Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/81

 from this greater readiness and certainty with which we can look forward into our own minds than into those of other men, that the strong and uneasy attachment to self, which comes at last (in most minds) to overpower every generous feeling, takes its rise; and not, as I think I have shewn, from any natural hardness of the human heart, or necessary absorption of all its thoughts and purposes in any exclusive feeling of self-interest.

There is a confirmation of the account here given in the fact that we always feel for others in proportion as we know from long acquaintance what the nature of their feelings is; and that next to ourselves we have the strongest attachment to our immediate relatives and friends, who, from this intercommunity of feeling and situations, may more truly be said to be a part of ourselves than from the ties of blood. Moreover, a man must be employed more continually in providing for his own wants and pleasures than those of others. In like manner he is employed in providing for the immediate welfare of his family and connections much more than in providing for the welfare of those, who are not bound to him by any positive ties. And we consequently find that the attention, time and pains bestowed on these several objects give him a proportionable degree of anxiety about, and attachment to his own interest and that of those connected with him; but it would be absurd to conclude that his affections are therefore circumscribed by a natural necessity within certain limits which they cannot pass, either in the one case, or in the other. This general connection between the pursuit of any object and our habitual interest in it, will also account for the well-known observation that the affection of parents to children is the strongest of all others, frequently even overpowering self-love itself. This fact is, however, inconsistent with the sup-