Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/184

168 writers as Professor Sidgwick and others, that it may be passed over here without further comment.

In contradistinction to the particular affections, the principle of self-love has reference to a subjective state or condition. Its object is the self. It is that rational and general regard which every individual has for his own happiness, and it consequently "never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good." Thus action from this principle is called 'interested' in a sense which may not be used to describe action passionately determined, and, so far as a man possesses this regard for his own welfare, "he is interested, or a lover of himself." Happiness, however, does not consist in self-love. "Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections," and "our interest or good being constituted by nature, supposed self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it." So far is self-love from constituting happiness, that "if it wholly engrosses us, and leaves no room for any other principle, there can be absolutely no such thing at all as happiness, or enjoyment of any kind whatever."

Self-love, then, may become irrational through a misapprehension of the true nature of the self. If it is acted upon as a principle of self-partiality or self-exclusiveness, and, taken in this connotation, is regarded as the sole principle of our nature; if it has a single eye to the individual's own happiness, falsely viewing the self as independent and isolated, and thus becomes the one unrestrained and uncorrected principle for the determination of conduct; it fails to attain its own end by aiming at a realization of a mere part of the self, and thwarts its true function by ever looking towards an incomplete happiness. In other words, if self-love becomes perverted into selfishness or unmixed egoism, it ceases to be a principle of action, and thereby loses its authoritative and rational control over the passions. Action from such