purity, unselfishness, and philanthropy! One man tells me, with
Shaftesbury, that he does not want any "immortal hopes," or any such
"bribes" of "prudence" to make him virtuous or religious,--delicate,
noble-minded creature!--that he can serve and love God equally well,
though he were sure of being annihilated to-morrow morning! Another
declares that he would not accept heaven itself if purchased by a
single pang, voluntary or involuntary, endured by any other being in
God's universe? Another swears that such is his sympathetic benevolence,
that he "would not accept that same heaven if he thought any other
being was to be shut out of it"; I wonder whether he condescends to
accept any blessing now, while a single fallow-creature remains
destitute of it? A fourth (a lady too) declares "there is no theory
God, of an author of nature, of an origin of the universe which is
not utterly repugnant to her faculties, which is not (to her feelings)
so irreverent as to make her blush, so misleading as to make her
mourn"; and now Harrington, instead of being thankful for his glimpse
of happiness, and yielding to the better instincts and convictions
it partly awakened, and learning patience, submission, and faith
under his shattered hopes, is taken captive on the same weak side;
and (all unconscious that he shares in the prophet's feeling, "I
do well to be angry") fancies that his present gloom is more truly
in unison with the condition of the universe, and that he is bound
to be most philanthropically misanthropical. O, well does the Book
say of this heart of ours, "DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS"! Such are
our mingled follies and wickedness, so ludicrous, so sorrowful, are
the features presented in this great tragi-comedy,--THE LIFE OF MAN,
--that it is impossible to play consistently either Democritus
or Heraclitus.
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