I.

torrent.

SECT. the firft approaches of that difagreeable paf fion, and it requires fome time before the melancholy object can produce its full effect. Grief comes on flowly and gradually, nor ever rifes at once to that height of agony to which it is increafed after a little time. But joy comes rufhing upon us all at once like a The change produced therefore by a Surprise of joy is more fudden, and upon that account more violent and apt to have more fatal effects, than that which is occafioned by a Surprise of grief; there seems too to be fomething in the nature of Surprise, which makes it unite more easily with the brisk and quick motion of joy, than with the flower and heavier movement of grief. Moft men who can take the trouble to recollect, will find that they have heard of more people who died or became diftracted with fudden joy, than with fudden grief. Yet from the nature of human affairs, the latter must be much more frequent than the former. A man may break his leg, or lofe his fon, though he has had no warning of either of thefe events, but he can hardly meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, without having had fome forefight of what was to happen.

Not only grief and joy but all the other paffions, are more violent, when oppofite extremes fucceed each other. Is any refent

ment

I.

ment fo keen as what follows the quarrels of S ECT. lovers, or any love fo paffionate as what attends their reconcilement ?

Even the objects of the external fenfes affect us in a more lively manner, when oppofite extremes fucceed to, or are placed befide each other. Moderate warmth feems intolerable heat if felt after extreme cold. What is bitter will feem more fo when tasted after what is very sweet; a dirty white will feem bright and pure when placed by a jet black. The vivacity in short of every fenfation, as well as of every fentiment, feems to be greater or lefs in proportion to the change made by the impreffion of either upon the fituation of the mind or organ; but this change must neceffarily be the greatest when opposite sentiments and fenfations are contrafted, or fucceed im, mediately to one another. Both fentiments

and fenfations are then the livelieft; and this fuperior vivacity proceeds from nothing but their being brought upon the mind or organ when in a state moft unfit for conceiving them.

As the oppofition of contrafted fentiments heightens their vivacity, fo the resemblance of those which immediately fucceed each other renders them more faint and languid. A parent who has loft feveral children immediately after one another, will be lefs affected with the death of the last than with that of

the

SECT. the firft, though the lofs in itself be, in this I. cafe, undoubtedly greater; but his mind

being already funk into forrow, the new misfortune feems to produce no other effect than a continuance of the fame melancholy, and is by no means apt to occafion fuch transports of grief as are ordinarily excited by the firft calamity of the kind; he receives it, though with great dejection, yet with some degree of calmnefs and compofure, and without any thing of that anguish and agitation of mind which the novelty of the misfortune is apt to occafion. Thofe who have been unfortunate through the whole courfe of their lives are often indeed habitually melancholy, and fometimes peevish and fplenetic, yet upon any fresh disappointment, though they are vexed and complain a little, they feldom fly out into any more violent paffion, and never fall into thofe transports of rage or grief which often, upon the like occafions, diftract the fortunate and fuccefsful.

Upon this are founded, in a great measure, fome of the effects of habit and cuftom. It is well known that cuftom deadens the vivacity of both pain and pleasure, abates the grief we should feel for the one, and weakens the joy we fhould derive from the other. The pain is fupported without agony, and the pleasure enjoyed without rapture: because custom and the frequent repetition of any object comes at

laft

II.

laft to form and bend the mind or organ to SECT. that habitual mood and difpofition which fits them to receive its impreffion, without undergoing any very violent change.

SECT. II.

Of Wonder, or of the Effects of Novelty.

IT is evident that the mind takes pleasure in obferving the refemblances that are dif coverable betwixt different objects. It is by means of fuch obfervations that it endeavours to arrange and methodise all its ideas, and to reduce them into proper claffes and affortments. Where it can observe but one fingle quality, that is common to a great variety of otherwife widely different objects, that fingle circumftance will be fufficient for it to connect them all together, to reduce them to one common class, and to call them by one general name. It is thus that all things endowed with a power of self-motion, beafts, birds, fishes, infects, are claffed under the general name of Animal; and that these again, along with those which want that power, are arranged under the ftill more general word Subftance: and this is the origin of thofe affortments of objects and ideas which

VOL. V.

F

in

II.

SECT. in the schools are called Genera and Species, and of thofe abftract and general names, which in all languages are made ufe of to exprefs them.

The further we advance in knowledge and experience, the greater number of divifions and fubdivifions of thofe Genera and Species we are both inclined and obliged to make. We obferve a greater variety of particularities amongst those things which have a grofs refemblance; and having made new divifions of them, according to thofe newly-obferved particularities, we are then no longer to be fatisfied with being able to refer an object to a remote genus, or very general clafs of things, to many of which it has but a loofe and imperfect refemblance. A perfon, indeed, unacquainted with botany may expect to fatisfy your curiofity, by telling you, that fuch a vegetable is a weed, or, perhaps in ftill more general terms, that it is a plant. But a botanist will neither give nor accept of fuch an answer. He has broke and divided that great clafs of objects into a number of inferior affortments, according to thofe varieties which his experience has difcovered among them; and he wants to refer each individual plant to fome tribe of vegetables, with all of which it may have a more exact resemblance, than with many things comprehended under the extenfive genus of plants. A child ima