Chapters 31
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1 01 - Part I, Section I: Chapters I - III 35:05
I. CHAPTER I. Part I of the Propriety of Action, consisting of three sections. Section I. Of the sense of propriety. Chapter One of Sympathy. How selfish soever a man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, When we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it. For this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility.
The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it. As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case.
It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter, as it were, into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, So, to conceive, or to imagine, that we are in it excites some degree of the same emotion in proportion to the vivacity or dullness of the conception.
That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, May be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm, and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on a slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation.
Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, They are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation on the correspondent part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those wretches affects the particular part in themselves more than any other. Because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would suffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, And if that particular part in themselves was actually effected in the same miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of.
Men of the most robust make observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason. That organ being in the strongest man more delicate than any other part of the body is in the weakest. Neither is it those circumstances only, which create pain or sorrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that with their happiness.
We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties, and we heartily go along with their resentment against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of the bystander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer. Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was perhaps originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.
Upon some occasions, sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions, upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man to another, instantaneously and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to everybody that sees it, A cheerful object. As a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one. This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no sort of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occasion to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them.
The furious behavior of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive anything like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see— What is the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed from so enraged an adversary? We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger. If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of the like emotions, It is because they suggest to us the general idea of some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe them, and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little influence upon us.
The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person who feels those emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are concerned, and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it, But the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it. Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect.
General lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and still more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very considerable. Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes feel for another a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable, because, when we put ourselves in his case, the passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality.
We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behavior, Because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner. Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other, But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs, and sings, perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer.
The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment.
What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the moanings of her infant that, during the agony of disease, cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder, and out of all these forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly secure, and, in its thoughtlessness and want of foresight, possesses an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will, in vain, attempt to defend it when it grows up to a man.
We sympathize even with the dead, and, overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence on their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun, to be shut out from life and conversation, To be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth, to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated in a little time from the affections and almost from the memory of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity.
The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in danger of being forgot by everybody, and, by the vain honors which we pay to their memory, we endeavor, for our own misery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation seems to be an addition to their calamity. And to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances, nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound security of their repose.
The idea of the dreary and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so. Our own living souls in their inanimate bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case.
It is from this very illusion of the imagination that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, The dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.
Chapter Two of The Pleasure of Mutual Sympathy But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast, nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all of our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love Think themselves at no loss to account according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness, and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured of that assistance, and grieves whenever he observes the contrary.
Because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is mortified when, After having endeavoured to divert the company, he looks round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself. On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest applause. Neither does his pleasure seem to arise altogether from the additional vivacity which his mirth may receive from sympathy with theirs, nor his pain from the disappointment he meets with when he misses this pleasure, though both the one and the other, no doubt, do in some measure.
When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty. We enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us. We consider all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him than in that which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On the contrary, We should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the same case here.
The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us. But though this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one, and to the pain which we feel from the other, it is by no means the sole cause of either. And this correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own appears to be a cause of pleasure, and the want of it a cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manner. The sympathy which my friends express with my joy might indeed give me pleasure by enlivening that joy, but that which they express in my grief could give me none if it served only to enliven that grief. Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief.
It enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction, and it alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it is at that time capable of receiving.
It is to be observed accordingly that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and that we are still more shocked by the want of it. How are the unfortunate relieved when they have found out a person to whom they can communicate the cause of their sorrow? Upon his sympathy they seem to disburden themselves of a part of their distress. He is not improperly said to share it with them. He not only feels a sorrow of the same kind with that which they feel, but as if he has derived a part of it to himself, what he feels seems to alleviate the weight of what they feel.
Yet, by relating their misfortunes, they in some measure renew their grief.
They awaken in their memory the remembrance of those circumstances which occasion their affliction. Their tears accordingly flow faster than before, and they are apt to abandon themselves to all the weakness of sorrow. They take pleasure, however, in all this, and, it is evident, are sensibly relieved by it. Because the sweetness of his sympathy more than compensates the bitterness of that sorrow, which, in order to excite this sympathy, they had thus enlivened and renewed. The cruellest insult, on the contrary, which can be offered to the unfortunate, is to appear to make light of their calamities. To seem not to be affected with the joy of our companions is but one of politeness. But not to wear a serious countenance when they tell us their afflictions is real and gross inhumanity.
