"Stet quicunque volet potens High renown can as little be the possession of many as high station; and, if Heaven had appropriated happiness to it, it must have left almost all mankind in misery. It has, in this as in every other instance, dealt more equally with those whom it has raised into glory, and those whom it has left obscure. Each has his appropriate enjoyments; and while Guilt alone can be miserable, it scarcely matters to Virtue, whether it be known and happy, or happy and unknown. * Last verses of the Chorus concluding the second Act. VOL. IIL-M LECTURE LXXII. III. PROSPECTIVE EMOTIONS.-9. DESIRE OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.-10. DESIRE OF THE UNHAPPINESS OF THOSE WHOM WE HATE.-GENERAL REMARKS ON CONCLUDING THE CONSID ERATION OF OUR PROSPECTIVE EMOTIONS. GENTLEMEN, the pleasure which glory affords, being evidently not a simple, but a complex pleasure, engaged us yesterday in an inquiry into the nature of the elementary feelings that compose it, and we were led, I flatter myself, into some interesting ana lyses, both of the complex delight of glory itself, and of that peculiar illusion of present reality, which, however far we may conceive our glory to spread over the earth, and through the ages that are to succeed us, still seems to carry with it, as if necessarily diffused in the very conception, our own ever-present feeling, our own capacity of knowing and enjoying praises which never are to reach our ears. The two desires which remain to be considered by us, will require but little examination; since they flow so readily from some emotions before examined at length, as to appear almost parts of them, rather than any distinct emotions. The first is our desire of the happiness of others,-a desire that forms, as I have already said in my analysis of love, a part of every affection to which we commonly give that name, and that increases in vividness with every increase of the mere regard; but which, like the desire of reciprocal affection, that is also a part of what is commonly termed love, is a state of mind distinguishable from the mere admiration, respect, regard, which the sight or conception of the beloved object directly induces, admitting of a ready separation in our thought, however complex the love may be, as it usually exists in nature. It is this desire of the happiness of those whom we love, which gives to the emotion of love itself its principal delight, by affording to us constant means of gratification. He who truly wishes the happiness of any one, cannot be long without discovering some mode of contributing to it. Reason itself, with all its light, is not so rapid, in discoveries of this sort, as simple affection, which sees means of happiness, and of important happiness, where reason scarcely could think that any happiness was to be found, and has already, by many kind offices, produced the happiness of hours, before reason could have suspected that means so slight could have given even a moment's pleasure. It is this, indeed, which contributes in no inconsiderable degree to the perpetuity of affection. Love, the mere feeling of tender admiration, would, in many cases, have soon lost its power over the fickle heart, and, in many other cases, would have had its power greatly lessened, if the desire of giving happiness, and the innumerable little courtesies and cares to which this desire gives birth, had not thus, in a great measure, diffused over a single passion the variety of many emotions. The love itself seems new at every moment, because there is, every moment, some new wish of love that admits of being gratified,—or rather, it is at once, by the most delightful of all combinations, new, in the tender wishes and cares with which it occupies us, and familiar to us, and endeared the more, by the remembrance of hours and years of well-known happiness. The desire of the happiness of others, though a desire always attendant on love, does not, however, necessarily, suppose the previous existence of some one of these emotions which may strictly be termed love. I already showed you, when treating of compassion, that this feeling is so far from arising necessarily from regard for the sufferer, that it is impossible for us not to feel it, when the suffering is extreme, and before our very eyes, though we may, at the same time, have the utmost abhorrence of him who is agonizing in our sight, and whose very look, even in its agony, still seems to speak only that atrocious spirit, which could again gladly perpetrate the very horrors for which public indignation, as much as public justice, had doomed it to its dreadful fate. It is sufficient, that extreme anguish is before us—we wish it relief before we have paused to love, or without reflecting on our causes of hatred-the wish is the direct and instant emotion of our soul in these circumstances-an emotion which, in such peculiar circumstances, it is impossible for hatred to suppress, and which love may strengthen, indeed, but is not necessary for producing. It is the same with our general desire of happiness to others. We desire, in a particular degree, the happiness of those whom we love, because we cannot think of them without tender admiration. But, though we had known them, for the first time, simply as human beings, we should still have desired their happiness, that is to say, if no opposite interests had arisen, we should have wished them to be happy, rather than to have any distress-yet there is nothing in this case, which corresponds with the tender esteem that is felt in love, There is the mere wish of happiness to them-a wish, which itself, indeed, is usually denominated love, and which may, without any inconvenience, be so denominated in that