ment at its highest pitch, in the torrent of youthful sensations and ungratified desire, is probably the most furious and elated experience of human nature. By every test applied to estimate the force of a state of feeling, this condition ranks supreme. Even at a later stage, under the influence of familiarity, matter of fact, and occasional discords, an amount of interest is maintainable between the opposite sexes that, more than any other circumstance, attests the force that draws them together. Of the attracting bonds, the most constant and enduring is the clement of tender emotion. Whatever other feelings are excited, they never fail to evoke this accompaniment, which always remains as the staple of the relationship. Ceasing to be fed by the charms of sense, and quenched by the growth of dislike, affection may come to an end; but so long as there is anything to attract, the relation is one of tenderness, and all its fruits and manifestations are such as have been described.

The Benevolent Affections.

16. In Benevolence, the main constituent is Sympathy; which, however, as we have seen, is peculiarly liable to be excited by the tender emotion. The displays familiarly designated Love, Compassion, Kindness, the Heart, are in fact compounded of Sympathy and Tenderness.

Love is tender feeling awakened by an object possessed of charms. Under it the attention is gained, and the sympathies evoked in their fullest measure. Our best energies are at the service of those we love, whatever be the form of the relationship.

It is common to speak of the pleasures of Benevolence, the delight of doing good, but there is a complication here, which the following considerations may help to resolve.

In the first place, love or tender feeling, is by its nature pleasurable, but does not necessarily cause us to seek the good of the object farther than is needful to gratify ourselves in the indulgence of the feeling. It is as purely self-seeking

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as any other pleasure, and makes no enquiry as to the feelings of the beloved personality.

In the second place, from a region of the mind quite apart from the tender emotion, arises the principle of Sympathy, or the prompting to take on the pleasures and pains of other beings, and act on them as if they were our own. Instead of being a source of pleasure to us, the primary operation of sympathy is to make us surrender pleasures and to incur pains. This is that paradox of our constitution, already dwelt on (Senses and the Intellect, p. 350) and to be again more fully considered.

Thirdly. The engagement of the mind by objects of affection gives them, in preference to others, the benefit of our sympathy; and hence we are specially impelled to work for advancing their pleasures and alleviating their pains. It does not follow that we are made happier by the circumstance; on the contrary, we may be involved in painful and heavy labours.

Fourthly. The reciprocation of sympathy and good offices. is a great increase of pleasure on both sides; being indeed, under favourable circumstances, one of the greatest sources of human delight. This is not difficult to understand, as will appear when we come to the full explanation of sympathy.

Fifthly. It is the express cim of a well-constituted society, if possible, never to let good offices pass unreciprocated. If the immediate object of them cannot or will not reciprocate in full, as when we relieve the destitute or the worthless, others bestow upon us approbation and praise. Of course, if benevolent actions, instead of being a tax, were self-rewarding, such acknowledgment would have no relevance.

Sixthly. There is a pleasure in the sight of happy beings, and we naturally feel a certain elation in being instrumental to this agreeable effect.

17. Compassion or Pity means sympathy at the instance of weakness or distress. The first step here, too, is an outburst of tenderness. There may be an absence of fascination from sensuous or other charms, and therefore of love in the

full meaning of the word, but it is the peculiarity of the tender feeling, as already explained, to connect itself with states of weakness in ourselves, and to be stimulated in consequence by weakness or distress in others. It is in this situation that the two separate facts of tender feeling and sympathy are so fused as to be indistinguishable; the same name signifying both. An act of discernment is required, such as makes the first step in sympathy, to be aware that a fellow-being is in distress; and becoming aware of it, we are affected by the emotion suitable to distress in ourselves, namely, tenderness, which towards others is compassion, or heart,' and puts on the usual display of tender feeling, and also prompts to the completed act of sympathy in rendering assistance or good offices. In tender-hearted constitutions, the melting mood is abundant; in constitutions where sympathy proper is highly developed, the good offices are the chief fact; the one extreme is pointed at by the reproachful term 'sentimentality;' the other, hard and business-like, seems to carve too little interest from the occasion. The tender-hearted will always bestow a tear; the man of un-tender sympathy would provide a remedy if he could, but failing that he does nothing, and appears wanting in heart. The difference is the same as between the person that in his own distresses sits down to bewail his fate, and him that begins a course of exertion for his recovery, deriving no consolation from the other source.

