# Essays on the Principles of Human Action/Essay 1

AN ARGUMENT
IN DEFENCE OF
THE NATURAL DISINTERESTEDNESS
OF THE
HUMAN MIND.
It is the design of the following Essay to show that the human mind is naturally disinterested, or that it is naturally interested in the welfare of others in the same way, and from the same direct motives, by which we are impelled to the pursuit of our own interest.
The objects in which the mind is interested may be either past or present or future. These last alone can be the objects of rational or voluntary pursuit; for neither the past nor present can be altered for the better or worse by any efforts of the will. It is only from the interest excited in him by future objects that man becomes a moral agent, or is denominated selfish, or the contrary, according to the manner in which he is affected by what relates to his own future interest, or that of others. I propose then to shew that the mind is naturally interested in its own welfare in a peculiar mechanical manner, only as far as relates to its past or present impressions. I have an interest in my own actual feelings or impressions by means of ​consciousness, and in my past feelings by means of memory, which I cannot have in the past or present feelings of others, because these faculties can only be exerted upon those things which immediately and properly affect myself. As an affair of sensation, or memory, I can feel no interest in any thing but what relates to myself in the strictest sense. But this distinction does not apply to future objects, or to those impressions which determine my voluntary actions. I have not the same sort of exclusive, or mechanical self-interest in my future being or welfare, because I have no distinct faculty giving me a direct present interest in my future sensations, and none at all in those of others. The imagination, by means of which alone I can anticipate future objects, or be interested in them, must carry me out of myself into the feelings of others by one and the same process by which I am thrown forward as it were into my future being, and interested in it. (I could not love myself, if I were not capable of loving others.) Self-love, used in this sense, is in its fundamental principle the same with disinterested benevolence.
Those who have maintained the doctrine of the natural selfishness of the human mind have always taken it for granted as a self-evident principle that a man must love himself, or that it is not less absurd to ask why a man should be interested in his own personal welfare, than it would be to ask why a man in a state of actual enjoyment or suffering likes what gives him pleasure, and dislikes what gives him pain. They say, that no such necessity, nor any positive reason whatever can be conceived to exist for my promoting the welfare of another, since I cannot possibly feel the pleasures, or pains which another feels without first becoming that other, that our interests must be as necessarily distinct as we ourselves are, that the good which I ​do to another, in itself and for its own sake can be nothing to me. Good is a term relative only to the being who enjoys it. The good which he does not feel must be matter of perfect indifference to him. How can I be required to make a painful exertion, or sacrifice a present convenience to serve another, if I am to be nothing the better for it? I waste my powers out of myself without sharing in the effects which they produce. Whereas when I sacrifice my present ease or convenience, for the sake of a greater good to myself at a future period, the same being who suffers afterwards enjoys: both the loss and the gain are mine, I am upon the whole a gainer in real enjoyment, and am therefore justified to myself: I act with a view to an end in which I have a real, substantial interest. The human soul, continue some of these writers, naturally thirsts after happiness; it either enjoys, or seeks to enjoy. It constantly reaches forward towards the possession of happiness, it strives to draw it to itself, and to be absorbed in it. But as the mind cannot enjoy any good but what it possesses within itself, neither can it seek to produce any good but what it can enjoy: it is just as idle to suppose that the love of happiness or good should prompt any being to give up his own interest for the sake of another, as it would be to attempt to allay violent thirst by giving water to another to drink.
Now I can conceive that a man must be necessarily interested in his own actual feelings, whatever these may be merely because he feels them. He cannot help receiving pain from what gives him pain, or pleasure from what gives him pleasure. But I cannot conceive how he can have the same necessary, absolute interest in whatever relates to himself, or in his own pleasures and pains, generally speaking, whether he feels them or not. This kind of reasoning ​which in itself is all along founded in a mere play of words, could not have gained the assent of thinking men but for the force with which the idea of self habitually clings to the mind of every man, binding it as with a spell, deadening its discriminating powers, and spreading the confused associations which belong only to past and present impressions over the whole of our imaginary existence. It therefore becomes difficult to separate ideas which have been thus knit together by custom, or "by a long tract of time, by the use of language, and want of reflection." If it were possible for a man's particular successive interests to be all bound up in one general feeling of self-interest as they are all comprehended under the same word, self, or if a man on the rack really felt no more than he must have done from the apprehension of the same punishment a year before, there would be some foundation for this reasoning, which supposes the mind to have the same absolute interest in its own feelings both past, present, and to come. I say the sophism here employed consists in comparing the motives by which we are interested in the welfare of others with the mechanical impulses of self-love, as if because we are mechanically affected by the actual impression of objects on our senses in a manner in which we cannot be affected by the feelings of others, all our feelings with respect to ourselves must be of the same kind, and we could feel no interest in any thing but what was excited in the same way. It is plain we are not interested in our general, remote welfare in the same manner, or by the same necessity that we are affected by the actual sense of pleasure, or pain. We have no instinctive secret sympathy with our future sensations by which we are attracted either consciously or unconsciously to our greatest good; we are for the most part indifferent to it, ignorant of it. We certainly do not ​know, and we very often care as little what is to happen to ourselves in future: it has no more effect upon us in any way, than if it were never to happen. Were it not for this shortsightedness and insensibility, where would be the use, or what would become of the rules of personal prudence?
It will be said, I know, that this is foreign to the purpose; for that whether he feels it or not, every man has a real interest in his own welfare which he cannot have in that of another person. First, this is to shift the ground of the argument; for it requires to be made out how a man can be said to have an interest in what he does not feel. There is not evidently the same contradiction in supposing him not to be particularly interested in feelings which he has not, as there is in supposing him not to be interested in his actual, sensible pleasures and pains. Secondly, I shall very readily grant that to have and to feel an interest in any thing are not always convertible terms: that is, an interest may attach or belong to an individual in some way or other though he does not feel it at the time. My having a real interest in any object may refer to the matter of fact that such an object will sometime or other exist: now the reality of its existence does not certainly depend on my feeling an interest in it previously. Neither is the reality of another's pleasures, or pains affected by my not feeling such an interest in them as I ought to do. The feelings of others are evidently as real, or as much matters of fact in themselves as my own feelings can ever be. This distinction between that which is true and that which has merely an imaginary existence, or none at all, does not therefore so far apply to the question, if by a real interest be meant that which relates to a real object, for it is supposed at first that this object does not excite any immediate or real interest in the mind. ​Another difference that may be insisted on is this, that I shall have a real sensible interest in my own future feelings which I cannot possibly have in those of others. I must therefore as the same individual have the same necessary interest in them at present. This may either proceed on the supposition of the absolute, metaphysical identity of my individual being, so that whatever can be affirmed of that principle at any time must be strictly and logically true of it at all times, which is a wild and absurd notion; or it may refer to some other less strict connection between my present and future self, in consequence of which I am considered as the same being, the different events and impressions of my life constituting one regular succession of conscious feelings. In this sense, the saying that I have a general interest in whatever concerns my future welfare in fact amounts to no more than affirming, that I shall have an interest in that welfare, or that I am nominally and in certain other respects the same being who will hereafter have a real interest in it. The reason why we are so ready to attribute a real identity of interests to the same person is, that we have an indistinct idea of extended consciousness, and a community of feelings as essential to the same thinking being; so that whatever interests me at one time must interest me, or be capable of interesting me, at other times. Now this continued consciousness only serves to connect my past with my present impressions. It only acts retrospectively. I have not previously the same sympathy with my future being that I have with my past being, nor consequently the same natural or necessary interest in my future welfare that I have in my past. Lastly, it may be said, that there is something in the very idea of pleasure or pain as affecting myself which naturally excites a lively unavoidable interest in my mind. I cannot conceive how ​the mere idea of self can produce any such effect as is here described, unless we imagine that self-love literally consists in the love of self, or in a proper attachment to our own persons instead of referring to the feelings of desire and aversion, hope, and fear, &c. excited in us by those things which either do, or may immediately affect ourselves. In consequence of the impression of many such objects on the thinking being, we shall come no doubt to connect a sense of self-interest with this very being, with the motions of our blood, and with life itself, and shall by degrees transfer the emotions of interest excited by particular positive feelings to the idea of our own interest generally speaking. This however must be the work of time, the gradual result of habit, and reflection, and cannot be the natural reason why a man pursues his own welfare, or is interested in his own feelings. I think therefore that in the first instance the idea of personal pleasure or pain can only affect the mind as a distinct idea of that which is in itself the object of desire, or aversion, and that the idea of self is nothing more than the first and most distinct idea we have of a being capable of receiving pleasure and pain. It will be the business of the greatest part of the following essay to make out these several points more distinctly.
There is another hypothesis which 1 shall just mention, that holds a sort of middle place between the two opposite ones already stated. The partisans of this more liberal philosophy, who could not suppress the consciousness of humane and benevolent dispositions in themselves, or the proofs of them in others, but yet knew not how to reconcile these feelings with the supposed selfishness of human nature, have endeavoured to account for the different impulses of generous affection from habit, or the constant connection between the pleasures and pains of others, and our own, by ​which means we come at last to confound our own interests with theirs, and to feel the same anxiety for their welfare without any view to our own advantage. A man according to this hypothesis becomes attached to others as he becomes attached to any other indifferent object, to a tree, or a stone, from familiarity, and the frequent association of his immediate gratification with the indifferent idea; and this attachment once formed, he must afterwards be interested in their welfare whether he will or no. An example of this may be given in boys at school. A boy is confined to his task at the same time with his school-fellows; he feels the effects of the good or ill humour of the master in common with the rest; when the school-hour is over, they are all let loose to play together; he will in general like the same games that others do, and be most delighted when they are noisiest, when they happen to be in the best humour, in the hottest part of the game, on the finest days, or in the pleasantest places: they will have the same joyous breakings-up for the holidays, and will often on some bright morning stroll out in search of unknown good, and return home tired and disappointed together. Would it not be strange if this constant fellowship of joys and sorrows did not produce in him some sensibility to the good or ill fortune of his companions, and some real good-will towards them The greatest part of our pleasures depend upon habit: and as those which arise from acts of kindness and disinterested attachment to others are the most common, the most lasting, the least mixed with evil of all others, as a man devoid of all attachment to others, whose heart was thoroughly hard and insensible to every thing but his own interest would scarcely be able to support his existence (for in him the spring and active principle of life would be gone), it follows that we ought to cultivate sentiments of generosity and kindness for others out of mere ​selfishness. The obligations to the practice of virtue really, depend on its contributing to the original object of our nature, our own proper happiness: for no man is bound to sacrifice his own ultimate welfare to any foreign consideration whatever. The advantages of virtue are however to be derived, like those of any liberal art, from the immediate gratification attending it, from its necessary effect on the mind, and not from a gross calculation of self-interest. This effect must be the greatest, where there is the most love of virtue for its own sake, as we become truly disinterested, and generous. Therefore as the habit of generous concern for others, and readiness to promote their welfare cannot be broken in upon at will in every particular instance where our immediate interest might require it, it becomes necessary to disregard all such particular, accidental advantages for the sake of the general obligation, and thus confirm habit into principle.
Whatever may be the manner in which we first acquire disinterested feelings, I do not think that much good can be done by tracing these feelings back again to a selfish origin, and leaving virtue no other basis to rest upon than a principle of refined self-interest, by setting on foot a sort of game at hide-and-seek between the reasons and motives to virtue. Without stopping to inquire whether the effect of this theory upon the mind would be to produce much true generosity, or disinterested simplicity of character, there can be no doubt but that this end must be attained much more effectually, as far as the philosophical theory, or a belief of certain abstract distinctions will ever influence our habitual principles of action, by showing to man that ​his nature is originally and essentially disinterested; that as a voluntary agent, he must be a disinterested one; that ​he could neither desire, nor will, nor pursue his own happiness but for the possession of faculties which necessarily give him an interest out of himself in the happiness of others; that personal identity neither does, nor can imply any positive communication between a man's future, and present self, that it does not give him a mechanical interest in his future being, that man when he acts is always absolutely independent of and uninfluenced by the feelings of the being for whom he acts, whether this be himself, or another; lastly, that all morality, all rational, and voluntary action, everything undertaken with a distinct reference to ourselves or others must relate to the future, that is, must have those things for its object which can only act upon the mind by means of the imagination, and must naturally affect it in the same manner, whether they are thought of in connection with our own future being, or that of others.
