Chapter XXVII: Act III: Scene II (6)

Supposing therefore that our most generous feelings and actions were equivocal, the object only bearing a shew of disinterestedness, the motive being always selfish, this would be no reason for rejecting the common use of the term _disinterested benevolence_, which expresses nothing more than an immediate reference of our actions to the good of others, as self-love expresses a conscious reference of them to our own good, as means to an end. This is the proper meaning of the terms. If there is any impropriety in the one, the other must be equally objectionable, the same fallacy lurks under both.

Secondly, the objection is not true in itself, that is, I see no reason for resolving the feelings of compassion, &c. into a principle of mechanical self-love. That the motive to action exists in the mind of the person who acts is what no one can deny. The passion excited and the impression producing it must necessarily affect the individual. There must always be some one to feel and act, or there could be no such thing as feeling or action.[98] It cannot therefore be implied as a condition in the love of others, that this love should not be _felt_ by the person who loves them, for this would be to say that he must love them and not love them at the same time, which is palpable nonsense. This absurd inference, I say, could never be implied in the common use of the terms, as it could never be imagined that in order to feel for others, we must in reality feel nothing. This distinction proves clearly that it is always the individual who _loves_, but not that he always _loves himself_; for it is to be presumed that the word _self_ has some meaning in it, and it would have absolutely none at all, if nothing more were intended by it than any object or impression existing in the mind. Self-love would merely signify the love of something, and the distinction between ourselves and others be quite confounded. It therefore becomes necessary to set limits to the meaning of the term.

First, it may signify, as explained above, the love or affection excited by the idea of our own good, and the conscious pursuit of it as a general, remote, ideal thing. In this sense, that is considered with respect to the proposed end of our actions, I have shewn sufficiently that there is no exclusive principle of self-love in the human mind which constantly impels us to pursue our own advantage and nothing but that, and that it must be equally absurd to consider either self-love or benevolence as a physical operation.

