The greater part of the life of the mightiest ge- nius that ever existed is spent in doing nothings and saying nothing. Pope has observed of Shake- spear's plays, that, '* had all the speeches been printed without the names of the persons, we might have applied them with certainty to every speaker." To which another critic has rejoined, that that was impossible, since the greater part of what every man says is unstamped with peculiarity. We have all more in us of what belongs to the common nature of man, than of what is peculiar to the individual.
xj OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 189 It is from this beaten^ turnpike road^ that the favoured few of mankind are for ever exerting themselves to escape. The multitude grow up, and are carried away, as grass is carried away by the mower. The parish-register tells when they were born, and when they died: " known by the ends of being to have been." We pass away, and leave no- thing behind. Kings, at whose very glance thou- sands have trembled, for the most part serve for nothing when their breath has ceased, but as a sort of distance-posts in the race of chronology. "The dull swain treads on" their relics " with his clouted shoon." Our monuments are as perishable as our- selves; and it is the most hopeless of all problems for the most part, to tell where the mighty ones of the earth repose.
All men are aware of the frailty of life, and how short is the span assigned us. Hence every one, who feels, or thinks he feels the power to do so, is desirous to embalm his memory, and to be thought of by a late posterity, to whom his personal presence shall be unknown. Mighty are the struggles; ever- lasting the efforts. The greater part of these we well know are in vain. It is ^sop's mountain in labour: " Dire was the tossing, deep the groans:" and the result is a mouse. But is it always so?
This brings us back to the question: " Is there indeed nothing new under the sun?"
Most certainly there is something that is new. If, as the beast dies, so died man, then indeed we should 190 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [essAT ■ be without hope. But it is his distinguishing faculty, that he can leave something behind, to testify that he has lived. And this is not only true of the pyrir raids of Egypt, and certain other works of human industry, that time seems to have no force to de** stroy. It is often true of a single sentence, a single word, which the multitudinous sea is incapable of washing away: Quod non mber edax, non Aquilo impotens PossU diruere, aut innumerabilis Annorum series^ etfuga temporum.
It is the characteristic of the mind and the heart of man, that they are progressive. One word, hap- pily interposed, reaching to the inmost soul, may "take away the heart of stone, and introduce a heart of flesh." And, if an individual may be thoB changed, then his children, and his connections, to the latest page of unborn history.
This is the true glory of man, that " one genera*' tion doth not pass away, and another come," veiut tmda supervenit undam; but that we leave our im-^ provements behind us. What infinite ages of refine- ment on refinement, and ingenuity on ingenuity, seem each to have contributed its quota, to make up the accommodations of every day of civilised man; his table, his chair, the bed he lies on, the food he eats, the garments that cover him! It has often been said, that the four quarters of the world are put under contribution, to provide the most mo- derate table. To this what mills, what looms, what X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION* 191 macfaiiiery of a thousand denominations, what ship- buildin^y what navigation, what fleets are required! Man seems to have been sent into the world a imked, forked, helpless animal, on purpose to call forth his ingenuity to supply the accommodations tliat may conduce to his well-being. The saying, that " there is nothing new under the sun," could never have been struck out, but in one of the two extreme states of man, by the naked savage, or by the highly civilised beings among whom the perfec- tion of refinement has produced an artificial feeling of uniformity.
The thing most obviously calculated to impress us with a sense of the power, and the comparative sublimity of man, is, if we could make a voyage of some duration in a balloon, over a considerable tract of the cultivated and the desert parts of the earth. A brute can scarcely move a stone out of his way, if it has fallen upon the couch where he would repose. But man cultivates fields, and plants gardens; he constructs parks and canals; he turns the course of rivers, and stretches vast artificial moles into the sea; he levels mountains, and builds a bridge, joining in giddy height one segment of the Alps to another; lastly, he founds castles, and diurches, and towers, and distributes mighty cities at his pleasure over the face of the globe. " The first earth has passed away, and another earth has come; and all things are made new."
