means of B, A is transferred to C, the pleasurable feelings are transferred to the idea of money (and consequently to money itself) and are called up by it without any reference to B, the objects by which those pleasurable feelings were excited. The law of transference may, in this instance, and many others, be carried one step further. In this state money is desired, on account of the pleasurable feelings with which it is connected; but by degrees the desire is transferred from the pleasurable feelings with which it is connected to money itself, and money is loved for itself, without any reference to those pleasurable feelings. This is so important a fact in our mental constitution, and what can be explained only by association, that we deem no apology necessary for endeavouring so much at length to point out its application. Here A is the desire which is excited by B, the pleasurable feeling connected with C, the idea of money: by means of B, A, the desire, is transferred to C, the idea of the money; and thus money comes to be desired for itself, without any reference to the pleasurable feelings which it is the means of procuring. In this state the desire of money is become an ultimate affection; it is no longer desired as a means, but as an end; it is desired on its own account.

44. Illustrations of a similar kind might be offered with respect to the filial, fraternal, and even the parental affections; and it might be shewn that they are only gradually disinterested; but at the same time the natural tendency is to disinterestedness: and, that it is only where disinterestedness is opposed by the culture of wrong affections, (affections which, when become ultimate, are ever selfish), and by neglect of those which are in all their stages worthy and which hasten the progress almost indefinitely, that the mind stops at partial disinterestedness or sinks into confirmed selfishness.-In opposition to these views, however, it may be advanced by some that children are usually more disinterested than persons who have had experience in life. We shall make some observations on this point, which will at the same time throw some light on the progress of the filial affections. Children often appear disinterested where they are not really so, because we do not take into account the quick changes of their feelings; sometimes setting a light value upon what a few hours, or even minutes, before they were delighted with, and at other times the

reverse. Hence they are readily induced to give away what they have before been delighted with, and to make what we erroneously think sacrifices without an ef fort.-But again, we are apt to think them disinterested when they give up what they really like, only, or principally, because they thus have a greater share of the pleasures resulting from their obedience to their friends' praise, or other rewards. Now the approbation of their friends is to children a thing of such value, that praise affords them some of their greatest pleasures. And therefore when for the sake of that approbation, they give up play-things or niceties, or any other objects of pleasure, so far from being disinterested, they are eminently selfinterested; but their self-interestedness is of a better kind, one which with due care will prove a most powerful engine in the moral and religious culture of the mind, by increasing the influence of the parent and instructor.-Again, children are in general influenced more by present objects than by future objects, however far superior in their value and durability. Few children early attain such command over themselves as voluntarily to give up a present source of pleasure for a future one; and where it is done, it is rather in compliance with the wishes and injunctions of their friends, than from any comprehensive conception of the future good. It is an excellent thing to obtain the sacrifice by means of any worthy feeling; all we wish to observe is, that children do not feel the value of future pleasures, and therefore easily yield to that which is most powerful at the time. Hence therefore they appear disinterested because they cannot calculate the value of the good which they relinquish; and do in reality prefer the greatest present pleasure, or rather they are in reality actuated by the greatest present pleasure.-We do however cheerfully admit that children very often are disinterested; for instance, will obey their parents, will tell the truth, will endeavour to increase the comforts of others, without any reference direct or indirect to any personal gratification; and we admit too that these same children too frequently as they grow up become more selfish, and sometimes the constitutional readiness with which they have in some instances become disinterested, will be the cause of their becoming selfish, and that to a degree which those of less promise never experience. All this may be easily explained, but we must confine ourselves to the fact, that

from the contagion of feeling, and partly because his means of happiness considerably depend upon the convenience of others. If his companions are ill, his sources of pleasure are diminished; if his parents are unable to take their customary care of him, he misses it in various ways, he loses the caress of affection, or the little kindnesses of parental tenderness. Hence the comfort and happiness of others necessarily becomes the object of desire; and even in children, it not unfrequently happens, that this desire becomes sufficiently disinterested to forego small pleasures, or endure small pains, in order to increase the comfort of their parents, or to prevent what would diminish it.-Benevolence is that affection which leads us to promote the welfare of others to the best of our power; and general benevolence is founded upon particular benevolence; for instance, upon affection to parents. We have seen the rudiments of it spring up; and that in some instances, even in children, it becomes disinterested: but it has been in only one branch, and it will be well to pursue it further.-The endeavour to promote the comfort or welfare of others, is almost invariably followed in the early part of life with an increase of pleasurable feelings. Parents approve, and tell children that God approves, of those who do good to others. Children and young people are continually feeling and observing the good effects of benevolence, as manifested in their own conduct, or in that of others; and hence, in well-disposed children, the pleasurable feelings connected with benevolent actions are very strong; they are very glad to see others made happy, and very glad to be enabled to make others happy; the pleasure derived from the approbation of others, from the approbation of their own minds; the increase of goodwill in the person benefited; and the accordance with all the religious feelings which are possessed, and with various circumstances less general, add such a stock of pleasurable feelings to the doing good to others, that by degrees it is an object of desire, altogether independently of any consideration beyond itself. A person who has completely gone through this process, desires to benefit others without the slight est reference to his own personal benefit, either in this world or in the next: he employs the different opportunities which present themselves to him of doing good to others, without thinking of any thing more than the immediate object. If it call for

