ent. Unhappily it is also susceptible, by a sufficient use of
the external sanctions and of the force of early impressions, of being
cultivated in almost any direction: so that there is hardly anything so
absurd or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these influences,
be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
To doubt that the same potency might be given by the same means to the
principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in human nature,
would be flying in the face of all experience.

But moral associations which are wholly of artificial creation, when
intellectual culture goes on, yield by degrees to the dissolving force
of analysis: and if the feeling of duty, when associated with utility,
would appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading department of
our nature, no powerful class of sentiments, with which that association
would harmonize, which would make us feel it congenial, and incline us
not only to foster it in others (for which we have abundant interested
motives), but also to cherish it in ourselves; if there were not, in
short, a natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality, it might
well happen that this association also, even after it had been implanted
by education, might be analysed away.

But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment; and this it is
which, when once the general happiness is recognized as the ethical
standard, will constitute the strength of the utilitarian morality. This
firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to
be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerful
principle in human nature, and happily one of those which tend to become
stronger, even without express inculcation, from the influences of
advancing civilization. The social state is at once so natural, so
necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some unusual
circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he never
conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this
association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further removed
from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which
is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an inseparable
part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is
born into, and which is the destiny of a human being. Now, society
between human beings, except in the relation of master and slave, is
manifest