_Queen._ To please the King, I did; to please myself, I cannot do it. Yet I know no cause Why I should welcome such a guest as grief; Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks, Some unborn sorrow, ripe in Fortune’s womb, Is coming tow’rd me; and my inward soul With something trembles, yet at nothing grieves, More than with parting from my Lord the King. _Richard II. act. 2. sc. 5._ The foregoing examples depend on the first principle. In the following, both principles concur. Resentment at first is wreaked on the relations of the offender, in order to punish him. But as resentment when so outrageous is contrary to conscience, the mind, to justify its passion as well as to gratify it, is disposed to paint these relations in the blackest colours; and it actually comes to be convinced, that they ought to be punished for their own demerits. Anger raised by an accidental stroke upon a tender part, which gives great and sudden pain, is sometimes vented upon the undesigning cause. But as the passion in this case is absurd, and as there can be no solid gratification in punishing the innocent; the mind, prone to justify as well as to gratify its passion, deludes itself instantly into a conviction of the action’s being voluntary. This conviction however is but momentary: the first reflection shows it to be erroneous; and the passion vanisheth almost instantaneously with the conviction. But anger, the most violent of all passions, has still greater influence. It sometimes forces the mind to personify a stock or a stone when it occasions bodily pain, in order to be a proper object of resentment. A conception is formed of it as a voluntary agent. And that we have really a momentary conviction of its being a voluntary agent, must be evident from considering, that without such conviction, the passion can neither be justified nor gratified. The imagination can give no aid. A stock or a stone may be imagined sensible; but a notion of this kind cannot be the foundation of punishment, so long as the mind is conscious that it is an imagination merely without any reality. Of such personification, involving a conviction of reality, there is one illustrious instance. When the first bridge of boats over the Hellespont was destroyed by a storm, Xerxes fell into a transport of rage, so excessive, that he commanded the sea to be punished with 300 stripes; and a pair of fetters to be thrown into it, enjoining the following words to be pronounced. “O thou salt and bitter water! thy master hath condemned thee to this punishment for offending him without cause; and is resolved to pass over thee in despite of thy insolence. With reason all men neglect to sacrifice to thee, because thou art both disagreeable and treacherous[43].”