Moral Science | Page 9

It is an essential part of human liberty, to permit each person to form
and to indulge these sentiments or caprices; although a good education
should control them with a view to our happiness on the whole. But,
when any individual liking or fancy of this description is imposed as a
law upon the entire community, it is a perversion and abuse of power, a
confounding of the Ethical end by foreign admixtures. Thus, to enjoin
authoritatively one mode of sepulture, punishing all deviations from
that, could have nothing to do with the preservation of the order of
society. In such a matter, the interference of the state in modern times,
has regard to the detection of crime in the matter of life and death, and
to the evils arising from the putrescence of the dead.
6. The Ethical End, although properly confined to Utility, is subject to
still farther limitations, according to the view taken of the Province of

Moral Government, or Authority.
Although nothing should be made morally obligatory but what is
generally useful, the converse does not hold; many kinds of conduct are
generally useful, but not morally obligatory. A certain amount of bodily
exercise in the open air every day would be generally useful; but
neither the law of the land nor public opinion compels it. Good roads
are works of great utility; it is not every one's duty to make them.
The machinery of coercion is not brought to bear upon every
conceivable utility. It is principally reserved, when not abused, for a
select class of utilities.
Some utilities are indispensable to the very existence of men in society.
The primary moral duties must be observed to some degree, if men are
to live together as men, and not to roam at large as beasts. The interests
of Security are the first and most pressing concern of human society.
Whatever relates to this has a surpassing importance. Security is
contrasted with Improvement; what relates to Security is declared to be
Right; what relates to Improvement is said to be Expedient; both are
forms of Utility, but the one is pressing and indispensable, the other is
optional. The same difference is expressed by the contrasts--Being and
Well-being; Existence and Prosperous Existence; Fundamentals or
Essentials and Circumstantials. That the highway robber should be
punished is a part of Being; that the highways should be in good repair,
is a part of Well-being. That Justice should be done is Existence; that
farmers and traders should give in to government the statistics of their
occupation, is a means to Prosperous Existence.[3]
It is proper to advert to one specific influence in moral enactments,
serving to disguise the Ethical end, and to widen the distinction
between morality as it has been, and morality as it ought to be. The
enforcing of legal and moral enactments demands a power of coercion,
to be lodged in the hands of certain persons; the possession of which is
a temptation to exceed the strict exigencies of public safety, or the
common welfare. Probably many of the whims, fancies, ceremonies,
likings and antipathies, that have found their way into the moral codes
of nations, have arisen from the arbitrary disposition of certain

individuals happening to be in authority at particular junctures. Even
the general community, acting in a spontaneous manner, imposes
needless restraints upon itself, delighting more in the exercise of power,
than in the freedom of individual action.
7. Morality, in its essential parts, is 'Eternal and Immutable;' in other
parts, it varies with Custom.
(1) The rules for protecting one man from another, for enforcing justice,
and the observance of contracts, are essential and fundamental, and
may be styled 'Eternal and Immutable.' The ends to be served require
these rules; no caprice of custom could change them without sacrificing
these ends. They are to society what food is to individual life, of sexual
intercourse and mother's care to the continuance of the race. The
primary moralities could not be exchanged for rules enacting murder,
pillage, injustice, unveracity, repudiation of engagements; because
under these rules, human society would fall to pieces.
(2) The manner of carrying into effect these primary regulations of
society, varies according to Custom. In some communities the
machinery is rude and imperfect; while others have greatly improved it.
The Greeks took the lead in advancing judicial machinery, the Romans
followed.
In the regulations not essential to Being, but important to Well-being,
there has prevailed the widest discrepancy of usage. The single
department relating to the Sexes is a sufficient testimony on this head.
No one form of the family is indispensable to the existence of society;
yet some forms are more favourable to general happiness than others.
But which form is on the whole the best, has greatly divided opinion;
and legislation