is to be placed unconditionally before the advantage of the individual, particularly his momentary well-being, but also before his lasting advantage or even his continuance in life. If the individual suffers from an arrangement which benefits the whole, if he is stunted, goes to pieces on its account—the custom must none the less be maintained, the sacrifice made. This is from the community's point of view. The individual himself may think differently; he may invert the propositions and say in his own case that the individual is worth more than the many, and that present enjoyment—a moment in paradise—is to be rated higher than a dull continuance of indifferent states. But the community has the upper hand, and in it and under it the individual is trained—trained not as an individual, but as a member of a whole, one of a majority; and the normal outcome of the training is that he takes the side of the majority (der Einzelne sich selbst majorisirt): this indeed is what morality essentially means.[1]
The training is a long historic (one might say, prehistoric) process. In subjecting individuals, checking their egoisms, binding them together, the community operates at first more or less by force; it struggles long perhaps with their selfishness and wilfulness. Only late does free obedience arise. But when this is reached and it becomes at last almost instinctive, pleasure coming to be associated with it, as with all things habitual and natural, it receives the name of virtue.[2] Individuals now not merely submit willingly to the ordinary social restrictions, they are ready to sacrifice on occasion, not holding back their very life. And this, not in violation of the general psychological law already mentioned that every one seeks personal gratification, but because gratification is now found in doing whatever serves the common weal.[3] k
In the course of this developmental process there is another result. As stated, morality has its basis in social utility. But in time actions come to be performed without thought or even knowledge of this—perhaps from fear or reverence for those
