ABSTRACT
As devotion is, in some degree, related to affection, though mainly consisting of reverence, often combined with fear, the expression of this state of mind may here be briefly noticed. With some sects, both past and present, religion and love have been strangely combined; and it has even been maintained, lamentable as the fact may be, that the holy kiss of love differs but little from that which a man bestows on a woman, or a woman on a man. With babies, whilst sucking their mother’s breast, this movement of the eyeballs often gives to them an absurd appearance of ecstatic delight; and here it may be clearly perceived that a struggle is going on against the position naturally assumed during sleep. Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood has apparently given the true explanation, though this implies that the attitude is one of slavish subjection. It is the pictorial representation of the Latin dare manus, to signify submission.
