ossesses
extraordinary merits. We assent to the assertion. But if we have no
knowledge of particulars, no close acquaintance with him, nothing in
short which brings his merits home to us, they interest us less than
what we know to be a far inferior degree of the very same qualities in
one of our common associates. A parent has several children, all
constantly under his eye, and equally dear to him. Yet if any one of
them be taken ill, it is brought into so much _closer contact_ than
before, that it seems to absorb and engross the parent's whole
affection. Thus then, though it will not be denied that an object by
being visible may thereby excite its corresponding affection with more
facility; yet this is manifestly far from being the prime consideration.
And so far are we from being the slaves of the sense of vision, that a
familiar acquaintance with the intrinsic excellences of an object,
aided, it must be admitted, by the power of habit, will render us almost
insensible to the impressions which its outward form conveys, and able
entirely to lose the consciousness of an unsightly exterior.

We may be permitted to remark, that the foregoing observations furnish
an explanation, less discreditable than that which has been sometimes
given, of an undoubted phaenomenon in the human mind, that the greatest
public misfortunes, however the understanding may lecture, are apt
really to affect our feelings less than the most trivial disaster which
happens to ourselves. An eminent writer[39] scarcely overstated the
point when he observed, "that it would occasion a man of humanity more
real disturbance to know that he was the next morning to lose his little
finger, than to hear that the great empire of China had been suddenly
swallowed up by an earthquake. The thoughts of the former, would keep
him awake all night; in the latter case, after making many melancholy
reflections on the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all
the labours of man which could be thus annihilated in a moment; after a
little speculation too perhaps on the causes of the disaster, and its
effects in the political and commercial world; he would pursue his
business or his pleasure with the same ease and tranquillity as if no
such accident had happened; and snore at night with the most profound
serenity over the ruin of a hundred million of his fellow creatures.
Selfishness is not the cause of this, for the most unfeeling brute on
earth would surely thi