All the energies of its being are
directed to the extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually
assailed. At length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures
susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late before
children attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without
emotion, its nurse or its mother suffering acute pain, it is
attributable rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as
the accents and gestures, significant of pain, are referred to the
feelings which they express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder
a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be evil
for its own sake, without any other necessary reference to the mind
by which its existence is perceived, than such as is indispensable
to its perception. The tendencies of our original sensations, indeed,
all have for their object the preservation of our individual being.
But these are passive and unconscious. In proportion as the mind
acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies becomes
limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish,
because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation
of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself.
The inhabitant of a highly civilized community will more acutely
sympathize with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than
the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilization. He
who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity
with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually
sympathize more than one engaged in the less refined functions
of manual labour.
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