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PLEASURES OF BENEVOLENCE.

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indulgence of the feeling. It is as purely self-seeking as any other pleasure, and makes no enquiry concerning the feelings of the beloved personality.

In the second place, in a region of the mind quite apart from the tender emotion, arises the principle of Sympathy, or the prompting to take on the pleasures and pains of other beings, and act on them as if they were our own. Instead of being a source of pleasure to us, the primary operation of sympathy is to make us surrender pleasure and to incur pains.

Thirdly, The engagement of the mind by objects of affection gives them, in preference to others, the benefit of our sympathy; and hence we are specially impelled to work for advancing their pleasures and alleviating their pains. It does not follow that we are made happier by the circumstance; on the contrary, we may be involved in painful and heavy labours.

Fourthly, The reciprocation of sympathy and good offices is a great increase of pleasure on both sides; being, indeed, under favourable circumstances, one of the greatest sources of human delight.

Fifthly, It is the express aim of a well-constituted society, if possible, never to let good offices pass unreciprocated. If the immediate object of them cannot or will not reciprocate in full, as when we relieve the destitute or the worthless, others bestow upon us approbation and praise. Of course, if benevolent actions, instead of being a tax, were self-rewarding, such acknowledgment would have no relevance.

Sixthly, There is a pleasure in the sight of happy beings, and we naturally feel a certain elation in being instrumental to this agreeable effect.

11. Compassion, or Pity, means Sympathy with distress, and usually supposes an infusion of Tender Feeling.

The effective aid to a sufferer springs from sympathy proper, and may be accompanied, or not, with tender manifestations. Many persons, little given to the melting mood, are highly sympathetic in the way of doing services. Others bestow sympathy, in the form of mere tender effusion, with perhaps little else. To be full of this last kind of sympathy is the proper meaning of Sentimentality.

12. The receipt of favours inspires Gratitude; of which the foundation is sympathy, and the ruling principle, the complex idea of Justice.

Pleasure conferred upon us, by another human being, im

mediately prompts the tender response. With whatever power of sympathy we possess, we enter into the pleasures and pains of the person that has thus engaged our regards. The highest form of gratitude, which leads us to reciprocate benefits and make acknowledgments, in some proportion to the benefits conferred, is an application of the principle of Justice.

13. In the Equal relationships of life, there is room for the mutual play of Benevolence and Gratitude.

In brotherhood, friendship, co-membership of the same society, occasional inequalities give room for mutual good offices. In the tenderness thus developed, there is a bond of attraction to counterwork the rivalries and repellant egotisms of mankind.

14. The operation of Sympathy renders the mere spectacle of Generosity a stimulant of Tender Feeling.

This is one great producing cause of the fictitious tenderness made use of in Fine Art. Sympathy interests us in other beings; their pains and pleasures become to a certain extent ours; and the benefits imparted to them can raise a tender wave in us. The more striking manifestations of generosity, as when an injured person or an enemy renders good for evil, are touching even to the unconcerned spectator. 15. The Lower Animals are subjects of tender feeling, and of mutual attachment.

Their total dependence forbids rivalry; while their sensuous charms, vivacity, their contrast to ourselves, and their services, are able to evoke tenderness and affection.

The reciprocal attachment of animals to men, so much greater than they can maintain to their own species, shows that the sense of favours received is able to work in them the genuine tender sentiment. All that the feeling can amount to, in the absence of the totally distinct aptitude of sympathy, is seen in them, very much as it appears in early human infancy.

16. There is a form of tenderness manifested towards Inanimate things.

By associated pleasurable emotion, we come to experience towards our various possessions, and local surroundings, a certain warmth of the nature of an attachment. It is from their original power to give pleasure, that these things work the springs of tenderness; but, as they are unsuited to

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INANIMATE THINGS.

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its proper consummation, the indulgence of the feeling is imaginary or fictitious. The personifying impulse here comes to our aid; and, by going through some of the forms, we experience the reality, of tender regard.

Sorrow.

17. Sorrow is pain from the loss of objects of affection; the tender feeling becoming a means of consolation.

Affection supposes a habitual reference to another person, an intertwining of thoughts, interests, pleasures, and conduct, extensive in proportion to the intimacy of the relationship. To be deprived of such a one, is to lose a main stay of existence; on the principle of Self-conservation the loss is misery. The giving way of anything that we have been accustomed to depend upon, leaves us in a state of helplessness and wretchedness, till we go through the process of building up new supports.

