It is a standard to which the human race can be authoritatively ordered to conform, or be despised, derided, and hated, if it refuse to do so.

It is implied that those who find their happiness in virtue have a right to order and to force, if possible, all others to do the same.

Unless we believed this there would be no such thing as moral earnestness in the propagation of any system.

There could, indeed, be no such thing as propagandism at all.

If a man (to use an example of Mill's) preferred to be a contented pig rather than a discontented Socrates, we should have no positive reason for thinking him wrong; even did we think so we should have no motive for telling him so; even if we told him, we should have no means of convincing him.
Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of action, and the one key that can unlock for each of us the true treasure of life, who talk of things being noble and sacred and heroic, who call our responsibilities and our privileges[13] awful, and who urge on a listless world the earnestness and the solemnity of existence--all those, I say, who use such language as this, imply of the moral end three necessary things: first, that its essence is inward, in the heart of man; secondly, that its value is incalculable, and its attainment the only true happiness for us; thirdly, that its standard is something absolute, and not in the competence of any man or of all men to alter or abolish.