178 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



The extension of sympathy then is conditioned by the limi- 

 tation and suppression of counteracting emotions and by the 

 * ;. 'extension of the imaginative realisation of the life of others. 

 As this passes beyond the circle of the immediate objects 

 of affection, sympathy begins to be dispassionate and 

 supplies the humanitarian element in conduct. But as the 

 history of human ethics shows, it is only by slow stages that 

 ' it spreads from the circle of the kindred and the personal 

 friends to that of the community, and from this again to 

 the wider society, the human race and the sentient creation. 

 But though sympathy is one root of justice, it is not 

 the only one. Primitive, like developed, justice concerns 

 itself not only with the suffering of the sufferer but 

 with the deed of the doer. It is the deed which is directly 

 upheld or condemned, and the rule by which the verdict 

 is determined is a part of the tradition by which the 

 existing social fabric is maintained. What gives force 

 to this tradition is the necessity of a social order as a condi- 

 tion not merely of the healthy life, but of the bare existence 

 of human beings. In the maintenance of this fundamental 

 condition of life, not one but all the living interests of 

 human beings may be said to be concerned. Now this 

 interdependence of the individual and the community to 

 which he belongs is only realised in full at a late stage of 

 reflection, but like other conditions of evolution it operates 

 upon consciousness long before it becomes an object of 

 consciousness. In the present case it operates through the 

 formation of a social tradition, and we may conceive its 

 operation as analogous to that of the environmental condi- 

 tions in shaping the growth of an instinct. If we conceive 

 a sentiment growing up which would forbid some course 

 of conduct necessary to the maintenance of a given society 

 or allow a course which would be fatal to it, it results that 

 that society must, as a society, perish, or that a counter 

 sentiment must arise in time to check the dissolution. 

 Thus, the actual sentiments that prevail are roughly corre- 

 lated with the needs of the social structure, without neces- 

 sarily any conscious reflection on those needs. The one 

 thought-factor that is indispensable is the universal judg- 

 ment by which a rule is apprehended and applied. But a 



