nationality, religion, and customs, agree upon any demand, it must be
founded upon universal experiences which are perforce individual and not
social.

An instinctive recognition of this on the part of the alderman makes it
possible to understand the individualistic basis of his political
success, but it remains extremely difficult to ascertain the reasons for
the extreme leniency of judgment concerning the political corruption of
which he is constantly guilty.

This leniency is only to be explained on the ground that his
constituents greatly admire individual virtues, and that they are at the
same time unable to perceive social outrages which the alderman may be
committing. They thus free the alderman from blame because his
corruption is social, and they honestly admire him as a great man and
hero, because his individual acts are on the whole kindly and generous.

In certain stages of moral evolution, a man is incapable of action
unless the results will benefit himself or some one of his
acquaintances, and it is a long step in moral progress to set the good
of the many before the interest of the few, and to be concerned for the
welfare of a community without hope of an individual return. How far the
selfish politician befools his constituents into believing that their
interests are identical with his own; how far he presumes upon their
inability to distinguish between the individual and social virtues, an
inability which he himself shares with them; and how far he dazzles them
by the sense of his greatness, and a conviction that they participate
therein, it is difficult to determine.

Morality certainly develops far earlier in the form of moral fact than