problem? Is moralizing not-immoral?) In the end, they all want English morality to be recognized as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the “general utility,” or “the happiness of the greatest number,”—no! the happiness of England , will be best served thereby. They would like, by all means, to convince themselves that the striving after English happiness, I mean after comfort and fashion (and in the highest instance, a seat in Parliament), is at the same time the true path of virtue; in fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving. Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the “general welfare” is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum—that what is fair to one may not at all be fair to another, that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to higher men, in short, that there is a distinction of rank between man and man, and consequently between morality and morality. They are an unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of their utility. One ought even to encourage them, as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes:—
Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, “Longer—better,” aye revealing, Stiffer aye in head and knee; Unenraptured, never jesting, Mediocre everlasting, Sans genie et sans esprit!