"No," replied her conductor, "unless a morbid and excessive sensibility
on such a subject can be termed insanity. Yet I will not deny that this
governing feeling and apprehension carried the person who entertained
it, to lengths which indicated a deranged imagination. He appeared
to think that it was necessary for him, by exuberant, and not always
well-chosen instances of liberality, and even profusion, to unite
himself to the human race, from which he conceived himself naturally
dissevered. The benefits which he bestowed, from a disposition naturally
philanthropical in an uncommon degree, were exaggerated by the influence
of the goading reflection, that more was necessary from him than from
others,--lavishing his treasures as if to bribe mankind to receive him
into their class. It is scarcely necessary to say, that the bounty which
flowed from a source so capricious was often abused, and his confidence
frequently betrayed. These disappointments, which occur to all, more or
less, and most to such as confer benefits without just discrimination,
his diseased fancy set down to the hatred and contempt excited by his
personal deformity.
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