great exertion on his part, great efforts of self-denial, he brings to his aid the desire of following the dictates of duty, of obeying the commands of God, and where his benevolence, his love of duty, and his love of God, are thoroughly purified from self; to do good he will forego great and any pleasures, and endure great and any pains, without a thought beyond the attainment of the good which he produces, and the obedience to the claims of God and duty. Is he not now a noble being, worthy the discipline which his heavenly father hath be stowed upon him? And would not any one, to attain this height, go through any correction or trial? A less height is often observed. Benevolence may, with the strictest propriety, be termed disinterested, when, in a considerable number of its promptings, it has no end beside the good which it proposes, and this is obtained by numbers; and by those who have attained this height, that improvement may be made, by cultivating a general love of duty, and a regard to the will of God, which refutes beyond the possibility of rational controversy, the opinion that every feeling of the human mind is selfish.-We surely need not show how these things illustrate and explain the law of transference, by which, means become the ends. We shall, however, just point out that the desire of doing good itself may sometimes be lost from the view of the mind in attention to the means of doing it. Some of our readers are probably considerably interested in the welfare of institutions for the promotion of the welfare of the poor and afflicted; these institutions were planned by benevolence, and benevolence prompts their support. It is the desire of doing good which has led to the frequently returning exertions which are made to keep them in vigour; but we have no doubt but the welfare of one or other of those institutions will often be found to be an object of the mind without reference to the good it does. The mind rejoices in its success, without thinking of the benefit which will result from it. As soon as the attention is directed to the benefits, the mind dwells upon them as the ultimate reason of its pleasure; but that was not in the view of the mind. Whether we have been successful or not in making our readers feel the force of the assertion by this illustration, we are confident of the fact, that the means of doing good often themselves become ends; and that the desire of their successful furtherance, which

was originally felt for them, merely on account of the good they promised or did, is at last felt without reference to that good; though, on the other hand, it would by degrees, though perhaps not very soon, decay, if it were proved to the satisfaction of the mind, that the means of the hoped-for good were and must be totally inefficacious. But there would be no end to illustrations of this law, if we were to trace it out in all its operations. We are continually loving things because-and afterwards loving them for themselves alone: it extends to the love of duty in general, without any reference to those peculiar branches of it with which we have been more immediately concerned. All the pleasurable feelings arising from particular branches of duty, and all the tendencies to particular branches of duty, by degrees become connected with the idea of duty in general, which is, in fact, formed of all the ideas of particular branches, &c. which we have considered as right and our duty; hence duty becomes an object of desire, because parts of it are loved on their own account, and this hastens the progress of a disinterested love of duty in general. But leaving this out of the question, a great variety of considerations make it an object of choice; and if it be pursued as a mean to obtain the object in view, with sufficient steadiness, and for a sufficient length of time, by degrees it is pursued as an end, and duty is then loved for itself.

46. We shall think ourselves fortunate if we have succeeded in giving a distinct idea of the progress of the mind from self to disinterestedness. There are few things in mental investigations more interesting, or of greater practical value, than the tendency to love and to desire to promote things which have no immediate connection with our own good, without any reference to our own good. That the human mind is capable of gross selfishness which defies all present discipline to correct, is a fact which cannot be denied, and which should excite our vigilance and concern. But it is no less a fact, that it is also capable of disinterestedness which shall run through the whole of the conduct, and prompt uniformly and steadily to the promotion of others' welfare. The earliest pleasures are personal; I wish not to call them selfish, because we seem to appropriate that term to those feelings which have an explicit reference to our own real or imaginary good, and which prompt to this even at

the expense of others; in this sense the human mind cannot with the least propriety be said to be originally selfish; but its earliest pleasures are personal, and its earliest desires are consequently personal. Its interest in the pleasures of others, arises from their connection with the personal pleasures; and consequently the desire of promoting their pleasures, the love of others, is originally interested; that is, it is in consequence of its personal pleasures depending on the pleasures of others. There is nothing criminal in this, it is according to the laws of our mental frame; it is only criminal when the mind rests here; for it cannot, without being wrongfully impeded. The good of others promotes our personal pleasures, and hence it is originally that we desire to promote their good. By degrees the desire is transferred completely from the original end, personal pleasures, to the good of others, the original means, and then this becomes an end and the desire is disinterested.

