I put aside Mill’s phrases that such sacrifice was “heroic”: that it was not “well” with me unless I was in a disposition to make it. I put to him in my mind the dilemma:--Either it is for my own happiness or it is not. If not, why [should I do it]?--It was no use to say that if I was a moral hero I should have formed a habit of willing actions beneficial to others which would remain in force, even with my own pleasure in the other scale. I knew that at any rate I was not the kind of moral hero who does this without reason; from _blind_ habit. Nor did I even wish to be that kind of hero: for it seemed to me that that kind of hero, however admirable, was certainly not a philosopher. I must somehow _see_ that it was right for me to sacrifice my happiness for the good of the whole of which I am a part. Thus, in spite of my early aversion to Intuitional Ethics, derived from the study of Whewell, and in spite of my attitude of discipleship to Mill, I was forced to recognise the need of a fundamental ethical intuition. The utilitarian method--which I had learnt from Mill--could not, it seemed to me, be made coherent and harmonious without this fundamental intuition. In this state of mind I read Kant’s Ethics again: I had before read it somewhat unintelligently, under the influence of Mill’s view as to its “grotesque failure.”[7] I now read it more receptively and was impressed with the truth and importance of its fundamental principle:--_Act from a principle or maxim that you can will to be a universal law_--cf. Book iii. chap. i. § 3 [of _The Methods of Ethics_]. It threw the “golden rule” of the gospel (“Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you”) into a form that commended itself to my reason. Kant’s resting of morality on Freedom did not indeed commend itself to me,[8] though I did not at first see, what I now seem to see clearly, that it involves the fundamental confusion of using “freedom” in two distinct senses--“freedom” that is realised only when we do right, when reason triumphs over inclination, and “freedom” that is realised equally when we choose to do wrong, and which is apparently implied in the notion of ill-desert. What commended itself to me, in short, was Kant’s ethical principle rather than its metaphysical basis. This I briefly explain in Book iii. chap. i. § 3 [of _The Methods of Ethics_]. I shall go into it at more length when we come to Kant. That whatever is right for me must be right for all persons in similar circumstances--which was the form in which I accepted the Kantian maxim--seemed to me certainly fundamental, certainly true, and not without practical importance. But the fundamental principle seemed to me inadequate for the construction of a system of duties; and the more I reflected on it the more inadequate it appeared.