REPETITION AND IMITATION. SECT. XXH. 5. 



are produced by afibciation with difagreeable founds, 

 as explained in Sect. XVI. 10. 



The effect of this powerful agent, imitation, in 

 the moral world, is mentioned in Sect. XVI. 7. as it 

 is the foundation of all our intellectual fympathies 

 with the pains and pleafures of others, and is in 

 confequence the fotfrce of all our virtues. For in 

 what confifts our fympathy with the miferies, or 

 with the joys, of our fellow creatures, but in an in- 

 voluntary excitation of ideas in fome meafure fimi- 

 lar or imitative of thofe, which we believe to exift 

 in the minds of the peifons, whom we commiferate 

 or congratulate ? 



There are certain concurrent or fucceflive actions 

 of fome of the glands, or other parts of the body, 

 which are pofleffed of fenfation, which become in- 

 telligible from this propenfity to imitation. Of 

 thefe are the production of matter by the mem- 

 branes of the fauces, or by the ikin, in confequence 

 erf the venereal difeafe previoufly affecting the parts of 

 generation. Since as no fever is excited, and as nei- 

 ther the blood of fuch patients, nor even the matter 

 from ulcers of the throat, or from cutaneous ulcers, 

 will by inoculation produce the venereal difeafe in 

 others, as obferved by Mr. Hunter, there is reafon 

 to conclude, that no contagious matter is conveyed 

 thither by the blood -veffels, but that a milder matter 

 is formed by the actions of the fine veffels in thofe 

 membranes imitating each other. See Sect. XXXIII. 

 a. 9. In this difeafe the actions of thefe veflels pro- 

 ducing ulcers on the throat and (kin are imperfect 

 imitations of thofe producing chancre, orgonorrhoea j 

 frnce the matter produced by them is not infectious, 

 while the imitative actions in the hydrophobia ap- 

 pear to be perfect refemblances, as they produce a 

 material equally infectious with the original one, 

 "which induced them, 



The 



