Sec. 3-5: Love for Relations, The Rich

SEC. 3: DIFFICULTIES SOLVED

• We do not need to examine all the causes of love and hatred.
• I shall:
  1. Remove some difficulties on particular causes of love and hate.
  2. Examine the compound affections arising from the mixture of love and hatred with other emotions.

• Anyone acquires our kindness, or is exposed to our ill-will, in proportion to the pleasure or uneasiness we receive from him.
• The passions keep pace exactly with the sensations in all their changes and variations.
  • Whoever can render himself useful or agreeable to us by his services, beauty, or flattery, is sure of our affections.
  • Whoever harms or displeases us always excites our anger or hatred.
• When our own nation is at war with another, we detest them as cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent.
  • But we always esteem ourselves and our allies as equitable, moderate, and merciful.
  • If the general of our enemies is successful, we allow him the figure and character of a man, with difficulty.
    • Oliver Cromwell and the Duke of Luxembourg were reported to:
      • be sorcerers,
      • have communication with demons,
      • be bloody-minded, and
      • take pleasure in death and destruction.
  • But if success is on our side, our commander:
    • has all the opposite good qualities, and
    • is an example of virtue, courage, and conduct.
  • We call his treachery as policy.
    • We call his cruelty as an evil inseparable from war.
  • In short, we try to dignify all of his faults as virtue.
    • The same method of thinking runs through common life.

• Some people also require that the pain and pleasure arise from the person knowingly with a particular design and intention.
  • A man, who wounds and harms us by accident, does not become our enemy.
  • We do not think ourselves bound by gratitude to one who does us any service accidentally.
• Actions become causes of love or hatred by the good or bad intention.

• But here we must make a distinction.
  • If that quality which pleases or displeases in another is constant and inherent in his character, it will cause love or hatred, independent of the intention.
  • But otherwise, a knowledge and design is needed to create these passions.
• A person who is disagreeable by his deformity or folly is the object of our aversion.
  • Even if he did not intend to displease us by these qualities.
• But if the uneasiness does not proceed from a quality, but from an action produced and annihilated in a moment, it needs to be derived from a particular fore-thought and design, to:
  • produce some relation
  • connect this action with that person.
• It is not enough:
  • for the action to arise from the person
  • to have him for its immediate cause and author.
• This relation alone is too feeble and inconstant to be a foundation for these passions.
  • It does not:
    • reach the sensible and thinking part.
    • proceed from anything durable in him
    • leave anything behind it.
• It passes in a moment as if it had never been.
  • On the other hand, an intention shows qualities which remain after the action is performed.
    • These qualities:
      • connect it with the person
      • facilitate the transition of ideas from one to the other.
• We can never think of him without reflecting on these qualities, unless repentance and a change of life have produced a change in that respect.
  • In this case, the passion is likewise changed.
• This is why an intention is needed to excite love or hatred.

• An intention strengthens the relation of ideas.
  • Intention is often necessary to:
    • produce a relation of impressions
    • give rise to pleasure and uneasiness.
• The principal part of an injury is the contempt and hatred on the person’s intention who injures us.
  • Without that, the mere harm gives us a less sensible uneasiness.
• Similarly, a good office is agreeable, chiefly because it flatters our vanity.
  • It is a proof of the kindness and esteem of its performer.
• The removal of the intention removes the mortification in the former case, and vanity in the latter.
  • It must cause a remarkable reduction in love and hatred.

• These effects of the removal of intention in reducing the relations of impressions and ideas, are not entire
  • They are unable to remove every degree of these relations.
• But if the removal of intention is able to remove love and hatred entirely?
  • Experience tells us of the contrary.
  • Men often become violently angry for involuntary and accidental injuries.
  • This anger cannot last long.
  • But it is sufficient to show that:
    • there is a natural connection between uneasiness and anger
    • the relation of impressions will operate on a very small relation of ideas.
• But after the violence of the impression a little abated, the relation’s defect begins to be better felt.
  • A person is not interested in such casual and involuntary injuries.
  • We seldom entertain a lasting enmity on them.

• This is illustrated by:
  • the uneasiness proceeding from another person by accident
  • the uneasiness from an acknowledged necessity and duty.
    • These have little force to excite our passion.
• A person that has a real intention of harming us from justice and equity, instead of hatred and ill-will, does not draw our anger on him, if we are reasonable.
  • He is both the cause and the knowing cause of our sufferings.
  • Let us examine this phenomenon.