Love is an agreeable, resentment a disagreeable passion, and, accordingly, we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships as that they should enter into our resentments. We can forgive them, though they seem to be little affected with the favors which we may have received. but lose all patience if they seem indifferent about the injuries which may have been done to us. Nor are we half so angry with them for not entering into our gratitude as for not sympathizing with our resentment. They can easily avoid being friends to our friends, but can hardly avoid being enemies to those with whom we are at variance. We seldom resent their being at enmity with the first, Though upon that account we may sometimes effect to make an awkward quarrel with them, but we quarrel with them in good earnest if they live in friendship with the last.
The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the heart without any auxiliary pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.
As the person who is principally interested in any event is pleased with our sympathy, and hurt by the want of it, so we, too, seem to be pleased when we are able to sympathize with him, and to be hurt when we are unable to do so. We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted. And the pleasure which we find in the conversation of one whom in all the passions of his heart we can entirely sympathize with, seems to do more than compensate the painfulness of that sorrow with which the view of his situation affects us. On the contrary, it is always disagreeable to feel that we cannot sympathize with him, and instead of being pleased with this exemption from sympathetic pain, It hurts us to find that we cannot share his uneasiness.
If we hear a person loudly lamenting his misfortunes, which, however, upon bringing the case home to ourselves, we feel can produce no such violent effect upon us, we are shocked at his grief, and because we cannot enter into it, call it pusillanimity and weakness. It gives us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy Or too much elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune. We are disobliged even with his joy, and, because we cannot go along with it, call it levity and folly. We are even put out of humor if our companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it deserves, that is, than we feel that we ourselves could laugh at it.
Chapter Three Of the manner in which we judge the propriety or impropriety of the affections of other men by their concord or dissonance with our own.
When the original passions of the person principally concerned are in perfect concord with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they necessarily appear to this last just and proper, and suitable to their objects, and, on the contrary, When, upon bringing the case home to himself, he finds that they do not coincide with what he feels, they necessarily appear to him unjust and improper, and unsuitable to the causes which excite them. To approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them. And not to approve of them as such is the same thing as to observe that we do not entirely sympathize with them.
The man who resents the injuries that have been done to me, and observes that I resent them precisely as he does, necessarily approves of my resentment. The man whose sympathy keeps time to my grief cannot but admit the reasonableness of my sorrow. He who admires the same poem or the same picture, and admires them exactly as I do, must surely allow the justness of my admiration. He who laughs at the same joke, and laughs along with me, cannot well deny the propriety of my laughter. On the contrary, the person who, upon these different occasions, Either feels no such emotion as that which I feel, or feels none that bears any proportion to mine, cannot avoid disapproving my sentiments on account of their dissonance with his own.
If my animosity goes beyond what the indignation of my friend can correspond to, if my grief exceeds what his most tender compassion can go along with, If my admiration is either too high or too low to tally with his own, if I laugh loud and heartily when only he smiles, or, on the contrary, only smile when he laughs loud and heartily, In all these cases, as soon as he comes from considering the object, to observe how I am affected by it, according as there is more or less disproportion between his sentiments and mine, I must incur a greater or less degree of his disapprobation, and upon all occasions his own sentiments are the standards and measures by which he judges of mine.
To approve of another man's opinions is to adopt those opinions. And to adopt them is to approve of them. If the same arguments which convince you convince me likewise, I necessarily approve of your conviction, and if they do not, I necessarily disapprove of it. Neither can I possibly conceive that I should do the one without the other.
To approve or disapprove, therefore, of the opinions of others is acknowledged by everybody to mean no more than to observe their agreement or disagreement with our own, but this is equally the case with regard to our approbation or disapprobation of the sentiments or passions of others. There are, indeed, some cases in which we seem to approve without any sympathy or correspondence of sentiments, and in which, consequently, the sentiment of approbation would seem to be different from the perception of this coincidence.
