powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which
tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the
influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so
natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some
unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he
never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this
association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further removed
from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which
is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an
inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things
which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being.

  Now, society between human beings, except in the relation of
master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any other footing than
that the interests of all are to be consulted. Society between
equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all
are to be regarded equally. And since in all states of civilisation,
every person, except an absolute monarch, has equals, every one is
obliged to live on these terms with somebody; and in every age some
advance is made towards a state in which it will be impossible to live
permanently on other terms with anybody. In this way people grow up
unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of
other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving
themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and
(if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant
protest against them. They are also familiar with the fact of
co-operating with others and proposing to themselves a collective, not
an individual interest as the aim (at least for the time being) of
their actions. So long as they are co-operating, their ends are
identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling
that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does
all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society,
give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically
consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his
feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an even
greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of
course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a
thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the
physical conditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of this
feeling a person has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of
interest and of sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his
power encourage it in others; and even if he has none of it himself,
he is as greatly interested as any one else that others should have
it. Consequently the smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of
and nourished by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of
education; and a complete web of corroborative association is woven
round it, by the powerful agency of the external sanctions.

  This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation
goes on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in
political improvement renders it more so, by removing the sources of
opposition of interest, and levelling those inequalities of legal
privilege between individuals or classes, owing to which there are
large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still practicable to
disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the influences are
constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in each
individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which, if perfect,
would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial condition for
himself, in the benefits of which they are not included. If we now
suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the
whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion, directed,
as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person grow up
from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and the
practice of it, I think that no one, who can realise this
conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the
ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student
who finds the realisation difficult, I recommend, as a means of
facilitating it, the second of M. Comte's two principle works, the
Traite de Politique Positive. I entertain the strongest objections
to the system of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I
think it has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the
service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence,
both the psychological power and the social efficacy of a religion;
making it take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling,
and action, in a manner of which the greatest ascendancy ever
exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste; and of
which the danger is, not that it should be insufficient but that it
should be so excessive as to interfere unduly with human freedom and
individuality.

  Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the binding
force of the utilitarian morality on those who recognise it, to wait
for those social influences which would make its obligation felt by
mankind at large. In the comparatively early state of human
advancement in which we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that
entireness of sympathy with all others, which would make any real
discordance in the general direction of their conduct in life
impossible; but already a person in whom the social feeling is at
all developed, cannot bring himself to think of the rest of his fellow
creatures as struggling rivals with him for the means of happiness,
whom he must desire to see defeated in their object in order that he
may succeed in his. The deeply rooted conception which every
individual even now has of himself as a social being, tends to make
him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony
between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow creatures. If
differences of opinion and of mental culture make it impossible for
him to share many of their actual feelings- perhaps make him denounce
and defy those feelings- he still needs to be conscious that his real
aim and theirs do not conflict; that he is not opposing himself to