| But when the fair sex, or music, or good cheer, or any thing, that naturally ought to be agreeable, becomes indifferent, it easily produces the opposite affection. |
| But custom not only gives a facility to perform any action, but likewise an inclination and tendency towards it, where it is not entirely disagreeable, and can never be the object of inclination. |
| And this is the reason why custom encreases all active habits, but diminishes passive, according to the observation of a late eminent philosopher. |
| The facility takes off from the force of the passive habits by rendering the motion of the spirits faint and languid. |
| But as in the active, the spirits are sufficiently supported of themselves, the tendency of the mind gives them new force, and bends them more strongly to the action. |
| SECT. VI OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMAGINATION ON THE PASSIONS |
| It is remarkable, that the imagination and affections have close union together, and that nothing, which affects the former, can be entirely indifferent to the latter. |
| Wherever our ideas of good or evil acquire a new vivacity, the passions become more violent; and keep pace with the imagination in all its variations. |
| Whether this proceeds from the principle above-mentioned, that any attendant emotion is easily converted into the predominant, I shall not determine. |
| It is sufficient for my present purpose, that we have many instances to confirm this influence of the imagination upon the passions. |
| Any pleasure, with which we are acquainted, affects us more than any other, which we own to be superior, but of whose nature we are wholly ignorant. |
| Of the one we can form a particular and determinate idea: The other we conceive under the general notion of pleasure; and it is certain, that the more general and universal any of our ideas are, the less influence they have upon the imagination. |
| A general idea, though it be nothing but a particular one considered in a certain view, is commonly more obscure; and that because no particular idea, by which we represent a general one, is ever fixed or determinate, but may easily be changed for other particular ones, which will serve equally in the representation. |
| There is a noted passage in the history of Greece, which may serve for our present purpose. |
| Themistocles told the Athenians, that he had formed a design, which would be highly useful to the public, but which it was impossible for him to communicate to them without ruining the execution, since its success depended entirely on the secrecy with which it should be conducted. |
| The Athenians, instead of granting him full power to act as he thought fitting, ordered him to communicate his design to Aristides, in whose prudence they had an entire confidence, and whose opinion they were resolved blindly to submit to. |
| The design of Themistocles was secretly to set fire to the fleet of all the Grecian commonwealths, which was assembled in a neighbouring port, and which being once destroyed would give the Athenians the empire of the sea without any rival Aristides returned to the assembly, and told them, that nothing coued be more advantageous than the design of Themistocles but at the same time that nothing coued be more unjust: Upon which the people unanimously rejected the project. |
| A late celebrated historian [Mons. |
| Rollin {Charles Rollin, HISTOIRE ANCIENNE.(Paris 1730-38)}.] admires this passage of antient history, as one of the most singular that is any where to be met. |
| Here, says he, "they are not philosophers, to whom it is easy in their schools to establish the finest maxims and most sublime rules of morality, who decide that interest ought never to prevail above justice. |
| It is a whole people interested in the proposal. |