Fanaticism Author:Isaac Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION III. ALLIANCE OF THE MALIGN EMOTIONS WITH THE IMAGINATION. If nature denies to the irascible passions any attendant sense of pleasure, she absolute... more »ly refuses them also, at least in their simple state, the power of awakening the sympathy, or of exciting The copiousness of our subject must exclude whatever does not directly conduce to its illustration. Otherwise it would be proper here to mention those complex dispositions which spring from the union of the malignant passions with the elements of individual character. The irascible sentiment, for example, takes a specific form from the peculiarities of the animal structure. Combined with conscious muscular vigour, and a sanguineous temperament, it becomes a stormy rage, and constitutes either the bully, or the dread devastator of kingdoms, as circumstances may determine. The same irascibility, joined with a feeble constitution, begets petulance, in those various forms which depend upon the particular seal of debility; namely, whether it be the nervous system—the arterial system—the mesenteric glands—the liver, or the stomach; each of which imparts a peculiarity to the temper. An attentive observer of the early developement of character 'will also leave room, in any theory of the passions he may construct, for a hitherto unexplored and undefined influence of conformation— ought we to say of the brain, or of the mind ? How much soever (from various motives) any might wish to simplify their philosophy of human nature, and especially to exclude from it certain facts which give rise to painful perplexities, they can do so only (as we think) by refusing to turn the eye toward the real world. After receiving their first characteristic from the physical temperament, the malign emotions next ally themselves with the inst...« less