On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we escape an imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected? The fenfe on these occafions is far from that smooth and voluptuous fatisfaction which the affured profpect of pleasure bestows. The delight which arifes from the modifications of pain, confeffes the stock from whence it sprung, in its folid, strong, and severe nature.

SECT. VI.

OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELFPRESERVATION.

MOST of the ideas which are capable of making a powerful impreffion on the mind, whether fimply of Pain or Pleasure, or of the modifications of those, may be reduced very nearly to these two heads, self-preservation and society; to the ends of one or the other of which all our paffions are calculated to anfwer. The paffions which concern felfprefervation, turn moftly on pain or danger. The ideas of pain, sickness, and death, fill the mind with ftrong emotions of horror; but life and health, though they put us in a capacity of being affected with pleasure, they make no fuch impreffion by the fimple enjoyment. The paffions therefore which are converfant about the prefervation of the individual, turn chiefly on pain and danger, and they are the moft powerful of all the paffions.

SECT.

SEC T. VII.

OF THE SUBLIME.

WHATEVER is fitted in any fort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to fay, whatever is in any fort terrible, or is converfant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a fource of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I fay the strongest emotion, because I am fatisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleafure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer, are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could fuggeft, or than the livelieft imagination, and the most found and exquifitely fenfible body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in great doubt whether any man could be found who would earn a life of the most perfect fatisfaction, at the price of ending it in the torments, which juftice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, fo death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquifite, which are not preferred to death; nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, that it is confidered as an emiffary of this king of terrors. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are fimply terrible; but at certain diftances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavour to investigate hereafter.

SE C T. VIII.

OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY.

THE other head under which I clafs our paffions, is that of fociety, which may be divided into two forts. I. The fociety of the fexes, which answers the purposes of propagation; and next, that more general fociety, which we have with men and with other animals, and which we may in fome fort be faid to have even with the inanimate world. The paffions belonging to the preservation of the individual, turn wholly on pain and danger: those which belong to generation, have their origin in gratifications and pleasures; the pleasure moft directly belonging to this purpose is of a lively character, rapturous and violent, and confeffedly the highest pleasure of fenfe; yet the absence of this fo great an enjoyment, scarce amounts to an uneafiness; and, except at particular times, I do not think it affects at all. When men describe in what manner they are affected by pain and danger, they do not dwell on the pleasure of health and the comfort of fecurity, and then lament the loss of these fatisfactions: the whole turns upon the actual pains and horrors which they endure. But if you liften to the complaints of a forfaken lover, you obferve that he insists largely on the pleafures which he enjoyed or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfec tion of the object of his defires; it is the lofs which is always uppermoft in his mind. The violent effects produced by love, which has fometimes been even wrought up to madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek to establish. When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected with any idea, it fo wholly engroffes them as to fhut out by de

grees

grees almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which would confine it. Any idea is fufficient for the purpose, as is evident from the infinite variety of causes, which give rife to madness; but this at most can only prove that the paffion of love is capable of producing very extraordinary effects, not that its extraordinary emotions. have any connection with positive pain.

SECT. IX.

THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PASSIONS BELONGING TO SELF-PRESERVATION, AND

THOSE WHICH REGARD THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES.

THE final cause of the difference in character between the paffions which regard felf-prefervation and those which are directed to the multiplication of the species, will illuftrate the foregoing remarks yet further; and it is, I imagine, worthy of observation even upon its own account. As the performance of our duties of every kind depends upon life, and the performing them with vigour and efficacy depends upon health, we are very ftrongly affected with whatever threatens the deftruction of either: but as we were not made to acquiefce in life and health, the fimple enjoyment of them is not attended with any real pleasure, left, fatisfied with that, we should give ourselves over to indolence and inaction. On the other hand, the generation of mankind is a great purpofe, and it is requifite that men fhould be animated to the pursuit of it by fome great incentive. It is therefore attended with a very high pleasure ;' but as it is by no means defigned to be our conftant bufinefs, it is not fit that the abfence of this pleasure should be:

attended.

attended with any confiderable pain. The difference between men and brutes in this point, feems to be remarkable. Men are at all times pretty equally disposed to the pleasures of love, because they are to be guided by reason in the time and manner of indulging them. Had any great pain arisen from the want of this fatisfaction, reafon, I am afraid, would find great difficulties in the performance of its office. But brutes, who obey laws, in the execution of which their own reason has but little fhare, have their stated feafons; at fuch times it is not improbable that the fenfation from the want is very troublesome, because the end must be then answered, or be miffed in many, perhaps for ever; as the inclination returns only with its feafon.

THE

SECT. X.

OF BEAUTY.

HE paffion which belongs to generation, merely as fuch, is luft only. This is evident in brutes, whose paffions are more unmixed, and which pursue their purpofes more directly than ours. The only distinction they obferve with regard to their mates, is that of fex. It is true, that they stick severally to their own species in preference to all others. But this preference, I imagine, does not arise from any sense of beauty which they find in their fpecies, as Mr. Addison fuppofes, but from a law of fome other kind, to which they are fubject; and this we may fairly conclude, from their apparent want of choice amongst those objects to which the barriers of their species have confined them. But man, who is a creature adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of relation, connects with the

general