“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.”
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Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
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.
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.
The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity, and with respect only to the present world, is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.