It is true, that the basest treacheries, the most 192 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [essAY atrocious cruelties^ butcheries, massacres, violatipns of all the restraints of decency, and all the ties of nature, fields covered with dead bodiea, and flooded with human gore, are all of them vulgar repetitions of what had been acted countless times already. If Nero or Caligula thought to perpetrate that which should stand unparalleled, they fell into the grossest error. The conqueror, who should lay waste vast portions of the globe, and destroy mighty cities, so that " thorns should come up in the palaces, and nettles in the fortresses thereof, and they should be a habitation of serpents, and a court for owls, and the wild beasts of the desert should meet there,'* would only do what Tamerlane, and Aurengzebe, and Zingis, and a hundred other conquerors, in every age and quarter of the world, had done before. The splendour of triumphs, and the magnificence of courts, are so essentially vulgar, that history almost disdains to record them.
And yet there is something that is new, and that by the reader of discernment is immediately felt to be so.
We read of Moses, that he was a child of ordinary birth, and, when he was bom, was presently marked, as well as all the male children of his race, for de- struction. He was unexpectedly preserved; and his first act, when he grew up, was to slay an Egyptian, one of the race to whom all his countrymen were slaves, and to fly into exile. This man, thus friend- less and alone, in due time returned, and by the X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 193 iiu'.re energy of his character prevailed upon his whole race to make common cause with him^ and to migrate to a region, in which they should become sovereign and independent. He had no soldiers, but what were made so by the ascendancy of his spirit, no counsellors but such as he taught to be wise, no friends but those who were moved by the sentiment they caught from him. The Jews he commanded were sordid and low of disposition, perpetually murmuring against his rule, and at every unfavourable accident calling to remembrance "the land of Egypt, where they had sat by the flesh- pots, and were full.*' Yet over this race he retained a constant mastery, and finally made of them a nation whose customs and habits and ways of thinking no time has availed to destroy. This was a man then, that possessed the true secret to make other men his creatures, and lead them with an irresistible power wherever he pleased. This history, taken entire, has probably no parallel in the annals of the world.
The invasion of Greece by the Persians, and its result, seem to constitute an event that stands alone among men. Xerxes led against this little territory an army of 6,280,000 men. They drank up rivers, and cut their way through giant-mountains. They were first stopped at Thermopylae by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans. They fought for a country too narrow to contain the army by which the question was to be tried. The contest was here to be decided between despotism and liberty, wheo 194 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION, [ESSAY ther there is a principle in iiian, by Which a handful of individuals, pervaded with lofty aentiments, aiid a conviction of whit is of most worth in our nature, can defy the brute fotce^and put to flight the attack, of bones, j bints and sinfews, though congregated in multitudes, numberless as the waves of the sea, or the sands on its shdre. The flbod filially rolled babk: and ih process of time Alexander, with these Greets whom the ignorance of the East affected to des^iise, foiinded Another universal monarchy on the ruins 6f Persia. This is certainly ilb vulgar history. Christianity ii another of those meihorable chap- ters ih the annals of mankind, to which there is probably no second. The son of a carpenter in /9r little, rock;^ country, among a nation despised a^d enslaved, undertook to reform the tnahners of the people of whom he, was a citizen. Thie reformation he preached was unpalatable to the leaders of the state; he was persecuted; abd finally suffered the death reserved for the lowest lilalefactors, b^ing nailed to a cross. He wis cut off in the very b^in- ning of his career, before he had time to form a sect. His ihimediate representatives ind supcesaora were tax-galherfers and fishermen. Whit, could fe^ more incredible, till proved by the event, than that a religion thiis begun, should haVe embraced in a manner the. i/^hole civilised world, And that of its king'dom there sh6uld be no visible end? This is a novelty in the history of the world, equally if we consider it as brought about by the imihediate in- X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 195 tftrpositioh of thie author of all things, or regard it, ftd 6'otikb pretehd to do, as happening in the course Bf mere human events.
• Roine, " the fetemal city," is likewise a subject that stands oiit from the vulgar history of the htt^ mftn racie. Three times, in three succeissive forms, has bhe been the mistress of the world. First, by the purity, the simplicity, the single-heartedness, the fervour and perseverance of her original cha- taicter she qualified herself to subdue all the nations of mankind. Next, having conquered the earth by her virtue and by the spirit of liberty, she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries tinder the omperol*s, notwithstanding all her astonishing pro- fligacy and anarchy. And, lastly, ^fter her seicular ascendancy had been destroyed by the inrdads of thiB northern barbarians, she rose like the phoehix 6bm her ashes, and, though powerledis in material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains of the mind, and the consummateness of her policy. Nfever was any thing so admirably contrived as the Catholic religion, to subdue the souls 6f men by Ae power of its worship over the senses, and, by ilsi contrivances in auricular confession, purgatory, masses for the dead, and its claim magisterially to determine controversies, to hold the subjects it hid gained in eveirksting submission.
