This is attended by a composure of features more affecting to the spectator than the most vehement paroxysms of grief. The afflicted person seeks retire ment to weep, loses his appetite, is care less of his dress, and views the grave and the gay with equal indifference, and, when in this state, incurs the danger of falling into an habitual melancholy, which, though often the result of the loss of friends, is not less frequently the consequence of disease. The melan choly man feels an universal listlessness ; he is deprived of all desire of exertion, walks without consciousness, and reposes his limbs when fatigued by the mere im pulse of nature. As it appears, his mind is abstracted from all external objects, and preys only upon itself, the brilliancy of the sun, the beauty of the expanse of air and clouds, the pride of the spring, and the rigour of winter, pass in their fascinating varieties before him unnoti ced, and he is only anxious to escape from them by suicide.
Resignation is one remove towards re turning happiness, the calmness and tranquility of which cannot be described ; but it is nearly allied to humility, or a sense that no exertion will avail to re store the loss occasioned by death, and that it is little short of presumption to oppose the weakness of human nature to the dispensations of Providence. Hu mility, however, hears another character, and becomes in this view a melancholy resignation, or acquiescence in the con sciousness of some defect of person or intellect.
Enthusiasm, or vehemence, in any ptir suit may be called a passion of the soul, which exhibits its effects with the greatest violence when generated by religion. To describe its consequences would require a volume. It has led, and will hereafter lead, mankind into a thousand extrava gancies, which can only be compared with the inconsistencies madness. This cause will impel him to flagellate the body till blood follows, immure him self within a voluntary prison, and to meet death in any shape it may present itself. The consequences of this passion cannot well be described, as they belong almost decidedly to disease. Enthusiasm is the parent of despair, which it fre quently produces in the minds of those who conceive that their sins in this life exceed the possibility of future forgive ness. The wretch thus situated displays all the gestures and actions of grief uni ted with terror, a compound which is fortunately generally concealed from view by the asylums for lunatics.
We have now noticed the principal emotions of the soul, and stated our opinion that the causes of them are stu diously kept from us by the great Au.
thor of that ethereal spirit ; and without attempting to reason upon the probability or improbability of the opinions of others, we shall conclude this article with a slight summary of some of them.
Writers on the passions have indulged in a variety of speculations and conjec tures as to the precise situation of their impetus, in hopes of ascertaining whether that is in the material animated part of man, or in the spiritual. Des Cartes and other philosophers will have their seat to be wholly in the corporeal system ; and Mr. Grove, of a totally opposite opinion, concludes the passions to be affec tions attended with peculiar and extraor dinary motions of the animal spirits ;" and adds, that he inclines to "think that a sensation of the soul generally precedes a change in the spirits, external objects not being able to raise a ferment in the spirits till they have first struck the mind with an idea of something noble, fright ful, amiable," &c. Mallebranche defines the passions as being all those agitations of the soul, naturally proceeding from un common influence and motion in the blood and animal spirits ; those he con trasts with others which are usual with decided intelligences, and which he terms natural inclinations.
Dr. Cheyne considered the passions in two points of view, spiritual and animal ; the former he supposes to he the emotion produced in the soul by external objects, which become compounded and material by the intervention of the organs of life. The animal he defines by those effects produced by bodies or spirits imme diately on the body. Dr. Morgan, by in. defatigable observation, drew the fol lowing conclusion : "That all the grateful or pleasurable passions raise the vital tide, strengthen and quicken the pulse, diffuse the natural heat, and take off any antecedent stimulus or pressure upon the abdomen and inferior organs. And, on the contrary, the painful passions sink and depress the blood, weaken the pulse, recal and consenter the natural heat, and fix a stimulus, or compression, on the in. ferior organs. All the passions impress their characteristic sensations or modifi cations on the muscles of the larynx, and thus discover themselves by the different modulation and tone of the voice." From which he concludes, that the nerves of the eighth conjugation, or par vagum, are the principal instruments of the passions.