§ II.—CHAPTER XIII.

EMOTIVE STRUCTURE IN MAN.

WE pass finally, in this section of evidence, to a brief consideration of the emotive sphere of our nature, which is very rich in results for our purpose. It is its emotional capacity which imparts to human life all its peculiar and ever-freshening interest. It may be possible to conceive a being made capable of intellectual without emotional activity. “We might, perhaps,” says Dr Thomas Brown, “have been so constituted with respect to our intellectual states of mind, as to have had all the varieties of these, our remembrances, judgments, and creations of fancy, without one emotion. But without the emotions which accompany them, of how little value would the mere intellectual functions have been! It is to our vivid feelings of this class we must look for those tender regards which make our remembrances sacred—for that love of truth and glory and mankind, without which, to animate and reward us in our discovery and diffusion of knowledge, the continued exercise of judgment would be a fatigue rather than a satisfaction; and for 225all that delightful wonder which we feel, when we contemplate the admirable creations of fancy, or the still more admirable beauties of their unfading model—that model which is ever before us, and the imitation of which, as it has been truly said, is the only imitation that is itself originality. By our other mental functions we are mere spectators of the machinery of the universe, living and inanimate; by our emotions we are admirers of nature, lovers of men, adorers of God. The earth, without them, would be only a field of colours, inhabited by beings who may contribute, indeed, more permanently to our means of physical comfort than any one of the inanimate forms which we behold; but who, beyond the moment in which they are capable of affecting us with pain or pleasure, would be only like the other forms and colours which would meet us wherever we turned our weary and restless eye; and God himself, the source of all good, and the object of all worship, would be only the Being by whom the world was made.”¹²⁸¹²⁸   BROWN’S Lectures, tenth edit., p. 339.

The truth is, that while it may be possible for us to imagine intellectual life apart from emotional, we cannot imagine any development of the one without the other; for the advancement of knowledge and of civilisation, if the direct product of our intellectual, is no less truly the indirect product of our emotional nature, the one being called into activity all along its course only by the other. All the progressive springs of humanity take their rise in our emotional being. In virtue of it alone do we own the spur of a happiness which is never satisfied, and of a glory which is 226still distant. In the very fact, therefore, of our combined emotive and cognitive activity, we are bound to recognise the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. How blank and unbeneficent would life have been as a mere round of passionless intellectuality! Where would have been all that now makes its charm, and renders it, amid the gathering darkness of death, still dear? Where would have been all the most exquisite products of literature and of art, without passion to portray or interest to kindle? And we must surely, then, acknowledge the beneficence of the Hand which has clothed life with all those soft and tender attributes—that garment of ever-varying emotion which makes it truly life. Here, indeed, we shall find the most abundant traces of the Divine goodness.

We do not attempt any systematic analysis, far less any exhaustive classification, of the emotions. Here, as everywhere, our purpose only requires, and our space can only afford, a general glance at the phenomena which crowd upon us.

Among the lowest and most universal group of emotions seem to be those which serve to guard, and, so to speak, intrench life, of which Alarm on the negative side, and Anger¹²⁹¹²⁹   We are sensible that these very names already suggest an inference unfavourable to the benevolence of the Creator. But here, as before, we must ask a postponement of judgment as to the hostile suggestions which everywhere necessarily arise with the very first statement of the evidence for the Divine goodness. on the positive, may be considered the generic expressions.¹³⁰¹³⁰   See Dr M‘Vicar’s ingenious and highly philosophical Inquiry into Human Nature, which the writer has very advantageously consulted on this part of his subject. Throughout the whole course of animal 227life these emotions are found deeply implanted. In the feeblest animal forms, alarm is seen manifesting itself on the approach or the contact of any unknown object. And as we rise in the scale of being to man himself, the motive becomes, indeed, less obtrusive in its modes of operation, more refined and disguised in its character, but not less really present and powerful. It lives a silent yet watchful sentinel in every human bosom, conservative not only of life, but of all that gives beauty and dignity and happiness to life. How vividly, for example, does it reign in the mother for the care of her offspring; in the householder for the care of his goods; in the citizen for the care of the commonwealth; in the maiden for the care of her virtue! It is everywhere the guardian of life and its treasures. Whenever life becomes intensified, fraught as with a deeper wealth and fulness of possession, there alarm, however undemonstrative, stands a more vigilant guardian. And did it not do so—were the soul not readily fluttered and put up when destruction threatened—what an invaded and desecrated thing would life soon become!

