Mill was born in london, England. He was educated by his father, James Mill, a distinguished scottish philosopher, political theorist, economist, and historian. A utilitarian, empiricist, and important public thinker, Mill was author of Utilitarianism, Considerations on Representative Government, Principles of Political Economy, Subjection of Women, System of Logic, The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, and, most famously, On Liberty. Apart from his writings, Mill worked at the East india Company (1823–58), served as a Member of Parliament (1865–68), and was lord Rector of the University of st. Andrews (1865–68).

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to great works of art. As individuals, each of us should confront with unblinking
honesty the truth about ourselves and endeavor to live joyfully and exuberantly.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

Mill was born in london, England. He was educated by his father, James Mill, a distinguished
scottish philosopher, political theorist, economist, and historian. A utilitarian, empiricist, and
important public thinker, Mill was author of Utilitarianism, Considerations on Representative
Government, Principles of Political Economy, Subjection of Women, System of Logic, The
Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, and, most famously, On Liberty. Apart from his writings,
Mill worked at the East india Company (1823–58), served as a Member of Parliament
(1865–68), and was lord Rector of the University of st. Andrews (1865–68).

UTILITARIANISM

Chapter 1: General Remarks

There ought either to be some one fundamental principle or law, at the root of allmorality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate order of precedence
among them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the various
principles when they conflict, ought to be self-evident. . . .

On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of other theories,
attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the
Utilitarian or Happiness theory. . . .

I shall offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself; with the view of showing more
clearly what it is, distinguishing it from what it is not, and disposing of such of the
practical objections to it as either originate in, or are closely connected with, mistaken
interpretations of its meaning. . . .

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is

. . . The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Hap-
piness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is
intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of

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pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more
requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure;
and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations
do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely,
that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all
desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are
desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion
of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds . . . inveterate dislike. To suppose
that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler
object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doc-
trine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus1 were, at a very early
period, contemptuously likened. . . .

The Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who
represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human
beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. . . . Human
beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made
conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their
gratification. . . . There is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the
pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments,
a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. . . .

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one
pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in
amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which
all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective
of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If
one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far
above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a
greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other
pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred
enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in
comparison, of small account.

Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and
equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference
to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures
would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest
allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool,
no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience
would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the
dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would
not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all

1. Epicurus (341–270 bce) was an ancient Greek philosopher whose complete works have not survived.
His fragments and the works of his followers suggest that he contended that a good life involved attaining
pleasure and avoiding pain.

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the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is
only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange
their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of
higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute
suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type;
but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be
a lower grade of existence. . . .

Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness—that
the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the infe-
rior—confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable
that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having
them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness
which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to
bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy
the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels
not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being
dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their
own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. . . .

From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal.
On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, . . . the judgment of
those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority
among them, must be admitted as final. . . .

I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly just conception
of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct. But it is
by no means an indispensable condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard;
for that standard is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of
happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is
always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people
happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism,
therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character,
even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so
far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. . . .

According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end,
with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we
are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far
as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity
and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being
the preference felt by those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be
added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best furnished with
the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end
of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly
be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an
existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured

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to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the
whole sentient creation.

Against this doctrine, however, arises another class of objectors, who say that
happiness, in any form, cannot be the rational purpose of human life and action;
because, in the first place, it is unattainable. . . .

Something might still be said for the utilitarian theory; since utility includes not
solely the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness; and if
the former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater scope and more imperative
need for the latter.  .  .  . If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable
excitement, it is evident enough that this is impossible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts
only moments, or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours or days, and is
the occasional brilliant flash of enjoyment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this
the philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life were as fully aware
as those who taunt them. The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture;
but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and
various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and
having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of
bestowing. A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain
it, has always appeared worthy of the name of happiness. . . .

. . . The main constituents of a satisfied life appear to be two, either of which by
itself is often found sufficient for the purpose: tranquillity, and excitement. With
much tranquillity, many find that they can be content with very little pleasure: with
much excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a considerable quantity of pain.
There is assuredly no inherent impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to
unite both; since the two are so far from being incompatible that they are in natural
alliance, the prolongation of either being a preparation for, and exciting a wish for, the
other. . . . When people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find
in life sufficient enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring
for nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private affections,
the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the
time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those
who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have
also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as
lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health. Next
to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental
cultivation. A cultivated mind—I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to
which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in
any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties—finds sources of inexhaustible interest in
all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations
of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their
prospects in the future. . . .

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount of mental
culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these objects of contemplation, should
not be the inheritance of every one born in a civilised country. As little is there an

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inherent necessity that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of every
feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable individuality. Something
far superior to this is sufficiently common even now. . . . Genuine private affections
and a sincere interest in the public good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to
every rightly brought up human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest,
so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has this
moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which
may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection
to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his
reach, he will not fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils of
life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering—such as indigence, disease,
and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection. . . . Most
of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human
affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits. Poverty, in
any sense implying suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wisdom of so-
ciety, combined with the good sense and providence of individuals. Even that most
intractable of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in dimensions by good
physical and moral education, and proper control of noxious influences; while the
progress of science holds out a promise for the future of still more direct conquests
over this detestable foe. And every advance in that direction relieves us from some,
not only of the chances which cut short our own lives, but, what concerns us still more,
which deprive us of those in whom our happiness is wrapt up. As for vicissitudes of
fortune, and other disappointments connected with worldly circumstances, these are
principally the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated desires, or of bad or
imperfect social institutions. . . .

