According to the theory of Utility, our conduct would conform to _rules_ inferred from the tendencies of actions, but would not be determined by a direct resort to the principle of general utility. Utility would be the ultimate, not the immediate test. To preface each act or forbearance by a conjecture and comparison of consequences were both superfluous and mischievous:--superfluous, inasmuch as the result is already embodied in a known rule; and mischievous, inasmuch as the process, if performed on the spur of the occasion, would probably be faulty. With the rules are associated _sentiments_, the result of the Divine, or other, command to obey the rules. It is a gross and flagrant error to talk of _substituting_ calculation for sentiment; this is to oppose the rudder to the sail. Sentiment without calculation were capricious; calculation without sentiment is inert. There are cases where the _specific_ consequences of an action are so momentous as to overbear the rule; for example, resistance to a bad government, which the author calls an _anomalous_ question, to be tried not by the rule, but by a direct resort to the ultimate or presiding-principle, and by a separate calculation of good and evil. Such was the political emergency of the Commonwealth, and the American revolution. It would have been well, the author thinks, if utility had been the sole guide in both cases. There is a second objection to Utility, more perplexing to deal with. How can we know fully and correctly all the consequences of actions? The answer is that Ethics, as a science of observation and induction, has been formed, through a long succession of ages, by many and separate contributions from many and separate discoverers. Like all other sciences, it is progressive, although unfortunately, subject to special drawbacks. The men that have enquired, or affected to enquire, into Ethics, have rarely been impartial; they have laboured under prejudices or sinister interests; and have been the advocates of foregone conclusions. There is not on this subject _a concurrence or agreement of numerous and impartial enquirers_. Indeed, many of the legal and moral rules of the most civilized communities arose in the infancy of the human mind, partly from caprices of the fancy (nearly omnipotent with barbarians), and partly from an imperfect apprehension of general utility, the result of a narrow experience. Thus the diffusion and the advancement of ethical truth encounter great and peculiar obstacles, only to be removed by a better general education extended to the mass of the people. It is desirable that the community should be indoctrinated with sound views of property, and with the dependence of wealth, upon the true principle of population, discovered by Malthus, all which they are competent to understand.