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the idea of this philanthropy. It is as old as love. Its history began to be written in the first tear which fell from a human eye, over one whose only claim was pity, and whose only plea was sorrow. But we shall not be required to prove that there is such a thing in our day as "the philanthropic movement:" we may safely allege the fact that simple pity, love for the wretched as such, has become a more formal and recognizable power in our time than heretofore. Of this we speak.

That our conception of Christian Philanthropy may be clearly perceived, and that it may be known at once what we believe to be its true nature, and what we are willing to stand by as its defensible positions, we shall state, in four categories, what we deem its grand fundamental propositions.

I. In the system of human affairs, there is a distinct, traceable, and indispensable function, to be performed by compassion.

II. All men are, in a definable sense, equal. All human law is grounded on expediency; on what is temporal and not eternal. Revenge is foreign to the idea of law.

III. It is not a possible case that hatred be the highest and most reasonable feeling with which one human being can regard another. There can not, upon earth, exist, in the human form, any one whom it is not noble and holy to love.

IV. It is impossible, in this world, that the traces of the divine image be absolutely obliterated from the human soul. God has not revealed to man any period at which it is either incumbent on, or lawful for him, to abandon hope and effort that his brother may attain to that higher nature which is at once the restoration and elevation of humanity.

These categories are closely connected with each other, and

a more searching analysis might doubtless afford clearer lines. of demarcation; but, for practical purposes, we think they will serve. The first is the general declaration with which philanthropy, as such, sets out. The second leads us to define its true relation to justice. The third is intimately associated with the second, and is the Christian rule of feeling, as expressed by our Saviour. The fourth indicates the rationale of every effort toward reclamation of the criminal or condemned.

At its first arising, Philanthropy was hailed with acclamation. Without hesitation, apparently without question, and almost with universal voice, men affirmed its light to be holy, and its influence, of necessity, benign. Be the cause, however, what it may, we now find matters altered. Philanthropy, it is true, has pervaded the nation, and more is done at the simple cry of compassion than was ever done before; but it has been assailed with vituperation and contempt, scarcely condescending to argue; while it furnishes every petty novelist and scribbler with subjects of caricature, and targets for small arrows that stick because they are viscous with venom, not because they are pointed with wit. The chief argumentative assailant of philanthropy is a man whose words must always deserve calm and thorough consideration, whose name alone is a battery-Mr. Carlyle. Caricaturists and small wits might be left to shift for themselves, after we had demonstrated, if that proved to be in our power, the value and reasonableness of philanthropy; but to leave them thus altogether, were to fall into the mistake of supposing that nothing can injure which has little force, or that men are not in the habit, every day, and scores of times every day, of holding apples so near to their eyes that they shut out the light of the sun. We consider, therefore, a few words (and

they shall be as few as we can possibly make them) not wholly wasted on the subject of the ridicule to which philanthropy is in our day exposed: they may prove applicable to the sense of the ridiculous as exercised on every kind of religious or moral action or emotion.

We are by no means among those who utter a sweeping condemnation against all laughter in the serious provinces of human affairs: we consider the sense of the ridiculous extremely valuable in a man and a nation. In every department of art, of literature, and of life, it prunes a fantastic or grotesque exuberance, keeping down, to give it in one word, excessive idiosyncrasy. It is, by its nature, in close league with common sense; it is the mortal foe of bombast, sentimentality, softness, and every sort of pretense. We regard the strong sense of the ridiculous inherited by the English people as one of the healthiest characteristics. It may at present threaten to degenerate into universal titter; but, in its native strength and soundness, it preserves us in a fine mean between the French and the Germans; between the "gesticulating nation that has a heart, and wears it on its sleeve," and the nation that thinks walls, and holds the empire of the air.* We imagine there is much in our literature at present which might be bettered by a little smart satire: it is a tonic we can not well do without.

And we claim no exemption for philanthropy from the restraining or tempering power of a sound sense of the ridic

"Gentlemen, think the wall:"-these were the words in which Fichte commenced his philosophic lectures in Jena. However idealistic, we can scarcely conceive a British audience not being touched with a feeling of drollery by the words: the Germans sat like stucco. Let it not be thought from this remark that I intend the faintest disrespect for the majestic genius and noble character of Fichte.

ulous, resulting in manly and discriminating satire. Assuredly, like every other human thing, it may run into absurdity or excess, and, in particular instances, may furnish legitimate objects of caricature.

But satire has its laws: as sure and imperative laws as any other species of composition. And in these it certainly is included, both that it must never be absolutely in error, and that it must never be absolutely frivolous. There is a national mirth which comports with earnestness and reverence, and is beautiful as the smile of natural and fearless strength; but there is such a thing as the laughter of national paralysis, and what more ghastly than that? Laughter is noble and profitable; but not that of the madman when he sets the house on fire, or that of the fool who goes to wedding and funeral with the same mindless grin. Its office is to prune the excrescences that will adhere to the best of human things, to prevent stupid ity, pretension, or weak enthusiasm, from attaching their distorting or encumbering insignia to any form of truth. But it becomes at once of malign influence, if its attacks menace the truth itself—if, in cutting away excess of foliage, it draws the vital sap from the tree-if, in curing the squint, it cuts out the eye. Sound satire should clear from all stains the statue of truth; but it should make men love to gaze on that statue the more. And, since satire is of prevailing influence, since it acts upon the mind with a more subtle insinuation, and often exerts a greater power of unconscious mental modification even than argument, it is of serious importance that this fact be constantly borne in mind.

Now, we do think that in the caricatures we have had of philanthropy, this fundamental law has been infringed. There has been a fatal want of all discrimination of the true from the false; qualities radically and perennially holy, human in the

noblest sense, and dignifying humanity, have been confounded with their morbid excess, or left to appear altogether absurd and ignoble. One or two words will make this plain.

There are three circles in which, in his life on earth, and the discharge of his earthly duties, a man may act. The first is that of self: one must always, by duty and necessity, do more for himself, or in connection with himself, than for any one else. The second is that of family and friends, of all those who have a claim on one by blood or friendship: within this circle a man must perform certain duties, or he meets universal reprobation and contempt. The third is that of humanity in general. We shall not insult our readers by proving to them that this is truly and properly a sphere of human duty; although there are not wanting writings in our day whose tendency seems to indicate it as an insult to suppose one to doubt the reverse: we shall not endeavor to eliminate the fact, which used to be considered as good as settled, that a man is by nature united in mysterious but ennobling bonds with every other man, and that it is not one of the characteristics of a high state of humanity, that it be separated into families and coteries, each attending to its own affairs, like so many families of wolves in the pine forest; we shall presume our readers to agree that severance, disunion, isolation, selfishness, are symptoms of disease in the human race, and that the evolution of the ages, if it tends to any consummation whatever, must tend to their termination. Not only, however, is this sphere noble; we fearlessly assert, still without deeming proof necessary, that it is this third sphere where, save in rare instances, nobleness as such has existence. A man who performs well his duties to himself, who has no higher object than that he may be undisturbed and happy, we shall not call noble. In the second circle we find many of the loveliest spectacles that our

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