ESSAY X. ON SELF LOVE. THE modern system of philosophy has one great advantage, which makes it difficult to attack it, with any hope of success, namely, that it is not founded on any of the prevailing opinions or natural feelings of mankind. It rests upon a single principle-its boasted superiority over all prejudice. Unsupported by facts or reason, it is by this circumstance alone enabled to trample upon every dictate of the understanding or feeling of the heart, as weak and vulgar prejudices. In this alone it is secure and invulnerable. To this it owes its giant power and dreaded name. Let the contradictions and fallacies contained in the system be proved over and over again, still the answer is ready:-all the objections made to it are resolved into prejudice. Destitute of every other support, it staggers our faith in received opinions by the hardihood of its assertions, and derives its claim to implicit credence by the boldness of its defiance of all established authority. Common sense is brought to the bar like an old offender, and condemned without a hearing. Under the shelter of this presumption there is no absurdity so great as not to be advanced with impunity. There is no hypothesis, however gratuitous, however inadequate, or however unfounded, that is not held up as the true one, if it is but contrary to all observation and experience. The grossest credulity succeeds to the most extravagant scepticism. From being the slaves of authority we become the dupes of paradox. Every opinion which is so absurd as never to have been affirmed before is converted into an undeniable truth. Whoever dares to question it, unawed by the authority on the one hand, and undazzled by the novelty on the other, is considered as a person of a narrow and bigoted understanding, and as relinquishing all claim to the exercise of his reason. We are effectually deterred from protesting against any of these "wise saws and modern instances" by the dread of being mixed up with the vulgar, and we dare not avoid the common feelings of humanity lest we should be ridiculed as the dupes of self-love, or of the whining cant of moralists. There is however no bigotry so blind as that which is founded on a supposed exemption from all prejudice. The mind in this case identifies every opinion of its own with reason itself: and regarding the objections made to it as proceeding from a jaundiced and distorted view of the case, it converts them into the strongest confirmations of the depth and comprehensiveness of its own views. There are accordingly no people so little capable of reasoning as those who make the loudest pretensions to it: and having assumed the name of Philosophers, are astonished that any one should call their title in question. I have been led to make these observations from reading Helvetius's account of self-love, which is nothing but a series of misrepresentations and assumptions of the question, and which can only have imposed upon his readers from that tone of confidence and alertness which men always have in attacking a received and long-established principle, and a tacit and involuntary feeling that boldness of opinion implies strength and independence of mind. A few examples will show that this censure is well-founded. "What,” says this author in the beginning of his view of the question," what is the human understanding? It is the assemblage of his ideas. To what sort of understanding do we give the name of talent? To the understanding concentrated upon a single subject; that is to say to a large assemblage of ideas of the same kind. "Now if there are no innate ideas, human understanding and genius are only acquired: and both one and the other have the following faculties for their principles. "1. Physical sensibility; without which we could receive no sensa tions. "2. Memory, that is to say, the faculty of recalling the sensations received. "3 The interest which we have in comparing our sensations together, that is to say, in observing with attention the resemblances and differences, the agreements and disagreements of several objects amongst them. It is this interest which fixes the attention, and in minds commonly well-organized, is the efficient cause of understanding." It is added in a note "To judge, according to M. Rousseau, is not to feel. The proof of his opinion is that we have a faculty or power which enables us to compare objects. Now this power according to him cannot be the effect of physical sensibility. But," continues Helvetius, "if Rousseau had more profoundly considered the question, he would have perceived that this power (or faculty of understanding) is no other than the interest itself which we have to compare these objects, and that this interest takes its rise in the feeling of self-love, which is the immediate effect of physical sensibility." This is the author's account of the understanding. It is bold and decided, but it is not on that account either more or less true. It comes to this; that the faculty or power of understanding is owing to the use we have for such a faculty; or that we have a power of comparing our sensations, because we have an interest in comparing them, and that therefore this power is nothing but the effect of physical sensibility. So that a man before he has any understanding, feeling the want of it, supplies himself with this very necessary faculty by an act of the will, and out of pure friendly regard to himself. The interest or desire to fly might at this rate supply us with a pair of wings, or an effort of curiosity might furnish us with a new sense, or an