A little attention, however, will convince us that even in these cases our approbation is ultimately founded upon a sympathy or correspondence of this kind. I shall give an instance in things of very frivolous nature, because in them the judgments of mankind are less apt to be perverted by wrong systems. We may often approve of a jest, and think the laughter of the company quite just and proper, though we ourselves do not laugh, because perhaps we are in a grave humor, or happen to have our attention engaged with other objects. We have learned, however, from experience, what sort of pleasantry is upon most occasions capable of making us laugh, and we observe that this is one of that kind.
We approve, therefore, of the laughter of the company, and feel that it is natural and suitable to its object, because, though in our present mood we cannot easily enter into it, we are sensible that upon most occasions we should very heartily join in it.
The same thing often happens with regard to all the other passions. A stranger passes by us in the street with all the marks of the deepest affliction, and we are immediately told that he has just received the news of the death of his father. It is impossible that, in this case, we should not approve of his grief. Yet it may often happen, without any defective humanity on our part, that, so far from entering into the violence of his sorrow, we should scarce conceive the first movements of concern upon his account. Both he and his father, perhaps, are entirely unknown to us, or we happen to be employed about other things, and do not take time to picture out in our imagination the different circumstances of distress which must occur to him.
We have learned, however, from experience, that such misfortune naturally excites such a degree of sorrow, and we know that if we took time to consider his situation, fully and in all its parts, we should, without a doubt, most sincerely sympathize with him. It is upon the consciousness of this conditional sympathy that our approbation of his sorrow is founded Even in those cases in which that sympathy does not actually take place, and the general rules derived from our preceding experience of what our sentiments would commonly correspond with correct upon this, as upon many other occasions, the impropriety of our present emotions. The sentiment or affection of the heart from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice must ultimately depend, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations.
First, in the relation to the cause which excites it, or the motive which gives occasion to it, and secondly, In relation to the end which it proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce. In the suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or disproportion which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, consists the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action. In the beneficial or hurtful nature of the effects which the affection aims at, or tends to produce, consists the merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward, or is deserving of punishment.
Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of affections, and have given little attention to the relation which they stand in to the cause which excites them. In common life, however, when we judge of any person's conduct, and of the sentiments which directed it, we constantly consider them under both these aspects. When we blame in another man the excesses of love, of grief, of resentment, we not only consider the ruinous effects which they tend to produce, but the little occasion which was given for them. The merit of his favorite, we say, is not so great, His misfortune is not so dreadful, his provocation is not so extraordinary, as to justify so violent a passion. We should have indulged, we say, perhaps, have approved of the violence of his emotion, had the cause been in any respect proportioned to it.
When we judge in this manner of any affection, as proportioned or disproportioned to the cause which excites it, It is scarce possible that we should make use of any other rule or canon but the correspondent affection in ourselves. If, upon bringing the case home to our own breast, we find that the sentiments which it gives occasion to coincide and tally with our own, we necessarily approve of them as proportioned and suitable to their objects. If otherwise, we necessarily disapprove of them, as extravagant and out of proportion. Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love.
I neither have nor can have Any other way of judging about them.
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2 02 - Part I, Section I: Chapters IV - V 23:39
Of the Propriety of Action, consisting of three sections. Section I. of the sense of propriety. Chapter Four. The same subject continued. We may judge of the propriety or impropriety of the sentiments of another person by their correspondence or disagreement with our own, upon two different occasions. Either, first, when the objects which excite them are considered without any peculiar relation, either to ourselves or to the person whose sentiments we judge of, Or, secondly, when they are considered as peculiarly affecting one or other of us. One. With regard to those objects which are considered without any peculiar relation, either to ourselves or to the person whose sentiments we judge of, wherever his sentiments entirely correspond with our own, we ascribe to him the qualities of taste and good judgment.
The beauty of a plain, The greatness of a mountain, the ornaments of a building, the expression of a picture, the composition of a discourse, the conduct of a third person, the proportions of different quantities and numbers, the various appearances which the great machine of the universe is perpetually exhibiting, with the secret wheels and springs which product them, all the general subjects of science and taste. are what we and our companion regard as having no peculiar relation to either of us. We both look at them from the same point of view, and we have no occasion for sympathy, or for that imaginary change of situation from which it arises, in order to produce, with regard to these, the most perfect harmony of sentiments and affections.