The continuation of alarm—not merely the first movement or flutter of the soul, but the prolonged emphasis of the emotion—becomes fear,—apprehension,—inciting to escape from danger. The object of alarm, if not removed, has a constant tendency thus to pass into an object of fear. Terror, which sometimes stands for the generic emotion, seems certainly more correctly regarded as its highest excess, betokening the comparative feebleness of the subject of it. 228The danger is so imminent and threatening that the mere guardian impulse loses itself in that species of convulsive agitation which we specially denominate terror. Panic, again, is contagious alarm. The simple emotion has a tendency to propagate itself from heart to heart, and as it propagates, it kindles into intenser forms, till it becomes that general and helpless movement of fear which we call panic.

Along with this class of emotions may be reckoned another class, different in character, yet also allied, as revealing something of the same cautionary character. Of this class, surprise and wonder may stand as specimens. These emotions we experience on the presentation of some new, striking, or unexpected object. We pause and are arrested, but do not, as in alarm, feel any impulse to retreat. Where the exciting cause is not novelty, or unexpectedness, but something great, unknown, and but dimly suggested, wonder becomes awe. These emotions are not, like the preceding, directly conservative, but they involve a conservative element; and it is remarkable that they all readily pass over into alarm, or some of its directly associate feelings. They all tend to drive the soul backward within itself; while yet, by a strange paradox, often marking (as all true and comprehensive observers know) the deepest facts of nature, they also tend to draw it forth and detain it before the exciting object. It is this balance of movement, the oscillation of backwards and forwards, of retreat and advance, which makes the pause so characteristic of these emotions.

The great generic emotion of anger is perhaps even more 229actively conservative in its character than alarm; for it is positive, while the latter is only negative. It furnishes weapons of defence, while the other only instigates to flight. Dr Thomas Brown has described it very finely and eloquently under this point of view. So obviously is it the view under which it falls to be considered, that all which he says regarding it is little more than a representation of the beneficial ends which it thus subserves. “There is a principle in our mind,” he says, “which is to us like a constant protector—which may slumber, indeed, but which slumbers only at seasons when its vigilance would be useless—which awakes, therefore, at the first appearance of unjust intention, and which becomes more watchful and more vigorous in proportion to the violence of the attack which it has to dread. What should we think of the providence of Nature, if, when aggression was threatened against the weak and unarmed at a distance from the aid of others, there were instantly and uniformly, by the intervention of some wonder-working power, to rush into the hand of the defenceless a sword, or other weapon of defence? And yet this would be but a feeble assistance, if compared with that which we receive from those simple emotions which Heaven has caused to rush, as it were, into our mind for repelling every attack. What would be a sword in the trembling hand of the infirm, of the aged, of him whose pusillanimous spirit shrinks at the very appearance, not of danger merely, but even of the arms by the use of which danger might be averted, and to whom, consequently, the very sword, which he scarcely knew how to grasp, would be an additional cause of terror, not an 230instrument of defence and safety? The instant anger which arises does more than many such weapons. It gives the spirit which knows how to make a weapon of everything, or which, of itself, does without a weapon what even a thunderbolt would be powerless to do in the shuddering grasp of the coward. When anger arises, fear is gone; there is no coward, for all are brave. Even bodily infirmity seems to yield to it, like the very infirmities of the mind. The old are, for the moment, young again; the weakest vigorous.”¹³¹¹³¹   BROWN’S Lectures, tenth edit., pp. 419, 420.

Resentment is the deepened and prolonged form of anger; and where the simple emotion might be impotent for the defence of invaded rights, this becomes a formidable guardian of them. Those who might brave the temporary heat of anger, would yet shrink from the sustained energy of resentment.

