Where the ties of affection are weaker, and particularly where there is a great deficiency in the moral or religious dispositions of either or both the parties, the passions of the third class intermix themselves with those of the first and second; and in many cases, the opposite affections prevail in great degrees alternately, and even at short and frequent intervals. And indeed each kind often becomes more violent from succeeding its opposite.
In very immoral and wicked persons the passions of the third class prevail almost entirely, and that especially where the peculiar affection, called love by young persons, and which springs from the pleasures of sensation, imagination, and ambition, in the manner above explained, was originally weak.
The affection of parents towards children seems to begin from the pain which the mother feels in bringing them into the world, and the sympathetic fears and cares of the father in consequence thereof, and in some degree from children’s being supposed to belong to their parents in a very peculiar sense, and being parts of their own bodies. It is increased, especially in mothers, by all the signs of life, sense, and distress, which the helpless tender infant shews; many religious and moral considerations, with the language in which these are expressed, adding also great force thereto. The giving suck in the mother, with all the fears and cares in both parents, increases it still farther, and as the child advances in age and understanding, diverts by his little follies, pleases by his natural beauty, draws on the encomiums of others, surprises by his agility or wit, &c. the affections continue to rise. When the time comes for the cultivation of the moral and religious powers of the mind, these either increase the affection by their proper appearance and growth, or check it by being deficient, and by giving occasion to censures and corrections. Yet even these last, when justly proportioned, and followed by mental improvement, add greatly to the warmth of affection by raising compassion. And thus the remainders of former affections, and the accessions of new ones, seem to make a sum total, which grows perpetually greater in tender and religious parents.
The little affection commonly shewn to bastards agrees very well with the foregoing history of parental affection.
The affection towards grand-children is, in general, the same as that towards children, differing chiefly in this, that it is more fond and tender, and less mixed with severity, and the necessary corrections. This may be, perhaps, because the appearance of the helpless infant, after so long an interval, raises up all the old traces of parental affection with new vigour, from their not having been exerted for some years, and by recalling many of the most moving scenes of the foregoing life; so that these old traces, increased by the addition of new similar ones, make together a greater sum total than before: or, perhaps, because old persons have more experience of pain, sorrow, and infirmity; and so are more disposed to compassion, in the same manner as they
