 But to us, probability is the very guide of life. |
| Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else. |
| Happiness does not consist in self-love. |
| However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it. |
| People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable. |
| As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow. |
| There is a much more exact correspondence between the natural and moral world than we are apt to take notice of. |
| The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written. |
| Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it. |
| Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived? |
| Every man is to be considered in two capacities, the private and public; as designed to pursue his own interest, and likewise to contribute to the good of others. |
| The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves. |
| Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed. |
| Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food. |
| Thus there is no doubt the eye was intended for us to see with. |
| The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery. |
| For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. |
| Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not. |
| The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone; therefore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of. |
| Thus self-love as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are, themselves, their objects and ends, stated and shown. |
