'As a publicist, a historian, and a busy official, he had not much time to spare for purely philosophic reading. He was not a professor in want of a system, but an energetic man of business, wishing to strike at the root of superstitions to which his political opponents appealed for support. He had heard of Kant, and seen "what the poor man would be at".'
His own views are elaborated in his book on the _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, for a close criticism of which we must refer readers to Mr. Stephen's second volume. The connection of these dissertations with the social and political ends of the Utilitarians lies, it may be said briefly, in the support which a purely experiential psychology gives to the doctrine that human character depends on external circumstance, and that such vague terms as the 'moral sense' only disguise the true identity of rules of morality with the considerations that can be shown to produce general happiness. Whenever there appears to be a conflict between these rules and considerations, utility is the only sure criterion. To the extreme situations in which casuistry revels, as when a man is called upon to sacrifice his life or his personal honour for his country's good, the Utilitarian would apply this unfailing test inexorably; in such cases a man ought to decide upon a calculation of the greatest happiness of the majority. He does not, in fact, apply this reckoning; he may possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral or immoral by the habitual association of ideas. The martyr or patriot does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; he believes himself to be acting with the perfect disinterestedness which can only be accounted for by superficial reasoners on the assumption of some such abstract notion as religion, moral sense, or duty. Since the behaviour of mankind at large, therefore, is invariably guided by a remote or proximate consideration of utility; since conduct depends upon character, and character is shaped by external conditions and positive sanctions, it is possible to frame, on utilitarian principles, scientific rules of behaviour which can be powerfully, though indirectly, promoted by legislation and a system of enlightened polity. For morality, it is argued, can be materially assisted by pointing to, or even providing, the serious consequences that are inseparable from human misdeeds, by proving that pain or pleasure follows different kinds of behaviour; while motives are so complex that they can never be verified with certainty, and must therefore be left out of account. This anatomy of the springs of action obviously lays bare some truths, although they fit in much better with the department of the legislator than of the moralist. As Mr. Stephen forcibly shows, although the consideration of motive may fall very seldom within the sphere of legislation, yet no theory which should exclude its influence on the moral standard could be tolerated, since the motive is of primary importance in our ethical judgment of conduct. Nor has motive, as discriminated from intention, ever been kept entirely outside the criminal law, notwithstanding the danger of admitting, as an extenuation of some violent crime, that the offender had convinced himself that some religious or patriotic cause would be served by it. James Mill's view of morals as theoretically coordinate with law--because in both departments the intention is the essential element in measuring actions according to their consequences--operated in practical contradiction to his principle of restraining State interference within narrow limits. It is this latter principle which has since given way. For the general trend of later political opinion has evidently been towards bringing public morality more and more under administrative regulation; and this manifestly indicates a growing expansion of ideas upon the legitimate duties and jurisdiction of the State.