20 “We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be ‘violent motive’ to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.”—Paley’s _Moral Philosophy_, book ii. ch. ii. 21 See Gassendi _Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma_. These four canons are a skilful condensation of the argument of Torquatus in Cicero, _De Fin._ i. 2. See, too, a very striking letter by Epicurus himself, given in his life by Diogenes Laërtius. 22 “Sanus igitur non est, qui nulla spe majore proposita, iis bonis quibus cæteri utuntur in vita, labores et cruciatus et miserias anteponat.... Non aliter his bonis præsentibus abstinendum est quam si sint aliqua majora, propter quæ tanti sit et voluptates omittere et mala omnia sustinere.”—Lactantius, _Div. Inst._ vi. 9. Macaulay, in some youthful essays against the Utilitarian theory (which he characteristically described as “Not much more laughable than phrenology, and immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting”), maintains the theological form of selfishness in very strong terms. “What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is not only true but identical, that men always act from self-interest.”—Review of Mill’s _Essay on Government_. “Of this we may be sure, that the words ‘greatest happiness’ will never in any man’s mouth mean more than the greatest happiness of others, which is consistent with what he thinks his own.... This direction (Do as you would be done by) would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr. Bentham’s philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In the Christian scheme accordingly it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.”—_Answer to the Westminster Review’s Defence of Mill._