The great principle of originality is in the soul of msan. And here again we may recur to Greece, the parent of all that is ekcellent in art. Painting, stao 2 196 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [ESSAY tuary, architecture^ poetry, in their most exquisite and ravishing forms, originated in this little pro* vince. Is not the Iliad a thing new, and that will for ever remain new? Whether it was written by one man, as I believe, or, as the Ijpvellers of human glory would have us think, by many, there it stands: all the ages of the world present us nothing that can come in competition with it.
Shakespear is another example of unrivalled ori- ginality. His fame is like the giant-rivers of the world: the further it flows, the wider it spreads out its stream, and the more marvellous is the power with which it sweeps along.
But, in reality, all poetry and all art, that have a genuine claim to originality, are new, the smallest, as well as the greatest.
It is the mistake of dull minds only, to suppose that every thing has been said, that human wit is ex- hausted, and that we, who have unfortunately fallen upon the dregs of time, have no alternative left, but either to be silent, or to say over and over again^ what has been well said already.
There remain yet immense tracts of invention, the mines of which have been untouched. We per- ceive nothing of the strata of earth, and the hidden fountains of water, that we travel over, unconscious of the treasures that are immediately within our reach, till some person, endowed with the gift of a superior sagacity, comes into the country, who ap- pears to see through the opake and solid mass, as X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 197 we see through the translucent air, and tells us of things yet undiscovered^ and enriches us with trea-^ sures^ of which we had been hitherto entirely igno- rant. The nature of the human mind, and the ca- pabilities of our species are in like manner a maga- zine of undiscovered things, till some mighty genius comes to break the surface, and shew us the won*^ derful treasures that lay beneath uncalled for and idle.
Human character is like the contents of an ample cabinet) brought together by the untired zeal of some curious collector, who tickets his rarities with numbers, and has a catalogue in many volumes, in which are recorded the description and qualities of the things presented to our view. Among the most splendid examples of character which the genius of man has brought to light, are Don Quixote and his trusty squire, sir Roger de Coverley, Parson Adams, Walter Shandy and his brother Toby. Who shall set bounds to the everlasting variety of nature, as she has recorded her creations in the heart of man? Most of these instances are recent, and sufficiently shew that the enterprising adven^ turer, who would aspire to emulate the illustrious men from whose writings these examples are drawn, has no cause to despair. Vulgar observers pass carelessly by a thousand figures in the crowded masquerade of human society, which, when in- scribed on the tablet by the pencil of a master,^ would prove not less wondrous in the power of }9^ OM tliflTATlON ANP INVSVTION. [bs^AY affording pleasure, por less rich as themes for in^ exhaustible reflectiQn, than the most admirable of these. The things ar^ there; and all that is want^ ing is an eye to perceive, and a pen to record them« As tp a great degree we may subscribe to the spying of the wise inan^ that " there is nothing new updci* the sun,'' aio in a certain sense it may also be gtlirmed that nothing is ol4- Both of these maximis may be equally true. The prima materia, the atoms of which the universe is composed, is of a date beyond ^1 record; and the figures which have yet hepn intrpduced intq the most fantastic chronologgr^ may p^rh^ps be incompetent to represent the pe4 ripfi of its birth. But the way? in which they may he compoiyi4^d are exhaustless. It is like what th^ writers pn thp Ppctrine pf Chances tell us qf the throwing pf dice. How many men now exist PR the face of the earth? Y0t, if all these were brought together, and if, \x\ addition to this, me ^ould call up all the men that ever lived, it may be doubled, wheth^f any twp wonld be found so much a.like, th^t a clear-sighted apd acute obgeryer might npt surely distinguish the one from the othec Leibnitz infprm^ us, that Qp two leaves of a tsee exist in the most spacip^s gsgrden^ thai, upon exin minatipn, could be prpnounced perfectly similar^; Xhe true questioi) is nojt, whether any thing can be found thftt is new, h\;t whether the particjolars in which anv thing is new may not be so minute * Seeabove^ p. 31.