Another sense of the term may be, that the indulgence of certain affections necessarily tends without our thinking of it to our immediate gratification, and that the impulse to prolong a state of pleasure and put a stop to whatever gives the mind the least uneasiness is the real spring and overruling principle of our actions. No matter whether the impression existing in my mind is a sensation or an idea, whether it is an idea of my own good or that of another, it’s effect on the mind is entirely owing to this involuntary attachment to whatever contributes to my own gratification, and aversion from actual pain. Or the mind is so constructed that without forethought or any reflection on itself it has a natural tendency to prolong and heighten a state of pleasurable feeling, and instantly remove every painful feeling. This tendency must be wholly unconscious; the moment my own gratification is indirectly adverted to by the mind as the consequence of indulging certain feelings, and so becomes a distinct motive to action, it returns back into the limits of deliberate, calculating selfishness; and it has been shewn that there is nothing in the idea of our own good which makes it a proper motive of action more than that of others. There appears to be as little propriety in making the mechanical tendency to our own good the foundation of human actions. In the first place, it may be sufficient to deny the mere matter of fact, that such is the natural disposition of the human mind. We do not on every occasion blindly consult the interest of the moment, there is no instinctive, unerring bias to our own good, controuling all other impulses, and guiding them to it’s own purposes. It is not true that in giving way to the feelings either of sympathy or rational self-interest (by one or other of which feelings my actions are constantly governed[99]) I always yield to that impulse which is accompanied with most pleasure at the time. It is true that I yield to the strongest inclination, but not that my strongest inclination is to pleasure. The idea of the relief I may afford to a person in extreme distress is not necessarily accompanied by a correspondent degree of pleasurable sensation to counterbalance the painful feeling his immediate distress occasions in my mind. It is certain that sometimes the one and sometimes the other may prevail without altering my purpose in the least: I am held to my purpose by the idea (which I cannot get rid of) of what another suffers, and that it is in my power to alleviate his suffering, not that that idea is always the most agreeable contemplation I could have. The mind is often haunted by painful images and recollections, not that we court their company, but that we cannot shake them off, even though we strive to do it. Why does a woman of the town always turn round to look at another finer than herself? Why does the envious man torment himself by dwelling on the advantages of his rival? Not from the pleasure it affords him. Why then should it be maintained that the feelings of compassion, generosity, &c. cannot possibly actuate the mind, but because and in as far as they contribute to our own satisfaction? Those who willingly perform the most painful duties of friendship or humanity do not do this from the immediate gratification attending it; it is as easy to turn away from a beggar as to relieve him; and if the mind were not governed by a sense of truth, and of the real consequences of it’s actions, we should treat the distresses of others with the same sort of feeling as we go to see a tragedy because we know that the pleasure will be greater than the pain. There is indeed a false and bastard kind of feeling which is governed altogether by a regard to this reaction of pity on our own minds, and which therefore serves more strongly to distinguish the true. So there is a false fear, as well as a refined self-interest. We very often shrink from immediate pain, though we know that it is necessary to our obtaining some important object; and at other times undergo the most painful operations in order to avoid some greater evil at a distance.—In the sense which the objection implies, my love of another is not the love of myself but as it operates to produce my own good. The mind is supposed to be mechanically attached to, or to fly from every idea or impression simply as it affects it with pleasure, or pain. And if this were the case, it might with some propriety be said to be actuated by a principle of mechanical or practical self-love. If however there is no such principle regulating my attachment to others by my own convenience, very little foundation will be left for the mechanical theory. For, secondly, the real question is, why do we sympathize with others at all? It seems we are first impelled by self-love to feel uneasiness at the prospect of another’s suffering, in order that the same principle of tender concern for ourselves may afterwards impel us to get rid of that uneasiness by endeavouring to prevent the suffering which is the cause of it. It is absurd to say that in compassionating the distress of others we are only affected by our own pain or uneasiness, since this very pain arises from our compassion. It is putting the effect before the cause. Before I can be affected by my own pain, I must first be put in pain. If I am affected by, or feel pain and sorrow at an idea existing in my mind, which idea is neither pain itself nor an idea of my own pain, I wonder in what sense this can be called the love of myself. Again, I am equally at a loss to conceive how if the pain which this idea gives me does not impel me to get rid of it as it gives _me_ pain or as it actually affects myself as a distinct, momentary impression, but as it is connected with other ideas, that is, is supposed to affect another, how I say this can be considered as the effect of self-love. The object, effort or struggle of the mind is not to remove the idea or immediate feeling of pain from the individual or to put a stop to that feeling as it affects his temporary interest, but to produce a disconnection (whatever it may cost him) between certain ideas of other things existing in his mind, namely the idea of pain, and the idea of another person. Self, mere physical self, is entirely forgotten both practically and consciously. My own good is neither the exciting cause nor the immediate result of the feeling by which I am actuated. I do not shrink from the idea of the pain which another feels as it affects myself, but it excites repugnance, uneasiness, or active aversion in my mind as it affects, or is connected with the idea of another; and it is because I know that certain actions will prevent or remove that pain from that other person according to the manner in which I have perceived effects to be connected together in nature, that I _will_ those actions for that purpose, or that their ideas take hold of my mind, and affect it in such a manner as to produce their volition. In short, the change which the mind endeavours to produce is not in the relation of a certain painful idea to itself as perceiving it, but in the relation of certain ideas of external things to one another. If this is not sufficient to make the distinction intelligible, I cannot express it any better. ‘Oh, but’ (it will be said) ‘I cannot help feeling pain when I see another in actual pain, or get rid of the idea by any other means than by relieving the person, and knowing that it exists no longer.’ But will this prove that my love of others is regulated by my love of myself, or that my self-love is subservient to my love of others? What hinders me from immediately removing the painful idea from my mind but that my sympathy with others stands in the way of it? That this independent attachment to the good of others is a natural, unavoidable feeling of the human mind is what I do not wish to deny. It is also, if you will, a mechanical feeling; but then it is neither a physical, nor a selfish mechanism. I see colours, hear sounds, feel heat, and cold, and believe that two and two make four by a certain mechanism, or from the necessary structure of the human mind; but it does not follow that all this has any thing to do with self-love.—One half of the process, namely the connecting the sense of pain with the idea of it, is evidently contrary to self-love; nor do I see any more reason for ascribing the uneasiness, or active impulse which follows to that principle, since my own good is neither thought of in it, nor does it follow from it except indirectly, slowly and conditionally. The mechanical tendency to my own ease or gratification is so far from being the real spring or natural motive of compassion that it is constantly overruled and defeated by it. If it should be answered that these restrictions and modifications of the principle of self-love are a necessary consequence of the nature of a thinking being, then I say that it is nonsense to talk of mechanical self-love in connection with a power of reflection, that is, a mind capable of perceiving the consequences of things beyond itself, and of being affected by them. To ask therefore whether if it were possible to get rid of my own uneasiness without supposing the uneasiness of another to be removed I should wish to remove it, is foreign to the purpose; for it is to suppose that the idea of another’s uneasiness is not an immediate object of uneasiness to me, or that by making a distinction of reflection between the idea of what another suffers, and the uneasiness it causes in me, the former will cease to give me any uneasiness, which is a contradiction. A question might as well be put whether if pleasure gave me pain, and pain pleasure, I should not like pain, and dislike pleasure. So long as the idea of what another suffers is a necessary source of uneasiness to me, and the motive and guide of my actions, it is not true that my only concern is for myself, or that I am governed solely by a principle of self-interest.—The body has a mechanical tendency to shrink from physical pain: this may be called mechanical self-love, because, though the good of the individual is not the object of the action, it is the immediate and natural effect of it. The movement which is dictated by nature is directly followed by the cessation of the pain by which the individual was annoyed. The evil is completely removed with respect to the individual, the moment the object is at a distance from him; but it only exists as it affects the individual, it is therefore completely at an end when it ceases to affect him. The only thing necessary therefore is to produce this change in the relation of the body to the object; now this is the exact tendency of the impulse produced by bodily pain, that is, it shrinks _at_ the pain and _from_ the object. The being does not suffer a moment longer than he can help it: for there is nothing that should induce him to remain in pain. The body is not tied down to do penance under the discipline of external objects, till by fulfilling certain conditions, from which it reaps no benefit, it obtains a release; all it’s exertions tend immediately to it’s own relief. The body (at least according to the account here spoken of) is a machine so contrived, that, as far as depends on itself, it always tends to it’s own good, in the mind, on the contrary, there are numberless lets and impediments that interfere with this object inseparable from it’s very nature; the body strives to produce such alterations in it’s relation to other things as conduce to it’s own advantage, the mind seeks to alter the relations of other things to one another; the body _loves_ it’s own good, for it tends to it, the understanding is not governed solely by this principle, for it is constantly aiming at other objects. To make the two cases of physical uneasiness, and compassion parallel, it would be necessary to suppose either an involuntary tendency in the muscles to remove every painful object from another through mechanical sympathy, or that the real object of compassion was to remove the nervous uneasiness, occasioned by the idea of another’s pain, as an abstract sensation existing in my mind, totally unconnected with the idea which gave rise to it.

