to bear to the caufe or object which excites it, confifts the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the confequent action.

In the beneficial or hurtful nature of the effects which the affection aims at, or tends to produce, confifts the merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward, or is deferving of punishment.

Philofophers have, of late years, confidered chiefly the tendency of affections, and have given little attention to the relation which they stand in to the cause which excites them. In common life, however, when we judge of any person's conduct, and of the fentiments which directed it, we conftantly confider them under both these aspects. When we blame in another man the exceffes of love, of grief, of refentment, we not only confider the ruinous effects which they tend to produce, but the little occafion which was given for them. The merit of his favorite, we fay, is not fo great, his misfortune is not fo dreadful, his provocation is not so extraordinary, as to justify fo violent a paffion. We fhould have indulged, we fay, perhaps, have approved of the violence of his emotion, had the cause been in any respect proportioned to it.

When we judge in this manner of any affection, as proportioned or difproportioned to the cause which excites it, it is scarce poffible that we should make use of any other rule or canon but the correspondent affection in ourselves. If, upon bringing the cafe home to our own breast, we find that

the fentiments which it gives occafion to, coincide and tally with our own, we neceffarily approve of them as proportioned and fuitable to their objects; if otherwise, we necessarily disapprove of them, as extravagant and out of proportion.

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your fight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reafon by my reafon, of your refentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

CHAP. IV.

The fame fubject continued.

WE may judge of the propriety or impropriety

of the fentiments of another person by their correspondence or disagreement with our own, upon two different occafions; either, firft, when the objects which excite them are confidered without any peculiar relation, either to ourselves or to the perfon whofe fentiments we judge of; or, secondly, when they are confidered as peculiarly affecting one or other of us.

1. With regard to those objects which are confidered without any peculiar relation either to ourselves or to the person whofe fentiments we judge of; wherever his fentiments entirely correfpond with our own, we afcribe to him the qualities of taste and good judgment. The beauty

of a plain, the greatness of a mountain, the ornaments of a building, the expreffion of a picture, the compofition of a difcourfe, the conduct of a third person, the proportions of different quantities and numbers, the various appearances which the great machine of the universe is perpetually exhibiting, with the secret wheels and fprings, which produce them; all the general fubjects of fcience and tafte, are what we and our companions regard as having no peculiar relation to either of us. We both look at them from the fame point of view, and we have no occafion for fympathy, or for that imaginary change of fituations from which it arifes, in order to produce, with regard to thefe, the moft perfect harmony of fentiments and affections. If, notwithstanding, we are often differently affected, it arises either from the different degrees of attention, which our different habits of life allow us to give easily to the feveral parts of thofe complex objects, or from the different degrees of natural acuteness in the faculty of the mind to which they are addressed.

When the fentiments of our companion coincide with our own in things of this kind, which are obvious and easy, and in which, perhaps, we never found a fingle perfon who differed from us, though we, no doubt, muft approve of them, yet he feems to deferve no praife or admiration on account of them. But when they not only coincide with our own, but lead and direct our own; when in forming them he appears to have attended to many things which we had overlooked, and to

have adjusted them to all the various circumstances of their objects; we not only approve of them but wonder and are surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acutenefs and comprehenfiveness, and he appears to deserve a very high degree of admiration and applause. For approbation heightened by wonder and surprise, conftitutes the fentiment which is properly called admiration, and of which applause is the natural expreffion. The decifion of the man who judges that exquifite beauty is preferable to the groffeft deformity, or that twice two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by all the world, but will not, furely be much admired. It is the acute and delicate difcernment of the man of taste, who distinguishes the minute, and scarce perceptible differences of beauty and deformity; it is the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced mathematician, who unravels, with ease, the moft intricate and perplexed proportions; it is the great leader in fcience and taste, the man who directs and conducts our own fentiments, the extent and fuperior juftness of whose talents aftonifh us with wonder and surprise, who excites our admiration, and feems to deserve our applause and upon this foundation is grounded the greater part of the praise which is bestowed upon what are called the intéllectual virtues.

The utility of those qualities, it may be thought, is what firft recommends them to us; and, no doubt, the confideration of this, when we come to attend to it, gives them a new value. Originally, however, we approve of another man's judgment,

not as fomething useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality: and it is evident we attribute thofe qualities to it for no other reafon but because we find that it agrees with our own. Taste, in the fame manner, is originally approved of, not as ufeful, but as juft, as delicate, and as precifely fuited to its object. The idea of the utility of all qualities of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not what first recommends them to our approbation.

2. With regard to those objects, which affect in a particular manner either ourselves or the perfon whose fentiments we judge of, it is at once more difficult to preserve this harmony and correfpondence, and at the fame time, vaftly more important. My companion does not naturally look upon this misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has been done me, from the fame point of view in which I confider them. They affect me much more nearly. We do not view them from the same station, as we do a picture, or a poem, or a fyftem of philofophy, and are, therefore, apt to be very differently affected by them. But I can much more easily overlook the want of this correspondence of fentiments with regard to fuch indifferent objects as concern neither me nor my companion, than with regard to what interests me fo much as the misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has been done me. Though you despise that picture, or that poem, even that system of philofophy, which I admire, there is little danger of our quarrelling upon that

or