Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/144

 that in order to feel for others, we must in reality feel nothing. This distinction proves clearly that it is always the individual who loves, but not that he always loves himself; for it is to be presumed that the word self has some meaning in it, and it would have absolutely none at all, if nothing more were intended by it than any object or impression existing in the mind. Self-love would merely signify the love of something, and the distinction between ourselves and others be quite confounded. It therefore becomes necessary to set limits to the meaning of the term.

First, it may signify, as explained above, the love or affection excited by the idea of our own good, and the conscious pursuit of it as a general, remote, ideal thing. In this sense, that is considered with respect to the proposed end of our actions, I have shewn sufficiently that there is no exclusive principle of self-love in the human mind, which constantly impels us to pursue our own advantage and nothing but that, and that it must be equally absurd to consider either self-love or benevolence as a physical operation.

Another sense of the term may be, that the indulgence of certain affections necessarily tends without our thinking of it to our immediate gratification, and that the impulse to prolong a state of pleasure and put a stop to whatever gives the mind the least uneasiness is the real spring and overruling principle of our actions. No matter whether the impression existing in my mind is a sensation or an idea, whether it is an idea of my own good or that of another, its effect on the mind is entirely owing to this involuntary attachment to whatever contributes to my own gratification, and aversion from actual pain. Or the mind is so constructed that without forethought or any reflection on itself it has a natural tendency to prolong and heighten a state of