Plate XLV, you will see him approximating, with his mouth opened by expectation and all the eager avidity of curiosity. In the last instance (Plate XLVI.) he is so absorbed in his own concerns, and so delighted by the intelligence conveyed to him that he is in the very act of embracing the attorney.

You will thus find that the affections succeed each other with so much more facility as the resemblance between them is the more striking, and more difficult in the contrary position.

We should never come to a conclusion were we to enter into a discussion on the approximation and removal of all the passions: let us select one, however, for our contemplation; that of choler, for instance, in those points in which it belongs to other affections, and to that let us apply our theory to establish its justice. If it be demanded why the contemplation in his own proper merit, in his courage, or in his strength, renders the man more inclined to choler than any other contemplative, tranquil affection? the answer immediately presents itself, whilst we consider the situation in which this proud sentiment places the soul. Plenitude, energy, and firmness are already situated in the mind; nought is wanting but a celerity in the increase, carried

almost to fury, and the soul will be mounted to the pitch when it is ready to burst suddenly into choler.

Do we wish to know why joy, however apparently the opposite of choler, is likewise transmuted with the greatest facility when it is carried to excess? (An observation whose truth is confirmed by the frequent quarrels attendant on the noisy orgies of Bacchus ;) the nature of the march of the ideas will furnish an equal solution of this problem: joy, too highly exalted, acquires so great, so unquiet a celerity, its march is so firm, it darts forward with so much vigour, that one greater degree of tension suffices to transmute it into the sentiment of choler. I own that my explanation may be far from satisfactory, and I hope, my friend, that this confession will not surprise you in truth I have here only attached myself to the most general possibilities of a respective connexion between the different affections: but you, doubtless, well remember that, from the commencement of these researches, I have limited and confined them.

Once more consider the subjects with a little attention, and they will furnish matter for some important remarks. The first will be, that the approach or removal, which may exist between