Lastly, 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 should 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 I hate myself in hating any other person. Indeed upon this principle the whole structure of language is a continued absurdity. Whatever can be made the object of our thoughts must be a part of ourselves, the whole world is contained within us, I am no longer John or James, but every one that I know or can think of, I am the least part of myself, my self-interest is extended as far as my thoughts can reach, I can love no one but I must love myself in him, in hating others I also hate myself. In this sense no one can so much as think of, much less love any one besides himself, for he can only think of his own thoughts. If our generous feelings are thus to be construed into selfishness, our malevolent ones must at least be allowed to be disinterested, for they are directed against ourselves, that is against the _ideas_ of certain persons in our minds. If I can have no feeling _for_ any one but myself, I can have no feeling _about_ any one but myself. Suppose I am seized with a fit of rage against a man, and take up a knife to stab him, the quantity of malice, which according to the common notion is here directed against another, must according to this system fall upon myself. I see a man sitting on the opposite side of a table, towards whom I think I feel the greatest rancour, but in fact I only feel it against myself. For what is this man whom I think I see before me but an object existing in my mind, and therefore a part of myself? The sword which I see is not a real sword, but an image impressed on my mind; and the mental blow which I strike with it is not aimed at another being out of myself, (for that is impossible) but at an idea of my own, at the being whom I hate within myself, at myself. If I am always necessarily the object of my own thoughts and actions, I must hate, love, serve, or stab myself as it happens. 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 that 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 one’s-self, 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.—If by self-love be meant nothing more than the attachment of the mind to any object or idea existing in it, or the connection between any object or idea producing affection and the state of mind produced by it, this is merely the common connection between cause and effect, and the love of every thing must be the love of myself, for the love of every thing must be the love of the object exciting it. On the contrary, if by self-love be meant my attachment to or interest in any object in consequence of it’s affecting me personally or from the stronger and more immediate manner in which certain objects and impressions act upon me, then it cannot be affirmed without an absurdity that all affection whatever is self-love. So if I see a man wounded, and this sight occasions in me a painful feeling of sympathy, I do not in this case feel for myself, because between that idea or object impressed on my mind and the painful feeling which follows there is no such positive connection as there is between the infliction of the same wound on my own body; and the physical pain which follows it. Will it be pretended by any one, on whose brain the intricacies of metaphysics have not had the same effect as the reading of romances had on the renowned knight of La Mancha, that a piece of wood which I see a man cutting in pieces, and so is an object existing in my mind, is a part of myself in the same sense as a leg or an arm? For my own part, as I am not at all affected by the hacking and hewing which this piece of wood receives, or all the blows with which it rings, which are to me mere harmless flourishes in the air, it seems to me a very different thing. The one idea is myself in a simple, very abstract sense indeed, the other idea is myself in the common emphatical sense, it is a reduplication or aggravation of the idea, the object becomes myself by a double right, I am sensible _in_ the object as well as _to_ it. I should say, then, that when the sight of another person wounded excites a feeling of compassion in my mind, this is not a selfish feeling in any narrow or degrading sense of the word, which is the only thing in dispute. (If selfishness is to mean generosity, there is an end at once of the dispute.) And that for this plain reason, that the connection between the visible impression and the feeling of pain is of a totally different kind from the connection between the feeling of pain, and the same wound when inflicted on my own body. The one is an affair of sensation, the other is entirely an affair of imagination. My love of others cannot therefore be built upon the love of myself, 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 shewn 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.

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Footnote 88:

I do not mean that Helvetius was the first who conceived the
hypothesis here spoken of (for I do not think he had wit enough to
invent even an ingenious absurdity) but it was through him I believe
that this notion has attained it’s present popularity, and in France
particularly it has had, I am certain, a very general influence on the
national character. It was brought forward in the most forcible manner
by the writers of the last century, and it is expressly stated, and
clearly answered by Bishop Butler in the Preface to his Sermons at the
Rolls’ Chapel. After Berkeley’s Essay on Vision, I do not know of any
work better worth the attention of those who would learn to think than
these same metaphysical Discourses preached at the Rolls’ Chapel.

Footnote 89:

No doubt the picture is always looked at with a very different feeling
from what it would have been, if the idea of the person had never been
distinctly associated with it.

Footnote 90:

Consciousness is here and all along (where any particular stress is
laid upon it) used in it’s etymological sense, as literally the same
with _conscientia_, the knowing or perceiving many things by a simple
act.

Footnote 91:

Those of the touch admit of the greatest variety in this respect from
the general diffusion of that sense over the whole body, and those
which depend on hearing from the small part of the ear which is in
general distinctly affected by sound at the same time. As to the taste
and smell, the stimulants applied to these senses are such as for the
most part to act on a large proportion of the organ at once, though
only at intervals. The direction of smells is hardly distinguishable
like that of sounds.

Footnote 92:

The method taken by Hartley in detailing the associations, which take
place between the ideas of each of the senses one by one, saves him
the trouble of explaining those which take place between the ideas of
different senses at the same time.

Footnote 93:

I have always had the same feeling with respect to Hartley (still
granting his power to the utmost) which is pleasantly expressed in an
old author, Roger Bacon, quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby in his answer to
Brown. ‘Those students,’ he says, ‘who busy themselves much with such
notions as relate wholly to the fantasie, do hardly ever become
idoneous for abstracted metaphysical speculations; the one having
bulky foundation of matter or of the accidents of it to settle upon,
(at the least with one foot:) the other flying continually, even to a
lessening pitch, in the subtil air. And accordingly, it hath been
generally noted, that the exactest mathematicians, who converse
altogether with lines, figures, and other differences of quantity,
have seldom proved eminent in metaphysicks or speculative divinity.
Nor again, the professors of these sciences in the other arts. Much
less can it be expected, that an excellent physician, whose fancy is
always fraught with the material drugs that he prescribeth his
apothecary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured to
the cutting up, and eyes to the inspection of anatomized bodies,
should easily and with success, flie his thoughts at so towring a
game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soul.’—I confess I
feel in reading Hartley something in the way in which the Dryads must
have done shut up in their old oak trees. I feel my sides pressed
hard, and bored with points of knotty inferences piled up one upon
another without being able ever to recollect myself, or catch a
glimpse of the actual world without me. I am somehow wedged in between
different rows of material objects, overpowering me by their throng,
and from which I have no power to escape, but of which I neither know
nor understand any thing. I constantly see objects multiplied upon me,
not powers at work, I know no reason why one thing follows another but
that something else is conjured up between them, which has as little
apparent connection with either as they have with one another;—he
always reasons from the concrete object, not from the abstract or
essential properties of things, and in his whole book I do not believe
that there is one good definition. It would be a bad way to describe a
man’s character to say that he had a wise father or a foolish son, and
yet this is the way in which Hartley defines ideas by stating what
precedes them in the mind, and what comes after them. Thus he defines
the will to be ‘that idea, or _state of mind_ which precedes action,’
or ‘a desire, or aversion sufficiently strong to produce action,’ &c.
He gives you the outward signs of things in the order in which he
conceives them to follow one another, never the demonstration of
certain consequences from the known nature of their causes, which
alone is true reasoning. Nevertheless, it is not to be forgotten, that
he was also a great man. See his Chapter on Memory, &c.

