"I think you are partly right.

Our difference of opinion amounts to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement.

Possibly you are right too, that action founded on material interest would be more desirable.

You are altogether, as the French say, too _primesautiere_ a nature; you must have intense, energetic action, or nothing.