If notwithstanding we are often differently affected, it arises either from the different degrees of attention, which our different habits of life allow us to give easily to the several parts of those complex objects, or from the different degrees of natural acuteness in the faculty of the mind to which they are addressed.
When the sentiments of our companion coincide with our own in things of this kind, which are obvious and easy, and in which, perhaps, we never found a single person who differed from us, though we, no doubt, must approve of them, Yet he seems to deserve no praise or admiration on account of them. But when they not only coincide with our own, but lead and direct our own, when informing them he appears to have attended to many things which we had overlooked, and to have adjusted them to all the various circumstances of their objects, we not only approve of them, but wonder and are surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acuteness and comprehensiveness. and he appears to deserve a very high degree of admiration and applause.
For approbation, heightened by wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called admiration, and of which applause is the natural expression. The decision of the man who judges that exquisite beauty is preferable to the grossest deformity, or that twice two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by all the world, but will not surely be much admired. It is the acute and delicate discernment of the man of taste, who distinguishes the minute and scarce perceptible differences of beauty and deformity. It is the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced mathematician, who unravels with ease the most intricate and perplexed proportions. It is the great leader in science and taste, the man who directs and conducts our own sentiments, the extent and superior justness of whose talents astonish us with wonder and surprise, who excites our admiration and seems to deserve our applause.
And upon this foundation is grounded the greater part of the praise which is bestowed upon what are called the intellectual virtues.
The utility of those qualities, it may be thought, is what first recommends them to us, and no doubt the consideration of this, when we come to attend to it, gives them a new value. Originally, however, we approve of another man's judgment, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality, and it is evident we attribute those qualities to it for no other reason but because we find that it agrees with our own. Taste, in the same manner, is originally approved of, not as useful, but as just, as delicate, and as precisely suited to its object. The idea of the utility of all qualities of this kind is plainly an afterthought, and not what first recommends them to our approbation.
Two. With regard to those objects which affect in a particular manner, either ourselves or the persons whose sentiments we judge of, It is at once more difficult to preserve this harmony and correspondence, and at the same time vastly more important. My companion does not naturally look upon the misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has been done me, from the same point of view in which I consider them. They affect me much more nearly. We do not view them from the same station as we do a picture, or a poem, or a system of philosophy, and are therefore apt to be very differently affected by them. But I can much more easily overlook the want of this correspondence of sentiments with regard to such indifferent objects as concern neither me nor my companion than with regard to what interests me so much as the misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has been done me.
Though you despise that picture, or that poem, or even that system of philosophy, which I admire, There is little danger of our quarrelling upon that account. Neither of us can reasonably be much interested about them. They ought, all of them, to be matters of great indifference to us both, so that, though our opinions may be opposite, our affections may still be very nearly the same. But it is quite otherwise with regard to those objects by which either you or I are particularly affected. Though your judgments in matters of speculation Though your sentiments in matters of taste are quite opposite to mine, I can easily overlook this opposition, and if I have any degree of temper, I may still find some entertainment in your conversation, even upon those very subjects.
But if you have either no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have met with, or none that bears any proportion to the grief which distracts me, Or, if you have either no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or none that bears any proportion to the resentment which transports me, we can no longer converse upon these subjects. We become intolerable to one another. I can neither support your company, nor you mine. You are confounded at my violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold insensibility and want of feeling.
In all such cases that there may be some correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and the person principally concerned, the spectator must, first of all, endeavor as much as he can to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the sufferer. He must adopt the whole case of his companion with all its minutest incidents, and strive to render as perfect as possible that imaginary change of situation upon which his sympathy is founded. After all this, however, the emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive for what has befallen another That degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.
That imaginary change of situation, upon which their sympathy is founded, is but momentary. The thought of their own safety, the thought that they themselves are not really the sufferers, continually intrudes itself upon them, and though it does not hinder them from conceiving a passion somewhat analogous to what is felt by the sufferer, hinders them from conceiving anything that approaches to the same degree of violence. The person principally concerned is sensible of this, and at the same time passionately desires a more complete sympathy. He longs for that relief which nothing can afford him but the entire concord of the affections of the spectators with his own. To see the emotions of their hearts in every respect beat time to his own in the violent and disagreeable passions constitutes his sole consolation.
