Utilitarianism
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(1): ( n.) The doctrine that utility is the sole standard of morality, so that the rectitude of an action is determined by its usefulness.
(2): ( n.) The doctrine that virtue is founded in utility, or that virtue is defined and enforced by its tendency to promote the highest happiness of the universe.
(3): ( n.) The doctrine that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the end and aim of all social and political institutions.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
The theory which makes happiness the end of life and the test of virtue, and maintains that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse," a theory characterised by Carlyle, who is never weary of denouncing it, as "reducing the infinite celestial soul of man to a kind of hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on." The great apostle of this theory was John Stuart Mill, and the great father of it Jeremy Bentham.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature [3]
a term first applied to the doctrine of utility (q.v.) by John Stuart Mill, and adopted by very many since that time., The term tiliy, was first employed to distinguish the doctrine by Jeremy Bentham. See Mill, Utilitarianism.
