out, furnish us with many; our intercourse among mankind with many more, some of them thrown upon us designedly by education and instruction, and others formed insensibly by custom and example; some we fall into by habit without intending it, and others we work out for ourselves by our own care and industry. But the principal supply of our stores comes from Translation: upon which, though perhaps I may not have a great deal to say, yet because we shall find frequent occasion to mention it hereafter, therefore I shall make a chapter of it by itself.

CHAP. XVIII.

TRANSLATION.

We have taken notice in the chapter on judgment (§ 38) of the transferable nature of assent, and how it passes from the premises to the conclusion; I do not mean while we retain the whole process of argumentation in view, for then assent does not adhere directly to the point concluded on, but only connects with it remotely, by the intervening evidence. But daily experience testifies that conviction will often remain after the grounds of it have slipped out of our thought: whenever we reflect on the thing proved, there occurs a judgment of its being true, united in the same assemblage without aid of any proof to support it; and this many times after the proofs are so far gone out of our memory that we cannot possibly recal them. By this channel we are supplied with many truths, commonly reputed self-evident, because though we know them assuredly for truths, we cannot discover how we came by that knowledge. In like manner we have store of propensities, generally esteemed natural, because we cannot readily trace them to any other origin than that quality of affecting us, assigned by nature to certain ideas. But having shown how translation prevails in satisfaction, as well as assent, there will appear reason to conclude, that we derive our inclinations and moral senses through the same channel as our knowledge, without having them interwoven originally into our constitution.

As every motive contains an opinion of the object moving us being satisfactory, whatever appears conducive to procure it we must necessarily judge expedient: but this does not complete the translation, for there requires something more to transfer satisfaction than assent. If a man wishes to see some fine house and

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gardens, but the way lies along very dirty roads, the circumstance of slouching through mire does not immediately become a motive of action with him but if he had frequent occasion to ride along bad roads upon very desirable errands, though he might never come to like the exercise, they would grow much more tolerable to him than he found them at first. For the perpetual tendency of measures to what will please us greatly, alters their quality of affecting us, and in many cases renders them pleasant of themselves and when this happens they become motives, the transla-、 tion being perfectly made.

2. Imagination is not so scanty but that it can exhibit several objects to our notice at once, and this I may say in longitude as well as latitude presenting a chain of causes and effects lying beyond one another. As few of our desires can be accomplished by a single effort, there occurs together with the object of our wishes, several means tending successively to compass it; which means have no satisfaction of their own, but take a tincture from that whereto they conduce: under this prospect, the object lying at the end of the line only is our motive; but as whatever we apprehend will please gives actual pleasure in the approach, therefore we pursue the intermediate steps for the satisfaction of that approach.

But the line of our pursuit frequently runs to a greater length than imagination has room to contain, and some of the means necessary to attain our end, require our whole attention to compass them; in this case, so much of the line as lies beyond those means, drops out of our thought for a time, but leaves that tincture of satisfaction it had given them behind the means then become motives for the present, for our motive upon every occasion, is always that furthest point we have in view at the instant of acting; whatever inducements we might have had to fix upon that point, are not motives while absent from our thought. Thus, if a man, being to ride a long journey, wants to buy a horse, which he does not know readily where to procure, the inquiries necessary to be made, and steps to be taken for that purpose, occupy him entirely, until he has gotten one to his liking: all this while the acquisition of a horse actuates his motions, and he will assign that for his motive to anybody who shail ask why he bestirs himself, unless they recal another idea into his head, by asking further what he wants the horse for. But these are only temporary. motives, which borrow satisfaction for a time from another hand, and have it not of their own property, therefore are not to be reckoned among our stock of motives reposited in the storehouse. But many times it happens that we find the same means con

ducive to our enjoyments of various kinds, and upon repeated occasions, which gives them the tincture so often, that at last it becomes their natural color: they then move us of themselves, without needing any further inducement to recommend them; and then the translation is perfectly completed. Sometimes they receive their quality by one strong impression: a burnt child dreads the fire, and some persons having received hurt by a sword can never endure the sight of one afterwards. But oftener the quality comes gradually by use: boys are driven by fear to their lessons until they take a liking to them; and many find amusement in professions they first entered into much against the grain. Nor is it uncommon for this quality to adhere so strongly, that no change of circumstances can disengage it: old people retain a fondness for their youthful sports after they have lost all sensation of pleasure in the exercise; and your hard students continue to plod on without prospect of any good to come of it, and after it appears manifestly prejudicial to their health.