Footnote 94:

See Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever.

Footnote 95:

See Essays by T. Cooper of Manchester. This very curious analysis was
also delivered with great gravity by Mr. Mac-Intosh to the
metaphysical students of Lincoln’s-Inn. I confess I like ingenuity,
however misapplied, if it is but a man’s own: but the dull, affected,
pompous repetition of nonsense is not to be endured with patience. In
retailing what is not our own, the only merit must be in the choice,
or judgment. A man, however, without originality may yet have common
sense and common honesty. To be a hawker of worn-out paradoxes, and a
pander to sophistry denotes indeed a desperate ambition.

Footnote 96:

This subject of consciousness, the most abstruse, the most important
of all others, the most filled with seeming inexplicable
contradictions, that which bids the completest defiance to the
matter-of-fact philosophy and can only be developed by the patient
soliciting of a man’s own spirit has been accordingly passed over by
the herd of philosophers from Locke downwards. There is a short note
about it in Hartley in which he flatly denies the possibility of any
such thing. Lest what I have already said should therefore be
insufficient to fix the attention of the reader on a subject which he
may think quite exploded, I will add the account which Rousseau has
given of the same subject, whose authority does not weigh the less
with me because it is unsupported by the Logic of Condillac, or the
book De l’Esprit.

‘Me voici déjà tout aussi sûr de l’existence de l’univers, que de la
mienne. Ensuite je réfléchis sur les objets de mes sensations, et
trouvant en moi la faculté de les comparer, je me sens doué d’une
force active que je ne savois pas avoir auparavant.

‘Appercevoir, c’est sentir; comparer, c’est juger: juger et sentir ne
sont pas la même chose. Par la sensation, les objets s’offrent à moi
séparés, isolés, tels qu’ils sont dans la Nature; par la comparaison,
je les remue, je les transporte, pour ainsi dire, je les pose l’un sur
l’autre, pour prononcer sur leur différence ou sur leur similitude, et
généralement sur tous leurs rapports. Selon moi, la faculté
distinctive de l’être actif, ou intelligent est de pouvoir donner un
sens à ce mot, _est_. Je cherche en vain dans l’être purement sensitif
cette force intelligente, qui superpose, et puis qui prononce; je ne
la saurois voir dans sa nature. Cet être passif sentira chaque objet
séparément, ou même il sentira l’objet total formé des deux, mais
n’ayant aucune force pour les replier l’un sur l’autre, il ne les
comparera jamais, il ne les jugera point.

‘Voir deux objets à la fois, n’est pas voir leurs rapports, ni juger
de leurs différences; appercevoir plusieurs objets les uns hors des
autres, n’est pas les nombrer. Je puis avoir au même instant l’idée
d’un grand bâton et d’un petit bâton sans les comparer, sans juger que
l’un est plus petit que l’autre, comme je puis voir à la fois ma main
entière sans faire le compte de mes doigts. Ces idées comparatives,
_plus grande_, _plus petite_, de même que les idées numériques d’_un_,
de _deux_, &c. ne sont certainement pas des sensations, quoique mon
esprit ne les produise, qu’à l’occasion de mes sensations.

‘On nous dit que l’être sensitif distingue les sensations les unes des
autres par les différences qu’ont entr’elles ces mêmes sensations:
ceci demande explication. Quand les sensations sont différentes,
l’être sensitif les distingue par leurs différences: quand elles sont
semblables, il les distingue parce qu’il sent les unes hors des
autres. Autrement, comment dans une sensation simultanée
distingueroit-il deux objets égaux? Il faudroit nécessairement qu’il
confondît ces deux objets, et les prît pour le même, sur-tout dans un
systême où l’on prétend que les sensations représentatives de
l’étendue ne sont point étendues.

‘Quand les deux sensations à comparer sont apperçues, leur impression
est faite, chaque objet est senti, les deux sont sentis; mais leur
rapport n’est pas senti pour cela. Si le jugement de ce rapport
n’étoit qu’une sensation, & me venoit uniquement de l’objet, mes
jugemens ne me tromperoient jamais, puisqu’il n’est jamais faux que je
sente ce que je sens.

‘Pourquoi donc est-ce que je me trompe sur le rapport de ces deux
bâtons, sur-tout s’ils ne sont pas parallèles? Pourquoi, dis-je, par
exemple, que le petit bâton est le tiers du grand, tandis qu’il n’en
est que le quart? Pourquoi l’image, qui est la sensation, n’est elle
pas conforme à son modèle, qui est l’objet? C’est que je suis actif
quand je juge, que l’opération qui compare est fautive, et que mon
entendement, qui juge les rapports, mêle ses erreurs à la vérité des
sensations qui ne montrent que les objets.

‘Ajoutez à cela une réflexion qui vous frappera, je m’assure, quand
vous y aurez pensé; c’est que si nous étions purement passifs dans
l’usage de nos sens, il n’y auroit entr’eux aucun communication; il
nous seroit impossible de connoître que le corps que nous touchons, et
l’objet que nous voyons sont le même. Ou nous ne sentirions jamais
rien hors de nous, ou il y auroit pour nous cinq substances sensibles,
donc nous n’aurions nul moyen d’appercevoir l’identité.

