Chap. 2: The Passions from the Imagination

¹⁵ The passions from the imagination which are habitual are perfectly natural.

• But they are little sympathized with.
• People’s imaginations might not have acquired those habits.
  • They cannot enter into them.
  • Thus, such passions are always somewhat ridiculous.
• This happens with strong romantic attachment.
  • We are unable to imagine what the lover experiences, so we are not as eager as he or she is.
• If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathize with his resentment,
  • We grow angry with the very person with whom he is angry.
• If he has received a benefit, we readily enter into his gratitude.
  • We have a very high sense of the merit of his benefactor.
• But if he is in love, we never think to be bound by the same love which he feels nor to love the person he loves.
  • This love appears to everybody else, entirely disproportioned to the object’s value.
  • Though natural, it is always laughed at, because we cannot enter into it.
  • All serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person.
    • A lover may be good company to his mistress, but not to anyone else.
    • He himself knows this.
    • As long as his senses are sober, he teases and ridicules his own passion.
      • We only care about his love in this way, because this is the only way we can see it.
      • We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and Petrarca.
        • They always exaggerate their love.
      • But Ovid’s gaiety and Horace’s gallantry are always agreeable.

 

¹⁶ Despite this, we may have conceived the same kind of passions and we readily enter into:

• the hopes which he feels from the gratification of his passion, and
• the distress which he fears from its disappointment.

His passion interests us as a situation which creates other passions which interest us.

• The hope and fear of the results of a sea voyage interests us, and not the voyage itself.
• We are interested in the distress which hunger creates, not the hunger itself.
• We properly do not enter into a man’s attachment to his lover.
  • But we readily go along with those expectations of romantic happiness which he derives from it.
• When the mind is relaxed with indolence and tired with the violence of desire, we feel that it is natural:
  • to long for serenity and quiet,
  • to hope to find serenity and quiet in the gratification of the passion which distracts the mind,
  • to have the idea of that life of pastoral tranquility and retirement as described by Tibillus with pleasure
    • Tibullus was elegant, tender, and passionate.
    • He described a life like what the poets describe in the Fortunate Islands, a life:
      • of friendship, liberty, and repose,
      • free from:
        • labour,
        • care, and
        • all the turbulent passions which attend labour and care.
• These scenes interest us most when they are painted as what is hoped, than what is actual.
  • This desire mixes with such love and is perhaps the foundation of that love.
  • This love disappears when this desire cannot be gratified.
    • This love then becomes offensive.
    • It then interests us much less than the fear and sadness.
      • We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and agreeable hopes.
      • We thus enter into the lover’s anxiety, concern, and distress.

 

¹⁷ Hence, in some modern tragedies and romances, this love appears so wonderfully interesting.

• The distress of the love between Castalio and Monimia interests us in the tragedy The Orphan.
  • Those two lovers, perfectly secure in expressing their love for each other, would excite laughter, not sympathy.
• It is always improper to admit this scene into a tragedy.
  • It is only acceptable from the concern for the dangers and difficulties which the audience foresees will come to it.

 

¹⁸ The reserve which the laws of society impose on women renders it more distressful to them.

• This makes it more deeply interesting.
• We are charmed with the love of Phaedra, despite all its extravagance and guilt.
  • That very extravagance and guilt recommends it to us.
  • Her fear, shame, remorse, horror, despair, become more natural and interesting.
• Her secondary passions which arise from her love, become necessarily more furious and violent.
  • We can then sympathize with her secondary passions.

 

¹⁹ Of all the passions which are so disproportioned to the value of their objects, romantic love is the only one that appears to have anything graceful or agreeable in it.

• Romantic love in itself is not naturally odious, even if it may be ridiculous.
  • Though its consequences are often fatal and dreadful, its intentions are seldom mischievous.
  • Though there is little propriety in this love itself, there is more propriety in its accompanying passions.
• In romantic love, there is a strong mixture of humanity, generosity, kindness, friendship, and esteem.
  • We have the greatest propensity to sympathize with these passions, even if they are excessive.
  • Our sympathy for these passions render them less disagreeable and supports it in our imagination, despite all its vices.
    • Its vices in men leads to ruin and infamy.
    • Its vices in women is the least fatal and leads to an incapacity for labour, neglect of duty, and contempt of fame and reputation.
  • Despite all this, it is supposed to be accompanied by sensibility and generosity.
    • These renders such love as the object of vanity to many people.
      • They are fond of appearing capable of feeling such  sensibility and generosity.

 

²⁰ Because of this, a certain reserve is necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, or our own professions.

• All these do not interest our friends in the same degree that they interest us.
• It is because of the lack of this reserve, that half of mankind make bad company to the other.
• A philosopher is company only to a small club of philosophers.

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