any kind, which they have experienced, put together in almost any manner, will raise up in them a pleasurable state, and opposite words a painful one. Whence it is easy to see, that the fine language expressing praise, and the harsh one expressing dispraise, must instantly, from the mere associations heaped upon the separate words, put them into a state of hope and joy, fear and sorrow, respectively. And when the foundation is thus laid, praise and dispraise will keep their influence from the advantages and disadvantages attending them, though the separate words should lose their particular influences, as they manifestly do in our progress through life.
The honour and shame arising from intellectual accomplishments do often, in learned men, after some time, destroy, in great measure, their sensibility, in respect of every other kind of honour and shame; which seems chiefly to arise from their conversing much with books and learned men, so as to have a great part of the pleasures, which they receive from this their conversation, closely connected with the encomiums upon parts and learning; also to have all terms of honour applied to them, and the keenest reproach, and most insolent contempt, cast upon the contrary defects. And, as the pleasures which raillery, ridicule, and satire, afford to the by-standers, are very considerable, so the person who is the object of them, and who begins to be in pain upon the first slight marks of contempt, has this pain much enhanced by the contrast, the exquisiteness of his uneasiness and confusion rising in proportion to the degree of mirth, and insolent laughter, in the by-standers: whence it comes to pass, that extremely few persons have courage to stand the force of ridicule; but rather subject themselves to considerable bodily pains, to losses, and to the anxiety of a guilty mind, than appear foolish, absurd, singular, or contemptible to the world, or even to persons of whose judgment and abilities they have a low opinion.
All this is, in general, more applicable to men than to women, just as the honour and shame belonging to beauty and deformity is more applicable to women than men; both which observations are easily deducible from the different talents and situations in life of the two sexes.
We come, in the last place, to consider moral accomplishments and defects, or virtue and vice. Now it is very evident, that the many advantages, public and private, which arise from the first, will engage the world to bestow upon it much honour and applause, in the same manner as the evil consequences of vice must make it the object of censure and reproach. Since therefore the child is affected with the words expressing honour and censure, both from the separate influences of these words, and from the application of phrases of this kind to other subjects of praise and
