itself, even while its wishes exist merely as wishes, and resentment painful in itself, while its object is unattained, and, unless in some very obdurate hearts, ready to be appeased by slight atonements, by the very acknowledgment of the evil done,or by the mere intervention of a few months or days, between the injury and the moment of forgiveness. On the nature of these feelings, it would be unnecessary, however, to dwell longer; my only object at present being to point out the place of their arrangement as prospective emotions, capable of being separated by internal analysis from those immediate emotions of dislike which constitute the varieties of simple hatred.

When I began the consideration of our prospective emotions, those emotions which regard the future, and which may regard it either with desire or fear,-I stated that it would be unnecessary to discuss at length, first all our desires, and, then, all our fears, -that there was no object, which might not, in different circumstances, be an object of hope and fear alternately, according as the good or evil was present or remote, or more or less probable, and that the discussion of one set of the emotions might, therefore, be considered as supplying the place of a double and superfluous discussion. When, however, any important circumstance of distinction attended the fears opposed to the desires considered by us, I have endeavoured occasionally to point these out to you. I shall not, therefore, at present enlarge on them.

In treating of our emotions,-particularly of those which I have termed prospective,-I have dwelt only on the more prominent forms which they assume,-because, in truth, they exist in innumerable forms, as diversified by slight changes of circumstances. It is easy for us to invent generic names, and to class, under these, various affections of the mind, which, though not absolutely similar in every respect, are at least analogous in some important respects. But we must not forget, on that account, that the affections, thus classed together, and most conveniently classed together, are still different in themselves-that what we have termed the desire of knowledge, for example, as if we had one simple desire of this kind, is generically inclusive of complex feelings as numerous as the objects existing in the universe; and even far more numerous, since they find objects in the abstract relations of things as much as in things themselves-emotions that have stimulated, and still stimulate, and will forever continue to stimulate, every inquiry of man, from the first gaze of the infant's trembling eye, which he scarcely knows how to direct on the little object before him, to the sublimest speculations of the philosopher, who scarcely finds, in infinity itself, an object sufficient for his research. On many of our emotions, that shadow into each other by gradations almost imperceptible, it would have been interesting, if my limits had permitted, to dwell at greater length, and to trace and deve

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lope them, as varied by the changes of circumstances in which they arise. Indeed, as I have before remarked, under this comprehensive and most interesting class of our mutual affections, might be considered every thing which has immediate reference to the whole ample field of moral conduct-whatever renders man worthy or unworthy of the approving and tranquillizing voice within, and of that eternal approbation of the great Awarder of happiness, of whose judgment, in its blessings or its terrors, the voice of conscience itself, powerful as it may be, is but the short and feeble presage.

The narrowness of my limits, then, I trust, will apologize sufficiently for a brevity of discussion, in many cases, which was unavoidable. In our view of those emotions, however, which, by their peculiar complexity, or general importance, seemed to me worthy of nicer examination, I have endeavoured to direct your thought as much as possible to habits of minute analysis, without which there can be no advance in metaphysical science. This very minuteness of analysis, to which I wished to accustom you, as much for the sake of habit as for the nicer results of the particular inquiries themselves,-may, in some instances, have led to distinctions, which, to many of you, perhaps, may have seemed superfluous, or too subtile, as requiring from you a little more effort of thought than would have been necessary in following arrangements more familiar to you, though, I conceive less accurate.-You are not to suppose, however, that in analyzing our complex emotions, and arranging, in different subdivisions, the various feelings that seem to me to be involved in them as elements,-I object to the use of the common phraseology on the subject, which expresses, in a single term, many feelings that are truly in nature, either immediately consecutive, or intimately conjoined,-though, in our stricter analysis, I may have found it necessary to divide them. This, you are not to think, any more than you are to suppose, that the chemist, who inquires into the elements of vegetable matter, which exist in a rose or a hyacinth,-and who, after his decomposition of those beautiful aggregates, arranges their elementary particles in different orders, as if the aggregates themselves were nothing, and the elements all,-objects to the use of the simple terms rose and hyacinth, as significant of the flowers which have been the subjects of his art, and which still continue to have a delightful unity to his senses, even while he knows them to have no real unity, and to be only a multitude of atoms, similar or dissimilar. What the rose and the hyacinth are to him, our complex feelings are to us. We may know and consider separately, and arrange separately, their various elements, but when we consider them as they exist together, we may still continue to give them, as complex

feelings, the names by which, as complex feelings, they are familiarly and briefly expressed.

