cling round near objects, round their children, or personal ease, or aggrandizement, or social rank and status, or dress, or furniture, or equipage, all liable to be disturbed from day to day, or from hour to hour. The person is prepared to sit down to a pleasant meal, or enjoy a quiet hour with his family, or commit himself to rest at night, when an unexpected event breaks in upon him, like a burglar, to make him flee or fight. Or he has a favorite opinion, and some one contradicts him; or he meets with opposition where he expected assistance; or the exertions he makes and the favors he bestows are received with ingratitude, and the man is put into a state of irritation which makes him disagreeable to himself and all who come in contact with him. The temper once kindled will be apt to throw out sparks towards all who are near, towards children and servants and neighbors, towards all who come across the man, though they may have had no connection with the original disturbance.

"But ever after the small violence done
Rankled in him, and ruffled all his heart
As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long
A little bitter pool about a stone

On the bare coast."1

Such is the experience when the appetences are numerous and small. The character is weak and may become contemptible. The energy is wasted in the heat of small molecular motion, or expresses itself in spitting sparks.

SECTION V.

PREPOSSESSIONS.

A strong affection creates a prepossession in favor of whatever promotes it. We have had pleasure in the presence of certain objects, they have gratified our tastes

1 Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

and fallen in with our predilections, and associations gather around them; and when they come before us we are prepared to welcome them, and at all times we think and expect favorably of them. We have a warm heart towards our birthplace, towards the scenes in which we have passed our younger years, and towards our home. The affectionate husband and wife will delight to visit the spot in which they spent their honeymoon. We are apt to delight in those who have a pleasant countenance, a genial temper, or a lively, a deferential, or a flattering manner. Some have a preference for those who have a frank or brusque address, or who are candid in their opinions, or have an honest way of expressing themselves. Others are rather drawn to those who are affectionate and tender in their feelings. All delight in the society of those for whom they have such predilections, do not willingly believe evil of them, and are inclined to copy them.

The father and mother are disposed to think favorably of the character of their sons and daughters, do not readily listen to an evil report of them, and will believe what they say when they would not credit the same tale told by a stranger. It is proverbial that love has a blinding influence, and the woman under its power trusts the vows of her lover who may thereby become her seducer. We willingly attend to the arguments urged in behalf of causes which seem to promote our pleasures or flatter our self-esteem. He is likely to be a favorite in private and in public, to be in fact the popular man (more so than a great and good man, who may rather excite envy, as interfering with our inordinate self-esteem), whose manner and style of address are such that those whom he meets go away better pleased with themselves. It is said that those who got a refusal from Charles II. of

England went away better pleased than were those who had their requests granted by his father, and no doubt this helped to make the one die in prosperity while the other perished on a scaffold. The flatterer gains his end by speaking to us of our real or imagined good qualities ; but it may happen unfortunately, or rather I should say fortunately, that we come to discover that he pays the like compliments to others, and we turn away with disgust as from one who has been trying to deceive us. The courtier studies the weaknesses of those whose favor he would gain, and addresses himself to them, but may find that the caprices of the pampered man of power become in the end intolerable. That man is not likely to be a successful agent in a good cause who sends away those whom he would gain in a humbled and repining humor. The ardent man stimulates others because he imparts to them some of the magnetic power which is in himself. There is sure to be a terrible disappointment, and perhaps even a disposition towards revenge and retaliation, when those whom our imaginations have clothed with such excellent qualities, or whom we supposed to be our friends, are seen to be unworthy, or have turned out to be foes.

SECTION VI.

PREJUDICE.

It presupposes certain tendencies, convictions, affections, or purposes which have been thwarted, and then all that is associated with the disappointments raises malign feelings which often lead to unjustifiable conduct. There are scenes at which we have suffered a humiliation, or experienced a sorrow, and we ever afterwards avoid them. Or there are people who have knowingly or unknowingly, justly or unjustly, offended us; who

have made us see their superiority and our inferiority; who have lowered us in our own estimation; who have wounded us in a tender part; who have crossed our favorite ends; who have injured or maligned us, or beat us in the rivalries of trade or the competitions, social or literary, of life; and henceforth we look askance upon them, are apt to feel uncomfortable in their presence, and to imagine them to be actuated by ugly motives towards us. This feeling is especially apt to rise in the breasts of those who have injured any one in his good name or estate; they fear that he may take revenge and do them mischief. In these ways prejudice is excited against not only individuals, but classes, against trades, professions, grades of society, the rich fearing the poor, and the poor envying the rich, against political parties, religious sects, against races, white or colored, against states and nations "the Jews had no dealings with the Sa

maritans."

This prejudice, wrong in itself, is sure to lead to evil conduct. These antipathies are one of the principal sources of quarrels, feuds, and wars; men clothe their enemies with evil qualities, as Nero clothed the early Christians with the skins of wild beasts, or covered them with pitch, and then destroyed them. We see the feeling working in more common cases. We do not listen patiently to the arguments urged by those who, for any cause, say by their misconduct or our misapprehension of it, have given us offense. We become predisposed against causes which have injured our prospects. The publican is not likely to feel an interest in the cause of temperance, nor the protectionist in free trade, nor the licentious man in the correction of vice, nor the infidel in the defenses of religion, nor the calumniator in the recital of the excellent deeds of one whom he has reviled.

Herod readily granted the request of the damsel who danced before him, and her mother prompted her to ask the head of John the Baptist, who had audaciously declared that "it is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." The perverse boy comes to detest the faithful teacher who has admonished him so often. Politicians are apt to speak against the party which hinders them in their schemes of patriotic or personal aggrandizement. Or, what is to be explained on much the same principles, they turn with a strong revulsion against the party which they have long favored, but which, as they think, has overlooked them, or kept them down, or ill-used them. We can thus explain the mistaken zeal, often the antipathies, of the convert or pervert.

SECTION VII.

FICKLENESS OF FEELING.

Every one must have come in contact with people who have feelings of a certain kind strong and lively, but who soon lose them and become apathetic, or fall under emotions of a different, perhaps of an opposite kind. Today they seem to be full of affection for us, and load us with expressions of regard; to-morrow they are turned away from us, and meet us with opposition or enmity, and are perhaps lavishing their friendship on others, for whom they had no regard before. There are people of whom this chameleon liability to change of affection is characteristic. They will be found to be persons with no very decided or deep motive principle, and whose emotions are very much determined by outward circumstances. Commonly they are swayed by a number of not very strong appetences, taking the direction which external events working on an irrepressible nervous tem