| We readily pass from one to the other, and make no difference in our judgments concerning them; especially if the latter be inferior to the former. |
| [Footnote 19. This source of property can never be explained but from the imaginations; and one may affirm, that the causes are here unmixed. |
| We shall proceed to explain them more particularly, and illustrate them by examples from common life and experience. |
| It has been observed above, that the mind has a natural propensity to join relations, especially resembling ones, and finds a hind of fitness and uniformity in such an union. |
| From this propensity are derived these laws of nature, that upon the first formation of society, property always follows the present possession; and afterwards, that it arises from first or from long possession. |
| Now we may easily observe, that relation is not confined merely to one degree; but that from an object, that is related to us, we acquire a relation to every other object, which is related to it, and so on, till the thought loses the chain by too long a progress, However the relation may weaken by each remove, it is not immediately destroyed; but frequently connects two objects by means of an intermediate one, which is related to both. |
| And this principle is of such force as to give rise to the right of accession, and causes us to acquire the property not only of such objects as we are immediately possessed of; but also of such as are closely connected with them. |
| Suppose a German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard to come into a room, where there are placed upon the table three bottles of wine, Rhenish, Burgundy and Port; and suppose they shoued fall a quarrelling about the division of them; a person, who was chosen for umpire would naturally, to shew his impartiality, give every one the product of his own country: And this from a principle, which, in some measure, is the source of those laws of nature, that ascribe property to occupation, prescription and accession. |
| In all these Cases, and particularly that of accession, there is first a natural union betwixt the Idea of the person and that of the object, and afterwards a new and moral union produced by that right or property, which we ascribe to the person. |
| But here there occurs a difficulty, which merits our attention, and may afford us an opportunity of putting to tryal that singular method of reasoning, which has been employed on the present subject. |
| I have already observed that the imagination passes with greater facility from little to great, than from great to littie, and that the transition of ideas is always easier and smoother in the former case than in the latter. |
| Now as the right of accession arises from the easy transition of ideas, by which related objects are connected together, it shoued naturally be imagined, that the right of accession must encrease in strength, in proportion as the transition of ideas is performed with greater facility. |
| It may, therefore, be thought, that when we have acquired the property of any small object, we shall readily consider any great object related to it as an accession, and as belonging to the proprietor of the small one; since the transition is in that case very easy from the small object to the great one, and shoued connect them together in the closest manner. |
| But In fact the case is always found to be otherwise, The empire of Great Britain seems to draw along with it the dominion of the Orkneys, the Hebrides, the isle of Man, and the Isle of Wight; but the authority over those lesser islands does not naturally imply any title to Great Britain. |
| In short, a small object naturally follows a great one as its accession; but a great one Is never supposed to belong to the proprietor of a small one related to it, merely on account of that property and relation. |
| Yet in this latter case the transition of ideas is smoother from the proprietor to the small object, which is his property, and from the small object to the great one, than in the former case from the proprietor to the great object, and from the great one to the small. |
| It may therefore be thought, that these phaenomena are objections to the foregoing hypothesis, THAT THE ASCRIBING OF PROPERTY TO ACCESSION IS NOTHING BUT AN AFFECT OF THE RELATIONS OF IDEAS, AND OF THE SMOOTH TRANSITION OF THE IMAGINATION. |
| It will be easy to solve this objection, if we consider the agility and unsteadiness of the imagination, with the different views, in which it is continually placing its objects. |
| When we attribute to a person a property in two objects, we do not always pass from the person to one object, and from that to the other related to it. |
| The objects being here to be considered as the property of the person, we are apt to join them together, and place them in the same light. |
| Suppose, therefore, a great and a small object to be related together; if a person be strongly related to the great object, he will likewise be strongly related to both the objects, considered together, because he Is related to the most considerable part. |