The Relations Of Impressions And Ideas

We have established 2 truths easily:

1. The causes of pride and humility are natural
2. Each different cause is adapted to its passion by a similar principle

How can we:

• reduce these principles fewer
• find among the causes some common origin of their influence?

The following properties of human nature influence our passions.

1. The association of ideas

The mind cannot fix itself steadily on one idea for a long time.*

But the changing of our thoughts have a rule and method.

The rule is to pass from one object to what is resembling, contiguous to, or produced by it.

The mind flows from one idea to another idea which is related to it.

2. A like association of impressions [feelings].

All resembling impressions are connected.

• An impression is followed immediately by other impressions

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger.

• Anger gives rise to envy
• Envy gives rise to malice
• Malice gives rise to grief again, until the whole circle is completed.*

Joy gives rise to love, generosity, pity, courage, pride, and the other resembling affections.

Our mind finds it difficult to confine itself to one passion alone.

Human nature is too inconstant to have such regularity.

• Changeableness is essential to it.

There is an attraction or association among impressions and ideas, but with a remarkable difference:

• ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation
• impressions are associated only by resemblance

3. These 2 kinds of association assist each other

The transition is easier where they both concur in the same object.

A man who is easily offended finds 100 subjects of discontent, impatience, fear, and other uneasy passions.

Those principles which forward the transition of ideas concur here with those principles which operate on impressions.

Both:

• unite in one action
• give a double impulse on the mind

This is why the new passion gets so much more force.*

According to Addison, an elegant writer:

Addison Spectator 412, final paragraph

The fancy delights in everything that is great, strange, or beautiful.

Any continued sound, as the music of birds, or a fall of waters awakens the mind, making it more attentive.

A fragrant perfume also makes the colours of the landschape appear more agreeable. Smell and sight recommend each other and are pleasanter together than separate.

This phenomenon shows the:

• association of impressions and ideas
• their mutual assistance