PHILOSOPHY, MORAL. 



a sufficient experience of the pleasures 

 of friendship, generosity, devotion, and 

 self-approbation, cannot avoid the desire 

 to have a return of them, when he is not 

 under the particular influence of any one 

 of them, merely on account of the plea- 

 sure which they have afforded. And if he 

 have not advanced into very considerable 

 purity of motives, will seek to excite 

 those pleasures by treasuring up the 

 means of them, and to keep himself in a 

 disposition to use them, not from any 

 particularly vivid love of his neighbour, 

 or of God, or from a sense of duty, 

 but entirely from the view of private 

 happiness. Refined self-interest is nei- 

 ther so common nor so conspicuous, in 

 real life, as the gross self-interest. It 

 rises late, and is never in any great 

 magnitude in the bulk of mankind, 

 though the want of the previous plea- 

 sures of sympathy, religion, and the mo- 

 ral sense, and in some ,it scarcely pre- 

 vails at all ; whereas gross self-interest 

 i-ises early in infancy, and arrives at a 

 Considerable magnitude before adult 

 age. 



56. The objections which lie against 

 making the pursuit of refined self-inte- 

 rest our ultimate object, though less ob- 

 vious, do not appear less weighty than 

 those which lie against gross self-interest. 

 In the first place, the mind which has so 

 far advanced towards perfection, as to 

 make the means of obtaining the refined 

 pleasures of religion and virtue the pri- 

 mary object, will be more likely, finally, 

 to stop at this point than he who was 

 guided by gross self-interest. There is 

 less the appearance of deficiency, and less 

 opposition between it and the claims of 

 benevolence and piety ; and as it leads to 

 the performance of laudable actions, the 

 conscience is too apt to give approbation 

 where, if all that influenced the mind 

 were brought into full view, nothing but 

 self would be seen. Hence there is lit- 

 tle inducement to refine the motives, 

 and purify them from their baser al- 

 loy ; and making self continually the 

 motive, checks the natural progress of 

 the affections to complete disinterested- 

 ness. 



57. To act with a direct view to the 

 pleasures of benevolence and piety, seems 

 to carry with it a degree of selfishness 

 little superior to that of the refined sen- 

 sualist, who chooses from among the ob- 

 jects of his degraded taste such only as 

 will give the least alloyed pleasures, and 

 those of the most continued duration. It 

 differs from bis selfishness, In producing 



VOL.V, 



tp society more valuable effects ; bat 

 from what has been stated respecting the 

 progress of the affections in wenta/ 'PHI- 

 LOSOPHY, it appears that it is very consi- 

 derably below that state in which the af- 

 fection is perfect: and we have already 

 seen that it stops its progress towards 

 that perfection. It may fairly be admit- 

 ted in the commencement of a virtuous 

 course as a step towards improvement; 

 but if the mind be suffered to rest here, 

 we cannot esteem its progress great. 

 In addition to these objections, some 

 very forcible ones will appear among 

 those which lie against acting with an 

 explicit view to our greatest happi- 

 ness on the whole, making even the high, 

 est least debasing, because least speci- 

 fic kind of self-interest, our ground of 

 action. 



58. Rational self-interest is certainly to 

 be put upon a very different footing from 

 the gross and refined ; agreeably to which 

 the scriptures promise general hopes and 

 fears, and especially those of a future 

 state, and inculcate them as good and 

 proper motives : and they may, therefore, 

 certainly be considered as auxiliary in our 

 moral progress. But Christianity holds 

 out still more refined motives, distinct 

 from hope and fear, the love of God and 

 our neighbour, the law of our minds, Sec, 

 that is, the motives of sympathy, theo- 

 pathy, and the moral sense. Rational 

 self-interest will lead to the formation of 

 these, and to the destruction of the im- 

 pure motives to action ; and precisely as 

 far as it does this, it may be reckoned a 

 virtue. When it tends to cherish the 

 impure motives, or simply to obstruct 

 the growth of the pure motives, then it 

 must be considered as a vice. That we 

 ought not to rest satisfied with that state 

 in the moral progress, in which an ex- 

 plicit and direct view to the greatest ge- 

 neral happiness or misery is made the 

 primary motive to action, may be argued 

 from the consideration, that a constant at- 

 tention even to these most general hopes 

 and fears would extinguish, by degrees, 

 our love of God and our neighbour, and 

 this especially by augmenting the ideas 

 and desires which centre immediately in 

 self to an undue height. While our own 

 happiness, even the most refined and ge- 

 neral, is the explicit motive, benevolence 

 and piety will never acquire that disin- 

 terestedness which will prompt to their 

 respective course of conduct, without 

 any exterior .stimulus, simply by the im- 

 pulse of the affection. Rational self-in- 

 terest will at times be present to the' 



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