The man of opulence naturally regards his children as part of his state; as the inheritors of his fortune; or as belonging to the same line of ancestors with himself; and with both those constituents of his 224 dignity he has many agreeable associations. But these are an imperfect substitute for the habits of agreeable association which are generated in more favourable circumstances.
Hitherto, we have considered only the parental affection of the Father. The parental affection of the Mother differs from that of the Father in the associations which she forms with her child in her own peculiar situations of gestation and nursing. That these are such as to create intense associations every one will admit. Every movement of the child during the period of gestation is to her a sensation. Every thought of it is connected with that flood of hopes and fears attached to the awful hour, never absent from her thoughts, which, through a series of cruel pains, will either stretch her a lifeless corpse, or render her a rejoicing mother. As a nurse, the child is to her a source, both of agreeable sensations, and agreeable ideas. On the sensations we need not dilate. They are known only to those who have experienced them. But it is not possible to conceive a case more calculated to associate strongly the ideas of our own pleasures, with the ideas of the pleasures we bestow, than that of the mother, when she presses her infant to her bosom, and communicates to him the means of life, and the only pleasures he is capable of enjoying, not only by her own acts, but from her own substance; and when she perceives how soon in the mind of the child, the idea of herself is associated with the existence of all his pleasures, and the removal of all his pains; in other words, how quickly she becomes not only the object of his affections, but the one and only object.
225 Having explained at so much length the grand case of the Domestic Affections, we may pass over the rest with a very cursory notice.
Even the Filial affection has in it nothing peculiar. In the child, the idea of his parent, as a being with power almost unlimited over him, creates the associations which constitute reverence, and respect; and the perpetual use of that power on the part of the parent to give him pleasures, or the command of pleasures, to remove from him pains, or give him the means of removing them, naturally creates the associations which constitute affection.
The affection which exists among Brothers and Sisters, has in it most of the ingredients which go to the formation of Friendship. There is first of all Companionship; the habit of enjoying pleasures, in common, and also of suffering pains: hence a great readiness in sympathizing with one another; that is, in associating trains of their own pains and pleasures, with the pains and pleasures of one another. There is next, when the Education is good, a constant reciprocation, to the extent of their power, of beneficent acts. And lastly there is their common relation to the grand source of all their pleasures, the Parent.
When the affections of the domestic class exist in perfection (in such a state of Education and Morals as ours this rarely can happen), they afford so constant a succession of agreeable trains, that they form, perhaps, the most valuable portion of human happiness. Acts of beneficence to larger masses of mankind, afford still more interesting trains to those who perform them. But they are the small number. The happiness of the Domestic affections is open to all.
4.—Country.
The word country is the name of an idea of great complexity. In that idea are included all the multitudes of persons, and all the multitudes of things, and all the multitudes of positions, in a certain portion of the Globe of the Earth. Nor are these present existences alone included in that idea: the HISTORY of the country is included, that is, the whole series of prior existences; and not the PAST HISTORY only, but the FUTURE HISTORY also, or series of future existences, as far as our power of anticipation reaches. This is a remarkable example of the power of association, to unite ideas without number in such closeness, that their individuality is unperceived, and the cluster, however large, resembles a single uncompounded idea.
This cluster is not wholly made up of indifferent ideas. There is included in it the sources of all our pleasures, and almost all the objects with which we have been accustomed to associate trains of agreeable ideas. The plains, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, with which we have formed agreeable associations, are all there; the individual objects with which we have formed similar associations, the trees, the houses; the house, for example, in which we were born, the tree under which we have sat to enjoy the affections of our parents, or indulge our sympathies with other objects of our love, the paths in which we have strayed, the fields through which we have roamed, the riches wherewith we have seen them periodically clothed, the labours of those fields, the labourers, their manners, appearance, and character, 227 the flocks and herds, the cities and towns, with all their inhabitants, and all their operations, the wonderful proceedings of the manufacturers, the arrival and departure of ships, loaded with the precious commodities of the different regions of the Earth.