frivolous of our own sex, who knowing little more, know at least, and repeat as their only literature, some of the trite traditionary sarcasms, which have been tediously repeated against women ;--though they have had no difficulty in forgetting the far more numerous sarcasms, which even men have pointed against the vices of men. But, though minds, which women would despise and blush to resemble, may speak contemptuously of excellence, which they cannot hope to equal,-it is only from the contemptible, in such a case, that you will hear the expression of contempt; and the real or affected disdain of such minds, is, perhaps, not less glorious to the character of the sex which they deride, than the respect which that character never fails to obtain, from those who alone are qualified to appreciate it, and whose admiration alone is honour. To the dissolute, indeed, who are fond of associating with the lowest of the sex, and who, in their conception of female excellence, can form no brighter pictures in their mind, than of the inmates of a brothel, or of those whom a brothel might admit as its inmates,-woman may seem a being like themselves, and be a subject of insulting mockery, in the coarse laughter and drunkenness of the feast; but the mockery, in such a case, is descriptive of the life and habits of the deriders, more than the derided. It is not so much the expression of contempt, as the confession of vice. The respect, which he feels for the virtues of woman, may thus be considered almost as a test of the virtues of man. He is, and must be, in a great measure, what he wishes the companions of his domestic hours to be-noble if he wish them to be dignified-frivolous, if he wish them to be triflers-and far more abject than the victims of his capricious favour, if, with the power of enjoying their free and lasting affection, he would yet sacrifice whatever love has most delightful, and condemn them to a slavery of the dismal and dreary influence of which, he is himself to be the slave. 395 LECTURE LXI. 1. IMMEDIATE EMOTIONS, INVOLVING NECESSARILY SOME MORAL FEELING.-2. LOVE AND HATE CONCLUDED.-3. SMYPATHY WITH THE HAPPINESS AND SORROW OF OTHERS. IN my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I considered the various affections comprehended under the general names of love and hatred, both with respect to their nature, as emotions, and to the relations which they bear to the happiness of man, and consequently to the provident benevolence of that Mighty Being, who has created us to be happy,-who, in rendering us susceptible of these opposite emotions, has not merely blessed us, but protected also the very blessings which he gave, bestowing on us the kind affections, as the source of our enjoyment, and the affections of hatred, as our security against aggression. Of the benevolent affections, in the first place, we saw how largely they contribute to happiness, by the pleasure which they directly yield, and, still more, by the pleasure which they diffuse over every other enjoyment, or with which they temper even affliction itself, till it almost cease to be an evil. The most sensual, who despise the pleasures of the understanding, and those delights, which have been so truly called "the luxury of doing good," must still, in their petty luxuries, have an affection of some sort, or at least the semblance of affection, to diffuse over their indulgencies, the chief part of the little pleasure which they seem to yield. To give a taste to their costly food, they must collect smiles around the table, even though there be at the heart a sad conviction, that the smiles are only the mimicry of kindness. So essential however, is kindness to happiness, that even this very mimicry of it is more than can be abandoned; and if all the gay faces of the guests around the festive board could, in an instant, be converted into statues, in that very instant the delight of him, who spread the magnificence for the eyes of others, and caught a sort of shadowy gaiety from that cheerfulness, which had at least the appearance of social regard, would cease, as if he, too, had lost even the common sensibilities of life. He would still see, on every side, attendants ready to obey a word, or a very look, the same luxurious delicacies would be before him, but there would no longer be the same appetite, that could feel them to be luxuries; and the enjoyment received,-if any enjoyment were received,-would be far less than that of the labourer, in his coarser meal, when there is only simple fare upon the board, but affection in every heart that is round it, and social gladness in every eye. So consolatory is regard, and so tranquillizing, in all the agitations of life, except the very horrors of guilty passion, and the remorse by which these are pursued, that he who has one heart to share his affliction, though he may still have feelings to which we must continue to give the name of sorrow, cannot be miserable; while he who has no heart, that would care whether he were suffering or enjoying, alive or dead,-and who has himself no regard to the suffering or enjoyment even of a single individual, may be rich, indeed, in the external means of happiness, but he cannot be rich in happiness, which external things may promote, but are as little capable of producing, as the incense on the altar of giving out its aromatic odours, where there is no warmth to kindle it into fragrance. The blind possessor of some ample inheritance, who is led through groves, and over lawns, where he sees no part of that loveliness, which every other eye is so quick to perceive, and who, as he walks in darkness, amid the brightest colours of nature, has merely the pleasure of thinking, that whatever his foot has pressed is his own,--enjoys his splendid domains, with a gratification very nearly similar to that of the haughty lord of possessions, perhaps, still more ample, who, without any mere visual infirmity, is able to walk, unlea, amid his own groves and lawns, which he measures with a cold and selfish eye, but who walks among them unloving and unloved, blind