AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS. 



461 



fbllowiiig: — LOVE, hope, emulation. Examine them attentively, and 

 you will find, that, different as they are from each other, they all possess 

 the sperm and parentage of desire, and possess it equally. 



Love is not simple desire, but flows from it, and is so closely connected 

 with it, that some shade of the latter passion is, in every instance, to be 

 found in the former. The terms are hence, in some particular senses, 

 and especially when employed loosely, used in all languages synonymously : 

 whence Eros ('Ef<y§) among the elegant Greeks, and Cupido among the 

 Romans, was the god equally appointed to preside over both passions. It 

 is from the latter tongue we obtain in our own language the word cupidity^ 

 which in like manner embraces both ideas. Spenser has made desire the 

 offspring of love, rather than love the offspring of desire ; but this is to 

 invert the order of nature. The first instinctive passion discoverable in 

 infant life, as 1 have already observed, is desire~a desire of satisfying the 

 new-born sensation of hunger ; and love — that is, love of the object that 

 gratifies it, follows from the gratification itself ; nor can we, through any 

 period of life, love what in our own estimation is undesirable. In many 

 cases, for there are innumerable shades belonging to both, love may be 

 regarded as the same passion as desire, but with an increase of intensity ; 

 as hatred, which is its opposite, is the same passion as aversion, but with 

 a parallel advance in the scale. There are, however, various marks of 

 difference ; and I may observe, that while desire is never without a less 

 or greater degree of uneasiness, love, though it is sometimes accompanied 

 with the same feehng, is occasionally free from it, and always so when 

 perfectly genuine. 



Before we proceed to the two other main branches which radiate from 

 desire, let us follow up the subsidiary streams into which the passion of 

 LOVE ramifies. These run in two opposite directions, according as they 

 possess a virtuous or a vicious tendency ; and in each direction they are 

 extremely prolific, and offer to us a numerous progeny. Thus, on the one 

 hand, we behold the passion or feeling of love giving birth to charity, 

 benevolence, philanthropy, pity, mercy, fellow-feeling, which the Latins 

 called compassion, and the Greeks sympathy ; generosity, friendship, and 

 ardour. They form a chaste and a happy group, are full of social affection, 

 and are hence often called, after the name of the eldest sister, the chari- 

 ties of life or of the heart. 



Mercy, and Truth, and hospitable Care, 

 And Kind connubial Tenderness, are there ; 

 And Piety, with wishes placed above, 

 And sweetest Sympathy, and boundless Love. 



Goldsmith, altered. 



On the other hand, we behold issuing from the same source a variet}' 

 of restless and turbulent affections, which, from their characteristic vio- 

 lence, contribute equally, perhaps, to the unhappiness of those who possess 

 them, and to the world on which they are exercised. To this tribe belong 

 avari-^e, or the love of gain ; ambition, or the love of power ; pride and 

 Vanity, or the love of pomp, splendour, and ostentation ; selfishness, or 

 the love of the person, in common languaire, self-love : though the whole 

 of these being of a selfish character, this latter term might, with as much 

 propriety, apply to every one of them, as that of charity or the love of 

 others to each of the preceding division. 



