had been Smethurst instead of Smith who committed the error of judgment--if the overdoses by which he had meant to kill had happened to cure--would his error of judgment have thereby been rendered moral, notwithstanding that his motive was murder? The same great teacher, who so strenuously insists that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of an action, does indeed go on to say that it has 'much to do with the worth of the agent.' Here, however, I confess myself unable to follow him. That an act may possess morality independent of the agent, may be intelligible on the assumption that morality means simply utility, and nothing more; but how, even then, worth can be evinced by the performance of an immoral action, is beyond my comprehension, except upon the further assumption that there may be worth in immorality. Waiving, however, these and all other objections, let us for the moment, and for the sake of argument, assume that morality and utility are really one and the same thing, that the right or wrong of an act depends entirely on its results, and then let us observe how utterly without rudder or compass to assist him in steering correctly will be the best-intentioned navigator of the ocean of life. We can seldom, if ever, be quite sure what will be the result of our conduct. Meaning to cure, we may only too probably kill; meaning to kill, we may not impossibly cure. Until a thing is done, we cannot determine as to its utility; nor, consequently, in an utilitarian sense, as to the morality of doing it. We must trust implicitly to our skill in calculating events, and if that skill happen to fail us, our conduct may become culpable. With the most earnest desire to act righteously, we can only guess beforehand whether what we propose doing will turn out to be righteous, and can never be sure, therefore, that we are not going to do something wicked.