any real use or
advantage to themselves. Thus the more thought and time any one employs
about the interests and good of others, he must necessarily have less to
attend his own: but he may have so ready and large a supply of his own
wants, that such thought might be really useless to himself, though of
great service and assistance to others.

The general mistake, that there is some greater inconsistence between
endeavouring to promote the good of another and self-interest, than
between self-interest and pursuing anything else, seems, as hath already
been hinted, to arise from our notions of property, and to be carried on
by this property's being supposed to be itself our happiness or good.
People are so very much taken up with this one subject, that they seem
from it to have formed a general way of thinking, which they apply to
other things that they have nothing to do with. Hence in a confused and
slight way it might well be taken for granted that another's having no
interest in an affection (_i.e._, his good not being the object of it)
renders, as one may speak, the proprietor's interest in it greater; and
that if another had an interest in it this would render his less, or
occasion that such affection could not be so friendly to self-love, or
conducive to private good, as an affection or pursuit which has not a
regard to the good of another. This, I say, might be taken for granted,
whilst it was not attended to, that the object of every particular
affection is equally somewhat external to ourselves, and whether it be
the good of another person, or whether it be any other external thing,
makes no alteration with regard to its being one's own affection, and the
gratification of it one's own private enjoyment. And so far as it is
taken for granted that barely having the means and materials of enjoyment
is what constitutes interest and happiness; that our interest or good
consists in possessions themselves, in having the property of riches,
houses, lands, gardens, not in the enjoyment of them; so far it will even
more strongly be taken for granted, in the way already explained, that an
affection's conducing to the good of another must even necessarily
occasion it to conduce less to private good, if not to be positively
detrimental to it. For, if property and happiness are one and the same
thing, as by increasing the property of another you lessen your own
property, so by promoting the happiness of another you must les