necessarily follows from some premises assuredly known and clearly conceived.

But though in some instances we may and must admit things our imagination cannot comprehend, yet it is well worth our care and study to render them as familiar to our comprehension as we can for we shall find them gain easier persuasion with us, and become more serviceable both in our reasonings and practice. For there is a difficulty in the management of inconceivable ideas: wherefore we sometimes suffer conception to run contrary to knowledge, where it can be done without hazard. Everybody now agrees that the Sun constantly keeps his station, and the earth circles round him as an attendant planet: yet we commonly think and speak of his diurnal and annual courses through the heavens, as being more convenient for our ordinary occasions. We may hereafter find it necessary to accommodate our language to the conceptions of mankind, though we should herein a little depart from our real sentiments: this necessity gave rise to the distinction between the esoteric and exoteric doctrine of the philosophers, the meat for men and milk for babes of Saint Paul, and the parabolical and plain, or direct and figurative styles. And we may meet with cases wherein it would be pernicious to entertain conceptions of things ourselves, of whose truth we have abundant reason to be satisfied; the rules of decency require this sometimes, and a regard to higher considerations at others.

CHAP. XV.

COMPOSITION OF MOTIVES.

If one were set to take an account of any of those vast woods in America, scarce ever trodden by human foot, he could not be expected to proceed with much regularity at first: he must follow wherever he should find an opening, and his observations upon the first trial would direct him to take another method of proceeding in making a second: when he had examined one quarter, he must return back to where he set out in order to examine another, and would often find occasion to take fresh notices of things that he thought he had sufficiently observed before. So in this, my investigation of that wilderness, the human mind, I am forced to work my passage where I find it practicable; for I have no preconcerted plan, nor any favorite point, which I am determined to make good at all events: and though not without

some general idea of the end to which my inquiries will lead me, yet have I not a full prospect of the track they will take. I am not to be considered as a professor instructing others in the science he is completely master of, but as a learner seeking after an improvement of my own knowledge: therefore strike into whatever turnings appear most likely to advance me forward on my way, and after having pursued them awhile, sometimes discover a necessity of returning back to take a fuller review of subjects I had considered before. This is at present my case with respect to Motives, and that vivifying ingredient which give them their vigor and activity, Satisfaction, which I thought to have dismissed long ago, but now find myself unable to proceed further without taking them under examination afresh. If I do not perform my work with the regularity I wish, yet as charity covers a multitude of sins, so I hope an earnest desire of producing something that carries the appearance of benefit, will cover a multitude of defects in the performance. But because. I would not neglect method where I can attain it, shall divide what I have next to offer under four general heads: the composition of motives, the several species of them, their production, and the causes introducing them to operate. We have observed before that motives, strictly such, are always something actually present in the thought, but they usually retain' the name while remaining in the repository of our ideas, and not directly occurring to view; and I have distinguished them by the figurative expression of motives operating in the scale, or lying dormant in the box. Under the first head I shall consider them in their active state, under the two next in their quiescent, and the fourth will relate to their passage from the box into the scale.

2. By the composition of motives, I mean the matter whereof they are made, which consists of three principal parts: some action apprehended possible, some consequence, perception, or end, to be attained, which we have heretofore styled the Vehicle, and the satisfaction expected therein. Hence it appears that motives always contain a judgment of the action being possible, of its producing the effect, and of the satisfactoriness of that effect.

Were you privately to unlock the doors of a prison unknown to those within, they would never try to get out so long as they remamed persuaded their endeavors would prove ineffectual. Indeed, a bare possibility of succeeding will often suffice to set us at work you shall see men endeavoring to open doors that they believe to be made fast, but then it is with an apprehension of some chance that they may find means of opening them. Sometimes impatience will raise a temporary persuasion, which the mind eagerly admits against evidence, because it soothes her uneasiness

for a moment; while this lasts, it will make men strive to push through stone walls, but the instant it subsides, they give over their efforts. Nor can you instance any one action of our lives wherein there is not a momentary apprehension, either well or ill grounded, either suggested by understanding or fancy, of something we can do. This seems a strong argument against Hartley's vibratiuncles, since in every exertion of our activity, there must be a perception in the mind of its efficacy. Or if his doctrine were true, it would be of most pernicious consequence to prevail amongst mankind: for were it possible once totally to banish all opinion of power, nobody would ever stir a finger to help themselves. We see this now and then exemplified in persons deeply affected with hypochondriac disorders, who, while they fancy themselves under an utter inability of action, you can never bring them to move either hand or foot, until by some sudden alarm or pungent smart you can dissipate their ideas, and turn imagination into her ordinary channels.

