The Vibration of the Mind

With regard to the passions, the human mind is not like a wind-instrument which loses the sound after the breath ceases.

It rather resembles a stringed instrument.

After each stroke, the vibrations still retain some sound which gradually and insensibly decays.

The imagination is extremely quick and agile.

But the passions are slow and restive.

This is why, when any object is presented that affords a variety of views to the one, and emotions to the other, the fancy may change its views very quickly.

Each stroke will not produce a clear and distinct note of passion.

Instead, the one passion will always be mixed and confounded with the other.

As the probability inclines to good or evil, the passion of joy or sorrow predominates in the composition.

Because the nature of probability is to cast a:

• superior number of views or chances on one side
• superior number of returns of one passion, or
• superior degree of that passion, since the dispersed passions are collected into one.

In other words, the grief and joy are intermingled with each other through the contrary views of the imagination.

Their union produces hope and fear.

On this, we may start a very curious question on the contrariety of passions.

Where the objects of contrary passions are presented at once, sometimes:

• both passions exist successively and by short intervals
• they destroy each other
• none of them takes place
• both of them remain united in the mind.

All these happen besides the increase of the predominant passion which commonly arises at their first shock.

How can we explain these variations?

What general principle we can reduce them to?

When the contrary passions arise from entirely different objects, they take place alternately.

The lack of relation in the ideas:

• separate the impressions from each other
• prevent their opposition.

Thus, when a man experiences the loss of a lawsuit and the joyful birth of a son, the mind runs from the agreeable to the calamitous object.

Its speed in transition cannot:

• temper the one affection with the other
• remain between them in a state of indifference.

The mind more easily attains that calm situation, when the same event:

• is of a mixed nature
• contains something adverse and prosperous in its different circumstances.

In that case, both passions mingle with each other through the relation.

They:

• become mutually destructive
• leave the mind in perfect tranquility.

But suppose, in the third place, that the object is not a compound of good or evil, but is probable or improbable.

In this case, the contrary passions will both be present in the soul at once.

Instead of destroying and tempering each other, they will:

• subsist together
• produce a third affection by their union.

Contrary passions are incapable of destroying each other, except when their contrary movement:

• meet exactly by chance
• are opposite in their direction and in the sensation they produce.

This exact chance meeting:

• depends on the relations of those ideas they are derived from.
• is more or less perfect, according to the degrees of the relation.

In the case of probability, the contrary chances are so far related, that they determine concerning the existence or non-existence of the same object.

But this relation is far from being perfect.

• since some of the chances lie on the side of existence
• and others on that of non-existence; which are objects altogether incompatible.

It is impossible by one steady view to survey the:

• opposite chances
• events dependent on them

The imagination needs to run alternately from the one to the other.

Each view of the imagination produces its peculiar passion which decays away by degrees.

This passion is followed by a sensible vibration after the stroke.

The incompatibility of the views keeps the passions from shocking in a direct line.

Yet their relation is sufficient to mingle their fainter emotions.

This is how hope and fear arise from grief and joy’s:

• different mixtures
• imperfect union and conjunction.

Contrary passions succeed each other alternately when they arise from different objects.

They mutually destroy each other when they proceed from different parts of the same object.

They both subsist and mingle together when they are derived from the contrary and incompatible chances or possibilities, on which any one object depends.

The influence of the relations of ideas is plainly seen in this whole affair.

If the objects of the contrary passions are totally different, the passions are like two opposite liquors in different bottles which have no influence on each other.

If the objects are intimately connected, the passions are like an alkali and an acid which destroy each other when mingled.

If the relation is more imperfect and consists in the contradictory views of the same object, the passions are like oil and vinegar which never perfectly unite and incorporate.