"Utilitarianism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mill John Stuart)

powerful principle in human nature, and happily one of those which
tend to become stronger, even without express inculcation, from the
influences of advancing civilisation. The social state is at once so
natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that, except in some
unusual circumstances or by an effort of voluntary abstraction, he
never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body; and this
association is riveted more and more, as mankind are further removed
from the state of savage independence. Any condition, therefore, which
is essential to a state of society, becomes more and more an
inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things
which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being.

Now, society between human beings, except in the relation of
master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any other footing than
that the interests of all are to be consulted. Society between
equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all
are to be regarded equally. And since in all states of civilisation,
every person, except an absolute monarch, has equals, every one is
obliged to live on these terms with somebody; and in every age some
advance is made towards a state in which it will be impossible to live
permanently on other terms with anybody. In this way people grow up
unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total disregard of
other people's interests. They are under a necessity of conceiving
themselves as at least abstaining from all the grosser injuries, and
(if only for their own protection) living in a state of constant
protest against them. They are also familiar with the fact of
co-operating with others and proposing to themselves a collective, not
an individual interest as the aim (at least for the time being) of
their actions. So long as they are co-operating, their ends are
identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling
that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only does
all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of society,
give to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically
consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to identify his
feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an even
greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of
course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a
thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the
physical conditions of our existence. Now, whatever amount of this
feeling a person has, he is urged by the strongest motives both of
interest and of sympathy to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of his
power encourage it in others; and even if he has none of it himself,
he is as greatly interested as any one else that others should have
it. Consequently the smallest germs of the feeling are laid hold of
and nourished by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of
education; and a complete web of corroborative association is woven
round it, by the powerful agency of the external sanctions.

This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilisation