on passion than on reasoning. This observation is fully justified by experience: to confine myself to a single instance, the numberless absurd religious tenets that at different times have pestered the world, would be altogether unaccountable but for that irregular bias of passion. We proceed to a more pleasant task, which is, to illustrate the foregoing observations by proper examples. Gratitude, when warm, is often exerted upon the children of the benefactor; especially where he is removed out of reach by death or absence.* The passion in this case being exerted for the sake of the benefactor, requires no peculiar excellence in his children: but the practice of doing good to these children produces affection for them, which never fails to advance them in our esteem. By such means, strong connexions of affection are often formed among individuals, upon the slight foundation now mentioned. Envy is a passion, which, being altogether unjustifiable, cannot be excused but by disguising it under some plausible name. At the same time, no passion is more eager than envy, to give its object a disagreeable appearance: it magnifies every bad quality, and fixes on the most humbling circumstances : Cassius. I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing as I, myself. I was born free as Cæsar, so were you; We both have fed as well; and we can both Endure the winter's cold as well as he. For once, upon a raw and gusty day, The troubled Tyber chafing with his shores, Cæsar says to me, Dar’st thou, Cassius, now * See part I. sect. 1. of the present cbaptér. Leap in with me into this angry flood, And swim to yonder point ?-Upon the word, And bid him follow; so indeed he did. Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder Is now become a god, and Cassius is A wretched creature and must bend his body, He had a fever when he was in Spain, And when the fit was on him, I did mark How he did shake. 'Tis true this god did shake; And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world, Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans Julius Cesar, Act I. Sc. 8. Glo'ster, inflamed with resentment against his son Edgar, could even force himself into a momentary conviction that they were not related: O strange fasten'd villain ! Would he deny his letter?-I never got him. King Lear, Act II. Sc.3 When by great sensibility of heart, or other means, grief becomes immoderate, the mind, in order to justify itself, is prone to magnify the cause : and if the real cause admit not of being magnified, the mind seeks a cause for its grief in imagined future events : Busby. Madam, your Majesty is much too sad ; Queen. To please the King, I did; to please myself, Richard II. Act II. Sc. 5 Resentment at first is vented on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him: but as resentment,when so outrageous, is contrary to conscience, the mind, to justify its passion, is disposed to paint these relations in the blackest colours; and it comes at last to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits. Anger raised by an accidental stroke upon a tender part of the body, is sometimes vented upon the undesigning cause. But as the passion in that case is absurd, and as there can be no solid gratification in punishing the innocent; the mind, prone to justify as well as to gratify its passion, deludes itself into a conviction of the action's being voluntary. The conviction, however, is but momentary: the first reflection shows it to be erroneous; and the passion vanisheth almost instantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the most violent of all passions, has still greater influence : it sometimes forces the mind to personify a stock or a stone, if it happen to occasion bodily pain, and even to believe it a voluntary agent, in order to be a proper object of resentment. And that we have really a momentary conviction of its being a voluntary agent, must be evident from considering, that, without such conviction, the passion can neither be justified nor gratified: the imagination can give no aid; for a stock or a stone imagined sensible, cannot be an object of punishment, if the mind be conscious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of such personification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illustrious instance: when the first bridge of boats over the Hellespont was destroyed by a storm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, so excessive, that he commanded the sea to be punished with 300 stripes ; and a pair of fetters to be thrown into it, enjoining the following words to be pronounced: '“O thou " salt and bitter water! thy master hath condemn“ed thee to this punishment for offending him with " out cause: and is resolved to pass over thee in "* despite of thy insolence: with reason all men “ neglect to sacrifice to thee, because thou art both “ disagreeable and treacherous.")* Shakespeare exhibits beautiful examples of the irregular influence of passion in making us believe things to be otherwise than they are. King Lear, , in his distress, personifies the rain, wind, and thunder; and, in order to justify his resentment, believes them to be taking part with his daughters: a Lear. Rumble thy bellyful, spit fire, spout rain! A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man! Act III. Sc. 2. King Richard, full of indignation against his favourite horse for carrying Bolingbroke, is led into the conviction of his being rational : Groom. O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld When Bolingbroke rode on Roan Barbary, That horse that I so carefully have dress'd. K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? tell me gentle friend, Groom. So proudly as he had disdain'd the ground. Richard II. Act V. Sc. 11. Hamlet, swelled with indignation at his mother's second marriage, was strongly inclined to lessen the time of her widowhood, the shortness of the time being a violent circumstance against her; and he deludes himself by degrees into the opinion of an interval shorter than the real one: Hamlet. That it should come to this! But two months dead! nay, not so much; not two;--- Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother, |