arises. Sympathy lies at the root of civilisation and of society. Hence all that is good in man's condition is founded ultimately on the power of thought, in that act in which the mind disengages itself from its own particular self, and from its own particular sensations, appetites, and desires, and takes into account other people and the interests of other people as well. Society, with all its beneficial institutions, thus arose out of thought, out of self-consciousness, out of the conception of oneself; whereas the mere feeling of self would for ever prevent society from being established among men, would for ever envelop the world in the darkness of barbarism, and keep away the dawn of civilisation.
28. The whole social edifice rests ultimately upon the freedom of thought, and arises out of it. First, there is freedom, that original and uncaused act by which the mind thinks itself, its own sensations, appetites, and desires, and in doing so frees or disengages itself from them; or, stated with equal truth in the converse way, that original and uncaused act by which the mind disengages itself from itself, from its own sensations, appetites, and desires, and in doing so thinks them: for, as I formerly said, the disengagement and the thought, the freedom and the conception, are identical; and we cannot say which comes first and which second; they are simultaneous in their operation. Secondly, there is self-consciousness, the consciousness or conception of one-
