Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/63

action, or excite in him any kind of impulse in any circumstances or any manner: and I conceive that it is no great stretch of speculative refinement to insist that without some such original faculty of being immediately affected by his future sensations more than by those of others, his relation to his future self, whatever that may be, cannot be made the foundation of his having a real positive interest in his future welfare which he has not in that of others. A general, or abstract, or reflex interest in any object, implies either a previous positive interest in that object, or a natural capacity in the mind to be affected by it in the manner given. Thus, I may be said to pursue any object from a general interest in it, though it excites no interest or emotion in my mind at the time, when I do this from habit, or when the impression has been so often repeated as to have produced a mechanical tendency to the pursuit of the object, which has no need of any new impulse to excite it. Or the same thing may be said with reference to my general nature as a voluntary agent. This implies that the object, in which I am supposed to be interested without being sensible of it, is in itself interesting to me; that it is an object in which I can and must necessarily be interested, the moment it is known to me; that I am interested generally in that whole class of objects, and may be said to be interested in this inclusively. To go farther than this, and say that the mind as the representative of truth, is or ought to be interested in things as they are really and truly interesting in themselves, without any reference to the manner in which they immediately affect the individual, is to destroy at once the foundation of every principle of selfishness, which supposes that all objects are good or bad, desirable or the contrary, solely from their connection with self. But I am tired of repeating the same thing so often; for "as