Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    own highly favoured species. But against all these evils, and against those numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from thie attachment of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived from this source—the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves and exertions—and every ill that can be traced to it is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on our guard against judging from what we see in the world at a parti- cular era. As reason and the higher sentiments of man’s nature increase in force, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected with it. The civilized man is more able to give it due control; his attach- ments are less the result of impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring. There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early society with love, such as hatred of suc- cessful rivalry, and jealousy, which almost disap- pear in an advanced state of civilization. The evils springing, In our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world’s pro-
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