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Untitled Article
most admired and beneficial productions of English art—the steam ^ engine , for example—to an Indian savage , and mark how he feels , and what bethinks , on the occasion . He may craze in astonishment at the machine ; but hetannot estimate it , because , at present , he cannot judge of the variety of highly valuable ends to which it is available . Thus , Love and Hatred , the respective parents of the two families to which the passions belong , depend on many and different associations of ideas for their preservation , if not indeed for their origin . Associated * circumstances , therefore , will awaken the one or the other of these states of feeling . When children have conceived an affection for a particular individual , that affection recurs with fresh and lively vigour , if they happen to behold him on the spot , and about the season , of his first meeting their eyes .
As our conviction of the utility of an object causes us to love it , so the desire of possessing it springs up quickly within our minds . Desire takes place only where love has previously existed and continues to exist . A hated object is always an object of aversion . Into a state of indifferency neither love nor hatred enters ; neither a wish nor a reluctance to make the acquisition . For this reason , the pursuits of men , being modified by education ,
and by a vast number of associated incidents , are extremely various . Before discipline and experience have improved the judgment , a confused sense of usefulness gives birth to confused and indiscriminate desire ; white in men of sound understanding desire is well directed and wisely tempered . Opinions , too , when practically expressed , are chequered partly by the strength or weakness of desire , and partly by its form . The principle , the feeling , is universal ; but , in its shades and applications , when distributed among individuals , there subsists an almost endless diversity . Earnest desire , founded on the sense of a certain kind and measure of utility , has dictated the most famous deeds which the page of history records . It was this affection which prompted the enterprises of Alexander , Julius Caesar , and Columbus , and the more truly illustrious undertakings of Wickliffe and of Luther .
diversion is augmented when the object of it was once the object of desire . The child ' s disappointment , in regard to whatever afforded him the promise of gratification , wonderfully inflames his hatred and increases his uneasiness . In these circumstances , anger , jealousy , and revenge , will often take possession of the breast .
It is a proof , however , of the wisdom and goodness of the Maker of our frame that he has subjected us to associations which controul the irregular and malignant passions . One state mi feeling corrects another state : the pleasing affections serve to mitigate those which are painful . Hope succeeds to desire ; and , even where desire is less vigorous than at first , it cheers and enlivens the soul , and diffuses sunshine all around . This
emotion has an intimate connexion with the sense of utility : nor will it mislead us , if we combine with it correct principle and judgment . It will be qualified by individual disposition * . In men who are sanguine and volatile we find it predominant , and , not rarely , illusive and injurious : in children it is ardent , because their reason is not yet come to them ; in our riper age
? In this manner associations of resemblance vastly augment the interest with which some men read works of history and those of fiction . There are passages in Goldsmith ' s " Vicar of Wakefield" that may be perused with signal effect amid the dreariest scenes of the months of winter : what I may term the contiguity of description , heightens the force of our sympathetic emotions .
Untitled Article
28 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 28, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2580/page/28/
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