and Horace seem to have enjoyed from nature, and cultivated by
reflection, as generous and friendly dispositions as any disciple
of the austerer schools. And among the modern, Hobbes and Locke,
who maintained the selfish system of morals, lived irreproachable
lives; though the former lay not under any restraint of religion
which might supply the defects of his philosophy.

An epicurean or a Hobbist readily allows, that there is such a
thing as a friendship in the world, without hypocrisy or
disguise; though he may attempt, by a philosophical chymistry, to
resolve the elements of this passion, if I may so speak, into
those of another, and explain every affection to be self-love,
twisted and moulded, by a particular turn of imagination, into a
variety of appearances. But as the same turn of imagination
prevails not in every man, nor gives the same direction to the
original passion; this is sufficient even according to the
selfish system to make the widest difference in human characters,
and denominate one man virtuous and humane, another vicious and
meanly interested. I esteem the man whose self-love, by whatever
means, is so directed as to give him a concern for others, and
render him serviceable to society: as I hate or despise him, who
has no regard to any thing beyond his own gratifications and
enjoyments. In vain would you suggest that these characters,
though seemingly opposite, are at bottom the same, and that a
very inconsiderable turn of thought forms the whole difference
between them. Each character, notwithstanding these
inconsiderable differences, appears to me, in practice, pretty
durable and untransmutable. And I find not in this more than in
other subjects, that the natural sentiments arising from the
general appearances of things are easily destroyed by subtile