bligation,
or the duties that bind society together. Of these duties, only a
small number aim at positive beneficence; they are either Protective
of one man against another, or they enforce Reciprocity, which is
another name for Justice. The chief exception is the requiring of a
minimum of charity towards the needy.

This department of duty is maintained by the force of a certain
mixture of prudential and of beneficent considerations, on the part of
the majority, and by prudence (as fear of punishment) on the part of
the minority. But there does not appear to be anything in our
professedly Benevolent Theory of Morals to interfere with the small
portion of disinterested impulse that is bound up-with prudential
regards, in the total of motives concerned in the morality of social
order called the primary or obligatory morality.

Let us, in the next place, view the objection as regards Optional
Morality, where positive beneficence has full play. The principal
motive in this department is Reward, in the shape either of benefits
or of approbation. Now, there is nothing to hinder the supporters of
the standard of Utility from joining in the rewards or commendations
bestowed on works of charity and beneficence.

Again, there is, in the constitution of the mind, a motive superior to
reward, namely, Sympathy proper, or the purely Disinterested impulse
to alleviate the pains and advance the pleasures of others. This part
of the mind is wholly _unselfish_; it needs no other prompting than
the fact that some one is in pain, or may be made happier by something
within the power of the agent.

The objectors need to be reminded that Obligatory Morality, which
works by punishment, creates a purely selfish motive; that Optional
Morality, in so far as stimulated by Reward, is also selfish; and that
the only source of purely disinterested impulses is in the unprompted
Sympathy of the individual mind. If such sympathies exist, and if
nothing is done to uproot or paralyze them, they will urge men to do
good to others, irrespective of all theories. Good done from any other
source or motive is necessarily self-seeking. It is a common remark,
with reference to the sanctions of a future life, that they create
purely self-regarding motives. Any proposal to increase disinterested
action by moral obligation contains a self-contradiction; it is
suicidal. The rich may be made to give half their wealth to the poor;
but in as far as they are _made_