For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which bas been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt.
He regarded them as a form of madness.

"The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation.

He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.

Feelings, as such, he considered to be no proper subjects of praise or blame.

Right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct--of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong.