Indeed, we may say that an egoist must be doubly self-regulative, since rational self-love ought to restrain not only other impulses, but itself also; for as happiness is made up of feelings that result from the satisfaction of impulses other than self-love, any over-development of the latter, enfeebling these other impulses, must proportionally diminish the happiness at which self-love aims. If, then, it be admitted that human impulses are naturally under government, the natural claim of conscience or the moral faculty to be the supreme governor will hardly be denied.
Though the administration still possessed a fund of tradition and a personnel which, including many men of note, protected it from the enfeebling influence o the court, it looked as though chance regulated everything so far as the government was concerned.
In a word, this diet disturbed the equilibrium of the state by enfeebling and degrading the middle classes.