to all that sunshine of the heart, which is forever diffusing, even on earth, a celestial loveliness,--a loveliness, to which there are hearts and spirits, as insensible as there are eyes, that are incapable of distinguishing the common radiance of Heaven. "Poor is the friendless master of a world," it has been truly said, and there is, perhaps, no curse so dreadful as that which would render man wholly insensible of affection, even though it were to leave him all the cumbrous wealth of a thousand empires: "Vivat Pacuvius quæso, vel Nestora totum, Possideat quantuin rapuit, Nero, meritibus aurum • Juvenal, Sat. xii. v. 128-130. It is a bold but a happy expression of St. Bernard, illustrative of the power of affection,-that the soul, or the principle of life, within us, may be more truly said to exist, when it loves, than when it merely animates. "Anima magis est ubi amat, quam ubi animat." The benevolent affections expand and multiply our being,--they make us live with as many souls as there are living objects of our love, and in this diffusion of more than wishes, confer upon a single individual, the happiness of the world. If there be any one, whose high station, and honour, and power appear to us covetable, ambition will tell us, to labour, and to watch, and to think neither of the happiness nor unhappiness of others, or at least to think of them only as instruments of our exaltation, till we arrive, at last, at equal or superior dignity. This it will tell us loudly; and, to some minds, it will whisper, that there are means of speedier advancement, that they have only to sacrifice a few virtues, or assume a few vices, to deceive, and defame, and betray,--or that, if they cannot rise themselves, by these means, they can at least bring down to their own level, or beneath it, the merit that is odious to them. The dignity which we thus covet, and for the attainment of which, Ambition would urge us to so many anxieties and struggles, and perhaps, too, to so much guilt, nature confers on us, by a much more simple process, and a process which, far from leading into vice, is itself the exercise of virtue. She has only to give us a sincere and lively friendship for him who possesses it; and all his enjoyments are ours. Our soul, to use St. Bernard's phrase, exists when it loves; and it exists, in all the enjoyments, of him whom it loves. If the benevolent affections be so important, as sources of happiness, the malevolent affections, we found, were not less important parts of our mental constitution, as the defence of happiness against the injustice which otherwise would every moment be invading it; the emotions of the individual injured, being to the injurer a certainty, that his crime will not be without one interested in avenging it; and the united emotions of mankind, as concurring with this individual interest of retribution, being almost the certainty of vengeance itself. If vice can perform these ravages in the moral world, which we see at present,-what would have been the desolation, if there had been no motives of terror, to restrain the guilty arm, -if frauds and oppressions, which now work in secret, could have come boldy forth into the great community of mankind, secure of approbation in every eye, or at least of no look of abhorrence, or shuddering at their very approach. It is because man is rendered capable of hatred, that crimes, which escape the law and the judge, have their punishment in the terror of the guilty. "Fortune," it has been truly said, "frees many from vengeance, but it cannot free them from fear, it cannot free them from the knowledge of that general disgust and scorn, which nature has so deeply fixed in all mankind, for the crimes which they have perpetrated. Amid the security of a thousand concealments, they cannot think themselves sufficiently concealed from that hatred, which is ever ready to burst upon them; for conscience is still with them, like a treacherous informer, pointing them out to themselves."-" Multos fortuna pæna liberat, metu neminem. Quare? quia infixa nobis ejus rei aversatio est, quam natura damnavit. Ideo namquam fides latendi fit, etiam latentibus, quia coarguit illos conscientia, et ipsos sibi ostendit."* The emotions, to which I am next to direct your attention, are those, by which, instantly, as if by a sort of contagion, we become partakers of the vivid feelings of others, whether pleasing or painful. They are general affections of sympathy, a term, which expresses this participation of both species of feelings, though, in common language, it is usually applied, more particularly to the interest which we take in sorrow. By some philosophers, indeed, we have been said to be incapable of this participation, except of feelings of that sadder kind though the denial of this sympathy with happiness--a denial so unfavourable and so false to the social nature of man,-is surely the result only of narrow views, and imperfect analysis. Nor, is it difficult to discover the circumstances which have tended to mislead them. The state of happiness is a state, which we are so desirous of feeling, and so readily affect to feel, even when we truly feel it not, that our participation of it becomes less remarkable, being expressed merely in the same way, as the common courtesies of society require us to express ourselves, even when we are feeling no peculiar satisfaction. If the face must, at any rate, be dressed in smiles at meeting, and retain a certain number of these smiles with an occasional smile more or less, according to the turn of the conversation, during the whole of a long interview, the real complacency which is felt in the pleasures of others, is not marked, because the air of complacency had been assumed before. All this is so well understood, in that state of strange simulation, and dissimulation, which constitutes artificial politeness, that a smile of welcome is as little considered to be a certain evidence of gratification at heart, as the common forms of humility, which close a letter of business, are understood to signify * Seneca, Epist. 97. |