theory holds that, in the case of “ought” and “duty” we may say, what we could not say in the case of “right,” namely, that an action ought to be done or is our duty, only where it produces more pleasure than any which we could have done instead.
From this distinction several consequences follow. It follows firstly that a voluntary action may be “right” without being an action which we “ought” to do or which it is our “duty” to do. It is, of course, always our duty to act rightly, in the sense that, if we don’t act rightly, we shall always be doing what we ought not. It is, therefore, true, in a sense, that whenever we act rightly, we are always doing our duty and doing what we ought. But what is not true is that, whenever a particular action is right, it is always our duty to do that particular action and no other. This is not true, because, theoretically at least, cases may occur in which some other action would be quite equally right, and in such cases, we are obviously under no obligation whatever to do the one rather than the other: whichever we do, we shall be doing our duty and doing
