work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context 4525,Ruling Passion,HDIS (Poetry); confirmed in ECCO-TCP.,2003-11-04 00:00:00 UTC,"Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes,
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise;
Present to grasp, and future still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike ,
On diff'rent Senses diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent Passions more or less inflame,
As strong, or weak, the organs of the frame;
And hence one Master Passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest
.
(Epistle II, ll. 123-32; cf. pp. 28-9 in ECCO-TCP ed.)
",,11880,"•I've included twice: Government and Animals.
•Christopher Fox reads these lines as influencing Hume and quotes the following from the Treatise: ""a predominant passion swallows up an inferior, and converts it to it self."" See Fox, ""Defining Eighteenth-Century Psychology"" in Psychology and Literature in the Eighteenth Century (New York: AMS Press, 1987). p. 11.","""And hence one Master Passion in the breast, / Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.""",Animals,2014-07-11 16:09:06 UTC,Epistle II