that he could add this item of pleasure to the credit side of his account. This, however, he cannot accomplish; because, though he can by reason correct his calculations, it is not in the power, even of the most potent reason, suddenly to break habitual associations; much less is it in the power of cool reason to conjure up warm enthusiasm. Yet, in this case, enthusiasm is the thing required.

What the man of reason cannot do for himself after his associations are strongly formed, might have been easily accomplished in his early education. He might have been taught the same general principles, but with different habits. By early associating the pleasures of sympathy, and praise, and affection, with all generous and benevolent actions, his parents might have joined these ideas so forcibly in his mind, that the one set of ideas should never recur without the other. Whenever the words benevolence or generosity were pronounced, the feelings of habitual pleasure would recur; and he would, independently of reason, desire from association to be generous. When enthusiasm is fairly justified by reason, we have nothing to fear from her vehemence.

In rewarding children for the prudential virtues, such as order, cleanliness, economy, temperance, &c., we should endeavour to make the rewards the immediate consequence of the virtues themselves; and at the same time, approbation should be shown in speaking of these useful qualities. A gradation must, however, always be observed in our praises of different virtues; those that are the most useful to society, as truth, justice, and humanity, must stand the highest in the scale; those that are most agreeable, claim the next place. Those good qualities which must wait a considerable time for their reward, such as perseverance, prudence, &c., we must not expect early from young people. Till they have had experience, how can they form any idea about the future? Till they have been punctually rewarded for their industry, or for their prudence, they do not feel the value of prudence and perseverance. Time is necessary to all these lessons, and those who leave time out in their calculations, will always be disappointed in whatever plan of education they may pursue.

Many to whom the subject is familiar, will be fatigued, probably, by the detailed manner in which it has been thought necessary to explain the principles by which

we should guide ourselves in the distribution of rewards and punishments to children. Those who quickly seize and apply general ideas, cannot endure, with patience, the tedious minuteness of didactic illustration. Those who are actually engaged in practical education, will not, on the contrary, be satisfied with general precepts; and, however plausible any theory may appear, they are well aware that its utility must depend upon a variety of small circumstances, to which writers of theories often neglect to advert. At the hazard of being thought tedious, those must be minute in explanation who desire to be generally useful. An old French writer,* more remarkable for originality of thought than for the graces of style, was once reproached by a friend with the frequent repetitions which were to be found in his works. "Name them to me," said the author. The critic, with obliging précision, mentioned all the ideas which had most frequently recurred in the book. am satisfied," replied the honest author; you remember my ideas; I repeated them so often to prevent you from forgetting them. Without my repetitions, we should never have succeeded."

“I

CHAPTER X.

ON SYMPATHY AND SENSIBILITY.

THE artless expressions of sympathy and sensibility in children, are peculiarly pleasing; people who, in their commerce with the world, have been disgusted and deceived by falsehood and affectation, listen with delight to the genuine language of nature. Those who have any interest in the education of children, have yet a higher sense of pleasure in observing symptoms of their sensibility; they anticipate the future virtues which early sensibility seems certainly to promise; the future happiness which these virtues will diffuse. Nor are they unsupported by philosophy in these sanguine hopes. No theory was ever developed with more ingenious elegance, than that which deduces all our moral sentiments

* The Abbé St. Pierre. See his Eloge, by D'Alembert.

from sympathy. The direct influence of sympathy upon all social beings is sufficiently obvious, and we immediately perceive its necessary connexion with compassion, friendship, and benevolence; but the subject becomes more intricate when we are to analyze our sense of propriety and justice; of merit and demerit; of gratitude and resentment; self-complacency or remorse; ambition and shame.*

