place for the object of his pursuit during every particular stage: but if anything happens suggesting an alteration or addition to his plan, then the main purpose of his journey presently occurs and weighs with him in his deliberations. Most of us have a few leading aims that shape the general course of our lives, such as the attainment of some art or science, advancement of our fortune, engagement to a profession or favorite diversion: and these branch out into divisions which again contain inferior views; like the governors of provinces or generals of armies, who have their subaltern officers commanding the private men. In some persons there is one predominant purpose, usually styled the ruling passion, as wealth, power, or fame, that like Aaron's serpent, swallows up all the rest, and will suffer nothing to weigh that does not coincide with its interests. 3. We observed a little while ago how understanding and imagination influence each other: there are few of our purposes to be attained at a single stroke, but judgment recommends the thing to be done, and the trains of imagination, or that habitual expertness we have acquired in works of the like nature, successively suggests the means of performing it; which must be looked upon as ideal causes, having no satisfaction of their own, but taking a tincture of that belonging to the design they tend to promote. On the other hand, imagination often sets understanding at work. How many people employ all their sagacity and contrivance to compass some sudden whim they take into their heads without ever considering whether it be worth the while! And indeed in our most prudent proceedings we generally set out on some motive arising involuntarily to our view: for when sense, appetite, or a train of reflection instigates to an undertaking, and nothing occurs to render the expedience of it doubtful, what has understanding to do but concert proper measures for completing it? 4. Wherefore as the motives deposited in our imagination bear so great a sway in our proceedings, it is well worth the pains to examine what kinds of them we are capable of, in order to store up such as may serve us best and most effectually: but this is no easy matter, as well by reason of their smallness as of their obscurity. The satisfactions urging to our by-motions, while attention fixes on something else, are of the evanescent kind, as Hartly calls them, by an epithet taken from the mathematicians, who term those angles evanescent that lie between a perpendicular and the foot of an hyperbola: yet these little angles are sufficient to begin an opening between the two lines, and so are the little satisfactions suffi cient to produce sudden and short actions, and afford us that complacence we feel in the common transactions of life. But there are other satisfactions, which, though strong enough of themselves to strike the eye, yet are covered from our sight whenever we endeavor to look upon them by other objects intervening. When we attempt to recollect the inducements of our conduct, there commonly occurs, instead of them, specious reasons serving to justify it to ourselves or the world. How many people ascribe their actions to disinterestedness, or benevolence, or virtue, when they were prompted by fear, or resentment, or profit, or reputation? They fancy themselves possessed of those motives, but really have no such thing in their composition, or have them so feeble as never to weigh against anything else lying in counterbalance. For it must be noted, that when we reflect on our past behavior, we have not in view before us that state of mind we were actually in at the time of acting, which is gone and over, but its representative idea; and our ideas being perpetually upon the float, leave room for another representation to slip in such aims as bear an unfavorable aspect, hiding themselves, or taking shelter under others more reputable, which renders it extremely difficult to discover what real motives we have belonging to us, without continually keeping a watchful eye and fixing our attention upon them at the very instant of their operating. 5. The want of knowing what motives lie in the storehouse of imagination, has probably given rise to the notion of an arbitrary power which some attribute to the Will: for being acquainted only with the motives of understanding, and those strong instigations of passion which can escape nobody's observation, and yet finding that those incitements do not operate with equal effect upon all occasions, but sometimes one prevails, and sometimes the other, they can assign no cause of the difference besides an inherent authority in the Will to determine its own motions. But if one could discern all the various turns imagination is apt to take, it might not be difficult from thence to account for the turns of volition : and whenever the dictates of reason appear to act with more or less weight than was expected, one might always discover some secret inclination, or wilfulness, or persuasion, or moral sense at bottom that casts the balance. Therefore I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to trace out the minute and obscure motives, as well as the more observable, when I come to consider each of my four classes particularly. CHAP. XVII.' PRODUCTION OF MOTIVES. FOR reasons before given, it seems probable there is some particular organ or fibre, which I have called the spring, that affects us with satisfaction and uneasiness. Whether there be a several spring for either, or that one affects us differently according to its different motions, I shall not pretend to determine: but this spring never plays, unless touched by some of those organs which excite our other perceptions. Hence proceeds the necessity of a vehicle, because we cannot obtain satisfaction without the ministry of some idea that shall prove satisfactory, nor fall under uneasiness without the feeling or thought of something that shall render us uneasy. But in what manner soever our ideas operate either way, certain it is that nature, in the formation of our bodies, first gives them their respective qualities; for many sensations from our birth give us pain, and others afford us pleasure, and those sensations are not of our own procuring, but excited in us by external objects wherewith volition has no concern: therefore nature does not furnish us with motives, which must be worked out by experience of what hurts or delights us; for we can have no inducement for action before we know what to choose or reject. Our senses each of them respectively