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MOTIVES UNPERCEIVED — Exposition of Infants.
CHILD-MURDER.
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impressions of Nature, much stronger than those of the moral Sense, + + while yet known I should have thought had, by those in whose mouths the expression is found, had been made to include those impressions. we may learn
from that general practise, which prevailed in the most learned & polite
of the world, of exposing their Children, whereby the strong instinctive affction
of Parents for their offspring was violated without remorse."
In this passage these 7 propositions, if I mistake not are more or less explicitly contained —
1st That Custom has power to erase the strongest impressions of Nature:
that these impressions are stronger than, (& consequently distinct from) those of the Moral
Sense — 3dly That this Custom in particular had power to & did erase the an impression of
Nature. 4thly That this Custom is opposite to the Moral Sense. 5thly That this Custom
is either inhuman & unnatural, & perhaps that it is or inhuman & unnatural as well as whimsical and capricious
as those two sets of epithets are predicated of it cumulatively or disjunctively. 6thly That
This Custom owe it's birth to one or other in all of the more violent passions of Fear, Lust, and
Anger. 7thly & lastly that these appetites are opposite to the moral Sense.
However frequent the expression may be in the declamatory stile & in the laxity of popular discourse loose discourse
Custom to speak accurately, any more than & if meant in the rigorous sense, intelligibly, can never does nothing,
be the cause of any thing do any thing, nor be — The Custom of doing anything is the thing itself that is often done
nothing more of which nothing more is being consider'd in it than the very point of it's being often done, & to say
that therefore Custom does a thing is to say in that the thing does itself; and or.. that Custom
the cause of a thing", that a thing is a cause to itself it's own cause — However true therefore
may be It is may be true that this impressions of nature [if that is the name to be given
exclusively to the love of offspring] are erased easier overcome in a given instance after having
been erased overcome in other instances before: but it is not true that it was Custom that erased it: for
it could not be Custom that erased it the first time; & as it could not the first time, it
never — It must have been therefore some thing else than custom; viz: as I say, this difference of perception,
not that erased it but that outweighed it.overbalanced it And then the pleasure expected from the
society company of the child being app a good, but the pain expected from either the labor or the
expence or both of rearing it appearing likely to be often a greater good, outweighed the other; &
it is to no wonder this "strong instinctive affection xxxx was violated i:e: over-ruled without
remorse — as the striking instances adduced in the a note to the passage in question fully prove (sense fully to evince) [it to have been.]
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Identifier: | JB/096/209/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 96. |
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096 |
legislation |
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209 |
homicide of infants |
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001 |
motives unperceived |
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c9 |
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jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::j honig & zoonen [lion with vryheyt motif]]] |
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