y passes in the mind, is a
thing not in the slightest degree adverted to but in an interval of
leisure. No; the man here spoken of thinks of nothing but the object
immediately before his eyes; he adverts not at all to himself; he acts
only with an undeveloped, confused and hurried consciousness that he may
be of some use, and may avert the instantly impending calamity. He has
scarcely even so much reflection as amounts to this.

The history of man, whether national or individual, and consequently the
acts of human creatures which it describes, are cast in another mould
than that which the philosophy of self-love sets before us. A topic that
from the earliest accounts perpetually presents itself in the records
of mankind, is self-sacrifice, parents sacrificing themselves for their
children, and children for their parents. Cimon, the Athenian, yet in
the flower of his youth, voluntarily became the inmate of a prison, that
the body of his father might receive the honours of sepulture. Various
and unquestionable are the examples of persons who have exposed
themselves to destruction, and even petitioned to die, that so they
might save the lives of those, whose lives they held dearer than their
own. Life is indeed a thing, that is notoriously set at nothing by
generous souls, who have fervently devoted themselves to an overwhelming
purpose. There have been instances of persons, exposed to all the
horrors of famine, where one has determined to perish by that slowest
and most humiliating of all the modes of animal destruction, that
another, dearer to him than life itself, might, if possible, be
preserved.

What is the true explanation of these determinations of the human will?
Is it, that the person, thus consigning himself to death, loved nothing
but himself, regarded only the pleasure he might reap, or the uneasiness
he was eager to avoid? Or, is it, that he had arrived at the exalted
point of self-oblivion, and that his whole soul was penetrated and
ingrossed with the love of those for whom he conceived so exalted a
partiality?

This sentiment so truly forms a part of our nature, that a multitude
of absurd practices, and a multitude of heart-rending fables, have been
founded upon the consciousness of man in different ages and nations,
that these modes of thinking form a constituent part of our common
existence. In India there was found a woman, whose love to the deceased
partner of her soul was so overwhelming, that she r