convey pleasure from certain objects, and pain from others; but those sensations do not discover the means of procuring them, therefore they cannot generate a motive; which must arise from the remembrance of what exercises of our power have used to bring the objects to our organs, or to remove them. Even appetite, as given by nature, is no more than a pleasing or irksome feel, according to the several degrees of its intenseness; nor does it grow into desire until we have learned what will satisfy it. One may observe that little children, when uneasy through hunger or sleepiness, do not know what is the matter with them, and are so far from being moved by appetite towards the gratification of it, that they fight against their victuals and other methods of relief when applied to them. We have observed before, that every motive contains a judgment, and that the first judgment we ever passed must precede the first act we ever performed. How we attain this first judgment, whether by participation of the mother's ideas, or by the mental organs being thrown mechanically into a modification that shall excite a perception of judgment, I am not able to explain: but thus much we may conclude for certain, that little children come into the world with a general notion of action, though they know very little how to apply their powers for particular purposes. When anything affects them with pleasure or pain, they put themselves into violent agitations, throwing about their arms and legs, and working with every muscle of their body: and at other times you see them very full of motion continually while awake. By thus perpetually exerting their powers, they light upon such motions as happen to relieve them in their wants or please them with the sensation they feel in the exercise: the idea of those motions and their effect in time sinking into their reflection, urges them to repeat the like upon other occasions, and thus instructed by accident they gradually rise to the more perfect management of their limbs and organs. 2. As motives have their foundation in the knowledge of things satisfactory, or the contrary, of course they will follow the quality found in certain sensations of affecting us either way, and consequently will depend upon that which gives them their respective qualities: therefore many of our propensities and aversions, and our appetites, may be termed natural, although not innate; because unavoidably fallen into by experience of those properties of affecting us, which nature has given to several sensations. But the matter of our composition, whereon our sensations depend, being extremely soft and pliable, is susceptible of change from alterations in the grosser parts of our frame: therefore nature does not entirely preserve the texture she had given us originally, but in the growth of our bodies brings other wheels of the machine to catch the spring of satisfaction. Children, boys, young men and old, have their different sources of enjoyment; and it has been observed of our tastes, that they vary every seven years. Custom likewise, commonly styled a second nature, varies the position of our mechanism, so as to produce an affection from the same touches, different from that they produced originally. What parts of our flesh are tenderer at first than the soles of our feet? yet continual use brings them to be callous, and enables them to bear our weight without trouble. Bitters or tobacco offend the taste or smell of those who never tried them before; but use reconciles men to them, then rénders them pleasant, and afterwards indifferent again. Nor have particular accidents, or the dispositions of our body less effect to change the quality of objects: a surfeit will give an antipathy to things we were fond of before; a fever makes us nauseate our ordinary food; fulness, emptiness, or drowsiness, renders those Nature motions of our limbs irksome that used to delight us. has so constructed our muscles, that they remove from one spring to the other in the course of their play after long sitting we find our legs stiff, a few steps make their movement pleasant, a long walk renders it laborious, and a longer fatigues us. The same is notorious with respect to the other senses, wherein weariness takes the name of satiety uncouth motions or sensations we find troublesome, familiar ones generally agreeable, but continued too long they become tiresome; whence comes the observation, that variety makes the pleasure of life. As the sources of our enjoyment vary we quickly perceive it, and our motives vary accordingly; for those objects we conceive in our present circumstances agreeable, move us to pursue them. 3. It may be presumed, that nature gives our mental organs an aptness to affect us agreeably with their motion, though this quality cannot operate till there have been a competent number of trains worked in the imagination to give them play: for I think we may perceive an amusement in every easy motion of our thoughts, though upon matters indifferent, when they are not strained by intense application, nor stopped by difficulties, nor run upon melancholy subjects; and so we may in every motion of our limbs and exercise of our senses, unless prevented by some such hindrances as those above mentioned, or by the notice being drawn off upon something else. For But imagination derives most of her affecting quality from sensation; for the first ideas of reflection being only sensations repeated though in a fainter degree, they return with some portion of the satisfaction accompanying them at their first entrance. the remembrance of past enjoyments generally fills us with delight, if it be not destroyed by another reflection of their being to be had no more; and this delight increases upon the prospect of their being repeated, for whatever we apprehend will please us when attained, gives actual pleasure in the approach towards it. Which adds strength to our motives, or rather gives them their whole vigor, for present satisfaction being our constant pursuit, nothing remote could ever move us if it did not afford an immediate enjoyment in the expectation, or there were no uneasiness in the thought of missing it. 4. Thus far our motives may be styled natural, for though nature does not directly infuse them, she supplies us with sensations that cannot fail to attract our notice, and thereby informs us what to choose, and what to refuse. But we receive a considerable accession to our stock of motives from other sources. Our situation and circumstances in life, and variety of accidents falling |