I have thought upon this subject so long, and it has sunk into my mind so deeply in the single abstract form which appears to me to explain almost every other view which can be taken of it, that I cannot without difficulty bring myself to consider it separately or in detail; and I am sure that many things will appear to others very imperfectly and obscurely expressed which are to me evident truisms, from having been accustomed to refer a number of particular observations, and subordinate trains of feeling, which I have forgotten, to that general form of reasoning. However I hope that the simplicity of the principle itself which must be either logically and absolutely true, or not at all, will make it sufficiently intelligible.
All voluntary action, that is all action proceeding from a ​will, or effort of the mind to produce a certain event, must relate to the future, or to those things, the existence of which is problematical, undetermined, and therefore capable of being affected by the means made use of with a view to their production or the contrary. But that which is future, which does not yet exist can excite no interest in itself, nor act upon the mind in any way but by means of the imagination. The direct primary motive, or impulse which determines the mind to the volition of any thing must therefore in all cases depend on the idea of that thing as conceived of by the imagination, and on the idea solely. For the thing itself is a non-entity. By the very act of its being willed, it is supposed not to exist. It neither is any thing, nor can be the cause of any thing. We are never interested in the things themselves which are the real, ultimate, practical objects of volition: the feelings of desire, aversion, &c., connected with voluntary action are always excited by the ideas of those things before they exist. The true impulse to voluntary action can only exist in the mind of a being capable of foreseeing the consequences of things, of being interested in them from the imaginary impression thus made upon his mind, and of making choice of the means necessary to produce, or prevent what he desires or dreads. This distinction must be absolute and universally applicable, if it is so at all. The motives by which I am impelled to the pursuit of my own welfare can no more be the result of a direct impression of the thing which is the object of desire, or aversion, of any positive communication between my present, and future feelings, or of a sort of hypostatical union between the interests of the being acting, and the being acted upon, than the motives by which I am interested in the welfare of others can be so. It is true I have a real, positive interest in my actual feelings which ​I have not in those of others. But actual pleasure and pain are not the objects of voluntary action. It can be to no purpose, it is downright nonsense to will that which actually exists, which is impressed on my senses to exist, or not to exist, since it will exist neither more nor less for my willing it, or not willing it. Our shrinking from that which gives us pain could not in any respect be considered as an act of volition, or reason, if we did not know that the same object which gives us pain will continue to give us pain while we remain in contact with it. The mere mechanical movement which generally accompanies much pain does not appear to me to have any thing more to do with self-love properly so called than the convulsive motions or distortions of the muscles caused by bodily disease.—In other words the object of volition is never the cause of volition. The motive, or internal impression impelling me to the pursuit of any object is by the supposition incompatible with any such interest as belongs to the actual enjoyment of any good, or to the idea of possession. The real object of any particular volition is always a mere physical consequence of that volition, since it is willed for that very reason that otherwise it would not exist at all, and since the effect which the mind desires to produce by any voluntary action must be subsequent to that action. It cannot therefore exert any power over my present volitions, and actions, unless we suppose it to act before it exists, which is absurd. For there is no faculty in the mind by which future impressions can excite in it a presentiment of themselves in the same way that past impressions act upon it by means of memory. When we say that future objects act upon the mind by means of the imagination, it is not meant that such objects exercise a real power over the imagination, but merely that it is by means of this faculty ​that we can forsee the probable or necessary consequences of things, and are interested in them.
I hardly know how to insist on a point so plain in itself that it cannot be made plainer by any kind of reasoning. I only wish to define the sense of the general position as strictly as I can, and to guard if possible against any mistake arising from ambiguity of expression. For nothing but the certainty of absolute proof, and of having avoided every error of this sort can overcome the reluctance of the mind to admit fully and in all its consequences a distinction, which however simple in the abstract, goes to the direct subversion of one of the most deeply rooted feelings of the human mind, namely that of the essential difference between the interest we have in promoting our own welfare by all the means in our power, and that which we take in promoting the welfare of others. Almost every one has a feeling that he has a real interest in the one, but that his interest in the other is merely imaginary; that his interest in the one is absolute and independent of himself, that it exists with the same force whether he feels it, or not, whether he pursues, or neglects it; that it is a part of himself, a bond from which he cannot free himself without changing his being; whereas the interest which he takes in the welfare of others is a voluntary interest, taken up and dismissed at pleasure, and which exists no longer than he feels it; that his interest in his own welfare, however distant, must affect him equally at present, since he is really the same being who is to enjoy, or suffer hereafter, but that with respect to the feelings of pleasure, or pain which another is to enjoy or suffer, he neither has any direct present interest, nor can have an indirect future interest in them: they are nothing to him. This is the common feeling; and it is perhaps not less common to the most generous than to ​the most narrow and selfish minds: for a man of a generous disposition will take pleasure in sacrificing his own immediate interest considering it as a real sacrifice, and will be fond of exulting in his superiority to the gross influence of selfish motives. If however the distinction above insisted on with respect to voluntary action be any thing more than a play of words without meaning, the whole of this feeling must be utterly false, and groundless. For the mind can take no interest in any thing, that is an object of practical pursuit, but what is strictly imaginary; it is absurd to suppose that it can have a real interest in any such object directly, whether relating to ourselves, or others (this has been I trust sufficiently shewn already): neither can the reality of my future interest in any object give me a real interest in that object at present, unless it could be shewn that in consequence of my being the same individual I have a necessary sympathy with my future sensations of pleasure or pain, by which means they produce in me the same mechanical impulses as if their objects were really present. The puncture of a pin causing an irritation in the extremity of one of the nerves is sensibly felt along the whole extent of that nerve; a violent pain in any of the limbs disorders the whole frame; I feel at the same moment the impressions made on opposite parts of my body; the same conscious principle pervades every part of me, it is in my hands, my feet, my eyes, my ears at the same time, or at any rate is immediately affected by whatever is impressed on all these; it is not confined to this, or that organ for a certain time, it has an equal interest in the whole sentient system; nothing that passes in any part of it can be indifferent to me. Here we have a distinct idea of a real individuality of person, and a consequent identity of interests. Till some such diffusive conscious principle can be shewn to exist, producing a real connection between my ​future sensations and present impulses, collecting, and uniting the different successive moments of my being in one general representative feeling of self-interest as the impressions made on different parts of my body are all conveyed to one common principle of thought, it is in vain to tell me that I have the same interest in my future sensations as if they were present, because I am the same individual. However nearly allied, however similar I may be to my future self, whatever other relation I may bear to that self, so long as there is not this intercommunity of thoughts and feelings, so long as there is an absolute separation, an insurmountable barrier fixed between the present, and the future, so that I neither am, nor can possibly be affected at present by what I am to feel hereafter, I am not to any moral or practical purpose the same being. Natural impossibilities cannot be made to give way to a mere courtesy of expression. "But I know that I shall become that being." Then my interest in it is founded on that knowledge, and not on an event which not only is not felt by my mind, but is itself yet to come, viz. the transition of my present into my future being. How does it signify to me what I shall hereafter feel, or how can it influence my present conduct, or how ought it to do so but because, and in as far as, I have some idea of it beforehand? The injury that I may do to my future interest will not certainly by any kind of reaction return to punish me for my neglect of my own happiness. In this sense, I am always free from the consequences of my actions.—​The interests of the being who acts, and of the being who suffers, are never one. They are not swayed by the influence of the same causes, either directly, or by mechanical sympathy. The good which is the object of pursuit can never coexist with the motives which make it an object of pursuit. The good which any being pursues is always at a distance from him. His wishes, his exertions are always excited by "an airy, notional good:" by the idea of good, not the reality. But for this there could be no desire, no pursuit of any thing. We cannot strive to obtain what we already possess: we cannot give to that which already exists a double reality. My real interest is not therefore something which I can handle, which is to be felt, or seen: it is not lodged in the organs of hearing, or taste, or smell: it is not the subject of any of the senses: it is not in any respect what is commonly understood by a real, substantial interest. On the contrary, it is fundamentally, and in it's origin and by it's very nature the creature of reflection and imagination; and whatever can be made the subject of these, whether relating to ourselves or others, may also be the object of an interest powerful enough to become the motive of volition and action. If it should be asked then what difference it can make to me whether I pursue my own welfare, or entirely neglect it, what reason I can have to be at all interested in it, I answer that according to the selfish hypothesis I do not see any. But if we admit that there is something in the very idea of good, or evil, which naturally excites desire or aversion, which is in itself the proper motive of action, which impels the mind to pursue the one, and to avoid the other by a true moral necessity, then it cannot be indifferent to me whether I believe that any being will be made happy or miserable in consequence of my actions, whether this be myself or another. I naturally desire and pursue ​my own good (in whatever this consists) simply from my having an idea of it sufficiently warm and vivid to excite in me an emotion of interest, or passion; and I love and pursue the good of others, of a relative, of a friend, of a family, a community, or of mankind, for just the same reason.
The scheme of which I have here endeavoured to trace the general outline differs from the common method of accounting for the origin of our affections in this, that it supposes what is personal or selfish in our affections to be the growth of time and habit; and the principle of a disinterested love of good as such, or for it's own sake, without any regard to personal distinctions, to be the foundation of all the rest. In this sense self-love is in it's origin a perfectly disinterested, or if I may so say, impersonal feeling. The reason why a child first distinctly wills or pursues his own good is not because it is his, but because it is good. For the same reason he prefers his own gratification to that of others, not because he likes himself better than others, but because he has a more distinct idea of his own wants and pleasures than of theirs. Independently of habit and association, the strength of the affection excited is in proportion to the strength of the idea, and does not at all depend on the person to whom it relates except indirectly and by implication. A child is insensible to the good of others not from any want of goodwill towards them, or an exclusive attachment to self, but for want of knowing better. Indeed he can neither be attached to his own interest, nor that of others, but in consequence of knowing in what it consists. It is not on that account the less natural for him to seek to obtain personal pleasure, or to avoid personal pain after he has felt what these are. We are not born benevolent, that is we are not born with a desire of we ​know not what, and good wishes for we know not whom: neither in this sense are we born with a principle of self-love, for the idea of self is also acquired. When I say therefore that the human mind is naturally benevolent, this does not refer to any innate abstract idea of good in general, or to an instinctive desire of general, indefinite, unknown, good, but to the natural connection between the idea of happiness and the desire of it, independently of any particular attachment to the person who is to feel it.
