favorable conditions, with an increasing frequency which reveals your destiny as unerringly as the golden horizon presages the coming of the sun. The difference in the degree by which each individual holds the common welfare in comparison with his own, marks the stage of progress towards perfection in society. You hold within yourselves, by a divine provision, the elements to this end. Your history is full of instances to prove that self-sacrifice is an act which inspires a greater commendation than any other. All your normal mental organizations are endowed with the propensity to benefit others, which only the conditions of your society circumscribe by a conflict of interest. What is now in your higher faculties, during your present development, a pleasure, will become a passion by further progress and cultivation, and, by a still more extended pursuit, a necessity to the tranquility and enjoyment of your lives. Filial and parental love from mere instincts have grown among you to be the most gratifying of inclinations. Sexual affinity, from its origin of brutal desire, has been transformed, in your higher circles, to a pure and tender sentiment of disinterested regard. Not long ago your lunatics were chained to stakes like beasts. Your infected were left to die upon the roadsides. Your infirm were shut from sight, consumed with vermin among their rags. You house, clothe, and care for all these now with almost the solicitude that parents bestow upon children. If you should submit yourselves now for a time to the presence of these old inhumanities, and observe their disturbing effects upon the happiness of your lives, it would be a fair measurement of your progress toward the stationary state. Supposing yourself to be one of an audience assembled for the purpose of obtaining pleasure from a performance on the stage, your delight would, in a large degree, depend upon the manifestations of approval surrounding you. Any expression of dissatisfaction would spoil your enjoyment, no matter upon what it might be founded. It might arise, for instance, from unfair opportunities of view, or from the usurped privilege of some to obstruct the vision of others. Your inclinations, arising from no higher motive than self interest, would lead you to assist in bringing about that state of general satisfaction which is indispensable to your own comfort and happiness. This illustrates one of the motives which, in our stage of development, impels us to arrange that, so far possible, every individual shall enjoy equal privileges in society. Happiness is simply not possible without it.