But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that pitch in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who are about him. What they feel will indeed always be in some respects different from what he feels, and compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow. Because this secret consciousness that the change of situations from which the sympathetic sentiment arises is but imaginary, Not only lowers it in degree, but in some measure, there is it in kind, and gives it a quite different modification.
These two sentiments, however, may, it is evident, have such a correspondence with one another, as is sufficient for the harmony of society. Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords, and this is all that is wanted or required. In order to produce this concord, as nature teaches the spectators to assume the circumstances of the person principally concerned, so she teaches this last in some measure to assume those of the spectators. As they are continually placing themselves in his situation, and thence conceiving emotions similar to what he feels, so he is as constantly placing himself in theirs, and thence conceiving some degree of that coolness about his own fortune, with which he is sensible that they will view it.
As they are constantly considering what they themselves would feel if they actually were the sufferers, so he is as constantly led to imagine in what manner he would be affected if he was only one of the spectators of his own situation. As their sympathy makes them look at it in some measure with his eyes, so his sympathy makes him look at it in some measure with theirs, especially when in their presence and acting under their observation. And as the reflected passion which he thus conceives is much weaker than the original one, it necessarily abates the violence of what he felt before he came into their presence, before he began to recollect in what manner they would be affected by it, and to view his situation in this candid and impartial light.
The mind, therefore, is rarely so disturbed but that the company of a friend will restore it to some degree of tranquillity and sedateness. The breast is in some measure calmed and composed the moment we come into his presence. We are immediately put in mind of the light in which he will view our situation, and we begin to view it ourselves in the same light. For the effect of sympathy is instantaneous. We expect less sympathy from a common acquaintance than from a friend. We cannot open to the former all those little circumstances which we can unfold to the latter. We assume, therefore, more tranquillity before him, and endeavor to fix our thoughts upon those general outlines of our situation which he is willing to consider.
We expect still less sympathy from an assembly of strangers, and we assume, therefore, still more tranquillity before them, and always endeavor to bring down our passion to that pitch which the particular company we are in may be expected to go along with. Nor is this only an assumed appearance, for if we are at all masters of ourselves, the presence of a mere acquaintance will really compose us, still more than that of a friend, and that of an assembly of strangers, still more than that of an acquaintance. Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquility, if at any time it has unfortunately lost it. as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment.
Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honor, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.
Of the amiable and respectable virtues. Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that of the person principally concerned to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the One. The great, the awful, and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions, which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honor and the propriety of our own conduct require, take their origin from the other.
How amiable does he appear to be, whose sympathetic heart seems to re-echo all the sentiments of those with whom he converses, who grieves for their calamities, who resents their injuries, and who rejoices at their good fortune. When we bring home to ourselves the situation of his companions, we enter into their gratitude, and feel what consolation they must derive, from the tender sympathy of so affectionate a friend. And for a contrary reason, how disagreeable does he appear to be, whose hard and obdurate heart feels for himself only, but is altogether insensible to the happiness or misery of others. We enter, in this case, too, into the pain which his presence must give to every mortal with whom he converses, to those especially with whom we are most apt to sympathize.
the unfortunate and the injured. On the other hand, what noble propriety and grace do we feel in the conduct of those who in their own case exert that recollection and self-command which constitute the dignity of every passion, and which bring it down to what others can enter into? We are disgusted with that clamorous grief which without any delicacy calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears and importunate lamentations. But we reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant but affecting coldness of the whole behavior. It imposes the like silence upon us, We regard it with respectful attention, and watch with anxious concern over our whole behavior, lest by any impropriety we should disturb that concerted tranquility which it requires so great an effort to support.
The insolence and brutality of anger, in the same manner, when we indulge its fury without check or restraint, is of all objects the most detestable. But we admire that noble and generous resentment, which governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by the rage which they are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator, which allows no word, no gesture, to escape it beyond what this more equitable sentiment would dictate, which never, even in thought, attempts any greater vengeance. nor desires to inflict any greater punishment than what every indifferent person would rejoice to see executed.
