(4) The utilitarian's clear recognition of the general happiness as the ultimate end of human endeavor, and his insistence that institutions, laws and moral maxims must be judged solely by their fitness to serve as means to that end, have made him an energetic apostle of reform, and intolerant of old and passively accepted abuses. His insistence upon the principle of impartiality in the distribution of happiness has made him a champion of the inarticulate and the oppressed. Whatever one may think of his abstract principles, the general character of the specific measures he has advocated must meet with the approval of enlightened moralists of very different schools. 113. ARGUMENTS AGAINST UTILITARIANISM.--Against utilitarianism as an ethical theory various objections have been brought or may be brought. (1) Objection may be taken to the utilitarian assumption that the only ultimate object of desire is pleasure or happiness. It was pointed out forcibly by Bishop Butler in the eighteenth century that men desire many things besides pleasure. Man's desires are an outcome of his nature, and that results in "particular movements towards particular external objects"--honor, power, the harm or good of another. [Footnote: _Sermons_, Preface, Sec 29; cf. Sermon XI.] To be sure, "no one can act but from a desire, or choice, or preference of his own," but this is no evidence that what he seeks in acting is always pleasure. Particular passions or appetites are, Butler ingeniously argues, "necessarily presupposed by the very idea of an interested pursuit; since the very idea of interest or happiness consists in this, that an appetite or affection enjoys its object."