Section III.
The Affections.
The Affections are distinguished from the Desires, mainly in these two particulars: first, that the Desires are for impersonal objects, the Affections, for persons; and secondly, that the Desires prompt to actions that have a direct reference to one's self; the Affections, to actions that have a direct reference to others.
The Affections are benevolent or malevolent.
1. The benevolent affections are Love, Reverence, Gratitude, Kindness, Pity, and Sympathy.
Love needs no definition, and admits of none. It probably never exists uncaused; though it survives all real or imagined ground for it, and in some cases seems rendered only the more intense by the admitted unworthiness of its object. When it is not the reason for marriage, it can hardly fail to grow from the conjugal relation between one man and one woman, if the mutual duties belonging to that relation be held sacred. It is inconceivable that a mother should not love her child, inevitably cast upon her protection from the first moment of his being; the father who extends a father's care over his children finds in that care a constant source of love; and the children, [pg 023] waking into conscious life under the ministries of parental benignity and kindness, have no emotion so early, and no early emotion so strong, as filial love. It may be doubted whether there is among the members of the same family a natural affection, independent of relations practically recognized in domestic life. It is very certain that at both extremities of the social scale family affection is liable to be impaired, on the one hand, by the delegation of parental duties to hirelings, and, on the other, by the inability to render them constantly and efficiently. We may observe also a difference in family affection, traceable indirectly to the influence of climate. Out-of-door life is unfavorable to the intimate union of families; while domestic love is manifestly the strongest in those countries where the shelter and hearth of the common home are necessary for a large portion of the year.
Friendship is but another name for love between persons unconnected by domestic relations, actual or prospective.
Love for the Supreme Being, or piety, differs not in kind from the child's love for the parent; but it rightfully transcends all other love, inasmuch as the benefits received from God include and surpass all other benefits. To awake, then, to a consciousness of our actual relation to God, is “to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and all the soul, and all the strength.”
Reverence is the sentiment inspired by advanced [pg 024] superiority in such traits of mind and character as we regard with complacency in ourselves, or with esteem in our equals. Qualities which we do not esteem we may behold with admiration (that is, wonder), but not with reverence. Our reverence for age is not for advanced years alone, but for the valuable experience which they are supposed to have given, and especially for the maturity of excellence which belongs to the old age of good men, of which their features generally bear the impress, and which, in the absence of knowledge, we are prone to ascribe to a venerable mien and aspect. A foolish or wicked old man commands no reverence by his years.
God, as possessing in infinite fulness all the properties which we revere in man, must ever be the worthy object of supreme reverence.