Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/78

 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