A Treatise of Human Nature - Volume 2

impressions. All resembling impressions are connected together, and no sooner does one arise than the rest immediately follow. Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, until the whole circle is completed. In the same way our temper, when elevated with joy, naturally transitions into love, generosity, pity, courage, pride, and other resembling affections. It is difficult for the mind, when driven by any passion, to confine itself to that passion alone without any change or variation. Human nature is too inconstant to allow for such regularity. Changeability is essential to it. And to what can it so naturally change as to affections or emotions which are suitable to the temper and agree with that set of passions which then prevail? It is evident, then, that there is an attraction or association among impressions as well as among ideas, though with this remarkable difference: ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation, while impressions are associated only by resemblance.

In the third place, it is observable regarding these two kinds of association that they greatly assist and forward each other, and that the transition is more easily made where they