Should any desperate metaphysician persist in affirming that my love of others is still the love of myself, because the impression exciting my sympathy must exist in my mind, and so be a part of myself, I would answer that this is using words without affixing any distinct meaning to them. The love or affection excited by any general idea existing in my mind, can no more be said to be the love of myself, than the idea of another person is the idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. This method of reasoning, however, will not go a great way to prove the doctrine of an abstract principle of self-interest; for, by the same rule, it would follow that in hating another person I hate myself. Indeed, upon this principle, the whole structure of language is a continued absurdity. It is pretended by a violent assumption, that benevolence is only a desire to prolong the idea of another’s pleasure in one’s own mind, because the idea exists there: malevolence must, therefore, be a disposition to prolong the idea of pain in one’s own mind for the same reason, that is, to injure oneself, for by this philosophy no one can have a single idea which does not refer to, nor any impulse which does not originate in, self. But the love of others cannot be built on the love of self, considering this last as the effect of ‘physical sensibility;’ and the moment we resolve self-love into the rational pursuit of a remote object, it has been shown that the same reasoning applies to both, and that the love of others has the same necessary foundation in the human mind as the love of ourselves.