[Footnote 9: _Mahabharata_, xiii. 5571 _sq._, in Muir, _Religious and Moral Sentiments, rendered from Sanskrit Writers_, p. 107. _Cf._ _Panchatantra_, iii. (Benfey's translation, ii. 235).] [Footnote 10: _Lun Yü_, xv. 23. _Cf._ _ibid._ xii. 2; _Chung Yung_, xiii. 3.] [Footnote 11: _Chung Yung_, xiii. 4.] This "golden rule" is not, as has been sometimes argued, a rule of retaliation.[12] It does not say, "Do to others what they wish to do to you"; it says, "Do to others what you wish, or require, them to do to you." It brings home to us the fact that moral rules are general rules, which ought to be obeyed irrespectively of any selfish considerations. If formulated as an injunction that we should treat our neighbour in the same manner as we consider that he, under exactly similar circumstances, ought to treat us, it is simply identical with the sentence, "Do your duty," with emphasis laid on the disinterestedness which is involved in the very conception of duty. So far, St. Augustine was right in saying that "Do as thou wouldst be done by" is a sentence which all nations under heaven are agreed upon.[13] [Footnote 12: Letourneau, _L'évolution religieuse dans les diverses races humaines_, p. 553.] [Footnote 13: St. Augustine, quoted by Lilly, _Right and Wrong_, p. 106.] Disinterestedness, however, is not the only characteristic by which moral indignation and approval are distinguished from other, non-moral, kinds of resentment or retributive kindly emotion. It is, indeed, itself a form of a more comprehensive quality which characterises moral emotions--apparent impartiality. If I pronounce an act done to a friend or to an enemy to be either good or bad, that implies that I assume it to be so independently of the fact that the person to whom the act is done is my friend or my enemy. Conversely, if I pronounce an {104} act done by a friend or by an enemy to be good or bad, that implies that I assume the act to be either good or bad independently of my friendly or hostile feelings towards the agent. All this means that resentment and retributive kindly emotion are moral emotions in so far as they are assumed by those who feel them to be uninfluenced by the particular relationship in which they stand, both to those who are immediately affected by the acts in question, and to those who perform those acts. A moral emotion, then, is tested by an imaginary change of the relationship between him who approves or disapproves of the mode of conduct by which the emotion was evoked and the parties immediately concerned, whilst the relationship between the parties themselves is left unaltered. At the same time it is not necessary that the moral emotion should be really impartial. It is sufficient that it is tacitly assumed to be so, nay, even that it is not knowingly partial. In attributing different rights to different individuals, or classes of individuals, we are often, in reality, influenced by the relationship in which we stand to them, by personal