4. _Association._--Shall we, then, adopt the view of that class of ethical writers who account for the origin of these ideas by _the principle of association_? Such men as Hartley, Mill, Mackintosh, and others of that stamp, are not lightly to be set aside in the discussion of such a question. Their view is, that the moral perceptions are the result of certain combined antecedent emotions, such as gratitude, pity, resentment, etc., which relate to the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, and which very easily and naturally come to be transferred, from the agent himself, to the action in itself considered, or to the disposition which prompted it; forming, when thus transferred and associated, what we call the moral feelings and perceptions. Just as avarice arises from the original desire, not of money, but of the things which money can procure--which desire comes, eventually, to be transferred, from the objects themselves, to the means and instrument of procuring them--and, as sympathy arises from the transfer to others of the feelings which, in like circumstances, agitate our own bosoms, so, in like manner, by the principle of association, the feelings which naturally arise in view of the conduct of others, are transferred from the agent to the act, from the enemy or the benefactor, to the injury or the benefaction, which acts stand afterward, by themselves, as objects of approval or condemnation. Hence the disposition to approve all benevolent acts, and to condemn the opposite; which disposition, thus formed and transferred, is a part of conscience. So of other elementary emotions.