sult how he might strengthen his affection to a parent or a child, to his country or to mankind; and it is probable that an appetite of this sort would prove a source of enjoyment no less than the former.” *

Of the difficulty here remarked by Dr. Ferguson, the solution appears to me to be this, that the word selfishness, when applied to a pursuit, has no reference to the motive from which the pursuit proceeds, but to the effect it has on the conduct. Neither our animal appetites, nor avarice, nor curiosity, nor the desire of moral improvement, arise from self-love, but some of these active principles disconnect us with society more than others; and consequently, though they do not indicate a greater regard for our own happiness, they betray a greater unconcern about the happiness of our neighbours. The pursuits of the miser have no mixture whatever of the social affections; on the contrary, they continually lead him to state his own interest in opposition to that of other men. The enjoyments of the sensualist all expire within his own person; and, therefore, whoever is habitually occupied in the search of them must of necessity neglect the duties which he owes to mankind. It is otherwise with the desire of knowledge, which is always accompanied with a strong desire of social communication, and with the love of moral excellence, which, in its practical tendency, coincides so remarkably with benevolence, that many authors have attempted to resolve the one principle into the other. How far their conclusion, in this instance, is a necessary consequence of the premises from which it is deduced will appear hereafter.

The foregoing observations coincide so remarkably with a passage in Aristotle's Ethics, that I am tempted to quote it at length in the excellent English translation of Dr. Gillies. After stating the same inconsistencies in our language about self-love which Dr. Ferguson has pointed out, Aristotle proceeds thus :

"These contradictions cannot be reconciled but by distinguishing the different senses in which man is said to love himself. Those who reproach self-love as a vice con

* Part I. Sect. II.

sider it only as it appears in worldlings and voluptuaries, who arrogate to themselves more than their due share of wealth, power, or pleasure. Such things are to the multitude the objects of earnest concern and eager contention, because the multitude regards them as prizes of the highest value, and, in endeavouring to attain them, strives to gratify its passion at the expense of its reason. This kind of self-love, which belongs to the contemptible multitude, is doubtless obnoxious to blame, and in this acceptation the word is generally taken. But should a man assume a preeminence in exercising justice, temperance, and other virtues, though such a man has really more true self-love than the multitude, yet nobody would impute this affection to him as a crime. Yet he takes to himself the fairest and greatest of all goods, and those the most acceptable to the ruling principle in his nature, which is properly himself, in the same manner as the sovereignty in every community is that which most properly constitutes the state. He is said, also, to have, or not to have, the command of himself, just as this principle bears sway, or as it is subject to control; and those acts are considered as most voluntary which proceed from this legislative or sovereign power. Whoever cherishes and gratifies this ruling part of his nature is strictly and peculiarly a lover of himself, but in a quite different sense from that in which self-love is regarded as a matter of reproach; for all men approve and praise an affection calculated to produce the greatest private and the greatest public happiness; whereas they disapprove and blame the vulgar kind of self-love as often hurtful to others, and always ruinous to those who indulge it." *

* Aristotle's Ethics, Book IX. Chap. viii.

Jouffroy accounts as follows for the appearance of self-love in human nature:-"The faculties, as long as they are abandoned to the impulse of the passions, obey that passion which happens to be the strongest at the time, from which a twofold inconvenience ensues. In the first place, the passions are of all things the most unstable, the dominion of one being almost immediately supplanted by that of another, so that the faculties while under their exclusive control are incapable of continuous and connected effort, and consequently nothing of importance is effected. And, again, the good found in the satisfaction of the dominant passion at the moment often leads to serious evil, while, on the other hand, the evil of its not being satisfied often results in great and permanent good; from which it appears that nothing is less favorable

CHAPTER II.

OF THE MORAL FACULTY.

SECTION I.

THE MORAL FACULTY NOT RESOLVABLE

INTO SELF-LOVE.

