So far as a man is indifferent to every thing, he cannot it is true desire any thing. All that follows from this is, that so far as he desires the good of others he is not in a state of indifference. That a man cannot desire an object and not desire it at the same time requires no proof. But what ought to have been proved, and what was meant to be so, is that a man in a state of indifference to the welfare of others on his own account, cannot desire it for their sake, and this is what is not proved by the truism mentioned. The general maxim, that I cannot desire any object as long as I am indifferent to it, cannot be made to show that self-interest is the only motive that can make me pass from the one state into the other. By indifference, as used by the writers here ridiculed, in a popular sense, is evidently meant the want of personal or physical interest in any object, and to say that this necessarily implies the want of every other kind of interest in it, of all rational desire of the good of others, is a meagre assumption of the point in dispute. It is strange that these pretenders to philosophy choose to insult the English writers for daring to wear the plain, homely, useful, national garb of philosophy, while their most glossy and most fashionable suits are made up of the shreds and patches stolen from our countryman Hobbes, disguised with a few spangles, tinselled lace, and tagged points of their own. Helvetius’s paraphrase of Hobbes’s maxim, that ‘pity is only another name for self-love,’ is as follows: ‘What then do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? The recollection of the sufferings to which man is subject, and to which I am myself liable. It is this consideration that disturbs, that torments me, and so long as the unfortunate sufferer continues in my presence I am affected with melancholy sensations. Have I relieved him,—do I no longer see him? A calm is insensibly restored to my breast, because in proportion to the distance to which he is removed, the remembrance of the evils which his sight recalled is gradually effaced. When I was concerned for him, then, I was concerned only for myself. What are, in fact, the sufferings which I compassionate the most? They are those not only which I have felt myself, but those which I may still feel. Those evils the more present to my memory impress me more strongly. My sympathy with the sufferings of another is always in exact proportion to my fear of being exposed to the same sufferings myself. I would willingly, if it were possible, destroy the very germ of my own sufferings in him, and thus be released from the apprehension of the like evils to myself in time to come. The love of others is never any thing more in the human mind than the effect of love to ourselves, and consequently of our physical sensibility.’—Vol. ii. page 20.