Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/152

 minds. If I can have no feeling for any one but myself, I can have no feeling about any one but myself. Suppose I am seized with a fit of rage against a man, and take up a knife to stab him: the quantity of malice, which according to the common notion is here directed against another, must according to this system fall upon myself. I see a man sitting on the opposite side of a table, towards whom I think I feel the greatest rancour, but in fact I only feel it against myself. For what is this man whom I think I see before me but an object existing in my mind, and therefore a part of myself? The sword which I see is not a real sword, but an image impressed on my mind; and the mental blow which I strike with it is not aimed at another being out of myself (for that is impossible), but at an idea of my own, at the being whom I hate within myself, at myself. If I am always necessarily the object of my own thoughts and actions, I must hate, love, serve, or stab myself as it happens. It is pretended by a violent assumption, that benevolence is only a desire to prolong the idea of another's pleasure in one's own mind, because that idea exists there : malevolence must therefore be a disposition to prolong the idea of pain in one's own mind for the same reason, that is, to injure one's-self; for by this philosophy no one can have a single idea which does not refer to, nor any impulse which does not originate in, self.-If by self-love be meant nothing more than the attachment of the mind to any object or idea existing in it, or the connection between any object or idea producing affection, and the state of mind produced by it, this is merely the common connection between cause and effect, and the love of every thing must be the love of myself, for the love of every thing must be the love of the object exciting it. On the contrary, if by self-love be meant my attachment to or