ion is a duty, not only to ourselves and our
families, but to our fellow-creatures at large; it is the best and most
certainly beneficial exercise of philanthropy. It is not, it is true,
very flattering to self-love to be told, that instead of mending the
world, (the mania of the present day,) the best service which we can do
that world is to mend ourselves. "If each mends one, all will be
mended," says the old English adage, with the deep wisdom of those
popular sayings,--a wisdom amply corroborated by the unsettled
principles and defective practice of too many of the self-elected
reformers of society.

It is peculiarly desirable, at this particular juncture of time, that
this subject be insisted upon. Man, naturally a social and gregarious
animal, becomes every day more so. The vast undertakings, the mighty
movements of the present day, which can only be carried into operation
by the combined energy of many wills, tend to destroy individuality of
thought and action, and the consciousness of individual responsibility.
The dramatist complains of this fact, as it affects his art, the
representation of surface,--the moralist has greater cause to complain
of it, as affecting the foundation of character. If it be true that we
must not follow a multitude to do evil, it is equally true that we must
not follow a multitude even to do good, if it involve the neglect of our
own peculiar duties. Our first, most peremptory, and most urgent duty,
is, the improvement of our own character; so that public beneficence may
not be neutralized by private selfishness,--public energy by private
remissness,--that the applause of the world may not be bought at the
expense of private and domestic wretchedness. So frequent and so
lamentable are the proofs of human weakness in this respect, that we are
sometimes tempted to believe the opinion of the cold and sneering
skeptic,[112] that the two ruling passions of men are the love of
pleasure and the love of action; and that all their seemingly good deeds
proceed from these principles. It is not so: it is a libel on human
nature: men,--even erring men,--have better motives, and higher aims:
but they mistake the nature of their duties and invert their order; what
should be "first is last, and the last first."

It may be wisely urged, that if men waited for the perfecting of
individual character, before they joined their fellow men in those great
undertakings which are to insure benefit to the race,