| But the most common species of love is that which first arises from beauty, and afterwards diffuses itself into kindness and into the bodily appetite. |
| Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. |
| The one is, perhaps, the most refined passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar. |
| The love of beauty is placed in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that it is so singularly fitted to produce both. |
| This account of love is not peculiar to my system, but is unavoidable on any hypothesis. |
| The three affections, which compose this passion, are evidently distinct, and has each of them its distinct object. |
| It is certain, therefore, that it is only by their relation they produce each other. |
| But the relation of passions is not alone sufficient. |
| It is likewise necessary, there should be a relation of ideas. |
| The beauty of one person never inspires us with love for another. |
| This then is a sensible proof of the double relation of impressions and ideas. |
| From one instance so evident as this we may form a judgment of the rest. |
| This may also serve in another view to illustrate what I have insisted on concerning the origin of pride and humility, love and hatred. |
| I have observed, that though self be the object of the first set of passions, and some other person of the second, yet these objects cannot alone be the causes of the passions; as having each of them a relation to two contrary affections, which must from the very first moment destroy each other. |
| Here then is the situation of the mind, as I have already described it. |
| It has certain organs naturally fitted to produce a passion; that passion, when produced, naturally turns the view to a certain object. |
| But this not being sufficient to produce the passion, there is required some other emotion, which by a double relation of impressions and ideas may set these principles in action, and bestow on them their first impulse. |
| This situation is still more remarkable with regard to the appetite of generation. |
| Sex is not only the object, but also the cause of the appetite. |
| We not only turn our view to it, when actuated by that appetite; but the reflecting on it suffices to excite the appetite. |
| But as this cause loses its force by too great frequency, it is necessary it should be quickened by some new impulse; and that impulse we find to arise from the beauty of the person; that is, from a double relation of impressions and ideas. |