Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/469

447 is, indeed, in one respect as near ally'd to hope as to fear, since it makes an essential part in the composition of the former passion; but the reason, why it inclines not to that side, is, that uncertainty alone is uneasy, and has a relation of impressions to the uneasy passions.

'Tis thus our uncertainty conoeming any minute circumstance relating to a person encreases our apprehensions of his death or misfortune. Horace has remarked this phænomenon. Ut assidens implumibus pullus avis
 * Serpentium allapsus timet,

Magis relictis; non, ut adsit, auxili
 * Latura plus presentibus.

But this principle of the connexion of fear with uncertainty I carry farther, and observe that any doubt produces that passion, even tho' it presents nothing to us on any side but what is good and desire able. A virgin, on her bridal night goes to bed full of fears and apprehensions, tho' she expects nothing but pleasure of the highest kind, and what she has long wish`d for. The newness and greatness of the event, the confusion of wishes and joys, so embarrass the mind, that it knows not on what passion to fix itself; from whence arises a fluttering or unsettledness of the spirits, which being, in some degree, uneasy, very naturally degenerates into fear.

Thus we still find, that whatever causes any fluctuation or mixture of passions, with any degree of uneasiness, always produces fear, or at least a passion so like it, that they are scarcely to be distinguished.

I have here confin'd myself to the examination of hope and fear in their most simple and natural situation, without considering all the variations they may receive from the mixture of different views and reflections. Terror, contsernation, astonishment, anxiety, and other passions of that kind, are nothing but different species and degrees of fear. 'Tis easy to imagine how a different situation of the object,