There is a great difference between the general love of good which implies a knowledge of it, and a general disposition to the love of good, which does not imply any such thing. It is necessary to keep this distinction in our minds, or the greatest confusion will ensue. It is the general property of iron to be attracted by the loadstone, though this effect can only take place in consequence of the loadstone's being brought near enough to it, nor is any thing more meant by the assertion. The actual desire of good is not inherent in the mind of man, because it requires to be brought out by certain accessory objects or ideas; but the disposition itself, or property of the mind, which makes him liable to be so affected by certain objects, is inherent in him and a part of his nature; as sensibility to pleasure and pain will not be denied to be natural to man, though the actual feelings of pleasure and pain can only be excited in him by the impression of certain external objects. The love of my own particular good must precede that of the particular good of others, because I am acquainted with it first: the love of particular must precede that of general good whether my own, or another's, or the general good of mankind, for the same reason. I do not therefore originally love my own particular positive good as a portion of general good, or with a distinct reference in my mind to ​the good of the whole; for I have as yet no idea of nor any concern about the whole. But I love my own particular good as consisting in the first conception I have of some one desirable object for the same reason for which I afterwards love any other known good whether my own, or another's, whether conceived of as consisting in one or more things, that is because it possesses that essential property common to all good, without which it would cease to be good at all, and which has a general tendency to excite certain given affections in my mind. I conceive that the knowledge of many different sorts of good must lead to the love or desire of all these, and that this knowledge of various good must be accompanied with an intermediate, composite, or indefinite idea of good, itself the object of desire because retaining the same general nature: now this is an abstract idea. This idea will no doubt admit of endless degrees of indefiniteness according to the number of things, from which it is taken, or to which it is applied, and will be refined at last into a mere word, or logical definition. In this case it will owe all it's power as a motive to action, to habit, or association; for it is so immediately or in itself no longer than while it implies a sentiment, or real feeling, representative of good, and only in proportion to the degree of force and depth which this feeling has. ​The same objection evidently applies to the supposition either of an original principle of general comprehensive ​benevolence, or of general and comprehensive self-love. They both suppose the mind to have attained an indefinite power of abstraction which is not it's natural state. Both the one and the other must be made up of many actual pleasures and pains, of many forgotten feelings and half-recollections, of hopes and fears and insensible desires: the one, that is, a sentiment of general benevolence, can only arise from an habitual cultivation of the natural disposition of the mind to sympathise with the feelings of others, by constantly taking an interest in those which we know, and imagining others that we do not know; as the other feeling of abstract self-interest, that is in the degree in which it generally subsists, must be caused by a long narrowing of the mind to our own particular feelings and interests, and a voluntary insensibility to every thing which does not immediately concern ourselves. It is this excessive attachment to our own good because it is ours, or for the sake of the abstract idea which has no immediate connection with a real imagination of our own pleasures and pains, that I consider as a purely artificial feeling and as proper selfishness; not that love of self which first or last is derived from a more immediate knowledge of our own good and is a natural consequence of the general love of good as such. So of our attachment to others; for the general principle as exerted with respect to others, admits of the same modifications from habit as when it has a merely selfish direction. Our affections settle upon others as they do upon ourselves; they pass from the thing to the person. "I hate to fill a book with things that all the world knows," or I might here give a very elaborate and exact account taken from twenty different authors of the manner in which this transition takes place. I do not see how ideas are the better for being often repeated. Suffice it to say that in all these cases of habitual attachment the motives to ​action do not depend so much on a real interest in the thing which is the object of pursuit as on a general disposition to serve that particular person, occasioned by a previous habit of kind offices, and by transferring the feeling of a real interest in a number of things conducive to that person's welfare, to the abstract idea of his good in general. I leave it with the reader to apply this to the cases of friendship, family attachments, the effects of neighbourhood, &c., and to consider the feuds, the partialities, the antipathies produced by these attachments, and the consequent unwillingness to attend to the natural feelings of compassion, humanity, and the love of justice: and then let him see if the same process, that is the ingrafting a general, or abstract interest on an habitual positive feeling will not account in the same way for the effects of self-love, without supposing this last, as an exclusive principle, to be natural to the human mind. For my own part, I believe that the cases are exactly parallel. Thus we may consider self-love as bearing the same relation to family affection as this does to the more general love of our neighbour, as the love of our neighbour does to that of our country, or as the love of our country does to that of mankind. The love of mankind is here to be taken for an already given, definite, and to a certain degree associated feeling. The comparison might be instituted with a slight shade of difference between self-love, the love of a relative or friend, of a neighbour, and of an entire stranger. It is in proportioning our anxiety to promote the welfare of any of these to our sense of the use our assistance may be of, to use a well known phrase, without respect of persons, that what may be called the natural balance of our affections seems to consist. By the bye, this supposes that our insensibility to the feelings of others does not arise from an unwillingness to sympathize ​with them, or a habit of being stupidly engrossed by our own interests. Whether there may not be some higher principle of our general nature by which our sentiments and actions with respect to others should be voluntarily regulated, according to the same rule by which gross animal appetite is subjected to rational self-interest, may be made the subject of a future inquiry. All that is necessary to my present purpose is to have made it appear that the principles of natural self-love and natural benevolence, of refined self-love and refined benevolence are the same; that if we admit the one, we must admit the other; and that whatever other principles may be combined with them, they must stand, or fall together.
It is not therefore my intention to puzzle myself or my readers with the intricacies of a debtor and creditor account between nature and habit. Whatever the force of habit may be, however subtle and universal it's influence, it is not every thing, not even the principal thing. Before we plant, it is proper to know the nature of the soil, first that we may know whether it is good for any thing, secondly that we may know what it is good for. On these two questions will depend the sort of cultivation we bestow upon it. After this is settled, it is idle to dispute how much of the produce is owing to cultivation, and how much to the nature of the soil. We should only be sure of having made the best use of it we can. But we cannot be sure of this till we know what it is naturally capable of. I will however lay down two general maxims on this subject which will not admit of much controversy. First, when there is no natural connection between any two things which yet have been supposed inseparable from a confused association of ideas, it is possible to destroy this illusion of the imagination by rational distinction, and consequently to weaken ​the force of the habitual feeling which is confirmed and rendered permanent by the conviction of the understanding. Thus, a principle of general self-interest has been supposed inseparable from individuality, because a feeling of immediate consciousness does essentially belong to certain individual impressions, and this feeling of consciousness, of intimate sympathy, or of absolute self-interest, has been transferred by custom and fancy together to the abstract idea of self. It is therefore of some use to separate these ideas, or to shew that there is no foundation in reason or the nature of things for a very strong prejudice which has been conceived to arise immediately out of them. The mind must be drawn together, must be contracted and shrunk up within itself, by the mere supposition of this perpetual unity with itself and intense concentration of self-interest. Secondly, where this natural connection is wanting, that is, where the habitual connection of certain feelings with certain ideas does not arise from a predisposition in the mind to be affected by certain objects more than others, but from the particular direction which has been given to the mind or a more frequent association between those feelings and ideas, a contrary habit may be produced by giving the mind a different direction, and bestowing a greater share of attention on other objects. It cannot be a matter of indifference then whether the faculty by which I am originally interested in the welfare of others is the same as that by which I am interested in my own welfare, or whether I am naturally incapable of feeling the least interest in the welfare of others except from it's indirect connection with my own. Habit is by it's nature to a certain degree, arbitrary, and variable, the original disposition of the mind: it's tendency to acquire or persevere in this or that habit is ​alone fixed and invariable. As however the force of previous habit is and always must be on the side of selfish feelings, it is some consolation to think that the force of the habit we may oppose to this is seconded by reason and the natural disposition of the mind, and that we are not obliged at last to establish generosity and virtue "lean pensioners" on self-interest.
​I have thus far attempted to shew by a logical deduction that the human mind is naturally disinterested: I shall now try to shew the same thing somewhat differently, and more in detail.
To suppose that the mind is originally determined in it's choice of good and rejection of evil solely by a regard to self is to suppose a state of indifference to both, which would make the existence of such a feeling as self-interest utterly impossible. If there were not something in the very notion of good, or evil which naturally made the one an object of immediate desire and the other of aversion, it is not easy to conceive how the mind should ever come to feel an interest in the prospect of obtaining the one or avoiding the other. It is great folly to think of deducing our desire of happiness and fear of pain from a principle of self-love, instead of deducing self-love itself from our natural desire of happiness and fear of pain. This sort of attachment to self could signify nothing more than a foolish complacency in our own idea, an idle dotage, and idolatry of our own abstract being; it must leave the mind indifferent to every thing else, and could not have any connection with the motives to action unless some one should choose to make it the foundation of a new theory of the love of life and fear of death. So long as the individual exists, and remains entire, this principle is satisfied. As to the manner in which it exists, by what objects it shall be affected, whether it shall prefer one mode of being to another, all this is left undetermined. If then by self-love be meant a desire of one mode of being and aversion to another, or a desire of our own well-being, what is it that is to constitute this well-being It is plain there must be something in the nature of the objects themselves which of itself determines the mind to consider them as desirable, or the contrary, previously to any reference of ​them to ourselves. They are not converted into good and evil by being impressed on our minds, but they affect our minds in a certain manner because they are essentially good or evil. How shall we reconcile this with supposing that the nature of those objects or their effect on the mind is entirely changed by their being referred to this or that person 2 I repeat it that self-interest implies certain objects and feelings for the mind to be interested in: to suppose that it can exist separately from all such objects, or that our attachment to certain objects is solely deduced from, and regulated by our attachment to self is plain, palpable nonsense.
Take the example of a child that has been burnt by the fire, and consequently conceives a dread of it. This dread we will say does not consist simply in the apprehension of the pain itself abstractedly considered, but together with this apprehension of pain he connects the idea (though not a very distinct one) of himself as about to feel it. Let us consider in what way the intervention of this idea can be supposed to cause or increase his dread of the pain itself. In the first place then it is evident that the fire actually burns the child, not because he is thinking of himself, or of its burning him, but because it is the nature of fire to burn and of the child's hand to feel pain, and his dislike of the pain while it actually exists is the immediate, necessary and physical consequence of the sense of pain, not an indirect and reflex result of the child's love to himself, or after-consideration that pain is an evil as it affects himself. Again I apprehend that after the actual pain has ceased, it continues to be thought of and is afterwards recollected as pain, or in other words, the feeling or sense of pain leaves a correspondent impression in the memory which adheres to the recollection of the object, ​and makes the child involuntarily shrink from it by the same sort of necessity, that is from the nature of the human mind and the recollected impression, and not from his referring it historically to his own past existence. In like manner I conceive that this idea of pain when combined by the imagination with other circumstances and transferred to the child's future being will still retain its original tendency to give pain, and that the recurrence of the same painful sensation is necessarily regarded with terror and aversion by the child, not from its being conceived of in connection with his own idea, but because it is conceived of as pain. It should also be remembered as the constant principle of all our reasonings, that the impression which the child has of himself as the subject of future pain is never anything more than an idea of imagination, and that he cannot possibly by any kind of anticipation feel that pain as a real sensation a single moment before it exists. How then are we to account for his supposed exclusive attachment to this ideal self so as to make that the real source of the dislike and dread which the apprehension of any particular pain to be inflicted on himself causes in the mind? There are two ways in which this may at first sight appear to be satisfactorily made out. The first is from the notion of personal identity: this has been already considered and will be again touched upon. The other is something as follows. ​The child having been burnt by the fire and only knowing what the pain of a burn is from his own personal experience, as soon as he finds himself in danger of it again, has a very vivid recollection of the pain it formerly gave him excited in his mind; and by a kind of sudden transposition substituting this idea in the place of his immediate apprehension, in thinking of the danger to which he is exposed he confounds the pain he is to feel with that which he has already actually felt, and in reality shrinks from the latter. I mean that the child strongly recollects that particular sort of pain as it has affected himself, and as it is not possible for him to have a recollection of its effect on any one else, he oply regards it as a future evil in connection with the same idea, or as affecting himself, and is entirely indifferent to it as it is supposed to affect any one else. Or in other words he remembers being burnt himself as an actual sensation, but he does not remember the actual sensations of any one but himself: therefore, being able to trace back his present feelings to his past impressions, and struck with the extreme faintness of the one compared with the other, he gives way to his immediate apprehensions and imaginary fears only as he is conscious of, and dreads, the possibility of their returning into the same state of actual sensation again.
I do not deny that some such illusion of the imagination as I have here attempted to describe begins to take place very soon in the mind, and continues to acquire strength ever after from various causes. What I would contend for (and this is all that my argument requires) is that it is and can be nothing more than an illusion of the imagination, strengthening a difference in subordinate, indirect, collateral circumstances into an essential difference of kind. The objection would indeed hold good if it were true ​that the child's imaginary sympathy with the danger of another must be derived as it were in a kind of direct line from that other's actual sense of past pain, or its immediate communication to his own senses, which is absurd. It is not supposed that the child can ever have felt the actual pains of another as his own actual pains, or that his sympathy with others is a real continuation and result of this original organic sympathy, in the same way that his dread of personal pain is to be deduced from his previous consciousness of it. His sympathy with others is necessarily the result of his own past experience: if he had never felt any thing himself, he could not possibly feel for others. I do not know that any light would be thrown upon the argument by entering into a particular analysis of the faculty of imagination; nor shall I pretend to determine at what time this faculty acquires sufficient strength to enable the child to take a distinct interest in the feelings of others. I shall content myself with observing that this faculty is absolutely necessary to the child's having any apprehension or concern either about his own future interest, or that of others; that but for this faculty of multiplying, varying, extending, combining, and comparing his original passive impressions he must be utterly blind to the future and indifferent to it; insensible to every thing beyond the present moment; altogether incapable of hope, or fear, or exertion of any kind; unable to avoid or remove the most painful impressions, or to wish for or even think of their removal; to withdraw his hand out of the fire, or to move his lips to quench the most burning thirst; that without this faculty of conceiving of things which have not been impressed on his senses and of inferring like things from like, he must remain totally destitute of foresight, of self-motion, or a sense of self-interest; the passive instrument of undreaded pain and unsought-for ​pleasure; suffering and enjoying without resistance and without desire, in a state of more than idiot imbecility, just so long as the different outward objects continue to act upon his senses; but that with this faculty, enabling him to throw himself forward into the future, to anticipate unreal events and to be affected by his own imaginary interest, he must necessarily be capable, in a greater or less degree, of entering into the feelings and interests of others, and of being influenced by them. The child, by the time that his perceptions and actions begin to take any thing of a consistent form so that they can be made the subject of reasoning, being supposed to know from experience what the pain of a burn is, and seeing himself in danger of it a second time, is immediately filled with terror, and strives either by suddenly drawing back his hand, catching hold of something, or by his cries for assistance, to avoid the danger. Here then his memory and senses present him with nothing more than certain external objects, in themselves indifferent, and the recollection of extreme pain formerly connected with the same or similar objects. If he had no other faculties than these, he must stop here. He would see and feel his own body moved rapidly towards the fire, but his apprehensions would not outrun its actual motion: he would not think of his nearer approach to the fire as a consequence of the force with which he was carried along, nor dream of falling into the fire till he found it actually burning him. Even if it were possible for him to foresee the consequence, it would not be an object of dread to him; because without a reasoning imagination he would not and could not connect with the painted flame before him the idea of violent pain which the same kind of object had formerly given him by it's actual contact. But in fact he imagines his continued approach to the fire till he falls into ​it; by his imagination he attributes to the fire a power to burn, he conceives of an ideal self endued with a power to feel, and, by the force of imagination solely, anticipates a repetition of the same sense of pain which he before felt. If then he considers this pain, which is but an ideal sensation impressed on an ideal being, as an object of real, present, necessary and irresistible interest to him, and, knowing that it cannot be avoided but by an immediate exertion of voluntary power, makes a sudden and eager effort to avoid it by the first means he can think of, why are we to suppose that the apprehension of the same pain to be inflicted on another whom he must believe to be endued with the same feelings, and with whose feelings he must be capable of sympathising in the same manner as with his own imaginary feelings, may not affect him with the same sort of interest, the same sort of terror, and impel him to the same exertions for his relief?
