upon how they love, and how they hate; upon the nature and degree of all those active powers, which go to make the constitution of their minds.

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The active principles of our nature are divided by Mr. Stewart and Dr. Reid into appetites, desires, affections, self-love, and the moral faculty. They call those feelings appetites which take their rise from the body, - such as hunger and thirst, which operate periodically after certain intervals, and cease only for a time, upon the attainment of a particular object. They mean by desires, those feelings which do not take their rise from the body; which do not operate periodically, and do not cease upon the attainment of a particular object. The most remarkable active principles belonging to this class, they consider to be the desire of knowledge, or curiosity, the desire of society, the desire of power, and the desire of superiority, or the principle of emulation. Under the title of affections, they comprehend all those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication of joy or pain to our fellow-creatures. According to this definition, resentment, revenge, hatred, belong to the class of our affections, as well as gratitude or pity. When I explain what they mean by self-love, and the moral faculty, I must do it at full length. This division of the active powers I shall in general adopt, and propose to begin with the affections.

The popular word for affections in their highest degree, is passion; and the objection to using it, is, that it only means the excess of the feeling: for instance, we could not say that a man experienced the passion of anger who felt a calm indignation at a serious injury he had received; we should only think ourselves justifiable in applying the term passion if he were transported beyond all bounds, if his reason were almost vanquished, and if the bodily signs of that passion were visible in his appearance. However, if I should hereafter use the common term passion, instead of the more accurate term

affection, I beg to be understood to mean any degree of a feeling, however great or small. Emotion will be found to mean a short and transient fit of passion: howI shall use it synonymously with the words. passion and affection; or, if I do not, I shall say so.

ever,

It must be allowed, I suppose, that, in strictness, nothing can be meant by the passion, but the mere feeling of mind. I am under the influence of violent rage from some sudden and serious injury which I have experienced; but the quick respiration, the red cheek, the frowning eyebrow, and the fixt eye, are not the affection. of anger,- they are only the signs which that affection of anger produces on my body. In the same manner, I have a distinct impression of the person who has injured me; he appears almost to be standing before me: I know also that I have been assassinated in reputation, or ruined in fortune: but all these ideas are not the passion of anger; they are the causes of that passion, but not the passion itself. Again, I have the strongest desire to inflict an exemplary punishment upon the person who has done me this injury: — this is the affection or passion of resentment; the consequence of anger, but by no means anger itself.

In the same manner, a child loves its mother. The mother is the cause, which excites the affection of love in the mind of the child. The affection may possibly excite the child to do all the good in his power to his mother; these are its consequences; the affection itself is distinct from either: therefore, in speaking of passions and affections, it should be remembered we are merely speaking of certain feelings of the mind, which it is impossible to define. You may state the causes of such feelings, and their consequences; but it is as impossible to define them, as it is to define sour, sweet, and savoury. Men call the particular feeling annexed to shame, by one name; the particular feeling annexed to anger, by another. They are only believed to be the

same in different individuals, because they proceed from the same causes, and produce the same effects. It appears to me of some consequence to remember this; and to separate, in all discussions upon these very difficult subjects, the pure affection of mind, from what gives it birth, and from what it induces men to do when it is produced.

The first question which arises in the consideration of human passions, is their origin. Concerning what passions we do actually possess, there can be no dispute; but the question is, respecting their origin. With how many passions and desires are we born? is there any such original principle in our nature as a desire of power, a desire of society, a desire of esteem; or, are all these feelings, whose existence in the mature man no one doubts, - capable of being resolved into any more simple principles? The same with the passions: are men born with the original capacity of feeling gratitude for good, and resentment for evil? or can it be shown what the history of these feelings is; can their origin be traced, and their progress be clearly shown? The former opinions are entertained at present by the school of Reid, in Scotland; were taught by Hutcheson; and were, I fancy, the commonly received opinions on the subject before the time of Hartley. The disciples of this school, may differ a little in their enumeration of the original active principles of our nature, but they all agree, that they are numerous; that no account can be given of their origin; that they are there, because such is the constitution of our nature; that it is an ultimate fact, and cannot be reasoned upon. For instance, Dr. Reid would say, that "the passion of resentment is an original passion, implanted by Providence in the breast of all men for the purposes of self-preservation." Dr. Hartley would say, "the passion is there, and Providence intended it for self-preservation; but it was not placed originally in the human mind: provision, and very wise and very curious

provision, is made, that it should uniformly spring up there; but it is not an original, inexplicable impulse. I can show you the period when it does not exist; I can explain to you by what means it is generated; I can trace it throughout all its gradations, up to the perfect life, and entire development, of the passion." This is about the state of the question between Reid and Hartley, respecting the origin of the active powers. I shall now give some short account of the progress and nature of Dr. Hartley's opinions.

Every body here present knows what is meant by the association of ideas. When two ideas have, by any accident, been joined together frequently in the understanding, the one idea has, ever after, the strongest tendency to bring back the other: for instance, the celebrated Descartes was very much in love with a lady who squinted; he had so associated that passion with obliquity of vision, that he declares, to the latest hour of his life he could never see a lady with a cast in her eye, without experiencing the most lively emotions. In the same manner, to take the most trite of all instances, the ideas of spirits and of darkness, are so strongly united together in our infancy, that it becomes an exceedingly difficult thing to separate them in mature age. There is no reason upon earth, why twelve o'clock in the middle of the day, or why dinner-time, should not be the proper season for ghosts, instead of the middle of the night. It has pleased anility to make another arrangement; and now, as I have said before, the two ideas of darkness and supernatural agency are so firmly united together, that it is frequently almost impossible to separate them. This is what is meant by the principle of association: and this principle was, I believe, first noticed by Locke; but he had recourse to it only to explain those sympathies and antipathies which he calls unnatural, in distinction from those which he says are born with us;

and nothing can be more imperfect than his notions concerning the nature, cause, and effects, of the principle.

Afterwards, Mr. Gay, a clergyman in the West of England, endeavoured to show the possibility of deducing all our passions and affections from association, in a dissertation prefixed to Bishop Law's translation of King's "Origin of Evil:" but he supposed the love of happiness to be an original and implanted principle; and that the passions and affections were deducible only from supposing sensible and rational creatures dependent upon each other for their happiness. It was upon hearing of Mr. Gay's opinion, that Dr. Hartley turned his thoughts upon the subject; and at length, after giving the closest attention to it, in a course of several years, it appeared to him very probable, not only that all our intellectual pleasures and pains, but that all the phenomena of memory, imagination, volition, reasoning, and every other mental affection and operation, are only different modes or cases of the associations of ideas; so that nothing is necessary to make any man whatever he is, than a capacity of feeling pleasure and pain, and the principle of association. These are the simple rudiments and beginnings of our nature; these are the fountains of sorrow and of joy; from hence come all the passions which gladden, and all which embitter life. Hence come

"The radiant smiles of Joy, the applauding hand

Of Admiration; hence the bitter shower
That Sorrow sheds upon a brother's grave;
Hence the dumb palsy of nocturnal Fear,
And those consuming fires that gnaw the heart
Of panting Indignation."

Such is the celebrated theory of Dr. Hartley; in which I have totally passed over his doctrine of vibrations, because, as every body knows, it is very foolish, and no ways connected with the valuable part of his system.