LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND, LECTURE LXVI. III. PROSPECTIVE EMOTIONS.-) -I. CONSIDERATION OF THE DESIRE OF CONTINUED EXISTENCE, CONCLUDED.—II. DESIRE OF PLEASURE. IN my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I began the consideration of that order of our emotions, which, from their relation to objects as future, I distinguished, from our immediate and retrospective emotions, by the name of prospective, an order which comprehends our desires and fears,—the most important of all the affections of our mind, as the immediate directors of our conduct, which our other mental affections, of whatever species, influence only indirectly, through the medium of our wishes. With respect to this order in general, I endeavoured to explain to you, how the same objects, agreeable or disagreeable, may, in different circumstances of our relation to these objects, as present or absent, give rise both to hope and to fear; and how different the feeling of the mere desirableness of an object, which is no thing more than the relation of certain objects perceived or conceived, as antecedents to our desires as consequents,—is from the feeling of the greater amount of personal advantage, or of the moral propriety of certain actions; both which considerations, indeed, may produce the tendency to desire, in some cases, but do not necessarily constitute it in all ;-the clearest perception of greater advantage from certain actions, which it would be worldly prudence to prefer, and of moral propriety in certain actions, which it would be virtue to prefer, being often insufficient to overcome other circumstances of momentary attraction, which thus obtain our momentary preference, even though felt to be in absolute opposition to our good upon the whole, and to that virtue, which is itself, indeed, a part, and the most important part of this general good. Since the objects of desire,-which are so various to different persons, that perhaps, no two objects are regarded with the same interest and choice by any two individuals, are not limited, even to the infinity of existing things, but comprehend whatever the wildest imagination can conceive, I stated to you the impossibility of any exact enumeration of these objects, such as might enable us to treat compendiously of the whole boundless variety of human wishes. All which I could venture to do, therefore, was to class the principal objects, that seem, in their nature, to involve that species of attraction, which, as immediately antecedent to all our wishes, I have termed desirableness,—that is to say, the most important of those objects, which cannot, in the ordinary circumstances of our nature, be contemplated by us, without exciting the emotion of desire. Of these, I enumerated the following:-Our desire of the mere continuation of our being,—our desire of pleasure,—our desire of action, our desire of society,-our desire of knowledge, our desire of power, whether of direct power, as in what is commonly termed ambition, or of indirect power, as in avarice, our desire of the affection or esteem of those around us,—our desire of glory,—our desire of the happiness of others, our desire of the unhappiness of those whom we hate. All these desires, however, I stated, may exist in various forms, according to the different degrees of probability of attainment,-a simple wish, hope, expectation, confidence, being the most remarkable gradations in the scale,-though there are various in tervening shades of difference, to which no name is given. They are not species of desires essentially distinct, but modes of all our desires. Our wishes, when they exist with little force and permanence, are termed simply desires,-when they rise more vividly, and occupy the mind more exclusively, they are termed passions. The vividness and permanence, therefore, are the only circumstances, which distinguish our passions,--not any essential difference in the particular nature of the desires themselves. The slightest wish, which we scarcely feel as a very vivid emotion, becomes a passion, when it affects us strongly and lastingly. The most ardent passion, which may have occupied our whole soul for half our life, if it were to rise only slightly and faintly, would be termed a mere desire. After these general preliminary distinctions, I proceeded to the consideration of our particular desires; and, in my last Lecture, offered some remarks on the first of these, in my order of enumeration. Of the great fact of that desire of life, which you must see operating universally around you, you could not need to be informed; and my observations, therefore, were chiefly illustrative of that beautiful adaptation of our nature to the scene on which we have to discharge the various duties of men, that is effected by this principle of our constitution,-a principle, which renders the scene of those duties itself delightful, as the scene of our continued being,-of that life, which we love in itself, and which is associated, in our conception, with the scene on which every moment of our life has passed. Instead, therefore, of viewing, in our love of life, a principle disgraceful to our nature, we may see in it, far more truly, a principle which does honour to our nature, because it answers admirable purposes in our moral constitution. What happiness would it be, to those who were to be confined in the most gloomy prison for a series of years, if during all this long period of confinement, the very prison itself were to seem to them a delightful habitation, and when the hour of deliverance came, we had only to open the gate, and lead the prisoner forth to sunshine and the balmy breeze, which were not to be the less delightful, then, on account of the captivity in which his former years were spent! I need not point out to you, how exactly the case, now imagined, cor |