In one of his epistles to his friend Lapraik he says:
For thus the royal mandate ran,
When first the human race began:
The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate’er he be—
’Tis he fulfils great Nature’s plan,
And none but he.
The influence of any act on society, on the brotherhood of man as a whole, was the supreme test of Burns to distinguish between goodness and evil.
To Dr Moore, of London, he said: ‘Whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with thankful delight.’
To Clarinda he wrote: ‘Thou Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, and love! Do thou give me the social heart that kindly tastes of every man’s cup! Is it a draught of joy? Warm and open my heart to share it with cordial, unenvying rejoicing! Is it the bitter potion of sorrow? Melt my heart with sincerely sympathetic woe! Above all, do Thou give me the manly mind, that resolutely exemplifies in life and manners those sentiments which I would wish to be thought to possess.’
In ‘On the Seas and Far Away’ he says:
Peace, thy olive wand extend,
And bid wild war his ravage end;
Man with brother man to meet,
And as a brother kindly greet.
In the ‘Tree of Liberty’ he says, if we had plenty of the trees of Liberty growing throughout the whole world:
Like brothers in a common cause
We’d on each other smile, man;
And equal rights and equal laws
Wad gladden ev’ry isle, man.
To Clarinda, when he presented a pair of wine-glasses—a perfectly proper gift to a lady in the opinion of his time—he gave her at the same time a poem, in which he said: