while those who leave after them objects of
personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a
fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as
lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth
and health. Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life
unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation. A cultivated mind--I do
not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of
knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable
degree, to exercise its faculties--finds sources of inexhaustible
interest in all that surrounds it; in the objects of nature, the
achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of
history, the ways of mankind past and present, and their prospects in
the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all this,
and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it; but only
when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in these
things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity.

Now there is absolutely no reason in the nature of things why an amount
of mental culture sufficient to give an intelligent interest in these
objects of contemplation, should not be the inheritance of every one
born in a civilized country. As little is there an inherent necessity
that any human being should be a selfish egotist, devoid of every
feeling or care but those which centre in his own miserable
individuality. Something far superior to this is sufficiently common
even now, to give ample earnest of what the human species may be made.
Genuine private affections, and a sincere interest in the public good,
are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought-up
human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much
to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has
this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of
an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person,
through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the
liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not
fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the positive evils of
life, the great sources of physical and mental suffering--such as
indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss
of objects of affection. The main stress of the problem l