I. Duty and Interest not the same.] As some authors have supposed that vice consists in an excessive regard to

to the attainment of our highest good than this exclusive dominion of the passions. Reason is not slow to discover this, or to conclude from it that, in order to obtain the highest possible good, our effective force must no longer be the prey of the mechanical impulse of the passions. It sees, on the contrary, how much better it would be, if, instead of being hurried away each instant by such impulse to the gratification of some new passion, it were freed from this constraint, and directed exclusively to the realization of the interest of all the passions taken together, that is to say, the greatest good of our whole nature. Moreover, with the same degree of clearness that our reason conceives this course to be wise, it also conceives it to be practicable. We are certainly capable of judging what the highest good of our nature is; our reason enables us to do it. Equally certain is it that we can, if we please, take possession of our own faculties, and employ them to carry out this idea of our reason. That we have this power has been revealed even under the exclusive empire of passion; we have felt it in the spontaneous effort by which, in order to satisfy the dominant passion for the time being, we have concentrated all our forces on a single point. It is only necessary that we should do voluntarily what before we have done spontaneously, and free will appears. No sooner is this great revolution conceived, than it is accomplished. A new principle of action springs up within us, interest well understood,- - a principle which is not a passion, but an idea; not a blind and instinctive prompting of our nature, but an intelligible, deliberate, and rational purpose; not an impulse, but a motive. Finding a point of support in this motive, the natural power we have over our faculties takes these faculties under its control, and in its effort to direct them according to this motive shakes off the bondage of the passions, and becomes itself more and more developed and free. From this time our active powers are delivered from the irregular, vacillating, and turbulent empire of the passions, and become submissive to the law of reason, which considers what will be for the greatest possible satisfaction of our tendencies, that is to say, the highest good of the individual, or self-interest well understood." Cours de Droit Naturel, Leçon II. See the whole of this Lecture and the following one in the original, or in Mr. Channing's translation.

No writer has treated the subject of self-love with so much care and minuteness of discrimination as Jeremy Bentham, in the first volume of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Here we have what has been called his Moral Arithmetic, by which he

our own happiness, so others have gone into the opposite extreme, by representing virtue as merely a matter of prudence, and a sense of duty but another name for a rational self-love. This view of the subject was far from being unnatural; for we find that these two principles lead in general to the same course of action; and we have every reason to believe, that, if our knowledge of the universe. was more extensive, they would be found to do so in all instances whatever. Accordingly, by many of the best of the ancient moralists, our sense of duty was considered as resolvable into self-love, and the whole of ethics was reduced to this question, What is the supreme good? or, in other words, What is most conducive, on the whole, to our happiness? *

That we have, however, a sense of duty, which is notresolvable into a regard to our happiness, appears from various considerations.

II. First Argument. Expressed by distinct Terms in all Languages.] There are, in all languages, words

thinks to determine the relative value of different "lots of pleasure or pain"; and also what has been called his Moral Dynamics, or the doctrine of forces, motives, or sanctions, by which self-love, and through that the human will, is influenced and determined in all cases.

Paley, not content with making pleasure, considered as constituting human happiness, the only ultimate object of human pursuit, denies that the rational and moral pleasures, as such, are entitled to more regard than the rest. "In this inquiry," says he, "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature; the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity."-Moral Philosophy, Book I. Chap. vi. Dr. Whewell, in the Preface to his edition of Sir James Mackintosh's Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, says of this passage:- "If we could use such a term without an unbecoming disrespect towards a virtuous and useful writer, this opinion might properly be called brutish, since it recognizes no difference between the pleasures of man and those of the lowest animals."

For a very original and ingenious speculation respecting the nature of self-love and the natural disinterestedness of the human mind, see Hazlitt's Essays on the Principles of Human Action. Also his Literary Remains, Essay X., On Self-love.

*The same opinion, as will soon appear, has been adopted by various philosophers of the first eminence in England, and was long the prevailing system on the Continent.

equivalent to duty and to interest, which men have constantly distinguished in their signification. They coincide in general in their applications, but they convey very different ideas. When I wish to persuade a man to a particular action, I address some of my arguments to a sense of duty, and others to the regard he has to his own interest. I endeavour to show him that it is not only his duty, but his interest, to act in the way that I recommend to him.

This distinction was expressed among the Roman moralists by the words honestum and utile. Of the former Cicero says, "Quod vere dicimus, etiamsi a nullo laudetur, natura esse laudabile.”*

The to xalóv among the Greeks corresponds, when applied to the conduct, to the honestum of the Romans. Dr. Reid remarks that the word xa9xov (officium) extended both to the honestum and the utile, and comprehended every action performed either from a sense of duty, or from an enlightened regard to our true interest.† In English we use the word reasonable with the same latitude, and indeed almost exactly in the same sense in which Cicero defines officium :-"Id quod cur factum sit ratio probabilis reddi potest." In treating of such offices Cicero, and Panctius before him, first points out those that are recommended to us by our love of the honestum, and next those that are recommended by our regard to the utile.

This distinction between a sense of duty and a regard to interest is acknowledged even by men whose moral principles are not the purest, nor the most consistent. What unlimited confidence do we repose in the conduct of one whom we know to be a man of honor, even in those cases in which he acts out of the view of the world, and where the strongest temptations of worldly interest concur to lead him astray! We know that his heart would revolt

* De Offic., Lib. I. 4. "Which, though none should praise it, we maintain with truth to be of itself praiseworthy." Essays on the Active Powers, Essay III. Part III. Chap. v. De Offic., Lib. I. 3. tive can be assigned."

"That, for the doing of which a reasonable moBut, as Sir W. Hamilton says in a note to the passage in Reid, “this definition does not apply to kaðĥкov or officium, in general, but only to кaðĥкov μéoov, officium commune."―ED.