ABSTRACT
If the opposed statements are severally valid, or even if each of them is valid in part, the inference must be that pure egoism and pure altruism are both illegitimate. If the maxim, "Live for self" is wrong, so also is the maxim, "Live for others". Hence, a compromise is the only possibility. This chapter justifies it in full, and enunciates it at the outset because the arguments used are better understood if the conclusion to which they converge is in the reader's view. It first deals with it as the alleged right principle of public policy; and then as the alleged right principle of private action. From examining the doctrine that general happiness should be the end of public action, the chapter moves to examine the doctrine that it should be the end of private action. It shows that as individual conduct evolves, its principle becomes more and more that of making fulfilment of means the proximate end.
