184 EXPLANATIONS. 



J 



despairing comfortlessness of the selfish, who have 

 acted through long years on the supposition that 

 the social affections could be starved hurtlessly ; 

 in the pestilences ravaging the haiuits of poverty, 

 and revenging, in a spreading contagion, the ne- 

 glect by the rich of the haplessness of their 

 penury and disease-stricken neighbours ; in the 

 canker of discontent and crime, which eats into the 

 vitals of a nation in consequence of an unlimited 

 indulgence of acquisitiveness by those possessing 

 the most ready natural resources and standing in 

 the most fortunate positions ; in the national de- 

 gradation and misery which follow wars entered 

 upon in the wantonness of pride, greed, and vanity. 

 Doubtless, were the idea vitally present in the 

 minds of all men, that fi'om laws of unswerving 

 regularity every act, thought, and emotion of 

 theirs helps to determine their own futm'e, both 

 by its direct effects on their fate, and its reflection 

 from the future of their fellow-creatures, and this 

 without any possibility of reprieve or extenuation, 

 we should see society presenting a different as- 

 pect from what it does, the sum of human misery 

 vastly diminished, and that of the general happi- 

 ness as much increased. 



I am not to attemjDt a particular defence of the 

 new view of nature from various odiums tin-own 



