Moral goodness cannot be limited to, still less constituted by, the cultivation of self-regarding virtues, but consists in the attempt to realize in practice that moral ideal which self-analysis has revealed to us as our ideal.
This movement is characterized firstly by its magnitude; secondly, by the fact that the emigrant changes his political allegiance, for by far the greater part of modern emigration is to independent countries, and even where it is to colonies the colonies are largely self-governing and self-regarding; and thirdly, it is a movement of individuals seeking their own good, without state direction or aid.
Nay, further, he required that the Christian " love to God " should be regarded as pure only if purged from the self-regarding desire of the happiness which God gives.
There is no logical connexion between this theory and the doctrine that appetite of desire has always pleasure (or the absence of pain) for its object; but a materialist, framing a system of psychology, will naturally direct his attention to the impulses arising out of bodily wants, whose obvious end is the preservation of the agent's organism; and this, together with a philosophic wish to simplify, may lead him to the conclusion that all human impulses are similarly self-regarding.
It remains to try another psychological basis for ethical construction; instead of presenting the principle of social duty as abstract reason, liable to conflict to any extent naturalness of man's social affections, and demonstrate a normal harmony between these and his self-regarding impulses.