Agnostic moralists is precisely the elucidation and strengthening of this passage from individual to general welfare, so as to give security and permanency to the moral code. Of Bentham's immediate followers, Austin seems to have returned to the position of Paley. Grote extenuates the claim of the general interest upon the individual by considering duty as practically limited by reciprocity. John Stuart Mill continues the orderly development of the Utilitarian theory.
In J. S. Mill's system we find an unqualified subordination of individual to general welfare. It is, in fact, an Epicureanism strengthened by Stoical elements, and by ideas borrowed from Comtism. In his essay on "Utilitarianism," published in 1861, Mill is chiefly occupied in defending the system from the objections of sensualism and selfishness which the earlier presentations of it have excited. He differs from Bentham in establishing a distinction in kind between different orders of pleasures, and contending that the pleasures of the higher kind (although they may be less intense) must be preferred to the lower as ends of action. In this, however, which appears to be a fragment of pure Stoicism without an argumentative basis, Mill is generally deserted by later Utilitarians as inconsistent with hedonistic principles. He makes the higher principle which classifies pleasures, rather than pleasure itself, the basis of moral preference. Then, in further distinction from Bentham, he maintains that a disinterested public spirit should be the principal ground both for the performance of socially useful work, and for the inculcation of hygienic principles. Hence he does not identify the moral sentiment (in so far as it is altruistic) with sympathy or benevolence. Virtue is to be loved as "a thing desirable in itself." At the same time, he is forced to admit that, as Sidgwick expresses it, "the function of moral censure (including self-censure), as distinct from moral praise, should be restricted to the prevention of conduct that positively harms others, or impedes their pursuit of their own happiness, or violates engagements expressly or tacitly under taken by the agent." He has then to explain the logical basis of his altruism, always the principal point of attack from anti-Utilitarians, and to lend it a support which would appeal to the unphilosophical multitude as effectively
