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Rh attitude in regard to the question whether is happiness or virtue the summum bonum, the great end, of man. No particular blame attaches to Socrates on this score, for I think it may be said with truth, that in no ethical work whatsoever is any satisfactory and conclusive answer to be found to this question, no answer which settles the problem on scientific principles. In the remarks which I have now to make, I shall perhaps be no more successful than others have been before me. I shall not indeed attempt a complete solution of the question; I shall merely indicate the direction in which I think the solution is to be found.

19. The question, then, is this: Is happiness or utility, or wellbeing of one kind or another, the great and sole end of man—the goal at which all his efforts point, and towards which they tend? or is something else, something different from happiness, the proper end and object of his pursuit? This is the question which still divides and perplexes the philosophical world, as it perplexed them in the days of Socrates. On the side of utility, as its strongest champion, stands Mr J. S. Mill; on the other side stands Dr Whewell, who contends for the right as something distinct from the useful, and who holds that a man must aim at doing right, however disastrous the consequences may be to himself and to the world. This, I say, is the great moral question of the day. I put aside at present the theory of the selfish moralists,