Introduction. "Spring and motive of our actions": disinterest and self-interest -- "Acted by another": agency and action in early modern England -- "The belief of the people": Thomas Hobbes and the battle over the heroic -- "For want of some heedfull eye": Mr. Spectator and the power of spectacle -- "For its own sake": virtue and agency in early eighteenth-century England -- "Not perform'd at all": managing Garrick's body in eighteenth-century England -- "I wrote my heart": Richardson's Clarissa and the tactics of sentiment -- Epilogue: "A sign of so noble a passion": the politics of disinterested selves