Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the AuthorGodwin, William
Philosophy
Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries: Interspersed with Some Particulars Respecting the Author
Godwin, William
Human beings; Psychology -- Early works to 1850
But how different are the feelings that arise within us, as soon as
we enter into the society of our fellow-creatures! "The end of the
commandment is love." It is the going forth of the heart towards those
to whom we are bound by the ties of a common nature, affinity, sympathy
or worth, that is the luminary of the moral world. Without it there
would have been "a huge eclipse of sun and moon;" or at best, as a
well-known writer(29) expresses it in reference to another subject,
we should have lived in "a silent and drab-coloured creation." We are
prepared by the power that made us for feelings and emotions; and,
unless these come to diversify and elevate our existence, we should
waste our days in melancholy, and scarcely be able to sustain ourselves.
The affection we entertain for those towards whom our partiality and
kindness are excited, is the life of our life. It is to this we are
indebted for all our refinement, and, in the noblest sense of the word,
for all our humanity. Without it we should have had no sentiment (a
word, however abused, which, when properly defined, comprises every
thing that is the crown of our nature), and no poetry.--Love and
hatred, as they regard our fellow-creatures, in contradistinction to the
complacency, or the feeling of an opposite nature, which is excited in
us towards inanimate objects, are entirely the offspring of the delusive
sense of liberty.
(29) Thomas Paine.
The terms, praise and blame, express to a great degree the same
sentiments as those of love and hatred, with this difference, that
praise and blame in their simplest sense apply to single actions,
whereas love and hatred are produced in us by the sum of those actions
or tendencies, which constitute what we call character. There is also
another difference, that love and hatred are engendered in us by other
causes as well as moral qualities; but praise and blame, in the sense in
which they are peculiarly applied to our fellow-mortals, are founded on
moral qualities only. In love and hatred however, when they are intense
or are lasting, some reference to moral qualities is perhaps necessarily
implied. The love between the sexes, unless in cases where it is of a
peculiarly transient nature, always comprises in it a belief that the
party who is the object of our love, is distinguished by tendencies
of an amiable nature, which we expect to see manifesting themselves in
affectionate attentions and acts of kindness. Even the admiration we
entertain for the features, the figure, and personal graces of the
object of our regard, is mixed with and heightened by our expectation of
actions and tones that generate approbation, and, if divested of this,
would be of small signification or permanence. In like manner in
the ties of affinity, or in cases where we are impelled by the
consideration, "He also is a man as well as I," the excitement will
carry us but a little way, unless we discover in the being towards whom
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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