to be governed by force, should be kept
alive in the minds of children; the dread of shame is a more powerful
motive than the fear of bodily pain. To prove the truth of this, we
may recollect that few people have ever been known to destroy
themselves in order to escape from bodily pain; but numbers, to avoid
shame, have put an end to their existence. It has been a question,
whether mankind are most governed by hope or by fear, by rewards or by
punishments? This question, like many others which have occasioned
tedious debates, turns chiefly upon words. Hope and fear are sometimes
used to denote mixed, and sometimes unmixed, passions. Those who speak
of them as unmixed passions, cannot have accurately examined their own
feelings.[75] The probability of good, produces hope; the probability
of evil, excites fear; and as this probability appears less or
greater, more remote or nearer to us, the mind fluctuates between the
opposite passions. When the probability increases on either side, so
does the corresponding passion. Since these passions seldom exist in
absolute separation from one another, it appears that we cannot
philosophically speak of either as an independent motive: to the
question, therefore, "which governs mankind the most, hope or fear?"
we cannot give an explicit answer.

When we would determine upon the probability of any good or evil, we
are insensibly influenced, not only by the view of the circumstances
before us, but also by our previous habits; we judge not only by the
general laws of human events, but also by our own individual
experience. If we have been usually successful, we are inclined to
hope; have we been accustomed to misfortunes, we are hence disposed to
fear. "Caesar and his fortune are on board," exclaimed the confident
hero to the mariners. Hope excites the mind to exertion; fear
represses all activity. As a preventative from vice, you may employ
fear; to restrain the excesses of all the furious passions, it is
useful and necessary: but would you rouse the energies of virtue, you
must inspire and invigorate the soul with hope. Courage, generosity,
industry, perseverance, all the magic of talents, all the powers of
genius, all the virtues that appear spontaneous in great minds, spring
from hope. But how different is the hope of a great and of a little
mind; not only are the objects of this hope different, but the passion
itself is raised and supported in a different manner. A feeble person,