And even mutual punctiliousness in the fulfilment of contract is not sufficient to the moral ideal. Daily experience proves that every one would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid assistance. The limit of the evolution of conduct is not reached until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others. The form of nature which thus adds beneficence to justice, is one which adaptation to the social state produces. "The social man has not reached that harmonization of constitution with conditions forming the limit of evolution, so long as there remains space for the growth of faculties which, by their exercise, bring positive benefit to others and satisfaction to self. If the presence of fellow-men, while putting certain limits to each man's sphere of activity, opens certain other spheres of activity in which feelings, while achieving their gratifications, do not diminish but add to the gratifications of others, then such spheres will inevitably be occupied."[46] But of beneficence, as well as of justice, sympathy is the root. The assumption that feelings can be arranged in a scale of desirability, against which Mr. Sidgwick especially argues in his objections to (empirical) egoistic hedonism, is not necessarily an element of such hedonism, although Bentham, in naming intensity, duration, certainty, and proximity as traits entering into an estimation of the relative value of a pleasure or pain, has committed himself to it. But if a debtor who cannot pay offers to compound for his debt by making over to me any one of various objects of property, will I not endeavor to estimate their relative value, though I may not be able to do it exactly; and if I choose wrongly is therefore the ground of choice to be abandoned? Mr. Sidgwick's argument against empirical hedonism must tell, moreover, in a still greater degree, against his own utilitarianism, since this is applicable, not to the individual simply, but to many classes of differing individuals. To this difficulty must be added, moreover, the future indeterminateness of the means for obtaining such universal happiness. Mr. Sidgwick's objection contains, however, a partial truth; for guidance in the pursuit of happiness through the mere balancing of pleasures and pains is, if partially practicable throughout a certain range of conduct, futile throughout a much wider range. "It is quite consistent to assert that happiness is the ultimate aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the immediate aim. I go with Mr. Sidgwick as far as the conclusion that 'we must at least admit the desirability of confirming or correcting the results of such comparisons (of pleasures and pains) by any other method upon which we may find reason to rely'; and I then go further, and say that throughout a large part of conduct guidance by such comparisons is