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Alas, if this drive should rage!  Supposing the drive to attachment and care for others (the 'sympathetic affection') were twice as strong as it is, life on earth would be insupportable. Only consider what follies people commit, hourly and daily, out of attachment and care for themselves, and how intolerably awful they look as a result: how would it be if we became for others the object of the follies and importunities with which they had previously tormented only themselves! Would one not flee blindly away as soon as our 'neighbour' drew near? And bestow upon the sympathetic affection the kind of evil names we now bestow upon egoism?