e is connected, to
his town, his country, mankind at large, and even the whole sentient
creation. How far these should limit each other or a man's individual or
family interests is a question by no means easy to answer, and is the
main problem which each man has to be perpetually solving for himself,
and society at large for us all. There is hardly any waking hour in
which we have not to attempt to settle rival claims of this kind, and,
according as we settle them to our own satisfaction or not, so have we
peace or trouble of mind. No one can reasonably deny that the more
immediate interests of the individual and of the various social
aggregates, including society at large, are frequently in conflict. It
seems to me, I must confess, that it is also futile to deny that there
are occasions, though such occasions may be rare, in which even a man's
interests in the long run are incompatible with his social duties. To
take one or two instances. It may sometimes be for the good of society
that a man should speak out his mind freely on some question of private
conduct or public policy, though his utterances may be on the unpopular
side or offend persons of consideration and influence. The man performs
what he conceives to be his duty, but he knows that, in doing so, he is
sacrificing his prospects. Or, again, he is invited to join in some
popular movement which he believes to be of a questionable or pernicious
tendency, and, because he believes that to take part in it would be
untrue to his own convictions and possibly harmful to others, he
refrains from doing so, at the risk of losing preferment, or custom, or
patronage. Then, we are all familiar with the difficulties in which men
are often placed, when they have to record a vote; their convictions and
the claims of the public service being on one side, and their own
interests and prospects on the other. In all these cases it is true
that, if their moral nature be in a healthy condition, they approve, on
reflexion, of having taken the more generous course, while it is often a
matter of life-long regret if they have sacrificed their nobler impulses
to their selfish interests. And, taking into account these
after-feelings of self-approbation and self-disapprobation, it is often
the case, and is always the case where these feelings are very strong,
that a man gains more happiness, in the long run, by following the path
of duty and obeying his social impulses than by confining hims