The Idea of the Self

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.