Because, it is said, in his own case there is a natural deception, by which he confounds his future being with his past being, and the idea of a future imaginary pain with the recollection of a past conscious pain. Now, if the sense of present danger acts so powerfully on his mind as to ​bring back the recollection of a past sensation, and set that before him in the place of the real object of his fear, so that, while he is endeavouring to avoid an immediate danger, he is in fact thinking only of past suffering without his perceiving this confusion of ideas, surely the same thing must take place in a less degree with respect to others. If it be thought necessary for him, before he can seek his own future interest, to confound it with his past interest by the violent transition of an immediate apprehension into the stronger recollection of an actual impression, then I say that by the same sort of substitution he will identify his own interest with that of others, whenever a like obvious danger recalls forcibly to his mind his former situation and feelings, the lenses of memory being applied in the one case to excite his sympathy and in the other to excite personal fear, the objects of both being in themselves equally imaginary and according to this hypothesis both perfectly indifferent. But I should contend that the assumption here made that the direct and proper influence of the imagination is insufficient to account for the effects of personal fear, or of no force at all in itself is without any foundation. For there is no reason why the ideas of the imagination should not be efficient, and operative, as well as those of memory, of which they are essentially compounded. Their substance is the same. They are of one flesh and blood. The same vital spirit animates both. To suppose that the imagination does not exert a direct influence over human actions is to reject the plain inference from the most undoubted facts without any motive for so doing from the nature and reason of things. This notion could not have gained ground as an article of Philosophical faith but from a perverse restriction of the use of the word idea to abstract ​ideas, or external forms, as if the essential quality in the feelings of pleasure, or pain, must entirely evaporate in passing through the imagination; and, again, from associating the word imagination with merely fictitious situations and events, that is, such as never will have a real existence, and which consequently do not admit of action. Besides though it is certain that the imagination is strengthened in its operation by the indirect assistance of our other faculties, yet as it is this faculty which must be the immediate spring and guide of action (unless we attribute to it an inherent, independent power over the will, so as to make it bend to every change of circumstances or probability of advantage, and a power at the same time of controuling the blind impulses of associated mechanical feelings, and of making them subservient to the accomplishment of some particular purpose, or in words without a power of willing a given end for itself, and of employing the means immediately necessary to the production of that end, because they are perceived to be so), there could be neither volition, nor action, neither rational fear nor steady pursuit of any object, neither wisdom nor folly, generosity nor selfishness: all would be left to the accidental concurrence of some mechanical impulse with the immediate desire to obtain some very simple object: in no other case can either accident or habit be supposed likely to carry any rational purpose into effect. To return however to what I have said above in answer to this objection: it is evident that all persons are more inclined to compassionate those pains and calamities in others by which they have been affected themselves, and this proves that the operation of that principle, even supposing it to be the true one, is not confined to selfish objects. Our sympathy is ​always directly excited in proportion to our knowledge of the pain, and of the disposition and feelings of the sufferer. Thus with respect to ourselves we are little affected by the apprehension of physical pain which we have never felt, and therefore can know little of; and we have still less sympathy with others in this case. Our incredulity and insensibility with respect to what others frequently suffer from the tooth-ache and other incidental disorders must have been remarked by every one, and are even ludicrous from the excess to which they are carried. Give what account you will of it, the effect is the same:—our self-love and sympathy depend upon the same causes, and constantly bear a determinate proportion to each other, at least in the same individual. The same knowledge of any pain, which increases our dread of it, makes us more ready to feel for others who are exposed to it. When a boy I had my arm put out of joint, and I feel a kind of nervous twitching in it to this day whenever I see any one with his arm in a sling. This part of my subject has been so well detailed by Smith and others that it is needless to insist on it farther. There are certain disorders which have a disgusting appearance, that shock and force attention by their novelty; but they do not properly excite our sympathy, or compassion, as they would do if we had ever been subject to them ourselves. Children seem to sympathize naturally with the outward signs of passion in others without inquiring into the particular causes by which it is excited, whether it is that their ideas of pain are more gross and simple, and therefore more uniform and more easily substituted for each other, or that grown up persons, having a greater number of ideas and being oftener able to sympathize with ​others from knowing what they feel, habitually make this knowledge the foundation of their sympathy. In general ​it seems that those physical evils, which we have actually experienced, and which from their nature produce nearly ​the same effect upon every one, must excite a more immediate and natural sympathy than those which depend ​on sentiment or moral causes. It is however neither so complete nor durable; as these last, being the creatures of imagination, appeal more strongly to our sympathy, which is itself an act of the imagination, than mere physical evils can ever do, whether they relate to ourselves or others. Our sympathy with physical evil is also a more unpleasant feeling, and therefore submitted to with more reluctance. So that it is necessary to take another circumstance into the account in judging of the quantity of our sympathy, besides the two above mentioned; namely, the nature of the pain or it's fitness to excite our sympathy. This makes no difference in the question.
To say that the child recollects the pain of being burnt only in connection with his own idea, and can therefore conceive of it as an evil only with respect to himself, is in effect to deny the existence of any such power as the imagination. By the same power of mind which enables him to conceive of a past sensation as about to be re- excited in the same being, namely, himself, he must be capable of transferring the same idea of pain to a different person. He creates the object, he pushes his ideas beyond the bounds of his memory and senses in the first instance, and he does no more in the second. If his mind were ​merely passive in the operation, he would not be busy in anticipating a new impression, but would still be dreaming of the old one. It is of the very nature of the imagination to change the order in which things have been impressed on the senses, and to connect the same properties with different objects, and different properties with the same objects; to combine our original impressions in all possible forms, and to modify these impressions themselves to a very great degree. Man without this would not be a rational agent; he would be below the dullest and most stupid brute. It must therefore be proved in some other way that the human mind cannot conceive of or be interested in the pleasure or pains of others because it has never felt them.
The most subtle way of putting this objection is to represent the tendency of the child's apprehension of danger to deter him from going near the fire as caused, not simply by the apprehension or idea itself, which they say would never be strong enough for a motive to action, but by his being able to refer that idea to an actual sensation in his own mind, and knowing that with respect to himself it will pass into the same state of serious reality again, if he exposes himself to the same danger. Now here we have nothing but a reflection on a reflection. It is supposed that the direct idea of a terrible and well-known pain has no effect at all upon the mind; but that the idea of this idea, as about to be converted into, or succeeded by the pain itself m the same conscious being, will immediately excite the strongest efforts to prevent it. Certainly the near expectation of the object of your dread, actually realized to the senses, strengthens the fear of it; but it strengthens it through the imagination. So, the knowing that a person, whom you wished anxiously to see, after a separation of many years, was in the next room, would make you ​recal the impression of his face or figure almost with the same vividness and reality as if he were actually present. The force then, with which the mind anticipates future pain in connection with the idea of continued consciousness, can only tend to produce voluntary action by making the idea stronger; but it could not have this effect at all if it were not of the nature of all pain, when foreseen by the mind, to produce a tendency that way; that is, to excite aversion, and a will to prevent it, however slight this may sometimes be. The sophism which lurks at the bottom of this last objection seems to be the confounding the idea of future pain as the cause or motive of action, with the after-reflection on that idea as a positive thing, itself the object of action. Finding in many cases that the first apprehension and momentary fear of danger was gone by, though the reason for avoiding it still remained the same, the mind would be easily led to seek for the true cause of action in something more fixed and permanent than the fleeting ideas of remote objects, and to require that every object, whether of desire or aversion, should have some stronger hold on the individual than it's momentary effect on his imagination before it became an object of serious pursuit, or the contrary. But in rejecting the ideas of things as themselves the ultimate grounds and proper objects of action, and referring the mind to the things themselves as the only solid basis of a rational and durable interest, we only go back to the first direct idea of the object, which in representing that object, is as distinct from any secondary reflection on, or oblique consciousness of itself as an absolute thing, the object of thought, as a sensation can be different from an idea, or a present impression from a future one. There is nothing in the foregoing theory which has any tendency to overturn the fundamental ​distinctions between truth and falsehood, or the common methods of judging what these are: all the old boundaries and land-marks remain just where they were. It does not surely by any means follow because the reality of future objects can only be judged of by the mind, that therefore it has no power of distinguishing between the probable consequences of things, and what can never happen, that it is to take every impulse of will or fancy for truth: or because future objects cannot act upon the mind from without, that therefore our ideas cannot have any reference to, or properly represent those objects, or any thing external to the mind, but must consist entirely in the conscious contemplation of themselves.
There is another feeling in a great measure the same with the former, but distinguishable from it in being still more strongly connected with a sense of self-interest, namely, that of continued personal identity. This has been already a treated of but I shall here resume the question as on it the chief stress of the argument lies. The child seeing himself in danger of the fire does not think of his present and future self as two distinct beings, but as one and the same: he as it were projects himself forward into the future, and identifies himself with it. He knows that he shall feel his own future pleasures and pains, and believes that he must therefore be as much interested in them as if they were present. In thinking of the future, he does not conceive of any change as really about to take place in himself, or of any thing intermediate between his present and future being, but considers his future sensations as affecting that very same conscious being in which he now feels such an anxious and unavoidable interest. The hand which the child snatches back from the fire is the same hand which but for his doing so would the next ​moment be exposed to the most excessive pain. This is still more true of that inward conscious principle which alone connects the successive moments of his being together, and of which all his outward organs are but instruments, subject to perpetual changes both of action and suffering. To make the difference of time the foundation of an essential distinction and complete separation between his present and future being, as if this were the only thing to be attended to, is to oppose an unmeaning sophism to plain matter of fact, since mere distance of time does not destroy individuality of consciousness. He is the same conscious being now that he will be the next moment, or the next hour, or a month or a year hence. His interests as an individual as well as his being must therefore be the same. At least this must be the case so long as he retains the consciousness of his past impressions, connecting them together in one uniform or regular train of feeling: for the interruption of this sense of continued identity by sleep, inattention, or otherwise, seems from its being afterwards renewed, to prove the point more clearly, as shews that there is some deep inward principle which remains the same in spite of all particular, accidental changes.
The child does no doubt consider himself as the same being, or as directly and absolutely interested in his own welfare, as far as he can distinctly foresee the consequences of things to himself. But this very circumstance of his identifying himself with his future being, of feeling for this imaginary self as if it were incorporated with his actual substance, and weighed upon the pulses of his blood, is itself the strongest instance that can be given of the force of the imagination, which the advocates of the selfish hypothesis would represent as a faculty entirely powerless.
