Chapter 5 WHICH IS SHORT AND MORAL, AND CAN THEREFORE BE SKIPPED.

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I have already said that the mere presence of the philanthropic feeling, now infused into my spirit, filled me with happiness, even while I lay upon my back, aching with wounds and bruises. It may be inferred, therefore, that my soul was ecstasy itself, when, restored at last to health and strength, I stalked into the air, dispensing charity with both hands.

Of a verity, it was-at least, for a time; and I will say, that, during the first month of my new existence, I experienced a thousand agreeable sensations, such as had never occurred to me in my whole life before. And here let me observe, that, if what I have to add shall show that there are offsets of inconvenience and tribulation even to the satisfaction of the benevolent, I do not design to throw any discredit on the virtue of benevolence itself; which I truly regard as one of the divinest of endowments, angelic in its nature, and blessed in its effects, when practised with discretion; and amiable, if not lovely, even in its folly. I believe, indeed, that if Heaven looks with peculiar indulgence on the errors of any man, it is in the case of him who has the softest judgment for the errors, and the readiest reparation for the miseries, of his fellows. What I wish to be understood is, that man is an unthankful animal, and of such rare inconsistency of temper, that he seldom foregoes an opportunity to punish the virtue which he so loudly applauds.

I was now a philanthropist, and I will say (which I think I may do without shame, the merit being less attributable to me than to that worthy deceased personage whose body I inhabited), that a truer, purer, or more zealous one never walked the earth. I should fill a book as big as a family Bible, were I to record all the good things I did or attempted, while a tenant in Zachariah Longstraw's body. All my feelings and desires were swallowed up in one great passion of philanthropy; universal benevolence was the maxim I engraved upon my heart; I had no thought but to relieve the distresses, meliorate the condition, and advance the happiness of my species. My generosity extended equally to individuals and communities; I toiled alike in the service of the beggar and the million, putting bread into the mouth of the one, and infusing moral principles into the breasts of the others. In a word, I was, as I have called myself already, a philanthropist; and if my virtue was somewhat excessive in degree, it proceeded from the sincerest promptings of spirit.

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