3.—Family.

The Group, which consists of a Father, Mother, and Children, is called a Family. The associations which each member of this group has of his pains and pleasures, with the pains and pleasures of the other members, constitute some of the most interesting states of human consciousness.

The affection of the husband and wife is, in its origin, that of two persons of different sex, and need 219 not be further analysed. To this source of pleasurable association is added, when the union is happy, all those other associations, just enumerated, which constitute the affection of Friendship. To this another addition is made by the union of interests; or that necessity, under which both are placed, of receiving pain and pleasure from the same causes. As, in too many instances, these pleasurable associations are extinguished, by the generation of others of an opposite description; in other cases, they are carried to such a height, as to afford an exemplification of that remarkable state of mind, in which a greater value is set upon the means, than upon the end. Persons have been found, the one of whom could not endure to live without the other.

The Parental affection requires to be somewhat more minutely analysed.

First of all, there can be no doubt, that all that power of exciting trains of ideas of our own pains and pleasures, which belongs to the pains and pleasures of any of our fellow-creatures, is possessed by the pains and pleasures of a man’s child.

In the next place, it is well known that the pains and pleasures of another person affect us; that is, associate with themselves the ideas of our own pains and pleasures, with more or less intensity, according to the attention which we bestow upon his pains or pleasures. A parent is commonly either led or impelled to bestow an unusual degree of attention upon the pains and pleasures of his child; and hence a habit is contracted of sympathizing with him, as it is commonly, and not insignificantly named; in other words, a facility of associating the ideas of 220 his own pains and pleasures, with those of the child.

Again, a man looks upon his child as a cause to him of future pains or pleasures, much more certain, than any other person. The father regards the son somewhat in the light of another self, a great proportion of the effects of whose acts, whether good or evil, will redound to himself. An object regarded as a great future cause to us of future pains or pleasures, we call an object of intense interest; in other words, a train of interesting ideas, that is, of ideas of pains or pleasures, is associated with it.

The vivacity and simplicity of the expressions of the pains and pleasures of children, in their looks, and tones, and attitudes, as well as words, give them a peculiar power of exciting sympathy, that is, of associating with them trains of the analogous feelings of ourselves. The frequency with which a parent is called upon to attend to those expressions in his child, gives him a habit of forming the associations to which they lead.

The perfect dependence of the child upon the parent is a source of deep interest. The whole of its pleasures being the fruit of his acts, he more easily associates with them the trains of his own pleasures, than with those of any person not so connected with him. His acts, too, being required to save it from the worst of pains, and from destruction, the idea of its pains, arising from any relaxation of his care, calls up, in strong association, both the analogous pains of himself, and also the opposite pleasurable feelings arising from the continuance of the acts by which the pleasures of the child are produced. And to all these 221 sources of association is added, that which is always agreeable, the train making up the idea of our own power; no case of power being so perfect as that of the parent over his helpless offspring.

Another important source of agreeable association is yet to be mentioned. Man becomes fond (it is a matter of daily observation) of that on which he has frequently conferred benefits. This is a fact of considerable importance in human nature; for, under the little care which hitherto has been bestowed in generating, by education, the associations on which Beneficence depends, a considerable part of the beneficence existing in the world has been produced by this cause. It is also a case of association, which strongly illustrates the fact, that pleasures, produced by our own acts, have a peculiar power in associating with them trains of the ideas of our own pleasures. Not only a Fellow-creature, but even one of the lower animals, by having been the object of repeated acts of kindness, becomes an object of affection. Trains of our own pleasures are so often united with the idea of such an object of our kindness, that the idea of the object becomes at last an idea made up of the original idea of the individual and of trains of our own pleasures: a compound idea, made up, in great part, of pleasurable ideas; that is, an Affection.

That the whole of the parental affection is derived from these and similar associations, is proved by some decisive facts.

Whenever it happens that a man is placed in circumstances which produce those associations, he feels the parental affection, without parentage. Facts of this description are so frequent, and so notorious, that 222 it is hardly necessary to produce an instance of them. How else does it happen, that a man who does not suspect the infidelity of his wife, rears as his own, and without any difference of affection, the offspring of the man who has injured him? Cases, for the credit of our nature, are not wanting, and when education is better, they will be less rare, in which a family of orphans is taken under the protection of a man of virtue. By acting towards them the part of a parent, he never fails to acquire for them the affection of a parent.

