[149] Ibid., p. 357.
[150] Ibid., p. 404.
[151] Autobiography, London, 1884, p. 143.
[152] Utilitarianism, ch. iii., passim.
[153] Some phases of this view as respects legislation, etc., are touched upon later in ch. xviii.
[154] Mill in his article on Bentham says of him: "Personal affection, he well knew, is as liable to operate to the injury of third parties, and requires as much to be kept in check, as any other feeling whatever: and general philanthropy ... he estimated at its true value when divorced from the feeling of duty, as the very weakest and most unsteady of all feelings" (Op. cit., p. 356).
[155] "It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thought and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good."—George Eliot in Romola.
[156] The recognition of this by many utilitarian hedonists has caused them to have recourse to the supernaturally inflicted penalties and conferred delights of a future life to make sure of balancing up the account of virtue as self-sacrificing action with happiness, its proper end.
[157] The recognition of this type of spiritual selfishness is modern. It is the pivot upon which the later (especially) of Ibsen's tragedies turn.