defence. But these are not comprehended in the present plan; though it is but just to admit that these higher instincts may be so ennobled and refined, that they shall expand and heighten into the purest charities and most distinguished virtues.

When we feel and cherish a passion for any thing, our mind is in a particular state; the same is true when the passion is against any thing. We desire, or we deprecate, that object, because we judge it good or evil. It is an unmingled intellectual act. They are the most immediate and vivid of our judgments, but are they not judgments still? Are they not the choice of what seems best to us at the time? Are they not voluntary and independent? It may be answered, that they affect us differently from other judgments; that these powerful emotions are widely remote from the collected, and, in opposition to this opinion, from the dispassionate, exercise of the thinking principle. The reply I shall offer is threefold.

(1.) The difference arises from a dissimilarity in the exciting objects. Beauty in form, in excellence, in sentiment, affects us as the settlement of an abstract truth cannot do. A noble action, a splendid prize, will agitate the mind with a quick enjoyment which it cannot know in treating an indifferent and phlegmatic question. We have only to remember the disagreement between an aggravated insult and a mathematical position, to account for the disagreement between the feelings stimulated, the indignation aroused, at the one, and the imperturbable calmness with which we assent to the other. A stronger or weaker impression, a warmer or staider opinion, is due to reason which discriminates the diversity of things.

(2.) This inequality of judgment, proportioned as it is to the varied properties which it considers, has a special design and use. Our passions are intended to be prompt, decisive, influential;-they are the main-springs of conduct. Our fixed principles, speaking philosophically, would be too inert and unstirring. The bark needs the gale, and not alone the helm. But how deplorable would it be if these incentives were not of the reason, if the passions were not judgments, if our acts were stimulated by principles unworthy of comparison with the

masterdom of thought and reflection in which we may gratefully exult!

(3.) There will be no difficulty, the end and final cause of our passions being established, in tracing back their descriptive intensity and vigour to the constitution and original biasses of our mind. We are made to think after peculiar laws and methods. The evidence of general truth all minds receive in the same manner; the evidence is adapted to all minds. The same rule which directs us to judge of some things as indifferent, disposes us to regard others as most attractive and momentous. It is but a matter, at best, of curious speculation whether the quadrature of the circle can be accomplished; it is no very grave interest that most can take in the fact, that the asymptote of the hyperbola may eternally approach the curve of the hyperbola, and yet can never meet it. But bring me into circumstances of another kind, and my love is kindled, and my sensibility is thrilled, and my fear is raised, and my pity is wrung, and the genial current of my soul is swollen and accelerated. If it be the enquiry, Why these are stronger affections or states of the mind? It is a sufficient reply, that thus is it constituted.

No one can take a comprehensive view of the human intellect without investigating its passions. The word passion is conventionally used to denote anger, as affection is employed to describe love. But this must not be their meanings in our nomenclature. There may be a passion of complacency, and an affection of hatred. Nor must etymology be our guide. Passion would then signify suffering, passive susceptibility. We construe it as the more vehement conception and judgment of the soul. Cicero calls the passions, perturbationes.

Reid, perhaps, does not so greatly excel in his discussion of the passions as in the other portions of his masterly treatise. He seems to think that the term rather expresses a quality of ardency in the other particular affections which he has described, than any particular class of affections themselves. So far he is right in making passion an accident and adjunct; but then this accident and adjunct he considers as inconsistent with proper deliberation.

Kames distinguishes between emotion and passion. Emotion is an excitement without desire; passion, with it. Cogan employs emotion to express the re-action of a passion. Brown prefers emotion as a better word than passion, and on some grounds his preference may be justified. Yet I see no reason why these terms may not be applied indifferently and convertibly, especially since each new restriction in the vocabulary of science perplexes more than it explains. We shall exchange them at will.

To the intellection of the passions, it may be objected that we often speak of their blinding effect. But it is the determinativeness and strength of the judgment which refuses any reconsideration, which spurns any reversal. The successive operations of the mind are debarred by the obstinacy and violence of the first decision. When that decision once relents, we all know what is the force of the recoil. This is very notable when the passions rush to their opposite extremes. If I love a person whom I hated, it is an acknowledgment that I was too hasty in judging, that I was deceived. If I hate a person whom I loved, I rejoice that I understand his character at last.

