The aera of foresight is the aera of imagination, and imagination is the grand instrument of virtue.  The mind is the seat of pleasure and pain.  It is not by what we see, but by what we infer and suppose, that we are taught, that any being is the object of commiseration.  It is by the constant return of the mind to the unfortunate object, that we are strongly impressed with sympathy.  Hence it is that the too frequent recurrence of objects of distress, at the same time that it blunts the imagination, renders the heart callous and obdurate.

The sentiment that the persons about us have life and feeling as well as ourselves, cannot be of very late introduction.  It may be forwarded by cultivation, but it can scarcely at any rate be very much retarded.  For this sentiment to become perfectly clear and striking, and to be applied in every case that may come before us, must undoubtedly be an affair gradual in its progress.  From thence to the feelings of right and wrong, of compassion and generosity, there is but one step.

It has, I think, been fully demonstrated by that very elegant philosopher Mr. Hutcheson, that self-love is not the source of all our passions, but that disinterested benevolence has its seat in the human heart.  At present it is necessary for me to take this for granted.  The discussion would lead me too far from my subject.  What I would infer from it is, that benevolent affections are capable of a very early commencement.  They do not wait to be grafted upon the selfish.  They have the larger scope in youthful minds, as such have not yet learned those refinements of interest, that are incident to persons of longer experience.

Accordingly no observation is more common, than that mankind are more generous in the earlier periods of their life, and that their affections become gradually contracted the farther they advance in the vale of years.  Confidence, kindness, benevolence, constitute the entire temper of youth.  And unless these amiable dispositions be blasted in the bud by the baneful infusions of ambition, vanity and pride, there is nothing with which they would not part, to cherish adversity, and remunerate favour.

Hence we may infer, that the general ideas of merit and character are perfectly competent to the understanding of children of ten years.  False glory is the farthest in the world from insinuating its witchcraft into the undepraved heart, where the vain and malignant passions have not yet erected their standard.  It is true, the peculiar sublimities of heroism cannot be supposed perfectly within his comprehension.  But something of this sort, as we have already said, is incident to every step in the scale of literature.