§ 201. Objection to these views in respect to habit. It is proper to mention here that an objection has been raised to these views; not to the doctrine of Habit in general, but to the alleged extent of it. While it is admitted that it exists, and produces its results in most cases, it is contended that our passive feelings, as they are sometimes called, are not strengthened in this way. Passive feelings, as the term is used in this objection, are those where we suffer or endure. This seems to have been the original meaning of the epithet, which is derived from the participle of the Latin PATIOR, to suffer. So that the objection, stated in more obvious phraseology, has reference in particular to painful or unpleasant feelings. The statement, which is made in respect to feelings of this description, is that, instead of growing stronger by repetition, they diminish in power. The opinions involved in this objection are brought forward in the philosophical works of Bishop Butler. We learn from him, in express terms, that frequent exposure to danger lessens fear and begets intrepidity; and that a frequent acquaintance with scenes of distress lessens the passion of pity. "Let a man," he says, "set himself to attend to, inquire out, and relieve distressed persons, and he cannot but grow less and less sensibly affected with the various miseries of life with which he must become acquainted."* Some further illustrations will help to show what is meant, although the objection has always appeared in a somewhat perplexed and indefinite form. Among other instances referred to in connexion with this subject, it is said of the physician, which perhaps was the very instance had in view by Bishop Butler in the remark just quoted, that at first he is affected as much as another man at the sight of suffering; but the repetition of such scenes, to which he is constant * Butler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, pt. i., ch. v. The passage at the place here referred to in Butler is avowedly the basis of a number of remarks and illustrations in Mr. Stewart's Elements (vol. i., ch. vii., § 5), in which similar sentiments are maintained. ly called, blunts and does away the painful feeling, instead of increasing its strength.-Again, it is said of the sailor, when exposed for the first time to a storm on the ocean, that he is filled with the painful emotion of fear; but the feeling grows weaker at every repetition of danger. The soldier, in particular, felt a degree of pity for his writhing and groaning comrades in his first fields of battle; he wept as well as others; but, after a few campaigns, the feelings of sympathy grew weaker and weaker, and he no longer had tears to shed. It is not necessary to multiply instances; the difficulty will probably now be understood; the facts are in appearance precisely, or very nearly such as have been stated; nevertheless, they are susceptible of being satisfactorily accounted for, consistently with the great law which has been laid down. § 202. Explanation of the above-mentioned cases. In explanation of the instances mentioned in the preceding section, we would remark, in the first place, that the law of Habit is not so strong as not to be overcome by others; it may be weakened, subdued, apparently annulled, when coming in contact with other strong principles; and that is the fact in these cases. When the sailor was first exposed to the storm, it was but natural that the idea of danger should be prominent in his mind, and that his fears should be strong. After the repetition of similar situations, he finds that the danger is less than he at first imagined; and not only this, he finds that, in order to escape the danger, whatever it is, he must discharge his duty; he must make every effort; he must put forth a cool judgment, which is inconsistent with the agitations of fear; he must call into exercise other feelings. Every strong and energetic principle of the soul, ambition, courage, and hope, are summoned forward, to counteract and destroy the action of the law in question, and the effort is successful. This is the explanation. And so in the case of the physician. He finds it absolutely necessary that his sympathy or pity for the objects suffering before him should be overruled and subdued. It is more necessary for them than for himself. He must subdue pity in order to show pity; his mind must be perfectly calm and collected, which would be inconsistent with his dwelling much on the actual distress of the patient; he must be able to observe and collate the symptoms of the disease, and to prepare the remedy. His heart has not become truly and intrinsically harder than other men's; his judgment has gained an ascendency over his heart, and checked its emotions; he has made it hard for particular occasions and for sufficient reasons; but place him in other situations, where this necessity is not laid upon him; smite this seeming rock at other times, and the waters of sorrow will freely gush out. § 203. Further illustrations of the foregoing instances. In the cases which have been mentioned, and