274 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 



and every ill that can be traced to it is but as dust in the 

 balance. And here, also, we must be on our guard against 

 judging from what we see in the world at a particular era. 

 As reason and the higher sentiments of man's nature in- 

 crease in force, this passion is put under better regulation, 

 so as to lessen many of the evils connected with it. The civi- 

 lized man is more able to give it due control ; his attach- 

 ments are less the result of impulse : he studies more the 

 weal of his partner and offspring. There are even some of 

 the resentful feelings connected in early society with love, 

 such as hatred of successful rivalry, and. jealousy, which 

 almost disappear in an advanced state of civilization. The 

 evil springing, in our own species at least, from this passion, 

 may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to a particular 

 term of the world's progress, and which may be expected to 

 decrease greatly in amount. 



With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffer- 

 ing to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated 

 but regular process in electro-chemistry, which goes well, and 

 is a source of continual gratification, so long as nothing occurs 

 to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable every mo- 

 ment to be deranged by various external agencies, when it 

 becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, ceases 

 to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily admitted 

 that the evils experienced in this way are very great ; but, 

 after all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and 

 not necessarily frequent exceptions from a general rule of 

 which the direct action is to confer happiness. The human 

 constitution might have been made of a more hardy character ; 

 but we always see hardiness and insensibility go together, and 

 it may be of course presumed that we only could have pur- 

 chased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large 

 portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agree- 

 able sensations. Or man's faculties might have been restrictt d 

 to definitiveness of action, as is greatly the case with those of 

 the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe 

 from the aberrations which lead to disease ; but in that event 

 we should have been incapable of acting to so many different 

 purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which 

 the varied action of our faculties places in our power ; we 

 should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on 

 a level with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the 

 very fineness of man's constitution, that which places him in 



