dingly; but we have seen how the judgment of expedience, frequently reiterated, transfers satisfaction upon the measures so conceived expedient: and we purposely imitate the ways and manners of our teachers, or other persons whom we esteem more expert and knowing in any matter than ourselves. Thus we acquire much of our sympathy by inadvertent notice, and add more by design and industry; until custom in both ways has worked out trains wherein imagination learns to run involuntarily and mechanically. This appears most evident in compassion, for we cannot help sympathizing with distress, though we feel it painful to ourselves, and know it can afford no relief to the party suffering.

3. But we catch our other affections, too, from the prospect of them exhibited before us: a sprightly countenance makes us cheerful, and a face of melancholy damps our spirits; we pursue other people's hopes, and take alarm at their terrors; we grow to love things we perceive them fond of, and contract aversions from their dislike. Nor is immediate sensation the only thing that can work this effect upon us; for we find the same produced by stories of accidents befalling persons at a distance; we receive impression from facts recorded in history, and feel ourselves affected with the affections of those who have been dead a thousand

years ago. Nay, we find ourselves interested in imaginary scenes, partaking the pleasures and pains of fictitious characters in a play or a novel: and as we take a tincture of the affections, so we imbibe the opinions, and insensibly adopt the views of those with whom we have continual intercourse, which gives example the prevalence over precept, and enables evil communications to corrupt good manners. Even sensations may undergo a change by the effect we see them have upon others: we may get a relish to a dish upon observing the company eat eagerly of it, and nauseate a joint of meat because somebody at table fancies it to have an unsavory smell. How many people take their taste of music from the applauses of connoisseurs? How hideous does a once admired pattern of silk become in the ladies' eyes upon being grown out of fashion? What change do imbibed notions make in the ears of great scholars, as we have remarked in Chap. XIII. § 2, so that they cannot distinguish between a long sound and a short, a vowel and a consonant? None can have avoided observing how apt we are to mimic the gestures, fall into the habits, and copy the imperfections we see continually before us and it has been observed a thousand times, that laughing and yawning generally go round the company. We participate in some measure the ideas of all men, but more with those of whom we have a good opinion or frequent converse, than with strangers; for the

judgment of the former carries greater weight upon us for our estimation of their persons, and that of the latter makes up by repetition for what it wanted in strength.

4. But were we to give a full latitude to sympathy, we should whiffle about with every wind, nor could ever keep steady to one tenor of conduct, because we should perpetually meet with somebody or other leading us by their example to swerve from it. This teaches us a reserve and caution against taking impressions too hastily, and confines our propensity to imitation within due bounds. Yet where there are not urgent reasons to the contrary, I do not see why we may not let sympathy take its course, as it gives an easier flow to our thoughts, renders us more sociable, and assists us in making many improvements.

There are some who carry this reserve to extremities, so far as to throw their mind into a disposition contrary to that they see exhibited this temper whoever pleases may call Antipathy, as being the opposite to sympathy. It generally takes its rise or terminates in ill nature, rendering the possessors morose, contemptuous, and intractable they repine at others' successes, and rejoice at the sight of disappointment; if you talk seriously to them, they fall to joking; and if you would make them merry, they put on a more than ordinary solemnity of countenance. There are those who affect this contrariety of humor towards mankind in general, but it is more usually practised with respect only to such against whom we have conceived some great prejudice. And, indeed, if ever allowable, it is so when we fall under a necessity of consorting with persons of whose errors or evil principles we have just cause for suspicion, to prevent our taking contagion from them. Yet some situations render us all so unapt for imitation, that we rather take disgust at the expression of affections not tallying with our own in our seasons of jolity we cannot endure a melancholy aspect, and when under affliction, any levity disturbs us: but this proceeds rather from the force of sympathy, than otherwise; for that perpetually urges the mind to assimilate her trains to patterns she cannot follow under her present circumstances.

CHAP. XX.

INTRODUCTION OF MOTIVES.

SENSATION first moves us to action, in order to continue it if pleasant, or remove it if painful: thus the taste of victuals urges children to take more of them into their mouths, and the smart of a pin to catch away their hands from it. When they have gotten competent stores of reflection, these too affect them in like manner with sensation, and sometimes overpower it; for you may draw off a child's notice from any little pain or craving of appetite, by diverting it with play-things. As imagination becomes worked into trains, the notice, being put into one by some particular object, will run on to other ideas very different from those the object exhibited. Nor does imagination fail to suggest fancies of her own motion without any object to introduce them: of what kind they shall be, depends greatly upon constitution, the present state of our animal spirits or disposition of mind, inclining us either to seriousness or gaiety, business or diversion. Habits, too, attract the notice to follow them inadvertently by that ease there is in giving way to the little transient desires they present rather than restraining them. And when experience has brought us acquainted with the properties of things external, and the command we have over the ideas of our mind, which knowledge gives us the use of our understanding, we can then procure motives for ourselves; either by application of such objects as will raise any particular desire, or by putting reflection upon the hunt for something that will please us, or suggesting inducements to strengthen us in our purpose, or by resolution to banish some intruding ideas, and fix our whole attention upon others.