Indignation, in the twofold import which it seems to bear, is simply a modification of anger. As an individual emotion, it may be defined to be anger restraining itself from a sense of the unworthiness of the object exciting it—as when we feel indignant at some affront offered us—a kind of magnanimous anger. But it seems to be most characteristically a social emotion—anger propagating itself in the social body, at the sight or the recital of some great wrong done. In such a case the common heart is stirred, and drawn forth in an attitude of resistance. The injury committed kindles a widespread feeling, which gathers strength as it passes from heart to heart, and finally flames forth in a glow of indignant 231opposition, before which the sternest injustice must tremble, and which is undoubtedly one of the strongest safeguards of social virtue and happiness. At the same time, as Dr Brown has acutely pointed out, there is an admirably benevolent provision in the working of this emotion, whereby it is prevented becoming that inconvenient and excessive sentiment—passing over into acts of injustice, perhaps worse than those against which it was directed—which it would be otherwise ever apt to become. It is only by some very flagrant wrong that it is powerfully excited, and, for the most part, it tends speedily to expend itself. Were it different—were members of the same community not only disposed to share in feelings of anger for each other’s wrongs, but to experience such feelings with the same readiness, and in the same proportion, as the special sufferer, the consequences would be utterly destructive. There would then be no check to individual anger, which, propagating itself with an ever-kindling force, would swell to a mischievous and overbearing height. Indignation would no longer be a privilege, but an intolerable burden. “The zeal of the knight of La Mancha, who had many giants to vanquish, and many captive princesses to free, might leave him still some moments of peace; but if all the wrongs of all the injured were to be felt by us as our own, with the same ardent resentment and eagerness of revenge, our knight-errantry would be far more oppressive; and though we might kill a few moral giants, and free a few princesses, so many more would still remain, unslain and unfreed, that we should have little satisfaction even in our few successes. 232How admirably provident, then, is the Author of our nature, not merely in the emotions with the susceptibility of which He has endowed us, but in the very proportioning of these emotions so as to produce the greatest good at the least expense even of momentary suffering.”¹³²¹³²   BROWN’S Lectures, tenth edit., p. 421.

In ascending among the higher emotions, which no longer merely tend to conserve life, but to develop and advance it, we reach a region where the unceasing confluence of the phenomena seems almost to defy attempts at analysis and grouping. The simplest which present themselves are, perhaps, those of which the element of complacency or satisfaction may stand as the type. This element of emotion might have taken first rank in our enumeration, both on account of its comprehensiveness, and its being so directly suited to our purpose. It abounds in the lower animals, displaying itself in frequent playfulness and pervading happiness. In man, its range is very diversified, from the mere rude contentment which is half corporeal, to the cheerfulness which sheds a daily sunshine on the heart, the gladness which claps its hands, the delight which flashes with a quick and outbursting warmth, the most exalted joy, and the most spiritual rapture. It may be called the normal expression of the emotional power. It marks the tone which in health and security this power gives forth—just as pleasurableness, in the same case, is the proper expression of sensation. The natural condition of the one and of the other, when no invasion has taken place of the life which they manifest, is a feeling of enjoyment. This, as already observed, is a fact of 233the highest significance for our subject, speaking, in the most convincing language, of the goodness of the Creator of a life so fraught with happiness.

It is true that here, as along the whole line of sensibility, there is an opposite side—a shadow tracing the brightness. There is a parallel group of emotions of an antagonistic character, at least as varied in their range as those of which we have been speaking—from the tempered vein of sadness, and the quick acuteness of regret, to the dark brooding of melancholy, the vehement flow of sorrow, the bitterness of anguish, and the agony of remorse. But—not to speak of the strange element of enjoyment which often lies concealed in some of these painful emotions, nor yet, just now, of their disciplinary virtue, often converting them into the highest good—we merely point here to the fact of their being, as on their very front they so obviously bear to be, invaders of the natural life of emotion. They emerge as elements of disorder and conflict, interfering with the free flow of emotional activity, and so present themselves, from the first, as difficulties requiring a higher calculus for solution than that which their own nature simply affords. This is undoubtedly the meaning which such phenomena of suffering bear to all who most thoughtfully contemplate human existence. They are recognised as out of the course of the Divine order, as seeming contradictions to it, but not, by any means, as per se destroying that order, and making it a nullity. They are recognised as anomalies needing explanation (further than what they contain in themselves), but not as absolute contrarieties entitled to negative the good, with 234which they appear at variance. To all who have gone beyond the mere surface of speculation, the good is felt, under whatever appearances to the contrary, to be the Divine order, of which the evil is an invasion.¹³³¹³³   The bearing of this thought—which goes to the very root of Theism, and the logically consistent denial of which involves, as it may chance, Atheism or Pantheism—will be more fully considered in the sequel. So much seemed here inevitably suggested by the nature of the phenomena under consideration. The parallel existence of evil is not entitled to set aside the good, but only to arrest us in our full conclusions regarding it. It does not destroy our theodicy,—it only leaves it imperfect. The Divine meaning of nature, on the very lowest view, is not altogether doubtful and contradictory, but only incomplete.

