133. Be it so. Let it even be admitted that egoism is the only power conceivable by a modern metaphysician to be the spring of mental energy; just as chemical excitement may be the only power traceable by the modern physician as the source of muscular energy. And still Mr. Spencer's subsequent analysis is inaccurate, and unscholarly. For egoism does not necessarily imply either misapprehension or mismeasurement. There are modes of the love of our country which are definitely selfish, as a cat's of the hearthrug, yet entirely balanced and calm in judicial faculty; passions which determine conduct, but have no influence on opinion. For instance, I have bought for my own exclusive gratification, the cottage in which I am writing, near the lake-beach on which I used to play when I was seven years old. Were I a public-spirited scientific person, or a benevolently pious one, I should doubtless, instead, be surveying the geographical relations of the Mountains of the Moon, or translating the Athanasian Creed into Tartar-Chinese. But I hate the very name of the public, and labor under no oppressive anxiety either for the advancement of science, or the salvation of mankind. I therefore prefer amusing myself with the lake-pebbles, of which I know nothing but that they are pretty; and conversing with people whom I can understand without pains, and who, so far from needing to be converted, seem to me on the whole better than myself. This is moral egoism, but it is not intellectual error. I never form, much less express, any opinion as to the relative beauties of Yewdale crag and the Mountains of the Moon; nor do I please myself by contemplating, in any exaggerated light, the spiritual advantages which I possess in my familiarity with the Thirty-nine Articles. I know the height of my neighboring mountains to a foot; and the extent of my real possessions, theological and material, to an article. Patriotic egoism attaches me to the one; personal egoism satisfies me in the other; and the calm selfishness with which Nature has blessed all her unphilosophical creatures, blinds me to the attractions--as to the faults--of things with which I have no concern, and saves me at once from the folly of contempt, and the discomfort of envy. I might have written, as accurately, "The discomfort of contempt"; for indeed the forms of petulant rivalry and self-assertion which Mr. Spencer assumes to be developments of egoism, are merely its diseases; (taking the word "disease" in its most literal meaning). A man of sense is more an egoist in modesty than a blockhead is in boasting; and it is neither pride nor self-respect, but only ignorance and ill-breeding, that either disguise the facts of life, or violate its courtesies.