2. Thus there are three causes contributing to introduce motives into the scale: the action of the mind, impulse of external objects, and mechanical play of our organs; and these three mutually influence one another. The mind operates two ways, either by design or inadvertently; for when she turns her notice upon an idea, though with no other view than for the present amusement it affords, this occasions it to lead in a train of its associates, and often awakens a desire that would have lain dormant without such attention. Therefore, if we have any hurtful inclination belonging to us, it is very dangerous to let our thoughts run upon objects relative thereto; for we may raise a disturber we did not expect, nor can quiet again whenever we please: and perhaps desire scarce ever rises to any high pitch, unless assisted by some ac

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tion of the mind tending to foment it. But when the mind acts with design, nevertheless she has that design suggested by something happening to her from without, or by the spontaneous working of imagination; to which sources she must have recourse in search for motives of her conduct, or gathering encouragements to support her in an undertaking. Even in the most arbitrary exercise of her power, as when she endeavors to attain her purpose by dint of resolution, she uses some instrument to do her work. A man that holds his hand near a roasting fire, must have some reason for so doing, either to cure a burn, under the notion of fire driving out fire, or to try how long he can hold it there, or for some other purpose which appears satisfactory at the time, or else it would never have put him upon the attempt: this satisfactory purpose, then, he strives to retain in full vigor, without suffering it to fluctuate or fade, and withdraws his notice from that uneasiness the smart of the fire would throw upon him. Herein he acts upon the mental eye much in the same manner as we do upon the bodily, when we wink against a glaring light, or stretch our nerves to observe some obscure object that cannot be discerned without straining; or as we do upon the organs of hearing, when of two persons talking to us at once, we disregard the one, and attend wholly to the other. And in all cases of resolution, we may perceive the like method practised: we do not annex the idea of Best to what had it not before, but among opposite subjects, whereto that idea is already annexed, we hold one under contemplation, and exclude the rest, or strengthen it with other considerations, from whence that idea may be transferred.

Things external are made to operate upon us either by natural causes, or the situation we stand in, or the company we consort with but what effect they shall produce in us depends greatly upon the cast of our imagination. For we have observed before, that the same objects affect people variously, exciting different judgments, and suggesting different motives in one from what they do in another: nor does the mind want a power many times of applying or removing objects, and of increasing or diminishing in some measure the impression of those before her by an operation upon her organs.

In like manner the spontaneous courses of our ideas, although depending chiefly upon habit, and running into those trains of thought to which we have been accustomed, yet may be diverted by objects occurring, or drawn aside by the force of sympathy, or controlled by the power of the mind, so as to take another track than they would have followed of their own accord.

3. If we examine our proceedings carefully, we shall find in all of them a mixture of volition and machinery, and perhaps the latter bearing a greater share than the former. We never enter

upon an undertaking without some purpose starting up in our thoughts, or recommended by the present occasion as expedient or agreeable: we choose the measures for accomplishing it from among the stores presented by our understanding; and though we perform the work by our own activity, yet our manner of proceeding is such as former practice has made ready to us, and the minute steps necessary for completing it, rise mechanically in our imagination. Our latent motives, which bear so great a sway in the behavior of most men, cannot owe their appearance to the mind, because they escape her observation when she would discover them and our minute motives prompting us to inadvertent actions, which are far more numerous than commonly supposed, must take rise from some other spring, because the mind perceives them not the moment before they operate, nor remembers them the moment after. Nor are the grosser parts of our machine without their influence upon our actions: the natural temperament of our constitution, the accidental condition of our humors, the brisk or slow circulation of our animal spirits, the circumstances of health or sickness, freshness or weariness, fulness or emptiness, render the mind alert or unapt for exercise, turn imagination into different trains, excite desires of various kinds, and in great measure model the shape of our behavior.

4. What is the particular structure of our machine, how the several parts of it communicate, or in what manner they operate upon one another, we cannot pretend to describe, and therefore must express ourselves by figures. Sometimes we talk of characters imprinted, or traces engraven in the memory, sometimes of roads and tracks worn in the imagination, of weights hanging in the balance, springs impelling to action, wheels resembling those of clock-work, images striking upon the mental eye, or streams and currents running in various channels. Those expressions, if intended for a physical account of our interior frame, could not all be admitted, as being inconsistent with one another: but when we speak figuratively of a matter we cannot describe directly, we may vary our images without inconsistency, for the same will not answer in every case, therefore it is allowable to take any that shall afford the greatest resemblance according to the present occasion for which we want to apply it.

But if we may guess at the internal texture of our machine by the grosser parts of it discoverable upon dissection, they will lead us to imagine that our ideas are conveyed by a multitude of little