104. It does not follow, however, because there may often not be strictly a right on either side in such periods of conflict, that there is not a good and an evil, a better and a worse, on one side or the other. Of this we can only judge by reference to the end, whatever it be, in which we conceive the good of man to consist. There may be clear ground for saying, in regard to any conflict, that one side rather than the other _ought_ to have been taken, not because those on one side were, those on the other were not, entitled to say that they had a right to act as they did, but because the common good of a nation or mankind was clearly promoted by one line of action, not by the other. E.g. in the American war of secession, though it would be difficult to say that a man had not as much a right to fight for his seceding state as for the Union, yet as the special interest of the seceding states was that of maintaining slavery, there was reason for holding that the side of the Union, not that of the seceding states, was the one which ought to be taken. On the other hand, it does not follow that in a struggle for sovereignty the good of man is more served by one of the competing powers than by the other. Good may come out of the conflict without one power contributing more to it than the other. There may thus be as little ground retrospectively for saying that one side or the other ought to have been taken, as that men had a right to take one and not the other. At the same time, as regards the individual, there is no reason for doubting that the better the motive which determines him to take this side or that, the more he is actuated in doing so by some unselfish desire for human good, the more free he is from egotism, and that conceit or opinionatedness which is a form of egotism, the more good he will do whichever side he adopts.