ABSTRACT
The sayings and doings of daily life continually imply some intuitive belief of this kind. It is manifest, moreover, that some such faith is continually increasing in strength. Rightly understood, the advance from a savage to a cultivated state is the advance of its dominion. There exists, however, a dominant sect of so-called philosophical politicians who treat with contempt this belief that men have any claims antecedent to those endorsed by governments. “Persons of delicate fibres, and weak constitution of body, complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of their own bodies.” That there exists in the reader a mental mechanism by which the essential pro-requisite to greatest happiness is recognised and enforced, seems therefore abundantly manifest.