There is an important class of emotions which relate themselves by an intelligible process to those now considered. Conscious complacency, or the simple emotion turned back upon itself in contemplation—what we commonly call self-complacency—would seem to be their common basis. Such emotions as gladness, joy, rapture, are eminently distinguished for their unconscious character. They are all self-forgetting. The emotive capacity in them overflows round some other object; and the moment the overflow ceases, and returns upon itself, the pleasurable feeling so far disappears. Happiness shrinks from self-contemplation; and we may thus see the rationale of the reaction that often takes place in pleasurable emotion of an excessive kind. The tide of feeling having passed far out, exhausting itself in the effort, is naturally liable to retreat upon itself to a corresponding extent. In the purely antagonistic emotions, as will be 235seen on the least reflection, self is all predominant and obtrusive. The emotive capacity, instead of passing forth towards another, is concentrated within; and it is this feeling of self-concentration which in melancholy, and especially in remorse, constitutes the characteristic misery of these emotions. In the class of emotions to which we now pass, the element of self appears also obtrusive, but not in the same way. It is not in them necessarily or characteristically associated with pain; on the contrary, the common ground of all of them would seem to be a reflex feeling of pleasure. Yet they have, it is remarkable, in their reflex character, a constant tendency to pass over to a painful excess.

Of this class of emotions, pride is one of the most distinguishing. In its most general form, it seems to be simply self taking the measure of its own claims alongside those of others. It always implies this element of comparison. When the comparison is made with fairness, we recognise the propriety of the feeling—as in the common expression, a proper pride. Where, again, the comparison is grossly mistaken and over-estimated by self in its own favour, the feeling assumes that excessive form, in which it becomes so odious to others, and often such a source of misery to its subject. Vanity seems again to be the simple pampering of self-complacency—self dwelling on its own image till it can scarcely find interest or beauty in any other.

Directly converse to such emotions are those of humility and modesty. The former may be defined to be the simple opposite of pride—the retirement of self from the assertion even of rightful claims which it might prefer before others. 236It, too, seems always to involve an element of comparison; and, in a similar manner to pride, it may so greatly and obviously mistake the comparison as to become disagreeably excessive. The only case in which it can never do so, is in reference to the Supreme Being, before whom the most extreme retirement of self is not only appropriate, but demanded. And hence we recognise the primary importance of this emotion in religion. Modesty is also, may we not say, a species of self-denial—self shrinking from the acknowledgment of claims of which it is yet dimly conscious. It is self-repressive, peculiarly; and yet self does not, as in humility, retire out of sight. It is this curious balance of emotion, in which self is negatived, and yet, with a vaguely conscious justice, stands forward (the internal conflict betraying itself in the suffusion of the face with blushes), which gives to modesty that special charm which all recognise in it.

The large and diversified group of emotions of which tenderness is the most diffused element, and love the most expressive type, may next engage attention. They operate over human life with a vast influence, and invest it with its most solemn and beautiful interest. They are all of a social character, binding the race into families, and pervading it from rank to rank with reciprocal relations of the most happy and beneficent kind.

