before explained, and perhaps some from mere curiosity, and the rousing an obdurate callous mind to a state of sensibility. Thus we may perceive how nearly one ill passion is related to another; and that it is possible for men to arrive at last at some degree of pure disinterested cruelty and malice.
The jealousy against a rival in the affections of a beloved person of the other sex; also that peculiar resentment against this beloved person, when suspected to be unfaithful, which goes by the same name; are easily deducible from their sources, in the manner so often repeated. And it is owing to the extraordinary magnitude of the passions and pleasures between the sexes, and the singular contempt and ridicule thrown upon the person despised and deceived, (the last of which springs from the first,) that these two sorts of jealousy rise to such a height. This is more peculiarly remarkable in the southern climates, where the passions between the sexes are more violent than amongst us. The nature and origin of jealousies and suspicions of other kinds, with the affections attending them, may easily be understood from what has been already advanced.
Emulation and envy make the fourth class of the sympathetic affections. These are founded in the desire of pleasures, honours, riches, power, &c. and the consequent engrossing what others desire, losing what they obtain, in a comparison of our own acquisitions with those of others, &c. by which the happiness of others is connected with our misery; so that at last we become uneasy at their happiness, even where there is no such connexion, i.e. emulate and envy where our own interest is no ways concerned.
Having now seen, in some measure, the nature and origin of the principal sympathetic affections, pleasing and tormenting, moral and immoral, let us consider the several objects upon which these various and contrary affections are exerted.
I begin with the most intimate of all the relations of life, that of husband and wife. Where this union is cemented by the several pleasures of sensation and imagination before-mentioned, also by those of the moral and religious kinds, hereafter to be described, love, generosity, gratitude, compassion, and all the affections of the first and second class, prevail in the highest degree possible, to the exclusion of all those of the third and fourth class; so that the marriage state, in these cases, affords the most perfect earnest and pattern, of which our imperfect condition here admits, of the future happiness of the good in another world. And it is remarkable, that this state is in Scripture made the emblem of future happiness, and of the union of Christ with the church.
