That this social organization of persons is the ideal which Mill is actually thinking of, rather than any succession of states of agreeable sensation, is evident by his treatment of the whole subject. Mill is quite clear that education and opinion may produce _any_ sort of feeling, as well as truly benevolent motives to actions. For example, in his critique of Whewell, he says, (Op. cit., p. 154): "All experience shows that the moral feelings are preëminently artificial, and the products of culture; that even when reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than the growth of corn and wine (which are quite as natural), and that the most senseless and pernicious feeling can as easily be raised to the utmost intensity by inculcation, as hemlock and thistles could be reared to luxuriant growth by sowing them instead of wheat." It is certainly implied here that legislation, education and public opinion must have as a presupposed standard the identity of general and private interests or else they may produce anything whatever. That is to say, Mill instead of arriving at his result of general happiness simply takes it for granted.
This fact and the further fact that he virtually defines happiness through certain objective interests and ends (thus reversing the true hedonistic position) is obvious from the following, (Mill, Op. cit., pp. 343-347): After again stating that the moral feelings are capable of cultivation in almost any direction, and stating that moral associations that are of artificial construction dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (_cf._ his Autobiography, p. 136), and that the association of pleasure with the feeling of duty would similarly dissolve unless it had a _natural_ basis of sentiment, he goes on. "But there is this basis of powerful _natural_ sentiment. This firm foundation is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our fellow-creatures. _The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man that except in some unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary abstraction he never conceives of himself otherwise than as a member of a body._ Any condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society becomes more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a human being." Mill then goes on to describe some of the ways in which the social unity manifests itself and influences the individual's conduct. Then the latter "comes, as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who _of course_ pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our existence. _The deeply-rooted conception which every individual even now has of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it as one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures._ This conviction is the ultimate sanction of the greatest happiness morality."