were only satisfied to believe any extravagance of assertion, and to use words systematically without either connexion or meaning. The whole of this writer’s argument against the existence of a benevolent principle in the mind is founded either on a play of words, or an arbitrary substitution of one feeling for another. He has confounded, and does not even seem to have been aware of the distinction between, self-love, considered as a rational principle of action, or the voluntary and deliberate pursuit of our own good as such, and that immediate interest or gratification which the mind may have in the pursuit of any object either relating to ourselves or others. He sometimes evidently considers the former of these, that is, a deliberating, calculating, conscious selfishness, as the only rational principle of action, and treats all other feelings as romance and folly, or even denies their existence; while at other times he contends that the most disinterested generosity, patriotism, and love of fame, are equally and in the strictest sense self-love, because the pursuit of these objects is connected with and tends immediately and intentionally to the gratification of the individual who has an attachment to them. After stating the sentiment of Rousseau, that without an innate and abstract sense of right and wrong we should not see the just man and the true citizen consult the public good to his own prejudice, Helvetius goes on thus:—‘No one, I reply, has ever been found to promote the public good when it injured his own interest. The patriot who risks his life to crown himself with glory, to gain the public esteem, and to deliver his country from slavery, yields to the feeling which is most agreeable to him. Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of virtue, in the acquisition of public respect, and in the pleasure consequent upon this respect? For what reason, in a word, should he not expose his life for his country, when the sailor and soldier, the one at sea, and the other in the trenches, daily expose theirs for a shilling? The virtuous man who seems to sacrifice his own good to that of the public is only governed by a sentiment of noble self-interest. Why should M. Rousseau deny here that interest is the exclusive and universal motive of action, when he himself admits it in a thousand places of his work?’ The author then quotes the following passage from Rousseau’s ‘Emilius’ in support of his doctrine:—‘A man may indeed pretend to prefer my interest to his own: however plausibly he colours over this falsehood, I am quite sure it is one.’ But I would ask why, on the principle just stated by Helvetius, he should not prefer another to himself, ‘if it is agreeable to him?’ Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of friendship? Why should he not risk his life for his friend, as well as the patriot for his country, or as the soldier or sailor for a shilling a day? What is become, all of a sudden,