Few things can exceed the characters of human beings in variety. There must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which renders it accessible to these varieties. For the present we will call it taste. One man feels his spirits regaled with the sight of those things which constitute wealth, another in meditating the triumphs of Alexander or Caesar, and a third in viewing the galleries of the Louvre. Not one of these thinks in the outset of appropriating these objects to himself; not one of them begins with aspiring to be the possessor of vast opulence, or emulating the triumphs of Caesar, or obtaining in property the pictures and statues the sight of which affords him so exquisite delight. Even the admirer of female beauty, does not at first think of converting this attractive object into a mistress, but on the contrary desires, like Pygmalion, that the figure he beholds might become his solace and companion, because he had previously admired it for itself. Just so the benevolent man is an individual who finds a peculiar delight in contemplating the contentment, the peace and heart's ease of other men, and sympathises in no ordinary degree with their sufferings. He rejoices in the existence and diffusion of human happiness, though he should not have had the smallest share in giving birth to the thing he loves. It is because such are his tastes, and what above all things he prefers, that he afterwards becomes distinguished by the benevolence of his conduct. The reflex act of the mind, which these new philosophers put forward as the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents itself but to the speculative enquirer in his closet. The savage never dreams of it. The active man, engaged in the busy scenes of life, thinks little, and on rare occasions of himself, but much, and in a manner for ever, of the objects of his pursuit. Some men are uniform in their character, and from the cradle to the grave prefer the same objects that first awakened their partialities. Other men are inconsistent and given to change, are "every thing by starts, and nothing long." Still it is probable that, in most cases, he who performs an act of benevolence, feels for the time that he has a peculiar delight in contemplating the good of his fellow-man. The doctrine of the modern philosophers on this point, is in many ways imbecil and unsound. It is inauspicious to their creed, that the reflex act of the mind is purely the affair of experience. Why did the liberal-minded man perform his first act of benevolence? The answer of these persons ought to be, because the recollection of a generous deed is a source of the truest delight. But there is an absurdity on the face of this solution.