"
*Bryant
Conclusion.
The matter of the preceding thoughts may be thus summed up.
A progressive movement has been going on towards the rule, that,
self-love directed towards the material, the sensible, the showy, the
distinguishing, is so the ruling motive of human conduct, as to
constitute it the first requisite in adjusting the social relations,
that private interests, and class interests may not flourish best,
short of the best attainable flourish of the whole. When this point
shall be so thoroughly understood, that it shall be taken for no
reproach of any class of men to regard them practically as subject to
the common influences which control human conduct; we may expect an
effective move, for giving to the lawyer and to the physician a
relation to society, analogous to that sustained by the pastor among
Protestants; instead of leaving their professions to find their best
flourish, at about the vigor of intellectual and moral life, which just
now we live.
But this idea loses its importance as another comes into appreciation,
--namely, that the conflicts of self-love with self-love, suppose
mistaken estimates of happiness to be uppermost; and, just in
proportion as men rightly estimate life, and truly love themselves,
they appreciate those strong, numberless, delicate, indissoluble ties,
which bind the members of the social body to suffer, or to rejoice
together.
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