general humanity, which we call a love of mankind, but which we must always remember does not afford, on analysis, the same results as other affections of more cordial regard, to which we give the same name. To love a friend, is to wish his happiness, indeed, but it is to have other emotions at the same instant, emotions, without which this mere wish would be poor to constant friendship. To love the natives of Asia or Africa, of whose individual virtues or vices, talents or imbecility, wisdom or ignorance, we know nothing, is to wish their happiness; but this wish is all which constitutes the faint and feeble love. It is a wish, however, which, unless when the heart is absolutely corrupted, renders it impossible for man to be wholly indifferent to man; and this great object is that which nature had in view. She has, by a provident arrangement, which we cannot but admire the more, the more attentively we examine it, accommodated our emotions to our means,-making our love most ardent, where our wish of giving happiness might be most effectual, and less, gradually, and less, in proportion to our diminished means, From the affection of the mother for her new-born infant, which has been rendered the strongest of all affections, because it was to arise in circumstances where affection would be most needed,-to that general philanthropy, which extends itself to the remotest stranger, on spots of the earth which we never are to visit, and which we as little think of ever visiting, as of exploring any of the distant planets of our system, there is a scale of benevolent desire, which corresponds. with the necessities to be relieved, and our power of relieving them; or with the happiness to be afforded, and our power of affording happiness. How many opportunities have we of giv ing delight to those who live in our domestic circle, which would be lost before we could diffuse it, to those who are distant from us! Our love, therefore, our desire of giving happiness,-our pleasure in having given it, are stronger within the limits of this sphere of daily and hourly intercourse, than beyond it. Of those who are beyond this sphere, the individuals most familiar to us are those whose happiness we must always know better how to promote, than the happiness of strangers, with whose particular habits and inclinations we are little, if at all acquainted. Our love and the desire of general happiness which attends it, are, therefore, by the concurrence of many constitutional tendencies of our nature, in fostering the generous wish, stronger, as felt for an intimate friend, than for one who is scarcely known to us. If there be an exception to this gradual scale of importance, according to intimacy, it must be in the case of one who is absolutely a stranger, a foreigner, who comes among a people with whose general manners he is, perhaps, unacquainted, and who has no friend to whose attention he can lay claim, from any prior intimacy. In this case, indeed, it is evident, that our benevolence might be more usefully directed to one who is absolutely unknown, than to many who are better known by us, that live in our very neighbourhood, in the enjoyment of domestic loves and friendships of their own. Accordingly, we find, that by a provision which might be termed singular, if we did not think of the universal bounty and wisdom of God,-a modification of our general regard has been prepared, in the sympathetic tendencies of our nature, for this case also. There is a species of affection to which the stranger gives birth, merely as being a stranger. He is received and sheltered by our hospitality, almost with the zeal with which our friendship delights to receive one with whom we have lived in cordial union, whose virtues we know and revere, and whose kindness has been to us no small part of the happiness of our life. Is it possible to perceive this general proportion of our desire of giving happiness, in its various degrees, to the means which we possess, in various circumstances of affording it, without admiration of an arrangement so simple in the principles from which it flows, and at the same time so effectual,—an arrangement which exhibits proofs of goodness in our very wants, of wisdom in our very weaknesses, by the adaptation of these to each other, and by the ready resources which want and weakness find in these affections which every where surround them, like the presence and protection of God himself? "O humanity!" exclaims Philocles in the Travels of Anacharsis," generous and sublime inclination, announced in infancy by the transports of a simple tenderness, in youth by the rashness of a blind but happy confidence, in the whole progress of life by the facility with which the heart is ever ready to contract attachment! O, cries of nature! which resound from one extremity of the universe to the other, which fill us with remorse, when we oppress a single human being; with a pure delight, when we have been able to give one comfort! love, friendship, beneficence, sources of a pleasure that is inexhaustible! Men are unhappy, only because they refuse to listen to your voice; and, ye divine authors of so many blessings! what gratitude do those blessings demand! If all which was given to man had been a mere instinct, that led beings, overwhelmed with wants and evils, to lend to each other a reciprocal support, this might have been sufficient to bring. the miserable near to the miserable; but it is only a goodness, infinite as yours, which could have formed the design of assembling us together by the attraction of love, and of diffusing, through the great associations which cover the earth, that vital warmth which renders society eternal, by rendering it delightful." * Chap. lxxviii. |