The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
The second head to which the passions are referred with relation to
their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The
first is, the society of sex. The passion belonging to this is called
love, and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the beauty of
women. The other is the great society with man and all other animals.
The passion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no
mixture of lust, and its object is beauty; which is a name I shall apply
to all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense of affection and
tenderness, or some other passion the most nearly resembling these. The
passion of love has its rise in positive pleasure; it is, like all
things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of
uneasiness, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind
with an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost it. This
mixed sense of pleasure I have not called _pain_, because it turns upon
actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its
effects, of a nature altogether different.
Next to the general passion we have for society, to a choice in which we
are directed by the pleasure we have in the object, the particular
passion under this head called sympathy has the greatest extent. The
nature of this passion is, to put us in the place of another in whatever
circumstance he is in, and to affect us in a like manner; so that this
passion may, as the occasion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure;
but with the modifications mentioned in some cases in Sect. 11. As to
imitation and preference, nothing more need be said.
SECTION XIX.
THE CONCLUSION.
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