The Creator has put forth in his gifts, a magnificence which should impress our hearts. What variety in those affectionate sentiments, of the delights of which our natures are susceptible! Without going out of the family circle, I enumerate filial piety, fraternal affection, friendship, love, and parental tenderness. These different sentiments can all co?xist in our hearts, and, so far from weakening each other, each tends to give vigor and intensity to the other. No doubt, the need of so many affections[135] and props attests our feebleness and dependence. But I can scarcely conceive of the happiness, which a being, impassible to weaknesses and wants, could find in himself. I am ready to bless that infirmity of our natures, which is the source of such pure pleasures, and such tender affections.

Let us avoid confounding that sensibility which exacts the pleasures of the heart, with that which produces impassioned characters. They differ as essentially as the genial, vital warmth, from the burning of a fever. Indolence, objects calculated strongly to strike the imagination, and those maxims which corrupt the understanding, develope a vague and ardent sensibility, which sometimes conducts to crime, and always to misery. The other species is approved by reason and preserved by virtue. We owe to it those pure emotions which impart upon earth an indistinct sentiment of the joys of heaven.

There are men, however, who dread genuine sensibility; and, under the conviction that it will multiply their pains, study to eradicate the germs of it from their soul.

Hume was unhappily an unbeliever; but I might easily cite from his life many honorable traits indicative of a good natural disposition. He remarked to a friend, who confided to him his secret sorrows, ‘you entertain an internal enemy, who will always hinder you from being happy. It is your sensibility of heart.’ ‘What!’ responded his friend with a kind of terror, ‘have you not sensibility?’ ‘No. My reason alone speaks, and it declares that it is right to soothe distress.’

In listening to this reply of Hume, we are at once struck with the idea, that the greater part of those who[136] adopt his principles, do not pause at the same point with their model. They sink into that heartless class, who see all human calamities with a dry eye, provided they have no tendency to abridge their own enjoyments.

Suppose even that they pursue the lessons of the Scotch philosopher to better purpose; and without any emotion, without any impulse of heart, hold out a succoring hand to those who suffer. This, perhaps, may answer the claims of reason. But the social instinct will always repel that austere morality, which would give to the human heart an unnatural insensibility, and deprive it, if I may so say, of its amiable weakness. I would hardly desire to see a man oppose a courage, too stoical, to his own miseries. The natural tears which he sheds in extreme affliction, are his guaranty for the sympathy which he will feel for my sorrows.

It is a vile but common maxim, that two conditions are necessary to success in life. The one is, to have a selfish heart. The other, the adage of egotism, is, that to avoid suffering, we must stifle sensibility. I say to these heartless philosophers of the world, that if the only requisite is to avoid suffering, through destitution of feeling, to die is the surest method of all.[40]

The secret of happiness does not consist in avoiding all evils; for in that case, we must learn to love nothing. If there be a lot on earth worthy of envy, it is that of a man, good and tender hearted, who beholds his own creation in the happiness of all who surround him. Let him who would be happy, strive to encircle himself with happy beings. Let the happiness of his family be the incessant object of his thoughts. Let him divine the sorrows and............