B—— called and supped with me the same evening. I was too full of the adventure of Fanchon and Dubois not to mention it to him, with all the particulars of the Marquis’s behaviour.—This F—— of yours, said he, is an honest fellow. Do—contrive to let us dine with him to-morrow.—By the bye, continued he after a little pause, are not those F——’s originally from England?—I think I have heard of such a name in Yorkshire.
Adieu.
LETTER XVI.
Paris.
I am uneasy when I hear people assert, that mankind always act from motives of self-interest. It creates a suspicion that those who maintain this system, judge of others by their own feelings. This conclusion, however, may be as erroneous as the general assertion; for I have heard it maintained (perhaps from affectation) by very disinterested people, who, when pushed, could not support their argument without perverting the received meaning of language.—Those who perform generous or apparently disinterested actions, say they, are prompted by selfish motives—by the pleasure which they themselves feel.—There are people who have this feeling so strong, that they cannot pass a miserable object without endeavouring to assist him.—Such people really relieve themselves when they relieve the wretched.
All this is very true: but is it not a strange assertion, that people are not benevolent, because they cannot be otherwise?
Two men are standing near a fruit-shop in St. James’s street. There are some pine-apples within the window, and a poor woman, with an infant crying at her empty breast, without. One of the gentlemen walks in, pays a guinea for a pine-apple, which he calmly devours; while the woman implores him for a penny, to buy her a morsel of bread—and implores in vain: not that this fine gentleman values a penny; but to put his hand in his pocket would give him some trouble;—the distress of the woman gives him none. The other man happens to have a guinea in his pocket also; he gives it to the woman, walks home, and dines on beef-steaks, with his wife and children.
Without doing injustice to the taste of the former, we may believe, that the latter received the greater gratification for his guinea.—You will never convince me, however, that his motive in bestowing it was as selfish as the other’s.