The evil produced by egotism, that sad travesty of personal interest, appears under a form quite as formidable when the general interest takes the form of communism. The coöperation of personal interest and of the general interest is always necessary, both for individual profit and social advantage. There is as much danger in annihilating the individual as in exalting him. History furnishes us with memorable examples of this. It does not allow us to go astray in the narrow ways of a peevish and jealous personality, nor to lose ourselves in the vague labyrinth of a chimerical and false communism. The latter would destroy what constitutes the power and dignity of man. It would wipe out the most prominent features of his noble nature, by destroying the support of energy and activity and the food of moral force. XII. But, we are told, Political Economy is only the science of selfishness; Adam Smith is the prophet of individualism; grow rich _per fas et nefas_ is its ultimate teaching. Such a judgment is evidence of much levity and little enlightenment. How could the man who conceived the study of human interests on so large a scale, the philosopher who acknowledged Hutcheson as his master and gave his ideas a still more expansive character, be the apostle of egotism; and how can the science which he founded be its gospel? There is here an error of fact and a defect of appreciation. Hutcheson had based moral philosophy on the feeling which, according to him, engendered all the other virtues, on benevolence, which is disinterested, busied with the welfare of others, with the public weal and the general interest. Adam Smith went further, and sought to base it on a still more energetic feeling, on sympathy. The first sentence of his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, which is a full resumé of his theory, is as follows: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” And this is no empty declaration on his part. It is the thought which of all in his book is nearest to his heart; and hence he energetically assails those philosophers who look upon self-love and the refinements of self-love as the universal cause of all our sentiments, and seek to explain sympathy by self-love.