See Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p. 241, for an admirable discussion of this difficulty. When it is said that your pain is painful to me, he says, the inference is often "insinuated that I dislike your pain because it is painful to me in some special relation. I do not dislike it _as_ your pain, but in virtue of some particular consequence, such, for example, as its making you less able to render me a service. In that case _I do not really object to your pain as your pain at all_, but only to some removable and accidental consequences." (And see his whole treatment of sympathy, pp. 230-245). The whole question is shown to come to this: Is my interest in, my sympathy with, your joy and sorrow as such, or in your joy and sorrow as contributing to mine? If the latter, of course the interest is selfish, not being an interest in others at all. But if the former, then the fact that such sympathy involves one's own satisfaction is the best proof that man is not selfishly constructed. When Stephen goes on to say that such sympathy does not involve the existence of a real unity larger than the individual, he seems to me to misread his own facts, probably because he conceives of this unity as some abstract or external thing. Discussion regarding self-love and benevolence, or, in modern phrase, egoism and altruism, has been rife in English ethics since the time of Hobbes, and especially of Shaftesbury and Butler. See, in particular, the Sermons of the latter, which gave the central point of discussion for almost a century. With reference to the special weakness of this point of view, with its co-ordination of two independent principles, see Green, Philosophical Works, Vol. III, pp. 99-104. The essential lack (the lack which we have tried to make good in the definition of individuality as the union of capacity and surroundings in function), was the failure to analyze the idea of the individual. Individuality being defined as an exclusive principle, the inevitable result was either (i.) the "disguised selfishness" theory; or (ii.) the assumption of two fundamentally different principles in man. The ordinary distinction between prudence and virtue is an echo of the latter theory. Then, finally, (iii.) a third principle, generally called conscience by Butler, was brought in as umpire in the conflict of prudence and virtue. Suggestive modern treatment of the matter, from a variety of points of view, will be found in Spencer, Data of Ethics, chs. XI-XIII; Stephen, Op. cit., ch. VI; Sidgwick, Op. cit., Bk. V, ch. VII; Royce, Op. cit., ch. IV; Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism, pp. 134-150; Alexander, Op. cit., pp. 172-180; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 400-405; Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 295-311.