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thus (as was formerly observed) that wealth becomes with many an ultimate object of desire, although it is undoubtedly valued at first merely on account of its subservience to the attainment of other objects. In like manner we are led to desire dress, equipage, retinue, furniture, on account of the estimation in which they are supposed to be held by the public. Dr. Hutcheson calls such desires. secondary desires, and accounts for their origin in the way I have now mentioned. "Since we are capable," says he, "of reflection, memory, observation, and reasoning about the distant tendencies of objects and actions, and not confined to things present, there must arise, in consequence of our original desires, secondary desires of every thing imagined to be useful to gratify any of the primary desires, and that with strength proportioned to the several original desires, and the imagined usefulness or necessity of the advantageous object." "Thus," he continues, as soon as we come to apprehend the use of wealth or power to gratify any of our original desires we must also desire them. Hence arises the universality of the desires of wealth and power, since they are the means of gratifying all other desires."* The only thing exceptionable in the foregoing passage is, that the author classes the desire of power with that of wealth; whereas I apprehend it to be clear, according to Hutcheson's own definition, that the former is a primary desire, and the latter a secondary one. Avarice, indeed, (as I have already remarked,) is but a particular modification of the desire of power generated by the conventional value which attaches to money in the progress of society, in consequence of which it becomes the immediate and the habitual object of pursuit in all the various departments of professional industry.

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The author, also, of the Preliminary Dissertation prefixed to King's Origin of Evil attempts to explain, by means of the association of ideas, the origin, not only of avarice, but of the desire of knowledge and of the desire of fame, both of which I have endeavoured to show, in the preceding pages, are justly entitled to rank with the primary and most simple elements of our active constitution.

* Nature and Conduct of the Passions, Sect. I. Art. II.

That

they, as well as all the other original principles of our nature, are very powerfully influenced by association and habit, is a point about which there can be no dispute; and hence arises the plausibility of those theories which would represent them as wholly factitious.*

* Dr. Hartley's once celebrated work, entitled Observations on Man, in which he has pushed the theory of association to so extravagant a length, and which, not many years ago, found so many enthusiastic admirers in England, seems to have owed its existence to the dissertation here referred to.

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The work here offered to the public," he tells us himself in his preface, "consists of papers written at different times, but taking their rise from the following occasion.

"About eighteen years ago I was informed that the Rev. Mr. Gay, then living, asserted the possibility of deducing all our intellectual pleasures and pains from association. This put me upon considering the power of association. Mr. Gay published his sentiments on this matter, about the same time, in a Dissertation on the Fundamental Principle of Virtue, prefixed to Mr. Archdeacon Law's Translation of Archbishop King's Origin of Evil."

[Mr. Stewart speaks with too much confidence of the waning influence of the "once celebrated work" of Hartley. Since he wrote this note, one of the ablest defences of the Hartleian view has appeared in the Analysis of the Human Mind, by James Mill.

Most writers, holding with Stewart to a plurality of elementary desires, differ from him in making the desire of property and the desire of self-preservation to be of this number. See Upham's Mental Philosophy, Vol. II. Part I. Chap. iv., and Whewell's Elements of Morality, Book I. Chap. ii. On the desire of property, consult Lieber's Political Ethics, Book II. Chap. ii., and Illustrations of the Passions, Vol. I. Chap. V. Also the phrenologists, and particularly Gall.

On the other hand, the author of the article Desir in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques reduces them to three, curiosity, ambition, and sympathy. This writer observes: "The mind always knows, more or less, that which it desires; reason illuminates what sensibility pursues. Malebranche gave the saying of the poet, Ignoti nulla cupido, under a philosophical form of expression, when he defined desire to be 'the idea of a good which a man possesses not, but hopes to possess.' Desire is distinguished by this from the blind tendency which urges every being towards its end, whether it knows it or not. It is a spontaneous movement of nature transformed by intelligence, and constitutes, therefore, a phenomenon which cannot take place except among intelligent beings. A stone has its affinities; a brute has its instincts; man alone has his desires, because he alone has received the gift of thought."

Consult, also, on the subjects treated of in this chapter and the following, Gibon, Cours de Philosophie, P. I. Chap. ix.; Bautain, Philosophie Morale, Partie Psychologique, Chap iv.; Dr. Whewell's edition of Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature: with a Preface and Notes.]

CHAPTER III.

OF OUR AFFECTIONS.

