AFFECTIVE FACULTIES. 325 



pancies. They are too considerable to hope, that this will ever be 

 effected by metaphysical inquiry. We must, therefore, look to physio- 

 logical investigation, if no't with well-founded with the only hopes, 

 we can entertain, for the elucidation of the subject ; and we shall find 

 presently, that the minds of metaphysical physiologists have been turned 

 in this direction, and that many interesting facts and speculations have 

 been the result. 



A second topic of metaphysical inquiry regards the formation of 

 the intellectual notions. On this, there have been two principal opin- 

 ions; some, as Plato, Des Cartes, the Kantists, Kanto-Platonists, &c., 

 believing in the existence of innate ideas; others, as Bacon, Locke, 

 and Condillac, denying the existence of such innate ideas, and assert- 

 ing that the human intellect, at birth, is a tabula rasa; and that the 

 mind has to acquire and form all the ideas it possesses from impres- 

 sions made on the senses. The truth includes probably both these pro- 

 positions, the action of the senses and intellectual faculties being 

 alike necessary ; the former receiving the external and internal irq- 

 pressions, and transmitting them to the mind, which, through the 

 cerebral organ, produces the latter. 



Under the terms affective faculties, affections, and passions, are 

 comprehended all those active and moral powers, which connect us with 

 the beings that surround us, and are the incentives to our social and 

 moral conduct. To this class belong, the feeling, which attaches the 

 parent to the child ; that which attracts the sexes ; and compassion, 

 by which we are led to assist a suffering fellow-creature. They are, in 

 truth, internal sensations, but of a higher cast than those of hunger 

 and thirst ; the latter being purely physical, and announcing physical 

 necessities; the former suggesting social and moral relations. Such 

 affective faculties are the foundation of what are called moral wants ; 

 and, like the internal sensations in general, are the source of pleasure, 

 when satisfied, of pain, when resisted ; and it is only when they are 

 extreme and opposed, that they acquire the name of passions. 1 The 

 analysis of these is attended with the same difficulties as that of the 

 intellectual faculties. Their plurality is universally admitted, but still 

 greater discrepancy exists as to their precise number and connexion. 2 

 Many moralists have united the moral faculties under the head of will 

 or desires. Condillac 3 is one of those. Every sensation, he observes, 

 has the character of pleasure or pain, none being indifferent ; as soon, 

 therefore, as a sensation is experienced, the mind is excited to act. 

 This tendency is at first but slightly marked, and is only an uneasiness 

 (malaise); but it soon increases and becomes restlessness or inquietude; 

 in other words, a difficulty experienced by the mind of remaining in 

 the same situation. This gradually becomes desire, torment, passion, 

 and finally will excited totthe execution of some act. Some have en- 

 deavoured, by ultimate analysis, to derive all the affective faculties 

 from one principal faculty that of self-love, the inward feeling, 

 which induces all to attend to themselves, their own preservation, and 



1 From patior, I suffer. 



2 Adelon, art. Affection, Dictionnaire de Medecine, lere edit.; and Physiologie de 

 1'Homme, edit, cit., i. 537. 3 Qp. citat. 



