He united in an extraordinary
degree an intense delight in thinking for its own sake, with an almost
passionate desire to make his intellectual excursions contribute to
the amelioration of the lot of mankind, especially of the poorer and
suffering part of mankind. And yet he never allowed those high aims to
clash with one another: he did not degrade his intellect to the
sophistical office of finding reasons for a policy arising from mere
emotion, nor did he permit it to run waste in barren speculations,
which might have excited admiration, but never could have done any
good. This is the reason why so many persons have been unable to
understand him as the prophet of utilitarianism. A man of such
exquisite feeling, of such pure conscientiousness, of such
self-denying life, must surely be an advocate of what is called
absolute morality. Utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard
unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more subtle moral
influences. Such is the view natural to those who cannot dissociate
the word "utilitarianism" from the narrow meaning of utility, as
contrasted with the pleasures of art. The infirmity of human
language excuses such errors; for the language in which controversy
is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well happen
that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the death about
the word.
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