only means to say that a certain course of conduct founded on reason, or certain maxims deduced from reason, are useful to a man to enable him to obtain the end of his existence, that is, a certain happiness according to his opportunities and capacities. And if the advocates of the so-called utilitarian philosophy, finding the utter unmeaningness of their favourite shibboleth as a distinctive term, shall tell us that utility means something absolute (which however it can do only by interpolating into itself an altogether foreign idea), if, however, they shall say, as they are {52} in the habit of doing, that that course of action is useful which tends to promote “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” then here they say nothing which either Socrates or Plato or the apostle Paul, or Dr. Wollaston or Immanuel Kant or in fact any sane man, ever dreamt of contravening. In virtue of his faith in the innate sociabilities of man as opposed to the selfism of Hobbes, Socrates could not but believe that it was his duty, after having made his own life reasonable in the first place, to help other people to get out of the limbo of unreason as speedily as possible. This he says again and again in his conversations; in fact, his whole missionary exertions meant nothing else; and the philanthropic power of the missionary impulse which impelled him to seek the rational happiness of his fellow-men having once full sway in his heart, the wish for the greatest happiness of the greatest number followed as a matter of course. Every missionary estimates his success and feels his moral enjoyment increased by the number of his converts. The man who desires the happiness of his fellow-beings at all, whether as Epicurus or Plato, must desire that happiness to the greatest number of human beings that can comfortably enjoy it within certain given limits of space and time.