The Philosophy Of The Active And Moral Powers Of Man (1849) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. OF OUR AFFECTIONS. Section I. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. I. What Principles included under this Head.] Under this title are comprehended all those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or of suffering to any of our fellow-creatures. According to this definition, which has been adopted by some eminent writers, and among others by Dr. Reid, resentment, revenge, hatred, belong to the class of our affections, as well as gratitude or pity. Hence a distinction of the affections into benevolent and malevolent. I shall afterwards mention some considerations which lead me to think that the distinction requires some limitations in the statement. Our benevolent affections are various, and it would not perhaps be easy to enumerate them completely. II. Part. I. Chap iv., and Whewell's Elements of Morality, Book I. Chap. ii. On the desire of property, consult Lieber's Political Ethies, Book II. Chap. ii, and Illustrations of the Passions, Vol. I. Chap. v. Also the phrenologists, and particularly Gall. On the other hand, the author of the article Dtsir in the Dictionnaire des Sciences PhilosolMqnes reduces them to three, curiosity, ambition, and sympathy. This writer observes: ? " The mind always knows, more or less, that which it desires; reason illuminates what sensibility pursues. Male- branche gave the saying of the poct. Jgnoti nulla cupido, under a philosophical form of expression, when he defined desire to be ' the idea of a good which a man possesses not, but hopes to possess.' Desire is distinguished by this from the blind tendency which urges every being towards its end, whether it knows it or not. It is a spontaneous movement of nature transformed by intelligence, and constitutes, therefore, a phenomenon...