He then rebuts the idea that generous affections are selfish, because by _sympathy_ we make the pleasures and pains of others our own.

Sympathy is a real fact, but has regard only to the distress or suffering beheld or imagined in others, whereas generous affection is varied toward different characters.

Sympathy can never explain the immediate ardour of our good-will towards the morally excellent character, or the eagerness of a dying man for the prosperity of his children and friends.

Having thus accepted the existence of purely disinterested affections, and divided them as before into calm and turbulent, he puts the question, Whether is the selfish or benevolent principle to yield in case of opposition?
And although it appears that, as a fact, the universal happiness is preferred to the individual in the order of the world by the Deity, this is nothing, unless by some determination of the soul we are made to comply with the Divine intentions.

If by the desire of reward, it is selfishness still; if by the desire, following upon the sight, of moral excellence, then there must necessarily exist as its object some determination of the will involving supreme moral excellence, otherwise there will be no way of deciding between particular affections.