It thus supplies a useful element in the
early stages of moral development.
At a higher stage, love of God and the wish to "please Him" by leading
an exemplary life is a motive offered by religion, and this inspires to
purity and to self-sacrifice; again, this is no more ignoble than the
wish to please the father, the mother, the friend. Many a lad keeps pure
to please his mother, because he loves her. So religious men try to live
nobly to please God, because they love Him. At a higher stage yet, the
good of the people, the good of the race, of humanity in the future,
acts as a potent inspiration. But this does not touch the selfish lower
types. Hence Utility fails as a compelling power with the majority, and
is insufficient as motive. Add to this the radical fault that it does
not place morality on a universal basis, the happiness of _all_,
that it disregards the happiness of the minority, and its unsatisfactory
nature is seen. It has much of truth in it; it enters as a determining
factor into all systems of ethics, even where nominally ignored or
directly rejected; it is a better basis in theory, though a worse one in
practice, than either Revelation or Intuition, but it is incomplete.
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