​No one, I should think, will be disposed seriously to maintain that this future imaginary self is, by a kind of metaphysical transubstantiation, virtually embodied in his present being, so that his future impressions are indirectly communicated to him before-hand. For whatever we may imagine or believe concerning the substance itself, or elementary principle in which thought is supposed to reside, it is plain that this principle as acted upon by external objects, or modified by particular actual thoughts and feelings (which alone can be the motives of action, or can impel the mind in this, or that direction), is perpetually changing; and it is also plain that the changes which it has to undergo at any time can have no possible effect on those which it has previously undergone, which may be the cause indeed but cannot be the effect of subsequent changes. In this sense the individual is never the same for two moments together. What is true of him at one time is never (that we know of) exactly and particularly true of him at any other time. It is idle to say that he is the same being, generally speaking; that he has the same general interest. For he is also a man in general; and this argument would prove that he has a general interest in whatever concerns humanity. Indeed the terms mean nothing as applied to this question. The question is, whether the individual is the same being in such sort or manner as that he has an equal, absolute interest in every thing relating to himself, or that his future impressions affect him as much and impel him to action with the same mechanical force as if they were actually present. This is so far from being true that his future impressions do not exert the smallest influence over his actions, nor affect him mechanically in any degree. The catechism of this philosophy ​would run thus. You are necessarily interested in your future sensations? Yes. And why so? Because I am the same being. What do you mean by the same being? The same being is the same individual; that is, one who has the same interests, the same feelings, the same consciousness; so that whatever affects him at any one time must extend to his whole existence. He must therefore be at all times interested in it alike. Do you then feel your future sensations before they really exist? No. How then, if you do not feel them, can you be affected by them : Because as the same individual, &c. That is, by the very supposition, the pain which the child is to suffer does not exist: of course he does not exist, of course he does not feel it, nor can he be moved, affected or interested by it as if it did : and yet in the same breath, by a shrewd turn of logic it is proved that as he is the same being, he must feel, be interested in, affected by it as much as he ever will. But then it will as shrewdly follow that with this implication he is not the same being, for he cannot be affected in the same manner by an object before it is impressed on his senses as he is afterwards; and the fear or imaginary apprehension of pain is a different thing from the actual perception of it. There is just the same difference be- tween feeling a pain yourself and believing that another will feel it.
I request the reader to bear it in mind throughout the whole of this reasoning, that when I say the child does not feel; that he is not interested in his future sensations; and when I consider this as equivalent to his having no real or personal interest in them, I mean that he never feels, or can be affected by them, before-hand; that he is always necessarily cut off from every kind of communication with them; that they cannot possibly act upon his mind as motives to ​action, or excite in him any kind of impulse in any circumstances or any manner: and I conceive that it is no great stretch of speculative refinement to insist that without some such original faculty of being immediately affected by his future sensations more than by those of others, his relation to his future self, whatever that may be, cannot be made the foundation of his having a real positive interest in his future welfare which he has not in that of others. A general, or abstract, or reflex interest in any object, implies either a previous positive interest in that object, or a natural capacity in the mind to be affected by it in the manner given. Thus, I may be said to pursue any object from a general interest in it, though it excites no interest or emotion in my mind at the time, when I do this from habit, or when the impression has been so often repeated as to have produced a mechanical tendency to the pursuit of the object, which has no need of any new impulse to excite it. Or the same thing may be said with reference to my general nature as a voluntary agent. This implies that the object, in which I am supposed to be interested without being sensible of it, is in itself interesting to me; that it is an object in which I can and must necessarily be interested, the moment it is known to me; that I am interested generally in that whole class of objects, and may be said to be interested in this inclusively. To go farther than this, and say that the mind as the representative of truth, is or ought to be interested in things as they are really and truly interesting in themselves, without any reference to the manner in which they immediately affect the individual, is to destroy at once the foundation of every principle of selfishness, which supposes that all objects are good or bad, desirable or the contrary, solely from their connection with self. But I am tired of repeating the same thing so often; for "as ​to those that will not be at the pains of a little thought, no multiplication of words will ever suffice to make them understand the truth or rightly conceive my meaning."
To return. Even if it were possible to establish some such preposterous connection between the same individual, as that, by virtue of this connection, his future sensations should be capable of transmitting their whole strength and efficacy to his present impulses, and of clothing ideal motives with a borrowed reality, yet such is the nature of all sensation, or absolute existence, as to be incompatible with voluntary action. How should the reality of my future interest in any object be (by anticipation) the reason of my having a real interest in the pursuit of that object at present, when if it really existed I could no longer pursue it. The feelings of desire, aversion, &c. connected with voluntary action must always be excited by the idea of the object before it exists, and must be totally inconsistent with any such interest as belongs to actual suffering or enjoyment. The interest belonging to any sensation or real object, as such, or which arises as one may say from the final absorption of the idea in the object, cannot have any relation to an active or voluntary interest which necessarily implies the disjunction of these two things: it cannot therefore be the original, the parent-stock, the sole and absolute foundation, of an interest which is defined by its connection with voluntary action.—Still it will be said, that how- ever difficult it may be to explain in what this consists, there is a principle of some sort or other which constantly connects us with ourselves, and makes each individual the same person distinct from every one else. And certainly if I did not think it possible to account satisfac​torily for the origin of the idea of self, and the influence which that idea has on our actions, without loosening the foundation of the foregoing reasonings, I should give them up without a question, as there is no reasoning which can be safely opposed against a common feeling of human nature left unexplained, and without shewing in the clearest manner the grounds from which it may have arisen. I shall proceed to state (as far as is necessary to the present argument) in what the true notion of personal identity appears to me to consist; and this I believe it will be easy to shew depends entirely on the continued connection which subsists between a man's past and present feelings, and not, vice versâ, on any previous connection between his future and his present feelings, which is absurd and impossible.
Every human being is distinguished from every other human being, both numerically, and characteristically. He must be numerically distinct by the supposition: otherwise he would not be another individual, but the same. There is however no contradiction in supposing two individuals to possess the same absolute properties: but then these original properties must be differently modified afterwards from the necessary difference of their situations, or we must suppose them both to occupy the same relative situation in two distinct systems corresponding exactly with each other. In fact every one is found to differ essentially from every one else, if not in original properties, in the cirstances and events of their lives and consequent ideas. In thinking of a number of individuals, I conceive of them all as differing in various ways from one another, as well as from myself. They differ in size, in complexion, in features, in the expression of their countenances, in age, in the events and actions of their lives, in situation, in knowledge, ​in temper, in power. It is this perception or apprehension of their real differences that first enables me to distinguish the several individuals of the species from each other; and that seems to give rise to the most general idea of individuality, as representing first positive number, and secondly the sum of the differences between one being and another as they really exist in a greater or less degree in nature, or as they would appear to exist to an impartial spectator, or to a perfectly intelligent being. But I am not in reality more different from others than any one individual is from any other individual; neither do I in fact suppose myself to differ really from them otherwise than as they differ from each other. What is it then that makes the difference greater to me, or that makes me feel a greater difference in passing from my own idea to that of any one else, than in passing from the idea of an indifferent person to that of any one else? Neither my existing as a separate being, nor my differing from others, is of itself sufficient to constitute personality, or give me the idea of self, since I might perceive others to exist, and compare their actual differences without ever having this idea.
Farther, individuality expresses not merely the absolute difference, or distinction between one individual and another, but also a relation, or comparison of that individual with itself, whereby we affirm that it is in some way or other the same with itself, or one thing. In one sense it is true of all existences whatever, that they are the same with themselves; that is, they are what they are and not something else. Each thing is itself, it is that individual thing and no other, and each combination of things is that combination and no other. So also each individual is necessarily the same with himself; or, in other words, that combination of ideas which represents any individual person, is that com​bination of ideas and not a different one. This is the only true and absolute identity which can be affirmed of any being; which it is plain does not arise from a comparison of the different parts, composing the general idea, one with another, but each with itself, or all of them taken together with the whole. I cannot help thinking that some idea of this kind is frequently at the bottom of the perplexity which is felt by most people who are not metaphysicians (not to mention those who are) when they are told that the man is not the same with himself, their notion of identity being that he is the same with himself in as far as he is positively different from every one else. They compare his present existence with the present existence of others, and his continued existence with the continued existence of others. Thus when they say that the man is the same being in general, they do not mean that he is the same at twenty that he is at sixty, but their general idea of him includes both these extremes, and therefore the same man, that is collective idea, is both the one and the other. This however is but rude logic. Not well understanding the process of distinguishing the same individual into different metaphysical sections, to compare, collate, and set one against the other (so awkwardly do we at first apply ourselves to the analytic art!), the mind, to get rid of the difficulty, produces a double individual, part real and part imaginary, or repeats the same idea twice over, in which case it is a contradiction to suppose that the one does not correspond exactly with the other in all it's parts. There is no other absolute identity in the case.
All individuals (or all that we name such) are aggregates, and aggregates of dissimilar things. Here then the question is not how we distinguish one individual from another, or a number of things from a number of other things, which distinction is a matter of absolute truth, but how we come ​to confound a number of things together, and consider many things as the same, which cannot be strictly true. This idea must therefore relate to such a connection between a number of things as determines the mind to consider them as one whole, each thing in that whole having a much nearer and more lasting connection with the rest than with anything else not included in it, so that after all the degree of connection between the parts requires to be determined by annexing the name of the thing, that is, collective idea, signified. The same causes that determine the mind to consider a number of things as the same individual, must of course imply a correspondent distinction between them and other things, not making part of that individual. The eye is not the same thing as the ear: it is a contradiction to call it so. Yet both are parts of the same body, which contains these and infinite other distinctions. The reason of this is that all the parts of the eye have evidently a distinct nature, a separate use, a greater mutual dependence on one another than on those of the ear, at the same time that the connection between the eye and ear as well as the rest of the body is still very great, compared to their connection with any other body of the same kind, which is none at all. Similarity is in general but a subordinate circumstance in determining this relation. For the eye is certainly more like the same organ in another individual than the different organs of sight and hearing are like one another in the same individual. Yet we do not, in making up the imaginary individual, associate our ideas according to this analogy, which of itself would answer no more purpose than the things themselves would, so separated and so reunited, but we think of them in that order in which they are mechanically connected together in nature, because on this order depends their power of mutually acting and reacting on each other, of acting conjointly upon other things, or of being ​acted upon by them. To give an instance which just occurs to me. Suppose there are two gold-headed canes standing together in the corner of the room. I of course consider each of them as the same cane. This is not from the similarity of the gold to the wood. But the two gold-heads together would not if taken off, at all answer the purpose of a cane, and the two canes together would be more than I should want. Nor is it simply from the contiguity of the parts (for the canes themselves are supposed to touch one another), but from their being so united that by moving any part of one of them, I of necessity move the whole. The closest connection between my ideas is formed by that relation of things among themselves, which is most necessary to be attended to in making use of them, the common concurrence of many things to some given end: for example, my idea of the walking-stick is defined by the simplicity of the action necessary to wield it for that particular purpose. It seems hardly possible, however, to define the different degrees or kinds of identity in the same thing by any general rule. Thus we say the same tree, the same forest, the same river, the same field, the same country, the same world, the same man, &c. The nature of the thing will best point out the sense in which it is said to be the same. ​I am not the same thing, but many different things. To insist on absolute simplicity of nature as essential to individuality, would be to destroy all individuality: for it would lead to the supposition of as many distinct individuals, as there are thoughts, feelings, actions, and properties in the same being. Every thought would be a separate consciousness; every organ a different system. Each thought is a distinct thing in nature; and many of my thoughts must more nearly resemble the thoughts of others than they do my own sensations, which nevertheless are considered as a part of the same being. As to the continued identity of the ​whole being, that is, the continued resemblance of my thoughts to my previous thoughts, of my sensations to my previous sensations, and so on, this does not by any means define or circumscribe the individual, for we may say in the same manner that the species also is going on at the same time, and continues the same that it was. It is necessary to determine what constitutes the same individual at some given moment of time, before we can say that he continues the same. Neither does the relation of cause and effect determine the point: the father of the child is not the child, nor the child the father. In this case there is an obvious reason to the contrary; but we make the same distinction where a proper succession takes place, and the cause is entirely lost in the effect. We should hardly extend the idea of identity to the child before it has life, nor is the fly the same with the caterpillar. Here again we recur to likeness as essential to identity.
But to proceed to a more particular account of the origin of our idea of self, which is this relation of a thinking being to itself. This can only be known in the first instance by a consciousness of what passes in our own minds. I should say then that personality does not arise either from the being this, or that: from the identity of the thinking being with itself at different times, or at the same time: or still less from being unlike others, which is not at all necessary to it; but from the peculiar connection which subsists between the different faculties and perceptions of the same conscious being, constituted as man is, so that, as the 'subject of his own reflection or consciousness, the same things impressed on any of his faculties produce quite a different effect upon him from what they would do if they were impressed in the same way on any other being. Personality seems to be nothing more than conscious individu​ality, or the power of perceiving that you are, and what you are, from the immediate reflection of the mind on it's own operations, sensations, or ideas. It cannot be affected in the same direct manner by the impressions and ideas existing in the minds of others: otherwise, they would not be so many distinct minds, but one and the same mind; for in this sense the same mind will be that in which different ideas and faculties have this immediate communication with or power of acting and reacting upon each other. If to this we add the relation of such an inward conscious principle to a certain material substance, with which it has the same peculiar connection and intimate sympathy, this combination will be the same person.
