PART I. ANALYSIS OF THE PASSIONS. CHAP. I: General View of the Subject. SECTION I. On Passions, Emotions, and Affections; the specific difference between them. By Passions, emotions, and affections, we understand those stronger or weaker feelings, with their correspondent effects upon the system, which are excited within us, by the perception or contemplation of certain qualities, which belong, or are supposed to belong, to the objects of our attention; and which, in some respect or other, appear interesting to us. In all cases, when the violence of the emotion is not too powerful for the animal œconomy, the feelings or sensations excited, are pleasant or unpleasant, according to the nature of the exciting cause, the ideas entertained of it, or the intenseness with which the mind is struck by it. These feelings differ in degrees of strength, according B |