CHAPTER VIII. DEFINITION OF THE PASSIONS, AND THEIR GENERAL DIVISIONS. THE mind, equally with the body, is the subject of numerous feelings, pleasurable and painful, and which, according as they are mild or intense, receive the name of affections or passions. The term passion comes from the Greek verb πασχω, pascho, and the Latin patior, each meaning to suffer, or to be acted upon, or affected either pleasantly or painfully. In its literal and primitive sense, then, it imports all mental feelings, without respect to their degree, although in common usage it denotes only their deeper shades; the word affection being employed to express those of a more gentle character. Still, a division of this sort must be in a great measure arbitrary, for as different degrees only of moral feeling are implied by affection and passion, it is clear that no definite point can be established at which the former will be just exalted into the latter, or the latter just reduced to the former. In truth, the literal signification of the term affection answers precisely to that of passion. Some have attempted to make a distinction between passion and emotion, using the former as expressive of passiveness, or the simple feeling immediately resulting from the moral impulse; and the latter to indicate the visible effects, or the commotion manifested in the frame. But such a distinction, certainly in a physiological and pathological examination of the passions, will seldom be found practicable, since the feeling and physical phenomena are oftentimes so closely associated as to appear to be but the simultaneous effects of the primary exciting cause, and both, therefore, to belong essentially to the constitution of the passion in which they are displayed. In the ensuing pages, then, the word passion will be employed as a general expression for moral feeling, and its concomitant physical effects, and it will therefore comprehend, and be used synonymously with both affections and emotions, its degree being denoted, when necessary, by the adjunction of an adjective. I may observe, however, that it is only the more exaggerated feelings, or what all agree in classing as passions, that put in hazard the physical health, in more particular relation to which we have to consider them. As the design of the present volume calls for no detailed metaphysical disquisition on the passions, our classification of them will be very general and simple. We shall consider them under three principal heads, viz. pleasurable, painful, and mixed, or those in which pain and pleasure are more or less obviously associated. Not that I regard this as an unobjectionable division. Like all others, it is in a measure artificial, yet it seems to us to be the one which will best subserve the grand object of our treatise. The line especially between the two first and last classes, cannot in every instance be nicely defined; for the passions ranked as pleasurable are seldom wholly pure or unmingled with pain. Thus the happiest love is rarely clear from all pangs of jealousy, or the brightest hope from all sufferings of apprehension; and, as though it were preordained that no human enjoyment should be complete, even when at the summit of our wishes, and under the full gratification of our most ardent passions, fears and forebodings of change will almost always sully the purity of our happiness. The same is in like manner true of the painful passions. Rare indeed is it that we find them wholly unmitigated by those which are pleasurable. Some faint beams of hope will generally penetrate even the deepest moral gloom. It is questionable, then, whether any of the passions, could they be perfectly analyzed, would be found absolutely free from all mixture of their opposite. A large proportion of the painful passions experienced in society, are the offspring of such as are pleasurable. We suffer, because we have enjoyed. Our present state is darkened by contrasting it with the brighter past. Thus does our happiness frequently depend much less on what we are than on what we have been. The humble peasant in his lowly cot may enjoy as much felicity as the noble in his lordly palace; but reduce the latter to the condition of the former, and he becomes overwhelmed with misery. Diminish the wealth of the rich man to what he would once have regarded as abundance, and wretchedness, sometimes even despair, may be the melancholy consequence. Often then might we be happy had we never been so, or could we bury in oblivion all remembrance of the past. The reverse likewise holds true; the pleasurable passions deriving their existence from, or becoming greatly enhanced by, those which are painful. Few, probably, have reflected how large a share of human misery and human happiness derives its existence from contrasts. As we suffer because we have enjoyed, so also do we enjoy because we have suffered. Indeed, under our present constitution, the sufferings would seem almost as necessary to the enjoyments of life, as are the toils and fatigues of the day to the balmy slumbers of night. Knowledge, too, or the enlargement of our ideas, in opening to us new fields of desire, and causing new comparisons with our present condition, becomes a frequent source of discontent, and the various painful passions of which it is the parent. CHAPTER IX. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE EVILS AND ADVANTAGES OF THE PHYSICIAN SHOULD INVESTIGATE THE PASSIONS.-THE MORAL AS WELL AS THE PHYSICAL CAUSES OF DISEASE.- THE agency of the passions in the production of disease, especially in the advanced stages of civilisation, when men's relations are intimate, and their interests clash, and their nervous susceptibilities are exalted, can scarce be adequately appreciated. It is doubtless to this more intense and multiplied action of the passions, in union sometimes with the abuse of the intellectual powers, that we are mainly to attribute the greater frequency of diseases of the heart and brain in the cultivated, than in the ruder states of society. Few, probably, even suspect the amount of bodily infirmity and disease among mankind resulting from moral causeshow often the frame wastes, and premature decay comes on, under the corroding influence of some painful passion. It has seemed to me that the medical profession, in seeking for the remote occasions of disease, are too apt to |