ordinary degree of virtue, would not, however, be ordinarily performed, unless the sentiment of benevolence were reinforced by a pain of inferiority at the idea of falling short of others in benevolent acts. 33. It is also true, that almost all great and heroic acts of virtue, especially those which require any sustained and prolonged course of action, are, to a considerable extent, due to the love of superiority. No doubt, for the performance of such actions, a nice perception of the difference between right and wrong, and a warm love of the right, are absolutely necessary; and these cannot exist without a high degree of benevolence. When high acts of virtue consist, as they sometimes do, merely in the sacrifice, the relinquishment of our own good for the benefit of others, a high degree of benevolence may alone suffice for the performance of such acts. But when exertion, ande ffort, and labor, and struggle are essential towards the production of any great good to others, and few things are accomplished without exertion, and effort, and labor, and struggle, benevolence alone will never suffice; it must be reinforced by the desire of superiority, and that in a high degree.

The same sentiment, indeed, which, under the names of the love of power, and the love of money, ambition, covetousness, pride, and vanity, has been denounced by moralists as worthy of detestation and extirpation, and as a plain evidence of human depravity, has, by the greater part of the same moralists, some of the mystical schools excepted,under the names of Self-respect, Emulation, Shame,

Love of Reputation, Love of Fame, Love of Glory been extolled as the nurse and tutor of virtue.

34. And so indeed it is. For what is that exquisite pleasure, which, under the name of the pleasure of virtue, so attracted the fancy of the Platonists, and excited the desires of the Stoics; and which has ever been pointed out as one of the greatest rewards, if not indeed the only and all-sufficient reward, of a virtuous course of conduct? What is it, in a great measure, but a feeling of self-applause, the gratification, in the highest degree, of this same love of superiority? The mere sentiment of benevolence is as much gratified at the sight, or at the thought, of a beneficent act done by others, as though it were done by ourselves. That which gives us an additional and peculiar pleasure when the act is our own, is the consciousness that, in doing it, we have done more than ordinary men would have done, and so have vindicated our title to the possession of a superior degree of the highest human excellence. That feeling, on the other hand, which is called Remorse, when it is any thing more than the fear or the apprehension of punishment, that gnawing pain which never dies, and which is the fearful consequence of crime, is but the consciousness, that, however we may succeed in concealing it from the world, we are, in fact, debased, degraded, sunk below the common level. It is sufficiently humiliating to lose the esteem of others; but to lose our own esteem is the most terrible of humiliations.

35. Hence it is that Reproach is so powerful a means of impelling to the performance of virtuous

actions. When we are conscious it is just, it inflicts upon us a pain of inferiority.

36. There is still another way in which the love of superiority concurs in the production of beneficial acts. To confer a benefit upon a man gives us a certain superiority over him. It lays him under an obligation which is stronger in proportion as the benefit conferred is greater. Hence the saying, that it is more blessed to give than to receive; hence it is that men, in whom the sentiment of Self-comparison is strong, submit with the greatest reluctance to ask or to accept a favor; hence it is that the arrogance, or imagined arrogance, with which a favor is conferred, often inflicts such a pain of inferiority, as totally to overpower and extinguish the sentiment of benevolence, and to create a feeling of hatred in its place.

37. That we derive a certain pleasure from contemplating the struggles and distresses of others, is a very old observation. Lucretius repeats it at the commencement of his second book,

"Suave mari magno turbantibus æquora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem ;

and he truly adds,

"Non quia vexari quemquam est jocunda voluptas,

Sed quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est." But, though he alleges the fact, he omits to assign the reason why it is pleasant to see evils, from which we ourselves are free. The reason is, that it affords us a pleasure of superiority. Rochefoucault only pressed this observation a little further, when he uttered that celebrated remark, that we find a certain

degree of pleasure in the misfortunes even of our best friends; a remark which proves that he had looked much more deeply, than most of those who have criticized him, into the springs of human action.*

38. It is the gratification of this same sentiment of superiority, it is the pleasure of possessing a little dominion of his own, where he can rule, and where he is chief, where he is looked up to, not with affection alone, but with admiration and respect, that has a great deal to do with parental love; which indemnifies every head of a family for the many pains and labors to which he is obliged to submit in providing for the wants of his household; and which gives to parental tenderness no small portion of its warmth. and zeal.

A man's children are something that he has produced, or helped to produce. They are living monuments of his power. They are his; and often they are almost the only things which he can claim as his. If they excel, or if he fancies them to excel, in beauty, strength, or talent, or in any other particular, this excellence of theirs is an additional gratification to his love of superiority. Their very weakness and helplessness and continual wants, become sources of pleasure to him, because they enable him to contem

* The same observation, less epigrammatically expressed, is to be found in Hobbes, Treatise on Human Nature, Chap. IX. Hobbes was so struck by the occasional coincidence of the sentiment of Selfcomparison with the sentiment of Benevolence, that he denied the existence of the latter sentiment at all, and ascribed all beneficial actions to the former. See the chapter above referred to.

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plate the agreeable contrast of his strength, his helpfulness, his ability to supply their wants. It is chiefly because a man's children are the sources to him of these pleasures, that they become such peculiar objects of his benevolence, and that parents are ordinarily ready, and are held bound, to confer an infinity of benefits upon their children, and to submit to an infinity of pains for their sake.

39. There is one other means of gratifying the desire of superiority, different from all those which have been already pointed out; and that is, by the acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge is power.

There certainly is a pleasure, commonly called the pleasure of novelty, but which is, in fact, a pleasure of admiration, attendant upon new perceptions and conceptions, which makes the whole world so eager There is also a pleasure, which after what is new. may be denominated pleasure of the rational faculty, one of the pleasures of mental activity, which results from perceiving the relation of one thing to another. But the chief ingredient in what is usually called the love or desire of knowledge, is the desire of superiority. Knowledge is power;* and that superiority which the office of a teacher or instructor implies, is often a sufficient inducement to the proclamation of newly discovered truths, or supposed truths, even when hatred and persecution, and unbered pains, are certain to be the immediate equences to the promulgator.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas;
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,

Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari."

Virgil, Geor. Il. v. 489.