effort of self-interest might enable a man to be in two places at once. All these consequences might very easily follow, if we were only satisfied to believe any extravagance of assertion, and to use words systematically without either connexion or meaning. The whole of this writer's argument against the existence of a benevo lent principle in the mind is founded either on a play of words, or an arbitrary substitution of one feeling for another. He has confounded, and does not even seem to have been aware of the distinction between selflove, considered as a rational principle of action, or the voluntary and deliberate pursuit of our own good as such, and that immediate interest or gratification which the mind may have in the pursuit of any object either relating to ourselves or others. He sometimes evidently considers the former of these, that is, a deliberating, calculating, conscious selfishness, as the only rational principle of action, and treats all other feelings as romance and folly, or even denies their existence; while at other times he contends that the most disinterested generosity, patriotism, and love of fame, are equally and in the strictest sense self-love, because the pursuit of these objects is connected with and tends immediately and intentionally to the gratification of the individual who has an attachment to them. After stating the sentiment of Rousseau, that without an innate and abstract sense of right and wrong we should not see the just man and the true citizen consult the public good to his own prejudice, Helvetius goes on thus :-"No one, I reply, has ever been found to promote the public good when it injured his own interest. The patriot who risks his life to crown himself with glory, to gain the public esteem, and to deliver his country from slavery, yields to the feeling which is most agreeable to him. Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of virtue, in the acquisition of public respect, and in the pleasure consequent upon this respect? For what reason, in a word, should he not expose his life for his country, when the sailor and soldier, the one at sea, and the other in the trenches, daily expose theirs for a shilling? The virtuous man who seems to sacrifice his own good to that of the public is only governed by a sentiment of noble self-interest. 66 "Why should M. Rousseau deny here that interest is the exclusive and universal motive of action, when he himself admits it in a thousand places of his works?" The author then quotes the following passage from Rousseau's Emilius' in support of his doctrine:-"A man may indeed pretend to prefer my interest to his own; however plausibly he colors over this falsehood, I am quite sure it is one." But I would ask why, on the principle just stated by Helvetius, he should not prefer another to himself, if it is agreeable to him?" Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of friendship? Why should he not risk his life for his friend, as well as the patriot for his country, or as the soldier or sailor for a shilling a day? What is become, all of a sudden, of that noble self-interest which identifies us with our country and our kind? Is it quite forgot? Has it evaporated with a breath? Is there nothing of it left? When any instances are brought, or supposed, of the sacrifice of private interest to principle, or virtue, or passion, it is immediately pretended that these instances are not at all inconsistent with the grand universal principle of self-interest, which embraces all the sentiments and affections of the human mind, even the most heroical and disinterested. But the moment these instances are out of sight and the evasion is no longer necessary, this expansive principle shrinks into its own natural littleness again; and excludes all regard to the good of others as romantic and idle folly. All those instances of virtue which are at one moment perfectly compatible with this "universal principle of action" are the next moment said to be incompatible with it, and the author after his little rhetorical glozings on the extensive views and generous sacrifices of self-interest, immediately descends into the vulgar proverb that "the misfortunes of others are but a dream." To proceed: Helvetius says, (p. 14): "What we understand by the goodness or the moral sense in man, is his benevolence towards others and this benevolence we always find in proportion to the utility they are of to him. I prefer my fellow-citizens to strangers, and my friend to my fellow-citizens. The welfare of my friend is reflected upon me. If he becomes more rich and more powerful, I partake of his riches and his power. Benevolence towards others is nothing, then, but the effect of love to ourselves." The inference here stated, that benevolence is merely a reflection from self-love, is founded on the assumption that we always feel for others in proportion to the advantage they are of to us, and this assumption is a false one. That the habitual or known connexion between our own welfare and that of others, is one great source of our attachment to them, one bond of society, is what I do not wish to deny the question is whether it is the only one in the mind, or whether benevolence has not a natural basis of its own to rest upon, as well as self-love. Grant this, and the actual effects which we observe in human life will follow from both principles combined: but to say that our attachment to others is in the exact ratio of our obligations to them, is contrary to all we know of human nature. I would ask whether the affection of a mother for her child is