Book iii. chap. ix.; where these questions are discussed at somewhat

greater length.

[345] Cf. _ante_, § 2, and Book iii. chap. ii. § 1.

[346] I have before observed that it is quite in harmony with Utilitarian principles to recognise a sphere of private conduct within which each individual may distribute his wealth and kind services as unequally as he chooses, without incurring censure as unjust.

[347] It is obvious that so long as the social sanction is enforced, the lives of the women against whom society thus issues its ban must tend to be unhappy from disorder and shame, and the source of unhappiness to others; and also that the breach by men of a recognised and necessary moral rule must tend to have injurious effects on their moral habits generally.

[348] _Active and Moral Powers_, Book ii. chap. iii.

[349] Among definite changes in the current morality of the Græco-Roman civilised world, which are to be attributed mainly if not entirely to the extension and intensification of sympathy due to Christianity, the following may be especially noted: (1) the severe condemnation and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants; (2) effective abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipation; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary provision made for the sick and poor.

[350] This passage, which in the second and subsequent editions occurred in chap. ii. of Book i., was omitted by Professor Sidgwick from that chapter in the sixth edition, with the intention of incorporating it in Book iv., which he did not live to revise.