If now we contrast the civilized man intellectually and morally with the savage, we find that, along with his vast increase of cerebral surface, he has an immensely greater power of representing in imagination objects and relations not present to the senses.  This is the fundamental intellectual difference between civilized men and savages.[15] The power of imagination, or ideal representation, underlies the whole of science and art, and it is closely connected with the ability to work hard and submit to present discomfort for the sake of a distant reward.  It is also closely connected with the development of the sympathetic feelings.  The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people.  Half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one’s self in the other man’s place.  So closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety of experience.  From the simplest form of sympathy, such as the painful thrill felt on seeing some one in a dangerous position, up to the elaborate complication of altruistic feelings involved in the notion of abstract justice, the development is very largely a development of the representative faculty.  The very same causes, therefore, deeply grounded in the nature of industrial civilization, which have developed science and art, have also had a distinct tendency to encourage the growth of the sympathetic emotions.

But, as already observed, these emotions are still too feebly developed, even in the highest races of men.  We have made more progress in intelligence than in kindness.  For thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise, and kill one another.  The selfish and ugly passions which are primordial—­which have the incalculable strength of inheritance from the time when animal consciousness began—­have had but little opportunity to grow weak from disuse.  The tender and unselfish feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom been allowed to grow strong from exercise.  And the whims and prejudices of the primeval militant barbarism are slow in dying out from the midst of peaceful industrial civilization.  The coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished.  But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another.  And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval.  Though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another with knives and clubs, they still inflict wounds with cruel words and sneers.  Though the free—­thinker is no longer chained to a stake and burned, people still tell lies about him, and do their best to starve him by hurting his reputation.  The virtues of forbearance and self-control are still in a very rudimentary state, and of mutual helpfulness there is far too little among men.