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Chapter XVIII
The Passions
Passion is intense emotion – emotion is evanescent passion.
The nature of the passions can only be understood by their division into the different
heads of pleasure & pain; – for the principles by which they are to be governed reference
must be made to the list of virtues & vices.
Let the passion of anger be analysed – and its consequences traced.
When under its influence, a man is suffering pain– pain produced by the
contemplation of the act which has excited the passion. An immediate consequence
is a desire to produce pain in the breast of the party who has awakened the anger.
Anger then has in it two constant ingredients of pain – pain suffered by the angry
man – & a desire to produce give pain in to the person by whom he has been made angry.
And now to the question of virtue & vice. As there is no anger without
pain, & the the man who draws pain upon himself without the compensation of
a more than equivalent pleasure, violates the law of prudence.
Next comes the desire to produce pain in the breast of the object of
anger. This desire cannot be gratified without malevolence & maleficence. Here is
an obvious violation of the law of benevolence. And here we have an exemplification
of the relationship between passion & pain & pleasure – between passion & virtue & vice.
Cannot anger then be indulged without vice in both its shapes,
without imprudence – & without maleficence?
It cannot! it cannot, at least whenever it rises to the height of passion. And here a
more remote – yet more mischievous result presents itself to view as a violation of
the law of self-regarding prudence. The passion cannot be gratified but by the production of pain
in his breast by whom the anger has been excited, – and pain cannot be produced there
without a counter desire to retaliate the pain or greater pain on him who has produced
it. To the pain in the breast of the angry man there is a termination, – & most commonly
a speedy termination – but to the second remote pain which may be considered the third
link in the chain of causes & effects, who can put a limit Anger may have had what
is called its revenge – but the exercise of that revenge has may have created the durable passion of
enmity – to whose consequence it is impossible to affix a boundary.
Since anger cannot exist without vice, what is to be done? Can a man
exist without anger? Without anger can injuries be averted, can self-defence, can
self preservation be provided for?
Certainly not without the production of pain to him who has
inflicted the injury. But to the production of this pain anger is not necessary. Anger
is no more necessary than to the surgeon by whom to save suffering or life a painful
operation is performed. No anger is excited in his breast by the view of the
agony he inflicts, or by the contemplation of the greater evil which would follow
but for his interference. That anger should never have place is not possible – it
is not consistent with the structure of the human mind. But it may be
said – & that on every occasion – & without any exception that the less there is of it
the better: for whatever pain is needful to the production of the useful effect, that
pain will be much better measured without the passion than by it.
But, it may be said there are circumstances which not only pain –
the natural effect of anger – pain purposely produced, – but anger itself – the passion
of anger is useful – & even to the existence of society – and that these circumstances
in our own country – extending over the whole field of penal jurisprudence. I have been
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chapter xviii / the passions |
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