_ 110 Perin_ says (1, 93), that the conflict of interest is reconciled in the seeking for the attainment of the supreme good, that is God, “who gives himself to all in equal measure, and yet always remains the same, and out of whose fulness all may draw, and yet no one’s share grows less.” But the same is true of all ideal goods, and of every form of the feeling for the common interest, the highest of which is, indeed, religiousness. 111 According to _Kant_, Anthropologie, p. 239, the desire of comfort and well-being, and the inclination to virtue, when the former is properly restrained by the latter, produce the highest degree of moral, united to the highest degree of physical, good. It is well known, that during the middle ages, in all countries except Italy and, even up to the seventeenth century, the moral sciences were under a one-sided theological influence, whose ascetic condemnation of self-interest may have been well enough during a period of violence. By virtue of a very natural reaction, and as a protest of individualism against the constraint of absolute monarchy, the materialists of the eighteenth century endeavored to discover, even in the most exalted phenomena of human society, only the expression of an enlightened self-interest. See _Mandeville’s_ Fable of the Bees, or private Vices public Virtues (1723), but especially, _Helvétius_, De l’Esprit (1758). _Voltaire_ says, that, in all the celebrated maxims of _De Rochefoucauld_ (1665) there is but one truth contained, _que l’amour propre est le mobile de toutes nos actions_. (But see, per contra, _Pufendorf_, Jus Naturæ et Gentium, 1672, II, 3, 15.) This tendency was opposed, especially by the English, who could not be blind to the influence exerted in public life by the feeling for the common good. _David Hume_, Treatise on Human Nature (1739), III, 54, is of opinion that the interests of others are, on the whole, in the case of nearly every man stronger than even his own self interest. _Hutcheson_, System of Moral Philosophy (1755), speaks of the innate principle of benevolence. Man is not a perfect whole; a part belongs to his own person, part to his family, part to the nation, part even to all humanity. _Burke_, Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), distinguishes two fundamental principles of action, that of self-preservation and that of society. On the former is based the sense of the sublime; on the latter, of the beautiful. According to _Ferguson_, History of Civil Society, (1767), I, 3, 4, the “sense of union” is frequently strongest where the advantage drawn from the connection is smallest; for instance, it is weakest in highly cultured commercial countries. _Adam Smith_, Theory of