SEC. 4: THE LOVE OF RELATIONS • I have explained why actions that cause a real pleasure or uneasiness do not excite love or hatred towards the actors • Where does the pleasure or uneasiness of the objects which produce these passions come from? • According to the preceding system, there is always a double relation of impressions and ideas required between the cause and effect to produce love or hatred. ◦ But love may remarkably be excited only by one relation between ourselves and the object. ◦ This relation is always attended with both the others. • Whoever is united to us by any connection, is always sure of a share of our love proportional to the connection, without inquiring into his other qualities. ◦ Thus, the relation of blood produces the strongest tie the mind is capable of in the love of parents to their children. ◦ The relation lessens as the degree of the same affection lessens. • Consanguinity and any other relation has this effect without exception. ◦ We love our countrymen, neighbours, those of the same trade, profession, and even name with ourselves. ◦ Every one of these relations: ▪ is esteemed some tie ▪ gives a title to a share of our affection. • The phenomenon of acquaintance is parallel to this. ◦ It gives rise to love and kindness, without any kind of relation. • When we have contracted a habitude and intimacy with any person; though in frequenting his company we have not been able to discover any very valuable quality, of which he is possessed. ◦ Yet we cannot refrain preferring him to strangers, of whose superior merit we are fully convinced. • These two phenomena of the effects of relation and acquaintance will give mutual light to each other, and may be both explained from the same principle. • Those who take pleasure in declaiming against human nature, have observed that man is insufficient to support himself. ◦ When you loosen all his holds of external objects, he immediately drops down into the deepest despair. • They say that this is the cause of that continual search for amusement in gaming, hunting, and business. ◦ We do this when we are not sustained by some brisk and lively emotion, to: ▪ try to forget ourselves ▪ excite our spirits from the languid state. • I agree to this method of thinking. ◦ The mind: ▪ is insufficient to its own entertainment ▪ naturally seeks foreign objects which may: • produce a lively sensation • agitate the spirits. • On the appearance of such an object, it awakes from a dream: ◦ The blood flows with a new tide. ◦ The heart is elevated. ◦ The whole man acquires a vigour which he cannot command in his solitary and calm moments. • Hence company is naturally so rejoicing. ◦ It presents a rational and thinking Being like ourselves, who communicates to us all the actions of his mind. ▪ It is the liveliest of all objects. ▪ It makes us privy to his inmost sentiments. ▪ It lets us see all the emotions caused by any object, in the instant of their production. • Every lively idea is agreeable, especially the idea of a passion. ◦ Because such an idea: ▪ becomes a kind of passion ▪ gives a more sensible agitation to the mind than any other image or conception. • Once this being is admitted, all the rest is easy. ◦ The company of strangers is agreeable to us for a short time, by enlivening our thought. ◦ The company of our relations and acquaintances must be peculiarly agreeable. ▪ Because it: • has this effect in a greater degree • is of more durable influence. • Whatever is related to us is conceived in a lively manner by the easy transition from ourselves to the related object.

• Custom or acquaintance also:
    ◦ facilitates the entrance
    ◦ strengthens the conception of any object.

The first case is parallel to our reasonings from cause and effect. ◦ The second cause is parallel to education.

As reasoning and education concur only in producing a lively and strong idea of any object, so is this the only thing common to relation and acquaintance.

    ◦ This must, therefore, be the influencing quality which produces all their common effects.
    ◦ Love or kindness is one of these effects.
        ▪ They must be derived from the force and liveliness of conception.

Such a conception is peculiarly agreeable.

• It makes us have an affectionate regard for everything that produces it, when the proper object of kindness and goodwill.

People associate together according to their particular tempers and dispositions. ◦ Men of gay tempers naturally love the gay. ◦ The serious bear an affection to the serious. • This happens: ◦ where they remark this resemblance between themselves and others ◦ by the natural course of the disposition ◦ by a certain sympathy which always arises between similar characters. • Where they remark the resemblance, it operates as a relation by producing a connection of ideas. ◦ Where they do not remark it, it operates by some other principle. ◦ If this principle is similar to the former, it must be a confirmation of the foregoing reasoning.

The idea of ourselves:

• is always intimately present to us.
• conveys a sensible degree of vivacity to the idea of any other object, to which we are related.

