Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/91



I owe the reader two explanations; one relating to the association of ideas, from which Hartley and other writers have deduced the origin of all our affections, even of self-love itself; the other relating to the mechanical principle of self-interest stated by Helvetius. It was my first intention to have given at the end of the preceding essay, a general account of the nature of the will, and to have tried at least to dig down a little deeper into the foun-