It is owing to its exclusion, as a fixed idea, from the sphere of voluntary conduct, that sympathetic appropriation of the feelings of others has little or no place assigned it by Professor Bain, when he goes on[60] to describe the way in which the moral opinions of men have actually originated. They have, he holds, a twofold source--the one arising from the necessity for public security, the other being of sentimental origin. The former makes society ordain those acts and services required for its own preservation. The latter leads to the confusion of this necessary element of morality with the sentimental likes and dislikes which may be characteristic of different people. These are "mixed up in one code with the imperative duties that hold society together;" and it is only when "we disentangle this complication, and refer each class of duties to their proper origin," that we can "obtain a clear insight into the foundations of morality."[61] Morality, therefore, is that which is imposed by society for its own preservation and security, and which is sanctioned by the punishments of society either in its "public judicial acts," or "by the unofficial expressions of disapprobation and the exclusion from social good offices."[62] Of this external law the moral sense or conscience is merely a subjective mirror or copy. The duty of unselfishness is not connected with the disinterested impulse of sympathy, but is traced to the external order of society, which has found it necessary to restrain the self-seeking action of individuals--a restraint which has come to be transferred to the consciences of the members of the society. Mr Bain's theory falls back in this way upon external authority, just as Bentham's did; and, for the same reasons, they are neither of them able to prescribe the utilitarian principle of conduct. But, in his assertion of the disinterested nature of sympathy, Mr Bain has introduced--though he has not himself utilised--a fruitful principle, by means of which a basis of moral sentiment may be found by means of which it is possible to escape from ethical as well as psychological egoism. [Sidenote: and by Grote.]