And hence it is that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish and to indulge our benevolent affections constitutes the perfection of human nature, and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consist their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbor, or what comes to the same thing as our neighbor is capable of loving us.
As taste and good judgment, when they are considered, As qualities which deserve praise and admiration, are supposed to imply a delicacy of sentiment and an acuteness of understanding not commonly to be met with, so the virtues of sensibility and self-command are not apprehended to consist in the ordinary, but in the uncommon degrees of those qualities. The amiable virtue of humanity requires surely a sensibility much beyond what is possessed by the rude vulgar of mankind. The great and exalted virtue of magnanimity undoubtedly demands much more than that degree of self-command which the weakest of mortals is capable of exerting. As in the common degree of the intellectual qualities, there is no abilities, so in the common degree of the moral there is no virtue.
Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary. The amiable virtues consist in that degree of sensibility, which surprises by its exquisite and unexpected delicacy and tenderness. The awful and respectable, in that degree of self-command, which astonishes by its amazing superiority over the most ungovernable passions of human nature. There is, in this respect, a considerable difference between virtue and mere propriety. Between those qualities and actions which deserve to be admired and celebrated, and those which simply deserve to be approved of. Upon many occasions, to act with the most perfect propriety requires no more than that common and ordinary degree of sensibility or self-command which the most worthless of mankind are possessed of, and sometimes even that degree is not necessary.
Thus to give a very low instance to eat when we are hungry is certainly upon ordinary occasions perfectly right and proper, and cannot miss being approved of as such by everybody. Nothing, however, could be more absurd than to say it was virtuous. On the contrary, there may frequently be a considerable degree of virtue in those actions which fall short of the most perfect propriety, because they may still approach nearer to perfection, than could well be expected upon occasions in which it was so extremely difficult to attain it. And this is very often the case upon those occasions which require the greatest exertions of self-command. There are some situations which bear so hard upon human nature, that the greatest degree of self-government which can belong to so imperfect a creature as man is not able to stifle altogether the voice of human weakness.
or reduce the violence of the passions to that pitch of moderation in which the impartial spectator can entirely enter into them. Though in those cases, therefore, the behavior of the sufferer falls short of the most perfect propriety, it may still deserve some applause, and even in a certain sense may be denominated virtuous. It may still manifest an effort of generosity and magnanimity of which the greater part of men are incapable, And though it fails of absolute perfection, it may be a much nearer approximation towards perfection than what upon such trying occasions is commonly either to be found or to be expected. In cases of this kind, when we are determining the degree of blame or applause which seems due to any action, we very frequently make use of two different standards.
The first is the idea of complete propriety and perfection, which in those difficult situations No human conduct ever did, or ever can, come up to, and in comparison with which the actions of all men must forever appear blamable and imperfect. The second is the idea of that degree of proximity or distance from this complete perfection which the actions of the greater part of men commonly arrive at. Whatever goes beyond this degree, how far soever it may be removed from absolute perfection, seems to deserve applause, and whatever falls short of it to deserve blame.
It is in the same manner that we judge of the productions of all the arts which address themselves to the imagination. When a critic examines the work of any of the great masters in poetry or painting, he may sometimes examine it by an idea of perfection in his own mind, which neither that nor any other human work will ever come up to. And as long as he compares it with this standard, he can see nothing in it but faults and imperfections. But when he comes to consider the rank which it ought to hold among other works of the same kind, he necessarily compares it with a very different standard, the common degree of excellence, which is usually attained in this particular art. And when he judges of it by this new measure, it may often appear to deserve the highest applause, Upon account of its approaching much nearer to perfection than the greater part of those works which can be brought into competition with it.
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III. Part One.
Of the propriety of action consisting of three sections. Section Two. Of the degrees of different passions which are consistent with propriety. Introduction. The propriety of every passion excited by objects peculiarly related to ourselves, the pitch which the spectator can go along with, must lie, it is evident, in a certain mediocrity. If the passion is too high, or if it is too low, he cannot enter into it. Grief and resentment for private misfortunes and injuries may easily, for example, be too high, and in the greater part of mankind they are so. They may likewise, though this more rarely happens, be too low. We denominate the excess, weakness, and fury, and we call the defect stupidity.
