this principle self-love, or benevolence, or whatever refinements we may introduce into our manner of explaining it. The relation of man to himself and others as a moral agent is plainly determined, whether a rational pursuit of his own future welfare and that of others is the real or only the ostensible motive of his actions. Were it not that our feelings are so strongly attached to names, the rest would be a question more of speculative curiosity than practice. All that, commonly speaking, is meant by the most disinterested benevolence is this immediate sympathy with the feelings of others, as by self-love is meant the same kind of attachment to our own future interests. For if by self-love we understand any thing beyond the impulse of the present moment, any thing different from inclination, let the object be what it will, this can no more be a mechanical thing than the most refined and comprehensive benevolence. Self-love, used in the sense which the above objection implies, must therefore mean some thing very different from an exclusive principle of deliberate, calculating selfishness, rendering us indifferent to every thing but our own advantage, or from the love of physical pleasure or aversion to physical pain, which could produce no interest in any but sensible

impressions. In a word, it expresses merely any inclination of the mind be it to what it will, and does not at all determine or limit the object of pursuit. Supposing, therefore, that our most generous feelings and actions were so far equivocal, the object only bearing a show of disinterestedness, the secret motive being always selfish, this would be no reason for rejecting the common use of the term disinterested benevolence, which expresses nothing more than an immediate reference of our actions to the good of others, as self-love expresses a conscious reference of them to our own good as means to an end. This is the proper meaning of the terms. If we denominate our actions not from the object in view, but from the inclination of the individual, there will be an end at once, both of "selfishness" and "benevolence."

But farther, I deny that there is any foundation for the objection itself, or any reason for resolving the feelings of compassion or our voluntary motives in general into a principle of mechanical self-love. That the motive to action exists in the mind of the person who acts, is what no one can deny, or I suppose ever meant to deny. The passion excited and the impression producing it must necessarily affect the individual. There must always be some one to feel

and act, or there could evidently be no such thing as feeling or action. If therefore it had even been implied as a condition in the love of others, that this love should not be felt by the person who loves them, this would be to say that he must love them and not love them at the same time, which is too palpable an absurdity to be thought of for a moment. It could never, I say, be imagined that in order to feel for others, we must in reality feel nothing, or that benevolence, to exist at all, must exist no where. This kind of reasoning is therefore the most arrant trifling. To call my motives or feelings selfish, because they are felt by myself, is an abuse of all language it might just as well be said that my idea of the monument is a selfish idea, or an idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. By a selfish feeling must be meant, therefore, a feeling, not which belongs to myself (for that all feelings do, as is understood by every one) but which relates to myself, and in this sense benevolence is not a selfish feeling. It is the individual who feels both for himself and others; but by self-love is meant that he feels only for himself; for it is presumed that the word self has some meaning in it, and it would have absolutely none at all, if nothing more were intended by it than any object or im

pression existing in the mind. It therefore becomes necessary to set limits to the meaning of the terms. If we except the burlesque interpretation of the word just noticed, self-love can mean only one of these three things. 1. The conscious pursuit of our own good as such; 2. The love of physical pleasure and aversion to physical pain; 3. The gratification derived from our sympathy with others. If all our actions do not proceed from one of these three principles, they are all resolvable into self-love.

First, then, self-love may properly signify, as already explained, the love or affection excited by the idea of our own interest, and the conscious pursuit of it as a general, remote, ideal object. In this sense, that is, considered with respect to the proposed end of our actions, I have shown sufficiently that there is no exclusive principle of self-love in the human mind which constantly impels us, as a set purpose, to pursue our own advantage and nothing but that.

Secondly, any being would be strictly a selfish agent, all whose impulses were excited by mere physical pleasure or pain, and who had no sense or imagination, or anxiety about any thing but its own bodily feelings. Such a being could have no idea beyond its actual, momentary existence, and would be equally incapable of ra

tional self-love or benevolence. But it is allowed on all hands that the wants and desires of the human mind are not confined within the limits of his bodily sensations.

Thirdly, it is said that though man is not merely a physical agent, but is naturally capable of being influenced by imagination and sympathy, yet that this does not prove him to be possessed of any degree of disinterestedness or real good-will to others; since he pursues the good of others only from its contributing to his own gratification; that is, not for their sakes, but for his own, which is still selfishness. That is, the indulgence of certain affections necessarily tends, without our thinking of it, to our own immediate gratification, and the impulse to prolong a state of pleasurable feeling and put a stop to whatever gives the mind the least uneasiness, is the real spring and over-ruling principle of our actions. If our benevolence and sympathy with others arose out of and was entirely regulated by this principle of self-gratification, then these might indeed be with justice regarded as the ostensible accidental motives of our actions, as the form or vehicle which served only to transmit the efficacy of any other hidden principle, as the mask and cover of selfishness. But the supposition itself is the absurdest that can