time equally influenced by two equal desires, it is certain it can never comply with either of them, because a consent and preference would evince a dissimilarity in their value. If a man should chance to be placed between a bottle of wine and a Westphalia ham, with an equal inclination to eat and to drink, there could, in this case, be no possible remedy; and, by the law of necessity, he must die either of hunger or thirst. The Stoics, therefore," continues he, "who were most rigidly attached to the doctrine of fatalism, when asked how the mind determines when two objects of equal desire are presented to it, or what is the reason that out of a number of crown pieces it selects one rather than another, there being no motive to excite a preference, reply, that this action of the mind is extraordinary and irregular, and proceeds from an impulse equally irregular and fortuitous. But it would be better," continues Montaigne," in my estimation, to maintain that no two objects can be presented to us so perfectly equal, but that some trifling difference may subsist, and some small superiority be discoverable either in the one or the other."

And, no doubt, it would be better to maintain such a position; but who does not see that this is to give up the question? to renounce the point upon which we are at issue, and openly to confess that there does not exist in the moral world the same counterpoise of cause and cause that is to be perpetually met with in the natural.

Let us confine ourselves to one more example. A cannon-ball, discharged from the centre of a circle, and equally attracted to the north and to the east, will proceed towards neither point; but at an angle of 22 degrees, or immediately between the two. But is there any one, unincumbered with a straitwaistcoat, who can suppose that such a rule nas any application to the motive powers of the mind? who can conceive, that a man, starting at Blackfriar's Bridge, and having business so equally urgent at Highgate and at Mileend, that he is incapable of determining to which place he shall proceed first, would proceed to neither, but take a course between the two, and walk in a straight line to Hackney or Newington-Green? Yet, unless he should thus act, not occasionally, or by accident, but uniformly, and at all times, there is not in, the mind the same law of operation, the same sort of necessity, as in matter; but a something, whatever it may be, producing and designed to produce an irreconcilable distinction; and, in the correct language of the Epicurean philosophers, perpetually labouring to prevent the same blind force from vanquishing the one as it leads captive the other:

Ne mens ipsa necessum

Intestinum habeat cunctis in rebus agundis,

ET DEVICTA QUASI, COGATUR FERRE, PATIQUE.

Lest the mind

Bend to a stern necessity within,

AND, LIKE A SLAVE, DETERMINE BUT BY FORCE.

But we are told, that unless the moral world were thus constituted, there could be no mutual confidence between man and man; no series of actions could be depended upon, and it would be impossible to distinguish between one character and another; or, in other words, how long the same individual would maintain the same character.

Now this kind of argument, if accurately examined, just as much invalidates the doctrine it is intended to support as the preceding. There is no one who pretends to place the same degree of confidence in the general course of human actions as in the experienced train of natural events. Even where the circumstances to reason from are equally definite, moral dependence is in all instances less certain than physical, and never amounts to more than a probability. The closest friendships may fail, the purest virtue become tarnished; and, in the words of Sophocles, which I must beg leave to put into our own language—

*De Rer. Nat. ii. 289.

The power of all things cease; e'en sacred oaths

At times be broke, and the determined mind

Forego its steady purpose.

Material causes, on the contrary, are regular in their operations, and unınterrupted in their effects. Nobody doubts that the sun will rise to-morrow; that a cannon-ball will sink in water; or that, if the lamps over our heads were to be extinguished, we should be in darkness. The power of Buonaparte, when in the zenith of his success, was absolute and almost unbounded, but did even this ensure steadiness of conduct? Quite the reverse. We behold the decrees of to-day overthrown by those of to-morrow, and, in the blind and overwhelming career of his ambition, his hosts of bloodhounds that have just plundered his enemies next sent against his friends; we behold every thing in nature, that is within his reach, tottering and out of joint; while every thing that is beyond and above him continues steadfast and unchangeable; the air is as vital as ever, the seasons as regular in their courses, and, to adopt the beautiful language of our poet-laureate—

The moon,

Regardless of the stir of this low world,
Holds on her heavenly way.