In sensibility and want of spirit, we can enter into neither of them, but are astonished and confounded to see them. This mediocrity, however, in which the point of propriety consists, is different in different passions. It is high in some, and low in others. There are some passions which it is indecent to express very strongly. Even upon those occasions, in which it is acknowledged that we cannot avoid feeling them in the highest degree. And there are others, of which the strongest expressions are upon many occasions extremely graceful, even though the passions themselves do not, perhaps, arise so necessarily. The first are those passions with which, for certain reasons, there is little or no sympathy.
The second are those with which, for other reasons, There is the greatest. And if we consider all the different passions of human nature, we shall find that they are regarded as decent or indecent, just in proportion as mankind are, more or less, disposed to sympathize with them. Chapter One. Of the passions which take their origin from the body. One. It is indecent to express any strong degree of those passions which arise from a certain situation or disposition of the body, because the company, not being in the same disposition, cannot be expected to sympathize with them. Violent hunger, for example, though upon many occasions not only natural but unavoidable, is always indecent, and to eat voraciously is universally regarded as a piece of ill-manners.
There is, however, some degree of sympathy, even with hunger. It is agreeable to see our companions eat with a good appetite, and all expressions of loathing are offensive.
The disposition of body, which is habitual to man in health, makes his stomach easily keep time, if I may be allowed so coarse an expression, with the one and not with the other.
We can sympathize with the distress which excessive hunger occasions when we read the description of it in a journal of a siege or of a sea voyage. We imagine ourselves in the situation of the sufferers, and thence readily conceive the grief, the fear, and consternation which must necessarily distract them. We feel ourselves some degree of those passions, and therefore sympathize with them. But as we do not grow hungry by reading the description, we cannot properly, even in this case, be said to sympathize with their hunger. It is the same case with the passion by which nature unites the two sexes. Though naturally, the most furious of all the passions, all strong expressions of it, are upon every occasion indecent.
Even between persons in whom its most complete indulgence is acknowledged by all laws, both human and divine, to be perfectly innocent. There seems, however, to be some degree of sympathy even with this passion. To talk to a woman as we would to a man is improper. It is expected that their company should inspire us with more gaiety, more pleasantry, and more attention, and an entire insensibility to the fair sex renders a man contemptible in some measure even to the men. Such is our aversion for all the appetites which take their origin from the body. All strong expressions of them are loathsome and disagreeable. According to some ancient philosophers, these are the passions which we share in common with the brutes, and which, having no connection with the characteristical qualities of human nature, are upon that account beneath its dignity.
But there are many other passions which we share in common with the brutes, such as resentment, natural affection, even gratitude, which do not, upon that account, appear to be so brutal. The true cause of the peculiar disgust which we conceive for the appetites of the body when we see them in other men is that we cannot enter into them. To the person himself who feels them, as soon as they are gratified, the object that excited them ceases to be agreeable. Even its present often becomes offensive to him. He looks round to no purpose for the charm which transported him the moment before. And he can now as little enter into his own passion as another person. When we have dined, We ordered the covers to be removed, and we should treat in the same manner the objects of the most ardent and passionate desires, if they were the objects of no other passions but those which take the origin from the body.
In the command of those appetites of the body consists that virtue which is properly called temperance. To restrain them within those bounds which regard to health and fortune proscribes is the part of prudence. But to confine them within those limits which grace, which propriety, which delicacy and modesty require, is the office of temperance. Two. It is for the same reason that to cry out with bodily pain, how intolerable soever, always appears unmanly and unbecoming. There is, however, a good deal of sympathy, even with bodily pain. If, As has already been observed, I see a stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, I naturally shrink and draw back my own leg or my own arm, and when it does fall, I feel it in some measure, and am hurt by it as well as the sufferer.
My hurt, however, is no doubt excessively slight, and upon that account, if he makes any violent outcry, As I cannot go along with him, I never fail to despise him. And this is the case of all the passions which take their origin from the body. They excite either no sympathy at all, or such a degree of it, as is altogether disproportioned to the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. It is quite otherwise with those passions which take their origin from the imagination. The frame of my body, can be but little affected by the alterations which are brought about upon that of my companion, but my imagination is more ductile, and more readily assumes, if I may say so, the shape and configuration of the imaginations of those with whom I am familiar.
