CHAPTER VI. 891 order to find out, or to shew the nature of it, by searching and discovering of what simples it is composed. 4. Consider the absolute modes or affections of any being as it is in itself, before you proceed to consider it relatively, or to survey the various relations in which it stands to other beings, &c. Note, 'These rules chiefly belong to the method of instruc- tion which the learned call synthetic. But in the regulation of our ideas," there is seldom an abso- lute necessity that we should place them in this or the other par- ticular method ; it is possible in some cases that many methods may be equally good, that is, may equally assist the understand- ing and the memory ; to frame a method exquisitely accurate, according to the strict nature of things, and to maintain this accu- racy from the beginning to the end of a treatise, is a most rare and difficult thing, if not impossible. But a larger account of method would be very improper in this place, lest we anticipate what belongs to the fourth part of Logic. SECT.`X1I. These five Rules of Conception exemplified. IT may be useful here to give a specimen of the five spe- cial rules to direct our conceptions, which have been the chief subject of this long chapter, and represent them practically at one view. Suppose the theme of our discourse were the passions of, the mind. 1st, To gain a clear and distinct idea of passion, we most define both the name and the thing. To begin with the definition of the name. We are net here to understand the word passion in its vulgar and most limited sense, as it signifies merely anger or fury ; nor do we take it in its most extensive philosophical sense, for the sustaining. the ac -. ¿ion of an agent; but in the more limited philosophicalsense, passions signify the various affections of the mind, such as admi- ration, love, or hatred ; this is the definition of the name. We proceed to the definition of the thing. Passion is defi- ned a sensation of somespecial commotion in animal nature, occa- sioned by the mind's perception of some object suited to excite that commotion. *Here the genus, or general nature of passion, * Since this was written, I have published a short treatise of the panions, wherein. f have so far varied frorn.this definition as to call them sensible commo- tions of our whole nature, both soul and body, occasioned by the mind's pércep- tions of some objects, &c. I made this alteration in the description of the pas- sions in that book chiefly to include, in a more explicit manner, the passions of desire and aversion, which are acts of volition, rather than the sensations. Yet since some 'commotion's of animal nature attend all the passions, and since there is always a sensation of these commotions, I shall not change the definition I have written here; for this will to all the passions, whether they include any act of volition or not; nor indeed is the matter of any great. importance. Nov. 17, 1/28. is
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