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I shall now give two or three specimens of the manner in which the various active powers are traced up to simple pleasure and pain, guided by association; and I will begin with one of the passions, the passion of fear. Ask any body, whence comes the passion of fear? and they will tell you it is an original passion of our nature: at the same time it is evident to observation, that a child is wholly unacquainted with fear till he has received some hurt. If fear were coeval with birth; or a capacity of being afraid, implanted in us independently of all experience, a child of four months old would be afraid of the flame of a candle, the first moment he saw it, he would shrink from a viper, and be frightened into fits at the sight of a loaded pistol. Try a child of that age with a lighted candle; he is so far from having any notion of fear, that his first effort is to grasp it: when he has been once burnt, and suffered pain, the passion of fear, which is nothing more, in its early state, than the expectation of pain, is immediately formed. Put the candle to him again: he has now associated two ideas,— the light of the flame, and the pain of his body; the appearance of the flame, therefore, immediately gives him the notion that he is going to suffer, — and this feeling is what we call fear. In the same manner, a child learns to be afraid of sharp weapons, of animals that bite and scratch, and of all the common objects of juvenile terror; and, perceiving into how many inconveniencies he is betrayed by his ignorance, falls into a general apprehension of all striking and unknown objects, because he cannot appreciate the degree of mischief to be expected from them. This, I confess, appears to me a plain and true history of the passion of fear. If it were an original passion, the sight of a dagger would as immediately produce fear in a young child, as the touch of ice would produce cold in him: but before he can experience this passion, it is necessary he should suffer pain; and it is necessary that the object which

has inflicted the pain should again be presented to him, in order to recall the feeling which has been associated to it.

I observe, what those persons stand out for the most, who are the most conversant with children, is the fear of falling which they express, even though they have never fallen. But does not it seem rather capricious and singular, that, among all the innumerable perils by which children are surrounded, the fear of falling should be the only one against which they have any instinctive warning? A child will eat poison if it is sweet; set himself on fire, play with gunpowder, swallow needles, run into any kind of mischief, from which he has suffered no previous pain; and amid these ten thousand avenues to destruction, we believe that the only one he is warned not to approach, is that which would break his arm or his leg, or give him a great blow on the head. So that the child may be burnt, poisoned, stabbed, cut, mangled, or anything else, provided he is not bruised. But what is the meaning of a child being afraid instinctively? If he is afraid of an object, he must, I suppose, have an idea of that object. Is he, then, born with the ideas of fire, of boiling water, of sharp-pointed weapons, of medical gentlemen, and all other objects which can do him harm ?—or, if Locke has driven us out of these antiquated notions, shall we suppose, that he has no previous acquaintance with them; but that when they are perceived for the first time, the passion of fear immediately takes place? Is a child, then, startled by a brass blunderbuss the first time he sees it? "But this is not a natural object:" true; but is he, then, startled by arsenic, any more than with powdered sugar? To what do these instinctive terrors extend? It appears to me, I confess, quite impossible to make common sense of any supposition but that of Hartley, which says, that pain is the teacher of fear. Before pain there is no fear; and when that passion exists, however great the distance,

and however circuitous the course, there is the fountainhead from which it sprang.

I will now consider two of the most important principles of our nature, the desire of doing harm to others, and the desire of doing good; - resentment and benevolence. It will be curious to observe how far they fall into this doctrine of association. A young child, soon after his birth, has not the least desire to do good or harm to any one; he has no such passions: and it is our business to explain how he gets them. The food he eats or drinks gives him pleasure; but observing, in process of time, that the nurse is always present when he receives his food, the sight of the nurse gives him pleasure, because it reminds him of his food; yet in process of time the idea of the food is obliterated, and the sight of the nurse gives him pleasure, and, without the intervening idea that she is useful to him, he loves her immediately after his appetite of hunger is satisfied, as well as before: his passion for her, which first proceeded from an interested motive, becomes quite disinterested; and he loves her without the slightest reference to the advantages she procures him. This is the origin of his love for his nurse: and then, as all kindred ideas are very easily associated together, he proceeds from loving her, to desiring her good; for, perceiving that other people like what he likes, it is very natural, that the idea of his own gratification in eating, should suggest the idea of the nurse's gratification; and that he should offer her a little morsel of his apple or his cake, or any puerile luxury which he happens to be enjoying. The association is easy to be comprehended, and seems perfectly natural. Besides, a child begins very early to associate his own advantage with benevolence. Cake, and commendation, the parent of cake, are lavished upon the child who shows a disposition to please others. Cuffs, and frowns, and hard words, are the portion of a selfish and a malevolent child: he begins with loving benevo

lence for the advantage it affords him, and ends with loving it for itself: he is not born with love of any thing, but merely with the capacity of feeling pleasure; which he first feels for the milk, then for the mother, because she gives him the milk, then for her own sake: then, as she makes him happy, association gives him the idea of making her happy; and he gains so much by benevolence, that he loves it first for the advantages it affords, then for itself. Reverse all this, and you will have the history and progress of the malevolent passions. A young child hates nobody. If you were to pinch or scratch him, he would feel pain; if you did it often, he would associate the idea of you with the idea of pain, and would hate you, first, on account of the ideas you suggested, then hate you plainly and simply without any cause. After he had learnt by observation, that you were similarly constituted with himself, he would be led to associate your painful feelings with his own; and thus a foundation of malevolence towards you would be laid. Again: a child is deterred from doing anything, by threats and by pain; and he perceives that other persons are deterred by similar means: he therefore associates these ideas with prevention; threatens and beats whoever contradicts him; and cherishes resentment as a means of gratifying his will, and effecting whatever object he has in view. It is quite impossible that a child can be born with any feeling of resentment. He can never tell that the way to prevent another child from beating him, is to beat that child again; it would be an enormous thing that he who does not yet know black from scarlet, should be acquainted with the dominion which pain has over the mind, and make use of it to accomplish his purposes; and yet, such is the opinion that they adopt, who consider this passion as innate, and coeval with our existence.

I have said that the child first associates with his mother the idea of food, and loves her in consequence

of this association; then loves her from disinterested motives, without any association at all: and I have said. that he hates his tormentor, first, from associating painful ideas with his appearance; and then hates him without any association at all. This leads me to the mention of a very general, and very important, law of association and that is this; the medium idea by which two others are associated, is always at length destroyed, and the two others coalesce, and make the association: for instance, whatever we love for its uses, we love for itself. A man begins to love his horse because he carries him well out hunting: he ends with loving the horse without the slightest reference to his utility; and keeps him when he is blind and lame, with as much attention as in the vigour of his youth. Here, the middle term (if I may use the expression), which united together the two ideas of horse and affection, was utility that middle term was effaced; and the affection remains for the horse, when all notion of utility is completely at an end. The middle term here is like a cramp or a screw put upon two pieces of wood, just glued together, it serves to keep them together at first, but can be removed with perfect safety, when the cement is solid, and the union complete.

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I remember once seeing an advertisement in the papers, with which I was much struck; and which I will take the liberty of reading:-"Lost, in the Temple "Coffee House, and supposed to be taken away by mis"take, an oaken stick, which has supported its master not only over the greatest part of Europe, but has been his companion in his journies over the inhospitable deserts "of Africa: whoever will restore it to the waiter, will "confer a very serious obligation on the advertiser; or, if "that be any object, shall receive a recompense very "much above the value of the article restored." Now, here is a man, who buys a sixpenny stick, because it is useful; and, totally forgetting the trifling causes which

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