The visible impression of a man's own form does not convey to him the idea of personality any more than that of any one else; as objects of sight they are both equally obvious and make the same direct impression on the eye, and the internal perception is in both cases equally incommunicable to any other being. It is the impinging of other objects against the different parts of our bodies, or of the body against itself so as to affect the sense of touch, that extends (though perhaps somewhat indirectly) the feeling of personal identity to our external form. The reason of which is, that the whole class of tangible impressions, or the feelings of heat and cold, of hard and soft, &c. connected with the application of other material substances to our own bodies, can only be produced by our immediate contact with them; that is, the body is necessarily the instrument by which these sensations are conveyed to the mind, for they cannot be conveyed to it by any impression made on the bodies of others; whereas, as an object of sight or where the body in general acts from without on that particular organ, the eye, the impression which it ​excites in the mind can affect it no otherwise than any similar impression produced by any other body must do. Afterwards, no doubt, the visible image comes in to confirm and give distinctness to the imperfect conclusions of the other sense.
It is by comparing the knowledge that I have of my own impressions, ideas, feelings, powers, &c., with my knowledge of the same or similar impressions, ideas, &c., in others, and with the still more imperfect conception that I form of what passes in their minds when this is supposed to be essentially different from what passes in my own, that I acquire the general notion of self. If I had no idea of what passes in the minds of others, or if my ideas of their feelings and perceptions were perfect representations, i. e. mere conscious repetitions of them, all proper personal distinction would be lost either in pure self-love, or in perfect universal sympathy. In the one case it would be impossible for me to prefer myself to others, as I should be the sole object of my own consciousness; and in the other case I must love all others as myself, because I should then be nothing more than part of a whole, of which all others ​would be equally members with myself. I will here add once more, that this distinction subsists as necessarily and completely between myself and those who most nearly resemble me, as between myself and those whose character and properties are the very opposite of mine: because it does not relate to the difference between one being and another, or between one object and another, considered absolutely or in themselves, but solely to the difference of the manner and the different degrees of force and certainty, with which, from the imperfect and limited nature of our faculties, the same or different things affect us as they act immediately upon ourselves, or are supposed to act upon others. Indeed the distinction becomes marked and intelligible in proportion as the objects or impressions are intrinsically the same, as then it is impossible to mistake the true principle on which it is founded, namely, the want of any direct communication between the feelings of one being and those of another. This will shew why the difference between ourselves and others must appear greater to us than that between other individuals, though it is not really so.
Considering mankind in this two-fold relation, as they are to themselves, or as they appear to one another, as the subjects of their own thoughts, or the thoughts of others, we shall find the origin of that wide and absolute distinction which the mind feels in comparing itself with others, to be confined to two faculties, viz. sensation, or rather consciousness, and memory. The operation of both these faculties is of a perfectly exclusive and individual nature, and so far as their operation extends (but no farther) is man a personal, or if you will, a selfish being. The sensation ​excited in me by a piece of red-hot iron striking against any part of my body, is simple, absolute, terminating in itself; not representing any thing beyond itself, nor capable of being represented by any other sensation, or communicated to any other being. The same sensation may indeed be excited in another by the same means, but this sensation does not imply any reference to, or consciousness of mine: there is no communication between my nerves, and another's brain, by means of which he can be affected with my sensations as I am myself. The only notice or perception which another can have of this sensation in me, or which I can have of a similar sensation in another, is by means of the imagination. I can form an imaginary idea of that pain as existing out of myself: but I can only feel it as a sensation when it is actually impressed on myself. Any impression made on another can neither be the cause nor object of sensation to me. The impression or idea left in my mind by this sensation, and afterwards excited, either by seeing iron in the same state, or by any other means, is properly an idea of memory. This idea necessarily refers to some previous impression in my own mind, and can only exist in consequence of that impression: it cannot be derived from any impression made on another. I do not remember the feelings of any one but myself. I may remember the objects which must have caused such feelings in others, or the outward signs of passion which accompanied them: these, however, are but the recollection of my own immediate impressions, of what I saw or heard; and I can only form an idea of the feelings themselves after they have ceased, as I must do at the time, by means of the imagination. But though we should take away all power of imagination from the human mind, my own feelings must leave behind them certain traces, or representations of them​selves, retaining the same properties, and having the same immediate connection with the conscious principle. On the other hand, if I wish to anticipate my own future feelings, whatever these may be, I must do so by means of the same faculty by which I conceive of those of others, whether past or future. I have no distinct or separate faculty on which the events and feelings of my future being are impressed beforehand, and which shews, as in an enchanted mirror, to me and me alone, the reversed picture of my future life. It is absurd to suppose that the feelings which I am to have hereafter, should excite certain correspondent impressions, or presentiments of themselves, before they exist, or act mechanically upon my mind by a secret sympathy. I can only abstract myself from my present, and take an interest in my future being, in the same sense and manner in which I can go out of myself entirely and enter into the minds and feelings of others. In short there neither is nor can be any principle belonging to the individual which antecedently gives him the same sort of connection with his future being that he has with his past, or that reflects the impressions of his future feelings backwards with the same kind of consciousness that his past feelings are transmitted forwards through the channels of memory. The size of the river as well as it's taste depends on the water that has already fallen into it. It cannot roll back it's course, nor can the stream next the source be affected by the water that falls into it afterwards. Yet we call both the same river. Such is the nature of personal identity. If this account be true (and for my own part ​the only perplexity that crosses my mind in thinking of it, arises from the utter impossibility of conceiving of the contrary supposition,) it will follow that those faculties which may be said to constitute self, and the operations of which convey that idea to the mind, draw all their materials from the past and present. But all voluntary action must relate solely and exclusively to the future. That is, all those impressions or ideas with which selfish, or more properly speaking, personal feelings must be naturally connected, are just those which have nothing at all to do with the motives of action.
If indeed it were possible for the human mind to alter the present or the past, so as either to recal what has been done, or, to give it a still greater reality, to make it exist over again and in some more emphatical sense, then man might with some pretence of reason be supposed naturally incapable of being impelled to the pursuit of any past or present object, but from the mechanical ​excitement of personal motives. It might in this case be pretended that the impulses of imagination and sympathy are of too light, unsubstantial, and remote a nature to influence our real conduct, and that nothing is worthy of the concern of a wise man in which he has not this direct, unavoidable, and homefelt interest. This is, how- ever, too absurd a supposition to be dwelt on for a moment. I do not will that to be, which already exists as an object of sense, nor that to have been, which has already existed and is become an object of memory. Neither can I will a thing not to be, which actually exists, or that which has really existed, not to have been. The only proper objects of voluntary action are, by necessity, future events: these can excite no possible interest in the mind but by means of the imagination; and they make the same direct appeal to that faculty, whether they relate to ourselves, or others; as the eye receives with equal directness the impression of our own external form, or that of others.
It will be easy to perceive in this manner how, notwithstanding the contradiction involved in the supposition of a general, absolute self-interest, the mind comes to feel a deep and habitual conviction of the truth of this opinion. Feeling in itself a continued consciousness of its past impressions, it is naturally disposed to transfer the same sort of identity and consciousness to the whole of it's being, as if whatever is said generally to belong to itself must be inseparable from it's very existence. As our actual being is constantly passing into our future being, and carries this internal feeling of consciousness along with it, we seem to be already identified with our future being in that permament part of our nature, and to feel by anticipation the same sort of necessary sympathy with our future selves, that we know we shall have with our past selves. We take the ​tablets of memory, reverse them, and stamp the image of self on that, which as yet possesses nothing but the name. It is no wonder then that my imagination, constantly outstripping the progress of time, when it's course is marked out along the strait, unbroken line of individuality, should confound the necessary differences of things, and confer on my future interests a reality, and a connection with my present feelings which they can never have. The interest which is hereafter to be felt by this continued conscious being, this indefinite unit, called me, seems necessarily to affect me in every part of my existence. In the first place, we abstract the successive modifications of our being, and particular temporary interests, into one simple nature and general principle of self-interest, and then make use of this nominal abstraction as an artificial medium to compel those particular actual interests into the same close affinity and union with each other; as different lines meeting in the same centre must have a mutual communication with each other.—On the other hand, as I always remain perfectly distinct from others, the interest which I take in their past or present feelings being (like that which I take in their future feelings) never any thing more than the effect of imagination and sympathy, the same illusion and preposterous transposition of ideas cannot take place with regard to them, namely the confounding a physical impulse with the rational motives of action. Indeed the uniform nature of my feelings with respect to others (my interest in their welfare having always the same source, sympathy,) seems by analogy to confirm the supposition of a similar simplicity in my relation to myself, and of a positive, natural, absolute interest in whatever relates to that self, not confined to my actual existence, but extending over the whole of my being. Every sensation that I feel, or that afterwards ​recurs vividly to my memory, strengthens the sense of self, and this increased strength in the mechanical feeling is transferred to the general idea, and to my remote, future, imaginary interest: whereas our sympathy with the feelings of others, being always imaginary, having no sensible interest, no restless mechanical impulse to urge it on, the ties by which we are bound to others hang loose upon us, the interest we take in their welfare seems to be something foreign to our own bosoms, to be transient, arbitrary, and directly opposite to the necessary, absolute, permanent interest which we have in the pursuit of our own welfare.
There is, however, another consideration, and that the principal one, to be taken into the account in explaining the origin and growth of our selfish feelings, arising out of the necessary constitution of the human mind, and not founded like the former in a mere arbitrary association of ideas. There is naturally no essential difference between the motives by which I am impelled to the pursuit of my own good, and those by which I am impelled to pursue the good of others: but though there is not a difference in kind, there is one in degree. I know better what my future feelings will be than what those of others will be in the like case. I can apply the materials of memory with less difficulty and more in a mass in making out the picture of my future pleasures and pains, without frittering them away or destroying their original sharpness; in short I can imagine them more plainly, and must therefore be more interested in them. This facility in passing from the recollection of my past impressions to the imagination of my future ones, makes the transition almost imperceptible, and gives to the latter an apparent reality and presentness to the imagination, so that the feelings of others can never be brought home to us in the same degree. It is chiefly ​from this greater readiness and certainty with which we can look forward into our own minds than into those of other men, that the strong and uneasy attachment to self, which comes at last (in most minds) to overpower every generous feeling, takes its rise; and not, as I think I have shewn, from any natural hardness of the human heart, or necessary absorption of all its thoughts and purposes in any exclusive feeling of self-interest.
There is a confirmation of the account here given in the fact that we always feel for others in proportion as we know from long acquaintance what the nature of their feelings is; and that next to ourselves we have the strongest attachment to our immediate relatives and friends, who, from this intercommunity of feeling and situations, may more truly be said to be a part of ourselves than from the ties of blood. Moreover, a man must be employed more continually in providing for his own wants and pleasures than those of others. In like manner he is employed in providing for the immediate welfare of his family and connections much more than in providing for the welfare of those, who are not bound to him by any positive ties. And we consequently find that the attention, time and pains bestowed on these several objects give him a proportionable degree of anxiety about, and attachment to his own interest and that of those connected with him; but it would be absurd to conclude that his affections are therefore circumscribed by a natural necessity within certain limits which they cannot pass, either in the one case, or in the other. This general connection between the pursuit of any object and our habitual interest in it, will also account for the well-known observation that the affection of parents to children is the strongest of all others, frequently even overpowering self-love itself. This fact is, however, inconsistent with the sup​position that the social affections are all of them ultimately to be deduced from association, or the repeated connection of the idea of some other person with immediate selfish gratification. If this were the case, we must feel the strongest attachment to those from whom we had received, instead of those to whom we had done the greatest number of kindnesses, or where the greatest quantity of selfish enjoyment had been associated with an indifferent idea. Junius has remarked, that friendship is not conciliated "by the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned."
