of duty is shared by all of us in some degree, and is capable of being
greatly fostered and strengthened. So far from being inconsistent with
religion, the greatest happiness principle is in the highest degree
agreeable to it. For what can be more reasonable than that God should will
the happiness of all his creatures? and in working out their happiness we
may be said to be 'working together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable
that a new enthusiasm of the future, far stronger than any old religion,
may be based upon such a conception.

But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,' it
seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,' 'the
happiness of others principle'--the principle not of the greatest, but of
the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own immediate
interest than is required by the law of self-preservation. Transfer the
thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external circumstances
which form so large a part of our idea of happiness in this, and the
meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from holiness, harmony,
wisdom, love. By the slight addition 'of others,' all the associations of
the word are altered; we seem to have passed over from one theory of morals
to the opposite. For allowing that the happiness of others is reflected on
ourselves, and also that every man must live before he can do good to
others, still the last limitation is a very trifling exception, and the
happiness of another is very far from compensating for the loss of our own.
According to Mr. Mill, he would best carry out the principle of utility who
sacrificed his own pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so,
Hobbes and Butler, Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and
their followers imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are
alike superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at
large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the
friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great