more from the lessons received, in respect to the wise and good, exclusively of others.
Cor. III. In considering the sources of honour and shame, it will appear, that they are by no means consistent with one another; and, by a farther inquiry, that the maximum of the pleasures of this class ulimately coincides, omni ex parte, with moral rectitude.
Section III
THE PLEASURES AND PAINS OF SELF-INTEREST.
Self-interest may be distinguished into three kinds, viz.
First, Gross self-interest, or the cool pursuit of the means whereby the pleasures of sensation, imagination, and ambition, are to be obtained, and their pains avoided.
Secondly, Refined self-interest, or a like pursuit of the means that relate to the pleasures and pains of sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense.
And, Thirdly, Rational self-interest, or the pursuit of a man’s greatest possible happiness, without any partiality to this or that kind of happiness, means of happiness, means of a means, &c.
The love of money may be considered as the chief species of gross self-interest, and will help us, in an eminent manner, to unfold the mutual influences of our pleasures and pains, with the factitious nature of the intellectual ones, and the doctrine of association in general, as well as the particular progress, windings, and endless redoublings of self-love. For it is evident at first sight, that money cannot naturally and originally be the object of our faculties; no child can be supposed born with the love of it. Yet we see, that some small degrees of this love rise early in infancy; that it generally increases during youth and manhood; and that at last, in some old persons, it so engrosses and absorbs all their passions and pursuits, as that from being considered as the representative, standard, common measure and means of obtaining the commodities which occur in common life, it shall be esteemed the adequate exponent and means of happiness in general, and the thing itself, the sum total of all that is
