There is a class of emotions which we instinctively avoid. A human
being, such as is man considered in his origin, a child a month
old, has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other
natures resembling itself. All the energies of its being are
directed to the extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually
assailed. At length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures
susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late before
children attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without
emotion, its nurse or its mother suffering acute pain, it is
attributable rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as
the accents and gestures, significant of pain, are referred to the
feelings which they express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder
a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be evil
for its own sake, without any other necessary reference to the mind
by which its existence is perceived, than such as is indispensable
to its perception. The tendencies of our original sensations, indeed,
all have for their object the preservation of our individual being.
But these are passive and unconscious. In proportion as the mind
acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies becomes
limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish,
because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation
of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself.
The inhabitant of a highly civilized community will more acutely
sympathize with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than
the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilization. He
who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity
with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually
sympathize more than one engaged in the less refined functions
of manual labour. Every one has experience of the fact, that to
sympathize with the sufferings of another, is to enjoy a transitory
oblivion of his own.
The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of
perceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate
sphere of sensations with which that individual mind is conversant.
Imagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its
objects, is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation
of its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain
or pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely
in prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the
virtuous man is, that the imagination of the former is confined within
a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive
circumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be
inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring
of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy,
and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations
have blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the
product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion
with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power,
or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely
a refinement of civilized life; a creation of the human mind; or,
rather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary
rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the
relations established between man and man.
All the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those
which have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils,
have been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterestedness,
which we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism,
as it existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been
supposed, a calculation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scaevola
thrust his hand into the burning coals, and Regulus returned
to Carthage, and Epicharis sustained the rack silently, in the
torments of which she knew that she would speedily perish, rather
than betray the conspirators to the tyrant [Footnote: Tacitus.];
these illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate of their
private interest. If it be said that they sought posthumous fame;
instances are not wanting in history which prove that men have even
defied infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great error in
the world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is certainly
possible that a person should seek distinction as a medium of
personal gratification. But the love of fame is frequently no more
than a desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate,
and sympathize with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all
that draws us out of ourselves. It is the 'last infirmity of noble
minds'. Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self-sacrifice.
Love possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only
because disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities.
These propensities themselves are comparatively impotent in cases
where the imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be
received, does not enter into the account. Let it not be objected
that patriotism, and chivalry, and sentimental love, have been the
fountains of enormous mischief. They are cited only to establish the
proposition that, according to the elementary principles of mind,
man is capable of desiring and pursuing good for its own sake.