On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
and pains belonging to the exercise of certain dispositions , and constituting not a consequence , but an indissoluble element , of ihese dispositions ? Are there not pleasurable emotions , often amounting to intensity , in the exertion of all the sympathetic £ ffcfctions , emotions enveloped , as it were , in the affections
themselves , and altogether irrespective of any anticipation of consequences ? And are there not uneasy emotions inseparable from bbe existence of vindictive and malignant passions , actual ingredients of their composition , and not only independent of all idea »(> f retribution , but , by their own vividness , blinding the mind to Us certainty ? The contemplation , and still more , the exercise of
compassion , integrity , benevolence , awaken feelings which have so iittle concern with the outward advantages of these virtues , that , at the moment of excitement , they repudiate the idea of them as an unworthy intrusion . Without reference to this class of feelings , lit is impossible to explain the most remarkable and interesting ( Forms of human conduct . When a spectator before a burning
Ihouse penetrates the flames to rescue a stranger ' s child , from whose life he has nothing to expect , —what is it that distinguishes his act from a similar one by the mercenary fireman , anxious to signalize himself by an exhibition of daring ? Every one feels that the operating pleasures and pains which produce volition in mese two eases are essentially different : and in common language
tlanguage of which philosophy has established no title to prive us , —the former act would be called disinterested ; the latter , interested . Perhaps the most precise mode of distinguishng them is to say , that the sense of danger is overmastered , in the one instance , by the emotions of sympathy , in the other , by the prospect of money and of reputation . The pleasures of
sympathy ( or , what is the same thing , deliverance from its pains ) belong to the act itself ; they do not come in at the end w it , but take place during its performance . So inseparable are hey from it , that it cannot even be said to be undertaken for the iake of them ; this would imply a distinct idea of the act , as cause , ind another of pleasures , as effect ; it would imply an idea of
df as the recipient of certain feelings from the outward danger of mother ; whereas , in fact , the cause and the effect are as contiguous ks the particles in the same ball of iron , and make but one event , p these make but one mass : the ideas of them are so indissolubly psed together , that merely to speak of them separately , is to onvey a false impression : and the idea of self is so entirely
bsorbed in that of a fellow-oreature ' s danger , and of the means f rescue , as to be indistinguishable , and , in fact , not to exist , — * exist as a drop in the wave of emotion which rushes through the pind . It is impossible to find language which will unexception-My describe the moral process involved in such cases as this . n popular phraseology , tne agent would be said to sacrifice his * n comfort for the sake of another person ' s ; but as he is really
Untitled Article
Btnthorn * * Deontology 619
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 619, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/15/
-