I have seen many divisions and distributions of the pas sions; and some of these are very ingenious and prepossessing. The greatest importance does not attach to such synthetic arrangement. The order of facts is all that is worth a thought. Nature must engrave these tables; truth must codify these statutes. It is given to man at most to trace, but never to insert, the links of this mysterious chain. System is of little value, save as it implies a clearer accuracy of idea, and conduces to a happier explicitness of language.

Watts divaricates the passions into primitive and derivative. The primitive are of two kinds; first, admiration, love, hatred; second, the divers kinds of love and hatred, as esteem, &c. The derivative are desire, hope, &c.

Hartley, a very close thinker, and perhaps a very little appreciated author, would decompose them into five grateful passions, and into five ungrateful. Grateful and ungrateful here obviously signify pleasant and unpleasant.

The late Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh gave time as their index, apportioning them as they are retrospective, immediate, and prospective. But this seems done to tally with his favourite doctrine of sequence, and the principle is often unmanageable. Cheerfulness is an immediate emotion; but it may simply originate in hope, which is prospective. Grief is an immediate emotion, but may only spring from remorse, which is retrospective.

It is plain that the passions, most properly speaking, do not directly regard truth and knowledge. Man has a natural avidity and greed for these. Nothing is more indicative of him. As he is indifferent to these acquisitions, he recedes from his proper nature. The ancient fable informs us that Ulysses asked his comrades, after Circe had transformed them into different sorts of beasts, the power of speech being retained by them, whether they would return to humanity. The hog grunted his refusal, and rolled over again in his stye. All declined but the elephant, who had, ere the metamorphosis, been a philosopher. He replied that he gladly would, for he knew the difference between a brutish and a rational life. There are, indeed, those who have studied with what seemed a passion. The spirit of emulation, the quest of fame, the hope of reward, the throb of self-valuation, have really formed and fostered that passion. It is not denied, also, that our best interests are connected with truth and knowledge, and that our highest emotions may be set vibrating when we perceive that connection.

Good and evil, in their multiform character, and in their immediate or remote, certain or uncertain, probable or improbable, influence, are the exciting causes which give birth to these fervours of the spirit, these glowing states of the mind. Good and evil must be both morally, materially, and sensuously, considered. My apprehension and judgment must differ as these complexions of good and evil differ; but, being good and evil, my apprehension and judgment of them cannot be neutral. By the necessity of the case I am excited as to the one and the other. Hence, according to the theory I now advocate, results the distinction of a passion.

The actual number of these passions, or, in more rigid propriety, the actual number of those excited states in which the mind may be found, will be very variously determined. Horace Walpole says of Jerome, in the Castle of Otranto, that "on his countenance a thousand anxious passions stood expressed." We promise you a smaller scale. Incessant subdivision bewilders; the attempt at meagre simplication is as confusing. The mariner who was only prepared for the four cardinal winds blowing directly from their points, would be illdisciplined for the wildness of the tempest or the difficulties of the helm. Nor will it, perhaps, be always found that every passion has its opposite. We do not invariably obtain the extreme pole though we reverse the magnetic rod.

Good may be considered by us in itself, then there is complacency; or evil may be thus considered, then there is hatred. Good may be regarded as an object to be possessed, and then there is appetency or desire. Evil may be thus regarded, and then there is aversion or disgust. Good may be contemplated as something great and majestic, and then there is admiration or awe. Evil may be thus observed, and then there is horror or indignation. Good may be meditated as amiable and pleasing, and then there is esteem. Evil may assume similar characters, and then there is scorn or contempt. Good may be difficult of attainment, it then inspires courage. Evil may be formidable, it then begets fear. Good when realised awakens joy. Evil, present and endured, awakens sadness. Good, acquired by our own skill and enterprise, excites elation. Evil, when it befalls others, excites pity. Good, bestowed on us by others, raises gratitude. Evil, inflicted by others on us, raises anger and resentment. In the love of good consists our benevolence. In our love of evil lies our enmity and cruelty. When our share of good meets a particular temper, there is contentment: when our share of evil meets a particular temper, it is repining. Good may yearn towards evil in commiseration. Evil may scowl towards good with envy. Good, when perceived as a personal quality in ourselves, rarely or unequally exhibited by others, flatters our pride. Evil, perceived as a personal quality