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Untitled Article
own peace and the purification and strengthening of our virtue . They do not empire—they have immortalized themselves in the principles which are their Own work ; hut , having passed through one stage of their existence , they retire for a while into some recess of the soul , from whence they shall issue again in a more exalted and beautiful form , fitted for an intenser enjoyment of the light of heaven , and strengthened for a lofty flight above the objects of earth . Of this renovation we shall hereafter speak ; let us now consider how we are to console ourselves for their temporary retirement .
We are not responsible for our feelings , as we are for our principles and actions . They are not so directly in our own power , and are not the subjects of exhortation , approbation , or reproof , in the rule by which we are to govern our lives . Self-reproach is therefore misplaced in respect of our feelings , if our actions are right . Our emotions depend so much on circumstances wholly beyond our own control , on the variations of our bodily state , on the changes of external events , and the unavoidable predominance of one set of
associations over others , that we should be severely tasked indeed if we were required to maintain them at any given degree of intensity , or to keep them in any particular state at any appointed time . As far as we can , by the aids afforded us , command our associations and govern the actions which are connected with certain feelings , it is in our power , and it is our duty , to cherish or repress those feelings ; but over the variety of accessory circumstances which may intervene to influence our feelings , we may have but little
control . Our care , then , should be to look to our principles , and to avoid all anxiety about our emotions . Their nature can never be wrong where our course of action is right , and for their degree we are not responsible . If to this it be ohjected , that we make states of feeling the subject of praise and blame in our judgments of others—that we regard with love and approbation one whose devotion-appears warm and his sympathies unbounded , while we shrink with dread and dislike from him who listens with apathy to the groans
of the sick and the complaints of the sorrowful , and who looks with a dull eye on the most glorious works of nature—it is enough to reply , that we regard their sensibility as it affects their course of action ; or if we do not , our approbation and dislike are misplaced . If the piety of the one consists only in frames and feelings , and his benevolence exhausts itself in smiles and
tears , his emotions are absolutely worthless : and the reason why we dislike the apathy of the other is , that his feelings are dead because he has neglected to cherish them by efforts of duty , and has defeated the purpose of his being . The one ought not to be the object of envy , nor the other of compassion , because they are possessed or destitute of warm emotions , but because those emotions have been rightly fostered or impiously annihilated .
If it can be proved that the vivid , undisciplined emotions of youth are not only useless when principles have once been formed but are actually a hindrance to the purification ^ md exaltation of these principles , no further consideration will be needed to reconcile us to the diminution of their vigour . If not made subservient to principles , they would overpower them : and of this truth we may see abundance of illustrations , if we look abroad into the
world . There we behold beings once innocent , a miable , and well-disposed , happy in the full flow of youthful sensibility , and attractive if am ibe simplicity of their minds and ingenuousness of their hearts ; but now , tainted by the contagion of vice , or corrupted to the heart ' s core ; some , victims to a morbid sensibility which makes their life one lingering sickness of the soul ; others , hardened to the most awful degree of indifference to the welfare of
Untitled Article
104 On the Agency of Feelings in the Formation of Habits .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1829, page 104, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2569/page/32/
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