3. But the practicability of an action alone will not incite us to undertake it, for we have many ways wherein we might exert our power continually occurring to our thoughts, which yet we forbear to pursue and when we do act, it is not merely for the sake of acting, but for some end conceived attainable thereby, which our judgment or our fancy recommends. And this end I take to be always some perception the mind desires to have: if we put sugar into our mouths, it is for the sweetness of the taste; if we aim at things useful, it is for the thought of having them in our possession; if at things laudable, it is for the consciousness of having acted right. Even when we go abroad merely upon being tired of sitting, or while away the time in some trifling amusement, it is either to remove the uneasiness of indolence, or for the sensation our exercise will give us, or for some engagement we expect to find in what we do. Nor can one well conceive a man to make any movement, without a notion at the instant, of something to be effected thereby.

4. Neither will the idea of action and its event suffice, without an expectance of satisfaction in the attainment: for we pursue and reject the same things at times, according as we find ourselves in the humor. It is not barely the taste, nor the sight, nor the reflection of objects, but the satisfaction expected therein, that urges us to pursue them: those who have not a palate for sweet things, will never be tempted by the sweetness of sugar, nor will a man take pains to obtain things useful, if he have no concern for the future, nor things laudable, if he have no relish in the consciousness of having performed them. But as we cannot procure

satisfaction without the application of something saitsfactory, therefore other perceptions are regarded only as the vehicle necessary for conveyance, but that alone gives weight to the motive. If we search throughout all the actions of men, we shall find them always preferring that wherein they for the present apprehend the greatest satisfaction: even when they forego pleasures, or submit to pains, or undergo labors, they do it for the sake of something they conceive to be more satisfactory; and when they neglect the known greater good for some paltry appetite, it is because they find more satisfaction in present gratification than in the prospect of distant advantage. Nor if we consider the matter rightly, is this denied by those who ascribe the greatest power of self-moving to the mind: for though they contend for her having the privilege of annexing the idea of Best to whatever object she pleases, yet they admit that this idea so annexed, influences the active powers to pursue it.

5. For the most part we proceed upon some design more or less remote, and then our motive contains several ends of action one within another; understanding retaining the principal purpose in view, and imagination suggesting the means from time to time in their proper order. Thus a motive appears to be a very complicated idea, containing a variety of judgments, together with the subjects whereon they are passed. Besides this, we cannot go on currently without ideal causes to conduct us on our way, nor instruments to assist us, of which we must have a competent idea or we shall mistake in the use of them. But by long custom and familiarity, our compounds coalesce into one idea, and so, as 1 may say, take up no more room in the mind than if they were single and uniform and by habituating ourselves to fix our notice upon a variety of objects in the scenes passing before us, such of them as may serve to prompt or shape our actions, occur at one glance, and as it were in one complex; which gives us our readiness and dexterity in all those exercises of our powers to which we have been frequently accustomed.

CHAP. XVI.

SPECIES OF MOTIVES.

SATISFACTION is always one and the same in kind, how much soever it may vary in degree, for it is that state the mind is thrown into upon the application of things agreeable; and what

ever possesses that quality in equal degree, whether meats and drinks, or diversion, or gain, or acquisition of power, or reflection on past performances, fills it with the same content and complacence wherefore the various species of motives must be distinguished by the variety of vehicles containing satisfaction.

Innumerable are the ways men find at different times to satisfy themselves; to enumerate them all would be endless and needless: therefore I shall endeavor, what is usually practised in such cases, to distinguish them into classes, and I think them reducible to these four, Pleasure, Use, Honor, and Necessity. For I cannot recollect anything we undertake unless it be either for some amusement we hope to find in it, or for some service we expect it will do us, or for the credit that will redound from it in the estimation of others or ourselves, or because compelled thereto by the urgency of our situation. Sometimes two or more of these join forces to move us, and sometimes we have them all four in view at once: a man on bespeaking a suit of clothes, may do it because his old ones are worn out, and he must have something to put upon his back: he may choose his piece of cloth for the closeness and strength that will render it most serviceable; he directs the cut and make so as to appear fashionable, and perhaps orders a dab of gold or silver lace to please his own fancy.

2. There is another division running through all the classes above mentioned, which distinguishes them into motives of reason and motives of fancy: the one giving birth to our considerate, and the other to our inadvertent actions; and both of these for the most part find room to operate without interrupting each other ; when two persons walk together to some place on business, they may swing their arms, or whistle, or discourse, or practise some other little amusement, which neither retards nor forwards them on their way. Nor are we scarce ever so totally engaged in the prosecution of any design as not to make many motions that do not directly tend to the furtherance of it. Or fancy may alter the shape of our actions without turning them aside from their purpose: a man may go on tiptoe for a whim, and make as much speed that way for a while as he desires, but when he finds it grow tiresome, he will return to his ordinary gait.

Our larger undertakings contain many ends, subordinate to one another, and all conducive to the principal; each of which in turn wholly occupies the thought, but the principal all along lies dormant in the mind, ready to operate as occasion shall offer. Thus a traveller, going on a long journey, has the next baiting