aims on others, and in return to
under-rate their's on him; a disposition to undervalue the advantages,
and over-state the disadvantages, of his condition in life. Thence
spring rapacity and venality, and sensuality. Thence imperious nobles,
and factious leaders; and an unruly commonalty, bearing with difficulty
the inconveniences of a lower station, and imputing to the nature or
administration of their government the evils which necessarily flow from
the very constitution of our species, or which perhaps are chiefly the
result of their own vices and follies. The opposite to selfishness is
public spirit; which may be termed, not unjustly, the grand principle of
political vitality, the very _life's breath_ of states, which tends to
keep them active and vigorous, and to carry them to greatness and glory.

The tendency of public spirit, and the opposite tendency of selfishness,
have not escaped the observation of the founders of states, or of the
writers on government; and various expedients have been resorted to and
extolled, for cherishing the one, and for repressing the other.
Sometimes a principle of internal agitation and dissension, resulting
from the very frame of the government, has been productive of the
effect. Sparta flourished for more than seven hundred years under the
civil institutions of Lycurgus; which guarded against the selfish
principle, by prohibiting commerce, and imposing universal poverty and
hardship. The Roman commonwealth, in which public spirit was cherished,
and selfishness checked, by the principle of the love of glory, was also
of long continuance. This passion naturally operates to produce an
unbounded spirit of conquest, which, like the ambition of the greatest
of its own heroes, was never satiated while any other kingdom was left
it to subdue. The principle of political vitality, when kept alive only
by means like these, merits the description once given of eloquence:
"Sicut flamma, materia alitur, & motibus excitatur, & urendo clarescit."
But like eloquence, when no longer called into action by external
causes, or fomented by civil broils, it gradually languishes. Wealth and
luxury produce stagnation, and stagnation terminates in death.

To provide, however, for the continuance of a state, by the admission of
internal dissensions, or even by the chilling influence of poverty,
seems to be in some sort sacrificing the end to the means. Happiness is
the end for which men unite in civil socie