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 thus for the appearance of self-love (égoisme) 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 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 bet ter it would be, if, instead of being hurried away each instant by suen im pulse to the gratification of some new passion, it were freed from this con straint, and directed exclusively to the realization of the interest of all the

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

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 thinks to deter mine 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 "In this inquiry," says he, "I will omit muh usual declamation on

est.

to our own happiness, so others have gone into the op posite 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 is 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 were 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? 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.

That we have, however, a sense of duty, which is not resolvable 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 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

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.

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 Tò kaλóv among the Greeks corresponds, when applied to the conduct, to the honestum of the Romans. Dr. Reid remarks that the word Kankov (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 Pancetius before him, first point 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 re gard 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 at the idea of any thing base or unworthy. Dr. Reid observes that what we call honor, considered as a principle of conduct, "is

* De Offic.. Lib. I. 4. tain with truth to be of † Essays on the Active De Offic., Lib. I. 3.

"Which, though none should praise it, we main itself praiseworthy."

Powers, Essay III. Part III. Chap. v.

"That, for the doing of which a reasonable mo. tive can be assigned." But, as Sir W. Hamilton says in a note to the pas sage in Reid, this definition does not apply to kaoŋkov or officium in gen eral, but only to kadĥкov μéσov, officium commune."

ED.

only another name for a regard to duty, to rectitude, to propriety of conduct." This, I think, is going rather too far; for, although the two principles coincide in general in the direction they give to our conduct, they do not coincide always; the principle of honor being liable, from its nature and origin, to be most unhappily perverted in its applications by a bad education and the influence of fashion. At the same time, Dr. Reid's remark is perfectly in point, for the principle of honor is plainly grafted on a sense of duty, and necessarily presupposes its existence.

Dr. Paley, one of the most zealous advocates for the selfish system of morals, admits the fact on which the foregoing argument proceeds, but endeavours to evade the conclusion by means of a theory so extraordinary, that I shall state it in his own words. "There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of duty. On the other hand, it would be thought a very unusual and loose kind of language to say, that, as I had made such a promise, it was prudent to perform it; or that, as my friend, when he went abroad, placed a box of jewels in my hands, it would be prudent in me to preserve it for him till he returned.

"Now, in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act.

"The difference, and the only difference, is this; that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall lose or gain in the world to come."

*Moral Philosophy, Book II. Chap. iii. It is in view of passages like these that Dr. Brown expresses himself with indignant severity. "This form of the selfish system, which has been embraced by many theological writers of undoubted piety and purity, is notwithstanding, I cannot but