equently to mislead
the Understanding.--The reader will perceive that I distinguish between
_mental Impressions_ and the _Understanding_.--I wish to avoid every thing
that looks like subtlety and refinement; but this is a distinction which
we all comprehend.--There are none of us unconscious of certain feelings or
sensations of mind which do not seem to have passed thro' the
Understanding; the effects, I suppose, of some secret influences from
without, acting upon a certain mental sense, and producing feelings and
passions in just correspondence to the force and variety of those
influences on the one hand, and to the quickness of our sensibility on the
other. Be the cause, however, what it may, the fact is undoubtedly so;
which is all I am concerned in. And it is equally a fact, which every
man's experience may avouch, that the Understanding and those feelings are
frequently at variance. The latter often arise from the most minute
circumstances, and frequently from such as the Understanding cannot
estimate, or even recognize; whereas the Understanding delights in
abstraction, and in general propositions; which, however true considered
as such, are very seldom, I had like to have said _never_, perfectly
applicable to any particular case. And hence, among other causes, it is,
that we often condemn or applaud characters and actions on the credit of
some logical process, while our hearts revolt, and would fain lead us to a
very different conclusion.

The Understanding seems for the most part to take cognizance of _actions_
only, and from these to infer _motives_ and _character_; but the sense we
have been speaking of proceeds in a contrary course; and determines of
_actions_ from certain _first principles of character_, which seem wholly
out of the reach of the Understanding. We cannot indeed do otherwise than
admit that there must be distinct principles of character in every
distinct individual: The manifest variety even in the minds of infants
will oblige us to this. But what _are_ these first principles of
character? Not the objects, I am persuaded, of the Understanding; and yet
we take as strong Impressions of them as if we could compare and assort
them in a syllogism. We often love or hate at first sight; and indeed, in
general, dislike or approve by some secret reference to these
_principles_; and we judge even of conduct, not from any idea of abstract
good or evil in the nature of actions, but by referring those actio