The existence of pure or disinterested Benevolence is proved by such facts, as Friendship, Compassion, Parental and Filial affections, Benevolent impulses to mankind generally.  But although the object of benevolence is the public good, and of self-love private good, yet the two ultimately coincide. [This questionable assertion must trammel any proof that the author can give of our possessing purely disinterested impulses.]

In a long note, he impugns the theory of Hobbes that Benevolent affection and its pleasures are merely a form of the love of Power.  He maintains, and with reason, that the love of power manifests its consequences quite as much in cruelty as in benevolence.

The second argument, to show that Benevolence is a fact of our constitution, involves the greatest peculiarity of Butler’s Psychology, although he was not the first to announce it.  The scheme of the human feelings comprehends, in addition to Benevolence and Self-Love, a number of passions and affections tending to the same ends as these (some to the good of our fellows, others to our own good); while in following them we are not conscious of seeking those ends, but some different ends.  Such are our various Appetites and Passions.  Thus, hunger promotes our private well-being, but in obeying its dictates we are not thinking of that object, but of the procuring of food.  Curiosity promotes both public and private good, but its direct and immediate object is knowledge.

This refined distinction appears first in Aquinas; there is in it a palpable confusion of ideas.  If we regard the final impulse of hunger, it is not toward the food, but towards the appeasing of a pain and the gaining of a pleasure, which are certainly identical with self, being the definition of self in the last resort.  We associate the food with the gratification of these demands, and hence food becomes an end to us—­one of the associated or intermediate ends.  So the desire of knowledge is the desire of the pleasure, or of the relief from pain, accruing from knowledge; while, as in the case of food, knowledge is to a great degree only an instrument, and therefore an intermediate and associated end.  So the desire of esteem is the desire of a pleasure, or else of the instrument of pleasure.

In short, Butler tries, without effect, to evade the general principles of the will—­our being moved exclusively by pleasure and pain.  Abundant reference has been already made to the circumstances that modify in appearance, or in reality, the operation of this principle.  The distinction between self-love and the particular appetites, passions, and affections, is mainly the distinction between a great aggregate of the reason (the total interests of our being) and the separate items that make it up.