 This is a far more powerful argument than Mill’s failed “proof” of utilitarianism. In highlighting the fundamental and undeniable similarity between ourselves and everyone else, it calls us to broaden our concern and care without limit, and to recognize the moral call of suffering and need, wherever they might be found. It stands as a lasting challenge to all those who seek to limit the scope or curtail the demands of morality. This argument was so central to Śāntideva’s intellectual and religious project that he made it the very first of the root verses of the ŚS.