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modify our other affections, and are powerful Springs of Action. We befriend a man, or we choose him for our friend, and do him good offices, not because he is our brother, but because we approve his actions, and therefore love him, and would treat him as our brother. We help to inflict pain or even death upon a man, not because he has done us especially any harm, but because he has committed an act of which we strongly disapprove, and which excites a strong indignation against him.

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There are Sentiments which partake of the nature of Esteem or Approval, but imply no settled Moral Rule, and include feelings of surprise and conscious inferiority in ourselves. Such are Admiration, and Awe.

5. Reflex Sentiments.

57. Besides the Moral Sentiments which impel to, act in one way or another to other men, accordingly as we approve or disapprove their actions, there are also certain Sentiments which have a reference to their judgment of us and their affections towards us; and these Sentiments are also Springs of Action. These we shall term Reflex Sentiments, for they imply Reflex Thought. order to regard another man's Sentiments concerning me, I must form a conception of his Sentiments as the image of my own; and of myself as the object of those sentiments.

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58. The Desire of being loved is one of these Reflex Sentiments. In minds so far unfolded by thought as to be capable of reflex processes, this Sentiment commonly accompanies love; but it belongs to a stage of mental developement higher than mere elementary love. Yet we see traces of it in the behaviour of those animals which seek to be fondled and caressed.

59. The Desire of Esteem is a powerful and extensive Spring of Action. We desire that other men should

think that what we do is right. Hence, this desire assumes some generally established Rule of what is right. Without ourselves esteeming what is right, we cannot conceive Esteem, and thus truly cannot feel the Desire of Esteem. But in this case, we may still feel the Desire of Admiration, the Desire of Honour, the Love of Fame, the Love of Glory, and the like Reflex Sentiments; which do not imply our own approval of the Rule by which others judge. Yet these are very powerful Springs of action in many men.

60. Finally, there is a Reflex Sentiment which we may term the Desire of our own Approval. This implies that we have adopted a Rule according to which we judge Actions to be right, and that we desire to conform our own actions to this Rule. Action, which must balance Rule may be really valid.

Such a Desire is a Spring of all others, in order that the What the nature of such a

Rule must be, we shall have to consider: in the mean time, we may remark, that the Desire of our own Approval, of which we now speak, is included in the meaning of the term Conscience.

Among the Reflex Sentiments, we may place all those Springs of Action which are designated by some compound of the word Self; as Self-Admiration, Self-Love. These, for the most part, are elementary Springs of Action, combined and modified by reflex habits of thought. Thus SelfLove may be understood to include the Desire of Property, of Bodily comfort, and the like, along with a distinct consideration of One's Self. In this view, Self-Love is rather a habit of regarding and providing for the elementary Desires, than a distinct Desire. It is sometimes spoken of as a General Regard for our own Good; and as we have said (37), the term Good is so used as to include the objects of all the elementary Desires.

6. General Remarks.

61. It appears by what has been said, that the different kinds of Springs of Action are distinguished by the nature of their objects. The Appetites have for their objects, Things; the Affections, Persons; the Mental Desires have Abstractions; the Moral Sentiments, Actions; and the Reflex Sentiments have for their objects the thoughts of other persons, or our own, about ourselves.

The Springs of Action which we have enumerated do not operate upon man as Forces operate upon inert Matter. They all operate through the Will. A man is moved by these Springs, when he will do that to which they impel him. Different springs of action may operate at the same time, and with opposite tendencies. The Desire of

Safety would keep the sailor or soldier at home, but the Desire of Gain, or the Love of Glory, sends him to the sea or to the war. In either case, it is through his Will that the Desires act. He stays at home because he wills to do so; or he goes forth because he wills it.

62. In determining his actions, man is seldom impelled merely by the most elementary Springs of Action, bodily desire and affection. By the progress of thought in every man, bodily desires are combined with mental desires, and elementary affections with moral sentiments.

The men who most seek the pleasures of eating, seek at the same time the pleasures of society. The most blind maternal love generally takes the form of approving, as well as loving, its darling. And thus, in man, the Desires and Affections are unfolded by thought, so as to involve abstract conceptions and the notion of a Rule. The Reason, to which such steps belong (10) is at work, in all the actions which the Springs of Action produce.

63.

Reason is conceived as being in all persons the
Different men desire different things,

same in its nature.

love different persons; but that which is seen to be true in virtue of the Reason, is true for all men alike. The influence of desire or affection may be mistaken for the result of Reason, for man is liable to errour (5); and so far, the decisions of Reason may be different in different men. But such decisions are not all really reasonable. So far as men decide conformably to Reason, they decide alike. His Appetites, and Desires, and Affections are peculiar to each man; but his Reason is a common attribute of all mankind and each man has his Reason in virtue of his participation of this common faculty of discerning truth and falsehood.

But though each man's Desires and Affections belong specially to himself, while Reason is a common faculty in all men; we consider our Reason as being ourselves, rather than our Desires and Affections. We speak of Desire, Love, Anger, as mastering us, or of ourselves as controlling them. If we decide to prefer some remote and abstract good to immediate pleasures; or to conform to a rule which brings us present pain; which decision implies the exercise of Reason; we more particularly consider such acts as our own acts. Such acts are deemed especially the result, not of the impulse of our desires, but of our own volition.

If we ask why we thus identify ourselves with our rational part, rather than with our desires and affections; we reply, that it is because the Reason alone is capable of that reflex act by which we become conscious of ourselves. To have so much thought as to distinguish between ourselves and our springs of action, is to be rational; and the Reason which can make this distinction, necessarily places herself on one side, and the Desires, which make no such distinction, on the other. It is by the Reason that we are conscious;

and hence we place the seat of our consciousness in the Reason.

64. The habit of identifying ourselves with our Reason, and not with our Desires, is further indicated by the term Passion, which is applied to Desire and Affection when uncontrolled by Reason; as if man in such cases were passive, and merely acted on; and as if he were really active, only when he acts in conformity with his Reason. Thus, we speak, of a man being in a Passion, meaning an uncontrolled fit of anger; and having a Passion for an object, meaning an uncontrolled desire.

Still, it is to be recollected that man, under the influence of such Passions, is not really passive. When he acts under such influences, he adopts the suggestions of Desire or Affection, and rejects the control of Reason; but this is what he does in all violations of reasonable Rules. Passion does not prevent a man's knowing that there is a Rule, and that he is violating it. To say that Passion is irresistible, is to annihilate Reason, and to exclude the most essential condition of Human Action.

CHAPTER III.

MORAL RULES EXIST NECESSARILY.

65. In enumerating and describing, as we have done, certain Desires, as among the most powerful Springs of human action, we have stated (39) that man's life is scarcely tolerable if these Desires are not in some degree gratified: that man cannot be at all satisfied without some security in such gratification (41); that without property, which gratifies one of these Desires, man's free agency cannot exist (45); that without marriage, which gratifies another, there can be

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