tituation of the mind or organ; but this change must neceffarily be the greatest when oppofite fentiments and fenfations are contrafted, or fucceed immediately to one another. Both fentiments and fen

sations are then the livelieft; and this fuperior vivacity proceeds from nothing but their being brought upon the mind or organ when in a ftate moft unfit for conceiving them.

As the oppofition of contrasted sentiments heightens their vivacity, fo the resemblance of those which immediately fucceed each other renders them more faint and languid. A parent who has loft feveral children immediately after one another, will be lefs affected with the death of the last than with that of the first, though the loss in itself be, in this cafe, undoubtedly greater; but his mind being already funk into forrow, the new misfortune feems to produce no other effect than a continuance of the fame melancholy, and is by no means apt to occasion such transports of grief as are ordinarily excited by the first calamity of the kind; he receives it, though with great dejection, yet with fome degree of calmnefs and composure, and without any thing of that anguish and agitation of mind which the novelty of the misfortune is apt to occafion. Those who have been unfortunate through the whole course of their lives are often indeed habitually melancholy, and fometimes peevish and fplenetic, yet upon any fresh disappointment, though they are vexed and complain a little, they feldom fly out into any more violent paffion, and never fall into thofe tranfports of rage or grief which often, upon the like occafions, diftract the fortunate and fuccefsful.

Upon this are founded, in a great measure, fome of the effects of habit and custom. It is well known that cuftom deadens the vivacity of both pain and pleasure, abates the grief we should feel for the one, and weakens the joy we should derive from the other. The pain is fupported without agony, and the pleasure enjoyed without

rapture: because custom and the frequent repetition of any object comes at last to form and bend the mind or organ to that habitual mood and difpofition which fits them to receive its impreffion, without undergoing any very violent change.

SECTION II.

Of Wonder, or of the Effects of Novelty.

T is evident that the mind takes pleasure in obferving the re∙IT femblances that are discoverable betwixt different objects. It is by means of fuch obfervations that it endeavours to arrange and methodise all its ideas, and to reduce them into proper claffes and affortments. Where it can observe but one fingle' quality, that is common to a great variety of otherwife widely different objects, that single circumstance will be sufficient for it to connect them all together, to reduce them to one common clafs, and to call them by one general name. It is thus that all things endowed with a power of felf-motion, beafts, birds, fishes, infects, are claffed under the general name of Animal; and that these again, along with those which want that power, are arranged under the ftill more general word Substance: and this is the origin of those affortments of objects and ideas which in the schools are called Genera and Species, and of thofe abftract and general names, which in all languages are made ufe of to express them.

The further we advance in knowledge and experience, the greater number of divisions and subdivisions of those Genera and Species we are both inclined and obliged to make. We observe a greater variety of particularities amongst those things which have a grofs refemblance; and having made new divifions of them, according to

thofe

thofe newly-obferved particularities, we are then no longer to be fatisfied with being able to refer an object to a remote genus, or very general clafs of things, to many of which it has but a loofe and imperfect refemblance. A perfon, indeed, unacquainted with botany may expect to fatisfy your curiofity, by telling you, that fuch a vegetable is a weed, or, perhaps in ftill more general terms, that it is a plant. But a botanist will neither give nor accept of fuch an answer. He has broke and divided that great class of objects into a number of inferior affortments, according to thofe varieties which his experience has difcovered among them; and he wants to refer each individual plant to fome tribe of vegetables, with all of which it may have a more exact resemblance, than with many things comprehended under the extenfive genus of plants. A child imagines that it gives a fatisfactory answer when it tells you, that an object whose name it knows not is a thing, and fancies that it informs you of fomething, when it thus afcertains to which of the two most obvious and comprehenfive claffes of objects a particular impreffion ought to be referred; to the clafs of realities or folid fubftances which it calls things, or to that of appearances which it calls nothings.

Whatever, in, fhort, occurs to us we are fond of referring to fome fpecies or clafs of things, with all of which it has a nearly exact refemblance; and though we often know no more about them than about it, yet we are apt to fancy that by being able to do fo, we fhow ourselves to be better acquainted with it, and to have a more thorough insight into its nature. But when fomething quite new and fingular, is prefented, we feel ourselves incapable of doing this. The memory cannot, from all its ftores, caft up any image that nearly refembles this strange appearance. If by fome of its qualities it feems to resemble, and to be connected with a fpecies which we have before been acquainted with, it is by others feparated and detached from that,

C 2

that, and from all the other affortments of things we have hitherto been able to make. It stands alone and by itself in the imagination, and refuses to be grouped or confounded with any fet of objects whatever. The imagination and memory exert themselves to no purpose, and in vain look around all their claffes of ideas in order to find one under which it may be arranged. They fluctuate to no purpose from thought to thought, and we remain ftill uncertain and undetermined where to place it, or what to think of it. It is this fluctuation and vain recollection, together with the emotion or movement of the fpirits that they excite, which conftitute the fentiment properly called Wonder, and which occafion that ftaring, and fometimes that rolling of the eyes, that fufpenfion of the breath, and that fwelling of the heart, which we may all observe, both in ourselves and others, when wondering at fome new object, and which are the natural symptoms of uncertain and undetermined thought. What fort of a thing can that be? What is that like? are the queftions which, upon fuch an occafion, we are all naturally difpofed to afk. If we can recollect many fuch objects which exactly resemble this new appearance, and which present themselves to the imagination. naturally, and as it were of their own accord, our Wonder is entirely at an end. If we can recollect but a few, and which it requires too fome trouble to be able to call up, our Wonder is indeed diminished, but not quite deftroyed. If we can recollect none, but are quite at a lofs, it is the greateft poffible.

With what curious attention does a naturalist examine a fingular plant, or a fingular foffil, that is prefented to him? He is at no lofs to refer it to the general genus of plants or foffils; but this does not fatisfy him, and when he considers all the different tribes or species of either with which he has hitherto been acquainted, they all, he thinks, refufe to admit the new object among them. It stands alone in his imagination, and as it were detached from all the other fpecies

of

He labours, however, to con

of that genus to which it belongs. nect it with fome one or other of them. Sometimes he thinks it may be placed in this, and fometimes in that other affortment; nor is he ever fatisfied, till he has fallen upon one which, in moft of its qualities, it refembles. When he cannot do this, rather than it should stand quite by itself, he will enlarge the precincts, if I may fay fo, of fome species, in order to make room for it; or he will create a new species on purpose to receive it, and call it a Play of Nature, or give it fome other appellation, under which he arranges all the oddities that he knows not what elfe to do with. But to fome clafs or other of known objects he must refer it, and betwixt it and them he must find out some resemblance or other, before he can get rid of that Wonder, that uncertainty and anxious curiofity excited by its fingular appearance, and by its diffimilitude with all the objects he had hitherto obferved.

As fingle and individual objects thus excite our Wonder when, by their uncommon qualities and fingular appearance, they make us uncertain to what fpecies of things we ought to refer them; fo a fucceffion of objects which follow one another in an uncommon train or order, will produce the fame effect, though there be nothing particular in any one of them taken by itself.

When one accustomed object appears after another, which it does not usually follow, it firft excites, by its unexpectedness, the fentiment properly called Surprise, and afterwards, by the fingularity of the fucceffion, or order of its appearance, the fentiment properly called Wonder. We ftart and are surprised at seeing it there, and then wonder how it came there. The motion of a small piece of iron along a plain table is in itself no extraordinary object, yet the person who first saw it begin, without any visible impulfe, in confequence of the motion of a loadstone at fome little diftance from it,