tively to put himself in: he place of this other, then morality
as a practical fact was Dorn.

We may imagine, for the purpose of illustration, this man saying: Here
is another being who appears to be like myself. He is capable of
suffering pain, as I am. He does not like pain any better than I do.
Therefore, I have no right to make him suffer that which I do not wish
to suffer myself. This other man is capable of pleasure. He desires
certain things, similar things to those which I desire. If I do not
wish him to take these things away from me, I have no right to take
them away from him.

I do not mean that this was thought out in this clear way, but that,
when there was the first dim perception of this other self, with
similar feelings, similar possibilities, similar pleasures, similar
pains, then there became a conscience, because there was a
consciousness of this similarity of nature. Morality, then, is born as
a social fact.

To go a little deeper, and in order to trace the natural and historical
growth of the moral ideal, let me say that morality in its deepest and
truest sense is born of the fact of sex, because it is right in there
that we find the root and the germ of permanent social relations. And I
wish you to note another very significant fact. You hear people talking
about selfishness and unselfishness, as though they were direct
contraries, mutually exclusive of each other, as though, in order to
make a selfish man unselfish, you must completely reverse his nature,
so to speak. I do not think this is true at all. Unselfishness
naturally and necessarily springs out of selfishness, and, in the
deepest sense of the word, is not at all contradictory to that.

For example: A man falls in love with a woman. This, on one side of it,
is as selfish as anything you can possibly conceive. But do you not see
by what subtle and divine chemistry the selfishness is straightway
transformed, lifted up, glorified, and becomes unselfishness? The very
love that he professes for her makes it necessary for his own happiness
that she should be happy, so that, in seeking for his own selfish
gratification, he is devoting himself unselfishly to the happiness of
somebody else.

And, when a child is born, do you not see, again, how the two
selfishnesses, the father's and the mother's, selfishly, if you please,
brooding over and loving the child, at once go out of themselves,
consecrating time and care and thought and love, and