Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…

AND as men may love persons and things from self-love, so may love to qualities and characters arise from the same source. Some represent as though there were need of a great degree of metaphysical refining, to make it out, that men approve of others from self-love, whom they hear of at a distance, or read of in history, or see represented on the stage, from whom they expect no profit or advantage. But perhaps it is not considered, that what we approve of in the first place, is the character; and from the character we approve the person. And is it a strange thing, that men should from self-love like a temper or character, which in its nature and tendency falls in with the nature and tendency of self-love; and which, we know by experience and self-evidence, without metaphysical refining, in the general tends to men's pleasure and benefit?—And on the contrary, should dislike what they see tends to men's pain and misery?—Is there need of a great degree of subtlety and abstraction, to make it out, that a child, which has heard and seen much, strongly to fix an idea, of the pernicious deadly nature of the rattle-snake, should have aversion to that species or form, from self-love; so as to have a degree of this aversion and disgust excited by seeing even the picture of that animal? And that from the same self-love it should be pleased and entertained with a lively figure and representation of some pleasant fruit, which it has often tasted the sweetness of? or, with the image of some bird, which, it has always been told, is innocent, and whose pleasant singing it has often been entertained with?—Though, the child neither fears being bitten by the picture of the snake, nor expects to eat of the painted fruit, or to hear the figure of the bird sing. I suppose none, will think it difficult to allow, that such an approbation or disgust of a child may be accounted for from its natural delight in the pleasures of taste and hearing, and its aversion to pain and death, through self-love, together with the habitual connection of these agreeable or terrible ideas with the form and qualities of these objects, the ideas of which are impressed on the mind of the child by their images.

AND as men may love persons and things from self-love, so may love to qualities and characters arise from the same source. Some represent as though there were need of a great degree of metaphysical refining, to make it out, that men approve of others from self-love, whom they hear of at a distance, or read of in history, or see represented on the stage, from whom they expect no profit or advantage. But perhaps it is not considered, that what we approve of in the first place, is the character; and from the character we approve the person. And is it a strange thing, that men should from self-love like a temper or character, which in its nature and tendency falls in with the nature and tendency of self-love; and which, we know by experience and self-evidence, without metaphysical refining, in the general tends to men's pleasure and benefit?—And on the contrary, should dislike what they see tends to men's pain and misery?—Is there need of a great degree of subtilty and abstraction, to make it out, that a child, which has heard and seen much, strongly to fix an idea, of the pernicious deadly nature of the rattle-snake, should have aversion to that species or form, from self-love; so as to have a degree of this aversion and disgust excited by seeing even the picture of that animal? And that from the same self-love it should be pleased and entertain'd with a lively figure and representation of some pleasant fruit, which it has often tasted the sweetness of? or, with the image of some bird, which, it has always been told, is innocent, and whose pleasant singing it has often been entertain'd with?—Though, the child neither fears being bitten by the picture of the snake, nor expects to eat of the painted fruit, or to hear the figure of the bird sing. I suppose none, will think it difficult to allow, that such an approbation or disgust of a child may be accounted for from its natural delight in the pleasures of taste and hearing, and its aversion to pain and death, through self-love, together with the habitual connection of these agreeable or terrible ideas with the form and qualities of these objects, the ideas of which are impressed on the mind of the child by their images.