Unfortunately, however, Utilitarianism allows no option in the matter. Unless we do our very utmost to promote the general weal, at whatever sacrifice to ourselves, it charges us with sin of omission. In the words of one of the ablest among able Editors, 'justice is the social idea in its highest, widest, and most binding expression.... It signifies the moral principle which obliges each so to shape his conduct and relations, his claims and his achievements, that they harmonise with the highest good of all.'[4] To which doctrine of Mr. Morley's, if other Utilitarians do not subscribe, it can only be because they are less resolutely logical. Mr. Mill, indeed, though dissenting in appearance on this point from Mr. Morley, agrees with him in substance. Even when on one occasion, distinguishing between duty and virtue, he says that there are innumerable acts and forbearances of human beings which, though either causes or hindrances of good to their fellow-creatures, lie beyond the domain of duty, and within that of virtue or merit, he goes on to assign as the sole reason for placing them in the domain of the latter that, in respect to them, it is, on the whole, for the general interest that people should be left free, thereby plainly intimating that society would be equitably entitled to insist on them if it thought proper. But conduct that can be equitably insisted on is clearly, in the strictest sense, duty; and it would be preposterous to claim merit for doing that which it would be a breach of duty to leave undone. Duties do not cease to be duties because he on whom they are incumbent is not compelled under penalty to perform them, any more than debts cease to be debts because creditors do not choose to ask for payment. All consistent utilitarian teaching points inflexibly towards Mr. Morley's conclusion, according to which justice and social virtue are absolutely identical, and according to which, also, whoever does not shape his 'conduct, &c., in harmony with the highest good of all,' does less than is due from him, while it is impossible for him to do more. For whatever he propose to do must either be or not be in the prescribed harmony. If it be, he is bound to do it. If not, he is bound not to do it. The very utmost he can do is no more than is incumbent upon him. Less than his very utmost is less than is incumbent. No action of his, therefore, can possess any merit; for mere fulfilment of obligations is reckoned not of grace, but of debt. Having done everything, he is still but an unprofitable servant; he has but done that which was his duty to do. Where, then, is the boast of virtue? It is excluded. By what law? By that of Utilitarianism, set forth in its full amplitude. Honesty and generosity, faith, truth, charity, patient endurance, and chivalrous self-devotion, all are mingled together under the name of justice, and justice itself only remains just as long as it remains identical with the largest expediency.