objects of our benevolence than others; and why many things are ordinarily required as duties towards a wife, a child, a father, a friend, a neighbour, a fellow countryman, which, if done to a stranger, would argue a very uncommon degree of virtue, and would be set down as highly meritorious acts.

16. We will examine, in the first place, those pleasures of which men are the involuntary causes to each other. One of the most universal and obvious of these pleasures, is that which arises from the perception of personal beauty. Those who have written upon Beauty have confounded many things together which have no connexion. Thus we hear of the beauty of virtue, which phrase, if it mean any thing, can only mean the pleasure which the contemplation of virtue affords us, a pleasure very distinct from those which beauty occasions, and which give rise to what are called the Laws of Taste, the investigation of which will form the subject of a separate Treatise. By beauty, in its strict sense, is signified a power which certain colors, forms, and motions,* and combinations of color, form, and motion have, of producing in us certain pleasurable feelings. The contemplation of human beauty is attended by an additional pleasure, because certain outward traits are considered indicative of certain agreeable mental qualities.

17. The human voice may be either melodious or otherwise; that is, the cause to us of an additional

* Motions indeed are but a sort of changeable forms, and the pleasures and pains which originate in the contemplation of them are properly classed among the pleasures and pains of form.

set of pleasures or pains. The power of speech enables men to excite in the minds of others, through the medium of the conceptive faculty, a great variety of pleasures and pains, especially those of mental activity, of admiration, of the ludicrous, of Self-comparison, of Benevolence, of Malevolence, of Anticipation, of Disappointment, many of which pleasures and pains a man often involuntarily produces in others; but which, nevertheless, are great causes of benevolence or malevolence towards him who produces them.

18. Persons of different sexes have an additional and most powerful means of acting upon each other through the sentiment of sexual desire; by reason of which, all other things being equal, men find far greater pleasure in the society of women than of men, and women far greater pleasure in the society of men than of women. So powerful is the operation of this cause, that men and women, who, but for the circumstance of being of an opposite sex, would be absolutely in tolerable to each other, may become, from that cause alone, very pleasing companions; an observation which will suffice to explain many curious phenomena in social and domestic life.

The joint influence of sexual desire, of the pleasures which are produced by personal beauty, and of all or several of the other pleasures above alluded to, occasion in men and women towards persons of the opposite sex, that highest pitch of benevolence called, par excellence, LOVE.

Love, in this its original and proper signification, at least when it reaches any high pitch, hardly

extends, at one and the same time, to more than a single individual; and persons of the most ordinary benevolence are accustomed, under the influence of this sentiment, to submit to great pains, or to sacrifice great pleasures, for the greater pleasure of pleasing the object of their love. As in several codes of practical morals, men and women are supposed to marry from pure love and nothing else, and as they are made to promise to love each other as long as they live, which promise they are all held bound and able to fulfil; husbands and wives being thus set down as perpetual lovers; hence many things are regarded as duties between husbands and wives, which no other parties are expected to perform towards each other; and which, if done to a stranger, would prove a degree of benevolence very uncommon. The circumstance, that love embraces but a single individual at once, explains why it commands, notwithstanding the intensity of benevolence which it implies, but a limited degree of moral approbation. 19. The pleasure of Wonder, or that agreeable feeling usually called Admiration, has a power over the sentiment of benevolence, hardly, if at all, inferior to that of sexual desire; and indeed this feeling of admiration is a necessary element in that compound sentiment called Romantic Love, which plays so conspicuous a part in the literature of Modern Europe. When the sexual element is wanting, that high degree of benevolence towards particular individuals, of whatever sex, or even towards imaginary beings, which admiration produces, is called Loyalty, Devotion, and sometimes, also, Love. This.

double use of the word Love, sometimes including, and sometimes excluding, the element of sexual desire, has constantly led to a great confusion of ideas. What adds to the confusion is, that the word Love is also used to signify any strong desire. Thus we speak of Love in general, meaning thereby emotions of benevolence; of the love of wealth; the love of power; and of self-love, meaning thereby the combined influence of all the desires, except those which originate in the sentiment of benevolence, and sometimes not even excepting those.

Admiration is an agreeable feeling, produced in us by the contemplation of any thing that is new to us, or uncommon. What is common, we view with indifference. When the new or uncommon thing, besides being new or uncommon, is beautiful also, or possesses any other capacity of giving pleasure, the additional pleasure of admiration gives it so much the more powerful an influence over us. When the new or uncommon thing has no beauty, nor any other power of giving pleasure, separate from its rarity or its novelty, that alone may produce a great effect. And even when the new or uncommon thing is in itself a cause of pain, the pleasure of admiration which it produces may for a time neutralize and even overbalance that pain; an observation which will enable us to understand why, in works of art,

* Platonic Love is the name given to those attachments between persons of different sexes who are fitted to excite the sexual sentiment in each other, but from whose attachment that sentiment is supposed to be excluded. The existence, however, of such a thing as Platonic Love is regarded by the best authorities as very apocryphal.

novelty, and even faulty novelty, is often mistaken for beauty.

Sublimity is uncommon greatness or power. This is implied in the very etymology of the word. The pleasure which sublime objects afford is a pleasure of admiration altogether distinct from that which beautiful objects afford; though, in some cases, the same object may afford both these pleasures at once. What is called the Moral Sublime is a different thing altogether. It is merely uncommon virtue.*

What is common we view with Indifference. But when the capacity of Admiration is great and predominant, the want and desire of something to gratify it produces a pain, usually described as weariness or Ennui, and which, in a secondary point of view, is correctly enough attributed to the commonness of the things about us.

When we have formed expectations of deriving pleasure from certain objects, whether pleasures of admiration, or of any other kind, and those objects fail to come up to our expectations, there ensues a pain of disappointment, then called Contempt, which, when it relates to sensitive beings, gives rise to a feeling of Malevolence.

The sentiment of Wonder is the source of that pleasure which we derive from the strange and the marvellous; and, as we have seen, of the weariness we experience from what is common and vulgar.

The heightening effect of admiration upon the sentiment of benevolence will serve to explain why

* The subject of beauty and sublimity will be more fully considered in the Theory of Taste.