There are equally notorious and decisive facts to prove, that whenever the parent is placed in circumstances which either wholly, or to a great degree, prevent the formation of the associations with the child to which we ascribe the parental affection, there is a corresponding want of the affection. The case of illegitimate children is pregnant with evidence to this point. In the great majority of cases of this description, no affection exists. The parent may feel the obligation of maintaining the child, because public opinion, or perhaps the law, requires it: but this is the extent of the bond.

The circumstances of Families, in the two opposite states, of great poverty, and great opulence, are unfavourable to the formation of those associations of which the parental affection consists.

In cases of extreme poverty, which alone are the cases here understood; because, in the more moderate cases of poverty, the parental affection exists in considerable strength; the circumstances which lead to the formation of agreeable associations with the child, are either wanting, or counteracted by circumstances 223 of an opposite tendency. The parent has little the means of bestowing pleasures on his child; he has not the means of saving it from an almost constant series of pains. The means which he employs in saving the child from pains, are taken from the means of saving himself from pains. Constantly occupied in the labours which yield him a scanty means of subsistence, he spends but little time in the company of his child, and has therefore little opportunity of attending to the engaging expressions of its pains and pleasures. It is needless to carry the enumeration of particulars farther. The circumstances which tend to generate agreeable associations with the child are few. The circumstances which tend to generate painful associations with it are many.

In Families of great opulence, the attention of the parent, averted either by the calls of pleasure, or the avocations which his position in society creates, is but little bestowed upon his children. Where the pains and pleasures of others are not attended to, no association with those pains and pleasures exists; where there is not a habit of forming the associations, the Affection does not exist.

The mode in which the child of the man of opulence is maintained and educated, proceeds so remotely from the acts of the parent, that the agreeable associations, which we have with our own acts of beneficence, are, in the case of such a parent, very imperfectly formed.

The man of opulence naturally regards his children as part of his state; as the inheritors of his fortune; or as belonging to the same line of ancestors with himself; and with both those constituents of his 224 dignity he has many agreeable associations. But these are an imperfect substitute for the habits of agreeable association which are generated in more favourable circumstances.

Hitherto, we have considered only the parental affection of the Father. The parental affection of the Mother differs from that of the Father in the associations which she forms with her child in her own peculiar situations of gestation and nursing. That these are such as to create intense associations every one will admit. Every movement of the child during the period of gestation is to her a sensation. Every thought of it is connected with that flood of hopes and fears attached to the awful hour, never absent from her thoughts, which, through a series of cruel pains, will either stretch her a lifeless corpse, or render her a rejoicing mother. As a nurse, the child is to her a source, both of agreeable sensations, and agreeable ideas. On the sensations we need not dilate. They are known only to those who have experienced them. But it is not possible to conceive a case more calculated to associate strongly the ideas of our own pleasures, with the ideas of the pleasures we bestow, than that of the mother, when she presses her infant to her bosom, and communicates to him the means of life, and the only pleasures he is capable of enjoying, not only by her own acts, but from her own substance; and when she perceives how soon in the mind of the child, the idea of herself is associated with the existence of all his pleasures, and the removal of all his pains; in other words, how quickly she becomes not only the object of his affections, but the one and only object.

225 Having explained at so much length the grand case of the Domestic Affections, we may pass over the rest with a very cursory notice.

Even the Filial affection has in it nothing peculiar. In the child, the idea of his parent, as a being with power almost unlimited over him, creates the associations which constitute reverence, and respect; and the perpetual use of that power on the part of the parent to give him pleasures, or the command of pleasures, to remove from him pains, or give him the means of removing them, naturally creates the associations which constitute affection.

The affection which exists among Brothers and Sisters, has in it most of the ingredients which go to the formation of Friendship. There is first of all Companionship; the habit of enjoying pleasures, in common, and also of suffering pains: hence a great readiness in sympathizing with one another; that is, in associating trains of their own pains and pleasures, with the pains and pleasures of one another. There is next, when the Education is good, a constant reciprocation, to the extent of their power, of beneficent acts. And lastly there is their common relation to the grand source of all their pleasures, the Parent.

When the affections of the domestic class exist in perfection (in such a state of Education and Morals as ours this rarely can happen), they afford so constant a succession of agreeable trains, that they form, perhaps, the most valuable portion of human happiness. Acts of beneficence to larger masses of mankind, afford still more interesting trains to those who perform them. But they are the small number. The happiness of the Domestic affections is open to all.

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