ly impossible on any other footing than that the interests of
all are to be consulted. Society between equals can only exist on the
understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally. And
since in all states of civilization, every person, except an absolute
monarch, has equals, every one is obliged to live on these terms with
somebody; and in every age some advance is made towards a state in which
it will be impossible to live permanently on other terms with anybody.
In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible to them a
state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are under a
necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from all the
grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection.) living in a
state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with the
fact of co-operating with others, and proposing to themselves a
collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the
time being) of their actions. So long as they are co-operating, their
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