habitants of smaller towns, and the industrious sort of common people; where it is rare to meet with any instances of those irregularities, which are known in courts and palaces, and in the rich foundations of easy and pampered priests.

Now if what we have advanced concerning an inward constitution be real and just; if it be true that Nature works by a just order and regulation as well in the passions and affections. as in the limbs and organs which she forms; if it appears withal, that she has so constituted this inward part, that nothing is so essential to it as exercise; and no exercise is so essential as that of social or natural affection: it follows that where this is removed or weakened, the inward part must necessarily suffer and be impaired. Let indolence, indifference, and insensibility be studied as an art, or cultivated with the utmost care; the passions thus restrained will force their prison, and in one way or other procure their liberty, and find full employment. They will be sure to create to themselves unusual and unnatural exercise, where they are cut off from such as is natural and good. And thus in the room of orderly and natural affection, new and unnatural must be raised, and all inward order and economy destroyed.

One must have a very imperfect idea of the order of nature in the formation and structure of animals to imagine that so great a principle, so fundamental a part as that of natural affection should possibly be lost or impaired, without any inward ruin or subversion of the temper and frame of mind.

Whoever is the least versed in this moral kind of architecture will find the inward fabric so adjusted and the whole so nicely built, that the barely extending of a single passion a little too far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring irrecoverable ruin and misery. He will find this experienced in the ordinary case of frenzy and distraction; when the mind, dwelling too long upon one subject (whether prosperous or calamitous), sinks under the weight of it, and proves what the necessity is, of a due balance and counterpoise in the affections. He will find that in every different creature, and distinct sex, there is a different and distinct order, set, or suit of passions, proportionable to the different order of life, the different functions, and capacities assigned to each. As the operations and effects are different, so are the springs and causes in each system. The inside work is fitted to the outward action and performance. So that where

habits or affections are dislodged, misplaced, or changed; where those belonging to one species are intermixed with those belonging to another, there must of necessity be confusion and disturb. ance within.

All this we may observe easily, by comparing the more perfect with the imperfect natures, such as are imperfect from their birth, by having suffered violence within, in their earliest form and inmost matrix. We know how it is with monsters, such as are compounded of different kinds, or different sexes. Nor are they less monsters, who are misshapen or distorted in an inward part. The ordinary animals appear unnatural and monstrous, when they lose their proper instincts, forsake their kind, neglect their offspring, and pervert those functions or capacities bestowed by nature. How wretched must it be, therefore, for Man, of all other creatures, to lose that sense and feeling, which is proper to him as a man, and suitable to his character and genius! How unfortunate must it be for a creature, whose dependence on society is greater than any other's, to lose that natural affection by which he is prompted to the good and interest of his species, and community! Such, indeed, is man's natural share of this affection, that he, of all other creatures, is plainly the least able to bear solitude. Nor is anything more apparent than that there is naturally in every man such a degree of social affection as inclines him to seek the familiarity and friendship of his fellows. It is here that he lets loose a passion, and gives reins to a desire, which can hardly by any struggle or inward violence be withheld; or if it be, is sure to create a sadness, dejection, and melancholy in the mind. For whoever is unsociable, and voluntarily shuns society, or commerce with the world, must of necessity be morose and ill-natured. He, on the other side, who is withheld by force or accident, finds in his temper the ill effects of this restraint. The inclination, when suppressed, breeds discontent; and, on the contrary, affords a healing and enlivening joy, when acting at its liberty, and with full scope: as we may see particularly, when, after a time of solitude and long absence, the heart is opened, the mind disburdened, and the secrets of the breast unfolded to a bosom friend.

This we see yet more remarkably instanced in persons of the most elevated stations; even in princes, monarchs, and those who seem by their condition to be above ordinary human commerce, and who affect a sort of distant strangeness from the rest of

mankind. But their carriage is not the same towards all men. The wiser and better sort, it is true, are often held at a distance as unfit for their intimacy or secret trust. But, to compensate this, there are others substituted in their room who, though they have the least merit, and are perhaps the most vile and contemptible of men, are sufficient, however, to serve the purpose of an imaginary friendship, and can become favorites in form. These are the subjects of humanity in the Great. For these, we see them often in concern and pain; in these, they easily confide; to these, they can with pleasure communicate their power and greatness, be open, free, generous, confiding, bountiful; as rejoicing in the action itself: having no intention or aim beyond it; and their interest, in respect of policy, often standing a quite contrary way. But where neither the love of mankind, nor the passion for favorites prevails, the tyrannical temper fails not to show itself in its proper colors, and to the life, with all the bitterness, cruelty, and mistrust, which belong to that solitary and gloomy state of uncommunicative and unfriendly greatness. Nor needs there any particular proof from history, or present time, to second this remark.

Thus it may appear, how much natural affection is predominant; how it is inwardly joined to us, and implanted in our natures; how interwoven with our other passions; and how essential to that regular motion and course of our affections, on which our happiness and self-enjoyment so immediately depend.

And thus we have demonstrated, that as, on one side, to have the natural and good affections is to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment, so, on the other side, to want them is certain misery and ill.

From "Inquiry concerning Virtue.»

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(1792-1822)

HELLEY wrote a considerable number of essays which were edited by Mrs. Shelley after his death. All of them show

the effects of his inclination to metaphysics, which was even stronger than that of Coleridge. His prose is often remarkable, but it does not demonstrate the genius which makes his verse unmistakably the product of one of the greatest lyric poets of modern times. Born in Sussex, England, August 4th, 1792, Shelley was schooled for six years at Eton and then sent to the University of Oxford which expelled him for writing a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism." In the year of his expulsion, he married Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, the daughter of a tavern keeper. Three years later he deserted her for Mary Wollstonecraft, whom, after the suicide of his wife in 1816, he married. In 1818 he went with her to Italy and they were living together at Spezia when Shelley was drowned, July 8th, 1822, by the capsizing of the boat in which he and his friend, Edward Williams, were sailing on the bay of Spezia. Shelley's body was recovered and burned in the presence of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney.

TH

BENEVOLENCE

A

HERE is a class of emotions which we instinctively avoid. human being, such as is man considered in his origin, a child a month old, has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other natures resembling itself. All the energies of its being are directed to the extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late before children attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without emotion, its nurse or its mother suffering acute pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures, significant of pain, are referred to the feelings which they express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be evil for its own sake, without any other

necessary reference to the mind by which its existence is perceived than such as is indispensable to its perception. The tendencies of our original sensations, indeed, all have for their object the preservation of our individual being. But these are passive and unconscious. In proportion as the mind acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish, because its mind. is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself. The inhabitant of a highly civilized community will more acutely sympathize with the sufferings and enjoyments of others than the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilization. He who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy will usually sympathize more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labor. Every one has experience of the fact that to sympathize with the sufferings of another is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his

own.

The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of perceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate sphere of sensations with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly analyzed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is that the imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connection with all the arts. which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilized life; a creation of the human mind; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the relations established between man and man.