There is no range of emotion more enlarged or more minutely subdivided than this of tenderness, not to speak of the antagonistic range of emotions which here also lies alongside. All the affections are based on it, from the mere 237fondness of infancy to the exquisite passionateness of sexual and parental regard. It embraces equally the tranquil interest of friendship and the lofty zeal of patriotism. It is the chord which vibrates in the warm-heartedness of the host, the geniality of the old schoolfellow, and the kindness of neighbourhood. Compassion and sympathy are among its most influential manifestations, springing from a fountain of good in the social bosom, and spreading around them, as they flow, unnumbered blessings. Respect, esteem, veneration, blending as they do to a greater or less degree merely intellectual elements, may all be traced back to it; and finally, worship is best expressed by the name of love, in which at once the emotion culminates, and of which throughout it testifies. This form of moral feeling is the flower of the emotive capacity. It is the richest and worthiest outgoing of man’s spiritual activity, the course of which is everywhere and always more continually beneficent, and which, in this its inexhaustibleness, or rather ever-accumulating force of good, contains the pledge of its own peculiar immortality. In its more special meaning it has been supposed¹³⁴¹³⁴   DR M‘VICAR’S Inquiry, p. 127. to imply not merely the going forth of good towards an object, but the meeting of good in that object, the term benevolence being used to express the love of that which in itself does not contain any love-worthiness. There is only, as it were, room for love after benevolence has accomplished its end, in bringing the object into a state of wellbeing or love-worthiness. There is something in this distinction, and yet we question the propriety of so fixing down or confining the name of love. 238The distinction seems to us to be not between one species or shade of affection and another, but rather between a complete and incomplete enjoyment or fruition of the same affection. Love may certainly, in the purest and loftiest sense, go forth towards wretchedness, but it cannot, so to speak, complete itself towards it by embracing it till the wretchedness is turned away. So far, however, we apprehend, is love from being postponed till this result, that it is the very energy and activity of the love concentrated on the object which accomplish the result.

The pleasure which attends the exercise of the benevolent affections has been rightly considered a special proof of the Divine goodness. The mere existence of these affections sufficiently shows that goodness. The mere presence of love in human life, pervading and beautifying it in so many forms, attests the presence of love in the great Source of that life. But the fact of our not only having such emotions implanted in us, but of our deriving from their exercise such pure delight, while the gratification of the opposite evil emotions is accompanied with pain, is a fact of peculiar significance. For what is its language? Does it not say with clearest force that the good alone is divine? We are so constituted, that in imparting happiness through the channel of any one of the benevolent emotions, we ourselves experience happiness; while, on the contrary, through the indulgence of envy or hatred, or any other of the malevolent emotions, we ourselves suffer in imparting suffering. So radically is the good fixed in our natures that its violation thus avenges itself. Putting out 239of question, then, in the mean time, how such evil affections emerge in human nature—looking only at its actual constitution—it seems impossible to imagine how it could have borne stronger testimony to the Divine goodness; for it not only expresses the good, but delights in it. The good is not only, notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, the most prominent fact in human nature, but it thus approves itself to be the only normal action of human nature. Our delight in welldoing says, as powerfully as it is possible to say it, that man was made to be good and to do good; or, in other words, that the Author of his being is good.

The partial happiness that lies in the indulgence of evil affections, expressed in the word gratification, equally used with reference to them, does not at all militate against this conclusion, for this is simply an accidental result of their accomplished activity. They and all our mental activities cannot express themselves successfully without a certain measure of enjoyment; but such is the essential destructiveness of the evil that its very gratification is in the end its most perfect misery. Its continued successes, affording a minimum of enjoyment all along its course—as in the case of the drunkard, or the continued gratification of hatred or cruelty—become its accumulating curse. Nature thus everywhere bears her testimony against the evil, stamping it with her reprobation amid whatever apparent triumph—uttering her voice against it, however it may exalt itself—and so declaring, in the most emphatic and unceasing language, that the good alone is divine; or, in other words, that God is good, and alone loveth good.

