The New-York Weekly Magazine, or Miscellaneous Repository / Forming an Interesting Collection of Original and Select Literary Productions in Prose and Verse

by Unknown

HUMANITY.

As pain is what we are all naturally averse to, our own sensibility of it should teach us to commiserate it in others, not wantonly or unmeritedly to inflict it. But the absurd barbarity of our prejudices and customs often leads us to transgress this rule.—When we are under apprehension that we ourselves shall be the sufferers of pain, we naturally shrink back at the very idea of it: we can then abominate it, we detest it with horror; we plead hard for mercy; and we feel that we can feel. But when man is out of the question, humanity sleeps, and the heart grows callous.

---