When the mother, with total
disregard to her health and comfort, devotes herself to watching over
her child, she is not influenced by any sense of duty, nor do we attach
to her conduct the feeling of moral approbation. She acts simply upon
an impulse within, which she perceives to be a part of her constitution,
and which carries her forward with unshrinking firmness in a particular
course of laborious and anxious service. She may, indeed, be sensible
that the violation of these feelings would expose her to the reprobation
of her kind; but she does not imagine that the zealous fulfilment of
them entitles her to any special praise. The same principle applies to
all the affections. They are a part of our moral constitution, intended
to bind men together by certain offices of justice, friendship, and
compassion; and have been well named by a distinguished writer, "the
voice of God within us." They serve a purpose in our moral economy,
analogous to that which the appetites answer in our physical system. The
appetite of hunger, for example, ensures a regular supply of
nourishment, in a manner which could never have been provided for by any
process of reasoning; though an exercise of reason is still applicable
to preserving over it a certain regulation and control. In the same
manner, the various feelings of our moral nature have each a defined
purpose to answer, both in respect to our own mental economy and our
relations to our fellow-men; and in the due exercise of them they ought
to be controlled and regulated by the moral principle. The violation of
these feelings, therefore, places man below the level of a moral being;
but the performance of them does not entitle him to assume the claim of
merit. He is merely bearing his part in a certain arrangement, from
which he is himself to derive benefit, as a being holding a place in
that system of things which these feelings are intended to keep together
in harmony and order. In regard to the great principles of veracity and
justice, every one perceives this to be true. In all mercantile
transactions, for example, a character for high honour and integrity
leads not only to respect, but to that confidence which is closely
connected with prosperity.--These qualities, indeed, are as essential to
a man's own interest as they are to his duty to other men; and if he
does gain an advantage by fraud and deceit, it is only when he escapes
detection;--that is, while he preserves the reputati