esolved voluntarily
to perish on his funeral pile. And this example became so fascinating
and admirable, that, by insensible degrees, it grew into a national
custom with the Hindoos, that, by a sort of voluntary constraint, the
widows of all men of a certain caste, should consign themselves to the
flames with the dead bodies of their husbands. The story of Zopyrus
cutting off his nose and ears, and of Curtius leaping into the gulph,
may be fictitious: but it was the consciousness of those by whom these
narratives were written that they drew their materials from the mighty
store-house of the heart of man, that prompted them to record them.
The institutions of clientship and clans, so extensively diffused in
different ages of the world, rests upon this characteristic of our
nature, that multitudes of men may be trained and educated so, as to
hold their existence at no price, when the life of the individual they
were taught unlimitedly to reverence might be preserved, or might be
defended at the risk of their destruction.

The principal circumstance that divides our feelings for others from
our feelings for ourselves, and that gives, to satirical observers, and
superficial thinkers, an air of exclusive selfishness to the human
mind, lies in this, that we can fly from others, but cannot fly from
ourselves. While I am sitting by the bed-side of the sufferer, while
I am listening to the tale of his woes, there is comparatively but a
slight line of demarcation, whether they are his sorrows or my own. My
sympathy is vehemently excited towards him, and I feel his twinges and
anguish in a most painful degree. But I can quit his apartment and the
house in which he dwells, can go out in the fields, and feel the fresh
air of heaven fanning my hair, and playing upon my cheeks. This is at
first but a very imperfect relief. His image follows me; I cannot forget
what I have heard and seen; I even reproach myself for the mitigation
I involuntarily experience. But man is the creature of his senses. I am
every moment further removed, both in time and place, from the object
that distressed me. There he still lies upon the bed of agony: but
the sound of his complaint, and the sight of all that expresses his
suffering, are no longer before me. A short experience of human life
convinces us that we have this remedy always at hand ("I am unhappy,
only while I please")(24); and we soon come therefore to anticipate the
cure, and so, even while we