modern times for those of the Greeks or Romans?  Or, again, should we be willing, in this respect, to go back three hundred, or two hundred, or even one hundred years in our own history?  Are not the abolition of slavery, the improved and improving treatment of captives taken in war, of women and children, of the distressed and unfortunate, and even of the lower animals, alone sufficient to mark the difference between the morality of earlier and of later times?  I shall assume, then, that there is a test of conduct, and that this test is of such a character that its continued application, by individual thinkers or by mankind at large, consciously or semi-consciously, is sufficient to account for the existence of a progressive morality.  But, if so, it must be a test which experience enables us to apply with increasing accuracy, and which is derived from external considerations, or, in other words, from the observation of the effects and tendencies of actions.  And here I may observe, parenthetically, that to make ‘conscience’ or ‘moral reason’ or ’moral sense’ the test of action, as, for instance, Bishop Butler appears to do in the case of conscience, is, even on the supposition of the independent existence of these so-called ‘faculties,’ to confound the judge with the law which governs his decisions, the ‘faculty’ with the rules in accordance with which it operates.  Limiting ourselves, therefore, to a test which is derived from a consideration of the results, direct and indirect, immediate and remote, of our actions, we simply have to enquire what is the characteristic in these results which men have in view when they try to act rightly, and which they mistake, ignore, or lose sight of, when they act wrongly.

There are, in the main, three answers to this question, though they are rather different modes, I conceive, of presenting the same idea, than distinct and independent explanations.  It may be said that we look to the manner in which the action will affect the happiness or pleasure of those whom it concerns, or their welfare or well-being, or the development or perfection of their character.  Now it seems to me that these are by no means necessarily antagonistic modes of speaking, and that, in attempting to determine the test of right action, they are all useful as complementing each other.  There is, however, a view of the measure of actions which, though derived from external considerations, is opposed to them all, and which it may be desirable to notice at once, with the object of eliminating it from our enquiry.  It is that we are only concerned with actions so far as they affect ourselves, and that, providing we observe the law of the land, which will punish us if we do not observe it, we are under no further obligations to our fellow-citizens.  This paradox, for such it is, has mainly acquired notoriety though the advocacy of Hobbes, though it has sometimes been ignorantly attributed to Bentham and other writers of what is called the utilitarian school.  But,