• In the first place, this circumstance is not decisive.
  • It may be able to reduce the passions.
  • It can seldom entirely remove them.
• Few criminals have no ill-will to their accuser or to the judge that condemns them, even if they are conscious of their own deserts?
• Our antagonist in a law-suit and our competitor for any office, are commonly regarded as our enemies, even if their motive is as justifiable as our own.

• When we receive harm from anyone, we are apt to imagine him criminal.
  • We allow of his justice and innocence with extreme difficulty.
• This is a clear proof that, independent of the opinion of iniquity:
  • any harm or uneasiness has a natural tendency to excite our hatred
  • we afterwards seek for reasons to justify and establish our hatred .
• Here, the idea of injury does not produce the passion, but arises from it.

• It is no wonder why hatred should produce the opinion of injury.
  • Since otherwise, hatred must suffer a considerable reduction, which all the passions avoid as much as possible.
• The removal of injury may remove the anger without proving that the anger arises only from the injury.
• The harm and the justice are two contrary objects.
  • Harm produces hatred.
  • Justice produces love.
• Either of the objects prevails and excites its proper passion according to:
  • their different degrees
  • our particular turn of thinking.

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SEC. 4: THE LOVE OF RELATIONS

• I have explained why actions that cause a real pleasure or uneasiness do not excite love or hatred towards the actors
• Where does the pleasure or uneasiness of the objects which produce these passions come from?

• According to the preceding system, there is always a double relation of impressions and ideas required between the cause and effect to produce love or hatred.
  • But love may remarkably be excited only by one relation between ourselves and the object.
  • This relation is always attended with both the others.
• Whoever is united to us by any connection, is always sure of a share of our love proportional to the connection, without inquiring into his other qualities.
  • Thus, the relation of blood produces the strongest tie the mind is capable of in the love of parents to their children.
  • The relation lessens as the degree of the same affection lessens.
• Consanguinity and any other relation has this effect without exception.
  • We love our countrymen, neighbours, those of the same trade, profession, and even name with ourselves.
  • Every one of these relations:
    • is esteemed some tie
    • gives a title to a share of our affection.

• The phenomenon of acquaintance is parallel to this.
  • It gives rise to love and kindness, without any kind of relation.
• When we have contracted a habitude and intimacy with any person; though in frequenting his company we have not been able to discover any very valuable quality, of which he is possessed.
  • Yet we cannot refrain preferring him to strangers, of whose superior merit we are fully convinced.
• These two phenomena of the effects of relation and acquaintance will give mutual light to each other, and may be both explained from the same principle.

• Those who take pleasure in declaiming against human nature, have observed that man is insufficient to support himself.
  • When you loosen all his holds of external objects, he immediately drops down into the deepest despair.
• They say that this is the cause of that continual search for amusement in gaming, hunting, and business.
  • We do this when we are not sustained by some brisk and lively emotion, to:
    • try to forget ourselves
    • excite our spirits from the languid state.
• I agree to this method of thinking.
  • The mind:
    • is insufficient to its own entertainment
    • naturally seeks foreign objects which may:
      • produce a lively sensation
      • agitate the spirits.
• On the appearance of such an object, it awakes from a dream:
  • The blood flows with a new tide.
  • The heart is elevated.
  • The whole man acquires a vigour which he cannot command in his solitary and calm moments.
• Hence company is naturally so rejoicing.
  • It presents a rational and thinking Being like ourselves, who communicates to us all the actions of his mind.
    • It is the liveliest of all objects.
    • It makes us privy to his inmost sentiments.
    • It lets us see all the emotions caused by any object, in the instant of their production.
• Every lively idea is agreeable, especially the idea of a passion.
  • Because such an idea:
    • becomes a kind of passion
    • gives a more sensible agitation to the mind than any other image or conception.

• Once this being is admitted, all the rest is easy.
  • The company of strangers is agreeable to us for a short time, by enlivening our thought.
  • The company of our relations and acquaintances must be peculiarly agreeable.
    • Because it:
      • has this effect in a greater degree
      • is of more durable influence.
• Whatever is related to us is conceived in a lively manner by the easy transition from ourselves to the related object.
• Custom or acquaintance also:
  • facilitates the entrance, and
  • strengthens the conception of any object.
• The first case is parallel to our reasonings from cause and effect.
  • The second cause is parallel to education.
• As reasoning and education concur only in producing a lively and strong idea of any object, so is this the only thing common to relation and acquaintance.
  • This must, therefore, be the influencing quality which produces all their common effects.
  • Love or kindness is one of these effects.
    • They must be derived from the force and liveliness of conception.
• Such a conception is peculiarly agreeable.
  • It makes us have an affectionate regard for everything that produces it, when the proper object of kindness and goodwill.