47. We feel the glow of pleasure in thus tracing the progress of the mind, and shewing that its tendency is to disinterestedness, and that it is often obtained in a comparatively universal extent. Let us not then listen to the degrading ideas of those who would persuade us that the most perfect benevolence is only the most refined selfishness; that all which is said by philosophers and moralists respecting disinterestedness is unmeaning rant, and that, when we call upon mankind to divest themselves of self and personal considerations, we call upon them for something which they are not able to practise. We may, with the consistency of truth, have a nobler view of our species; and we may ourselves hold up, as the object of our steady exertions, that state of mind, in which to perceive the practicable means of promoting the good of others, and to employ them, will be invariably associated, without any connecting intervening bond of union.-On the other hand, let no one less highly value the exertions of disinterestedness because it can be shewn to arise from a meaner origin. Ought we not rather to admire the height which has been gained by a steady use of the general means of worth, and by a right employment of the discipline of Providence? Is his conduct less lovely who has gone throngh the trial, and brought from it disinterestedness which prompts to efforts of the noblest kind for the good of others? The original disinterestedness

of the mind may be pleasing in some points of view; but in others it is the contrary; it diminishes the worth of character in those cases where it exists, for constitutional disinterestedness has no more merit than the possessions of a good sight; and it damps too the efforts to obtain disinterestedness. Those who find themselves deficient, who discover feelings which disinterestedness owns not, have, on the theory here proposed, the best encouragement, the prospect of success, in their endeavours to transfer their affections from self. It leads too, humbly and gratefully, to acquiesce, in every means which Providence may appoint, to discipline the mind, and to purify it from all that can debase. In short, it points the view to the highest excellence, and directs the means of attaining it.

4. Habitual Biases.

48. We now proceed to the last of those laws of association, which we propose to notice, and in what we shall advance on the subject, we shall make a free use of Stewart's Elements.-The leading feature of the operations of the associative power is that when two or more ideas, &c. are presented to the mind, together or in close succession, they become connected with one another, or blended together, so that the one when recalled to the view of the mind, is accompanied with the other. But we must not limit its exercise to this operation; it not only connects ideas when they are thus presented together to the mind, but is the cause of the introduction of ideas with one another, which have ne ver before been presented together to the mind. An object which has never before been presented to the mind, may excite numerous ideas, or trains of ideas; while another may continually occur without exciting a single idea. And the same object will affect different persons differently, so that in the mind of one it will excite trains of thought, while in another it will only produce a momentary impression; and in different persons too the same object will excite different trains of thought; and in the same person, at different times, different effects will be produced.-Now all this depends upon the habitual or accidental biases to particular kinds of connection, produced either by the habitual tendency of the mental constitution, or more usually by the particular culture of the individual mind, owing to direct instruction, or to the effect of circumstances, operating without

any intention either on his part or on that of others.

49. The earliest bond of union between objects of thought, is their being presented to the mind together, or in close succession, through the medium of sensation; this is owing to the objects of sensation being connected either in time or place, or in other words, owing to the relation of contiguity in time and place existing between these objects. This cause of connection among our ideas is what necessarily has the earliest efficacy in forming those connections, because it does not presuppose, as every other does, the existence of other ideas in the mind, or the exercise of attention to other relations which exist among them. Children associate ideas together almost entirely by this bond of union; persons of uncultivated minds in the same manner, usually have their ideas connected by the same bond of union, contiguity of time and place of the objects of sensation, producing impressions on the mind at the same time, or in close succession; and more or less it is a connecting link, or cause of connection, in every one, in every period of life. We might, à priori, calculate upon its high importance in the mental structure, and as a matter of fact, it is the foundation of all experience and philosophy, and at the same time the source of numerous prejudices. It is the source of numerous prejudices, by leading us to expect continued conjunction in time or place, where the conjunction was only occasional, and thus to suppose a real and permanent connection between objects which had only an accidental and temporary connection. Hence unenlightened experience of the past will fill the mind, in numberless instances, with vain expectations, or with groundless alarms, concerning the future; hence the regard which is paid to unlucky days, to unlucky colours, to the influence of the planets, &c.; apprehensions which render human life, to many, a continual series of absurd terrors. But this principle of connection among our ideas is also the foundation of all experience and philosophy; for the grand object of philosophy is the knowledge of those laws which regulate the succession of events, so that from the past we may be enabled to anticipate the probable course of the future, and to regulate our conduct accordingly; and therefore it is of the first importance that the connec. tions of time and place should have a strong power over the mind. Experience is of a more limited nature, but has the same ob