ristotelian consideration, that he who
confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him
again: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that
every artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it
would be of him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be
consists in movement and action; therefore every one has in some sort a
being in his work. He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest
action; he who receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful is
much less lovable than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent,
supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. The useful
loses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither so
fresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest to us that have cost us
most, and giving is more chargeable than receiving.

Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the
end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the
laws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary
liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to
the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be
tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should
have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange
disgust for those propensions that are started in us without the
mediation and direction of the judgment, as, upon the subject I am
speaking of, I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing
infants scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor shape of
body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves amiable, and
have not willingly suffered them to be nursed near me. A true and
regular affection ought to spring and increase with the knowledge they
give us of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural
propension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a truly
paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they be otherwise, still
rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature.
'Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves
more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile
simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their most
complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys,
and not as men; and some there are, who are very l