iness and the pleasure we seek. He also sees the individual as a coherent part of a social whole, and as the individual develops as a social being, morality adds to the sum total of happiness on the individual and the social level as the individual acts in a conscious way to be part of and enjoy the social level.
For Mill, the individual has a moral duty to live according to the laws of the state, but this is not an absolute duty. The element of utility takes precedence so that some laws might be considered unjust because they would produce unhappiness rather than happiness. Some laws may be unjust, giving rise to the question of whether it is right to disobey it:
Some maintain that no law, however, bad, ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should only be shown in endeavoring to get it altered by competent authority. . . Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opinion that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be unjust but only inexpedient, while others would confine the license of disobedience to the case of unjust laws (Mill 43).
Mill himself would propose limits for criminal law and also for the moral force of social disapproval. The general test of law is utilitarian, based on the standard of whether the law tends to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (Kelly 340). Mill created an important link between utility and justice while recognizing the elusive quality of justice. He believed that a "shared fundamental idea of justice must subsist" (Mill 318), but Mill substitutes the idea of "resentment" invoked by justice as a value instinctively recognized. It is common to resent injustice, and more than this, security from injustice is a vital need for everyone:
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