That love and benevolence are productive of great happiness
is beyond question; but then the feeling must be mutual, it must be
reciprocated. One-sided love or benevolence is a _virtue_, which is as
much as to say it is _not_ a pleasure. The delights of benevolence are
the delights of reciprocated benevolence; until reciprocated, in some
form, the benevolent man has, strictly speaking, the sacrifice and
nothing more. There is a great reluctance to encounter this simple naked
truth; to state it in theory, at least, for it is fully admitted in
practice. We fence it off by the assumption that benevolence will always
have its reward somehow; that if the objects of it are ungrateful,
others will make good the defect at last. Now these qualifications are
very pertinent, very suitable to be urged after allowing the plain
truth, that benevolence is intrinsically a sacrifice, a painful act; and
that this act is redeemed, and far more than redeemed, by a fair
reciprocity of benevolence. Only such an admission can keep us out of a
mesh of contradictions. Like justice in itself, Benevolence in itself is
painful; any virtue is pain in the first instance, although, when
equally responded to, it brings a surplus of pleasure.
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