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?

[Relationality]

According to my 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 connected to us is always sure 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.