| Besides we may consider, that when we receive harm from any person, we are apt to imagine him criminal, and it is with extreme difficulty we allow of his justice and innocence. |
| This is a clear proof, that, independent of the opinion of iniquity, any harm or uneasiness has a natural tendency to excite our hatred, and that afterwards we seek for reasons upon which we may justify and establish the passion. |
| Here the idea of injury produces not the passion, but arises from it. |
| Nor is it any wonder that passion should produce the opinion of injury; since otherwise it must suffer a considerable diminution, which all the passions avoid as much as possible. |
| The removal of injury may remove the anger, without proving that the anger arises only from the injury. |
| The harm and the justice are two contrary objects, of which the one has a tendency to produce hatred, and the other love; and it is according to their different degrees, and our particular turn of thinking, that either of the objects prevails, and excites its proper passion. |
| SECT. IV OF THE LOVE OF RELATIONS |
| Having given a reason, why several actions, that cause a real pleasure or uneasiness, excite not any degree, or but a small one, of the passion of love or hatred towards the actors; it will be necessary to shew, wherein consists the pleasure or uneasiness of many objects, which we find by experience to produce these passions. |
| According to the preceding system there is always required a double relation of impressions and ideas betwixt the cause and effect, in order to produce either love or hatred. |
| But though this be universally true, it is remarkable that the passion of love may be excited by only one relation of a different kind, viz, betwixt ourselves and the object; or more properly speaking, that this relation is always attended with both the others. |
| Whoever is united to us by any connexion is always sure of a share of our love, proportioned to the connexion, without enquiring 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, and a lesser degree of the same affection, as the relation lessens. |
| Nor has consanguinity alone this effect, but any other relation without exception. |
| We love our country-men, our neighbours, those of the same trade, profession, and even name with ourselves. |
| Every one of these relations is esteemed some tie, and gives a title to a share of our affection. |
| There is another phaenomenon, which is parallel to this, viz, that acquaintance, without any kind of relation, gives rise to love and kindness. |
| 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 forebear preferring him to strangers, of whose superior merit we are fully convinced. |
| These two phaenomena 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 a pleasure in declaiming against human nature, have observed, that man is altogether insufficient to support himself; and that when you loosen all the holds, which he has of external objects, he immediately drops down into the deepest melancholy and despair. |
| From this, say they, proceeds that continual search after amusement in gaming, in hunting, in business; by which we endeavour to forget ourselves, and excite our spirits from the languid state, into which they fall, when not sustained by some brisk and lively emotion. |
| To this method of thinking I so far agree, that I own the mind to be insufficient, of itself, to its own entertainment, and that it naturally seeks after foreign objects, which may produce a lively sensation, and agitate the spirits. |