Moderating "feeling"

In Mackenzie’s “man of feeling,” Harley, at first seemed like a nice idea (even to a non-sentimentalist reader, like myself)—he is refreshingly sensitive, bashful, and kind-hearted---something atypical for a male hero. But all this was undermined when he became excessively “feeling.” I mean, sometimes, giving all your money to charity may not be the best idea when you have bills to pay... And I started to sneer at Harley’s sentimentality. Within the framework of the novels we have discussed, exists two major elements of identity: logical reasoning, and overt sentimentality. Mackenzie flaunts sensibility but simultaneously rejects the purity of this sentimentality. He says in chapter XL, “The desire of communicating knowledge …is an argument with those that hold that man is naturally a social animal…but it may be doubted whether the pleasure…arising from it be not more often selfish than social” (79). Basically, sensibility is tainted. This gives rise to some questions: Just how are reason and sensibility perceived by Mackenzie? Can the two be jibed into one realistic character? Can this "man of feeling" actually exist? It was difficult for me to read Harley as a straight up sentimental character. With that sort of reading, he seemed more sentimentally unattainable, in the same way that Pamela is morally superior. This encouraged a more ‘read between the lines’ approach that encouraged the analysis of human nature and the characteristics that create a balanced individual: both sentimental, and logical.