Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/9

 PREFACE.

Work here offered to the Public consists of papers written at different times, but taking their rise from the following occasion.

About eighteen years ago I was informed, that the Rev. Mr. Gay, then living, asserted the possibility of deducing all our intellectual pleasures and pains from association. This put me upon considering the power of association. Mr. Gay published his sentiments on this matter, about the same time, in a Dissertation on the fundamental Principle of Virtue, prefixed to Mr. Archdeacon Law's Translation of Archbishop King's Origin of Evil.

From inquiring into the power of association, I was led to examine both its consequences, in respect of morality and religion, and its physical cause. By degrees many disquisitions foreign to the doctrine