Let us suppose the imagination to be so developed that the remote end of progress--that happier state of men in some far off century--is ever vividly present to us as a possibility we may help to realise.

Another question still remains for us.

To preserve this happiness for others, we are told, we must to a large extent sacrifice our own.

Is it in human nature to make this sacrifice?
The positive moralists assure us that it is, and for this reason.

Man, they say, is an animal who enjoys vicariously with almost as much zest as in his own person; and therefore to procure a greater pleasure for others makes him far happier than to procure a less one for himself.