‘Qu’on donne tel ou tel nom à cette force de mon esprit qui rapproche
et compare mes sensations; qu’on l’appelle attention, méditation,
réflexion, ou comme on voudra; toujours est-il vrai qu’elle est en moi
et non dans les choses, que c’est moi seul qui la produis, quoique je
ne la produise qu’à l’occasion de l’impression que font sur moi les
objets. Sans être maître de sentir ou de ne pas sentir, je le suis
d’examiner plus ou moins ce que je sens.

‘Je ne suis donc pas simplement un être sensitif et passif, mais un
être actif et intelligent, et quoi qu’en dise la philosophie, j’oserai
prétendre à l’honneur de penser, &c.’—EMILE, beginning of the third,
or end of the second volume.

Footnote 97:

I here speak of association as distinct from imagination or the
effects of novelty.

Footnote 98:

See preface to Butler’s Sermons.

Footnote 99:

As far as the love of good or happiness operates as a general
principle of action, it is in this way. I have supposed this principle
to be at the bottom of all our actions, because I did not desire to
enter into the question. If I should ever finish the plan which I have
begun, I shall endeavour to shew that the love of happiness even in
the most general sense does not account for the passions of men. The
love of truth, and the love of power are I think distinct principles
of action, and mix with, and modify all our pursuits. See Butler as
quoted above.

NOTES

THE PLAIN SPEAKER

ESSAY I. ON THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS

PAGE

1. _Do you read_, etc. See vol. viii. p. 319 (_A View of the English
Stage_).

5. _Feathered, two-legged things._

‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’
Dryden’s _Absalom and Achitophel_, l. 170.

_Unpleasing flats and sharps._ Cf. 4 ‘Straining harsh discords and
unpleasing sharps.’ _Romeo and Juliet_, III. 5.

_His Muse has been silent._ _Waverley_ was published in 1814, the
_Lord of the Isles_ in 1815; other novels followed, and, with the
exception of _Harold the Dauntless_, published in 1817, Sir Walter’s
work was confined to novels until the issue of _Halidon Hill_ in
1822. Scott publicly acknowledged his authorship of the _Waverley
Novels_ on Feb. 23, 1827.

6. _The translation of Ossian’s poems._ James Macpherson’s (1736–1796)
so-called translations were published in 1761–1763.

_Shaftesbury’s Characteristics._ _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions and Times_ (1711), a collection of the works of Anthony
Ashley Cooper (1671–1713) third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, says
Sidgwick, was ‘the first to make psychological experience the basis
of ethics.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt’s attention was
drawn to this work in Baskerville’s edition, which his father is
represented as reading in the oil painting executed in 1804.

_Foregone conclusion._ _Othello_, III. 3.

_Horne Tooke._ John Horne Tooke (1736–1812) was elected Member for Old
Sarum in 1801, after unsuccessfully contesting Westminster in 1790
and 1797.

_The Portraits of Kneller, Richardson, and others._ Sir Godfrey
Kneller (1648–1723), painter of the Kit-Cat Club Portraits, and
Jonathan Richardson (c. 1665–1745), who, after Kneller’s death, was
considered the head of his profession.

7. _He murmurs by the running brooks._ Wordsworth’s ‘A Poet’s
Epitaph.’

_Charles Fox_. Charles James Fox (1749–1806).

_Lord Stormont._ David Murray (1727–1796), diplomatist and statesman,
second Earl of Mansfield (1793) and eldest son of David, sixth
Viscount Stormont, who died in 1748.

8. _To come trippingly off the tongue._ _Hamlet_, III. 2.

_Invita Minervâ._ ‘Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva,’ Horace,
_De Arte Poet._, 385.

9. _Like Goldsmith ... a Noble Lord._ Prior, in his _Life of
Goldsmith_, II. pp. 66–68, refers to this as a ‘ludicrous story’
which has ‘long been told.’ He describes it as ‘wholly a
fabrication.’

10. _Treads the primrose path._ _Hamlet_, I. 3.

_The highest_ [brightest] _heaven of invention_. _King Henry V._
Prologue.

_He is nothing if not fanciful_ [critical]. _Othello_, II. 1.

_Bristol-stones._ Brilliant crystals of colourless quartz, found on
St. Vincent’s Rocks near Bristol, go by the name of Bristol
Diamonds.

_On the unstedfast footing of a spear._ _1 King Henry IV._, I. 3.

11. _To make us heirs._ Wordsworth’s ‘Personal Talk,’ _Poems of
Sentiment_ XIII. [by heavenly lays].

_Like beauty making beautiful old rime._ Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_, 106.

_Letter to a Noble Lord._ Published 1796.

12. _Buttress, frieze ... pendant bed._ _Macbeth_, I. 6.

_At one fell swoop._ _Macbeth_, IV. 4.

_Sharp and sweet._ Cf. ‘As sweet as sharp.’ _All’s Well that Ends
Well_, IV. 4.

13. _From Windsor’s heights._ _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
College._ [‘Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey’].

_The so much admired description._ Speech on the motion made for
papers relative to the directions for charging the Nabob of Arcot’s
private debts to Europeans on the Revenues of the Carnatick,
February 28th, 1785.

_The Abbe Sieyes ... ‘pigeon-holes.’_ Burke’s _A Letter to a Noble
Lord_, p. 142 (_Works_, Bohn, V.).

_The comparison of the Duke of Bedford._ _A Letter to a Noble Lord_,
(_Ib._) p. 129.

_That sea-beast._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 200–2.

_Put his hook in the nostrils._ The Book of Job, xli. 1–2.

_The death of Lord Castlereagh._ Robert Stewart (1769–1822), Viscount
Castlereagh 1796, and second Marquis of Londonderry 1821. See vol.
III., _Political Essays_, note to p. 36. He committed suicide in a
fit of insanity.

14. _Mr. Montgomery._ James Montgomery (1771–1854) began the
_Sheffield Iris_ in 1794, and edited it until 1825.

15. _Poets have been said to succeed best in fiction._ The reply of
Edmund Waller to Charles II., who had complained of the inferiority
of the poet’s verses on the Restoration as compared with his
panegyric on Cromwell.

