which the robber would lay his violent hands, and which even
the most frivolous aspirer, after the most frivolous trappings
of courtly honour, would wish to obtain as soon, at least al-
most as soon, as that wand or ribbon, to which his ambition is
obliged to be at present limited. This, however, though it is
the only possession which is safe from violence or fraud, is
still safe from these. The tyrant, with all his power, cannot
divest of it the most helpless of those, on whom his tyranny
is exercised; he cannot purchase it, even for a single moment,
with all the treasures which he has amassed,-with all the
lands which he has desolated,-with all that power which, in
his hands, far from facilitating the acquisition, only renders
more hopeless, the attainment of those delights of conscience,
to which he would still vainly aspire.

"Magne pater divum,-sævos punire tyrannos
Haud alia ratione velis,-cum dira libido
Moverit ingenium, ferventi tincta veneno
Virtutem ut videant, intabescantque relicta.
Anne magis Siculi gemuerunt ara juvenci,
Et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis
Purpureas subter cervices terruit,-Imus
Imus præcipites quam si sibi dicat, et intus
Palleat, infelix, quod proxima nesciat uxor.'

And it is well for the world, that the only consolation of which the virtuous stand in need, cannot be forced from virtue, and usurped by vice. If the powerful could, by the promise of a reward, like that which the Persian monarch offered, obtain the means of forming to themselves, or purchasing at the same cheap rate, at which they purchase their other pleasures, that new pleasure of virtuous satisfaction, which nothing but virtue can give, vice would, indeed, have little to restrain it; and if he, who can order the virtuous resister of oppression to the dungeon, or to distant exile,--who can separate him,-I will not say, from his home, and his domains, and external dignities,--for the loss of these is comparatively insignificant, --but from all those, whom he loves and honours, from that conjugal, and filial, and parental, and friendly kindness, which would now be doubly valuable,-when he might still have the comfort of seeing eyes, to which his own had often been turned in kindness, and of hearing voices, the very sound of which had often, in other griefs, been felt to be consolation, before the gentle meaning itself was uttered,-if the oppressor, who can strip his victim of all these present and external means of comfort, could strip him also of those remembrances, which allow him to look back on the past with satisfaction, and to * Persius, Sat. III. 35-43.

VOL. II.-3 L

the future with the confidence of one who knows, that, whatever his path may be, he is to be received, at the close of it, by that Being, whose majesty, awful as it is, is still only the majesty of a benevolence surpassing all earthly love,--if this could be done, then, indeed, might virtue, in this world, seem to be abandoned to the vengeance, or the mercy of the guilty. But while these remain, what is there of which the glorious sufferer, I had almost said, if the words admitted combination, the happy sufferer,-can be truly said to be bereaved of? The friendships of those who are to meet again, and to meet forever, are lost but for a moment ;--the dignities, the wealth, are not lost; all that is valuable in them,--the remembrance of having used them, as Heaven wishes them to be used,--remains ;--there are years of happiness past, and an immortality of happiness, which is separated from the past only by a moment, and which will not be less sure, whether that moment be spent in fetters, with the pity, and gratitude, and veneration of the good, or, with the same gratitude and veneration, be spent,--if a moment can be said to be spent,--in liberty and opulence.

Man, indeed, is too frail, not to yield occasionally to temptations; but he yields to temptations because he is stupified by passion, and forgets, at the moment, the differences of the state of the vicious and the virtuous, that in calmer hours are present to him with an influence of which he delights to feel the power. If these differences--the mere contrast of the feeling with which the pure and the guilty look back on the years of their glorious or inglorious life--could be made constantly present to the mind, there is little reason to think, that all the seductions of power and momentary pleasure could prevail over him who sees what the good are, even in those adversities which the world considers as most afflicting, and what the guilty are, even in the midst of their enjoyments, without taking into account what they must be when those short and palling enjoyments have ceased,-

"One self-approving hour whole years outweighs,
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas,-
And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels,
Than Cæsar, with a senate at his heels.'

"The wicked man," says Rousseau, "fears and flies himself. He endeavours to be gay, by wandering out of himself. He turns around him his unquiet eyes, in search of an object of amusement, that may make him forget what he is. Even then his only pleasure is a bitter raillery,—without some con

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. IV. v. 255–258.

temptuous sarcasms, some insulting laughter, he would be forever sad. On the contrary, the serenity of the virtuous man is internal. His smile is not a smile of malignity, but of joy; he bears the source of it within himself; he is as gay alone as in the midst of the gayest circle; he does not derive his delightful contentment from those who approach him; he communicates his own to them."

Such are the emotions which are excited in us when we consider the past, in reference to ourselves, as moral agents; and, if we knew nothing more of virtue and vice than these feelings alone, and knew, at the same time, that in a future state of existence there was a happiness destined for those who felt emotions of one or the other kind, could we hesitate for a moment, in determining in which class we were to look for those, by whom the happiness was to be inherited? It would not require any abstract notions of what is morally good and what is morally evil. The emotions themselves would distinguish sufficiently, all that required to be distinguished. We should see in the agitation of a bad conscience,-in the terror that arose in it at the very conception of futurity, and of him who presides over the future as over the past,--that the misery which was anticipated was already begun;-as in the tranquillity of the good, and the delight which they felt in the very contemplation of the perfections of the Divinity, we should perceive the commencement of that happiness which immortality was not to confer, but to continue:

"Heaven our reward,-for heaven enjoyed below."

