Veneration for relics has the same natural foundation. A temple is in a proper sense an accessory to the deity to which it is dedicated. Diana is chasteso is her temple, and the very icicle which hangs on it. The noble sister of Publicola,

The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle

That's curded by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple.

CORIOLANUS.-
.-ACT V. Sc. 3.

The respect and esteem which the great, powerful, and opulent command, give currency to what is called the fashion, in dress, manners, connexions, and taste. By the same easiness of communication, every bad quality of an enemy is spread to all its connexions. Thus the house in which Ravaillac was born was rased to the ground; the Swiss suffer no peacocks to live, because the Duke of Austria, their ancient enemy, wears a peacock's tail in his crest. Even the bearer of bad tidings, because an object of aversion, cannot escape:

Fellow, begone; I cannot brook thy sight,
This news hath made thee a most ugly man.

KING JOHN. ACT III Sc. 1.

Yet the first messenger of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after, as a sullen bell
Remember'd, tolling a departed friend.

SECOND PART, HENRY IV.-ACT I. Sc. 1.

The object, however, from which such properties are borrowed, must be such as to warm the mind and inflame the imagination. But these emotions are secondary, being occasioned by antecedent, and primary emotions and passions. A secondary emotion may readily swell into a passion from the accessory object, provided the accessory be a proper object for desire. Thus it often happens that one passion is productive of another. Self-love generates love to children. Remorse for betraying a friend or murdering an enemy in cold blood, makes a man hate himself; in that state, he is not conscious of affection to his children, but rather

of disgust or ill-will. The hatred he has for himself, is expanded upon his children.

Self-love is expanded to blood relations, and the passion communicates itself in proportion to the degree of connexion. Self-love extends even to things inanimate, the property a man calls his own.

Friendship, less vigorous than self-love, is less apt to communicate itself to the friend's children or other relations. There are, however, instances of this.

The more slight and transitory relations are not favorable to the communication of passions. Sudden and violent anger is an exception.

The sense of order influences this passion in nature to descend from parents to children by an easy transition; the ascent to a parent, contrary to that order, makes the transition more difficult. Gratitude to a benefactor is readily extended to his children; but not so readily to his parents.

REVIEW.

Do the relations of things produce passions similar to those produced by the things themselves?

Give examples.

What is the origin of fashion?

Give examples of the bad qualities of an enemy spread to its

connexions.

What are the emotions caused by relations called?

Give examples of one passion producing another.

What sort of relations are most favorable to the communication of passions?

SECTION VI.-Causes of the Passions of Fear and Anger.

Fear and anger, to answer the purposes of nature, operate sometimes instinctively, sometimes deliberatively, according to circumstances. Deliberatively, where reason suggests means to avoid a threatened danger. If a man be injured, the first thing he thinks of is what revenge he shall take, and what means he shall employ. These particulars are no less obvious than natural; but, as the passions of fear and anger, in their

C

instinctive state, are less familiar to us, it may be acceptable to the reader to have them accurately delineated. I begin with fear.

Self-preservation is not wholly left to the conduct of reason. Nature acts here with her usual foresight. Fear and anger, moving us to act instinctively, afford security when the slower operations of deliberate reason would be too late; we avoid danger by the impulse of fear, before reflection places us in safety. If my horse stumble, my hands and knees are instantly at work to prevent him from falling.

Fear provides for self-preservation by flying from harm; anger by repelling it. Where anger impels one suddenly to return a blow, the passion is instinctive; and it is chiefly in such a case that it acts blindly and ungovernably. Instinctive anger is frequently raised by pain, and a man thus beforehand disposed to anger, is not nice in giving a blow if he be touched on a tender part. The child is violently excited to crush to atoms the stone it has hit its toe against.

An instance of blind and absurd anger is finely illustrated in No. 439 of the Spectator, in a story, the dramatis persona of which are, a cardinal and a spy retained in pay for intelligence. The cardinal is represented as minuting down the particulars. The spy begins with a low voice, "Such an one, the advocate, whispered to one of his friends within my hearing, that your eminence was a very great poltroon;" and after having given his patron time to take it down, adds, "That another called him a mercenary rascal in a public conversation." The cardinal replies, "Very well," and bids him go on. The spy proceeds, and loads him with reports of the same nature, till the cardinal rises in a fury, calls him an impudent scoundrel, and kicks him out of the room.

In these examples anger appears irrational and ab surd; but it was given us to prevent or repel injuries and it is not wonderful to find it exerted irregularly and capriciously: but all the harm that can be done

by the passion in that state is instantaneous; for the shortest delay sets all to rights; and circumstances are seldom so unlucky as to put it in the power of a passionate man to do much harm in an instant.

Social passions, like the selfish, sometimes drop their character, and become instinctive. It is not unusual to find anger and fear respecting others so excessive, as to operate blindly and impetuously, precisely as where they are selfish.

SECTION VII.—Emotions caused by Fiction.

Hitherto fiction has not been assigned as the cause of any emotion or passion; but passions are moved by fiction as well as by truth.

The objects of our external senses really exist in the way and manner we perceive, and nature determines us to rely on the veracity of our senses; and the power of memory recalls objects to the mind with dif ferent degrees of accuracy. Interesting objects make a strong impression. For example, I saw yesterday a beautiful woman in tears for the loss of an only child, and was greatly moved with her distress: not satisfied with a slight recollection or bare remembrance, I ponder upon the melancholy scene: conceiving myself to be in the place where I was an eye-witness, every circumstance appears to me as at first: I think I see the woman in tears, and hear her moans. Hence it may be justly said, that in a complete idea of memory there is no past nor future: a thing recalled to the mind with the accuracy I have been describing, is perceived as in our view, and consequently as existing at present. Past time makes part of an incomplete idea only: I remember or reflect, that some years ago I was at Oxford, and saw the first stone laid of the Ratcliff library. This act of the mind is called conception. The thing exists, and I am a spectator of its existence, and I have a perception of the object similar to what a real spectator has.

Many rules of criticism depend on conception. To

distinguish conception from reflective remembrance, 1 give the following illustration: when I think of an event as past, without forming any image, it is barely reflecting or remembering that I was an eye-witness; but when I recall the event so distinctly as to form a complete image of it, I perceive it as passing in my presence; and this perception is an act of intuition, into which reflection enters not, more than into an act of sight.

Let us now consider the idea of a thing we never saw, raised in us by speech, writing, or painting. That idea, with respect to the present subject, is of the same nature with an idea of memory, being either complete or incomplete. Lively and accurate description raises in us ideas no less distinct than if we had been originally spectators. Slight and superficial narrative produces faint and incomplete ideas, of which conception makes no part. Past time enters into this idea, as into an incomplete idea of memory; as when we have spread out before our minds a lively and beautiful description of the battle of Zama, in which Scipio overcame Han

nibal.

Ideas, both of memory and speech, produce emotions similar to those produced by an immediate view of the object; only fainter, in proportion as an idea is fainter than an original perception. Conception supplies the want of real presence; and in idea we perceive persons acting and suffering precisely as in an original survey: hence the pleasure of a reverie, the objects of which we conceive to be actually existing in our presence, precisely as if we were eye-witnesses of them. If then, in reading, conception be the means by which our passions are moved, it makes no difference whether the subject be fable or true history. When the conception is complete, the mind finds no leisure for reflection. The meeting of Hector and Andromache, the passionate scenes in Lear, give an impression of reality no less distinct than that given by Tacitus of the death of Otho.