Page:Table-Talk, vol. 2 (1822).djvu/374

 had so much attachment, as was generally supposed; and I said that I conceived the regard they had towards each other was expressed by the word interest rather than by any other, which he said was the true answer. I do not know that I could mend it now. Natural affection is not pleasure in one another’s company, nor admiration of one another’s qualities; but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of the things that affect those to whom we are bound by the nearest ties, with pleasure or pain; it is an anxious, uneasy fellow-feeling with them, a jealous watchfulness over their good name, a tender and unconquerable yearning for their good. The love, in short, we bear them is the nearest to that we bear ourselves. Home, according to the old saying, is home, be it never so homely. We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but our cravings after good: so we love our immediate relations in the next degree (if not, even sometimes a higher one), because we know best what they have suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. We are implicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and sympathy, as we are in our own.

If our devotion to our own interests is much the same as to theirs, we are ignorant of our own characters for the same reason. We are