Unquestionably it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by
nineteen-twentieths of mankind, even in those parts of our present world which are
least deep in barbarism; and it often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or the
martyr, for the sake of something which he prizes more than his individual happiness.
But this something, what is it, unless the happiness of others or some of the requi-
sites of happiness? It is noble to be capable of resigning entirely one’s own portion of
happiness, or chances of it: but, after all, this self-sacrifice must be for some end; it is
not its own end; and if we are told that its end is not happiness, but virtue, which is
better than happiness, I ask, would the sacrifice be made if the hero or martyr did not
believe that it would earn for others immunity from similar sacrifices? Would it be
made if he thought that his renunciation of happiness for himself would produce no
fruit for any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his, and place them also
in the condition of persons who have renounced happiness? . . .

The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing
their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice
is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total
of happiness, it considers as wasted. . . .

The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is
not the agent’s own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness

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and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinter-
ested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the
complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your
neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the
means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws
and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may
be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the
interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a
power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of
every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good
of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes
of conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes; so
that not only he may be unable to conceive the possibility of happiness to himself,
consistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a direct impulse
to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual motives of
action, and the sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and prominent place
in every human being’s sentient existence. . . .

[Some] objectors to utilitarianism  .  .  .  sometimes find fault with its standard as
being too high for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to require that people
shall always act from the inducement of promoting the general interests of society. But
this is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals, and confound the rule of
action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or
by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive
of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all
our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does
not condemn them. . . . He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is
morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble;
he who betrays the friend that trusts him, is guilty of a crime, even if his object be to
serve another friend to whom he is under greater obligations.

.  .  .  It is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought, to conceive it as
implying that people should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world,
or society at large. The great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit
of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up;
and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on these occasions travel beyond
the particular persons concerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself that
in benefiting them he is not violating the rights, that is, the legitimate and authorised
expectations, of any one else. The multiplication of happiness is, according to the
utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one
in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words to be
a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on
to consider public utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness
of some few persons, is all he has to attend to. Those alone the influence of whose
actions extends to society in general, need concern themselves habitually about so
large an object. In the case of abstinences indeed—of things which people forbear to

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do from moral considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might
be beneficial—it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware
that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious,
and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it. . . .

The same considerations dispose of another reproach against the doctrine of utility,
founded on a still grosser misconception of the purpose of a standard of morality, and
of the very meaning of the words right and wrong. It is often affirmed that utilitarian-
ism renders men cold and unsympathising; that it chills their moral feelings towards
individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard consideration of the
consequences of actions, not taking into their moral estimate the qualities from which
those actions emanate. If the assertion means that they do not allow their judgment
respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be influenced by their opinion of
the qualities of the person who does it, this is a complaint not against utilitarianism, but
against having any standard of morality at all; for certainly no known ethical standard
decides an action to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a bad man, still
less because done by an amiable, a brave, or a benevolent man, or the contrary. These
considerations are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but of persons; and there
is nothing in the utilitarian theory inconsistent with the fact that there are other things
which interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions. . . .
Utilitarians are quite aware . . . that a right action does not necessarily indicate a virtuous
character, and that actions which are blamable, often proceed from qualities entitled to
praise. When this is apparent in any particular case, it modifies their estimation, not
certainly of the act, but of the agent. I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion,
that in the long run the best proof of a good character is good actions; and resolutely
refuse to consider any mental disposition as good, of which the predominant tendency
is to produce bad conduct. . . .

Utility is often summarily stigmatised as an immoral doctrine by giving it the
name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to contrast
it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right,
generally means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent him-
self. . . . When it means anything better than this, it means that which is expedient for
some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose
observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead
of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus, it would often
be expedient, for the purpose of getting over some momentary embarrassment, or
attaining some object immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie. But inas-
much as the cultivation in ourselves of a sensitive feeling on the subject of veracity, is
one of the most useful, and the enfeeblement of that feeling one of the most hurtful,
things to which our conduct can be instrumental; and inasmuch as any, even unin-
tentional, deviation from truth, does that much towards weakening the trustworthi-
ness of human assertion, which is not only the principal support of all present social
well-being, but the insufficiency of which does more than any one thing that can be
named to keep back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness on
the largest scale depends; we feel that the violation, for a present advantage, of a rule

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of such transcendant expediency, is not expedient, and that he who, for the sake of
a convenience to himself or to some other individual, does what depends on him to
deprive mankind of the good, and inflict upon them the evil, involved in the greater
or less reliance which they can place in each other’s word, acts the part of one of their
worst enemies. Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions, is
acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when the withholding of some
fact (as of information from a malefactor, or of bad news from a person dangerously
ill) would save an individual (especially an individual other than oneself ) from great
and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in
order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the
least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognised, and,
if possible, its limits defined; and if the principle of utility is good for anything, it must
be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out
the region within which one or the other preponderates.

.  .  .  [Some object] that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and
weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly
as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity,
because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read
through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has
been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that
time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which
experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent. People
talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off,
and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property
or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and
theft are injurious to human happiness. . . .

[M]ankind 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. . . . The corollaries from the principle of utility, like the precepts of
every practical art, admit of indefinite improvement. . . .

But to consider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass over the
intermediate generalisations 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. . . . Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy,
because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack.2 Being rational creatures,

2. To assist in navigation, a nautical almanac offers projections about the locations and distances of celestial
bodies during a calendar year. The information could be calculated by sailors, en route, with difficulty, but
Mill’s point is that it is reasonable to rely on prior calculations.

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they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go …