3. Translation takes place solely in the mental organs, yet seems to bear some resemblance in the manner of it with those changes made in our bodies by custom. Sailors bring their hands to a hardness by continually handling the ropes, so that they lose a great deal of the sensibility belonging to them. Nature perhaps at first designed us for quadrupeds, but the continual cares of our nurses enure us to an erect posture, so that we should now find it extremely troublesome to go upon all four. In these cases there is an alteration made in the texture of our flesh, or disposition of our muscles, whereby the same motions and objects give us different sensations from what they formerly did. In like manner when inclination passes from the end to the means, though there be no change in the grosser parts, nor difference of sensation effected, yet we may suppose some variation in the posture of our internal organs, those which did not affect us at all before, being brought to fasten on the spring of satisfaction by frequent application thereto.

But in what manner soever translation be effected, nobody can deny that we often acquire a liking to things from their having frequently promoted our other desires, where no alteration in our muscles or animal œconomy can be suspected. I need instance only in one very common propensity, whose derivation from prior inclinations will not be controverted. Everybody will acknowledge that the value of money arises solely from the use of it: if we had not found it commanding the pleasures and conveniences of life, we should never have thought it worth our regard. Nature gave us no such desire, but we are forced to take pains in

teaching children to be careful, and those with whom such pains have proved unsuccessful, cannot rest till they get rid of their money, or, as we say, it burns in their pockets. Nevertheless, the continual experience we find of money supplying our wants and fancies, gives it a general estimation among mankind, so that the desire of gain becomes a powerful motive of action. Few of us being suggested an acquisition of fortune by some honest, creditable, and easy method, but would feel an immediate pleasure in the pursuit, without looking forward to the many pretty things he could purchase: nor would he be thought a prudent man who should hesitate to receive a sum until he could find out some particular uses whereto he might apply it. And in some persons the love of riches rises to such an exorbitant pitch, as to overwhelm all those desires which first made them valuable: a covetous man will deny himself the pleasures, the conveniences, even the necessaries of life, for the sake of hoarding up his pelf, and seems to retain.no other motive in his storehouse than that of dying worth a plumb. What shall we say then? is there a different structure

parts between the miser, the generous œconomist, and the spendthrift? Their organs of sensation continue the same, there is no hardness of flesh, no stiffness or flexibility of muscles, in the one more than the other but their imagination has received a different cast, and the mental organs, exhibiting their ideas of reflection, been made to communicate differently with the spring of satisfaction. For though the niggard may possibly be prevailed on to do a generous deed once in his life, yet even then he feels a secret reluctance in parting with his cash: which reluctance is involuntary, therefore forced upon him by the act of some other agent distinct from himself, for we may suppose he would give cheerfully if he could; but this agent can be none other than the internal and finer parts of his mechanism, which, being differently connected, affect him in a different manner from what they would another person.

One might produce many other instances to show that our motives generate one another; that the children survive after their parents are dead and forgotten; and sometimes, like the viper's brood, destroy those that gave them birth. Many of these descendant motives gain the credit of being coeval with ourselves, and that even among the considerate and studious: they are currently reputed to have been, like Melchizedech, without father or mother, because we find no mention in our records of any they had. But upon a strict and impartial scrutiny it may be not impossible to trace out their origin, and perhaps make it appear that all the motives actuating us in our riper years, except sensations of

pleasure and pain, or our natural and acquired appetites, are of the translated kind. Through this channel we derive most of our tastes, inclinations, sentiments, moral senses, checks of conscience, obligations, impulses of fancy, attachments to professions, fondness for diversions, regard to reputation, views of prudence, virtues and vices, and in general all those pursuits, whether of distant or present aims, that render the occupations of men different from the amusements of children.

CHAP. XIX.

SYMPATHY.

THIS title may perhaps give occasion to expect a dissertation upon those sympathetic cures spoken of by Sir Kenelm Digby, who tells you that wounds have been healed by applying salves and plaisters to the instrument that made them. Or of that similitude supposed to be in the constitution of two persons, so that any good or evil befalling one of them shall instantly affect the other at a great distance, by means of certain cognate effluvia passing to and fro between them. But I deal in no such wonders; common experience is my guide, and that must have informed everybody how much we continually sympathise with the sentiments and affections of the company among whom we converse. this quality contributes greatly to introduce our motives into act, and by frequently introducing them to produce new ones, it seems properly to claim a place between those two subjects.

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2. We are not long in the world from our first entrance before we perceive that our pleasures and pains depend much upon the actions of those about us: on a little further progress, we discover that their actions follow their disposition of mind, and afterwards learn to distinguish those dispositions by certain marks of them in their looks and gestures. This makes children perpetually attentive to the motions and countenance of persons into whose hands they fall: nor does there want another cause to render them more so, for having but few stores in their own imagination, they catch the ideas of other people to supply themselves with employment. And in our advanced years we cannot well carry on any business or argument, or enjoy the pleasures of conversation, without entering into the thoughts and notions of one another. When we ar

rive at the use of understanding, the judgment of others weighs with us as a just and natural evidence, inducing us to judge accor