The two qualities which seem to be most required in first principles of
ethics are, (1) that they should afford a real explanation of the facts,
(2) that they should inspire the mind,--should harmonize, strengthen,
settle us. We can hardly estimate the influence which a simple principle
such as 'Act so as to promote the happiness of mankind,' or 'Act so that
the rule on which thou actest may be adopted as a law by all rational
beings,' may exercise on the mind of an individual. They will often seem
to open a new world to him, like the religious conceptions of faith or the
spirit of God. The difficulties of ethics disappear when we do not suffer
ourselves to be distracted between different points of view. But to
maintain their hold on us, the general principles must also be
psychologically true--they must agree with our experience, they must accord
with the habits of our minds.

When we are told that actions are right or wrong only in so far as they
tend towards happiness, we naturally ask what is meant by 'happiness.' For
the term in the common use of language is only to a certain extent
commensurate with moral good and evil. We should hardly say that a good
man could be utterly miserable (Arist. Ethics), or place a bad man in the
first rank of happiness. But yet, from various circumstances, the measure
of a man's happiness may be out of all proportion to his desert. And if we
insist on calling the good man alone happy, we shall be using the term in
some new and transcendental sense, as synonymous with well-being. We have
already seen that happiness includes the happiness of others as well as our
own; we must now comprehend unconscious as well as conscious happiness
under the same word. There is no harm in this extension of the meaning,
but a word which admits of such an extension can hardly be made the basis
of a philosophical system. The exactness which is required in philosophy
will not allow us to comprehend under the same term two ideas so different