Lifes Progress Through the Passions | Page 4

room at a year and some few months old,
without the help of a leading-string.
Hitherto the passions, those powerful abettors, I had almost said sole
authors of all human actions, operated but faintly, and could shew
themselves only in proportion to the vigour of the animal frame. Yet
latent as they are, an observing eye may easily discover them in each of
their different propensities, even from the most early infancy. The eyes
of Natura on any new and pleasing object, would denote by their
sparkling a sensation of joy:--Fear was visible in him by clinging to his
nurse, and endeavouring to bury himself as it were in her bosom, at the
sound of menaces he was not capable of understanding:--That sorrow
has a place among the first emotions of the soul, was demonstrable by
the sighs which frequently would heave his little heart, long before it
was possible for him either to know or to imagine any motives for
them:--That the seeds of avarice are born with us, by the eagerness
with which he catched at money when presented to him, his clinching it
fast in his hand, and the reluctance he expressed on being deprived of
it:--That anger, and impatience of controul, are inherent to our nature,
might be seen in his throwing down with vehemence any favourite toy,
rather than yield to resign it; and that spite and revenge are also but too
much so, by his putting in practice all such tricks as his young
invention could furnish, to vex any of the family who had happened to
cross him:--Even those tender inclinations, which afterwards bear the
name of amorous, begin to peep out long before the difference of sex is
thought on; as Natura proved by the preference he gave the girls over
the boys who came to play with him, and his readiness to part with any
thing to them.
In a word, there is not one of all the various emotions which agitate the
breast in maturity, that may not be discerned almost from the birth,
hope, jealousy, and despair excepted, which, tho' they bear the name in
common with those other more natural dispositions of the mind, I look
upon rather as consequentials of the passions, and arising from them,
than properly passions themselves: but however that be, it is certain,
that they are altogether dependant on a fixation of ideas, reflection, and

comparison, and therefore can have no entrance in the soul, or at least
cannot be awakened in it, till some degree of knowledge is attained.
Thus do the dispositions of the infant indicate the future _man_; and
though we see, in the behaviour of persons when grown up, so vast a
difference, yet as all children at first act alike, I think it may be
reasonably supposed, that were it not for some change in the
constitution, an equal similitude of will, desires, and sentiments, would
continue among us through maturity and old age; at least I am perfectly
perswaded it would do so, among all those who are born in the same
climate, and educated in the same principles: for whatever may be said
of a great genius, and natural endowments, there is certainly no real
distinction between the soul of the man of wit and the _ideot_; and that
disproportion, which we are apt to behold with so much wonder, is only
in fact occasioned by some or other of those innumerable and hidden
accidents, which from our first coming into the world, in a more or less
degree, have, an effect upon the organs of sense; and they being the
sole canals through which the spirit shews itself, according as they
happen to be extended, contracted, or obstructed, the man must
infallibly appear.

CHAP. II.
Contains some proofs by what swift degrees the passions gain an
ascendant over the mind, and grow up in proportion with our reason.
Natura had no sooner quitted the nursery, than he was put under the
direction of the school, to which at first he was every day conducted
either by a man or maid-servant; but when thought big enough to be
trusted alone, would frequently play the truant, for which he generally
received the discipline necessary on such occasions.--He took his
learning notwithstanding as well as could be expected;--he had read the
testament through at five years old, about seven was put into Latin, and
began the rudiments of Greek before he had attained the age of nine.
As his understanding increased, the passions became stronger in

proportion: and here is to be observed the wonderful wisdom of nature,
or rather of the Great Author of nature, in the formation of the human
system, that the passions given to us, especially those of the worst sort,
are, for the most