• People associate together according to their particular tempers and dispositions.
  • Men of gay tempers naturally love the gay.
  • The serious bear an affection to the serious.
• This happens:
  • where they remark this resemblance between themselves and others
  • by the natural course of the disposition
  • by a certain sympathy which always arises between similar characters.
• Where they remark the resemblance, it operates as a relation by producing a connection of ideas.
  • Where they do not remark it, it operates by some other principle.
  • If this principle is similar to the former, it must be a confirmation of the foregoing reasoning.

• The idea of ourselves:
  • is always intimately present to us.
  • conveys a sensible degree of vivacity to the idea of any other object, to which we are related.
• This lively idea changes by degrees into a real impression.
  • These two kinds of perception:
    • are the same
    • differ only in their degrees of force and vivacity.
• But this change must be produced with the greater ease.
  • Our natural temper:
    • gives us a propensity to the same impression we observe in others
    • makes this propensity arise on any slight occasion.
• In that case, resemblance converts the idea into an impression:
  • by means of the relation
  • by transfusing the original vivacity into the related idea
  • by presenting such materials as take fire from the least spark.
• In both cases, a love or affection arises from the resemblance.
  • We may learn that a sympathy with others is agreeable only by giving an emotion to the spirits.
  • Since an easy sympathy and correspondent emotions are alone common to relation, acquaintance, and resemblance.

• The great propensity men have to pride may be considered as another similar phenomenon.
  • Living in a new city, might at first be disagreeable to us.
  • The aversion slowly reduces as we:
    • become familiar with its streets and buildings
    • contact an acquaintance
  • It finally changes into the opposite passion.
• The mind finds satisfaction and ease in the objects it is accustomed to.
  • It naturally prefers them to others more valuable but less known to it.
• In the same way, we are seduced into a good opinion of ourselves and of all objects that belong to us.
  • They appear in a stronger light.
  • They are more agreeable.
  • Consequently, they are fitter subjects of pride and vanity.

• Some pretty curious phenomena goes with our affection with our acquaintance and relations.
  • We commonly see children esteem their relation to their mother to be weakened greatly by her second marriage.
  • They no longer regard her with the same eye as if she had continued in widowhood.
• This happens:
  • when they have felt any inconveniences from her second marriage or
  • when her husband is much her inferior.
  • even without any of these considerations
  • merely because she has become part of another family.
• This also takes place with regard to the father’s second marriage, but in a much less degree.
  • The ties of blood are not so much loosened in the latter case as by the marriage of a mother.
• These two phenomena are remarkable in themselves, but much more so when compared.

• To produce a perfect relation between two objects, the imagination needs to:
  • be conveyed from one to the other by resemblance, contiguity or causation
  • return back from the second to the first with the same ease and facility.
• At first sight, this may seem a necessary and unavoidable consequence.
  • If one object resembles another, the latter object must necessarily resemble the former.
  • If one object be the cause of another, the second object is effect to its cause.
• It is the same case with contiguity.
  • Therefore the relation is always reciprocal.
  • The return of the imagination from the second to the first must also, be equally natural as its passage from the first to the second, in every case.
• But on farther examination we shall easily discover our mistake.
  • Supposing the second object also to have a strong relation to a third object.
  • The thought passes from the first object to the second, but does not return with the same facility, even if the relation continues the same.
    • Instead, it is readily carried on to the third object through the new relation which:
      • presents itself
      • gives a new impulse to the imagination.
• This new relation weakens the tie between the first and second objects.
  • The fancy is by its very nature wavering and inconstant.
  • It always considers two objects as more strongly related together, where it finds the passage equally easy in going and returning, than where the transition is easy only in one of these motions.
• The double motion:
  • is a kind of a double tie
  • binds the objects together in the closest and most intimate manner.

