We are kind because it makes us feel good about ourselves: kindly people are self-approbation junkies. Encountering this argument in the 1730s, the philosopher Francis Hutcheson dispatched it briskly: “If this is self-love, be it so. . . . Nothing can be better than this self-love, nothing more generous.” In Emile, Rousseau made the same point in greater psychological detail. Emile’s kindness, Rousseau shows, is an extension of his amour de soi (natural self-love). Emile “enjoys his pitié” because it expresses his vitality; only the self-caring child who enjoys being alive will “seek to extend his being and enjoyments” to others. Rousseau’s portrait of Emile shows very well why it is kindness that is the most envied human attribute. People think that they envy other people for their success, money, fame, when in fact it is kindness that is most envied, because it is the strongest indicator of people’s well-being, their pleasure in existence. Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, On Kindness, NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, p. 111.