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ON Tim PASSIONS. 



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 feel- 

 ing of sympathy, the sublimity of devotion, would be swept away in a mo- 

 ment. The world would become an Asphaltitis, a dead and stagnant 

 sea, with a smooth unruffled 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 harmony of the seasons would be lost upon us, and the 

 magnificence of the creation become a blank. The wants and gratifica- 

 tions of the body might instigate us, perhaps,.to till the soil ; to engage in 

 commerce and mechanical pursuits, and to provide a generation to suc- 

 ceed 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 sohtary. 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 

 pleasurable passions, and withhold those that accompany or indicate un- 

 easiness. Now, uneasiness, as I have already observed, is, in some de- 

 gree or other, an essential attendant upon desire, hope, and emulation : 

 and hence these passions must as necessarily be excluded here as under 

 the former scheme. For a similar reason, we must allow , neither gene- 

 rosity, nor gratitude, nor compassion ; for put away all sorrow and aver- 

 sion, all mental pain and uneasiness, and such affections could have no 

 scope for their exertion : they must necessarily have no existence. 



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

 passions ; love and transport, mirth and jolHty, would revel with an unin- 

 terrupted 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 in-- 

 dulgence, 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 superficially contemplated, they seem expressly in- 

 tended to produce ; but which man must be obnoxious to in a state of 

 imperfection and trial, and would be infinitely more so but for their pre- 

 sence and operation. 



The sum of the inquiry, then, is, that all the passions have their use, — 

 that they all contribute to the general good of mankind ; — and that it is the 

 abuse of them, the allowing them to run wild and unpruned in their career, 

 and not the existence of any of them, that is to be lamented. While 

 there are things that ought to be hated, and deeds that ought to be bewailed, 

 aversion and grief are as necessary to the mind as desire and joy. It is 

 the duty of the judgment to direct and to moderate them ; to discipline 

 tliem into obedience, and to attune them to harmony. The great object of 

 moral education is tocallforth,instruct,and fortify the judgment upon tbi« 



