really to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said:
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," this does not mean,
"Thou shalt first of all love, and by means of this love (in the
next place) do him good"; but: "Do good to thy neighbour, and this
beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit
of inclination to beneficence)."

The love of complacency (amor complacentiae,) would therefore
alone be direct. This is a pleasure immediately connected with the
idea of the existence of an object, and to have a duty to this, that
is, to be necessitated to find pleasure in a thing, is a
contradiction.



{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 155}

D. OF RESPECT



Respect (reverentia) is likewise something merely subjective; a
feeling of a peculiar kind not a judgement about an object which it
would be a duty to effect or to advance. For if considered as duty
it could only be conceived as such by means of the respect which we
have for it. To have a duty to this, therefore, would be as much as to
say to be bound in duty to have a duty. When, therefore, it is said:
"Man has a duty of self-esteem," this is improperly stated, and we
ought rather to say: "The law within him inevitably forces from him
respect for his own being, and this feeling (which is of a peculiar