I now then conclude the remarks which I had to offer on the last order of our mental affections,-the important order of our emotions, those affections of various kinds, in which almost all that is valuable in our earthly life is to be found, and many of which, we have every reason to believe, are not to be limited to those scenes in which they first were felt, but are to share the immortality of our existence, and to become more vivid, as our capacity becomes quicker, for the discernment of that moral or divine excellence which inspired them here,-excellence on the contemplation of which we have delighted to dwell on earth, even amid the distraction of cares, and follies, and vices, from which, in a nobler state of being, we may hope to be exempt.

In our benevolent emotions we have remarked, what it is impossible not to remark, their obvious relation to the supreme benevolence of Him who has communicated to us these delightful feelings, and who may be said to have made us after his own image, more in this universality of generous desire with which we are capable of embracing the whole orb of being, than in our feeble intellectual faculties, which, proud as they are of their range of thought, are unable to comprehend the relations of a single atom to any other single atom. In our malevolent emotions we have traced in like manner their admirable harmony with the other parts of the great system of our moral world, as necessary in the community for the punishment of evil in the guilty individual, and consequently, for the prevention of evil in others, or for that equally salutary punishment of its own evil, which the mind in remorse inflicts upon itself.

"This double lot

Of evil in the inheritance of man

Required for his protection no slight force,

In ceaseless watch; and, therefore, was his breast
Fenced round with passions, quick to be alarmed,
Or stubborn to oppose,-with fear, more swift
Than beacons, catching flame from hill to hill,
Where armies land;-with anger uncontroul'd,
As the young lion bounding on his prey;—
With sorrow, that locks up the struggling heart,
And shame, that overcasts the drooping eye,
As with a cloud of lightning. These the part
Perform of eager monitors, and goad

The soul, more sharply than with points of steel,
His enemies to shun, or to resist."

It is in our moral constitution, as in the physical universe. To him who knows the beautiful arrangements of the planetary

•No careless watch."-Orig.

† Pleasures of Imagination, second form of the Poem, B. II. v. 570–584.

motions, the very gloom of night suggests the continued influence of that orb which is shining in other climes, and which could not have carried light and cheerfulness to them, but for the darkness in which we are reposing. To him who considers our malevolent emotions only, these emotions may seem like absolute darkness in our moral day; but he who views them in their relation to the whole, perceives their necessity for the preservation of those very feelings of gentle regard to which they seem opposed. In the very resentment of individuals, and the indignation of society, he perceives at a distance, those emotions of benevolence, which, like the unfading sunshine, are not quenched by the temporary gloom that darkens our little portion of the social sphere, preserving even in absence that inexhausti ble source of radiance, which is speedily to shine on us as before, with all the warmth and brilliancy of the past.

LECTURE LXXIII.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON CONCLUDING THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MIND.-COMMENCEMENT OF ETHICS.—OBLIGATION, VIRTUE, MERIT, DIFFER ONLY IN THEIR RELATION TO TIME.—AN ACTION IN MORALS, IS NOTHING ELSE THAN THE AGENT ACTING.

IN my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I brought to a conclusion my remarks on the various emotions of which the mind is susceptible, and, with these, consequently, my physiological view of the mind, in all the aspects which it presents to our observation; the order of our emotions, being, as you will remember, the last of the orders into which I divided the mental phenomena.

We have reviewed, then, all the principal phenomena of the mind; and I flatter myself, that now, after this review, you will see better the reasons which have led me, in so many instances, to deviate from the order of former arrangements; since every former arrangement of the phenomena would have been absolutely inconsistent with the results of the minuter analysis into which we have been led. With the views of other philosophers, as to the nature and composition of our feelings, I might, indeed, have easily adhered to their plan; but I must then have presented to you views which appeared to myself defective; and, however eminent the names of those from whom I may have differed, it appeared to me my duty, in every instance in which I believed their opinions to be erroneous, to express to you my dissent firmly, though, I hope, always with that candour, which not the eminent only deserve, but even the humblest of those who have contributed their wish at least, and their effort to enlighten us.

In reducing to two generic powers or susceptibilities of the mind, the whole extensive tribe of its intellectual states, in all their variety, I was aware that I could not fail at first to be considered by you as retrenching too largely, that long list of intellectual faculties to which they have been commonly referred. But I flatter myself you have now seen, that this reference to so long a list of powers, has arisen only from an inaccurate view of phenomena referred to them, and particularly from inattention to the different aspects of the phenomena, according as they are combined or not combined with desire, in the different processes