of the pictures of human nature that are conveyed
in some of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and Schopenhauer. They tell us
that friendship is a mere exchange of interests in which each man only
seeks to gain something from the other; that most women are only pure
because they are untempted and regret that the temptation does not come;
that if we acknowledge some faults it is in order to persuade ourselves
that we have no greater ones, or in order, by our confession, to regain
the good opinion of our neighbours; that if we praise another it is
merely that we may ourselves in turn be praised; that the tears we shed
over a deathbed, if they are not hypocritical tears intended only to
impress our neighbours, are only due to our conviction that we have
ourselves lost a source of pleasure or of gain; that envy so
predominates in the world that it is only men of inferior intellect or
women of inferior beauty who are sincerely liked by those about them;
that all virtue is an egotistic calculation, conscious or unconscious.

Such views are at least as far removed from truth as the roseate
pictures of Rousseau and St. Pierre. No one can look with an unjaundiced
eye upon the world without perceiving the enormous amount of
disinterested, self-sacrificing benevolence that pervades it; the
countless lives that are spent not only harmlessly and inoffensively but
also in the constant discharge of duties; in constant and often painful
labour for the good of others. The better section of the Utilitarian
school has fully recognised the truth that human nature is so
constituted that a great proportion of its enjoyment depends on
sympathy; or, in other words, on the power we possess of entering into
and sharing the happiness of others. The spectacle of suffering
naturally elicits compassion. Kindness naturally produces gratitude. The
sympathies of men naturally move on the side of the good rather than of
the bad. This is true not only of the things that immediately concern
us, but also in the perfectly disinterested judgments we form of the
events of history or of the characters in fiction and poetry. Great
exhibitions of heroism and self-sacrifice touch a genuine chord of
enthusiasm. The affections of the domestic circle are the rule and not
the exception; patriotism can elicit great outbursts of purely unselfish
generosity and induce multitudes to risk or sacrifice their lives for
causes which are quite other than their own selfish interes