that is, an attachment to others is a real independent principle of human action. What I wish to state is this: that the mind neither constantly aims at nor tends to its own individual interest. That in benevolence, compassion, friendship, &c. the mind does aim at its good, is what every one must acknowledge. The only sense then in which our sympathy with others can be construed into self-love, must be that the mind is so constituted that without forethought or any reflection in itself, or when seeming most occupied with others, it is still governed by the same universal feeling of which it is wholly unconscious; and that we indulge in compassion, &c. only because and in as far as it coincides with our own immediate gratification. If it could be shown that the current of our desires always runs the same way, either with or without knowledge, I should confess that this would be a strong presumption of what has been called the falsity of human virtue. But it is not true that such is the natural disposition of the mind. It is not so constructed as to receive no impressions but those which gratify its desire of happiness, or to throw off every the least uneasiness relating to others, like oil from water. It is not true that the feelings of others have no natural hold upon the mind but by their connexion with self-interest. Nothing can be more evident than that we do not on any occasion blindly consult the interest of the moment; there is no instinctive unerring bias to our own good, which in the midst of contrary motives and doubtful appearances, puts aside all other impulses and guides them but to its own purposes. It is against all experience to say that in giving way to the feelings of sympathy, any more than to those of rational self-interest (for the argument is the same in both cases), I always yield to that impulse which is accompanied with most pleasure at the time. It is true that I yield to the strongest impulse, but not that my strongest impulse is to pleasure. The idea, for instance, of the relief I may afford to a person in extreme distress, is not necessarily accompanied by a correspondent degree of pleasurable sensation to counterbalance the painful sensation his immediate distress occasions in my mind. It is certain that sometimes the one and sometimes the other may prevail without altering my purpose in the least. I am led to persevere in it by the idea of what are the sufferings, and that it is in my power to alleviate them: though that idea is not always the most agreeable contemplation I could have. Those who voluntarily perform the most painful duties of friendship or humanity do not do them from the immediate gratification arising therefrom; it is as easy to turn away from a beggar as to relieve him; and if the mind were not actuated by a sense of truth, and of the real consequences of its actions, we should uniformly listen to the distresses of others with the same sort