I have hitherto purposely avoided saying any thing on the subject of our physical appetites, and the manner in which they may be thought to affect the principle of the foregoing reasonings. They evidently seem at first sight to contradict the general conclusion which I have endeavoured to establish, as they all of them tend, either exclusively or principally, to the gratification of the individual, and at the same time refer to some future or imaginary object as the source of this gratification. The impulse which they give to the will is mechanical, and yet this impulse, blind as it is, constantly tends to, and coalesces with the pursuit of some rational end. That is, here is an end aimed at, the desire and regular pursuit of a known good, and all this produced by motives evidently mechanical, and which never impel the mind but in a selfish direction. It makes no difference in the question whether the active impulse proceeds directly from the desire of positive enjoyment, or a wish to get rid of some positive uneasiness. I should say, then, that setting aside what is of a purely physical, or (for aught I can tell) instinctive nature in the case, the influence of appetite over our volitions may be accounted for, consistently enough with the foregoing hypothesis, from the natural ​effects of a particularly irritable state of body, rendering the idea of that which will heighten and gratify its susceptibility of pleasurable feeling, or remove some painful feeling, proportionably vivid, and the object of a more vehement desire than can be excited by the same idea, when the body is supposed to be in a state of indifference, or only ordinary sensibility to that particular kind of gratification. Thus the imaginary desire is sharpened by constantly receiving fresh supplies of pungency from the irritation of bodily feeling, and its direction is at the same time determined according to the bias of this new impulse; first, indirectly, by having the attention fixed on our own immediate sensations; secondly, because that particular gratification, the desire of which is increased by the pressure of physical appetite, must be referred primarily and by way of distinction to the same being, by whom the want of it is felt; that is, to myself. As the actual uneasiness which appetite implies can only be excited by the irritable state of my own body, so neither can the desire of the correspondent gratification subsist in that intense degree which properly constitutes appetite, except when it tends to relieve that very same uneasiness by which it was excited. As in the case of hunger. There is, in the first place, the strong mechanical action of the nervous and muscular systems co-operating with the rational desire of my own relief, and forcing it its own way. Secondly, this state of uneasiness continues to grow more and more violent, the longer the relief which it requires is withheld from it:—hunger takes no denial, it hearkens to no compromise, is soothed by no flattery, tired out by no delay. It grows more importunate every moment, its demands become louder the less they are attended to. The first impulse which the general love of personal ease receives from bodily ​pain, will give it the advantage over my disposition to sympathize with others in the same situation with myself; and this difference will be increasing every moment, till the pain is removed. Thus, if at first, either through compassion or by an effort of the will, I am regardless of my own wants, and wholly bent upon satisfying the more pressing wants of my companions, yet this effort will at length become too great, and I shall be incapable of attending to any thing but the violence of my own sensations, or the means of alleviating them. It is plain with respect to one of our appetites, I mean the sexual, where the gratification of the same passion in another is the means of gratifying our own, that our physical sensibility stimulates our sympathy with the desires of the other sex, and on the other hand this feeling of mutual sympathy increases the physical desires of both. This is indeed the chief foundation of the sexual passion, though I believe that its immediate and determining cause depends upon other principles not to be here lightly touched on. It would be easy to shew from many things, that mere appetite (generally at least in reason- able beings) is but the fragment of a self-moving machine, but a sort of half-organ, a subordinate instrument even in the accomplishment of its own purposes; that it does little or nothing without the aid of another faculty to inform and direct it. There are several striking examples of this given by Rousseau in relating the progress of his own passions. (See the first vol. of his Confessions.) Before the impulses of appetite can be converted into the regular pursuit of a given object they must first be communicated to the understanding, and modify the will through that. Consequently as the desire of the ultimate gratification of the appetite is not the same with the appetite itself, that is mere phy​sical uneasiness, but an indirect result of its communication to the thinking or imaginative principle, the influence of appetite over the will must depend on the extraordinary degree of force and vividness which it gives to the idea of a particular object; and accordingly we find that the same cause which irritates the desire of selfish gratification, increases our sensibility to the same desires and gratification in others, where they are consistent with our own, and where the violence of the physical impulse does not overpower every other consideration.
Make the most of the objection:—it can only apply to the determinations of the will while it is subject to the gross influence of another faculty, with which it has neither the same natural direction, nor is in general at all controuled by. The question which I have proposed to examine is whether there is any general principle of selfishness in the human mind, or whether it is not naturally disinterested. Now the effects of appetite are so far from being any confirmation of the first supposition, that we are even oftener betrayed by them into actions contrary to our own well-known, clear, and lasting interest, than into those which are injurious to others. The "short-lived pleasure" and the "lasting woe" fall to the lot of the same being.—I will give one more example and then have done. A man addicted to the pleasures of the bottle is less able to check this propensity after drinking a certain quantity and feeling the actuul pleasure and state of excitement which it produces, than he is to abstain entirely from its indulgence. When once the liquor gets into his head, to use the common phrase, the force which it gives to his predominant feeling gets the better of every other idea, and he from that time loses all power of self-controul. After this, the trembling of actual excitement, which urges him on, makes him enter more cordially into the convivial dispo​sitions of his companions, and a man is always the more anxious that others should drink as he becomes unwilling to desist himself.
There is but one instance in which appetite hangs about a man as a perpetual clog and dead-weight upon the reason, namely the sexual appetite, and here the selfish habit produced by this constant state of animal sensibility seems to have a direct counterpoise given to it by nature in the mutual sympathy of the sexes. Quere, also, whether this general susceptibility is not itself an effect of an irritable imagination exerted on that particular subject. (See Notes to the Essay on the Inequality of Mankind.) I hope this will be sufficient to break the force of the objection as above stated, and may perhaps furnish a clue to a satisfactory account of the subject itself.
I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by any thing I could add on the subject, as by relating the manner in which it first struck me.
There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the conqueror and hero—though milder triumphs and long remembered with truer and deeper delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his success, though gay trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering of armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his joy, yet shall he not want monuments and witnesses of his glory; the deep forest, the willowy brook, the gathering clouds of winter, or the silent gloom of his own chamber, "faithful remembrancers of his high endeavour, and his glad success," that, as time passes by him with unreturning wing, still awaken the consciousness of aspirit patient and indefatigable in the search of truth, and a hope of surviving in the thoughts and minds of other men.
I remember I had been reading a speech which Mirabeau ​(the author of the System of Nature) has put into the mouth of a supposed atheist at the Last Judgment; and was afterwards led on by some means or other to consider the question whether it could properly be said to be an act of virtue in any one to sacrifice his own final happiness to that of any other person or number of persons, if it were possible for the one ever to be made the price of the other. Suppose it were my own case—that it were in my power to save twenty other persons by voluntarily consenting to suffer for them: why should I not do a generous thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the consequence to myself the Lord knows when?–The reason why a man should prefer his own future welfare to that of others is that he has a necessary, absolute interest in the one which he cannot have in the other, and this again is a consequence of his being always the same individual, of his continued identity with himself. The difference, I thought, was this; that however insensible I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time comes I shall feel differently about it. I shall then judge of it from the actual impression of the object, that is truly and certainly; and as I shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret my own folly and insensibility, I ought as a rational agent to be determined now by what I shall then wish I had done when I shall feel the consequences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It is this continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes me at all times accountable to myself for my own conduct. As, therefore, this consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again at all—But stop—As I must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself, and as this conscious being will be myself, how if that consciousness should be ​transferred to some other being? How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity?—But that is ridiculous, because you will have no other self than that which arises from this very consciousness. Why then, this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same consciousness, which if it can be renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in an hundred others. Am I to regard all these as equally myself Am I equally interested in the fate of all? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be determined in my choice?—Here then I saw an end put to my speculations about absolute self-interest, and personal identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own feelings, which is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and might never be; that my identity with myself must be confined to the connection between my past and present being; that with respect to my future feelings or interests, they could have no communication with, or influence over my present feelings and interests, merely because they were future; that I shall be hereafter affected by the recollection of my past feelings and actions, and my remorse be equally heightened by reflecting on my past folly and late-earned wisdom whether I am really the same being, or have only the same consciousness renewed in me; but that to suppose this remorse can react in the reverse order on my present feelings, or give me an immediate interest in my future feelings, before it exists, is an express contradiction in terms. It can only affect me as an imaginary idea, or an idea of truth. But so may the interests of others; and the question proposed, was, whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute interest in what​ever relates to my future being in consequence of my immediate connection with myself, independently of the general impression which all positive ideas have on my mind. How then can this pretended unity of consciousness which is only reflected from the past, which makes me so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether it will be entirely interrupted by or renewed in me after death, and which might be multiplied in I know not how many different beings and prolonged by complicated sufferings without my being any the wiser for it, how I say can a principle of this sort identify my present with my future interests, and make me as much a participator in what does not at all affect me as if it were actually impressed on my senses? It is plain as this conscious being may be decompounded, entirely destroyed, renewed again, or multiplied in a great number of beings, and as, whichever of these takes place, it cannot produce the least alteration in my present being, that what I am does not depend on what I am to be, and that there is no communication between my future interests, and the motives by which my present con- duct must be governed. This can no more be influenced by what may be my future feelings with respect to it, than it will then be possible for me to alter my past conduct by wishing that I had acted differently. I cannot therefore have a principle of active self-interest arising out of the immediate connection between my present and future self, for no such connection exists, or is possible; I am what I am in spite of the future. My feelings, actions and interests must be determined by causes already existing and acting, and are absolutely independent of the future. Where there is not an intercommunity of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. My personal interest in any thing ​must refer, either to the interest excited by the actual impression of the object, which cannot be felt before it exists, and can last no longer than while the impression lasts; or it may refer to the particular manner in which I am mechanically affected by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the object. I can therefore have no proper personal interest in my future impressions, since neither my ideas of future objects, nor my feelings with respect to them can be excited either directly or indirectly by the impressions themselves, or by any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a complete transposition of the order in which effects follow one another in nature. The only reason for my preferring my future interest to that of others must arise from my anticipating it with greater warmth of present imagination. It is this greater liveliness and force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner identifies them with my present being: and this notion of identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen its habitual propensity, by giving to personal motives a reality and absolute truth which they can never have. Hence it has been inferred that my real substantial interest in any thing must be derived in some indirect manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that could have any sort of communication with my present feelings, or excite any interest in my mind, but by means of the imagination, which is naturally affected in a certain manner by the prospect of future good or evil.
* ↑ The question whether abstract or merely intellectual ideas have ever much influence on the conduct has not been fairly stated. The point is not whether an abstract proposition (no matter whether true or false) of which I became convinced yesterday, will be able to overturn all my previous habits, and prejudices, but whether ideas of this kind may not be made the foundation of inveterate prejudices themselves and the strongest principles of action. The ideas concerning religion are of a sufficiently abstract nature: and yet it will not be disputed that early impressions of this kind have some influence on a man's future conduct in life. Two persons accidentally meeting together, and who had never seen one another before shall conceive a more violent antipathy to each other in consequence of a dispute on religion or politics than they might have done from having been personally at variance half their lives. It is objected that this proceeds from wounded vanity. But why is our vanity more easily irritated upon these subjects than upon any other but from the importance attached to them by the understanding? Questions of morality do not always excite the same violent animosity; and this I think is because they do not so properly admit of dispute in themselves, or are so often made the instruments of cabal and power, and therefore depend less on opinion, or the number of votes, and because every one appealing to his own breast for the truth of his opinion attributes the continuance of the contest not to any want of force in his own arguments, but to a want of proper feelings in his opponent.—I will add here a remark in some measure connected with the last mentioned observation, that the reason why men are generally more anxious about the opinion entertained of their understanding than of their honesty is not so much that they really think this last of less consequence, as that a man always believes himself to be the best judge of what passes in his own breast. He therefore thinks very little the better of himself for the good opinion of others. Indeed he considers their suffrages in this respect as a sort of impertinence at best, as implying some doubt upon the subject; and as to their direct censures, he will always find some feelings, or motives in his own mind, or some circumstances with which they are not acquainted, which will in his opinion make a total difference in the case. With respect to manners, and those moral qualities which are denominated pleasing, these again depend on the judgment of others; and we find the same jealousy of the opinions of others manifested with respect to these as with respect to our sense, wit, &c.
* ↑ The distinction between the motives to action and the reasons for it cannot affect the argument here insisted on. When it is said, that though I am not really governed by such and such motives, I ought to be governed by them, this must mean (or it means nothing) that such would be the effect of a proper exertion of my faculties. The obligation to act in this or that manner must therefore be deduced from the nature of those faculties, and the possibility of their being impressed in a certain manner by certain objects.
