THE ANIMATED CEEATION. 283 



to promote their happiness as well as our own. There is even 

 a higher law, which has long been announced, but never acted 

 on to any considerable extent, that our greatest happiness is 

 not to be realized by each having a regard for himself, but by 

 each seeking primarily to benefit his fellow-creatures. When 

 man comes to have confidence in his own nature, he will begin 

 to act on this principle, and the result will be a degree of happi- 

 ness such as we only see at present faintly shadowed forth in 

 the purest and sweetest charities of family life a happiness 

 from which there will be no class exceptions. 



The question whether the human race will ever advance far 

 beyond its present position in intellect and morals, is one 

 which has engaged much attention. Judging from the past, 

 we cannot reasonably doubt that great advances are yet to be 

 made ; but if the principle of development be admitted, these 

 are certain, whatever may be the space of time required for 

 their realization. A progression resembling development may 

 be traced in human nature, both in the individual and in large 

 groups of men. The individual is in childhood under the in- 

 fluence of the propensities and instinctive aptitudes ; in youth, 

 he is swayed by niarvellousness, the love of the beautiful, the 

 imagination : in full maturity, he passes under (comparatively) 

 the domination of reason. In perfect analogy, a nation is at 

 first impulsive and unreasoning ; afterwards it is conducted 

 by the second class of sentiments (the age of mythologies, hie- 

 rocracies, man and idea worships) ; finally, its institutions 

 approximate to careful regard for what is convenient and 

 profitable, under the control of justice and humanity. The 

 advance of knowledge favours the progress of the moral condi- 

 tions, and in improved moral conditions knowledge becomes 

 more sound. In tolerably favourable circumstances, this ten- 

 dency onward never fails to make itself visible j and it is 

 evident that, though many nations seem nearly stationary, and 

 others appear to retrograde, there is always a progress in some 

 place, so that no long space of time ever elapses without show- 

 ing, upon the whole, a certain advance. By the work of our 

 thoughtful brains and busy hands, we modify external nature 

 in a way never known before. Under the operations of tillage, 

 of mechanism, of building, making, and inventing ; of those 

 applications of natural powers and forces which human wit 

 turns to account in so many ways ; of all the results of social 

 experience, of knowledge, and of arrangement ; the earth tends 

 to become a much serener field of existence than it was iu 