X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 199 and triflings as scarcely to enter for any thing, into that grand and comprehensive view of the whole, in which matters of ohvious insignificance are of no account.
But, if art and the invention of the human mind are exhaustless, science is even n^ore notoriously s^. We stand hut on the threshold of the know- ledge of nature, and of the various ways in whidi physical power may be brought to operate for the accommodation of man. This is a business that seems to be perpetually in progress; and, like the fall of bodies by the power of gravitation, appears to gain i;i moipentum, in proportion as it advancep to a greater distance from the point a^ which the impulse was given. The discoveries which at no remote period have been made, would, if prophe- sied of, have been laughed to scorn by the ignorant sluggishness of former generations; and we are equ^ly ready to regard with increduUty the disco- veries yet unmade, which will be familiar to our posterity. Indeed every man of a capacious and liberal mind is willing to admit, that the progress of human understanding in science, which is now going on, is altogether without any limits that by ihe most penetrating genius pan be assigned. It is like a mighty river, that flows on for ever and for ever, as far as the words, *^ for ever," can liave a meaning to the comprehension of mortals. The question that remains is, our practicable improve- ment in literature and morals; and here those per- 200 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [kssAY sons who entertain a mean opinion of human nature^ are constantly ready to tell us that it will he found to amount to nothing. However we may be continually improving in mechanical knowledge and ingenuity, we are assured by this party, that we shall never surpass what has already been done in poetry and literature, and, which is still worse, that, however marvellous may be our future acquisitions in science and the application of science, we shall be, as much as ever, the creatures of that vanity, ostentation, opulence and the spirit of exclusive accumulation, which has hitherto, in most countries (not in all countries), generated the glaring inequa- lity of property, and the oppression of the many for the sake of pampering the folly of the few.
There is another circumstance that may be men- tioned, which, particularly as regards the question of repetition and novelty that is now under consi- deration, may seem to operate in an eminent degree in favour of science, while it casts a most discou- raging veil over poetry and the pure growth of human fancy and invention. Poetry is, after all, nothing more than new combinations of old mate- rials. Nihil est in intellectUy quod non fuit prius in sensu. The poet has perhaps in all languages been called a maker, a creator: but this seems to be a vain-glorious and an empty boast. He is a collector of materials only, which he afterwards uses as best he may be able. He answers to the description I have heard given of a tailor, a man who cuts to X.] OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. 201 pieces whatever is delivered to him from the loom^ that he may afterwards sew it together again. The poet therefore, we may be told, adds nothing to the stock of ideas and conceptions already laid up in the storehouse of mind. But the man who is em- ployed upon the secrets of nature, is eternally in progress; day after day he delivers in to the maga- zine of materials for thinking and acting, what was not there before; he increases the stock, upon which human ingenuity and the arts of life are des- tined to operate. He does not, as the poet may be affirmed by his censurers to do, travel for ever in a circle, but continues to hasten towards a goal, while at every interval we may mark how much further he has proceeded from the point at which his race began.
Much may be said in answer to this, and in vin- dication and honour of the poet and the artist. All that is here alleged to their disadvantage, is in reality little better than a sophism. The conside- ration of the articles he makes use of, does not in sound estimate detract from the glories of which he is the artificer. Materiem superat opus. He changes the nature of what he handles; all that he touches is turned into gold. The manufacture he delivers to us is so new, that the thing it previously was, is no longer recognisable. The impression that he makes upon the imagination and the heart, the impulses that he communicates to the under- standing and the moral feeling, are all his own; 202 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [ESSAY and> ^^ if there is any thing lovely and of good re- port^ if tl^ere is any virtue and any praise/' he may well cUim our applauses and our thankfulness foif wh^t he has effected.
