Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/82

 position that the social affections are all of them ultimately to be deduced from association, or the repeated connection of the idea of some other person with immediate selfish gratification. If this were the case, we must feel the strongest attachment to those from whom we had received, instead of those to whom we had done the greatest number of kindnesses, or where the greatest quantity of selfish enjoyment had been associated with an indifferent idea. Junius has remarked, that friendship is not conciliated "by the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned."

I have hitherto purposely avoided saying any thing on the subject of our physical appetites, and the manner in which they may be thought to affect the principle of the foregoing reasonings. They evidently seem at first sight to contradict the general conclusion which I have endeavoured to establish, as they all of them tend, either exclusively or principally, to the gratification of the individual, and at the same time refer to some future or imaginary object as the source of this gratification. The impulse which they give to the will is mechanical, and yet this impulse, blind as it is, constantly tends to, and coalesces with the pursuit of some rational end. That is, here is an end aimed at, the desire and regular pursuit of a known good, and all this produced by motives evidently mechanical, and which never impel the mind but in a selfish direction. It makes no difference in the question whether the active impulse proceeds directly from the desire of positive enjoyment, or a wish to get rid of some positive uneasiness. I should say, then, that setting aside what is of a purely physical, or (for aught I can tell) instinctive nature in the case, the influence of appetite over our volitions may be accounted for, consistently enough with the foregoing hypothesis, from the natural