^{page 345 note 1} Mr. Unnson's article deals with the second objective. I agree with his account, but would add to it. I give here a brief summary of Mill's distinction.

In Mill's view, the rules of morality, in prescribing (or forbidding) types of action, share with other forms of commendation (or disparagement) the common aim of promoting happiness (or preventing unhappiness). Actions called right are therefore, like actions called prudent or expedient, and also like actions called noble, actions of a type that tends to promote happiness (or reduce unhappiness). But the rules of morality, and consequently actions to which we attach specifically moral terms such as “right” and “wrong,” have in addition two specific features which, when taken together, distinguish “Morality” from the other two departments of “the Art of Life.” The first of these two features belongs to the noble as well as to the right, though not to the expedient. The second belongs only to the right.

The two specific features are these. (i) Moral rules confine themselves to the pleasurable (or painful) effects of action on persons other than the agent. (2) Moral rules confine themselves to types of action whose pleasurable (or painful) effects are sufficiently great and widespread to make us wish to see such action enforced (or punished). Our desire for enforcement (or punishment) is expressed, according to Mill, by the use of specifically moral terms, such as “ought,” “right” (adjective and noun), “just,” etc. As opposed to these, the general terms of commendation or advice, such as “good,” “desirable,” “should,” etc., are less forceful.

Mill also draws a distinction, within the sphere of morality, between what is morally right in general, and what is just, or what can be claimed as a right (the noun), in particular. The rights of justice refer to interests that are basic or especially vital to happiness.

I believe that, for Mill, the concept of virtue, as opposed to the concept of duty, belongs to the category of “Aesthetics” rather than “Morality.” It is a species of the “beautiful or noble,”and is commended as noble rather than prescribed as obligatory. Like morality, and indeed to a greater degree, virtue or self–sacrifice has regard to the interests of others. But unlike morality, it is not something that we feel should be enforceable. (For Mill, the words “X should be enforceable” express and advocate the desire that X be enforced.)

^{page 348 note 1} Everyman edition, p. 28.

^{page 348 note 2} Ibid., p. 25. My italics.

^{page 349 note 1} Everyman edition, p. 30. My italics.

^{page 349 note 2} Letters of J. S. Mill (ed. H. Elliot), Vol. II, p. 116.

^{page 351 note 1} One can therefore understand Professor Britton's feeling that the letter gives “a most unsatisfactory reply” (John Stuart Mill, p. 53, footnote). Yet James Seth, writing his 1908 article before Hugh Elliot published the Letters in 1910, interprets the Utilitarianism sentence in just the way that Mill's letter explains it. See Seth, Essays in Ethics and Religion, pp. 27–8.

^{page 351 note 1} John Stuart Mill, p. 6.

^{page 351 note 2} Ibid., p. 36.

^{page 352 note 1}1 John Stuart Mill, p. 7.

^{page 353 note 1} P. 9. The italics, in all these references to pp. 8–9, are mine.

^{page 354 note 1} John Stuart Mill, p. 8.

^{page 354 note 2} Ibid., p. 9.

^{page 355 note 1} My italics. James Seth (Essays in Ethics and Religion, p. 44) also uses this passage as evidence that Mill's distinction in Chapter II is ultimately quantitative, but Seth's interpretation gives away to Mill's critics more than they are entitled to.

^{page 357 note 1} Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals (trans. Broad), III, §5, especially pp. 160–4. I have discussed Hägerström's views in The Philosophical Quarterly, October 1954.

^{page 357 note 2} Thinking and Experience, pp. 222–3.