Nothing is so capable of lessening our self-love as the observation that we disapprove at one time what we approve at another.
Self-love is the love of self, and of everything for the sake of self. When fortune gives the means, self-love makes men idolise themselves and tyrannise over others. It never rests or fixes itself anywhere outside its home. If it settle on external things, it is only as the bee does on flowers, to extract what may be serviceable. Nothing is so impetuous as its desires, nothing so secret as its designs, nothing so adroit as its conduct. We can neither fathom the depth, nor penetrate the obscurity of its abyss. There, concealed from the most piercing eye, it makes numberless turnings and windings; there is it often invisible even to itself; there it conceives, breeds, and cherishes, without being aware of it, an infinity of likings and hatreds; some of which are so monstrous that, having given birth to them, self-love either does not recognize them, or cannot bear to own them. From the darkness which covers self-love spring the ridiculous notions which it entertains of itself; thence its errors, ignorance, and silly mistakes; thence it imagines that its feelings are dead when they are but asleep; and thinks that it has lost all appetite when it is for the moment sated.
But the thick mist which hides it from itself does not hinder it from seeing perfectly whatever is without; and thus it resembles the eye, that sees all things except itself. In great concerns and important affairs, where the violence of its desire excites its whole attention, it sees, perceives, understands, invents, suspects, penetrates, and divines all things; so that one is tempted to believe that each of its passions has its peculiar magic.
Its desires are inflamed by itself rather than by the beauty and merit of the objects; its own taste heightens and embellishes them; itself is the game it pursues, and its own inclination is what is followed rather than the things which seem to be the objects of its inclination. Composed of contrarieties, it is imperious and obedient, sincere and hypocritical, merciful and cruel, timid and bold. Its desires tend, according to the diverse moods that direct it, sometimes to glory, sometimes to wealth, sometimes to pleasure. These are changed as age and experience alter; and whether it has many inclinations or only one is a matter of indifference, because it can split itself into many or collect itself into one just as is convenient or agreeable.
It is inconstant; and numberless are the changes, besides those which happen from external causes, which proceed from its own nature. Inconstant through levity, through love, through novelty, through satiety, through disgust, through inconstancy itself. Capricious; and sometimes labouring with eagerness and incredible pains to obtain things that are in no way advantageous, nay, even hurtful, but which are pursued merely as a passion. Whimsical, and often exerting intense application in the most trifling employments; taking delight in the most insipid things, and preserving all its haughtiness in the most contemptible pursuits. Attendant on all ages and conditions; living everywhere; living on everything; living on nothing. Easy in either the enjoyment, or privation of things. Going over to those who are at variance with it; even entering into their schemes; and, wonderful! joining with them, it hates itself; conspires its own destruction; labours to be undone; desires only to exist; and, that granted, consents to be its own enemy.
We are not therefore to be surprised if sometimes, uniting with the most rigid austerity, it enters boldly into a combination against itself; because what is lost in one respect is regained in another. When we think it relinquishes pleasures, it only suspends or changes them; and even when discomforted, and we seem to be rid of it, we find it triumphant in its own defeat. Such is self-love!—of which man's whole life is only a strong, a continued agitation. The sea is a striking image of it, and in the flux and reflux of the waves, self-love may find a lively expression of the turbulent succession of its thoughts, and of its eternal agitation.