[370] Cf. Book iii. chap. [i.] and chap. [xiii.]
[371] Book iii. chap. vii. § [3].
[372] In particular cases, however, they seem to be admitted by Common Sense to a certain extent. For example, it would be commonly thought wrong to express in public speeches disturbing religious or political opinions which may be legitimately published in books.
[373] Cf. chap. iii. § [2] of this Book.
[374] We have seen that a Utilitarian may sometimes have to override these rules; but then the case falls under the head discussed in the previous section.
[375] See J. S. Mill’s treatise on Utilitarianism (chap. iii. passim): where, however, the argument is not easy to follow, from a confusion between three different objects of inquiry: (1) the actual effect of sympathy in inducing conformity to the rules of Utilitarian ethics, (2) the effect in this direction which it is likely to have in the future, (3) the value of sympathetic pleasures and pains as estimated by an enlightened Egoist. The first and third of these questions Mill did not clearly separate, owing to his psychological doctrine that each one’s own pleasure is the sole object of his desires. But if my refutation of this doctrine (Book i. chap. iv. § [3]) is valid, we have to distinguish two ways in which sympathy operates: it generates sympathetic pleasures and pains, which have to be taken into account in the calculations of Egoistic Hedonism; but it also may cause impulses to altruistic action, of which the force is quite out of proportion to the sympathetic pleasure (or relief from pain) which such action seems likely to secure to the agent. So that even if the average man ever should reach such a pitch of sympathetic development, as never to feel prompted to sacrifice the general good to his own, still this will not prove that it is egoistically reasonable for him to behave in this way.
[376] I do not mean to imply that the process of change is merely circular. In the earlier period sympathy is narrower, simpler, and more presentative; in the later it is more extensive, complex, and representative.
[377] I do not, however, think that we are justified in stating as universally true what has been admitted in the preceding paragraph. Some few thoroughly selfish persons appear at least to be happier than most of the unselfish; and there are other exceptional natures whose chief happiness seems to be derived from activity, disinterested indeed, but directed towards other ends than human happiness.
[378] See chap. iii. § 3 of this Book, pp. [432-33].
[379] See Book iii. chap. i. § [2]: also Book iii. chap. ii. § [1].