Humanity was cramped by a mistaken prejudice, by a
perverse presumption of the intellect. In a case like this it was
necessary and proper to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative
precept. Such a precept would have been powerless to create the feeling,
nor would it have done much to protect it from being overpowered by the
opposite passion, but the opposite passion of selfishness was at this
period justified by authority and claimed to be on the side of reason
and law. Precept is fairly matched against precept, and what the law of
love and the golden rule did for mankind was to place for the first time
the love of man as man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dissipate
the exclusive prejudices of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the
character of sin.
When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole community, it is a bold
and hazardous step for a part of the community to abandon it. For in the
society of selfish people selfishness is simply self-defence; to
renounce it is to evacuate one's entrenched position, to surrender at
discretion to the enemy.
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