With these remarks, I conclude my view of our retrospective emotions. The remaining series of emotions, which we have still to consider, are those which relate to the future, comprehending the important class of our desires and fears, as these are diversified by all the variety of the objects on which they can be fixed, and by all the variety of degrees of probability, with which the good which we desire can be expected, or the evil anticipated and feared. In this order of our affections, as in all the emotions already considered by us, we shall find abundant proof of the wisdom and goodness of that being, who has given us our passions as he has given us our intellectual faculties, for nobler purposes than those of individual gratification,-purposes which the virtuous delight in seeing and fulfilling, and which the wicked unconsciously promote, even while they are regardless of the wisdom and goodness which protect the world, and equally regardless of that social world which is under this sublime protection

452

LECTURE LXV.

III. PROSPECTIVE EMOTIONS, COMPREHENDING ALL OUR DESIRES AND FEARS.-DESIRE AND FEAR MAY ARISE FROM THE SAME OBJECT.—OUR DESIRES ALWAYS HAVE FOR THEIR OBJECT SOME GOOD, AND OUR FEARS SOME EVIL.-DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THAT GOOD WHICH CONSTITUTES DESIRABLENESS, AND MORAL, OR EVEN ABSOLUTE PHYSICAL GOOD.—— CLASSIFICATION OF DESIRES.-WISH, HOPE, EXPECTATION, CONFIDENCE, DIFFERENT FORMS OF DESIRE.-1. DESIRE OF CONTINUED EXISTENCE.

GENTLEMEN,-In my original arrangement of our emotions, I divided them into three orders, according as their objects were regarded by us as present, past or future--our immediate emotions, our retrospective emotions, our prospective emotions. In my last Lecture, I concluded my remarks on the second of these orders,-which from their reference to the past, I have termed retrospective. One order still remains to be considered by us,--the emotions, which I have denominated prospective, from their reference to objects as future.

This order is, in its immediate consequences, the most important of all our emotions, from its direct influence on action, which our other feelings of the same class, and indeed all our other feelings whatever, influence, only indirectly, through the medium of these. It comprehends all our desires and all our fears, our desires, which arise equally from the prospect of what is agreeable in itself, or from the prospect of relief, from what is disagreeable in itself,-our fears, which arise equally from the prospect of what is disagreeable in itself, and from the prospect of the loss of what is in itself agreeable. The same external object, agreeable or disagreeable, may give rise to both emotions, according as the object is, or is not in our possession, or is, or is not producing any present uneasiness,-or, when it is equally remote in both cases, according as the probability of attainment of the agreeable object, or of freedom from the disagreeable object, is greater or less. Hope and fear do not necessarily relate

to different objects. We fear to lose any source of pleasure possessed by us, which had long been an object of our hope; we wish to be free from a pain that afflicts us, which, before it attacked us, was an object of our fear. We hope that we shall attain to a situation of which we are ambitious ; we fear that we shall not attain to it. We fear that some misfortune, which seems to threaten us, may reach us; we hope that we shall be able to escape. The hope and the fear, in these cases, opposite as the emotions truly are, arise, you perceive, from the same objects;--the one or the other prevailing according to the greater or less probability on either side. But though they vary with different degrees of probability, they do not depend wholly on a mere comparison of probabilities. They arise, or do not arise, in some measure, also according to the magnitude of the object; our hope and our fear awaking more readily, as well as operating more permanently and strongly, when the object which we wish to attain, or of which we fear to be deprived, is very important to our happiness, though the probabilities on either side may be exactly the same as in cases of less importance, where desire or fear, if they arise at all, are comparatively feeble, and when often not the slightest emotion of either species arises:

"Pauca licet portes argenti vascula puri,

Nocte iter ingressus, gladium contumque timebis,
Et motæ ad lunam trepidapis arundinis umbram ;
Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator."*

"The needy traveller, serene and gay,
Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away.
Does envy bid thee crush the upbraiding joy?
Increase his riches, and his peace destroy.
Now fears in dire vicissitude invade,-
The rustling brake alarms, and quivering shade;--
Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief;-
One shews the plunder, and one hides the thief."

There can be no question, that he who travels, in the same carriage, with the same external appearances of every kind, by which a robber could be tempted or terrified, will be in equal danger of attack, whether he carry with him little of which he can be plundered, or such a booty as would impoverish him if it were lost. But there can be no question also, that though the probabilities of danger be the same, the fear of attack, would, in these two cases, be very different,-that, in the one case, he would laugh at the ridiculous terror of any one who journeyed with him, and expressed much alarm at the approach of evening ;-and that in the other case, his own

*Juvenal. Sat. X. v. 19-22.