Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/48

 pleasure; suffering and enjoying without resistance and without desire, in a state of more than idiot imbecility, just so long as the different outward objects continue to act upon his senses; but that with this faculty, enabling him to throw himself forward into the future, to anticipate unreal events and to be affected by his own imaginary interest, he must necessarily be capable, in a greater or less degree, of entering into the feelings and interests of others, and of being influenced by them. The child, by the time that his perceptions and actions begin to take any thing of a consistent form so that they can be made the subject of reasoning, being supposed to know from experience what the pain of a burn is, and seeing himself in danger of it a second time, is immediately filled with terror, and strives either by suddenly drawing back his hand, catching hold of something, or by his cries for assistance, to avoid the danger. Here then his memory and senses present him with nothing more than certain external objects, in themselves indifferent, and the recollection of extreme pain formerly connected with the same or similar objects. If he had no other faculties than these, he must stop here. He would see and feel his own body moved rapidly towards the fire, but his apprehensions would not outrun its actual motion: he would not think of his nearer approach to the fire as a consequence of the force with which he was carried along, nor dream of falling into the fire till he found it actually burning him. Even if it were possible for him to foresee the consequence, it would not be an object of dread to him; because without a reasoning imagination he would not and could not connect with the painted flame before him the idea of violent pain which the same kind of object had formerly given him by it's actual contact. But in fact he imagines his continued approach to the fire till he falls into