480 Pra9ic*biBty of Virtue. [Book X. 



There is, perhaps, no paflion fo improvable by affa- 

 ciation as love ; it is connected with many ideas that 

 tend to refine, foften, and elevate the foul, and to in- 

 creafe the paffion under the appearance of increafmg 

 prefent pleafure. We are not to wonder, therefore, 

 that it has proved fo copious a means of playing with 

 our feelings in poetical and dramatic compofitions. 

 To feel and fympathize v/ith ambition we muft be 

 particularly circumftanced, and then our thoughts are 

 generally roo ftrongly bent on the purfuit to attend to 

 imagination. Ambition is an afbive, love a fedentary 

 palfion. 



Some conclufions in favour of the practicability of 

 virtue will enfue from the preceding principles, in the 

 firft place, much of the government of the paflions 

 will hence appear to be in our own power, by avoid- 

 ing pernicious afibciations, and by early care j hence 

 we may learn how to reftrain the enthufiafai of avarice 

 and ambition, by tracing them to their fource. In 

 our choice of friends and books alfo, we may learn to 

 be cautious to avoid thofe from which ill habits or pre- 

 judices may be derived ; we may be inftructed further to 

 be aware of the effects of cufcom in acquiring a fondnefs 

 for trifles, and efpecially for gaming, and other unna- 

 tural propenfities ; we may learn to direct our affections 

 to proper objects, to affociate the pleating with the ufe- 

 ful, or, by force of reafon and refolution, to difentangle 

 thofe improper combinations which we may have 

 formed. This, indeed, feems to be the great ufe of 

 reafon and fcience, viz. to enable us to purfue and un- 

 ravel the chain of affociations, which our affections may 

 have extended, and to difcern plainly the Kttleneft of the 

 common and ruling paflions of mankind. 



