142 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. V. 



Cognition is what is called Understanding, and is most 

 thought of generally. 



Feelings are pleasures, pains, appetites, desires, aversions, 

 approval and disapproval, love, hate, and all affections. 



Conations are acts of will, whatever they be. 



Now to move a man's will it is necessary to move his 

 affections. (How ? Wait !) For no convictions of the 

 understanding will do, for a man does what he likes to do, 

 not what he believes to be best for himself or others. The 

 feelings can only be moved by notions coming through the 

 understanding, for cognition is the only inlet of thoughts. 

 Therefore, although it can be proved that self-love leads to 

 all goodness, or, in other words, that goodness is happiness, 

 and self loves happiness, yet it can also be proved that men 

 are not able to act rightly from pure self-love; so that though 

 self-love is a very fine theoretical principle, yet no man can 

 keep it always in view, or act reasonably upon it. Now, 

 most moralists take for granted that the end which men, 

 good or bad, pursue is their own happiness, and that happi- 

 ness, false or true, is the motive of every action, and that it 

 is the only right motive. Others say that benevolence is 

 the only virtue, and that any action not done expressly for 

 the good of others is entitled to no praise. 



Most of the ancients, and Hobbes among the moderns, 

 are of the first opinion. Hutcheson and Brown (I think) are 

 of the second, and call the first selfish Philosophers and the 

 selfish school. A few consider benevolence to the whole 

 universe as the proper motive of every action, but they all 

 (says Macintosh) confound men's motives with the criterion of 

 right and wrong, the reason why a thing is right, and that 

 which actually causes a man to do it. In every book on Moral 

 Philosophy some reference is made to that precept or maxim, 

 which is declared to be the spirit of the law and the pro- 

 phets (see Matt. vii. 12), and the application of it is a good 

 mark of the uppermost thoughts or mode of thinking of the 

 author. 



Hobbes lays down as the first agreement of men to 

 secure their safety, that a man should lay down so much 



