The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits | Page 4

things are abstractedly or in themselves, as how
they affect the mind, and to approve or condemn them accordingly. The
same object seen near strikes us more powerfully than at a distance:
things thrown into masses give a greater blow to the imagination than
when scattered and divided into their component parts. A number of
mole-hills do not make a mountain, though a mountain is actually made
up of atoms: so moral truth must present itself under a certain aspect
and from a certain point of view, in order to produce its full and proper
effect upon the mind. The laws of the affections are as necessary as
those of optics. A calculation of consequences is no more equivalent to
a sentiment, than a seriatim enumeration of square yards or feet touches
the fancy like the sight of the Alps or Andes!

To give an instance or two of what we mean. Those who on pure
cosmopolite principles, or on the ground of abstract humanity affect an
extraordinary regard for the Turks and Tartars, have been accused of
neglecting their duties to their friends and next-door neighbours. Well,
then, what is the state of the question here? One human being is, no
doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of
time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and our
affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative
faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the universe,
could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be possible,
could our hands reach as far as our thoughts or wishes, we might then
busy ourselves to advantage with the Hottentots, or hold intimate
converse with the inhabitants of the Moon; but being as we are, our
feelings evaporate in so large a space--we must draw the circle of our
affections and duties somewhat closer--the heart hovers and fixes
nearer home. It is true, the bands of private, or of local and natural
affection are often, nay in general, too tightly strained, so as frequently
to do harm instead of good: but the present question is whether we can,
with safety and effect, be wholly emancipated from them? Whether we
should shake them off at pleasure and without mercy, as the only bar to
the triumph of truth and justice? Or whether benevolence, constructed
upon a logical scale, would not be merely nominal, whether duty,
raised to too lofty a pitch of refinement, might not sink into callous
indifference or hollow selfishness? Again, is it not to exact too high a
strain from humanity, to ask us to qualify the degree of abhorrence we
feel against a murderer by taking into our cool consideration the
pleasure he may have in committing the deed, and in the prospect of
gratifying his avarice or his revenge? We are hardly so formed as to
sympathise at the same moment with the assassin and his victim. The
degree of pleasure the former may feel, instead of extenuating,
aggravates his guilt, and shews the depth of his malignity. Now the
mind revolts against this by mere natural antipathy, if it is itself
well-disposed; or the slow process of reason would afford but a feeble
resistance to violence and wrong. The will, which is necessary to give
consistency and promptness to our good intentions, cannot extend so
much candour and courtesy to the antagonist principle of evil: virtue, to
be sincere and practical, cannot be divested entirely of the blindness

and impetuosity of passion! It has been made a plea (half jest, half
earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and
manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities practised
upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their blood and
sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to sweeten
their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial, as they
serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of-- this is a sort of
sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the bare scheme of
contingent utility; but on the ground that we have stated, it must pass
for a mere irony. What the proportion between the good and the evil
will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may be a question to
the understanding; but to the imagination and the heart, that is, to the
natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none!
Mr. Bentham, in adjusting the provisions of a penal code, lays too little
stress on the cooperation of the natural prejudices of mankind, and the
habitual feelings of that class of persons for whom they are more
particularly designed. Legislators (we mean writers on legislation) are