and the true.

False friendship and false love, marriage but one

degree better than prostitution, frivolous idleness but one degree less hurtful than vice, these things are alien to her nature; she is in no danger from their seductions.

It may be added, that, were this tone of mind more common, society would speedily assume a higher character. When women shall give their admiration to the noble and the good; when their contempt shall be reserved for low morals, low ambition, and frivolous coxcombry, rather than for awkward manners or an ill-chosen dress; when it shall be found that to forfeit their esteem is to forfeit their love, then men may feel themselves more strongly impelled to restrain vices which no law can reach, and seek to win by true worth and manly exertion hearts that would disdain a meaner homage.

17

CHAPTER VII.

BENEVOLENCE.

WE use this term to denote not only that general desire for the good of mankind which it is usually employed to signify, but also the source whence spring the social affections. It is the prevalence of the latter over the desire for private gratification which constitutes benevolence, and we approach it in proportion as we enlarge the sphere of our sympathies and extend them to objects less and less connected with our own private happiness. He who cares more for his family than himself is certainly not a selfish man; but if he cares exclusively for his own family, he cannot be called a benevolent one. That praise is due only to him who, whilst feeling the tenderest love for the small circle around his own hearth, carries his sympathies into the wider sphere of social life, whose heart throbs at the voice of human weal or woe, whencesoever it may come, and whose hand stays not in the labor of doing good till it has reached the limits of its power. We cannot better describe the character of the benevolent man than in the beautiful language of Hume: "To his parents he endears himself by his pious attachment and duteous care still more than by the connections of nature. His children never feel his authority but when employed for their advantage. With him the ties of love are consolidated by beneficence and friendship. The ties of friendship approach, in a fond observance of each obliging office, to those of love and inclination. His domestics and dependants have in him a sure resource, and no longer dread the power of Fortune, but so far as she exercises it over him. From him the hungry receive food, the naked clothing, the ignorant and slothful, skill

and industry. Like the sun, an inferior minister of Providence, he cheers, invigorates, and sustains the surrounding world.

"If confined to private life, the sphere of his activity is narrower; but his influence is all benign and gentle. If exalted into a higher station, mankind and posterity reap the fruit of his labors."*

This picture of the benevolent man, drawn by the sceptical philosopher, might be taken as a practical illustration of the Apostle's + description of charity or love. There is scarce a virtue which man can exercise towards his brother man not included in that description; patience, kindness, sympathy, modesty, good temper, just appreciation of the claims of others, kind interpretation of their motives, joy in their uprightness and sorrow over their errors, trust and hope in their virtue, and endurance of their failings. And to all these it is added that, without charity, - eloquence, foresight, knowledge, faith, the most unlimited bounty, the most daring zeal, are nothing worth. There is yet a higher distinction attributed by the Apostle to this virtue. We are expressly told that it will endure after the dissolution of our present constitution, and that it will still, in another world, find objects and scope for its exercise. When the dim and imperfect knowledge afforded us here is effaced in the full daylight of truth, when faith is merged in certainty, and hope is lost in the realization of bliss, love will remain unchanged, except in its degree, and will still be exercised in other worlds, and amongst other beings.

The Christian religion is expressly founded on the principle of love, love to God and love to man; the latter being required as a test of the former. "If thou love not thy brother whom thou hast seen, how shalt thou love God, whom thou hast not seen? It is strange and painful to observe how this principle, so earnestly and so constantly insisted upon, is more neglected in practice than any other. We should at least expect, in a society calling itself Christian, that charity would be regarded as the first of virtues; but far from it. Mere alms-giving usurps the name,

*

and in its true and wide sense we find almost

Essay on Benevolence, Part II.

† 1 Cor. xiii,

every other qualification exalted above it; the slightest difference of opinion on points of which no one professes infallible knowledge, seeming to justify the violation of all its precepts.

As justice is the foundation on which society rests, so benevolence or love may be regarded as the cement that binds together its several parts, drawing them closer and closer as they ascend from the general relations of country and profession to the sacred ties of domestic life. Whatever importance we may attach, and justly so, to self-interest as a general bond of union between man and man, it is certain that society could not long exist without the more special one of affection. No calculation of interest could supply the place of its spontaneous and unwearied zeal. Accordingly, wherever we find family ties weakened, and the dissocial stronger than the social passions, society hangs loosely together, and only waits some external pressure. to fall asunder. This was the state of many of the old European nations at the breaking out of the French Revolution. Corruption of manners had loosened every family tie, loyalty was worn out by oppression, and class was arrayed against class in deadly feud. The rapid fall of the old systems, at the first touch of the republican armies, sufficiently proved that they had ceased to contain any principles of vitality.

It would lead us far beyond our limits to follow out so vast a subject as the cultivation and influence of the affections. We can only point out the practical evils arising from deficiency of benevolence in the present state of society, and offer a few remarks on the special affections of love and friendship, of which a correct appreciation is so important to woman's character and happiness.

Adam Smith refers the origin of all our social affections to what he terms habitual sympathy. Whether this be correct or no, it is at least certain that sympathy is so intimately connected with benevolence, that we cannot imagine the one without the other, and in every manifestation of affection, from simple kindness to ardent passion, sympathy enters as an essential and unfailing element. Sympathy is the strong and indissoluble tie which binds us to our kind, as to beings of a common

nature, subject to the same feelings, the same joys, the same sorrows, as ourselves. It is the attraction which draws men into societies, which binds them together as by an invisible chain, and which makes isolation from our species appear the heaviest of calamities. The most hardened ruffians have been tamed down by solitary confinement into meek and broken-spirited wretches, and gentler natures have been maddened by its sufferings. So completely are all our feelings and faculties adapted to a social state, so necessary is that state to maintain health of body and mind, that those who are cut off from it generally sink into maniacs or brutes. It is the power of this feeling which makes the words of the orator fly, as electric fire, through the hearts of a multitude. It is to our sympathies that the poet, the painter, or the actor appeals, and never appeals in vain when he is true to the nature of man. Could the artist imagine, could the actor represent, any feelings foreign to that nature, they would only meet with cold indifference.

Adam Smith has remarked, with his usual acuteness, that the heathen mythology springs from the principle of sympathy. Men naturally transferred to their imaginary deities the same passions and judgments by which they themselves were guided. Between such a system and the cold abstractions of philosophy, which were powerless over the hearts and actions of man, there was no medium till Christ came, to be in this sense as much as in any other a mediator between God and man. He brought the attributes of the Deity within the conception of man, by exhibiting them in the perfection of human nature, and, by sharing that nature, raised man by sympathy nearer to the character of Divinity. The sympathetic principle is intimately connected with all our social affections. Whether a natural love for our own species be the foundation of sympathy, or sympathy the source of love, it is certain that the latter never exists without the former. We cannot love without sympathizing with the object of our love, without entering into the feelings, the joys, the sorrows, of the beloved one.* And we require the same sym

*

This is true as a general principle, but many things modify it. The