it, was a secret stimulus to all French free-thinkers from Voltaire clown to Auguste Comte; and the latter, with his famous moral formula of "vivre pour autrui." has indeed outchristianed Christianity! The doctrine of sympathetic affections and of the pity or utility of others, as the principle of action, has gained its greatest fame in Germany through Schopenhauer, in England through John Stuart Mill: but they themselves were only echoes—from about the time of the French revolution, these doctrines have, with an enormous motor force, sprung up everywhere in the coarsest as well as the subtlest forms, and all socialistic principles involuntarily, as it were, took their stand on the common ground of this doctrine. Perhaps in our days no prejudice is more implicitly believed in than that we know what really constitutes morality. It seems that now everybody is pleased to hear that society is about adapt the individual to the general requirements, and that the happiness and, at the same time, the sacrifice of the individual consists in feeling himself as a useful member and instrument of the whole: we have only our lingering doubts as to where to look for this whole; whether in an existing State or in one yet to be founded, or in the nation, or in an international brotherhood, or in small, new, economic communities. A great deal of meditation, doubt, fighting, much excitement and passion, are just now being exhibited on this head; but wonderful and pleasant is the unanimity with which the "ego" is requested to practise self-
