Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/147

 themselves by deciding on human actions by systems; but, as these systems are of the most opposite natures, it is evident that each philosopher, in reflecting his own feelings in the system he has so elaborately formed, has only painted his own character.

"Do not, therefore, conclude with Hobbes and Mandeville, that man lives in a state of civil warfare with man; nor with Shaftesbury, adorn with a poetical philosophy our natural feelings. Man is neither the vile, nor the excellent being which he sometimes imagines himself to be.  He does not so much act by system, as by sympathy. If this creature cannot always feel for others, he is doomed to feel for himself; and the vicious are, at least, blessed with the curse of remorse.

"You are now inspecting one of the worst portions of society, in what is called the great world; (St. Giles' is bad, but of another kind;) and it may be useful, on the principle, that the