_Emotions and passions as pleasant and painful, agreeable and disagreeable. Modifications of these qualities._ It will naturally occur at first view, that a discourse upon the passions should commence with explaining the qualities now mentioned. But upon trial, I found this could not be done distinctly, till the difference were ascertained betwixt an emotion and a passion, and till their causes were evolved. Great obscurity may be observed among writers with regard to the present point. No care, for example, is taken to distinguish agreeable from pleasant, disagreeable from painful; or rather these terms are deemed synonymous. This is an error not at all venial in the science of ethics; as instances can and shall be given, of painful passions that are agreeable, and of pleasant passions that are disagreeable. These terms, it is true, are used indifferently in familiar conversations, and in composition for amusement, where accuracy is not required. But for those to use them so who profess to explain the passions, is a capital error. In writing upon the critical art, I would avoid every refinement that may seem more curious than useful. But the proper meaning of the terms under consideration must be ascertained, in order to understand the passions, and some of their effects that are intimately connected with criticism. I shall endeavour to explain these terms by familiar examples. Viewing a fine garden, I perceive it to be beautiful or agreeable; and I consider the beauty or agreeableness as belonging to the object, or as one of its qualities. Again, when I turn my thoughts from the garden to what passes in my mind, I am conscious of a pleasant emotion of which the garden is the cause. The pleasure here is felt, not as a quality of the garden, but of the emotion produced by it. I give an opposite example. A rotten carcass is loathsome and disagreeable, and raises in the spectator a painful emotion. The disagreeableness is a quality of the object: the pain is a quality of the emotion produced by it. Agreeable and disagreeable, then, are qualities of the object we perceive: pleasant and painful are qualities of the emotions we feel. The former qualities are perceived as adhering to objects; the latter are felt as existing within us. But a passion or emotion, beside being felt, is frequently made an object of thought or reflection: we examine it; we inquire into its nature, its cause, and its effects. In this view it partakes the nature of other objects: it is either agreeable or disagreeable. Hence clearly appear the different significations of the terms under consideration, as applied to passion. When a passion is termed _pleasant_ or _painful_, we refer to the actual feeling: when termed _agreeable_ or _disagreeable_, it is considered as an object of thought or reflection. A passion is pleasant or painful to the person in whom it exists: it is agreeable or disagreeable to the person who makes it a subject of contemplation.