Professor Calderwood, in his _Handbook of Moral Philosophy_, says that “Affection is inclination towards others, disposing us to give from our own resources what may influence them either for good or ill. In practical tendency, the Affections are the reverse of the Desires. Desires absorb, Affections give out. Affections presuppose a recognition of certain qualities in persons, and, in a modified degree, in lower _sentient_ beings, but _not in things_, for the exercise of Affection presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or antagonism of feeling.” In other words, the eminent Scotch moralist thinks we can entertain affections only towards human beings, and, to some degree, towards animals; but not towards plants or inanimate objects. Careful analysis of our emotions, however, does not sustain this distinction, which is as unpoetic as it is anthropocentric and unscientific. Dr. Calderwood obviously confounds affection with sympathy. Sympathy means literally to suffer with another, or to share his feelings; and this, indeed, “presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or antagonism of feeling.” But affection, in his own words, “gives out,” and hence can be bestowed, and _is_ bestowed, by all emotional and refined persons on a variety of “things,” that are neither sentient nor even animate; and a poetic soul will even feel _sympathy_ with such a non-sentient thing as a crushed flower, for his imagination unconsciously endows it with the requisite feeling. “Things” are of two kinds—those fashioned by man, and those produced by Nature. A poem, a symphony, a violin, a novel come under the first head; a tree, a precious metal, a mountain under the second. An author who has passed through the whole gamut of emotion in writing his book, follows its fate with a paternal pride and an affectionate anxiety as great as if his bodily child had been sent into the world to seek its fortune. Perhaps the story of the German soldier who was carried off his feet by a cannon-ball, and who grasped first his pipe and then his severed leg, is not a legend. For was not his pipe, like a good, friend, associated with all the pleasant hours of his life? An artist certainly can entertain for his favourite instrument an affection almost, if not quite, human in quality. When Ole Bull suffered shipwreck on the Mississippi, he swam ashore, holding his violin high above water, at the risk of his life. And to an amateur who has often called upon his pianoforte to feed his momentary mood with a nocturne or a scherzo, the instrument soon assumes the functions of “a true friend, to whom,” as Bacon would say, “you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.”