Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/36

 referring all low evanescent ones to the head of mere sensations and ideas.

The pleasures and pains may be ranged under seven general classes; viz.

1. Sensation;

2. Imagination;

3. Ambition;

4. Self-interest;

5. Sympathy;

6. Theopathy; and,

7. The Moral Sense; according as they arise from,

1. The impressions made on the external senses;

2. Natural or artificial beauty or deformity;

3. The opinions of others concerning us;

4. Our possession or want of the means of happiness, and security from, or subjection to, the hazards of misery;

5. The pleasures and pains of our fellow-creatures;

6. The affections excited in us by the contemplation of the Deity; or

7. Moral beauty and deformity.

The human mind may also be considered as endued with the faculties of memory, imagination, or fancy, understanding, affection, and will.

Memory is that faculty by which traces of sensations and ideas recur, or are recalled, in the same order and proportion, accurately or nearly, as they were once actually presented.

When ideas, and trains of ideas, occur, or are called up in a vivid manner, and without regard to the order of former actual impressions and perceptions, this is said to be done by the power of imagination or fancy.

The understanding is that faculty by which we contemplate mere sensations and ideas, pursue truth, and assent to, or dissent from, propositions.

The affections have the pleasures and pains for their objects; as the understanding has the mere sensations and ideas. By the affections we are excited to pursue happiness, and all its means, and to fly from misery, and all its apparent causes.

The will is that state of mind which is immediately previous to, and causes, those express acts of memory, fancy, and bodily motion, which are termed voluntary.

The motions of the body are of two kinds, automatic and voluntary. The automatic motions are those which arise from the mechanism of the body in an evident manner. They are called automatic, from their resemblance to the motions of automata, or machines, whose principle of motion is within themselves. Of this kind are the motions of the heart, and peristaltic motion of the bowels. The voluntary motions are those which arise from ideas and affections, and which therefore are referred to the mind; the immediately preceding state of the mind, or of