ted ones; but I had not believed that the whole weight of the
depraved mob of modern England, though they have become incapable alike
of fidelity to their own country, and alliance with any other, could so
far have perplexed one of our exactest students as to make him confuse
heroism with conceit, and the loves of country and of home with the
iniquities of selfishness. Can it be only a quarter of a century since
the Last Minstrel died--and have we already answered his "Lives there a
man?" with the calm assertion that there live no other than such; and
that the "wretch concentered all in self "is the "Patriot" of our
generation?

133. Be it so. Let it even be admitted that egoism is the only power
conceivable by a modern metaphysician to be the spring of mental energy;
just as chemical excitement may be the only power traceable by the
modern physician as the source of muscular energy. And still Mr.
Spencer's subsequent analysis is inaccurate, and unscholarly. For egoism
does not necessarily imply either misapprehension or mismeasurement.
There are modes of the love of our country which are definitely selfish,
as a cat's of the hearthrug, yet entirely balanced and calm in judicial
faculty; passions which determine conduct, but have no influence on
opinion. For instance, I have bought for my own exclusive gratification,
the cottage in which I am writing, near the lake-beach on which I used
to play when I was seven years old. Were I a public-spirited scientific
person, or a benevolently pious one, I should doubtless, instead, be
surveying the geographical relations of the Mountains of the Moon, or
translating the Athanasian Creed into Tartar-Chinese. But I hate the
very name of the public, and labor under no oppressive anxiety either
for the advancement of science, or the salvation of mankind. I therefore
prefer amusing myself with the lake-pebbles, of which I know nothing but
that they are pretty; and conversing with people whom I can understand
without pains, and who, so far from needing to be converted, seem to me
on the whole better than myself. This is moral egoism, but it is not
intellectual error. I never form, much less express, any opinion as to
the relative beauties of Yewdale crag and the Mountains of the Moon; nor
do I please myself by contemplating, in any exaggerated light, the
spiritual advantages which I possess in my familiarity with the
Thirty-nine Articles. I know the height of my neighboring mountains to