Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/77

 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