The Conscience of approving ones self a Benefactor to Mankind is the noblest Recompence for being so; doubtless it is, and the most interested cannot propose anything so much to their own Advantage, notwithstanding which, the Inclination is nevertheless unselfish.  The Pleasure which attends the Gratification of our Hunger and Thirst, is not the Cause of these Appetites; they are previous to any such Prospect; and so likewise is the Desire of doing Good; with this Difference, that being seated in the intellectual Part, this last, though Antecedent to Reason, may yet be improved and regulated by it, and, I will add, is no otherwise a Virtue than as it is so.

Thus have I contended for the Dignity of that Nature I have the Honour to partake of, and, after all the Evidence produced, think I have a Right to conclude, against the Motto of this Paper, that there is such a thing as Generosity in the World.  Though if I were under a Mistake in this, I should say as Cicero in Relation to the Immortality of the Soul, I willingly err, and should believe it very much for the Interest of Mankind to lye under the same Delusion.  For the contrary Notion naturally tends to dispirit the Mind, and sinks it into a Meanness fatal to the Godlike Zeal of doing good.  As on the other hand, it teaches People to be Ungrateful, by possessing them with a Perswasion concerning their Benefactors, that they have no Regard to them in the Benefits they bestow.  Now he that banishes Gratitude from among Men, by so doing stops up the Stream of Beneficence.  For though in conferring Kindnesses, a truly generous Man doth not aim at a Return, yet he looks to the Qualities of the Person obliged, and as nothing renders a Person more unworthy of a Benefit, than his being without all Resentment of it, he will not be extreamly forward to Oblige such a Man.

[Footnote 1:  The Rev. Henry Grove was a Presbyterian minister, who kept school at Taunton.  He was born there in 1683, became a teacher at the age of 23 (already married), and worked for the next 18 years in the Taunton Academy, his department Ethics and Pneumatology.  He spent his leisure in religious controversy, writing an ’Essay on the Terms of Christian Communion,’ a Discourse on Saving Faith, an Essay on the Soul’s Immortality, and miscellanies in prose and verse, including Nos. 588, 601, 626, and 635, of the Spectator.  He received also L20 a year for ministering to two small congregations in the neighbourhood of Taunton.  His wife died in 1736, and he in the year following.  His works appeared in 1740 in 4 vols. 8vo.]

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No. 589.  Friday, September 3, 1714.

  ’Persequitur scelus ille suum:  labefactaque tandem
  Ictibus innumeris adductaque funibus arbor
  Corruit.’

  Ovid.

  SIR,