When Dogberry brought Conrade before Leonato, the only offense he seems to have had a clear idea of, was the one against himself: 'Moreover, sir, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment.' Shakspeare has, by this 'one touch of nature,' made Dogberry kin to the whole world. It would be the most terrible of punishments to run the gauntlet of a company, every one of which you had called an ass; whatever may have been the original offense, this would be the one most remembered in your punishment, I don't think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears would be worse than the famous 'diabolical trumpet' for collecting and distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or discovered them peeping through the assumed lion's skin. Apollo's music probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after he received his 'wonderful ear.' But my object in introducing Dogberry was not to give a dissertation on this greatest of insults, but to illustrate our selfishness. Our patience will bear great _crimes_ against others, but how it gives way under the slightest _insult_ to ourselves. Now I am not going to denounce selfishness; I'd as soon think of denouncing gravitation. There is, in the best of us, an under-current of selfishness; indeed, selfishness and unselfishness are convertible terms; this is a higher kind of that, as the upper-current of the ocean is but the under-current risen to the surface. Saint James says: 'The love of money is the root of all evil.' I am not exactly prepared to agree with him; it is a great branch, almost the trunk; but I think selfishness is the root. You know Hahnemann thought all diseases but a modification of one disease--_psora_. However it may be with his theory, the one moral disease is not an itching palm. This is but a modification of selfishness, which is not merely cutaneous.