ch they owe their origin are
generally the result of self-discipline and of self-sacrifice, they
have to be worked out by every man for himself; and thus, begun by each
anew, they derive little benefit from the maxims of preceding
experience, nor can they well be stored up for the use of future
moralists. The consequence is that although moral excellence is more
amiable, and to most persons more attractive, than intellectual
excellence, still it must be confessed that looking at ulterior results,
it is far less active, less permanent, and as I shall presently prove,
less productive of real good. Indeed, if we examine the effects of the
most active philanthropy and of the largest and most disinterested
kindness, we shall find that those effects are, comparatively speaking,
short-lived; that there is only a small number of individuals they come
in contact with and benefit; that they rarely survive the generation
which witnessed their commencement; and that when they take the more
durable form of founding great public charities, such institutions
invariably fall, first into abuse, then into decay, and after a time are
either destroyed or perverted from their original intention, mocking the
effort by which it is vainly attempted to perpetuate the memory even of
the purest and most energetic benevolence.

These conclusions are no doubt very unpalatable; and what makes them
peculiarly offensive is, that it is impossible to refute them. For the
deeper we penetrate into this question, the more clearly shall we see
the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over moral feeling. There
is no instance on record of an ignorant man who, having good intentions
and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good.
And whenever the intentions have been very eager, and the power very
extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the
sincerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his motives, you
will likewise diminish the evil which he works. If he is selfish as well
as ignorant, it will often happen [that] you may play off his vice
against his ignorance, and by exciting his fears restrain his mischief.
If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole
object is the good of others, if he pursues that object with enthusiasm,
upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you
have no check upon him, you have no means of preventing the calamities
which in an i