Part First. Chapter IV. Of the six classes of intellectual pleasures and pains. Section I

Of the Pleasures and Pains of Imagination

I begin with the pleasures and pains of imagination; and shall endeavour to derive each species of them by association, either from those of sensation, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense, or from foreign ones of imagination. They may be distinguished into the seven kinds that follow.

• First, the pleasures arising from the beauty of the natural world.

• Secondly, those from the works of art.

• Thirdly, from the liberal arts of music, painting, and poetry.

• Fourthly, from the sciences.

• Fifthly, from the beauty of the person.

• Sixthly, from wit and humour.

• Seventhly, the pains which arise from gross absurdity, inconsistency, or deformity.

Prop. 94.

To examine how the just-mentioned pleasures and pains of imagination are agreeable to the doctrine of association

Of the pleasures arising from the beauty of the natural world

The pleasures arising from the contemplation of the beauties of the natural world seem to admit of the following analysis.

The pleasant tastes, and smells, and the fine colours of fruits and flowers, the melody of birds, and the grateful warmth or coolness of the air, in the proper seasons, transfer miniatures of these pleasures upon rural scenes, which start up instantaneously so mixed with each other, and with such as will be immediately enumerated, as to be separately indiscernible.