 Like Aristotle, Mill recognized the power of political institutions to transform individuals’ desires and aims and to improve them morally. In chapter III of Considerations on Representative Government, Mill writes approvingly of the democratic institutions of ancient Athens. He believed that by participating in these institutions, Athenians were called upon to rise above their individual partialities and to consider the general good. By co-operating with others in governing their community, he wrote, each citizen “is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is their interest to be his interest” (Mill 1991, 79).