There is a second objection to Utility, more perplexing to deal with.
How can we know fully and correctly all the consequences of actions?
The answer is that Ethics, as a science of observation and induction,
has been formed, through a long succession of ages, by many and
separate contributions from many and separate discoverers. Like all
other sciences, it is progressive, although unfortunately, subject to
special drawbacks. The men that have enquired, or affected to enquire,
into Ethics, have rarely been impartial; they have laboured under
prejudices or sinister interests; and have been the advocates of
foregone conclusions. There is not on this subject _a concurrence or
agreement of numerous and impartial enquirers_. Indeed, many of the
legal and moral rules of the most civilized communities arose in the
infancy of the human mind, partly from caprices of the fancy (nearly
omnipotent with barbarians), and partly from an imperfect apprehension
of general utility, the result of a narrow experience. Thus the
diffusion and the advancement of ethical truth encounter great and
peculiar obstacles, only to be removed by a better general education
extended to the mass of the people. It is desirable that the community
should be indoctrinated with sound views of property, and with the
dependence of wealth, upon the true principle of population, discovered
by Malthus, all which they are competent to understand.