_Forlorn way obscure._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II. 615. ‘In confused
march forlorn.’

16. _Old Fuller, and Burton, and Latimer._ Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
of the _Worthies_ (1662); Robert Burton (1577–1640) of the _Anatomy
of Melancholy_ (1621); and Hugh Latimer (1491–1555), Bishop, and
writer of _The Ploughers_ (1549).

_The poet-laureat._ Robert Southey (1774–1843) was made poet-laureate
in 1813.

_Extravagant and erring spirit._ _Hamlet_, I. 1.

_Stoops to earth._ Cf. ‘But stoop’d to Truth, and moraliz’d his song.’
Pope, _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, l. 341.

_The words of Mercury._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, v. 2.

16. _Wat Tyler._ Published 1817.

_The Author of Rimini, and Editor of the Examiner._ Leigh Hunt’s poem,
_The Story of Rimini_, was published in 1816. The first number of
_The Examiner, a Sunday Paper on Politics, Domestic Economy and
Theatricals_, appeared on Jan. 3, 1808.

17. _His effusions in the Indicator._ This paper lasted from Oct. 13,
1819 to March 21, 1821. A second series lasted from March 28, 1821
to Oct. 13, 1821.

ESSAY II. ON DREAMS

From _The New Monthly Magazine_, ‘Table Talk, VI.,’ ‘Dreaming,’ No. 27, Vol. 7, 1823.

17. _Dr. Spurzheim._ J. G. Spurzheim, phrenologist (1776–1832). See
_The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, founded on an
Anatomical and Physiological Examination of the Nervous System in
general, and of the Brain in particular_, 1815. See also the Essay
on p. 137, _et seq._, _ante_, ‘On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory.’

18. _Imparted in dreadful secresy._ _Hamlet_, I. 2.

21. _That which was now a horse._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV. 14.

22. _Heat-oppressed brain._ _Macbeth_, II. 1.

24. _Bishop Atterbury._ Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), Bishop of
Rochester, Jacobite and controversialist, and correspondent of Pope
and Swift. See also vol. VIII. _Lectures on the English Comic
Writers_, p. 14.

_Intus et in cute._ Persius, _Sat._ III. 30.

_The New Eloise._ Rousseau’s _Nouvelle Héloïse_ (1760), Sixième
Partie, Lettre XII.

ESSAY III. ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS

From _The London Magazine_, ‘Table Talk, III.,’ Sep. 20, 1820, signed ‘T., Winterslow Hut,’ vol. 2. The footnote which follows was not reprinted from the Magazine. The Essay was also published as ‘Table Talk, V.’ _The New Monthly Magazine_, No. 24, Vol. 5, 1822. See the Essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’

‘Of all persons spouters at Debating Societies are the most intolerable and troublesome as acquaintance. They have a constant desire to hear themselves talk, and never know what any one else wishes to hear. They talk incessantly, and say nothing. They are loud, offensive, and common-place. They try to get the ear of the company as they get the ear of the Chair, which, having got, they will not let go. They bait some unpretending individual (as if it was a case-hardened antagonist) with gross and vapid assurance, and turn a drawing-room into a bear-garden. They have all the prolixity and unwieldiness of authorship, without any of the solidity, and have all the ambition of orators to shine, without the ability, the excuse, or the inclination on the part of others to attend to them. I know one of this class in particular who has no more business in any party of ladies and gentlemen, with his splay-foot manners and long train of awkward speeches, than the Dragon of Wantley.’

25. _And of his port._ Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, 69.

_He is one that cannot make a good leg._ _The Return from Parnassus_,
II. 6. See vol. V., _Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age
of Elizabeth_, p. 284.

_Tull’s Husbandry._ _New Horse-hoing Husbandry, or an Essay on the
Principles of Tillage and Vegetation; wherein is shewn a sort of
Vineyard Culture into the Corn Fields, in order to increase their
Product, and diminish the Common Expense by Instruments described in
the Cuts._ By Jethro Tull (1733). The Fourth edition contained an
Introduction by William Cobbett. See also vol. VI., _Table Talk_, p.
102 and note.

_The Philosopher of Botley._ William Cobbett (1762–1835), who settled
at Botley, Hampshire, in the early years of the nineteenth century.

26. _Dilworth’s Spelling Book._ ? Thomas Dilworth’s _A New Guide to
the English Tongue_, an eighteenth century book.

_Fearn’s Treatise on Contingent Remainders._ Charles Fearne’s
(1742–1794) _An Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and
Executory Devises_ (1772). a book which made him an authority.

_Etherial mould, sky-tinctured._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II. 139, and V.
285.

_Breathe in other air less pure._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 284.

_Confined and cabin’d in._ _Macbeth_, III. 4; ‘cabined, cribbed,
confined, bound in.’

_Verily we have our reward._ _S. Matthew_, vi. 2.

27. _Should go about to cozen fortune._ _Merchant of Venice_, II. 9.

_Because we are scholars_ [virtuous]. _Twelfth Night_, II. 3.

27. _The wretched slave._ _King Henry V._, IV. 1.

28. _Tell his tale._ Milton’s _L’Allegro_.

_Stocks and stones._ ‘You blocks, you stones, etc.’ _Julius Cæsar_, I.
1.

29. _Miss ——._ The reference is probably to Fanny Burney (1752–1840),
and her novels _Evelina_ (1778) and _Cecilia_ (1782).

_Whose is the superscription?_ _S. Matthew_, xxii. 20.

_G—— C——._ Probably Godwin and Coleridge.

32. _The fear of being silent strikes us dumb_ [‘makes us mute’].
Cowper, _Conversation_, 352.

33. _Grimm’s Memoirs._ Colburn published in 1813 an abridgment in 4
vols. of the _Mémoires historiques, littéraires et anecdotiques_ of
Frederic Melchior, Baron de Grimm (1723–1807). They are full of
entertaining information concerning eighteenth century French
writers. See Vol. I. _The Round Table_, p. 131 _et seq._

_We had good talk, sir._ Boswell’s _Johnson_, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 66.

