A Treatise of Human Nature - Volume 2

they both concur in the same object. Thus

SECTION IV.

Of the relations of impressions and ideas.

a man who, due to an injury from another, is very much discomposed and ruffled in his temper, is likely to find a hundred subjects of discontent, impatience, fear, and other uneasy passions; especially if he can discover these subjects in or near the person who was the cause of his first passion. Those principles which promote the transition of ideas here concur with those which operate on the passions; and both uniting in one action, bestow on the mind a double impulse. The new passion, therefore, must arise with much greater violence, and the transition to it must be rendered much more easy and natural.

UPON this occasion, I may cite the authority of an elegant writer, who expresses himself in the following manner:

"As
"the imagination delights in everything that
"is great, strange, or beautiful, and is still
"more pleased the more it finds of these
"perfections in the same object, so it is ca-
"pable of receiving a new satisfaction by
"the assistance of another sense. Thus any
"continued sound, such as the music of birds
"or a waterfall, awakens every mo-
"ment the mind of the beholder and
"makes him more attentive to the several