SECTION I.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

I. What Principles included under this Head.] Under this title are comprehended all those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or of suffering to any of our fellowcreatures. According to this definition, which has been adopted by some eminent writers, and among others by Dr. Reid, resentment, revenge, hatred, belong to the class of our affections, as well as gratitude or pity. Hence a distinction of the affections into benevolent and malevolent. I shall afterwards mention some considerations which lead me to think that the distinction requires some limitations in the statement.

Our benevolent affections are various, and it would not perhaps be easy to enumerate them completely. The parental and the filial affections, the affections of kindred, love, friendship, patriotism, universal benevolence, gratitude, pity to the distressed, are some of the most important. Besides these there are peculiar benevolent affections excited by those moral qualities in other men, which render them either amiable or respectable, or objects of admiration.

In the foregoing enumeration, it is not to be understood that all the benevolent affections particularly specified are stated as original principles, or ultimate facts in our constitution. On the contrary, there can be little doubt that several of them may be analyzed into the same general principle differently modified, according to the circumstances in which it operates. This, however, (notwithstanding the stress which has been sometimes laid upon it,) is chiefly a question of arrangement. Whether we suppose these principles to be all ultimate facts, or some of them to be resolvable into other facts more general, they

are equally to be regarded as constituent parts of human nature, and, upon either supposition, we have equal reason to admire the wisdom with which that nature is adapted to the situation in which it is placed. The laws which regulate the acquired perceptions of sight are surely as much a part of our frame as those which regulate any of our original perceptions; and although they require for their development a certain degree of experience and observation in the individual, the uniformity of the result shows that there is nothing arbitrary or accidental in their origin.

The question, indeed, concerning the origin of our different affections, leads to some curious disquisitions, but is of very subordinate importance to those inquiries which relate to their nature and laws and uses. In many philosophical systems, however, it seems to have been considered as the most interesting subject of discussion con'nected with this part of the human constitution.

II. Two Circumstances in which all the Benevolent Affections agree.] Before we proceed to consider any of our benevolent affections in detail, I shall make a few observations on two circumstances in which they all agree. In the first place, they are all accompanied with an agreeable feeling; and, secondly, they imply a desire of happiness or of good to their respective objects.*

1. That the exercise of all our kind affections is accompanied with an agreeable feeling will not be questioned. Next to a good conscience it constitutes the principal part of human happiness. With what satisfaction do we submit to fatigue and danger in the service of those we love, and how many cares do even the most selfish voluntarily bring on themselves by their attachment to others! So much, indeed, of our happiness is derived from this source, that those authors whose object is to furnish amusement to the mind avail themselves of these affections as one of the chief vehicles of pleasure. Hence the principal charm of tragedy, and of every other species of pathetic composition. How far it is of use to separate in

* See Reid On the Active Powers, Essay III. Part II. Chap. iii.

this manner" the luxury of pity" from the opportunities of active exertion may perhaps be doubted. My own opinion on this question I have stated at some length in the Philosophy of the Human Mind.*

Without entering, however, in this place into the argument I have there endeavoured to support, I shall only remark at present, that the pleasures of kind affection are by no means confined to the virtuous part of our species. They mingle also with our criminal indulgences, and often mislead the young and thoughtless by the charms they impart to vice and folly. It is, indeed, from this very quarter that the chief dangers to morals are to be apprehended in early life; and it is a melancholy consideration to add, that these dangers are not a little increased by the amiable and attractive qualities by which nature often distinguishes those unfortunate men who would seem, on a superficial view, to be her peculiar favorites.

Nor is it only when the kind affections meet with circumstances favorable to their operation that the exercise of them is a source of enjoyment. Contrary to the analogy of most, if not of all, our other active principles, there is a degree of pleasure mixed with the pain even in those cases in which they are disappointed in the attainment of their object. Nay, in such cases it often happens that the pleasure predominates so far over the pain as to produce a mixed emotion, on which a wounded heart loves to dwell. When death, for example, has deprived us of the society of a friend, we derive some consolation for our loss from the recollection of his virtues, which awakens in our mind all those kind affections which the sight of him used to inspire; and in such a situation the indulgence of these affections is preferred, not only to every lighter amusement, but to every other social pleasure. Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse ! The final cause of the agreeable emotion connected with the exercise of benevolence in all its various modes was evidently to induce us to cultivate with peculiar care a class of our active principles so immediately subservient to the happiness of society.†

* Part I. Chap. vii. Sect. v.

+ See Lucan's picturesque and pathetic description of the behaviour

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