_I once knew a very ingenious man._ Probably Sir John Stoddart,
Hazlitt’s brother-in-law. He was a friend of the Bourbons. See vol.
III. _Political Essays_, p. 169 _et seq._

_Sterne ... Yorick._ _A Sentimental Journey_: The Passport,
Versailles.

34. _Villainous, and shews a pitiful ambition._ _Hamlet_, III. 2.

_When Greek meets Greek._ ‘When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug
of war.’ Nathaniel Lee’s (1655–1692) _Alexander the Great_, IV. 2.

_C——._ Coleridge.

ESSAY IV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

35. _L——‘s._ Lamb’s. See the chapter entitled ‘Lamb’s Wednesdays’ in
the _Memoirs of W. Hazlitt_, Vol. I. p. 271 _et seq._

_The Small-coal man’s musical parties._ Thomas Britton (1654–1714), a
dealer in small coal and a collector of every musical book he could
meet with. He was frightened to death by a ventriloquist.

_John Buncle._ See Vol. I. _The Round Table_, p. 51 _et seq._, and
Lamb’s Essay on ‘Imperfect Sympathies.’

36. _And, in our flowing cups._

‘Then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words ...
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.’
_King Henry V._ IV. 3.

_The cartoons at Hampton Court._ See Hazlitt’s essay on ‘The Pictures
at Hampton Court.’

_A list of persons._ See the essay entitled ‘On Persons one would wish
to have seen.’

36. _C——._ Coleridge, here and throughout the essay.

37. _Ned P——._ Edward Phillips, secretary to Charles Abbott, Speaker
of the House of Commons. See Lamb’s _Letters_, ed. Hazlitt, I. pp.
76, 419, etc.

_Captain ——._ Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750–1821), brother of Fanny
Burney and author of the famous _Chronological History of the
Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean_
(1803–1817), 5 vols. He sailed with Captain Cook in two of his
voyages.

_Jem White, the author of Falstaff’s Letters._ _Original Letters,
etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, now first made public by
a Gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine MSS. which
have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred
years_ (1796). See Lamb’s _Letters_, ed. Hazlitt, I. 10, 90, etc.
and _The Lambs_, 1897, pp. 24–6.

_Turning like the latter end of a lover’s lute._ _Letters of Sir John
Falstaff_, etc. (see above), in a letter from ‘Davy to Shallow.’
Said of Master Abram, who dies of love for sweet Anne Page. See
Lamb’s review of the _Letters_ in _The Examiner_, Sep. 5, 1819, and
Leigh Hunt’s reprint of it in _The Indicator_, Jan. 24, 1821. Lamb
was suspected of having had a share in his friend and schoolmate’s
book.

_A——._ William Ayrton (1777–1858), musical critic and editor of
Charles Knight’s _Musical Library_.

_Mrs. R——._ Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb’s ‘sage woman.’

_M. B._ Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s friend, the son of Admiral
Burney.

_The author of ‘the Road to Ruin.’_ Thomas Holcroft. See Vol. II. p.
121 _et seq._

_The Critique of Pure Reason._ Immanuel Kant’s work was published in
1781.

_Mitre-court._ In the Temple, where the Lambs resided for eight years
at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

38. _The Biographia Literaria._ Coleridge’s book was published in
1817.

_Like Angels’ visits._ ‘Like those of angels, short and far between.’
Blair’s _The Grave_, 582. Cf. Vol. V. _Lectures on the English
Poets_, p. 150.

_Mr. Douce of the Museum._ Francis Douce (d. 1834), antiquarian,
Shakespearian scholar, and keeper of manuscripts in the British
Museum.

_L. H—— ... tropical blood._ Leigh Hunt’s father, Isaac Hunt, was a
Barbadian.

_Aliquando sufflaminandus erat._ Probably quoted from Ben Jonson’s
_Discoveries_, LXIV., De Shakespeare Nostrati. See Vol. IV. _The
Spirit of the Age_, note to p. 336.

39. _Mr. Northcote._ James Northcote (1746–1831).

40. _Hear a sound so fine._ James Sheridan Knowles’s _Virginius_
(1820), V. 2.

41. _Fuseli._ Heinrich Fuessly or Henry Fuseli, portrait-painter and
art critic (1741–1825). Cf. Vol. IV. _The Spirit of the Age_, p.
233.

_Curran._ John Philpot Curran (1750–1817), the Irish advocate.

_Mrs. Inchbald._ Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist
and actress.

_Mary Woolstonecroft._ Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759–1797), of the
_Vindication of the Rights of Women_ (1792).

_From noon to dewy eve._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 743.

_A Table Talk._ See note on source of this essay, above.

_Peter Pindar._ John Wolcot, ‘Peter Pindar’ (1738–1819), physician,
satirist and poet.

_Mrs. M——._ Mrs. Montagu, Basil Montagu’s third wife, the widow of
Thomas Skepper and mother (by Skepper) of Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter.
She married Montagu about 1806.

42. _H—t’s._ Hunt’s.

_N——‘s._ Northcote’s.

_H—y—dn’s._ Haydon’s.

_A Doctor Tronchin._ Theodore Tronchin (1709–1781), Genevan physician
and friend of Rousseau.

_Sir Fopling Flutter._ In Sir George Etherege’s comedy _The Man of
Mode_.

_For wit is like a rest._ Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben
Jonson, printed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Comedies (1647) [the best
gamesters].

_L—— once came down._ To Winterslow. See Vol. VI. _Table Talk_, notes
to pp. 90 and 188.

_Like the most capricious poet_ [honest] _Ovid_. _As You Like It_,
III. 3.

_Walked gowned._ Lamb’s _Sonnet_, written at Cambridge, August 15,
1819.

_The person I mean._ Undoubtedly George Dyer. See Lamb’s description
of him in ‘Oxford in the Vacation’ (_Essays of Elia_).