But we are farther told, that unless there be the same fixed and dependent chain established in the moral creation which unquestionably exists in the physical, the Deity himself could have no prescience or foreknowledge of human conduct. And so forcible has this argument appeared to some men, and men, too, of acknowledged worth and piety, that in the dilemma into which they have felt themselves thrown, like the Brahmins of the East, they have utterly abandoned the doctrine of divine prescience in favour of that of moral liberty.

Shallow and impotent conclusion! Absurd admission of an hostility that has no existence! As though he who sees through infinite space is incapable of seeing through the brief duration of time; or as though, like Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth, the great Author of nature stands in need of a thread to guide him through the maze of his own creation, and depends upon every preceding event as a direction-post to that which follows. There are contingencies in the natural as well as in the moral world, though they are far less frequent because far less necessary. Miracles are of this description; they are direct and palpable deviations from the common laws of nature, the common routine of causes and effects; and he who denies that the Deity can know any thing of contingencies, in the one case, ought also to deny that he can know any thing of them in the other; for the necessary and consecutive chain of causation, upon which alone such philosophers found the attribute of prescience, is equally broken in both instances. But such philosophers have to deny still more than this, or they must abandon their principle altogether. They have equally to deny that the Deity can see or know any thing of such anomalies, even when present; for if he can only know events as successive and necessary links of preceding events, the tie being broken, on their appearance, and the anomalous events detached, he can have no more knowledge of them when gone by or present than when future. It may, perhaps, be thought, that when present and operating they pass before him! Pass before him! O puerile and miserable conception of Divinity! All nature is equally before him, in every point of space, and every moment of eternity, and he who denies God to be every where, must deny him to be any where; unless he sees and knows every thing, he must see and know nothing. Miracles and moral contingencies, then, are as much provided for, and must be so, as the most common train of natural events. It is true, we know nothing of the arrangement by which they subsist; but they are and must be provided for, nevertheless. It is here, and here only, we ought to rest-in an equal acknowledgment of human ignorance and divine perfection;-for it is, assuredly, not quite consistent either with the modesty of genuine philosophy, or the reverence of religious faith, to controvert a truth because we cannot account for it; or

to pluck away attribute after attribute from the diadem of the Deity, out of mere compliment to the demand of a fanciful and empty hypothesis. I retreat from this subject, however, with pleasure. It is too perplexed and mysterious for popular discussion, and I am fearful of darkening it by illustration. I should not have touched upon it, but that I have been forced, by the regular progress of our own inquiries; and now turn, with a free and unfettered foot, to the study of the passions; their general nature and influence upon human actions and language; which we shall enter upon in our next lecture.

LECTURE IX.

ON THE ORIGIN, CONNEXION, AND CHARACTER OF THE PASSIONS.

We have entered upon an inquiry concerning the nature and operation of the various faculties that constitute the general furniture of the mind These we have divided into three classes; the faculties of the understanding, the faculties of volition, and the passions or faculties of emotion. The commencement of the present series of lectures was devoted to an illustration of the first; the second we discussed in our preceding study; and we now advance to a brief analysis of the third.

In sailing over the sea of life, the passions are the gales that swell the canvass of the mental bark; they obstruct or accelerate its course; and render the voyage favourable or full of danger, in proportion as they blow steadily from a proper point, or are adverse and tempestuous. Like the wind itself, they are an engine of high importance and mighty power. Without them we cannot proceed; but with them we may be shipwrecked and lost. Reined in, therefore, and attempered, they constitute, as I have already observed, our happiness; but let loose and at random, they distract and ruin us.

How few, beneath auspicious planet born,
With swelling sails make good the promis'd port,
With all their wishes freighted.
YOUNG.

Let it not be forgotten, however, that the passions are not distinct agents, but mere affections or emotions, mere states or conditions of the mind, excited by an almost infinite variety of external objects and events, or internal operations and feelings. And here, the first remark that will probably occur to us is, that, derived from sources thus numerous and diversified, they must themselves form a numerous and motley host. Some of them are simple, others complex; some peculiar to certain circumstances or individuals, others general and embracing all countries and conditions; some possessing a natural tendency to promote what is good; and others what is mischievous and evil; while many of them, again, though distinguished by separate names, only differ from other passions in degree; and, hence, naturally merge into them upon a change in the scale.

