The question is, Is this moral element, this impassioned and unselfish co-operation with the social law, producible, in the absence of any farther end to which the social law is to be subordinate?
The positive school apparently think it is; and this opinion has a seeming foundation in fact.

We will therefore carefully examine what this foundation is, and see how far it is really able to support the weight that is laid upon it.
That fact, in itself a quite undoubted one, is the possession by man of a certain special and important feeling, which, viewed from its passive side, we call sympathy, and from its active side, benevolence.

It exists in various degrees in different people, but to some degree or other it probably exists in all.

Most people, for instance, if they hear an amusing story, at once itch to tell it to an appreciative friend; for they find that the amusement, if shared, is doubled.

Two epicures together, for the same reason, will enjoy a dinner better than if they each dined singly.