SECT. XVII.

AMBITION.

ALTHOUGH imitation is one of the great instruments used by Providence in bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men gave themfelves up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and so on in an eternal circle, it is eafy to fee that there never could be any improvement amongst them. Men muft remain as brutes do, the fame at the end that they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning of the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man a sense of ambition, and a fatisfaction arifing from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in fomething deemed valuable amongst them. It is this paffion that drives men to all the ways we fee in use of fignalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction fo very pleasant. It has been fo ftrong as to make very miferable men take comfort, that they were fupreme in mifery; and certain it is, that where we cannot diftinguish ourselves by fomething excellent, we begin to take a complacency in fome fingular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that flattery is so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he

has not. Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a fort of fwelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the human mind; and this fwelling is never more perceived, nor operates with more force, than when without danger we are converfant with terrible objects, the mind always claiming to itself fome part of the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates. Hence proceeds what Longinus has obferved of that glorying and sense of inward greatness, that always fills the reader of such pasfages in poets and orators as are fublime; it is what every man must have felt in himself upon fuch occafions.

SECT. XVIII.

THE RECAPITULATION.

TO draw the whole of what has been faid into a few diftinct points :-The paffions which belong to self-preservation, turn on pain and danger; they are fimply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in fuch circumstances; this delight I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any idea of pofi tive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call

fublime.

fublime. The paffions belonging to felf-prefervaa tion are the strongest of all the paffions.

The fecond head to which the paffions are referred with relation to their final caufe, is fociety. There are two forts of focieties. The firft is, the fociety of fex. The paffion belonging to this is called love, and it contains a mixture of luft; its object is the beauty of women. The other is the great fociety with man and all other animals. The paffion fubfervient to this is called likewise love, but it has no mixture of luft, and its object is beauty; which is a name I fhall apply to all fuch qualities in things as induce in us a fenfe of affection and tendernefs, or fome other paffion the most nearly refembling thefe. The paffion of love has its rife in positive pleasure; it is, like all things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of uneafinefs, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind with an idea at the fame time of having irretrievably loft it. This mixed fenfe of pleasure I have not called pain, because it turns upon actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its effects, of a nature altogether different.

Next to the general paffion we have for fociety, to a choice in which we are directed by the pleafure we have in the object, the particular paffion under this head called fympathy has the greatest extent. The nature of this paffion is, to put us in

the place of another in whatever circumstance he is in, and to affect us in a like manner; fo thạt this paffion may, as the occafion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure; but with the modifications mentioned in fome cafes in fect. 11. As to imitation and preference, nothing more need be faid.

SECT. XIX.

THE CONCLUSION.

I BELIEVED that an attempt to range and me. thodize fome of our most leading paffions, would be a good preparative to fuch an inquiry as we are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The pasfions I have mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be neceffary to confider in our prefent defign; though the variety of the paffions is great, and worthy in every branch of that variety of an attentive investigation. The more accurately we fearch into the human mind, the ftronger traces we every where find of his wifdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may be confidered as an hymn to the Creator; the ufe of the paffions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite

wisdom

wifdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilft, referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves, difcovering his ftrength and wisdom even in our own weakness and imperfection, honouring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we are loft in our fearch, we may be inquifitive without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to fay fo, into the counfels of the Almighty by a confideration of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies, which if they do not in fome measure effect, they are of very little fervice to us. But, befides this great purpose, a confideration of the rationale of our paffions feems to me very neceffary for all who would affect them upon folid and fure principles. It is not enough to know them in general: to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work defigned to affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we fhould pursue them through all their variety of operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inacceffible parts of our nature,

Quod latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrá.

Without all this it is poffible for a man, after a confused manner, fometimes to fatisfy his own