Even pain we hate only when we cannot KNOW it; when we can only feel it, without explaining it, and making it harmonise with our notions of our own deserts and destiny.

And as for human beings, there surely it stands true, wherever else it may not, that all knowledge is love, and all love knowledge; that even with the meanest, we cannot gain a glimpse into their inward trials and struggles, without an increase of sympathy and affection.
Whether he reasoned thus or not, Lancelot found that his new interest in the working classes was strangely quickened by his passion.

It seemed the shortest and clearest way toward a practical knowledge of the present.

'Here,' he said to himself, 'in the investigation of existing relations between poor and rich, I shall gain more real acquaintance with English society, than by dawdling centuries in exclusive drawing-rooms.' The inquiry had not yet presented itself to him as a duty; perhaps so much the better, that it might be the more thoroughly a free-will offering of love.

At least it opened a new field of amusement and knowledge; it promised him new studies of human life; and as he lay on his sofa and let his thoughts flow, Tregarva's dark revelations began to mix themselves with dreams about the regeneration of the Whitford poor, and those again with dreams about the heiress of Whitford; and many a luscious scene and noble plan rose brightly detailed in his exuberant imagination.