more proves that the disposition to compassion or benevolence is not innate, than the fact that the ideas or feelings of pleasure and pain are not innate and born with us, proves that physical sensibility is not an original faculty of the mind. Moral sensibility, or the capacity of being affected by the ideas of certain objects, is as much a part of our nature as physical sensibility, or the capacity of being affected in a certain manner by the objects themselves. Helvetius says, physical sensibility is the only quality essential to the nature of man: I answer, that physical sensibility is not the only quality essential to the nature of man. To show how senseless and insignificant is this kind of reasoning, I will refer back to Helvetius's concise profession of his metaphysical faith, which is that he can form an idea of the five senses and of the organs of them, but of nothing else. Now, I may ask, how he comes by this idea? Which of his senses or which of the organs of them is it that gives him an idea of the other four? Has the eye an action of words, or the ear of colours, or either of the impressions of taste, smell, or feeling? Which of them is the common sense? or if none, must we not suppose some superintending faculty to which all the other impressions are subject, and which alone can give him an idea of his

own senses or their organs? Another instance of the utter want of logical and consecutive reasoning which characterizes the French philosophers, might be given in their singular proof of the selfishness of the human mind from the incompatibility of a state of desire and a state of indifference. The English philosophers are charged with representing a man in a state of indifference, "seated in his arm-chair," as desiring the good of others. This arm-chair it should seem, no less than his state of indifference, presents certain insurmountable barriers to his desires, which they cannot pass so as to effect him with the slightest concern for any thing beyond it. So far as a man is indifferent to every thing, he cannot it is true desire any thing. All that follows from this is, that so far as he desires the good of others he is not in a state of indifference.

That a man cannot desire an object and not desire it at the same time requires no proof. But what ought to have been proved, and what was meant to be so, is that a man in a state of indifference to the welfare of others on his own account, cannot desire it for their sake, and this is what is not proved by the truism mentioned. The general maxim, that I cannot desire any object as long as I am indifferent to it, cannot

be made to show that self-interest is the only motive that can make me pass from the one state into the other. By indifference, as used by the writers here ridiculed, in a popular sense, is evidently meant the want of personal or physical interest in any object, and to say that this necessarily implies the want of every other kind of interest in it, of all rational desire of the good of others, is a meagre assumption of the point in dispute. It is strange that these pretenders to philosophy should choose to insult the English writers for daring to wear the plain, homely, useful, national garb of philosophy, while their most glossy and most fashionable suits are made up of the shreds and patches stolen from our countryman Hobbes, disguised with a few spangles, tinselled lace, and tagged points of their

own.

Helvetius's paraphrase of Hobbes's maxim, that "pity is only another name for self-love," is as follows:

"What then do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? The recollection of the sufferings to which man is subject, and to which I am myself liable. It is this consideration that disturbs, that torments me, and so long as the unfortunate sufferer continues in my presence

I am affected with melancholy sensations. Have I relieved him,-do I no longer see him? A calm is insensibly restored to my breast, because in proportion to the distance to which he is removed, the remembrance of the evils which his sight recalled is gradually effaced. When I was concerned for him, then, I was concerned only for myself. What are, in fact, the sufferings which I compassionate the most? They are those not only which I have felt myself, but those which I may still feel. Those evils the more present to my memory impress me more strongly. My sympathy with the sufferings of another is always in exact proportion to my fear of being exposed to the same sufferings myself. I would willingly, if it were possible, destroy the very germ of my own sufferings in him, and thus be released from the apprehension of the like evils to myself in time to come. The love of others is never any thing more in the human mind than the effect of love to ourselves, and consequently of our physical sensibility."Vol. ii. page 20.

To this I answer as follows:-What do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? Not, certainly, the general recollection of the sufferings to which man in general is

subject, or to which I myself may be exposed. It is not this remote and accidental reflection, which has no particular reference to the object before me, but a strong sense of the sufferings of the particular person, excited by his immediate presence, which affects me with compassion, and impels me to his relief. The relief I afford him, or the absence of the object, lessens my uneasiness, either by the contemplation of the diminution of his sufferings, to which I have contributed, or by diverting my mind from the consideration of his sufferings. Neither the relief afforded, nor the absence of the object could produce this effect, if the strong emotion which I experience did not relate to the particular object. It is the fate of the individual, and of him only, which I am contemplating, and my sympathy accordingly rises and falls with it, or as my attention is more or less fixed upon it. A total alteration in the situation of the individual produces a total change in my feelings with respect to him, which could not be the case, if my compassion depended wholly on my sense of my own security, or the general condition of human nature. In feeling compassion for another, therefore, it was not for myself that I was concerned, but for the sufferer: my feelings were, in a manner, bound up with