The foregoing ranges of emotional activity are found for the most part represented throughout the sphere of animal existence, while yet only reaching their highest expression in man. We now approach a class of emotions which there is reason to think are peculiar to the human mind—a class which, for our general purpose, may be sufficiently designated as the emotions of taste—including our sentiments of harmony, beauty, sublimity, and their opposites. We can only here indicate the fact of these emotions, and their bearing on our subject; their analysis, it is well known, involving some of the most keenly-contested problems in psychological science. It is sufficient, in our point of view, to observe their high use in man’s constitution. They are, and have ever been, recognised among its most delightful springs of elevated progress. They minister purely to mental gratification and culture, and have no lower function in reference to our mere animal nature, a fact which sufficiently accounts for their being confined to man. This feature of the emotions of taste has been pointed out with his accustomed acuteness by Dr Thomas Brown, and the appropriate theological inference so well expressed by him that we gladly avail ourselves of his language.¹³⁵¹³⁵   Apart from the appropriate beauty of Dr Brown’s language, we have not hesitated, on another account, to avail ourselves of it to the extent we have done in this chapter. It is peculiarly satisfactory to present the conclusions for which we naturally seek in the words of one to whom they came by force of their own clearness and strength, while engaged in the mere analysis of the phenomena, without any view to their theological meaning. It has seemed an advantage that it should be thus clearly seen that we are not led to impose a meaning on the phenomena which they do not in themselves naturally and irresistibly suggest. “In no part of our nature,” he 241says, “is the pure benevolence of Heaven more strikingly conspicuous than in our susceptibility of the emotions of this class. The pleasure which they afford is a pleasure that has no immediate connection with the means of preservation of our animal existence; and which shows, therefore, though all other proof were absent, that the Deity who superadded these means of delight must have had some other object in view in forming us as we are, than the mere continuance of a race of beings who were to save the earth from becoming a wilderness. In consequence of these emotions, which have made all nature ‘beauty to our eye, and music to our ear,’ it is scarcely possible for us to look around without feeling either some happiness or some consolation. Sensual pleasures soon pall even upon the profligate, who seeks them in vain in the means which were accustomed to produce them, weary almost to disgust of the very pleasures which he seeks, and yet astonished that he does not find them. The labours of severer intellect, if long continued, exhaust the energy which they employ, and we cease for a time to be capable of thinking accurately, from the very intentness and accuracy of our thought. The pleasures of taste, however, by their variety of easy delight, are safe from the languor which attends any monotonous or severe occupation; and instead of palling on the mind, they produce in it, with the very delight which is present, a quicker sensibility to future pleasure. Enjoyment springs from enjoyment; and if we have not some deep wretchedness within, it is scarcely possible for us, with the delightful resources which nature and 242art present to us, not to be happy as often as we will to be happy.”¹³⁶¹³⁶   BROWN’S Lectures, pp. 393, 394.

There is a further large group of emotive powers, whose special significance in human life will by no means allow us to pass them by. They are distinguished from those previously reviewed by a special character of activity and complexity. The mind no longer simply feels, but desires. A special energy has arisen in the bosom, of some simple mental experience, which goes forth, often with great force, in search of its object. The desires, therefore, in the emotional sphere, are parallel to the appetites in the sensational. In both, the attitude of the mind is no longer merely that of feeling, but of wishing.

Desire is almost endlessly diversified, according to its objects, which it were in vain to try to enumerate. Dr Brown has summed up the more general and important forms of desire in a tenfold series. But if it were necessary for us to attempt such an analysis, it would be easy to reduce them to a broader and more general basis. We are inclined to think, indeed, that, according to a right interpretation of the first of Dr Brown’s series, all the others might be considered simply modifications of it—viz. the desire of life. If we understand life to mean the sum not only of physical but of mental existence—a sense in which we may say it is parallel with happiness (everywhere, as we have seen, its proper correlate)—all our desires will be found to be only various forms of the desire of life, or, in other words, of pleasurable activity. Desire only responds 243to pleasure in some shape or another. Whatever may be the object, it is only as it is seen to be pleasurable that it is desired. The desire of life, therefore, in our sense, may be made to include every other mode of desire.

Dr Brown, indeed, seems to think that there may be a desire of life—of simple existence—apart from any consideration of pleasure;¹³⁷¹³⁷   Lectures, p. 438. but it appears to us that he has here confounded, with what alone can be properly called the desire of life, the simple movement of self-preservation. This latter, however, has no title to stand as an emotion—it is a mere blind ineradicable instinct. It is so truly ineradicable, and almost physical in its character, that it may be found asserting itself even in the hour of self-destruction. The desire of life, on the contrary, is a special mental feeling, entertained and cherished with various degrees of force, and capable, in certain cases, of being altogether overpowered and destroyed. And what are our desires of pleasure and of action (the second and third of Dr Brown’s series), but the desire of intenser forms of life? And our desire of knowledge, what is it but simply the desire of life in a more exalted and interesting character than hitherto experienced? And so of power, which is only the equation of knowledge; and equally of property, which is but another name for power. And again, what is the desire of society but the desire of life intensified in a different direction—viz. from contact with other life? As life is essentially active, so is it essentially circulatory—only reaching its full being in mingling and sharing 244with other life. The desire of life, therefore, involves the desire of social contact and circulation. And in a being of intelligence and morality like man, we cannot imagine this desire of contact with other life—of sharing and mingling in it—without the desire of also approving himself to it. Hearts meeting (which is just moral life in circulation) cannot but seek to commend themselves to each other; and what is this but the desire of the affection and esteem of others? And in this way we have run over nearly the whole of Dr Brown’s series.¹³⁸¹³⁸   It is needless to say that we do not claim for this analysis any scientific worth. It may seem, indeed, that in making the desire of life, as pleasurable activity, the type of our various desires, we are merely saying that desire, in all its forms, is desire.