18. The receipt of favours inspires Gratitude, which, simple and natural as it appears, has all the complication that runs through the emotions we are now considering. In one of its aspects it is pure tender feeling, but its real foundations are in sympathy, while it touches on the highly complex sentiment of Justice. The situation of receiving benefits is one of pleasure, and calls forth warm emotion towards the giver, in proportion to the greatness of the pleasure; the unsympathizing mind of childhood stops at this point, the point of thorough selfishness. But with sympathy developed, we enter into the pleasures and pains of the person that has thus engaged our regards, in all respects as with any object of affec

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tion. With reference to the highest form of gratitude, which induces us to reciprocate benefits and make acknowledgment in some proportion to the benefits conferred, this must be pronounced an application of the principle of Justice, and, so far from being innate, is an elaborate product, formed for us by society, and varying with social growth and improvement. The tender feeling is illustrated in a salient manner by the operation of a stroke of signal and unexpected gen eroity. When an enemy, or an injured party, renders good offices, even the indifferent spectator is touched and melted. The mind being totally unprepared, the stimulation would appear to operate as a shock, apart from which circumstance, I see nothing beyond the usual tendency of benevolent actions to inspire a loving outburst.

19. In the equal relationships of life, as in brotherhood, friendship, co-membership of the same society, the occurrence of positions of inequality makes room for the mutual play of benevolence and gratitude; and the effect is to soften the severe business intercourse of mankind.

20. The Lower Animals are fit subjects of tender feeling, and inspire warm attachments. Their total dependence forbids the rivalries that introduce the taint of anxious watchfulness into the relationships between human beings. By their sensuous charms, their vivacity, their contrast to ourselves, their services, and their devotion, the domestic species are able to touch the chord of tenderness, and enlarge the sphere of our affectionate interests.

21. There is not wanting towards Inanimate things a form of tender sentiment. A man comes to look upon his house, his fields, his wealth, the implements of his trade, his collections of art and curiosity, his local environment, with something of the associated emotion shown to his family or friends. His regard for these things assumes the character of affection; when he is deprived of them, the pain is a kind of sorrow.

It is, doubtless, from their original power to give pleasure that such things instigate the tender passion, but as they are unsuited to its proper consummation, the indulgence is ima

ginary or fictitious, like the love felt towards a person beyond our reach. We derive a certain satisfaction from personifying the impersonal objects that give us delight, since by complying with the forms, we can in some measure experience the reality, of tender regard.

Sorrow.

22. The pains inflicted upon human beings through their tender sentiments are of various grades, from the gentle longings of brief absence, to the overwhelming sorrow of the new-made grave. They are as manifold as the ills that can happen to any beloved object. They may be mainly summed up in two classes. On the one hand, our own loss by the withdrawal of those we love, and, on the other, our share in the evil that befals them, are the two sides wherein we are vulnerable through our affections.

With respect to the first case-the deprivation of what we have become attached to-the pain is deep and intense, according to the power of the attachment, and the pleasure it affords. When we have cultivated an object of tenderness as a principal ingredient of our life's comfort, the cutting off of that object has a reaction of misery and distress, and charges a cup of bitterness to be drained to the dregs. There is in this effect much that is common to the pain of severe loss or disappointment in any region of things. The baulking of a dear revenge, an insult to personal dignity, the wreck of some cherished hopes, pecuniary losses, a sudden check in anything that the heart is bent upon, the failure of a prop-all lead to an intensity of mental conflict, constituting one of the severest forms of human suffering, A large range of associations that used to yield pleasure and support have suddenly stopped payment; the cheerful future is all at once darkened. To the first shock succeeds a physical depression of the brain, rendering it unfit to be the medium of any ray of comfort; the spirits are weighed down as with an atmosphere of lead.

Although the first effect of the situation we are supposing is of a kind common to most forms of heavy loss, the after