Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations.

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self, and not the player, to be that wretched man at the very time that he is acted. I fancy that I am actually in the midst of the storm, suffering all his anguish, that my daughters have turned me out of doors, and treated me with such unheard-of cruelty " and injustice." It is exceedingly lucky that there do not oftener follow terrible consequences from these misconceptions. It will be said, "they are transient, "and quickly cured by recollection." But however transient, if they really exist, they must exist for some time. Now, if unhappily a man had two of his daughters sitting near him at the very instant he were under this delusion, and if, by a very natural and consequential fiction, he fancied them to be Goneril and Regan, the effects might be fatal to the ladies, though they were the most dutiful children in the world.

Ir hath never yet been denied (for it is impossible to say what will not be denied) that pity influences a person to contribute to relieve the object when it is in his power. But if there is a mistake in the object, there must of necessity be a mistake in the direction of the relief. For instance, you see a man perishing with hunger, and your compassion is raised; now you will pity no longer, say these acute reasoners, than you fancy yourself to suffer. You yourself properly are the sole object of your own pity, and as you desire to relieve the person only whom you pity; if there be any food within your reach, you will no doubt devour it voraciously, in order to allay the famine which you

Sect. I. The different solutions hitherto given by philosophers, examined.

fancy you are enduring; but you will not give one morsel to the wretch who really needs your aid, but who is by no means the object of your regret, for whom you can feel no compunction, and with whose distress (which is quite foreign matter to you) it is impossible you should be affected, especially when under the power of a passion consisting of unmixed selfishness and malignity. For though, if you did not pity him, you would, on cool reflection, give him some aid, perhaps from principle, perhaps from example, or perhaps from habit, unluckily this accursed pity, this unmixed malignant selfishness, interposeth, to shut your heart against him, and to obstruct the pious purpose.

I KNOW no way of eluding this objection but one, which is indeed a very easy way. It is to introduce another fiction of the imagination, and to say, that when this emotion is raised, I lose all consciousness of my own existence and identity, and fancy that the pitiable object before me, is my very self; and that the real I, or what I formerly mistook for myself, is some other body, a mere spectator of my misery, or perhaps nobody at all. Thus unknowingly I may contribute to his relief, when under the strange illusion which makes me fancy, that, instead of giving to another, I am taking to myself. But if the man be scrupulously honest, he will certainly restore to me when I am awake, what I gave him unintentionally in my sleep.

Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations.

THAT Such fictions may sometimes take place in madness, which almost totally unhinges our mental faculties, I will not dispute; but that such are the natural operations of the passions in a sound state, when the intellectual powers are unimpaired, is what no man would have ever either conceived or advanced, that had not a darling hypothesis to support. And by such arguments, it is certain, that every hypothesis whatever, may equally be supported. Suppose I have taken it into my head to write a theory of the mind; and, in order to give unity and simplicity to my system, as well as to recommend it by the grace of novelty, I have resolved to deduce all the actions, all the pursuits, and all the passions of men from self-hatred, as the common fountain. If to degrade human nature be so great a recommendation, as we find it is to many speculators, as well as to all atheists and fanatics, who happen, on this point, I know not how, to be most cordially united, the theory now suggested is by no means deficient in that sort of merit from which one might expect to it the very best reception. Selflove is certainly no vice, however justly the want of love to our neighbour be accounted one; but if any thing can be called vicious, self-hatred is undoubted-.ly so.

LET it not be imagined, that nothing specious can be urged in favour of this hypothesis; What else, it may be pleaded, could induce the miser to deny himself, not only the comforts, but even almost the ne

Sect. 1. The different solutions hitherto given by philosophers, examined.

cessaries of life, to pine for want in the midst of plenty, to live in unintermitted anxiety and terror? All the world sees that it is not to procure his own enjoyment, which he invariably and to the last repudiates. And can any reasonable person be so simple as to believe that it is for the purpose of leaving a fortune to his heir, a man whom he despises, for whose deliverance from perdition he would not part with half a crown, and whom of all mankind, next to himself, he hates the most? What else could induce the sensualist to squander his all in dissipation and debauchery; to rush on ruin certain and foreseen? You call it pleasure. But is he ignorant, that his pleasures are more than ten times counterbalanced by the plagues and even torments which they bring? Does the conviction, or even the experience of this, deter him? On the contrary, with what steady perseverance, with what determined resolution, doth he proceed in his career, not intimidated by the haggard forms which stare him in the face, poverty and infamy, disease and death? What else could induce the man who is reputed covetous, not of money, but of fame, that is of wind, to sacrifice his tranquillity, and almost all the enjoyments of life; to spend his days and nights in fruitless disquietude and endless care? Has a bare name, think you, an empty sound, such inconceivable charms? Can a mere nothing serve as a counterpoise to solid and substantial good? Are we not rather imposed on by appearances, when we conclude this to be his motive? Can we be senseless enough to ima

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Of the cause of that pleasure we receive from affecting objects or representations.

gine, that it is the bubble reputation (which, were it any thing, a dead man surely cannot enjoy) that the soldier is so infatuated as to seek, even in the cannon's mouth? Are not these, therefore, but the various -ways of self-destroying, to which, according to their various tastes, men are prompted, by the same universal principle of self-hatred?

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If you should insist on certain phenomena, which appear to be irreconcileable to my hypothesis, I think I am provided with an answer. You urge our readiness to resent an affront or injury, real or imagined, which we receive, and which ought to gratify instead of provoking us, on the supposition that we hate ourselves. But may it not be retorted, that its being a gratification is that which excites our resentment, inasmuch as we are enemies to every kind of self-indulgence? If this answer will not suffice, I have another which is excellent. It lies in the definition of the word revenge. Revenge, I pronounce, may be justly "deemed an example of unmixed self-abhorrence and benignity, and may be resolved into that power of "imagination, by which we apply the sufferings that "we inflict on others to ourselves; we are said to "wreak our vengeance no longer than we fancy our"selves to suffer, and to be satiated by reflecting, that "the sufferings of others are not really ours; that we "have been but indulging a dream of self punishment, "from which, when we awake and discover the fic"tion, our anger instantly subsides, and we are meek

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