that virtue is a thing to be desired.
The very reverse. They maintain that it is to be desired, and that _for
itself_. Although considering that what makes virtue is the tendency to
promote happiness, yet they hold that the mind is not in a right state,
not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state conducive to
the general happiness, unless it has adopted this essential
instrumentality so warmly as to love it for its own sake. It is
necessary to the carrying out of utility that certain things,
originally of the nature of means, should come by association to be a
part of the final end. Thus health is but a means, and yet we cherish
it as strongly as we do any of the ultimate pleasures and pains. So
virtue is not originally an end, but it is capable of becoming so; it
is to be desired and cherished not solely as a means to happiness, but
as a part of happiness.

The notorious instance of money exemplifies this operation. The same
may be said of power and fame; although these are ends as well as
means. We should be but ill provided with happiness, were it not for
this provision of nature, whereby, things, originally indifferent, but
cond