CTIQN XIII 473 are too often tempted to the haughty, the morose, the surly, and the more unfriendly ruffles end disturbances of nature, unless they watch against them with daily care, The commanders in armies and navies, the governors of work -houses, the masters of public schools, or those who have e great number of servants under them, and a multitude of cares and concerns in human life, should continuallyset a guard upon themselves, lest they get a habit of affected superiority, pride and vanity of mintl, of fret fulness, impatience and criminal anger. There are many other things which might be mentioned as disposing the soul and body to special'passions ; as company or solitude, plenteous circumstances or poverty, hard labour or diversion, and more particularly music of the various strains ; all these have poner to raise or depress the variouspassions of the heart. There is also á contagion in some of the passions, whereby one person infects his neighbour with them : Fear, sor- row; love, 'joy, anger, jealousy, are often thus propagated. . Different places and habitations, city or country, thicker or finer air, a colder or a warmer climate, hunger or fulness, differ- ent diet, &c. dispose the nature of man to different affections. The various nations, the Scots, the Welsh, the English, the French, the Spaniards and Germans, have their particular cha- racters and tempers assigned to them by various writers, and are accordingly more or less susceptive of different passions. A man is pleasant and easy when at leisure in the fields, who is perhaps ever fretful in the midst of the businesses and cares of the city. Anger, peevishness, and the surly humour is too often ready to prevail upon'some persons, when they are hungry and empty ; but a good dinner allays the unpleasing commotions of the heart, and they are all'benevolence and joy. Among these things, it is remarkable, that diseases of the nervous kind will give so strong a disposition to particular pas- sions, in the animal part of oùr nature, that they have sometimes actually raised them, or at least the various symptoms of them, without any particular object or thought. Persons under the power of these disorders have been sometimes carried, almost mechanically, into a fit of excessive laughter, and sometimes have been drowned in a flood of grief and tears, and both with- out any apparent occasion. . SECT. XIV.Th'e general design and use of the Passions. While we inhabit this sensible world, and are united to flesh, the passions.were given us to assist the feeble influences of our reason in the practice of duty, for our oivn' and our neigh- bour's good. Reason is too often called away from a due atten- tion to a present necessary idea by many sensible objects :.But, passion serves to fi3t the attention, Reason is too slow, and too'
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