This plain piece of advice which Bentham gives to Blackstone is not often neglected by himself. The motive, he once said, of his own exceptional devotion to the interests of the community was that it pleased him. "I am a selfish man," he wrote, "as selfish as any man can be. But in me, somehow or other, so it happens, selfishness has taken the shape of benevolence."[40] But when the matter is thus brought back from the regions of political, moral, and religious duty, to the individual ground of "private ethics," we have still to refer to Bentham's own discussion of the question, "What motives (independent of such as legislation and religion may chance to furnish) can one man have to consult the happiness of another?"[41] Bentham at once replies--and indeed the answer on his principles is obvious enough--that there is no motive which always continues _adequate_. But yet there are, he says, "no occasions in which a man has not some motives for consulting the happiness of other men." Such are "the purely-social motive of sympathy or benevolence," and "the semi-social motives of love of amity and love of reputation." A man is directly moved to promote the happiness of others through the sympathetic feelings which make the happiness of others in some degree pleasurable to himself; and he is indirectly moved to promote their happiness through his desire of their friendship and good opinion. So far, therefore, it is quite true that "private ethics"--or what Bentham regards as such--"concerns every member--that is, the happiness and the actions of every member of any community that can be proposed."[42] It certainly concerns their happiness, but only in so far as this is a means to the happiness of the agent. So that when Bentham says that "there is no case in which a private man ought not to direct his own conduct to the production of his own happiness and of that of his fellow-creatures," he should rather say that a man will[43] only direct his conduct to the happiness of his fellow-creatures in so far as such action leads to his own happiness. Private ethics, therefore, has to do with the happiness of others only so far as this reacts on the happiness of self; or, as Bentham ultimately defines it, in terms to which no exception can be taken: "Private ethics teaches how each man may dispose himself to pursue the course most conducive to his own happiness by means of such motives as offer of themselves."[44] * * * * * [Sidenote: 3. Bentham's treatment exhaustive from his point of view.]