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this machine. There are more wheels and counterpoises in this engine than are easily imagined. It is of too complex a kind to fall under one simple view, or be explained thus briefly in a word or two. The studiers of this mechanism must have a very partial eye to overlook all other motions besides those of the lowest and narrowest compass. It is hard that in the plan or description of this clockwork no wheel or balance should be allowed on the side of the better and more enlarged affections; that nothing should be understood to be done in kindness or generosity; nothing in pure good nature or friendship, or through any social or natural affection of any kind: when perhaps the main springs of this machine will be found to be either those very natural affections themselves, or a compound kind derived from them, and retaining more than one half of their nature.

But here it must not be expected that I should draw up a formal scheme of the passions, or pretend to shew their genealogy and relation, how they are interwoven with one another, or interfere with our happiness and interest. It would be beyond the genius and compass of an essay, to frame a just plan or model; by which the proportion which the friendly and natural affections bear to each other in this order of ar

chitecture, might be shewn. Modern projectors I know would willingly rid their hands of these natural materials; and would fain build after a more uniform way. They would new frame the human heart; and have a mighty fancy to reduce all its motions, balances, and weights to that one principle, a cool and deliberate selfishness. Men, it seems, are unwilling to think they can be so outwitted and imposed on by nature, as to be made to serve her purposes rather than their own They are ashamed to be drawn thus out of themselves, and forced from what they esteem their true interest.

There has been at all times a sort of narrowminded philosophers, who have thought to set this difference to rights by conquering nature in themselves. A primitive father, and founder* among these saw well this power of nature, and understood it so far that he earnestly exhorted his followers neither to beget children nor serve their country.

"Tu Pater, et rerum inventor! Tu patria nobis

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There was no dealing with nature, it seems, while these alluring objects stood in the way. Relations, friends, countrymen, laws, politic constitutions, the beauty of order and government, Lucretius, lib. 3.

* Epicurus.

and the interest of society and mankind, were objects which he well saw would naturally raise a stronger affection than any which was grounded upon the narrow bottom of mere SELF. His advice therefore, not to marry, nor engage in public concerns was wise, and suitable to his design. There was no way to be truly a disciple of this philosophy, but to leave family, friends, country, and society, to cleave to it. And in good

earnest, who would not, if it were happiness to do so? The philosopher, however, was kind in telling us his thought. It was a token of his fatherly love of mankind.

But the revivers of this philosophy in latter days, appear to be of a lower genius. They seem to have understood less of this force of nature, and thought to alter the thing by shifting a name. They would so explain all the social passions and natural affections, as to denominate them of the selfish kind. Thus civility, hospitality, humanity towards strangers, or people in distress, is only a more deliberate selfishness. An honest heart is only a more cunning one; and honesty and good nature a more deliberate or better regulated self-love. The love of kindred, children, and posterity, is purely love of one's self, and of one's own immediate blood; as if by this reckoning all mankind were not included,

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all being of one blood and joined by intermarriages and alliances, as they have been transplanted in colonies and mixed one with another. And thus love of one's country, and love of mankind, must be also self-love. Magnanimity, and courage, no doubt, are modifications of this universal self-love. For courage (says our modern philosopher*) is constant anger; and all men (says a witty poett) would be cowards if they durst.

That the poet and the philosopher both were cowards, may be yielded perhaps without dispute. They may have spoken to the best of their knowledge. But for true courage, it has so little to do with anger, that there lies always the strongest suspicion against it when this passion is highest. The true courage is cool and calm. The bravest of men have the least of a brutal, bullying insolence, and in the very time of danger are found to be the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in fury or anger, can never be placed to the account of courage.

*Sudden courage, says Hobbes (Lev. ch. 6.) is anger. Therefore courage, considered as constant, must, in his account, be defined constant anger, or anger constantly returning.

Lord Rochester's Satire against Man.

Other authors there have been of a yet inferior kind; a sort of distributers and party retailers of this wit, who have run changes and divisions without end upon this article of Selflove. You have the very same thought spun out an hundred ways, and drawn into mottos and devices to set forth this riddle; they say "act as generously and disinterestedly as you please, self is still at the bottom, and nothing else." Now if these gentlemen who delight so much in the play of words, but are cautious how they grapple closely with definitions, would tell us only what self interest was, and determine happiness and good, there would be an end of this enigmatical wit. For in this we should agree, that happiness was to be pursued, and in fact was always sought after: but whether found in following nature, and giving way to common affection, or in suppressing it, and turning every passion towards private advantage, a narrow self end, or the preservation of mere life; this would be the matter in debate between us. The question would not be " Who loved himself or who not, but who loved and served himself after the rightest and the truest manner.

It is the height of wisdom no doubt to be rightly selfish; and to value life, as far as life is good, belongs as much to courage as to discre

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