I am, I confess it, one of those old-fashioned people who believe in progress, and hold that their own century is distinctly better than any which preceded it; who would on no account go back, if they could, to the days of the noble savages or even to the brutalities and superstitions of the ages of faith. But I do not think that I need argue that question for our present purpose. We have got to this century somehow, and we can only get out of it by living till the twentieth. Meanwhile, we should make the best of the interval. I will, therefore, only permit myself one remark. If we suppose, with Mandeville, that the instincts which have developed modern society have been, to a great extent, selfish desires, that is, for the personal comfort of the agent, irrespectively of consequences to others, it does not follow that the corresponding development has been mischievous. Good commonplace moralists have been much in the habit of condemning the selfish passions of kings and conquerors. What can be an easier mark for denunciation than such a man, for example, as Louis XI. of France, and the wily and cruel rulers of past ages, whose only aim was to enlarge their own powers and wealth? And yet, if we consider the matter historically, we must admit that such men have rendered enormous services to mankind. A ruler, let us say, had for his only object the extension and concentration of his own authority. Still, it was by the conflicts of rulers that the great nations have been formed out of a chaos of struggling clans; that peace and order, therefore, have been substituted for violence, throughout broad territories; that law has taken the place of private war; moreover, that the privileges of selfish orders have been suppressed through the development of a larger and more civilised national organisation; and that, although the immediate victory was won by the selfish ruler, the ultimate benefit has accrued to the people upon whom he was forced to rely for support against the oppressive subordinate powers. The ruler, perhaps, did not look beyond his own interests; but his own interest forced him to find allies among the mass of the population, and so gradually led to the formation of central organs, representing not the personal interest of the king, but the interest of the whole nation in which they had arisen. We may make a similar remark upon industrial development. The great merchant and capitalist and inventor of new methods and machinery has not looked, it may be, beyond his own interest; but, intentionally or not, he was helping to construct a vast organisation, which, whether it has, on the whole, improved the world or not, has, at least, made it enormously richer. Perhaps Watt, when he was improving the steam-engine, thought only of the profits to be derived from his invention. But the profit which he gained after a laborious life was but an infinitesimal fraction of the enormous increase of efficiency which resulted to the national industry. We cannot doubt that the whole gigantic system which at least maintains a population several times multiplied, which maintains part of it in wealth and a large proportion in reasonable comfort, has been due to the labours of many men, each working for his own interest and animated chiefly by the desire of wealth. So much remains true of the economist's doctrine of the natural harmony between individual and public interest. In this case, as in the case of governments, we may, perhaps, say that men acted from motives which must be called selfish, in this sense at least, that they thought of little but their own interests; but that, at the same time, their own interests compelled them to work in a direction which promoted, more or less, the interests of others. I add, briefly, that these are only instances of what we may call the general rule: namely, that morality begins from an external or unrecognised conformity of interests, and ends by recognising and adopting, as motives, the consequences which, in the earlier stage, seemed to be internal or accidental consequences. I begin by helping a man because circumstances make it useful to myself, and I end--and only become truly moral when I end--by doing what is useful to him, because it is useful to him. When, indeed, I have reached that point, my end itself is profoundly modified; it becomes much wider, and yet only regulates and directs to new channels a great deal of the corresponding conduct.