own affection, and the gratification of it one's own private
enjoyment. And so far as it is taken for granted that barely having
the means and materials of enjoyment is what constitutes interest
and happiness; that our interest or good consists in possessions
themselves, in having the property of riches, houses, lands,
gardens, not in the enjoyment of them; so far it will even more
strongly be taken for granted, in the way already explained, that an
affection's conducing to the good of another must even necessarily
occasion it to conduce less to private good, if not to be positively
detrimental to it. For, if property and happiness are one and the
same thing, as by increasing the property of another you lessen your
own property, so by promoting the happiness of another you must
lessen your own happiness. But whatever occasioned the mistake, I
hope it has been fully proved to be one, as it has been proved, that
there is no peculiar rivalship or competition between self-love and
benevolence: that as there may be a competition between these two,
so there many also between any particular affection whatever and
self-love; that every particular affection, benevolence among the
rest, is subservient to self-love by being the instrument of private
enjoyment; and that in one respect benevolence contributes more to
private interest, i.e., enjoyment or satisfaction, than any other of
the particular common affections, as it is in a degree its own
gratification.

And to all these things may be added that religion, from whence
arises our strongest obligation to benevolence, is so far from
disowning the principle of self-love, that it often addresses itself
to that very principle, and always to the mind in that state when
reason presides, and there can no access be had to the
understanding, but by convincing men that the course of life we