Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations
between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to
weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling.
They are therefore (I thought) favourable to prudence and
clear-sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions
and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, and
all pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, according
to the theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the
entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a
stronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human nature, by
which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. All
those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy
with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and
especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were
the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was
convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it,
did not give me the feeling.
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