qualified to compare selfish and focial pleasure; but a man, after acquiring a high relish for the latter, lofes not thereby a tafte for the former: he is qualified to judge, and he will give preference to focial pleasures as more fweet and refined. In fact they maintain that character, not only in the direct feeling, but also when we make them the subject of reflection: the focial paffions are far more agreeable than the selfish, and rife much higher in our esteem.

There are differences not lefs remarkable among the painful paffions. Some are voluntary, fome involuntary: the pain of the gout is an example of the latter; grief, of the former, which in fome cafes is fo voluntary as to reject all confolation. One pain foftens the temper, pity is an instance: one tends to render us favage and cruel, which is the cafe of revenge. I value myself upon fympathy: I hate and defpife myself for envy.

Social affections have an advantage over the felfish, not only with refpect to pleasure, as above explained, but also with refpect to pain. The pain of an affront, the pain of want, the pain of disappointment, and a thousand other selfish pains, are cruciating and tormenting, and tend to a habit of peevishness and difcontent. Social pains have a very different tendency: the pain of fympathy, for example, is not only voluntary, but foftens my temper, and raises me in my own efteem. Refined

VOL. I.

H

Refined manners, and polite behaviour, muft not be deemed altogether artificial: men who, inured to the sweets of fociety, cultivate humanity, find an elegant pleasure in preferring others, and making them happy, of which the proud, the felfish, scarce have a conception.

Ridicule, which chiefly arifes from pride, a felfish paffion, is at best but a grofs pleasure: a people, it is true, muft have emerged out of barbarity before they can have a tafte for ridicule; but it is too rough an entertainment for the polished and refined. Cicero difcovers in Plautus a happy talent for ridicule, and a peculiar delicacy of wit: but Horace, who made a figure in the court of Auguftus, where tafte was confiderably purified, declares against the lownefs and roughness of that author's raillery. Ridicule ist banished France, and is lofing ground in England.

Other modifications of pleafant paffions will be occafionally mentioned hereafter. Particularly the modifications of high and low are to be handled in the chapter of grandeur and fublimity; and the modifications of dignified and mean, in the chapter of dignity and grace.

PART

PART III.

INTERRUPTED EXISTENCE OF EMOTIONS AND PAS

SIONS. THEIR GROWTH AND DECAY.

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ERE it the nature of an emotion to continue, like colour and figure, in its prefent ftate till varied by fome operating caufe, the condition of man would be deplorable: it is ordered wifely, that emotions should more resemble another attribute of matter, namely motion, which requires the conftant exertion of an operating cause, and ceases when the cause is withdrawn. An emotion may subfift while its cause is prefent; and when its caufe is removed, may fubfift by means of an idea, though in a fainter manner: but the moment another thought breaks in and engroffes the mind, the emotion is gone, and is no longer felt if it return with its caufe, or an idea of its caufe, it again vanifheth with them when other thoughts crowd in. The reafon is, that an emotion or paffion is connected with the perception or idea of its cause, fo intimately as not to have any independent exiftence: a strong paffion, it is true, hath a mighty influence to detain its cause in the mind; but not fo as to detain it for ever, because a fucceffion of perceptions or ideas is unavoidable *. Further, even while

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See this point explained afterwards, chap. 9.

while a paffion fubfifts, it feldom continues long in the fame tone, but is fucceffively vigorous and faint the vigour of a paffion depends on the impreffion made by its caufe; and a cause makes its deepest impreffion, when, happening to be the single interefting object, it attracts our whole attention* its impreffion is flighter when our attention is divided between it and other objects; and at that time the paffion is fainter in proportion.

When emotions and paffions are felt thus by intervals, and have not a continued existence, it may be thought a nice problem to determine when they are the fame, when different. In a ftrict philofophic view, every fingle impreffion made even by the fame object is diftinguishable from what have gone before, and from what fucceed neither is an emotion raised by an idea the fame with what is raised by a fight of the object. But fuch accuracy not being found in common apprehenfion, is not neceffary in common language: the emotions raised by a fine landscape in its fucceffive appearances are not distinguishable from each other, nor even from thofe raised by fucceffive ideas of the object; all of them being held to be the fame: a paffion alfo is always reckoned the fame as long as it is fixed upon the fame object; and thus love and hatred

are

* See the Appendix, containing definitions and explanation of terms, Sec. 33.

are faid to continue the fame for life. Nay, fo loofe are we in that way of thinking, that many paffions are reckoned the fame even after a change of object; which is the case of all paffions that proceed from fome peculiar propenfity: envy, for example, is confidered to be the fame paffion, not only while it is directed to the same person, but even where it comprehends many persons at once: pride and malice are examples of the fame. So much was neceffary to be faid upon the identity of a paffion and emotion, in order to prepare for examining their growth and decay.

The growth and decay of paffions and emotions, traced through all their mazes, is a fubject too extenfive for an undertaking like the prefent : I pretend only to give a curfory view of it, fuch as may be neceffary for the purposes of criticifm. Some emotions are produced in their utmost perfection, and have a very fhort endurance; which is the case of surprise, of wonder, and sometimes of terror. Emotions raised by inanimate objects, trees, rivers, buildings, pictures, arrive at perfection almost instantaneously; and they have a long endurance, a fecond view producing nearly the fame pleasure with the firft. Love, hatred, and fome other paffions, fwell gradually to a certain pitch; after which they decay gradually. Envy, malice, pride, fcarce ever decay. Some paffions, fuch as gratitude and revenge, are often exhausted by a fingle act of gratification: other paffions, fuch as pride, malice, envy, love, hatred,

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