| The double relation between the ideas and impressions subsists in both cases, and produces an easy transition from the one emotion to the other. |
| In a word, nature has bestowed a kind of attraction on certain impressions and ideas, by which one of them, upon its appearance, naturally introduces its correlative. |
| If these two attractions or associations of impressions and ideas concur on the same object, they mutually assist each other, and the transition of the affections and of the imagination is made with the greatest ease and facility. |
| When an idea produces an impression, related to an impression, which is connected with an idea, related to the first idea, these two impressions must be in a manner inseparable, nor will the one in any case be unattended with the other. |
| It is after this manner, that the particular causes of pride and humility are determined. |
| The quality, which operates on the passion, produces separately an impression resembling it; the subject, to which the quality adheres, is related to self, the object of the passion: No wonder the whole cause, consisting of a quality and of a subject, does so unavoidably give rise to the pass on. |
| To illustrate this hypothesis. |
| we may compare it to that, by which I have already explained the belief attending the judgments, which we form from causation. |
| I have observed, that in all judgments of this kind, there is always a present impression. |
| and a related idea; and that the present impression gives a vivacity to the fancy, and the relation conveys this vivacity, by an easy transition, to the related idea. |
| Without the present impression, the attention is not fixed, nor the spirits excited. |
| Without the relation, this attention rests on its first object, and has no farther consequence. |
| There is evidently a great analogy betwixt that hypothesis. |
| and our present one of an impression and idea, that transfuse themselves into another impression and idea by means of their double relation: Which analogy must be allowed to be no despicable proof of both hypotheses. |
| SECT. VI LIMITATIONS OF THIS SYSTEM |
| But before we proceed farther in this subject, and examine particularly all the causes of pride and humility, it will be proper to make some limitations to the general system, THAT ALL AGREEABLE OBJECTS, RELATED TO OURSELVES, BY AN ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS AND OF IMPRESSIONS, PRODUCE PRIDE, AND DISAGREEABLE ONES, HUMILITY: And these limitations are derived from the very nature of the subject. |
| I. Suppose an agreeable object to acquire a relation to self, the first passion, that appears on this occasion, is joy; and this passion discovers itself upon a slighter relation than pride and vain-glory. |
| We may feel joy upon being present at a feast, where our senses are regard with delicacies of every kind: But it is only the master of the feast, who, beside the same joy, has the additional passion of self-applause and vanity. |
| It is true, men sometimes boast of a great entertainment, at which they have only been present; and by so small a relation convert their pleasure into pride: But however, this must in general be owned, that joy arises from a more inconsiderable relation than vanity, and that many things, which are too foreign to produce pride, are yet able to give us a delight and pleasure, The reason of the difference may be explained thus. |
| A relation is requisite to joy, in order to approach the object to us, and make it give us any satisfaction. |
| But beside this, which is common to both passions, it is requisite to pride, in order to produce a transition from one passion to another, and convert the falsification into vanity. |