owing to the good received or bestowed; or the child's power of conferring benefits, or its standing in need of assistance? Are not the fatigues which the mother undergoes for the child, its helpless condition, its little vexations, its sufferings from ill health or accidents, additional ties upon maternal tenderness, which by increasing the attention to the wants of the child and anxiety to suppply them, produce a proportionable interest in and attachment to its welfare? Helvetius justly observes that we prefer a friend to a stranger, but the reason which he assigns for it, that our interests and pleasures are more closely allied, is not the only one. We participate in the successes of our friends, it is true, but we also participate in their distresses and disappointments, and it is not always found that this lessens our regard for them. Benevoelence, therefore, is not a mere physical reflection from self-love. His account of friendship agrees exactly with that which the grave historian of Jonathan Wild has given of the friendship between his hero and Count La Ruse: "Mutual interest, the greatest of all purposes, was the cement of this alliance, which nothing of conscquence but superior interest was capable of dissolving." The mechanical principle of association, understood in a strict sense, will not account for the multifarious and mixed nature of our affections, and if we do not understand it in a strict sense, it will then only be another name for sympathy, imagination, or any thing else. "What then in truth," proceeds this author, " is the natural goodness, or moral sense, so much extolled by the English? What distinct idea can we form of such a sense, or on what evidence found its existence? If we allow a moral sense, why not allow an algrebraical or chemical sense? Nothing is more absurd than this theological philosophy of Shaftesbury, and yet most of the English are as much delighted with it as the French formerly were with their music. It is not the same with other nations. No foreigner can understand the one or hear the other. It is a film on the eye of the English, which it is necessary to remove in order that they may see. According to their philosophy, a man in a state of indifference, sitting in his elbow chair, desires the good of others: but in as far as he is indifferent, man desires and can desire nothing. A state of desire and indifference is incompatible. These philosophers repeat in vain that the moral sense is implanted in man, and makes him at a certain time disposed to compassionate the sufferings of his fellows. This system is in fact nothing more than the system of innate ideas overturned by Locke. For my : part, I can form an idea of my five senses, and of the organs which constitute them but I confess that I have no more idea of a moral sense than of a moral elephant and castle. The enthusiasts for moral beauty' are ignorant of the contempt in which these notions are held by all those who, either in the character of statesmen, officers of police, or men of the world, have an opportunity of knowing what human nature is."-page 15. In reply to the dogmatical question with which this passage begins"What distinct idea can be given of the moral sense ?"-I answer for myself, the following very explicit one: namely, that it is the natural preference of good to evil, arising from the conception or idea formed of them in the understanding. Those who assert a moral sense, affirm that there is a faculty of some sort or other inseparable from the nature of a rational and intelligent being, that enables us to form a conception of good and evil, or of the feelings of pleasure and pain generally speaking, which ideas so formed have a natural tendency to excite certain affections and actions. Those, on the other hand, who deny a moral sense, or any thing equivalent to it, must affirm either that we can form no idea whatever of the feelings of others, or of good and evil generally speaking, or that these ideas have no possible influence over the mind, except from their connexion with physical impressions, memory, habit, self-interest, or some other motive, quite distinct from the ideas themselves. But I have already shown that without the co-operation of rational motives, there could be neither habit, nor self-interest, nor voluntary action of any kind. The moral is therefore nothing but the application of the understanding to the feelings or ideas of good. The question, consequently, whether there is a moral sense, is reducible to this; whether the mind can understand or conceive, or be affected by any thing beyond its own physical or mechanical feelings. If it can, then there is something in man besides his five senses and the organs which compose them, for these can give him no thought, conception, or sympathy with any thing beyond himself, or even with himself beyond the present moment. The actions, and events, and feelings of human life, the passions and pursuits of men, could no more go on without the interference of the understanding than without an original principle of physical sensibility. Neither the one nor the other explains the whole economy of our moral nature, but that is no reason why both are not essential and integrant parts of it. The five senses and the organs which compose them will not account for the science of morality, let it be as imperfect as it may, any more than for the science of algebra or chemestry in the different degrees in which they are possessed by different men. The point is not whether reason is furnishing us with a perfect and infallible rule of |