I told my people that I thought they had more
sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians, for
that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserted,
seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all
in morals and manners to which the new-fangled doctrine of utility
pretended." Mill is wrong in supposing that his use of the term "was
the first time that any one had taken the title of Utilitarian"; and
Galt, who represents his annalist as writing of the year 1794,
is historically justified. Writing in 1781 Bentham uses the word
'utilitarian,' and again in 1802 he definitely asserts that it is the
only name of his creed ('Works,' x. 92, 392). M. Halevy ('L'evolution
de la doctrine utilitaire,' p. 300) draws attention to the presence of
the word in Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility,' published in 1811.]
The Intuitionists maintained--to put the matter briefly--that the
moral consciousness of man could not be entirely accounted for by
experiences of the kind laid stress on by the Utilitarians. They
maintained that moral ideas were in their origin spiritual, although
they might be called into definite consciousness by the experience of
the facts to which they could be applied. Experience might call them
forth into the light of day; but it was held that they belonged, in
nature and origin, to the constitution of man's mind.
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