There is a still further advantage that helongs to the poet and the votarist of polite literatqre^ wbicl} ought to he mentioned^ as strongly calculated tq repress the arrogance of the men of science^ and the supercilious contempt they are apt to expi%8» far those who are engrossed by the pursuits of imagination and taste. They are for ever talking of the reality and progressiveness of the^r pinrsnits, and telling us that every step they take is a point l^ained, and gained for th^ latest posterity^ while the poet merely suits himself to the taste of the men among whom he lives, writes up to the fashion of the day, and, as our manners turn, is sure to be bwept away to the gulp)i of oblivion. But how does the matter really stand? It is to a great degree th^ very reverse of this.
The natural and experimental philosopher has nothing sacred and indestructible in the language and form in which. he delivers truths. New disco- veries and ^experiments come, and his individual terms and phrases and theories perish. One rac^ of natural philosophers does but prepane the way for anoi^her race, which is to succeeji. They ^^blow the trumpet, and give out the play." And they must be contented to perish before the brighter knowledge, of whic^ their efforts were hut the harrbingera. The Ptolemaic aystem gave way to Tycho Srabe^ and bia to that of Copernicus. The vois- ticea of Deacartes perished before the discoveries of NewtQ^; and the philosophy of Newton already bf^gina to grow old, and is found to have mreak and decaying parta ipliied with those which are immor- tal and divine. In the science of mind Aristotle tod Plato are set aside; the depth of Malebranch'e^ and the patient investigation of Locke have had their day; more penetrating, and concise, and lynx- eyed reasoners of our own country have succeeded; the German metaphysicians seem to have thrust these aside; and it perhaps needs no great degree of sagacity to foresee, that Kant and Fichte will at last fare no better than those that went before them.
But the poet is immortal. The verses of Homer are of workmanship no less divine, than the armour of his own Achilles. His poems are as fresh and consummate to us now, as they were to the Greeks, when the old man of Chios wandered in person through the different cities, rehearsing his rhapso- dies to the accompaniment of his lute. The lan- guage and the thoughts of the poet are inextricably woven together; and the first is no more exposed to decay and to perish than the last. Presumptuous innovators have attempted to modernise Chaucer, and Spenser, and other authors, whose style was supposed to have grown obsolete. But true taste cannot endure the impious mockery. The very 204 OF IMITATION AND INVENTION. [ESSAY words that occurred to these men, when the God descended, and a fire from heaven tingled in all their veins, are sacred, are part of themselves; and you may as well attempt to preserve the man when you have deprived him of all his members, as think to preserve the poet when you have taken away the words that he spoke. No part of his glorious effiisions must perish; and ^^ the hairs of his head are all numbered/' XI.] OF 8SLF-L0VK AND BENEVOLENCE. 205 ESSAY XL OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE.
No question has more memorably exercised the ingenuity of men who have speculated upon the structure of the human mind^ than that of the mo- tives by which we are actuated in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. The dictates of a plain and unsophisticated understanding on the subject are manifest; and they have been asserted in the broadest way by the authors of religion, the re- formers of mankind, and all persons who have been penetrated with zeal and enthusiasm for the true interests of the race to which they belong.
"The end of the commandment/' say the authors ) of the New Testament, " is love." " This is the; great commandment of the law, Thou shalt love! thy maker with all thy heart; and the second is V \ like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- ^ self." " Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." "For none of us. | liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself."
The sentiments of the ancient Greeks and Ro- mans, for so many centuries as their institutions retained their original purity, were cast in a mould of a similar nature. A Spartan was seldom alone; \ ^ 20tt or SBLF-L6V£ AND BfiKfi^CFlLeftce. [ESsAt they were always in society with each other. The love of their country and of the public good was their predominant passion; they did not imagine that they belonged to themselves, but to the state. After the battle of Leuctra, in which the Spartans were defeated by the Thebans, the mothers of those wfab were slain cbhgratulated one another, and w^ni to the temples to thank the Godd, that their chil* dren had dOn^ their duty; while the telatibny of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable.
The Romaiiid were not less distinguished by thfeit self-denying patriotism. It was in this spirit thAt Brutus put his twO sons to death for conspiring against their country. It was in this spirit that the Fabii perished at their fort oh thfe Creinei'a, and the Decii devoted themselves For the public^ The rigour 6f self-denial in a true Roman ap- proached toatenliper Which moderns are inblined to denominate savage.
