preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled on this subject to the same regard (Mill, 1957, p. 15).
This is an appeal for a particular kind of social morality, a characterization that Mill freely admits. In that sense, it is artificial, but implicit in the case for that morality is a programmatic dedication to improving the quality and extent of happiness in the community. In other words, one cannot avoid the obligation of the good of the society into which one is born. To be sure, the society itself may impose obligations on the individual; Mill's term for this is external sanctions. But Mill is more ambitious than external reform of prevailing state systems. He proposes to inculcate a system of internal sanctions, which may be taken as the internalization or mind's acceptance of moral obligation to the greater good: "there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it is which, when once the general happiness is r
...