414 



ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, &c. 



Such, as it appears to me, are the chief passions or faculties of emotion 

 discoverable in the human mind. I submit, however, the present analysis and 

 classification of them with some deg-ree of diffidence ; for, as far as I am 

 aware, it is the first attempt of the kind that has ever been ventured upon ; 

 and, like other first attempts, it may perhaps be open to the charge of con- 

 siderable imperfections and errors. Be this, however, as it may, it at least 

 offers us a new key to the mind's complicated construction in one branch of 

 its study, simplifies its machinery, and perhaps unfolds a few springs which 

 have never hitherto been sufficiently brought into public view. 



I have said that the use of the passions is to furnish us with happiness, as 

 that of the intellectual faculties is with knowledge, and that of the faculties 

 of volition with freedom. But from the survey thus far taken, it must be ob- 

 vious to every one, that the passions furnish us with misery as well as with 

 happiness. And it may, perhaps, become a question with many, whether the 

 harvest of the former be not more abundant than that of the latter. We can- 

 not, therefore, close this subject better than by brieily inquiring whether the 

 passions produce happiness at all 1 Whether, allowing the affirmative, they 

 produce more happiness than misery, and whether the present constitution 

 of things would be improved if those that occasionally produce misery were 

 to be banished from the list 1 



Supposing, by a decree of the Creator, all the mental passions were to be 

 eradicated from the human frame, and nothing were to remain to it but a 

 sense of corporeal pain and pleasure, — what would be the consequence under 

 the present state of things, with this single alteration ? Man would cease to 

 be a social being ; the sweet ties of domestic life would be cut asunder ; the 

 pleasures of friendship, the luxury of doing good, the fine feeling of sympathjr, 

 the sublimity of devotion, would be swept away in a moment. The world 

 would become an Asphaltites, a dead and stagnant sea, with a smooth un- 

 ruffled calm, more hideous than the roughest tempest. No breeze of hope 

 or fear, of desire or emulation, of love or gayety, would play over it : the har- 

 mony of the seasons would be lost upon us, and the magnificence of the crea- 

 tion become a blank. The wants and gratifications of the body might insti- 

 gate us, perhaps, to till the soil, to engage in commerce and mechanical pur- 

 suits, and to provide a generation to succeed us. And, if literature should 

 exist at all, a few cold and calculating philosophers might spin out their dull 

 fancies upon abstract speculations, and a few Lethean poets write odes upon 

 indifference ; but all would be selfish and solitary. The master-tie would be 

 snapped ; the spiritus rector would be evaporated, and every man would be a 

 stranger to every man. 



To a state of being thus torpid and monotonous, let us now^ grant the plea- 

 surable passions, and withhold those that accompany or indicate uneasiness. 

 Now, uneasiness, as I have already observed, is, in some degree or other, an 

 essential attendant upon desire, hope, and emulation ; and hence these pas- 

 sions must as necessarily be excluded here as under the former scheme. For 

 a similar reason we must allow neither generosity, nor gratitude, nor compas- 

 sion ; for put away all sorrow and aversion, all mental pain and uneasiness, 

 and such affections could have no scope for their exertion : they must neces- 

 sarily have no existence. 



But still the world would be thronged with a gay and lively troop of pas- 

 sions ; love and transport, mirth and jollity, would revel with an uninter- 

 rupted career: — not a cloud would obstruct the laughing sunshine; and man 

 would drink his full from the sea of pleasure, and intoxicate himself without 

 restraint. 



But how long would this scene of ecstasy continue ? Under the present 

 constitution of nature, not a twelvemonth. In less than a year, the world, in 

 respect to its inhabitants, would cease to exist : worn out by indulgence, and 

 destroyed for want of those very uneasinesses, those pains and sorrows, those 

 aversions and hatreds, which, when skilfully intermixed and directed, like 

 wholesome but unpalatable medicines, chiefly contribute to its moral health ; 

 and form the best barriers against that misery and ruin, which, when superfi- 