In the times Of the ancieAt rfepublics the impulse of \he citizens Was to merge their oWn individuality in the interests of the statb. They held it their duty to live hut for their countty. In this spitit they were educated; aiid the lessons of their early yoiith regulated the conduct of their riper y^ars. ■ In ia more receht Jaeriod we have learned to model oui" charaicters by a different standard. We feel- dona recollect the society of which we SLte politi- cally members, as a whole, but are broken into de- tached parti^B, thinking only for the mo4t part of XI.3 OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE. 207 ouTsHves afid our imniediate connection^ and at*, tachments..
This chknge in iUe sentiments aiid manners of modem tinles has ambhg its other cbhseqiienceli given birth tto a new species of philosophy. Wb have been tdught to affirm^ that we can have lib ex^ pr^ss and pure regard for our fellow-crektures, but that all our benevolence and aflPectioii conie to lis thi'Dugh the strainers of h gross 61' a refined seU* love. The coarser adhereiits of this doctrine main* tain; that maiikind are in all cases gilidbd by views of the narrowest self-interest, and that those who advance the highest claims to philanthropy, patriot- ism, ^generosity and self-sacrifice, are all the time deceiving others, ot* deceiving themselves, )and use a plaiisible and high-sounding language merely, that sehres ho other purpose than to veil ftbm observa- tion ^^ that hideous sij^t, a naked human heart.".
The more delicate arid fastidious sbpporters of the doctrine of uhiversal sfelf-love^ take a different ^obnd. They affirm that "inch persoA^ as talk to us of 'disihtei*estedhess and pure beiievoUnoe, have not considered with silfficSent accuracy the nature of mind, feeling ahd ^iH. To understand^," they say, ^^is onfejthihg, and to choose another. The clearest proposition that ever was stated, haii, in itself, no tendency to produce Voluntary abtibn on the part of the percipient. It can be oWy sotoe- thing appreheiided as agreeable or diisagreeabte to us, that can operate so as to determine the tnHw 20S OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE. [ESSiCY Such is the law of universal nature. We act from the impulse of our own desires and aversions; and we seek to effect or avert a things merely because it is viewed by us as an object of gratification or the contrary. The virtuous man and the vicious are alike governed by the same principle; and it is therefore the proper business of a wise instructor of youths and of a man who would bring his own sentiments and feelings into the most praise-worthy frame, to teach us to find our interest and gratifi- cation in that which shall be most beneficial to others."
When we proceed to examine the truth of these statements, it certainly is not strictly an argument to say, that the advocate of self-love on either of these hypotheses cannot consistently be a believer in Christianity, or even a theist, as theism is ordi- narily understood. The commandments of the au- thor of the Christian religion are, as we have seen, purely disinterested: and, especially if we admit the latter of the two explanations of self-love, we shall be obliged to confess, on the hypothesis of this new philosophy, that the almighty author of the universe never acts in any of his designs either of creation or providence, but from a principle of self-love. In the mean time, if this is not strictly an argument, it is however but fair to warn the adherents of the doctrine I oppose, of the consequences to which their theory leads. It is my purpose to subvert that doctrine by means of the severest demonstration; XI.] OF SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE. 209 but I am not unwilling, before I begin^ to conciliate, as fer as may be, the good-will of my readers to the propositions I proceed to establish.
I will therefore further venture to add, that, upon the hypothesis of self-love, there can be no such thing as virtue. There are two circumatances re- quired, to entitle an action to be denominated vir- I j tuous. It must have a tendency to produce good j rather than evil to the race of man, and it must have been generated by an intention to produce such good. The most beneficent action that ever was performed, if it did not spring from the inten- tion of good to others, is not of the nature of vir- tue. Virtue, where it exists in any eminence, is a species of conduct, modelled upon a true estimate of the good intended to be produced. He that makes a false estimate, and prefers a trivial and partial good to an important and comprehensive one, is vicious*.. ^ It is admitted on all hands, that it is possible for a man to sacrifice his own existence to that of twenty others. But the advocates of the doctrine of self-love must say, that he does this that he may escape from uneasiness, and because he could not bear to encounter the inward upbraiding with which he would be visited, if he acted otherwise. This in reality would change his action from an act of vir- tue to ah act of vice. So far as belongs to the real merits of the case, his own advantage or pleasure is ' Political JuHtice, Book II, Chap. IV.