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Human life has been often likened to a race, and the parallel holds, not only in the general resemblance, but in many of the minuter circumstances. When the horses first start from the barrier how easy and sportive are their sallies, sometimes one taking the lead, sometimes another! If they happen to run abreast, their contiguity seems only the effect of the social instinct. In proportion, however, as they advance in their career, the spirit of emulation becomes gradually more apparent, till at length, as they draw near to the goal, every sinew and every nerve is strained to the utmost, and it is well if the competition closes without some suspicion of jostling and foul play on the part of the winner.

How exact and melancholy a picture of the race of ambition; of the insensible and almost inevitable effect of political rivalship in extinguishing early friendships; and of the increasing eagerness with which men continue to grasp at the palm of victory till the fatal moment arrives when it is to drop from their hands for ever!

As we have artificial appetites so we have also artificial desires. Whatever conduces to the attainment of any object of natural desire is itself desired on account of its subservience to this end, and frequently comes in process of time to be regarded as valuable in itself, independent of this subservience. It is thus (as we 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 desire 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 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 industury.

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. 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.

"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.”

. VOL. V.

7

CHAPTER THIRD.

OF OUR AFFECTIONS.

SECTION I.

General Observations.

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 fellow creatures. 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 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 some

times 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 developement 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 connected with this part of the human constitution.

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.*

I. 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

See Reid on the Active Powers, p. 144. 4to Edition.

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 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 (as men of loose principles are too apt to flatter themselves) 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

Vol. I. Chap. vii. Section v.

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