ngth of it.

But even giving these unpromising facts the least weight possible, the
case will practically be not much mended. The unselfish impulses, let
them be diffused never so widely, will be found, as a general rule, to
be very limited in power; and to be intense only for short periods, and
under exceptional circumstances. They are intense only--in the absence
of any further motive--when the thing to be won for another becomes
invested for the moment with an abnormal value, and the thing to be lost
by oneself becomes abnormally depreciated; when all intermediate
possibilities are suddenly swept away from us, and the only surviving
alternatives are shame and heroism. But this never happens, except in
the case of great catastrophes, of such, for instance, as a shipwreck;
and thus the only conditions under which an impassioned unselfishness
can be counted on, are amongst the first conditions that we trust to
progress to eliminate. The common state of life, then, when the feelings
are in this normal state of tension, is all that in this connection we
can really be concerned in dealing with. And there, unselfishness,
though as sure a fact as selfishness, is, spontaneously and apart from a
further motive, essentially unequal to the work it is asked to do. Thus,
though as I observed just now, a man may often prefer to sit on a table
and give up the arm-chair to a friend, there are other times when he
will be very loth to do so. He will do so when the pleasure of looking
at comfort is greater than the pleasure of feeling it. And in certain
states of mind and body this is very often the case. But let him be
sleepy and really in need of rest, the selfish impulse will at once
eclipse the unselfish, and, unless under the action of some alien
motive, he will keep the arm-chair for himself. So, too, in the case of
the two epicures, if there be sufficient of the best dainties for both,
each will feel that it is so much the better. But whenever the dainties
in question cannot be divided, it will be the tendency of each to take
them furtively for himself.

And when we come to the conditions of happiness the matter will be just
the same. If without incommoding ourselves we can, as Professor Huxley
says, repress '_all those desires which run counter to the good of
mankind_,' we shall no doubt all willingly do so; only in that case
little more need be said. The '_Civitas Dei_' we are promised may be
left to take care of itself, and i