These principles being established on unquestionable experience, I begin to consider how we shall apply them, by revolving over all the causes of pride and humility, whether these causes be regarded as the qualities that operate, or as the subjects on which the qualities are placed. In examining these _qualities_, I immediately find many of them to concur in producing the sensation of pain and pleasure, independent of those affections which I here endeavour to explain. Thus the beauty of our person, of itself, and by its very appearance, gives pleasure as well as pride; and its deformity, pain as well as humility. A magnificent feast delights us, and a sordid one displeases. What I discover to be true in some instances, I _suppose_ to be so in all, and take it for granted at present, without any farther proof, that every cause of pride, by its peculiar qualities, produces a separate pleasure, and of humility a separate uneasiness. Again, in considering the _subjects_, to which these qualities adhere, I make a new _supposition_, which also appears probable from many obvious instances, viz. that these subjects are either parts of ourselves, or something nearly related to us. Thus the good and bad qualities of our actions and manners constitute virtue and vice, and determine our personal character, than which nothing operates more strongly on these passions. In like manner, 'tis the beauty or deformity of our person, houses, equipage, or furniture, by which we are rendered either vain or humble. The same qualities, when transferred to subjects, which bear us no relation, influence not in the smallest degree either of these affections. Having thus in a manner supposed two properties of the causes of these affections, viz. that the _qualities_ produce a separate pain or pleasure, and that the _subjects_, on which the qualities are placed, are related to self; I proceed to examine the passions themselves, in order to find something in them correspondent to the supposed properties of their causes. _First_, I find, that the peculiar object of pride and humility is determined by an original and natural instinct, and that 'tis absolutely impossible, from the primary constitution of the mind, that these passions should ever look beyond self, or that individual person, of whose actions and sentiments each of us is intimately conscious. Here at last the view always rests, when we are actuated by either of these passions; nor can we, in that situation of mind, ever lose sight of this object. For this I pretend not to give any reason; but consider such a peculiar direction of the thought as an original quality.