ESSAY V. ON REASON AND IMAGINATION

44. _This breathing world._ _King Richard III._, I. 1.

45. _In the world’s volume._ _Cymbeline_, III. 4. ‘Seems as of it.’

_There are more things._ _Hamlet_ I. 5.

46. _The shadows in Plato’s cave._ _The Republic_, Book VII.

_As mice in an air-pump._ Burke, _A Letter to a Noble Lord_ (_Works_,
Bohn, V. p. 142). Cf. also Young, _Love of Fame_, V. 177, and _The
Spectator_, No. 21.

_All the mighty world of eye and ear._ Wordsworth’s _Tintern Abbey_.

_The Last Moments of Mr. Fox._ _Circumstantial details of the Long
Illness and last moments of the Rt. Hon. Charles James Fox, together
with some strictures on his Public and Private Life_, 1806. The
remark about Burke’s style does not seem to have been made by Lord
Holland.

_Lord Holland._ Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland
(1773–1840).

_Words that glow._ ‘Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’ Gray’s
_Progress of Poesy_, 110.

48. _Granville Sharp._ The abolitionist (1735–1813), whose Memoirs by
Prince Hoare were published in 1810.

49. _Mr. Bentham._ See Vol. IV. _The Spirit of the Age_, pp. 189, _et
seq._

_Paley’s Moral Philosophy._ William Paley’s (1743–1805) _Moral and
Political Philosophy_ was published in 1785.

_Tucker’s Light of Nature._ Abraham Tucker’s (1705–1774) _The Light of
Nature Pursued_ (7 vols., 1768–1778) was abridged by Hazlitt. See
Vol. IV. of the present edition, pp. 371–385.

50. _The tyrant’s plea._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 393.

_Casts its shadow before._ Campbell’s _Lochiel’s Warning_.

51. _The classical administration of Mr. Canning._ The oratory of
George Canning (1770–1827) was noted for its classical turn.

_Ex uno omnes._ Cf. ‘ab uno disce omnes,’ Virgil’s _Æneid_, II. 65–6.

_What can we reason._ Pope’s Essay _on Man_, Ep. I. 18.

52. _A breath can mar_ [make] _them_. Goldsmith’s _Deserted Village_,
54.

_His Social Contract._ Published 1762.

54. ‘_Duchess of Malfy._’ Webster’s tragedy (1623).

_Give the mind pause._ Cf. ‘Give us pause.’ _Hamlet_, III. 1.

_One touch of nature._ _Troilus and Cressida_, III. 3.

_Thou hast no speculation._ _Macbeth_, III. 4.

55. _Both at the first and now._ _Hamlet_, III. 2.

_To feel what others are._ Gray, _Ode to Adversity_.

ESSAY VI. ON APPLICATION TO STUDY

From _The New Monthly Magazine_, No. 35, Vol. VIII., 1823, ‘Table Talk, X.’

55. _Wilson the Painter._ Richard Wilson (1714–1782), ‘The English
Claude.’

56. _Morland._ George Morland (1763–1804), painter of country scenes
and humble life.

_Invita Minervâ._ See _ante_, note to p. 8.

_The labour we delight in._ _Macbeth_, II. 1.

_Denner._ Balthasar Denner, a German portrait painter (1685–1749).

_To him a kingdom was._ Cf. ‘My mind to me a kingdom is,’ by Sir
Edward Dyer.

_A lucid mirror._ Cowper, _The Task_, I. 701–2.

_Begun in gladness._ Wordsworth’s _Resolution and Independence_, St.
8.

57. _The Children in the Fiery Furnace._ _Daniel_, iii. 6.

_Terræ filii._ Cf. Persius, _Sat._ VI. 59, ‘Terræ est jam filius.’

_Highest_ [brightest] _Heaven of invention_. _King Henry V._ Prologue.

58. _Nice customs curtesy._ _King Henry V._ V. 2.

_A jest’s prosperity._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 2.

59. _The random, blindfold blows._

‘Strike in the dark, offending but by chance,
Such are the blindfold blows of Ignorance.’
Dryden, _The Hind and the Panther_, I. 323–4.

_Had drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again._

‘As fast
As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in
Like breath.’
Beaumont and Fletcher’s _Philaster_, V. 5.

_The sounding cataract._ Wordsworth, _Tintern Abbey_.

60. _Propulsive force._ Cf.

‘Like to the Pontic sea
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, etc. _Othello_, III. 3.

_Grows with our growth._ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, Epis. II. 136.

61. _The Prince of Painters._ The title is generally given to
Parrhasius, the Greek painter (c. 400 B.C.), but Hazlitt refers to
Raphael.

_Salvator._ Salvator Rosa, Neapolitan painter, musician and poet
(1615–1673).

_Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses._ Published 1771, etc.

_The Rev. W. Shepherd._ His _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_ was published
at Liverpool in 1802.

62. _Unfold the book._ _Hamlet_, I. 5.

_Spiritus precipitandus est._ See Vol. IV. _The Spirit of the Age_,
note to p. 309.

_Mr. Cobbett._ See Vol. IV., _The Spirit of the Age_, pp. 334 _et
seq._

63. _Perseverance, dear my lord._ _Troilus and Cressida_, III. 3.

64. _Ned Softly, in the Tatler._ See No. 163, April 25, 1710.

65. _Never ending, still beginning._ Dryden, _Alexander’s Feast_, 102.
Also cf. ‘Still ending and beginning still,’ Cowper’s _The Task_,
III. 627.

_Physician, heal thyself._ _S. Luke_, iv. 23.

66. _Dr. Burney._ Charles Burney the elder (1726–1814), historian of
music.

ESSAY VII. ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE

From _The New Monthly Magazine_, No. 32, vol. VIII. 1823, ‘Table Talk, VII.’

66. _Mr. Blackwood ... Cockney._ See Vol. VI. _Table Talk_, note to p.
98.

67. _Beyond Hyde Park._ Etherege’s _The Man of Mode_, V. 2.