opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral obligation, yet he
must not do what clearly conduces to his own happiness if it is at variance
with the good of the whole. Nay, further, he will be taught that when
utility and right are in apparent conflict any amount of utility does not
alter by a hair's-breadth the morality of actions, which cannot be allowed
to deviate from established law or usage; and that the non-detection of an
immoral act, say of telling a lie, which may often make the greatest
difference in the consequences, not only to himself, but to all the world,
makes none whatever in the act itself.

Again, if we are concerned not with particular actions but with classes of
actions, is the tendency of actions to happiness a principle upon which we
can classify them? There is a universal law which imperatively declares
certain acts to be right or wrong:--can there be any universality in the
law which measures actions by their tendencies towards happiness? For an
act which is the cause of happiness to one person may be the cause of
unhappiness to another; or an act which if performed by one person may
increase the happiness of mankind may have the opposite effect if performed
by another. Right can never be wrong, or wrong right, that there are no
actions which tend to the happiness of mankind which may not under other
circumstances tend to their unhappiness. Unless we say not only that all
right actions tend to happiness, but that they tend to happiness in the
same degree in which they are right (and in that case the word 'right' is
plainer), we weaken the absoluteness of our moral standard; we reduce
differences in kind to differences in degree; we obliterate the stamp which
the authority of ages has set upon vice and crime.

Once more: turning from theory to practice we feel the importance of
retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such as truth,
justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they have become