ethical standard
whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined
with it, but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this time
have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on
their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules
of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has
succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this,
even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no
means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to
the effects of actions on the general happiness, I admit, or rather,
earnestly maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility, like
the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement,
and, in a progressive state of the human mind, their improvement is
perpetually going on. But to consider the rules of morality as
improvable, is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations
entirely, and endeavour to test each individual action directly by the
first principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the
acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission
of secondary ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of his
ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of landmarks and
direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end
and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to
that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take
one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking
a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor
listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that
the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors
cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational
creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational
creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the
common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more
difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight
is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do.
Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require
subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing
without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument
against any one in partic