Kant maintains that love cannot be an object of duty; that no one is obliged to love: that sentiment is phenomenal and belongs to the order of nature, and can neither be produced nor prevented; that, consequently, it has nothing to do with morals. The only love admitted by Kant in morals is what he calls _practical_ love: namely, the love which consists in actions and does others good, or any kind of sentiment accompanying benevolence, provided it be a disinterested sentiment. "All other love," he says in his odd and energetic language, "is _pathological_," that is, sickly. Kant, no doubt, is right if he means that false sentimentality or feeble softness,[138] which the poet Gilbert has so well described, and which the enervating literature of the latter part of the eighteenth century made so ridiculous. We should take care not to fall into an effeminate tenderness or a silly philanthropy which sacrifices justice to a mawkish sensibility. But all danger and defects set aside, there still remains the question whether we owe anything to our own heart, and whether the only thing directly commanded us, be action. It is quite true that it is not an effect of our will if our heart is more or less tender, more or less sympathetic. Nature has made some souls gentle and amiable, others austere and cold, others again heroic and hard, etc.; the moralists should not forget these differences, and the degree of sensibility obligatory on all cannot be absolutely determined. But there are two facts which certainly oblige us to put some restrictions upon Kant's too harsh doctrine. The first is that moral emotion (affection, enthusiasm for the beautiful, for our country) is never wholly absent in any human soul; the second is that sensibility does not altogether lie outside our will. We can smother our good feelings as we can smother our evil passions; we can also cultivate them, develop them, encourage them; give them a greater or less share in our lives, by placing ourselves in circumstances which favor them. For example, say such or such a person is but slightly endowed with sensibility or sympathy for the sufferings of the wretched; yet is it impossible that he be entirely deprived of them: let him overcome his repugnance and indifference; let him visit the poor, put himself at the service of human misery; the dormant sympathy will inevitably awaken in his heart. By this fact alone will he be enabled to do good with more ease, and raise his soul to a higher degree of perfection and beauty.