ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary
feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only
does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of
society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in
practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to
identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with
an ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who _of
course_ pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing
naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical
conditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of this feeling a
person has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of interest and of
sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his power encourage it
in others; and even if he has none of it himself, he is as greatly
interested as any one else that others should have it. Consequently, the
smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of and nourished by the
contagion of sympathy and the influences of education; and a complete
web of corroborative association is woven round it, by the powerful
agency of the external sanctions. This mode of conceiving ourselves and
human life, as civilization goes on, is felt to be more and more
natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so, by
removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those
inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to
which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still
practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the
influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in
each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if
perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial
condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included.
If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and
the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion,
directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person
grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and
by the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realize this
conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the
ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student who
finds the realization difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitating
it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the _Système de
Politique Positive_. I entertain the strongest objections to the system
of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has
superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of
humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the
physical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take