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Untitled Article
made subservient to the growth of benevolence . It is a beautiful spectacle to watch the expansion of the affections in the mind of a child ; to see how , by p leasurable association , his interests are gradually transferred from himself to others ; how , having once felt pleasure and pain for his parents and companions , the association strengthens , till a desire of the good of others renders him unmindful of his own feelings ; how , self-denial being once exercised , the exercise becomes more easy and frequent , till it is itself the
source of as much pleasure to the individual as his benevolence can confer on others ; and how the sum of human happiness is thus indefinitely increased , and man is prepared for that state where nothing that defileth can enter . If he were born with an instinctive principle of benevolence , he would be , at his birth , as fit for the highest enjoyments of a better world as when his course of discipline was finished ; or we must suppose , with our author , that opposite instincts are implanted , which are to carry on a warfare till one or the other is annihilated . He calls resentment an instinct :
but have we any reason , from experience or analogy , to suppose that instincts are ever annihilated ? The supposition is irreconcilable with Dr . Crombie ' s doctrine of the indestructible nature of our consciousness . As for the degradation imputed to the process referred to , it is purely imaginary . Man is what he is , by whatever means he became so ; and as the choice of those means does not rest with him , the beauty or meanness of the process employed is ascribable not to him , but to his Maker and Guide . Benevolence is venerable and beautiful , and the elements from which it is formed ,
the influences under which it expands , are created and administered by God . It is the part of man to investigate the nature of those elements , to watch the operation of those influences , in order to use , as he best may , his privilege of co-operating with the universal Father in the development of mind and the creation of happiness . If he ventures to doubt the efficiency or dispute the existence of the process , because it is not accordant with his notions of fitness and beauty , it follows that his notions are imperfect , and
not that the process is in fault . It is his part to form his conceptions of fitness and beauty from the observation oi the means employed and the results displayed by Providence , and not to question the operation of the means because they vary from his conceptions . Where Dr . Crombie sees deformity and apprehends degradation , some other inquirers discern order and dignity : not that they think selfishness desirable in itself , or see any thing noble in the imperfection of benevolence . But beauty resides in the
process , though not in the elements employed ; and the dignity of the object imparts significance to the means by which it is attained . We can neither enter into our author's conception nor adopt his language when he says , " Our malevolence ceases to be a malignant feeling , when directed against the deliberate parricide , or the atrocity of the wretch who , with wanton cruelty , sheds the blood of an innocent and defenceless
fellow-creature . " Malevolence ( or wishing ill ) can never cease to be a malignant feeling , as its objects are persons , not qualities . We may hate moral evil , but we may not wish ill to the subjects of it . We may hate atrocity ; but to hate the atrocious is wrong ; to be malevolent to the atrocity is impossible , while " malevolence" means what it is universally understood to mean . The ideas included in the woids " virtuous malevolence "
are incongruous ; and the desire of retribution on the vicious proceeds , or ought to proceed , from a principle of benevolence to society , and not of malevolence to the criminal .
Untitled Article
228 Crombie ' s Natural Theology .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 228, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/12/
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