Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/34

 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