I may know that a certain line of conduct will on the one hand give me great pleasure, and that on the other hand, if it were practised by everyone, it would produce much general mischief; but I shall know that my practising it, will, as a fact, be hardly felt at all by the community, or at all events only in a very small degree.

And therefore my choice is not that of the sailor's in the shipwreck.

It does not lie between saving my life at the expense of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of mine.

It lies rather, as it were, between letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking my own arm.
It will appear, therefore, that the general conditions of an entirely undefined happiness form an ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance individual temptation or, to give even willingness, let alone ardour, to the self-denials that are required of us.

In the first place the conditions are so vague that even in the extremest cases the individual will find it difficult to realise that he is appreciably disturbing them.