The difficulty in this case will be removed if we consider, that,
when objects at first agreeable, lose that influence by frequently
recurring, the mind is wholly passive, and the perception involuntary;
but habit, on the other hand, generally supposes choice and activity
accompanying it: so that the pleasure arises here not from the object,
but from the mind's conscious determination of its own activity; and
consequently increases in proportion to the frequency of that
determination.
It will still be urged perhaps, that a familiarity with disagreeable
objects renders them at length acceptable, even when there is no
room for the mind to resolve or act at all. In this case, the
appearance must be accounted for one of these ways.
The pleasure from habit may be merely negative. The object at first
gave uneasiness: this uneasiness gradually wears off as the object
grows familiar: and the mind, finding it at last entirely removed,
reckons its situation really pleasurable, compared with what it had
experienced before.
The dislike conceived of the object at first, might be owing to
prejudice or want of attention. Consequently the mind being
necessitated to review it often, may at length perceive its own
mistake, and be reconciled to what it had looked on with aversion.
In which case, a sort of instinctive justice naturally leads it to
make amends for the injury, by running toward the other extreme of
fondness and attachment.
Or lastly, though the object itself should always continue
disagreeable, yet circumstances of pleasure or good fortune may
occur along with it. Thus an association may arise in the mind, and
the object never be remembered without those pleasing circumstances
attending it; by which means the disagreeable impression which it at
first occasioned will in time be quite obliterated.
ENDNOTE E.
_'This desire
Of objects new and strange'_.--P. 10.
These two ideas are oft confounded; though it is evident the mere
novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where the mind is not
affected with the least degree of wonder: whereas wonder indeed
always implies novelty, being never excited by common or well-known
appearances. But the pleasure in both cases is explicable from the
same final cause, the acquisition of knowledge and enlargement of
our views of nature: on this account it is natural to treat of them
together.
ENDNOTE F.
_'Truth and Good are one,
And Beauty dwells in them'_, etc.--P. 14.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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