The lower animals are capable of sorrow. The dog will sometimes pine and die of absence from his master: being unable to endure the privation, or to reconstitute a bond of attachment.

It is, however, the characteristic of the tender feeling to flow readily, on the prompting of such occasions, and to supply, in its almost inexhaustible fulness, a large measure of consolation. This is the genial and healing side of sorrow. It is a satisfaction not afforded, in the same degree, by other losses, by failure in worldly aspirations, by the baulking of revenge, or by the incurring of an ill name.

18. The Social and Moral bearings of tenderness are important, although the best part of the effect is due to the co-operation of Sympathy.

Anything tending to give us pleasure in other beings. makes us court society, and accommodate ourselves to others. The cultivation of the modes and expression of tenderness belongs to the arts of civilized man.

Admiration and Esteem.

19. Admiration is the response to pleasurable feeling aroused by Excellence or superiority; a feeling closely allied to love.

The occasions of admiration are various and complicated, and will be resumed under the Sublime (ESTHETIC EMOTIONS).

What we notice here is that the feeling is one readily passing into tenderness; the reason being not solely that it is a pleasure, but also that it supposes another sentient being to receive the admiring expression.

The frequent transition from Admiration to Love shows the community of the two feelings: an admiration without some portion of kindly regard is an exceptional and artificial state, which it takes a certain effort of mind to entertain; as in contemplating an Alcibiades or a Marlborough.

20. Esteem refers to the performance of essential Duties, whose neglect is attended with evil.

Our Esteem is moved by useful, rather than by shining, qualities. As we are painfully aware of the consequences of individual remissness in the duties and conduct of life, there is a cheering re-action in witnessing the opposite conduct. It is a rebound from pain not unmixed with apprehension, and being connected with persons, it falls into the strain of tender feeling. We esteem the prudent man, the just man, the self-sufficing or independent man; and our agreeable sentiment has its spring in the possible evils from the absence of these qualities, and is greater as our sense of those evils is greater.

Both Admiration and Esteem are accompanied with Deference, a mode of gratitude to the persons that have evoked those sentiments.

Veneration-the Religious Sentiment.

21. The Religious Sentiment is constituted by the Tender Emotion, together with Fear, and the Sentiment of the Sublime.

We must premise that the generic feature of Religion is Government, or authority; the specific difference is the authority of a Supernatural rule. It may thus be distinguished from mere Poetic Emotions, which are so largely incorporated with it.

. The composition of the feeling is expressed in the familiar conjunction wonder, love, and awe.'

(1) The vastness of the presiding power of the world, in so far as it can be brought home, is a source of the elation of the Sublime. The great difficulty here is in connexion with the unseen and spiritual essence, which requires the sensuous grandeurs of the actual world, and the highest stretch of poetic diction, as aids to bring it within the compass of imagination.

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(2) Our position of weakness, dependence, and uncertainty, brings us under the dominion of Fear. This feeling varies with our own conscious misdeeds, as compared with the exactions of the supreme Governor. The secondary uses of Religion, in the hands of the politician, are supposed to be favoured by the terror-inspiring severity of the creed; a weapon fraught with dangers. The autocrat of Russia was unable to induce even his soldiers to dispense with the Lenten fasting, during the ravages of cholera.

In almost all views of Religion, the Sense of Dependence is given as the central fact.

(3) Love or Tender Emotion enters into the feeling, according as the Deity is viewed in a benign aspect. There is a certain incompatibility between tenderness and fear; indeed, in any close relation between governor and governed, a perfect mutual affection is rare and exceptional; the putting forth of authority chills tenderness.

A great and beneficent being might be conceived, and is conceived, by many, as bestowing favours without imposing restraints, or inflicting punishments. It is to such a being that tender and adoring sentiment might arise in purity, or without the admixture of fear. The benefactor is in that case separated from the ruler, and the essential character of Religion is no longer present.

It

Veneration, in the terrestrial and human acceptation, is a sentiment displayed, not so much to active and present authority, as to power that is now passing or past. mingles with the conception of greatness the pathos of mortality and decay. It is the tribute to the memory of the departed, and is sometimes expressed by rites of a semireligious character. The followers of Confucius in China, who have no religion, in the proper sense of the term, join in the periodical observances of the Chinese in honour of their departed ancestry.

Reverence is a name for high admiration and deferential regard, without implying authority. We may express reverence and feel deference to a politician, a philanthropist, or a man of learning or science.

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