It does not, however, seem to me that this account of the matter is exhaustive. We do not all look with simple indifference on a man who declines to take the right means to attain his own happiness, on no other ground than that he does not care about happiness. Most men would regard such a refusal as irrational, with a certain disapprobation; they would thus implicitly assent to Butler’s statement[12] that “interest, one’s own happiness, is a manifest obligation.” In other words, they would think that a man _ought_ to care for his own happiness. The word ‘ought’ thus used is no longer relative: happiness now appears as an ultimate end, the pursuit of which--at least within the limits imposed by other duties--appears to be prescribed by reason ‘categorically,’ as Kant would say, _i.e._ without any tacit assumption of a still ulterior end. And it has been widely held by even orthodox moralists that all morality rests ultimately on the basis of “reasonable self-love”;[13] _i.e._ that its rules are ultimately binding on any individual only so far as it is his interest on the whole to observe them. Still, common moral opinion certainly regards the duty or virtue of Prudence as only a part--and not the most important part--of duty or virtue in general. Common moral opinion recognises and inculcates other fundamental rules--_e.g._ those of Justice, Good Faith, Veracity--which, in its ordinary judgments on particular cases, it is inclined to treat as binding without qualification and without regard to ulterior consequences. And, in the ordinary form of the Intuitional view of Ethics, the “categorical” prescription of such rules is maintained explicitly and definitely, as a result of philosophical reflection: and the realisation of Virtue in act--at least in the case of the virtues just mentioned--is held to consist in strict and unswerving conformity to such rules. On the other hand it is contended by many Utilitarians that all the rules of conduct which men prescribe to one another as moral rules are really--though in part unconsciously--prescribed as means to the general happiness of mankind, or of the whole aggregate of sentient beings; and it is still more widely held by Utilitarian thinkers that such rules, however they may originate, are only valid so far as their observance is conducive to the general happiness. This contention I shall hereafter examine with due care. Here I wish only to point out that, if the duty of aiming at the general happiness is thus taken to include all other duties, as subordinate applications of it, we seem to be again led to the notion of Happiness as an ultimate end categorically prescribed,--only it is now General Happiness and not the private happiness of any individual. And this is the view that I myself take of the Utilitarian principle.