73 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pleasure or happiness of the object. But I should think it a great mis- 

 take to define it in this latter way. It would reduce the field of be- 

 nevolence by excluding all inanimate beings, and make the definition 

 far too narrow. Benevolence, I assert, can be felt quite as well toward 

 inanimate, non-sentient beings as toward sentient organisms. It can 

 be felt toward any being of which it is believed that its welfare or per- 

 fection can be procured. As the parent toward his child, the master 

 toward his dog, so the sculptor feels benevolence toward his statue, 

 the author toward his book. The perfection of it makes him happy, 

 its imperfection or destruction causes him pain. Whether the object 

 is a living being or not, whether it is real or imaginary, the sentiment 

 of benevolence is the same in all cases. 



Disinterested I shall call such benevolence, if its origin cannot be 

 traced directly to some egoistical motive or to some other moral or 

 aesthetic feeling. Gratitude, which is dictated by a feeling of equity, 

 admiration, which takes its origin in an aesthetic judgment, or the aver- 

 sion to inflict pain, which is the result of our habits, I shall not call dis- 

 interested benevolence, and in this short essay I do not inquire into 

 their origin. 



To explain the growth of the special sentiment of disinterested 

 benevolence I must assume a certain number of qualities of the mind, 

 the existence of which, however, has generally been admitted. Whether 

 these qualities are native or acquired is here of no importance ; all I 

 require is that they be found in man very soon after his birth. These 

 qualities are, first, the impulse toward self-preservation and self-aug- 

 mentation inherent to every living organism, and without which it 

 could not exist and develop itself ; the wish to be and to be more and 

 more, in a word, to grow. The second quality of mind which I have to 

 assume is the consciousness of existing, not only as a passive sentient 

 being, but as an active being too. And these two qualities once ad- 

 mitted, there follows from them a third, which is the wish to exist as 

 an active being either actually or potentially, to be either acting or 

 capable of acting the wish for power. The fourth quality is that 

 known under the name of capacity of associating ideas, and the fifth 

 the capacity and tendency of the mind to fuse or confuse such asso- 

 ciated ideas, so as not to distinguish them any longer from one another. 

 The first four qualities just enumerated have long ago been generally 

 admitted and amply illustrated. The fifth, that of confusing ideas, has 

 likewise been admitted ; it has even been most admirably illustrated 

 in the works of many a philosopher of great repute, but I am not aware 

 that its importance for morals has ever been sufficiently insisted upon. 



The specimen case of confusion is that between the ego and the 

 body. All men in early life confuse the two notions of self and body, 

 and most men continue to do so forever. Here already the confusion 

 produces a kind of disinterested benevolence; we feel well inclined 

 toward our boclj 7 irrespective of any advantage to ourself. 



