Now, the first of these false tendencies and moral infirmities—unbounded pride and haughtiness—is essentially a mental blindness and aberration; and vanity, with its delusions, is the same disease in a lower and milder phase. And all will admit that the source of this moral failing is an overweening love of self. But in self-conceit the co-operating influence of fancy is easily and distinctly traceable. As to the second of those infirmities which distract and disturb life: I should also be disposed to consider the sensual passionateness or passionate sensuality as a disease indeed, but of a brutalizing tendency—an inflammatory habit, a fever of the soul, which either spends itself in acute and violent paroxysms, or with slower but certain progress secretly undermines and subverts all man’s better qualities. In either case, the true source of the evil—the irresistible energy and the false magic of this passion—lies in an over-excited, deluded, or poisoned fancy. The natural instinct itself, in so far as it is inborn and agreeable to nature, is obnoxious to no reproach. The blame lies altogether in the want of principle, or that weakness of character which half-voluntarily concedes to the mere instinct an unlimited authority, or, at least, is incapable of exercising over it a due control. The third false direction of man’s instincts which, after the two already noticed, involves human society in the greatest disorder, and most fatally disturbs the peace of individuals, is an unlimited love of gain, selfishness, and avarice. No doubt, in a certain modified and lower sense, the hope of advantage or profit is the motive that prompts every enterprise; at least, according to the judgment of the world, nothing is undertaken or transacted without a view to some object of a selfishness more or less refined. But when we look to the worst and most violent cases of this disease—an insatiable avarice and a morbid love of gain, then we at once see the baneful effects which the fancy, dwelling exclusively on material property and chinking coin, has on this moral disease, where, with the golden treasure, mind and soul are shut up and buried, and both completely numbed and petrified, in the same way that, by certain organic diseases of the body, the heart becomes ossified. By these pernicious passions, the higher moral organ of life is in different ways attacked and destroyed. In the first case, that of the blinding of the mind by pride and vanity, the moral judgment is perverted and falsified. In the second case, where the soul is brutalized by a life of sensuality, the moral sense is clouded, loses all its delicacy, and is at last totally obliterated. In the third instance, that of a thorough numbness of the inner life produced by selfishness and avarice, the idea of moral duty is in the end totally lost, dies away, and becomes extinct, while the dead Mammon is regarded as the supreme good of life, and, being set up as the sole object of human exertion, is substituted for the best and noblest acquisition of mind and soul. The three passions which we have already examined are founded indeed on a positive pursuit, however false may be the extent or perverted the direction in which it is carried out. We might now proceed with our speculation, and, progressively developing it from the same point of view, extend and apply it to the aggressive passions, which are based on a merely negative pursuit—the attack, annihilation, and destruction of their objects. I allude to the passion of hatred, in its three different elements or species, viz., anger, malice, and revenge. But to enter further upon such investigations would be inappropriate in the present place. Generally, indeed, in touching upon matters so universally known, my object has been merely to consider and exhibit them from their psychological side, in order to show partly how the triple principle of human existence, according to mind or spirit, and soul, and the third element, wherein the former two conjointly operate, finds its application, and is repeated, as it were, in miniature, in the narrower sphere of the natural inclination, both good and bad, and also in that of the external senses. At the same time it was also my wish to call attention to the fact, that the dominion of the fancy over its subordinate faculties, whether of the external senses or the instincts, manifests itself likewise in the pernicious passions, as exercising over them a very baneful influence, and, indeed, as being the principal source of the prevailing aberrations. These three passions and leading defects of character, which destroy the inward peace of individuals and disturb the order of society, may be regarded as so many Stygian floods, so many dark subterranean streams of lava and fire, which, bursting from the crater of a burning fancy, pour down upon the region of the will, there again to break out in lawless deeds and violent catastrophes, or, perhaps, what is far worse, to lie smoldering in a life frittered away in worthless pursuits, without object or meaning, or in the frivolous routine of an ordinary existence.
1. The three passions which corrupt moral character are also often referred to as ________.
2. By this excess and false direction the mental powers, originally designed for nobler and more exalted purposes may form ________.
3. In all the passions, when, by their intensity, they become immoral, the essential and co-operating influence is formed by ________.
4. According to the author “Mammon” stands for ________.
5.According to the passage, malevolence is one of the manifestations of ________.
