| But to leave as little room for doubt as possible, let us renew our experiments, and see whether the event in this case answers our expectation. |
| I choose an object, such as virtue, that causes a separate satisfaction: On this object I bestow a relation to self; and find, that from this disposition of affairs, there immediately arises a passion. |
| But what passion? That very one of pride, to which this object bears a double relation. |
| Its idea is related to that of self, the object of the passion: The sensation it causes resembles the sensation of the passion. |
| That I may be sure I am not mistaken in this experiment, I remove first one relation; then another; and find, that each removal destroys the passion, and leaves the object perfectly indifferent. |
| But I am not content with this. |
| I make a still farther trial; and instead of removing the relation, I only change it for one of a different kind. |
| I suppose the virtue to belong to my companion, not to myself; and observe what follows from this alteration. |
| I immediately perceive the affections wheel to about, and leaving pride, where there is only one relation, viz, of impressions, fall to the side of love, where they are attracted by a double relation of impressions and ideas. |
| By repeating the same experiment, in changing anew the relation of ideas, I bring the affections back to pride; and by a new repetition I again place them at love or kindness. |
| Being fully convinced of the influence of this relation, I try the effects of the other; and by changing virtue for vice, convert the pleasant impression, which arises from the former, into the disagreeable one, which proceeds from the latter. |
| The effect still answers expectation. |
| Vice, when placed on another, excites, by means of its double relations, the passion of hatred, instead of love, which for the same reason arises from virtue. |
| To continue the experiment, I change anew the relation of ideas, and suppose the vice to belong to myself. |
| What follows? What is usual. |
| A subsequent change of the passion from hatred to humility. |
| This humility I convert into pride by a new change of the impression; and find after all that I have compleated the round, and have by these changes brought back the passion to that very situation, in which I first found it. |
| But to make the matter still more certain, I alter the object; and instead of vice and virtue, make the trial upon beauty and deformity, riches and poverty, power and servitude. |
| Each of these objects runs the circle of the passions in the same manner, by a change of their relations: And in whatever order we proceed, whether through pride, love, hatred, humility, or through humility, hatred, love, pride, the experiment is not in the least diversifyed. |
| Esteem and contempt, indeed, arise on some occasions instead of love and hatred; but these are at the bottom the same passions, only diversifyed by some causes, which we shall explain afterwards. |
| Fifth Experiment. |