• The second marriage of a mother does not break the relation of child and parent.
  • That relation suffices to convey my imagination from myself to her with the greatest ease and facility.
• But after the imagination is arrived at this point of view, it finds its object to be surrounded with so many other relations.
  • These challenge its regard.
  • It does not know which to prefer.
  • It is at a loss what new object to pitch on.
• The ties of interest and duty:
  • bind her to another family
  • prevent that return of the fancy from her to myself, which is necessary to support the union.
• The thought no longer has the vibration needed to:
  • set it perfectly at ease
  • indulge its inclination to change.
• It goes with facility, but returns with difficulty.
  • By that interruption, it finds the relation much weakened from what it would be were the passage open and easy on both sides.

• Why does this effect not follow in the same degree on the second marriage of a father?
• The imagination goes easily from the view of a lesser object to the view of a greater object.
  • Yet it does not return with the same facility from the greater to the less.
• When my imagination goes from myself to my father, it does not:
  • pass so readily from him to his second wife
  • consider him as entering into a different family
• It considers him as continuing to be the head of the family I am a part of.
  • His superiority:
    • prevents the thought’s easy transition from him to his spouse.
    • keeps the passage open for a return to myself along the same relation of child and parent.
• He is not sunk in the new relation he acquires.
  • The double motion or vibration of thought is still easy and natural.
  • By this indulgence of the fancy in its inconstancy, the tie of child and parent still preserves its full force and influence.
• A mother does not think her tie to a son is weakened because it is shared with her husband.
• A son does not think that his tie with a parent is weakened because it is shared with a brother.
  • The third object is here related to the first and the second.
  • The imagination goes and comes along all of them with the greatest facility.

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SEC. 5: OUR ESTEEM FOR THE RICH AND POWERFUL

• A person’s power and riches, or poverty and meanness has the greatest tendency to give us an esteem or a contempt for that person.
  • Esteem and contempt are a species of love and hatred.

• Most fortunately, the greatest difficulty is not to discover a principle capable of producing such an effect.
  • The difficulty is in choosing the chief among several principles.
• Our satisfaction in the riches of others and our esteem for their possessors may be ascribed to three causes.
  1. To the objects they possess which are agreeable in themselves.
     • These necessarily produce a sentiment of pleasure in anyone who considers them.
  2. To the expectation of advantage from the rich and powerful, by our sharing their possessions.
  3. To sympathy.
     • This makes us partake of the satisfaction of every one, that approaches us.
• All these principles may concur in producing the present phenomenon.
  • The question is, to which of them we should principally ascribe it.

• The first principle, the reflection on agreeable objects, has a greater influence than what we might imagine.
  • We seldom reflect on what is beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, without an emotion of pleasure or uneasiness.
  • These sensations do not appear much in our common indolent way of thinking.
    • But it is easy to discover them in reading or conversation.
• Men of wit always turn their discourse on subjects that are entertaining to the imagination.
  • Poets only present objects that are entertaining.
• Mr. Philips has chosen cyder for the subject of an excellent poem.
  • Beer would not have been so proper, as it is not so agreeable to the taste nor the eye.
  • But he would certainly have preferred wine could his native country have afforded it to him.
• We may learn from this that everything agreeable to the senses:
  • is also agreeable to the fancy
  • conveys an image of that satisfaction to the thought which it gives by its real application to the bodily organs.

• Many other reasons may keep us from regarding these three reasons as the principal ones.
• The ideas of pleasure can influence only through their vivacity, which makes them approach impressions.
• Those ideas naturally should have:
  • that influence favoured by most circumstances
  • a tendency to become strong and lively, such as our ideas of the passions and sensations of any human.
• Every human resembles ourselves.
  • This resemblance gives us an advantage above any other object in operating on the imagination.

• No matter how lively and agreeable the ideas of a rich man’s pleasant wines, music, or gardens may become, the fancy will not confine itself to them.
  • The imagination will carry its view to:
    • the related objects
    • to the person who possesses them, in particular.
• The pleasant idea or image here naturally produces a passion towards the person, through his relation to the object.
  • He unavoidably enters into the original conception, since he makes the object of the derivative passion.
• But it is sympathy which causes the affection, if he:
  • enters into the original conception
  • is considered as enjoying these agreeable objects.
• The third principle is more powerful and universal than the first.

• Riches and power alone, even though unemployed, naturally cause esteem and respect.
  • Consequently, these passions do not arise from the idea of any beautiful or agreeable objects.
• Money implies a kind of representation of such objects, by the power it affords of obtaining them.
  • For that reason, it is still proper to convey those agreeable images, which may give rise to the passion.
• But this prospect is very distant.
  • It is more natural for us to take a contiguous object, namely the satisfaction, which this power affords the person who has it.
• Riches represent the goods of life, only through the will which employs them.
  • Riches in their very nature, therefore, imply an idea of the person.
    • It cannot be considered without a kind of sympathy with his sensations and enjoyments.

