If it be objected that this account of things supposes the passions
to be merely accidental, whereas there appears in some a natural and
hereditary disposition to certain passions prior to all
circumstances of education or fortune, it may be answered, that
though no man is born ambitious or a miser, yet he may inherit from
his parents a peculiar temper or complexion of mind, which shall
render his imagination more liable to be struck with some particular
objects, consequently dispose him to form opinions of good and ill,
and entertain passions of a particular turn. Some men, for instance,
by the original frame of their minds, are more delighted with the
vast and magnificent, others, on the contrary, with the elegant and
gentle aspects of nature. And it is very remarkable, that the
disposition of the moral powers is always similar to this of the
imagination; that those who are most inclined to admire prodigious
and sublime objects in the physical world, are also most inclined to
applaud examples of fortitude and heroic virtue in the moral. While
those who are charmed rather with the delicacy and sweetness of
colours, and forms, and sounds, never fail in like manner to yield
the preference to the softer scenes of virtue and the sympathies of
a domestic life.
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