It has often occurred to me, that if we were to follow up all the passions, multiplied and complicated as they are, to their radical sources, and to draw out their respective genealogies, we might easily reduce them to four-Desire, Aversion, Joy, and Sorrow. And as aversion and sorrow are only the oppo sites of desire and joy, and must necessarily flow from their existence in a state of things in which all we meet with is not to be desired or enjoyed, it is possible that desire and joy ought alone to be regarded as the proper parent stocks of all the rest. Let us examine them for a few minutes under this system of simplification.

Perhaps the oldest, simplest, and most universal passion that stirs the mind of man, is DESIRE. So universal is it, that I may confidently ask, where is the created bosom-nay, where is the created being, without it? And Dryden is fully within the mark in asserting, that

Desire's the vast extent of human mind.

AVERSION, which is its opposite, is less universal, less simple, and of later birth. It is less universal, for though there is no created being exempt from it, nor ought to be so upon certain points, it is more limited in its objects and operation. It is of later date, at least among mankind, for the infant desires before it dislikes and hence there is as much physical truth as picturesque genius in the following exhortation of Akenside, to the lovers of taste and

nature:

Through all the maze

Of YOUNG DESIRE, with rival steps pursue
The charm of beauty.

And it is less simple, as being the opposite of desire, and in a certain sense flowing from it, and connected with its existence; the whole of its empire being founded on objects and ideas that the elder passion of desire has rejected.

Now the main streams that issue from DESIRE, running in different directions and giving rise to multitudes of secondary streams, are the three following:-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 ('Eps) 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 I 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 feeling, 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 CHARITIES 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 variety of restless and turbulent affections, which, from their characteristic violence, contribute equally, perhaps, to the unhappiness of those who possess them, and to the world on which they are exercised. To this tribe belong avarice, 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 language, 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.

Most of these are admirably described or allegorized by Spenser in his Faerie Queene, which will be found to afford a most powerful illustration of the general hints here offered. I would readily bring instances in proof of this remark if our time would allow as a single example of the force of his imagination, let me especially direct your attention to his entire delineation of avarice or mammon, and particularly the following picturesque representation of his dwelling:

Both roofe and floore, and walls, were all of gold,
But overgrowne with dust and old decay,

And hid in darkness, that none could behold

The hew thereof: for vew of cherefull day

Did never in that house itselfe display,

But A FAINT SHADOW OF UNCERTAIN LIGHT:

SUCH AS A LAMP, WHOSE LIFE DOES FADE AWAY;

OR AS THE MOONE, CLOATHED WITH CLOWDY NIGHT,

DOES SHOW TO HIM THAT WALKES IN FEARE AND SAD AFFRIGHT.*

HOPE I have enumerated as the second main stream that emanates from the passion of DESIRE. Try the world, examine your own hearts, and you will agree with me that this is its source. Hope must spring from desire, and cannot exist without it: as it rises in the scale it becomes trust or confidence; and confidence, according to the alliance it forms with other feelings or affections, gives birth to two very different families. United to a vigorous judgment and an ardent imagination, it produces courage, magnanimity, patience, intrepidity, enterprise; combined with vanity or self-love, the complex and mischievous brood is self-opinion, impudence, audacity, and conceit.

Hope, however, is not produced singly. It is a twin-passion, and its congenital sister is Fear. This has not been sufficiently attended to by pathognomists; but examine the general tenor and accompaniment of the passions as they rise in your hearts, and you will find the present statement correct. Hope and fear spring equally from desire-the hope of gaining the desired object, and the fear of losing it. They run the same race, though with varying degrees of strength, and terminate their joint career in the antagonist extreme points of fruition or despair; the powers of hope growing gradually more intense as it approaches the former goal, and those of fear as it approaches the latter.

I have said, that at these boundaries they terminate their respective career; but fear does not always cease with fruition. Uncertainty and change are so strongly written on all earthly enjoyments, that even in the firmest possession we have still some fear of losing them; so that we can seldom say, "What a man hath, why doth he yet fear for ?" though nothing is more pertinent than the opposite inquiry, "What a man hath, why doth he yet hope for?" Fruition without fear is reserved for, and will be, the great prerogative of a higher state of being.

Fear, however, like hope, in its progress through life, forms other alliances

B. ii. canto vii. xxix.