• We can confirm this by a subtle and refined reflection.
  • Power, as distinguished from its exercise:
    • has no meaning at all, or
    • is nothing but a possibility of existence by which any object:
      • approaches to reality
      • has a sensible influence on the mind.
• By an illusion of the fancy, this approach appears much greater when we ourselves have the power, than when it is enjoyed by another.
  • In the former case, the objects seem to:
    • touch on the very verge of reality
    • convey almost an equal satisfaction, as if actually in our possession.
• Where we esteem a person on account of his riches, we must enter into this sentiment of the proprietor
  • Without such a sympathy, the idea of the agreeable objects, which they give him the power to produce, would have but a feeble influence on us.
• An avaritious man is respected for his money, even if he does not have a power.
  • There is no probability or even possibility of his employing it to acquire life’s pleasures and conveniences.
  • To himself alone, this power seems perfect and entire.
  • We must receive his sentiments by sympathy before we can:
    • have a strong idea of these enjoyments, or
    • esteem him because of them.

• Thus the first principle:
  • resolves itself into the third
  • becomes a sympathy with the person we esteem or love.
• Let us now examine the second principle.

• Riches and authority undoubtedly give their owner a power of doing us service.
  • Yet this power is not on the same footing with the power he has in pleasing himself.
• Self-love approaches the power and exercise very near each other in the latter case.
  • But to produce a similar effect in the former, we must suppose a friendship and goodwill to be conjoined with the riches.
• Without that circumstance, it is difficult to conceive what can be the basis of our hope of advantage from the riches of others.
  • Though we naturally esteem and respect the rich, even before we discover any such favourable disposition in them towards us.

• We respect the rich and powerful when:
  • they show no inclination to serve us, and
  • we lie so much out of their sphere of activity, that they cannot even have that power.
• Prisoners of war are always treated with a respect suitable to their condition.
  • Riches go very far towards fixing the condition of any person.
• If birth and quality enter for a share, this still affords us an argument of the same kind.
  • A ‘man of birth’ is but one who:
    • is descended from a long succession of rich and powerful ancestors
    • acquires our esteem by his relation to persons whom we esteem.
  • His dead ancestors are respected, in some measure:
    • because of their riches
    • consequently, without any kind of expectation.

• Let us observe those phenomena that occur in common life.
• A man of a competent fortune naturally treats strangers in a group with different degrees of respect and deference, as he is informed of their different fortunes and conditions, even if he can never propose and would not accept any benefit from them.
• A traveler is always admitted into company and meets with civility proportional to his fortune expressed by his train and equipage.
  • In short, the different ranks of men, the superiors, inferiors, strangers, acquaintances are regulated greatly by riches.

• These arguments have an answer drawn from the influence of general rules.
  • It may be pretended, that we extend the same sentiments to the rich but from whom we can never hope for any benefit because we are used to:
    • expect succour and protection from the rich and powerful, and
    • esteem them because of that.
• The general rule still prevails.
  • By giving a bent to the imagination it draws along the passion, in the same way as if its proper object were real and existent.

• But this principle does not take place here.
  • To establish a general rule and extend it beyond its proper bounds, we need:
    • a certain uniformity in our experience
    • a great superiority of those instances conformable to the rule, above the contrary.
  • But here the case is quite otherwise.
    • Of 100 men of credit and fortune, I do not meet anyone I can get benefit from.
      • So it is impossible that any custom can ever prevail in the present case.

• Only the principle of sympathy can give us:
  • an esteem for power and riches
  • a contempt for meanness and poverty.
• By sympathy, we:
  • enter into the sentiments of the rich and poor
  • partake of their pleasure and uneasiness.
• Riches give satisfaction to their possessor.
  • This satisfaction is conveyed to the beholder by the imagination, which produces an idea resembling the original impression in force and vivacity.
  • This agreeable idea or impression is connected with love.
  • It proceeds from a thinking conscious being, which is the very object of love.
• According to my hypothesis, love arises from this relation of impressions and identity of ideas.