* ↑ Similarity has been defined to be partial sameness. Curve lines have a general resemblance, or analogy to one another as such. Does this resemblance then consist in their being partially the same? This may be said where the difference arises from drawing out the same sort of curve to a greater extent, because by adding to the shorter curve I can make it equal to the other. But I cannot by adding any other line to an oval convert it into a circle, because these two sorts of curves can never coincide even in their smallest conceivable parts. It should seem then that their similarity is not to be deduced from partial sameness, or their having some one thing exactly the same, common to them both. But they have the same general nature as curves. True: but in what does this abstract identity consist? Is it not the same with similarity? So that we return to the same point from which we set out. I confess no light appears to me to be thrown on the subject by saying that it is partial identity. The same sort of reasoning is applicable to the question whether all good is not to be resolved into one simple principle, or essence, or whether all that is really good or pleasurable in any sensation is not the same identical feeling, an infusion of the same leven of good, and that all the rest is perfectly foreign to the nature of good, and is merely the form or vehicle in which it is conveyed to the mind. I cannot, however, persuade myself that our sensations differ only as to more, or less; or that the pleasure derived from seeing a fine picture, or hearing a fine piece of music:—that the gratification derived from doing a good action, and that which accompanies the swallowing of an oyster, are in reality and at bottom the same pleasure. The liquor tastes of the vessel through which it passes. It seems most reasonable to suppose that our feelings differ in their nature according to the nature of the objects by which they are excited, though not necessarily in the same proportion, as objects may excite very distinct ideas which have little or nothing to do with feeling. Why should there be only two sorts of feeling, plea- sure and pain? I am convinced that any one who has reflected much on his own feelings must have found it impossible to refer them all to the same fixed invariable standard of good or evil; or, by throwing away the mere husk and refuse without losing any thing essential to the feeling, to arrive at some one simple principle, the same in all cases, and which determines by it's quantity alone the precise degree of good or evil in any sensation. Some sensations are like others; this is all we know of the matter, and all that is necessary to form a class, or genus. The contrary method of reasoning appears to proceed on a supposition that things differing at all in kind must differ in toto and be quite different from each other; so that a resemblance in kind must imply an absolute coincidence in part, or in as far as the things resemble one another.—See "Usher on the Human Mind."
* ↑ It is a gross mistake to consider all habit as necessarily depending on association of ideas. We might as well consider the strength which is given to a muscle by habitual exertion as a case of the association of ideas. The strength, delicacy, &c. given to any feeling by frequent exercise is owing to habit. When any two feelings, or ideas are often repeated in connection, and the properties belonging to the one are by this means habitually transferred to the other, this is association.
* ↑ "Ainsi se forment les premiers liens qui l'unissent" [le jeune homme] "à son espèce. En dirigeant sur elle sa sensibilité naissante ne craignez pas qu'elle embrassera d'abord tous les hommes, et que ce mot de genre-humain signifiera pour lui quelque chose. Non, cette sensibilité se bornera premièrement à ses semblables, et ses semblables ne seront point pour lui des inconnus, mais ceux avec lesquels il a des liaisons, ceux que l'habitude lui a rendus chers, ou nécessaires, ceux qu'il voit évidemment avoir avec lui des manières de penser et de sentir communes, ceux qu'il voit exposés aux peines qu'il a souffertes et sensibles aux plaisirs qu'il a goutés; ceux, en un mot, en qui l'identité de nature plus manifestée lui donne une plus grande disposition à aimer. Ce ne sera qu'après avoir cultivé son natural en milles maniéres, après bien des réflections sur ses propres sentimens, et sur ceux qu'il observera dans les autres, qu'il pourra parvenir à généraliser ses notions individuelles sous l'idée abstraite d'humanité et joindre à ses affections particuliéres celles qui peuvent l'identifier avec son espèce." Emile, t. 2, p. 192.—It is needless to add any thing on this passage. It speaks for itself. "L'amour du genre-humain n'est autre chose en nous que l'amour, de la justice." lbid. p. 248.
* ↑ This account is loose enough. I shall endeavour to give a better, as to the manner in which ideas may be supposed to be connected with volition, at the end of this essay. In the mean time I wish the reader to be apprized, that I do not use the word imagination as contradistinguished from or opposed to reason, or the faculty by which we reflect upon and compare our ideas, but as opposed to sensation, or memory. It has been shewn above that by the word idea is not meant a merely abstract idea.
* ↑ I take it for granted that the only way to establish the selfish hypothesis is to shew that our own interest is in reality brought home to the mind as a motive to action in some way or other by which that of others cannot possibly affect it. This is unavoidable, unless we ascribe to each individual a particular genius of selfishness which never suffers his affections to wander for a moment from himself; or suppose that a man's attachment to himself is because he has a long nose or a short one, because his hair is black or red, or because he has an unaccountable fancy for his own name, for all these make a part of the individual, and must be deemed very weighty reasons by those who think it self-evident that a man must love himself because he is himself?
* ↑ See the last note but one.
* ↑ The general clue to that enigma, the character of the French, seems to be that their feelings are very imperfectly modified by the objects exciting them. That is, the difference between the several degrees and kinds of feeling in them does not correspond, as much as it does in most other people, with the different degrees and kinds of power in the external objects. They want neither feeling nor ideas in the abstract; but there seems to be no connection in their minds between the one and the other. Consequently their feelings want compass and variety, and whatever else must depend on the "building up of our feelings through the imagination." The feelings of a Frenchman seem to be all one feeling. The moment any thing produces a change in him, he is thrown completely out of his character, he is quite beside himself. This is perhaps in a great measure owing to their quickness of perception. They do not give the object time to be thoroughly impressed on their minds, their feelings are roused at the first notice of it's approach, and if I may so express myself, fairly run away from the object instead of grappling with it. The least stimulus is sufficient to excite them and more is superfluous, for they do not wait for the whole impression, or stop to inquire what degree or kind it is of. There is not resistance enough in the matter to receive those sharp incisions, those deep marked, and strongly rooted impressions, the traces of which remain for ever. From whatever cause it proceeds, the sensitive principle in them does not seem to be susceptible of the same modification and variety of action as it does in others; and certainly the outward forms of things do not adhere to, nor wind themselves round their feelings in the same manner. For anything that appears to the contrary, objects might be supposed to have no direct communication with the internal sense of pleasure or pain, but to act upon it through some intermediate very confined organ, capable of transmitting little more than the simple impulse. But the same thing will follow, if we suppose the principle itself to be this very organ, that is, to want comprehensiveness, elasticity, and plastic force. (It is difficult to express this in English: but the French have a word, ressort, which expresses it exactly. This is possibly owing to their feeling the want of it; as there is no word in any other language to answer to the English word, comfort, I suppose, because the English are the most uncomfortable of all people.) It will rather follow from what has been here said than be inconsistent with it, that the French must be more sensible of minute impressions and slight shades of difference in their feelings than others, because having, as is here supposed, less real variety, a narrower range of feeling, they will attend more to the differences contained within that narrow circle, and so produce an artificial variety. In short their feelings are very easily set in motion and by slight causes, but they do not go the whole length of the impression, nor are they capable of combining a great variety of complicated actions to correspond with the distinct characters and complex forms of things. Hence they have no such thing as poetry. This however must not be misunderstood. I mean then that I never met with any thing in French that produces the same kind of feeling in the mind as the following passage. If there is any thing that belongs even to the same class with it, I am ready to give the point up. Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me. Eros. Ay, noble Lord. Ant. Sometimes we see a cloud that's Dragonish, A vapour sometimes like a Bear, or Lion, A tower'd Citadel, a pendant Rock, A forked Mountain, or blue Promontory With Trees upon't, that nod unto the World And mock our Eyes with Air. Thou hast seen these Signs, They are black Vesper's Pageants. Eros. Ay, my lord. Ant. That which is now a Horse, even with a Thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As Water is in Water. Eros. It does, my Lord. Ant. My good Knave, Eros, now thy Captain is Even such a body, &c. It is remarkable that the French, who are a lively people and fond of show and striking images, should be able to read and hear with such delight their own dramatic pieces, which abound in nothing but general maxims, and vague declamation, never embodying any thing, and which would appear quite tedious to an English audience, who are generally considered as a dry, dull, plodding people, much more likely to be satisfied with formal descriptions and grave reflections. This appears to me to come to the same thing that I have said before, namely, that it is characteristic of the French that their feelings let go their hold of things almost as soon as the first impression is made. Except sensible impressions therefore (which have on that account more force, and carry them away without opposition while they last) all their feelings are general; and being general, not being marked by any strong distinctions, nor built on any deep foundation of inveterate associations, one thing serves to excite them as well as another, the name of the general class to which any feeling belongs, the words pleasure, charming, delicious, &c., convey just the same meaning, and excite the same kind of emotion in the mind of a Frenchman, and at the same time do it more readily, than the most forcible description of real feelings and objects. The English on the contrary are not so easily moved with words, because being in the habit of retaining individual images and of brooding over the feelings connected with them, the mere names of general classes, or (which is the same thing) vague and unmeaning descriptions or sentiments, must appear perfectly indifferent to them. Hence the French are all delighted with Racine, the English (I mean some of them) admire Shakespeare. Rousseau is the only French writer I am acquainted with (though he by the bye was not exactly a Frenchman) who from the depth of his feelings, without many distinct images, produces the same kind of interest in the mind that is excited by the events and recollections of our own lives. If he had not true genius, he had at least something which was a very good substitute for it. The French generalize perpetually, but seldom comprehensively: they make an infinite number of observations, but have never discovered any great principle. They immediately perceive the analogy between a number of facts of the same class, and make a general inference, which is done the more easily, the fewer particulars you trouble them with; theirs is in a good measure the art of forgetting. The difficult part of philosophy is, when a number of particular observations and contradictory facts have been stated, to reconcile them together by finding out some other distinct view of the subject, or collateral circumstance, applicable to all the different facts or appearances, which is the true principle from which, when combined with particular circumstances, they are all derived. Opposite appearances being always immediately incompatible with each other, cannot be deduced from the same immediate cause, but must be accounted for from a combination of different causes, the discovery of which is an affair of comprehension, and not of mere abstraction.
* ↑ Berkeley's Essay on Vision.
* ↑ See page 12, and the following pages.
* ↑ The sum of the matter is this. Individuality may relate either to absolute unity, to the identity, or similarity of the parts of any thing, or to an extraordinary degree of connection between things neither the same nor similar. This last alone, in fact, determines the positive use of the word, at least with respect to man, and other organised beings; Indeed the term is hardly ever applied to other things in common language. When I speak of the difference between one individual and another, this must refer ultimately to the want of such connection between them, or to my perceiving that a number of things are so connected as to have a mutual and intimate dependence on one another, making one individual; and that they are so disconnected with a number of other things as not to have the least habitual dependence upon, or influence over them, which makes them two distinct individuals. As to the other distinctions between one individual and another, namely those of number and properties, the first of these subsists as necessarily between the parts of the individual, as between one individual and another; and the second frequently subsists in a much greater degree between those parts, than between different individuals. Two distinct individuals can certainly never be the same: that is, supposing the number of parts in each individual to be as 10, 10 can never make 20. But neither can 10 ever be made into an unit; so that we should have ten individuals instead of one by insisting on the absolute distinction of numbers. When, therefore, I say, that one individual differs from another, I must be understood by implication to mean, in some way in which the parts of that individual do not differ from each other, or not by any means in the same degree. The mind is however extremely apt to fasten on the distinctions of number and properties where they co-exist with the other distinction, and almost lose sight of those distinctions between things that have a very close connection with each other. When therefore we include the distinctions of number and properties in our account of the difference between one individual and another, this can only be true in an absolute sense, and not if it be meant to imply that the same distinctions do not exist in the same individual. This account is, however, but very crude and unsatisfactory.
* ↑ I remember a story somewhere in the Arabian Nights of a man with a silver thigh. Why may not a fable serve for an illustration as well as any thing else? Metaphysics themselves are but a dry romance. Now suppose this thigh to have been endued with a power of sensation and to have answered every other purpose of a real thigh. What difference would this make in its outward appearance either to the man himself or to any one else? Or how by means of sight would he know it to be his thigh, more than it really was? It would still look just like what it did, a silver thigh and nothing more. It's impression on the eye would not depend on it's being a sensible substance, on it's having life in it, or being connected with the same conscious principle as the eye, but on it's being a visible substance, that is having extension, figure, and colour.
* ↑ To avoid an endless subtlety of distinction, I have not here given any account of consciousness in general: but the same reasoning will apply to both.
* ↑ Suppose a number of men employed to cast a mound into the sea. As far as it has gone, the workmen pass backwards and forwards on it, it stands firm in it's place, and though it extends farther and farther from the shore, it is still joined to it. A man's personal identity and self-interest have just the same principle and extent, and can reach no farther than his actual existence. But if a man of a metaphysical turn, seeing that the pier was not yet finished, but was to be continued to a certain point, and in a certain direction, should take it into his head to insist that what was already built and what was to be built; were the same pier, that the one must afford as good footing as the other, and should accordingly walk over the pier-head on the solid foundation of his metaphysical hypothesis—he would argue, perhaps, more ridiculously, but not a whit more absurdly, than those who found a principle of absolute self-interest on a man's future identity with his present being. But, it is said, the comparison does not hold in this, for the man can extend his thoughts (and that very wisely too) beyond the present moment, whereas in the other case he cannot move a single step forwards. Granted: but this will only shew that the mind has wings as well as feet; which of itself is a sufficient answer to the selfish hypothesis.
* ↑ See Preface to Wordsworth's Poems.
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