system can we account for this sentiment from self-love, or
deduce it from that favourite origin? There seems here a
necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others
are not spectacles entirely indifferent to us; but that the view
of the former, whether in its causes or effects, like sunshine or
the prospect of well-cultivated plains (to carry our pretensions
no higher), communicates a secret joy and satisfaction; the
appearance of the latter, like a lowering cloud or barren

landscape, throws a melancholy damp over the imagination. And
this concession being once made, the difficulty is over; and a
natural unforced interpretation of the phenomena of human life
will afterwards, we may hope, prevail among all speculative
enquirers.



PART II.



It may not be improper, in this place, to examine the influence
of bodily endowments, and of the goods of fortune, over our
sentiments of regard and esteem, and to consider whether these
phenomena fortify or weaken the present theory. It will naturally
be expected, that the beauty of the body, as is supposed by all
ancient moralists, will be similar, in some respects, to that of
the mind; and that every kind of esteem, which is paid to a man,
will have something similar in its origin, whether it arise from
his mental endowments, or from the situation of his exterior