This lively idea changes by degrees into a real impression. ◦ These two kinds of perception: ▪ are the same ▪ differ only in their degrees of force and vivacity. • But this change must be produced with the greater ease. ◦ Our natural temper: ▪ gives us a propensity to the same impression we observe in others ▪ makes this propensity arise on any slight occasion. • In that case, resemblance converts the idea into an impression: ◦ by means of the relation ◦ by transfusing the original vivacity into the related idea ◦ by presenting such materials as take fire from the least spark. • In both cases, a love or affection arises from the resemblance. ◦ We may learn that a sympathy with others is agreeable only by giving an emotion to the spirits. ◦ Since an easy sympathy and correspondent emotions are alone common to relation, acquaintance, and resemblance. • The great propensity men have to pride may be considered as another similar phenomenon. ◦ Living in a new city, might at first be disagreeable to us. ◦ The aversion slowly reduces as we: ▪ become familiar with its streets and buildings ▪ contact an acquaintance ◦ It finally changes into the opposite passion. • The mind finds satisfaction and ease in the objects it is accustomed to. ◦ It naturally prefers them to others more valuable but less known to it. • In the same way, we are seduced into a good opinion of ourselves and of all objects that belong to us. ◦ They appear in a stronger light. ◦ They are more agreeable. ◦ Consequently, they are fitter subjects of pride and vanity. • Some pretty curious phenomena goes with our affection with our acquaintance and relations. ◦ We commonly see children esteem their relation to their mother to be weakened greatly by her second marriage. ◦ They no longer regard her with the same eye as if she had continued in widowhood.

This happens: ◦ when they have felt any inconveniences from her second marriage or ◦ when her husband is much her inferior. ◦ even without any of these considerations ◦ merely because she has become part of another family.

This also takes place with regard to the father’s second marriage, but in a much less degree. ◦ The ties of blood are not so much loosened in the latter case as by the marriage of a mother. • These two phenomena are remarkable in themselves, but much more so when compared. • To produce a perfect relation between two objects, the imagination needs to: ◦ be conveyed from one to the other by resemblance, contiguity or causation ◦ return back from the second to the first with the same ease and facility. • At first sight, this may seem a necessary and unavoidable consequence. ◦ If one object resembles another, the latter object must necessarily resemble the former. ◦ If one object be the cause of another, the second object is effect to its cause. • It is the same case with contiguity. ◦ Therefore the relation is always reciprocal. ◦ The return of the imagination from the second to the first must also, be equally natural as its passage from the first to the second, in every case.

But on farther examination we shall easily discover our mistake. ◦ Supposing the second object also to have a strong relation to a third object. ◦ The thought passes from the first object to the second, but does not return with the same facility, even if the relation continues the same. ▪ Instead, it is readily carried on to the third object through the new relation which: • presents itself • gives a new impulse to the imagination.

This new relation weakens the tie between the first and second objects. ◦ The fancy is by its very nature wavering and inconstant. ◦ It always considers two objects as more strongly related together, where it finds the passage equally easy in going and returning, than where the transition is easy only in one of these motions.

The double motion: ◦ is a kind of a double tie ◦ binds the objects together in the closest and most intimate manner. • The second marriage of a mother does not break the relation of child and parent. ◦ That relation suffices to convey my imagination from myself to her with the greatest ease and facility.

But after the imagination is arrived at this point of view, it finds its object to be surrounded with so many other relations. ◦ These challenge its regard. ◦ It does not know which to prefer. ◦ It is at a loss what new object to pitch on. • The ties of interest and duty: ◦ bind her to another family ◦ prevent that return of the fancy from her to myself, which is necessary to support the union. • The thought no longer has the vibration needed to: ◦ set it perfectly at ease ◦ indulge its inclination to change. • It goes with facility, but returns with difficulty. ◦ By that interruption, it finds the relation much weakened from what it would be were the passage open and easy on both sides. • Why does this effect not follow in the same degree on the second marriage of a father?

The imagination goes easily from the view of a lesser object to the view of a greater object. ◦ Yet it does not return with the same facility from the greater to the less. • When my imagination goes from myself to my father, it does not: ◦ pass so readily from him to his second wife ◦ consider him as entering into a different family • It considers him as continuing to be the head of the family I am a part of. ◦ His superiority: ▪ prevents the thought’s easy transition from him to his spouse. ▪ keeps the passage open for a return to myself along the same relation of child and parent. • He is not sunk in the new relation he acquires. ◦ The double motion or vibration of thought is still easy and natural. ◦ By this indulgence of the fancy in its inconstancy, the tie of child and parent still preserves its full force and influence. • A mother does not think her tie to a son is weakened because it is shared with her husband. • A son does not think that his tie with a parent is weakened because it is shared with a brother. ◦ The third object is here related to the first and the second. ◦ The imagination goes and comes along all of them with the greatest facility.