Nor has consanguinity alone this effect, but any other relation without exception.

We love our country-men, our neighbours, those of the same trade, profession, and even name with ourselves.

Every one of these relations is esteemed some tie, and gives a title to a share of our affection.
There is another phaenomenon, which is parallel to this, viz, that acquaintance, without any kind of relation, gives rise to love and kindness.

When we have contracted a habitude and intimacy with any person; though in frequenting his company we have not been able to discover any very valuable quality, of which he is possessed; yet we cannot forebear preferring him to strangers, of whose superior merit we are fully convinced.

These two phaenomena of the effects of relation and acquaintance will give mutual light to each other, and may be both explained from the same principle.
Those, who take a pleasure in declaiming against human nature, have observed, that man is altogether insufficient to support himself; and that when you loosen all the holds, which he has of external objects, he immediately drops down into the deepest melancholy and despair.
From this, say they, proceeds that continual search after amusement in gaming, in hunting, in business; by which we endeavour to forget ourselves, and excite our spirits from the languid state, into which they fall, when not sustained by some brisk and lively emotion.