In other and less
pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every human being as
such interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise each
individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good
wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable presumption with regard to
human beings is not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle
superstition of the mind, nor is it a natural instinct. It is a feeling
founded on the actual observation and discovery of interesting and noble
qualities in particular human beings, and it is strong or weak in
proportion as the person who has the feeling has known many or few noble
and amiable human beings. There are men who have, been so unfortunate as
to live in the perpetual society of the mean and the base; they have
never, except in a few faint glimpses, seen anything glorious or good in
human nature. With these the feeling of humanity has a perpetual
struggle for existence, their minds tend by a fatal gravitation to the
belief that the happiness or misery of such a paltry race is wholly
unimportant; they may arrive finally at a fixed condition, in which it
may be said of them without qualification, that "man delights not them,
nor woman neither.
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