others like them, the persons concerned have formed, in some sense, an opposite habit; they have called into exercise, repeated, and strengthened, emotions and desires of a different kind; they have banked up, as it were, their fears and their sympathies, lest they should overflow. An explanation, similar to what has been already given, will apply universally, and, among other cases, to that of the soldier. How often did Napoleon look on the heaps of slain, on the lifeless piles of young men, the hope of their parents; of the men of middle age, the support of their families; of veterans and renowned officers, without discovering a single emotion! The lamentation of millions arose around him; but he heeded them not, felt not, wept not. But no one undertakes to assert that the heart of the French Emperor was naturally without kindly feeling. There is much reason to believe it was far otherwise; it was the supposed necessity of his situation, and his philosophy, which made it so. He had placed before him II.—M his own chosen object, and he had long and laboriously taught himself to care for nothing else. His hardness of heart was a matter of calculation and discipline; and possibly we may find a proof of it in what some will consider a trifling incident. It is said that he once rode along one of his fields of battle, and, amid the fearful desolation around him, happened to fix his eye on a dog that remained to watch and to mourn over his lifeless master's body; and he was affected, even agitated with emotion. And how did this happen? The explanation seems to be, that he had hardened his heart against sympathy with human beings, and had not counted on a contest with his sympathy for dogs. Here he was unprepared. He had left an opening, of which he was not aware, in the Chinese wall which he had built around his natural feelings of commiseration. He could meet the grief of mothers, and the lamentations of orphans, and the despair of widows, as the rock meets the dashing of the ocean, and remain unmoved; but with all this premeditated and immoveable induration of heart, the fact still remains, explainable only in the way which has been intimated, that his firmness was shaken and his spirit troubled by the humble sorrows of a mourning brute animal. § 204. The objection to the extent of the law of habit further considered. In forming a conclusion on this subject, we are to consider, furthermore, the results which would follow on the adoption of those views which we have thus seen reason to object to. In the case of physicians, for instance, it would seem to follow universally, that they must, as they advance in life, become an unfeeling and hard-hearted race of men. But the facts, as we have already had occasion to intimate, are far from warranting us in making any such assertion. Men who are naturally of decidedly kind and sympathetic feelings, and who, under the impulse of such feelings, are in the habit of visiting the chambers of the sick and the dungeon of the prisoner, and in whom, of course, painful feelings must almost constantly be in exercise, would be subject, on this doctrine, to a sure and rapid process of sentimentive induration. Howard himself, who spent his life amid scenes of suffering, must, on a strict and philosophical application of this system, have become, at last, one of the most hard-hearted of men. But this does not seem to have been the fact. On the contrary, his desire to relieve suffering appears to have grown stronger and stronger till the last moments of life. There are a considerable number of men at the present day, who, with no small portion of Howard's spirit, have left their native country, and the endearments and charities of home, that they may relieve the physical sufferings, and enlighten the mental darkness of their fellow-men. The hearts of these men, according to their own accounts, are continually pained with the view of vices and sufferings that are constantly presented to their notice. No other emotion than a painful one can possibly arise in the view of these vices and sufferings, in themselves considered. But on the system, some of the results of which we are endeavouring to indicate, these painful emotions will necessarily, after a time, cease to exist. And as the affection of Pity or Sympathy, as we have already had occasion to see, is based upon painful emotions, it will also become extinct with the extinction of these emotions. The heart will become sealed up, and its fountains of sorrow for the ruin which is witnessed, and of pity for the subjects of it, will be effectually closed. These are the results in theory; but we do not hesitate to say, that, as a general thing, they are far from being the results in fact. These devoted men, to whose philanthropic toils we have alluded, still labour on, month after month and year after year, without either any diminution of their grief at witnessing the wide-spread sin and misery around them, or any decrease of that benevolence which prompts them to labour for its removal. On the contrary, as their life wears away, they appear to experi |