assent to the maxim that “Justice should always be done, though the heavens should fall,” will generally be disposed to believe that justice never will, in fact, cause the heavens to fall, but will rather be always the best means of upholding them. And similarly those who say that “you should never do evil that good may come,” though their maxim seems to imply that good may sometimes come from doing wrong, would yet be very loth to admit that, by doing wrong, you ever would really produce better consequences on the whole than if you had acted rightly instead. Or again, those who say “that the end will never justify the means,” though they certainly imply that certain ways of acting would be always wrong, whatever advantages might be secured by them, yet, I think, would be inclined to deny that the advantages to be obtained by acting wrongly ever do really outweigh those to be obtained by acting rightly, if we take into account absolutely all the consequences of each course.
Those, therefore, who hold that certain specific ways of acting are absolutely always
