that of our country, or as the love of our country does to that of mankind. The love of mankind is here to be taken for an already given, definite, and to a certain degree associated feeling. The comparison might be instituted with a slight shade of difference between self-love, the love of a relative or friend, of a neighbour, and of an entire stranger. It is in proportioning our anxiety to promote the welfare of any of these to our sense of the use our assistance may be of, to use a well known phrase, without respect of persons, that what may be called the natural balance of our affections seems to consist. By the bye, this supposes that our insensibility to the feelings of others does not arise from an unwillingness to sympathise with them, or a habit of being stupidly engrossed by our own interests. Whether there may not be some higher principle of our general nature in conformity to which our sentiments and actions with respect to others should be voluntarily regulated, according

to the same rule by which gross animal appetite is subjected to rational self-interest, may be made the subject of a future inquiry. All that is necessary to my present purpose is to have made it appear that the principles of natural self-love and natural benevolence, of refined self-love and refined benevolence are the same; that if we admit the one, we must admit the other; and that whatever other principles may be combined with them, they must stand, or fall together.

It is not therefore my intention to puzzle myself or my readers with the intricacies of a debtor and creditor account between nature and habit. Whatever the force of habit may be, however subtle and universal it's influence, it is not every thing, not even the principal thing. Before we plant, it is proper to know the nature of the soil, first that we may know whether it is good for any thing, secondly that we may know what it is good for. On these two questions will depend the

sort of cultivation we bestow upon it. Af ter this is settled, it is idle to dispute how much of the produce is owing to cultiva, tion, and how much to the nature of the soil. We should only be sure of having made the best use of it we can. But we cannot be sure of this till we know what it is natural, ly capable of. I will however lay down two general maxims on this subject which will not admit of much controversy. First, when there is no natural connection between any two things which yet have been supposed inseparable from a confused association of ideas, it is possible to destroy this illusion of the imagination by rational distinction, and consequently to weaken the force of the habitual feeling which is confirmed and rendered permanent by the conviction of the understanding, Thus, a principle of general self-interest has been supposed inseparable from individuality, because a feeling of immediate consciousness does essentially belong to certain individual impressions, and this feeling of

consciousness, of intimate sympathy, or of absolute self-interest has been transferred by custom and fancy together to the abstract idea of self. It is therefore of some use to separate these ideas, or to shew that there is no foundation in reason or the nature of things for a very strong prejudice which has been conceived to arise immedi ately out of them. The mind inust be drawn together, must be contracted and shrunk up within itself by the mere suppo sition of this perpetual unity with itself and intense concentration of self-interest. Secondly, where this natural connection is wanting, that is, where the habitual connection of certain feelings with certain ideas does not arise from a predisposition in the mind to be affected by certain ob jects more than others, but from the partilar direction which has been given to the mind or a more frequent association between those feelings and ideas, a contrary habit may be produced by giving the mind a different direction, and bestowing a greater

share of attention on other objects. It can not be a matter of indifference then whether the faculty by which I am originally interested in the welfare of others is the same as that by which I am interested in my own welfare, or whether I am naturally incapable of feeling the least interest in the welfare of others except from it's indirect connection with my own. Habit is by it's nature to a certain degree arbitrary, and variable, the original disposition of the mind, it's tendency to acquire or persevere in this or that habit is alone fixed and invariable*. As however the force of previous habit is and always must be on the side

It is a gross mistake to consider all habit as necessarily depending on association of ideas. We might as well consider the strength which is given to a muscle by habitual exertion as a case of the association of ideas. The strength, delicacy, &c. given to any feeling by frequent exercise is owing to habit. When any two feelings, or ideas are often repeated in connection, and the properties belonging to the one are by this means habitually transferred to the other, this is association.