improvement renders it more so, by
removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those
inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to
which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still
practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the
influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in
each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if
perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial
condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included.
If we now suppose this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and
the whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion,
directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make every person
grow up from infancy surrounded on all sides both by the profession and
by the practice of it, I think that no one, who can realize this
conception, will feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the
ultimate sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical student who
finds the realization difficult, I recommend, as a means of facilitating
it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the _Systeme de
Politique Positive_. I entertain the strongest objections to the system
of politics and morals set forth in that treatise; but I think it has
superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of
humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the
physical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take
hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a
manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised by any religion
may be but a type and foretaste; and of which the danger is, not that it
should be insufficient, but that it should be so excessive as to
interfere unduly with human freedom and individuality.

Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes the binding
force of the utilitarian morality on those who recognize it, to wait for
those social influences which would make its obligation felt by mankind
at large. In the comparatively early state of human advancement in which
we now live, a person cannot indeed feel that entireness of sympathy
with all others, which would make any real discordance in the general
direction of their conduct in life impossible; but already a person in
whom the social feeling is at all developed, cannot bring himself to
thi