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But convenience, that admirable branch system from the main line of self-interest, makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse resolutions.
Governments must be made for human beings as they are, or as they are capable of speedily becoming; and in any state of cultivation which mankind, or any class among them, have yet attained, or are likely soon to attain, the interests by which they will be led, when they are thinking only of self-interest, will be almost exclusively those which are obvious at first sight, and which operate on their present condition.
The opposite disaster appears when there is no fusion at all but merely an alliance of two independent, self-centered persons who come together in the spirit of temporary self-interest and refuse to develop a common life. Even when they maintain the letter of the monogamic code, they lose its spirit.
The firm but judicious remedying of evils, the opportunities for fuller and happier lives, which local industries and local development afford, these also are a part of the duty of the sovereign power. Above all, there must be constant recognition that self-interest and beneficence alike demand that the local welfare be first taken into account.
He promised bribes of money, slave girls, and land from the Prophet if they would betray their new-found allies. Self-interest prevailed; at last the plan was agreed upon, and the messenger returned to Mahomet with the good news of the breaking-up of the confederacy. The treachery of the Koreitza spread discouragement among the Arab chiefs. Moreover, their supplies were already running short.
So, amongst bipeds, the most solid service must sometimes give way to the claims of congeniality. Human creatures are, happily, not to be swayed by self-interest alone: they are many-sided creatures; there are numberless modes of attaching their affections. Not only like likes like, but unlike likes unlike. To give an instance which must often occur.
They were to live at Slane, an inland town near Morningquest, where modern manufactures had competed successfully with ancient agricultural interests, and altered the attitude of the landed gentry towards trade, and towards the townspeople, beguiling them to be less exclusive because there was money in the town, self-interest weighing with them all at once in regard to the neighbours whom Christian precept had vainly urged them to recognise.
There is even a danger of being entrapped into sympathy with tyranny, when the cause of tyranny is maintained by genius; and of being surprised into indifference for human liberty, when the sacred interests of liberty are endangered by self-interest, perverseness, and folly. Even Sainte Aldegonde did not believe that the bridge could be completed.
More because it means opportunity for creative work creative as one helps to mould the new education of new India; creative as one reverently helps to fashion some of the lives that are to be new India itself. More too, as the rebound comes back to one's self in a life too full for loneliness, too obsessing for self-interest. Does it pay? Try it for yourself and see.
"I believe he could be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his own room. The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a course.
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