• Let all the powers and elements of nature serve and obey one man.
  • Let the:
    • sun rise and set at his command.
    • sea and rivers roll as he pleases
    • earth furnish spontaneously whatever may be useful or agreeable to him.
  • He will still be miserable until you give him some one person at least:
    • with whom he may share his happiness
    • whose esteem and friendship he may enjoy.
• Sympathy is the soul or animating principle of pride, ambition, avarice, curiosity, revenge or lust.
  • They do not have any force if we abstracted them entirely from the thoughts and sentiments of others.
• We can form no wish, which has not a reference to society.
  • A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer.
  • Every pleasure languishes when:
    • enjoyed apart from company
    • every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable.
• This desire associates them together, without any advantages they can ever propose to reap from their union.
  • This is still more conspicuous in man who:
    • has the most ardent desire of society
    • is fitted for society by the most advantages.
• There is a remarkable desire of company in creatures that:
  • do not prey on others
  • are not agitated with violent passions.
• The best method of reconciling us to this opinion is to:
  • take a general survey of the universe
  • observe the force of sympathy through:
    • the whole animal creation
    • the easy communication of sentiments from one thinking being to another.
• We may confirm this conclusion from a general view of human nature, by particular instances, wherein the force of sympathy is very remarkable.
  • Most kinds of beauty are derived from this origin.
• Our first object is some senseless inanimate matter.
  • We seldom rest there.
  • We do not see its influence on sensible and rational creatures.
• A man who shows us any house or building, takes particular care to:
  • point out the convenience of the apartments,
  • the advantages of their situation, and
  • the little room lost in the stairs and passages.
• The chief part of the beauty consists in these particulars.
  • The observation of convenience gives pleasure, since convenience is a beauty.
  • But how does it give pleasure?
• Our own interest is not concerned.
  • This is a beauty of interest, not of form.
  • It must delight us merely by:
    • communication, and
    • our sympathizing with its proprietor.
      • We enter into his interest by the force of imagination.
      • We feel the same satisfaction that the objects naturally occasion in him.

• This observation extends to tables, chairs, chimneys, coaches, saddles, ploughs, and every work of art.
• It is a universal rule that their beauty is chiefly derived from:
  • their utility, and
  • their fitness for their destined purpose.
• But this advantage concerns only the owner.
  • Only sympathy can interest the spectator.

• A field’s fertility renders it most agreeable.
  • No advantages of ornament or situation will be able to equal this beauty.
  • It is the same case with particular trees, plants, and fields.
  • To me, a plain, overgrown with furze and broom is as beautiful as a hill covered with vines or olive-trees.
  • But it will never appear as beautiful to a person who knows the value of each.
• But this is a beauty merely of imagination.
  • It has no foundation to the senses.
• Fertility and value have a plain reference to use, riches, joy, and plenty.
  • We have no hope of partaking of these, yet we:
    • enter into them by the fancy’s vivacity, and
    • share them with the proprietor, in a way.

• The most reasonable rules in painting are those of:
  • balancing the figures, and
  • placing them with the greatest exactness on their proper centers of gravity.
• An imbalanced figure is disagreeable because it conveys the ideas of its fall, harm, and pain.
  • These ideas are painful when they acquire force and vivacity by sympathy.

• The principal part of personal beauty is:
  • an air of health and vigour
  • a construction of members as promises strength and activity.
• This idea of beauty cannot be accounted for but by sympathy.

• Generally, human minds are mirrors to one another because:
  • they reflect each others emotions, and
  • those rays of passions, sentiments and opinions may often:
    • be reverberated, and
    • decay away by insensible degrees.
• The pleasure of a rich man from his possessions is thrown on the beholder.
  • This causes a pleasure and esteem.
  • The possessor perceives and sympathizes with these sentiments again, increasing his pleasure.
  • This pleasures is again reflected to the beholder.
  • These become a new foundation for his pleasure and esteem.
• In riches, there is an original satisfaction of enjoying all of life’s pleasures, derived from that power they bestow.
  • This is their very nature and essence.
  • It must be the first source of all the passions arising from them.
  • One of the most considerable of these passions is the love or esteem in others.
    • This therefore proceeds from a sympathy with the possessor’s pleasure.
• But the possessor also has a secondary satisfaction in riches, arising from the love and esteem he acquires by them.
  • This satisfaction is nothing but a second reflection of that original pleasure, which proceeded from himself.
  • This secondary satisfaction or vanity becomes one of the principal recommendations of riches.
  • It is the chief reason, why we desire them for ourselves or esteem them in others.
• Here then is a third rebound of the original pleasure.
  • After this, it is difficult to distinguish the images and reflections because of their faintness and confusion.

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