THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 541 



retaliatory action is aroused, with waste of energy and disagreeable 

 effects on either side. A society so restrained is held together by but 

 weak bands, and is ill fitted to support itself against external enemies. 

 Internal co-operation for the benefit of the community can not be 

 active under such circumstances. The products of labor are insecure. 

 Moreover, whatever has to be done in the way of self-protection or of 

 the safeguarding of property is so much withdrawn from the advance- 

 ment of the general interests of the body social. 



We have only to consider the condition of any European country, 

 our own included, in the good old times which so many ignorant per- 

 sons regret as a sort of golden age, to see how unsatisfactory must be 

 the state of a nation in which only a stern code of laws, or the dread of 

 retaliation, protects each against the undue egoism of his fellows. In- 

 ternal wrong-doing and the necessity for constant struggle to resist such 

 wrong-doing made each nation unstable. Our good old England was 

 invaded and conquered over and over again in consequence of insta- 

 bility so produced. From long before the invasions by Saxon hordes 

 under pirate chieftains to long after the invasion by Kormans under 

 the bastard descendant of the pirate chief Hollo, England was made 

 wretched and miserable by constant contests, having their origin inva- 

 riably in that undue egoism which we now call rapine and plunder. 

 None — not even the most powerful — were secure. The castles we 

 find so picturesque and romantic, the battles which seem glorious, the 

 chivalry in which we see so much splendor, all tell us of a state of 

 barbarism, of abject misery for the majority, of magnificent dis- 

 comfort for the powerful. In the unsafety of those days, however, 

 resided the certainty that the undue egoism of " the good old times '' 

 would by a natural process of evolution be eliminated. It is not yet 

 fully eliminated ; probably centuries will elapse before it is even in 

 great part got rid of ; but it is manifestly much reduced. We still 

 have laws to protect us against wrong-doing, but the worst wrong- 

 doers — those who of yore were the principal component parts of the 

 body politic— no longer exist in the same way as of old. A much 

 larger proportion of the social body recognize regard for others as a 

 duty ; no inconsiderable proportion recognize it as a pleasure ; and, 

 what is of more importance still, men recognize the advantage of en- 

 couraging these changed tendencies. 



These changes have come on so gradually that few consider how 

 important they really are. It is not too much to say that a large pro- 

 portion of the Englishmen of our day would find life not worth living 

 if the old state of things were restored ; if, for instance, life and prop- 

 erty and reputation became as insecure now as in the days of the 

 Plantagenets, the Tudors, or even the Stuarts. 



And here it may be noticed that those who neglect the considera- 

 tion that they form part of the social body and refrain from the tak- 

 ing due part in maintaining a healthy social state suffer from the 



