in Swift's thinking results from his admiration of the noble and the great, who act for principle against interest, and from his distaste for the neglect of one's own well-being or the well-being of society (Gilbert 27). As he writes in A Tale of a Tub: "But the self-love of some men inclines them to please others; and the self love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the distinction between virtue and vice". This would prove to be one of his main ideals that he kept his whole life.Swift would reiterate this notion that virtue lies in public action throughout his career. To Swift, virtue in a man equaled someone who was publicly spirited, unselfish, and courageous. During one of his sermons at mass, he tells how the Christian teaching of "love thy neighbor" really means to "love the public". He continues to say that this love is "a duty to which we are more strictly obliged than even that of loving ourselves" (Gilbert 40). His devotion to promote this ideal of his is extraordinary.Swift goes on to denounce the zealots and clergymen in religion for regarding only their own interests by saying: "no opinions are maintained with so much obstinacy as those in religion, especially by such Zealots who never bore the least regard to religion, conscience, honour, justice, Truth, Mercy, or common morality, farther than in outward appearance; under the mask of hypocrisy, to promote their diabolic designs." (Gilbert 23).Even for a government, Swift believed once again that only people who rule with a public interest should be elected into a government office. He also believed in Locke's principle that people have the right to be governed only by laws to which they consent to (Gilbert 90). Swift makes another interesting point about men in an early pamphlet of his: "When bounds are set to men's desires, after they have acquired as much as the laws will permit them, their private interest is at an end; and they have nothi...