We allow, without hesitation, that a being destitute of sympathy could never have any of these feelings, and must, consequently, be incapable of all intercourse with society; yet we must at the same time perceive, that a being endowed with the most exquisite sympathy, must, without the assistance and education of reason, be, if not equally incapable of social intercourse, far more dangerous to the happiness of society. A person, governed by sympathy alone, must be influenced by the bad as well as by the good passions of others; he must feel resentment with the angry man; hatred with the malevolent; jealousy with the jealous; and avarice with the miser: the more lively his sympathy with these painful feelings, the greater must be his misery; the more forcibly he is impelled to action by this sympathetic influence, the greater, probably, must be his imprudence and his guilt. Let us even suppose a being capable of sympathy only with the best feelings of his fellow-creatures,-still, without the direction of reason, he would be a nuisance in the world; his pity would stop the hand, and overturn the balance of justice; his love would be as dangerous as his pity; his gratitude would exalt his benefactor at the expense of the whole human race; his sympathy with the rich, the prosperous, the great, and the fortunate, would be so sudden and so violent as to leave him no time for reflection upon the consequences of tyranny, or the miseries occasioned by monopoly. No time for reflection, did we say? We forgot that we were speaking of a being destitute of the reasoning faculty! Such a being, no matter what his virtuous sympathies might be, must act either like a madman or a fool. On sympathy we cannot depend, either for the correctness of a man's moral sentiments, or for the steadiness of his moral conduct. It is very common to talk of the excellence of a person's

* Adam Smith.

heart, of the natural goodness of his disposition; when these expressions distinctly mean any thing, they must refer to natural sympathy, or a superior degree of sensibility. Experience, however, does not teach us that sensibility and virtue have any certain connexion with each other. No one can read the works of Sterne, or of Rousseau, without believing these men to have been endowed with extraordinary sensibility; yet, who would propose their conduct in life as a model for imitation? That quickness of sympathy with present objects of distress which constitutes compassion, is usually thought a virtue, but it is a virtue frequently found in persons of an abandoned character. Mandeville, in his essay upon charity-schools, puts this in a strong light.

"Should any one of us," says he, "be locked up in a ground room, where, in a yard adjoining to it, there was a thriving, good-humoured child at play, of two or three years old, so near us that through the grates of the window we could almost touch it with our hands; and if, while we took delight in the harmless diversion and imperfect prattle of the innocent babe, a nasty, overgrown sow should come in upon the child, set it a screaming, and frighten it out of its wits,-it is natural to think that this would make us uneasy, and that with crying out, and making all the menacing noise we could, we should endeavour to drive the sow away. But if this should happen to be a half-starved creature, that, mad with hunger, went roaming about in quest of food, and we should behold the ravenous brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it ;-to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout, digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage pleasure over the horrid banquet; to hear and see all this, what torture would it give the soul, beyond expression! * * Not only a man of humanity, of good morals, and commiseration, but likewise a highwayman, a housebreaker, or a murderer, could feel anxieties on such an occasion."

*

Among those monsters who are pointed out by the

historian to the just detestation of all mankind, we meet with instances of casual sympathy and sensibility; even their vices frequently prove to us, that they never became utterly indifferent to the opinion and feelings of their fellow-creatures. The dissimulation, jealousy, suspicion, and cruelty of Tiberius, originated, perhaps, more in his anxiety about the opinions which were formed of his character, than in his fears of any conspiracies against his life. The "judge within," the habit of viewing his own conduct in the light in which it was beheld by the impartial spectator, prompted him to new crimes; and thus his unextinguished sympathy, and his exasperated sensibility, drove him to excesses from which a more torpid temperament might have preserved him.* When, upon his presenting the sons of Germanicus to the senate, Tiberius beheld the tenderness with which these young men were received, he was moved to such an agony of jealousy as instantly to beseech the senate that he might resign the empire. We cannot attribute, either to policy or fear, this strong emotion, because we know that the senate was at this time absolutely at the disposal of Tiberius, and the lives of the sons of Germanicus depended upon his pleasure.

The desire to excel, according to "Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments," is to be resolved principally into our love of the sympathy of our fellow-creatures. We wish for their sympathy, either in our success or in the pleasure we feel in superiority. The desire for this refined modification of sympathy may be the motive of good and great actions; but it cannot be trusted as a moral principle. Nero's love of sympathy made him anxious to be applauded on the stage as a fiddler and a buffoon. Tiberius banished one of his philosophic courtiers, and persecuted him till the unfortunate man laid violent hands upon himself, merely because he had discovered that the emperor read books in the morning to prepare himself with questions for his literary society at night. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sued in the most abject manner for an Olympic crown, and sent a critic to the galleys for finding fault with his verses. Had not these men a sufficient degree of sensibility to praise, and more than a sufficient desire for the sympathy of their fellow-creatures?

* See Smith.