t will doubtless very soon begin '_to
rise like an exhalation_.' But if this self-repression be a matter of
great difficulty, and one requiring a constant struggle on our part, it
will be needful for us to intensely realise, when we abstain from any
action, that the happiness it would take from others will be far greater
than the happiness it would give to ourselves. Suppose, for instance, a
man were in love with his friend's wife, and had engaged on a certain
night to take her to the theatre. He would instantly give the engagement
up could he know that the people in the gallery would be burnt to death
if he did not. He would certainly not give it up because by the sight of
his proceedings the moral tone of the stalls might be infinitesimally
lowered; still less would he do so because another wife's husband might
be made infinitely jealous. Whenever we give up any source of personal
happiness for the sake of the happiness of the community at large, the
two kinds of happiness have to be weighed together in a balance. But the
latter, except in very few cases, is at a great disadvantage: only a
part of it, so to speak, can be got into the scale. What adds to my
sense of pleasure in the proportion of a million pounds may be only
taxing society in the proportion of half a farthing a head.
Unselfishness with regard to society is thus essentially a different
thing from unselfishness with regard to an individual. In the latter
case the things to be weighed together are commensurate: not so is the
former. In the latter case, as we have seen, an impassioned
self-devotion may be at times produced by the sudden presentation to a
man of two extreme alternatives; but in the former case such
alternatives are not presentable. I may know that a certain line of
conduct will on the one hand give me great pleasure, and that on the
other hand, if it were practised by everyone, it would produce much
general mischief; but I shall know that my practising it, will, as a
fact, be hardly felt at all by the community, or at all events only in a
very small degree. And therefore my choice is not that of the sailor's
in the shipwreck. It does not lie between saving my life at the expense
of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at the expense of mine. It lies
rather, as it were, between letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking
my own arm.

It will appear, therefore, that the general conditions of an entirely
undefined happiness form an ideal utterly