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December 2 , 1829 . " Modes of Self-love the passions we may call : 'Tis real good , or seeming , moves them alL " Pope .
The pursuits , the characters , and the happiness of men , depend so closely on the passions , that an investigation of the source , the progress , and the issue , of these springs of action , cannot be unimportant . I shall adopt Hartley' ' s enumeration of them , and endeavour to illustrate this part of his theory of the mind .
Regarding all the passions as arising from pleasure and from pain , he distributes them , generally , under Love and Hatred . * He ranks under Love , desire , hope , joy , and pleasing recollection ; under Hatred , aversion , fear , grief , and displeasing recollection— -and he conceives of the passions , or affections , as no more than aggregates of simple ideas united by association .
Love , resembling the passions flowing from it , is self-interested ; by which we must understand that it never exists , nor is cherished , in relation to any object , without our previous belief that the object will be instrumental to our advanta ge ; althou gh habit may render Love perfectly disinterested . A child's affection originates in a sense of there being something useful to him in the person , or the thing , upon which his love is exercised . All the little honours which he obtains for superior application—the finery of his dress , the beauty
of his toys—he values only as he acquires from them a sort of pre-eminence over his companions . If we ask , why he prefers certain things to others , the answer must be , not simply because they are of a more attractive colour , size , and form , but inasmuch as these very circumstances render them more beneficial to him , at least in his own imagination , than any of the things from among which they have been selected . The actions of children are less artificial than those of adults , and for this reasoa exhibit with greater clearness the rise and the quality of the passions .
Even parental affection is connected with some perception of utility , some hope and prospect of advantage . Human beings have few or no instinctive principles . Most fathers and mothers love their offspring as a gift and possession of distinguished worth : they look forward to the reputation and usefulness of their children in society , and hence promise themselves no mean share of reflected benefit and fame . Nor can they be strangers to the wish that those whom they have borne and educated , may " rock the cradle of" their " reposing age . "
Hatred , the opposite state of mind to Love , has evidently an alliance with self-interest ; being formed under a sense of injury received from an object or a person , or , however , of wrongs and disadvantages apprehended from them . Let me add that indifferency to an object , be it what it may , which in some men excites love and complacency , anct in others hatred , is owing to the want of any knowledge and experience of its utility . Shew one of the
* Much the same distribution was made by Pope : " Love , Hope , and Joy , fair Pleasure ' s smiling train ; Hate , Fear , and Grief , the family of Pain . "
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ESSAY ON THE PASSIONS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1830, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2580/page/27/
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