But desire is not only thus comprehensive as an emotion in relation to its objects; it presents itself, moreover, in various important modifications—such as hope, expectation, confidence, and ambition. Hope is one of the most pervading, as it is one of the most delightful, of all our emotions. It is also one of the most thoroughly educative of them all, ever keeping the soul in an attitude of forwardness—ever embellishing with bright visions the dim future, and quickening it in their pursuit. It is hope alone which sustains and upholds us amid the actual difficulties of life. Desire alone would have been comparatively inadequate for such a purpose, as it relates the soul to its object merely in an attitude of liking—it says merely that the object is good; whereas hope represents the object not only as good, but as within reach not only as likeable, but also as attainable. Hope is, therefore, not only “desire intensified” 245(this will not give in its full character the complex emotion), but desire with a new element of strength in it, which enables the soul to go forth towards its object, not only with additional eagerness, but already, as it were, in prospect to lay hold of it. When we hope for an object, we always, indeed, desire it intensely; but we have also already a deeper interest in it—a more personal relation to it, so to speak—than any mere desire can give. In expectation, again, we have a still firmer and more secure relation to the object, and confidence is the height of expectation. Ambition, on the other hand, would seem to be the mere over-growth of desire, carrying the mind forward towards its object with an energy which no obstacles can turn aside.

Curiosity is a special form of the desire of knowledge so important as to deserve separate mention. It is undoubtedly one of the most provident and benevolent principles of our mental constitution. It is the harbinger of intelligence in the infant breast; and, nursed by continually new incitements, it becomes the ever-strengthening spring of mental progress. It may be truly said to be inexhaustible in its workings, pausing merely to collect itself for a fresh advance, and—what especially serves to reveal the benevolence of the hand which implanted it—evolving ever, as it operates, fresh pleasure. “Can anything,” says Lord Brougham, “be more perfectly contrived as an instrument of instruction, and an instrument precisely adapted to the want of knowledge, by being more powerful in proportion to the ignorance in which we are? Hence it is the great 246means by which above all, in early infancy, we are taught everything most necessary for our physical as well as moral existence. In riper years it smoothes the way for farther acquirements to most men; to some, in whom it is strongest, it opens the paths of science; but in all, without any exception, it prevails at the beginning of life so powerfully as to make them learn the faculties of their own bodies, and the general properties of those around them—an amount of knowledge which, for its extent and its practical usefulness, very far exceeds, though the most ignorant possess it, whatever additions the greatest philosophers are enabled to build upon it in the longest course of the most successful investigations.”¹³⁹¹³⁹   Discourse on Natural Theology, pp. 55, 56.

The phenomena of desire, generally, are among the most characteristically benevolent in their intention of any in the human constitution. Apart from them, it may be possible to conceive human life prolonged through the force of the mere instinct of preservation, emotionally defended on all sides as it is; but, without desire, how stupid and aimless a thing would life have been! The greatest intellectual capacity would have been a mere slumbering potentiality—a mere vague dream, or rather nightmare, of power, from which there could have been no awakening. But, as it is, desire, expressing itself with the first movement of life, and strengthening with its growth, becomes the great educator of all our other activities. Under its quickening operation it is that the helpless child is trained to various degrees of manly or womanly culture and excellence—from the skilful 247craftsman to the lofty poet or philosopher—from the gentle doer of good deeds at home to the arduous and untiring philanthropist. It is thus truly the unslackening spring of human progress, relaxing not even in the hour of death; but, amid the withdrawal of all the objects of present desire, carrying the soul forward in hope and triumph to other and higher regions of mental and moral development.¹⁴⁰¹⁴⁰   “They desire a better country, that is, an heavenly.”—Heb. xi. 16.