Nor will it do to ignore reason, and adopt passion when we consider
the subject of slavery. Passions have their uses, but how often they
are perverted! Reason is sometimes perverted too, and never more than
when exercised against truth, justice, and civilization, and in favor
of barbarism. There is false sympathy, amounting to passion, that is
blindly lavished upon objects which neither need nor appreciate it. We
often see it exercised in behalf of the brute animals, whose proper
natures are totally unconscious of it; while their gentleness and
quietness seem to rebuke this shallow, human sentimentality, as
something wandering from its sphere, or as seed wasted upon the sand.
Your sympathy has its legitimate uses, and it is against the economy
of nature to misuse it, or bestow it upon natures foreign to its own.
If we pity the slave because he is not like ourselves, we shall
probably receive his pity, in return, for some weakness or power in
us, that covers an abyss which he cannot fathom, and from which he
turns away in terror. He is adapted to his place, and so are we, if we
are content.