children, are caused by others; who are thus, in the course of time, regarded with pleasure, independently of their usefulness to us.  Many of our pleasures are enjoyed along with, and are enhanced by, the presence of others.  This tends to make us more sociable.  Moreover, we are taught and required to put on the appearance of good-will, and to do kindly actions, and this may beget in us the proper feelings.  Finally, we must take into account the praise and rewards of benevolence, together with the reciprocity of benefits that we may justly expect.  All those elements may be so mixed and blended as to produce a feeling that shall teach us to do good to others without any expectation of reward, even that most refined recompense—­the pleasure arising from a beneficent act.  Thus Hartley conceives that he both proves the existence of disinterested feeling, and explains the manner of its developement.

His account of Compassion is similar.  In the young, the signs and appearances of distress excite a painful feeling, by recalling their own experience of misery.  In the old, the connexion between a feeling and its adjuncts has been weakened by experience.  Also, when children are brought up together, they are often annoyed by the same things, and this tends powerfully to create a fellow-feeling.  Again, when their parents are ill, they are taught to cultivate pity, and are also subjected to unusual restraints.  All those things conspire to make children desire to remove the sufferings of others.  Various circumstances increase the feeling of pity, as when the sufferers are beloved by us, or are morally good.  It is confirmatory of this view, that the most compassionate are those whose nerves are easily irritable, or whose experience of affliction has been considerable.

2.—­The Moral Sense.  Hartley denies the existence of any moral instinct, or any moral judgments, proceeding upon the eternal relations of things.  If there be such, let instances of them be produced prior to the influence of associations.  Still, our moral approbation or disapprobation is disinterested, and has a factitious independence. (1) Children are taught what is right and wrong, and thus the associations connected with the idea of praise and blame are transferred to the virtues inculcated and the vices condemned. (2) Many vices and virtues, such as sensuality, intemperance, malice, and the opposites, produce immediate consequences of evil and good respectively. (3) The benefits, immediate or (at least) obvious, flowing from the virtues of others, kindle love towards them, and thereafter to the virtues they exhibit. (4) Another consideration is the loveliness of virtue, arising from the suitableness of the virtues to each other, and to the beauty, order, and perfection of the world. (5) The hopes and fears connected with a future life, strengthen the feelings connected with virtue. (6) Meditation upon God and prayer have a like effect.  ’All the pleasures and pains