ABSTRACT
There is no social system more admirably rational in its working than is the spontaneous cooperation of irrational impulses in diverse individuals, under the influence of sexual and parental passion. Each person freely obeys his bent and sacrifices selfish interests to ideal interests which have become organically dominant in the psyche. The mechanism of such virtue is the same as the mechanism of vice, when selfish interests are sacrificed incorrigibly to bad habits; but where the dominant passion serves to enhance the existence of a race, a family, or a civilisation, the end secured, assumed to be a supreme good, turns the irrational impulse of the agents into a generous virtue.
