prehension, to which the doctrine I shall advance will be liable. If it be true that the pleasures and pains of sense are the source from which all our desires and affections flow, this necessarily implies that they are all deducible from a selfish origin, or may be said, in a certain sense, to be founded in self-love. But these terms, be it carefully observed, when used in this connexion, have a different import from that offensive signification which they sometimes bear. The term self-love being often used in contradistinction to benevolence, and selfish being the epithet by which we designate that cold, calculating, interested character, which always looks to its own advantage, and is insensible to all the generous feelings of sympathy, gratitude, and kind affection, the same invidious sense has been unfortunately attached to these terms in their application to the present subject, and great indignation has accordingly been expressed against the attempt to deduce the affections of the human mind from self-love, as if this were to deny the reality of any disinterested feelings, and to represent mankind as being always actuated by a cold regard to individual happiness. The

doctrine thus interpreted would certainly deserve that indignation which it has provoked, and would contradict the testimony of consciousness in every well-disposed and well-principled mind. We admire actions of exalted virtue, and condemn deeds of atrocity or baseness, from a certain instantaneous impulse, which evidently leaves no room for far-fetched calculations of their consequences to ourselves. We scorn the very thought of an act of meanness, even where it would most effectually serve our interest; and we feel that we love our parents, our children, our friends, with an affection which has nothing in it of a cold and calculating character. Be it, however, observed, that it is one thing to assert that the thought of self is always uppermost in the minds of men, even when they appear to be actuated by the most disinterested and elevated affections; and quite another thing to say that such affections are remotely derived from a selfish origin. The former revolting doctrine, though doubtless maintained by some ethical writers, among whom may be reckoned Hobbes, Mandeville, and Rochefoucauld, is by no means to be imputed to the system advanced in the following

pages, as will plainly appear in the course of the inquiry.*

In following out the analysis of human affections, I shall observe the following order :— First, I shall enumerate and describe the primary affections, from those lowest desires, called Appetites, which are common to man with the brutes, and which arise from the immediate pleasures and pains of sense, to those more refined, but equally original feelings, which arise from the exercise of the higher faculties. The course of this investigation will gradually lead to the consideration of those feelings or affections which may be called derived or secondary, because created by the remoter influence of good and evil, and consisting chiefly in the permanent desire and continued pursuit of whatever things are instrumental to the gratification of our primary desires. Next will succeed the analysis of the Affections, peculiarly so called, or of that class of associated feelings of which, not things, but persons are the objects; and this will lead, by

* Note B.

an easy transition, to the analysis of our Moral Sentiments.

SECTION I.

OF THE PLEASURES AND PAINS OF SENSE.

The original objects of human desire and aversion are corporeal pleasure and pain. If we ascend, indeed, to the very first sources of human actions, we shall arrive at such as are entirely independent of desire or volition, being the result merely of physical organization. Physiology informs us that the first actions of all animals are occasioned solely by that property of living bodies which is termed Irritability. The same principle, whatever it be, which causes the lungs to heave, the heart to beat, the blood to circulate, and the stomach to digest, operates also in the first instance upon those parts of the frame which afterwards become subject to the will. By this it is, that the new-born infant utters its touching cries, and sucks and swallows its food, without the least previous conception of the effects of these actions, still less of the complicated process by which they are performed. By this it is, that all its random gestures are at first occasioned, till memory.

creates determinate desires, and directs those desires to the means of obtaining their gratification. The same or a similar principle continues to operate in various instances even to the latest period of life; for to what, but the hidden mechanism of our frame, must we ascribe the several external signs or manifestations of the passions--the tears of sorrow, the laughter of mirth, the blushes of shame, and the pallid countenance and trembling limbs of fear? Leaving, however, to physiologists the explanation of these phenomena, and commencing the investigation where mind and its affections commence, we may safely allege, that the only affections originally manifested in our nature are those which regard the pleasures and pains of sense. The new-born infant is evidently susceptible of no other desires or affections than those which are excited by his more immediate and acute sensations, as by hunger and thirst, by warmth and cold, by pain or pleasure of whatever kind, arising either from external impressions, or the state of his internal frame. At this earliest period of life we can discover none of those elevated and disinterested feelings, no sign of that humanity, of that sympathy, or of that moral sense, which have been so confi