subject, it is one of the utmost importance.

As mankind have a faculty by which they discern speculative truth,
so we have various affections towards external objects.
Understanding and temper, reason and affection, are as distinct
ideas as reason and hunger, and one would think could no more be
confounded. It is by reason that we get the ideas of several
objects of our affections; but in these cases reason and affection
are no more the same than sight of a particular object, and the
pleasure or uneasiness consequent thereupon, are the same. Now as
reason tends to and rests in the discernment of truth, the object of
it, so the very nature of affection consists in tending towards, and
resting in, its objects as an end. We do indeed often in common
language say that things are loved, desired, esteemed, not for
themselves, but for somewhat further, somewhat out of and beyond
them; yet, in these cases, whoever will attend will see that these
things are not in reality the objects of the affections, i.e. are
not loved, desired, esteemed, but the somewhat further and beyond
them. If we have no affections which rest in what are called their
objects, then what is called affection, love, desire, hope, in human
nature, is only an uneasiness in being at rest; an unquiet
disposition to action, progress, pursuit, without end or meaning.
But if there be any such thing as delight in the company of one
person, rather than of another; whether in the way of friendship, or
mirth and entertainment, it is all one, if it be without respect to
fortune, honour, or increasing our stores of knowledge, or anything
beyond the present time; here is an instance of an affection
absolutely resting in its object as its end, and being gratified in
the same way as the appetite of hunger is satisfied with food. Yet
nothing is more common than to hear it asked, what advantage a man