A disappointment in love or ambition will, upon this account, call forth more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil. Those passions arise altogether from the imagination. A person who has lost his whole fortune, if he is in health, feels nothing in his body. What he suffers is from the imagination only, which represents to him the loss of his dignity, neglect from his friends, contempt from his enemies, dependence, want, and misery, coming fast upon him. And we sympathize with him more strongly upon this account, because our imaginations can more readily mold themselves upon his imagination than our bodies can mold themselves upon his body. The loss of a leg may generally be regarded as a more real calamity than the loss of a mistress.
It would be a ridiculous tragedy, however, of which the catastrophe was to turn upon a loss of that kind. A misfortune of the other kind, how frivolous soever it may appear to be, has given occasion to many a fine one. Nothing is so soon forgot as pain. The moment it is gone, the whole agony of it is over, and the thought of it can no longer give us any sort of disturbance. We ourselves cannot then enter into anxiety and anguish which we had before conceived, An unguarded word from a friend will occasion a more durable uneasiness.
The agony which this creates is by no means over with the word. What at first disturbs us is not the object of the senses, but the idea of the imagination. As it is an idea, therefore, which occasions our uneasiness, till time and other accidents have, in some measure, effaced it from our memory, The imagination continues to fret and rankle within from the thought of it. Pain never calls forth any very lively sympathy unless it is accompanied with danger. We sympathize with the fear, though not with the agony of the sufferer. Fear, however, is a passion derived altogether from the imagination, which represents, with an uncertainty and fluctuation that increases our anxiety, not what we really feel, but what we may hereafter possibly suffer.
The gout or the toothache, though exquisitely painful, excite very little sympathy. More dangerous diseases, though accompanied with very little pain, excite the highest. Some people faint and grow sick at the site of a chirurgical operation, and that bodily pain which is occasioned by tearing the flesh seems in them to excite the most excessive sympathy. We conceive in a much more lively and distinct manner the pain that proceeds from an external cause than we do that which arises from an internal disorder. I can scarce form an idea of the agonies of my neighbor when he is tortured with the gout or the stone, but I have the clearest conception of what he must suffer from an incision, a wound, or a fracture.
The chief cause, however, why such objects produce such violent effects upon us, is their novelty. One who has been witness to a dozen dissections and as many amputations sees, ever after, all operations of this kind with great indifference, and often with perfect insensibility. Though we have read or seen represented more than five hundred tragedies, we shall seldom feel so entire an abatement of our sensibility to the objects which they represent to us. In some of the Greek tragedies, there is an attempt to excite compassion by the representation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his sufferings. Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the severest tortures which, it seems, even the fortitude of Hercules was incapable of supporting.
In all these cases, however, It is not the pain which interests us, but some other circumstances. It is not the sore foot, but the solitude of philoctetes which affects us, and diffuses over that charming tragedy that romantic wildness which is so agreeable to the imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interesting only because we foresee that death is to be the consequence. If those heroes were to recover, We should think the representation of their sufferings perfectly ridiculous. What a tragedy would that be of which the distress consisted in a colic, yet no pain is more exquisite. These attempts to excite compassion by the representation of bodily pain may be regarded as among the greatest breaches of decorum of which the Greek theater has set the example.
The little sympathy which we feel with bodily pain is the foundation of the propriety of constancy and patience in enduring it. The man, who under the severest tortures allows no weakness to escape him, vents no groan, gives way to no passion, which we do not entirely enter into, commands our highest admiration. His firmness enables him to keep time with our indifference and insensibility. We admire and entirely go along with the magnanimous effort which he makes for this purpose. We approve of this behavior, and from our experience of the common weakness of human nature, we are surprised, and wonder how he should be able to act so as to deserve approbation. Approbation, mixed and animated by wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called admiration.
Of which applause is the natural expression, as has already been observed. Chapter Two. Of those passions which take their origin from a particular turn or habit of the imagination. Even of the passions derived from the imagination, those which take their origin from a peculiar turn or habit it has acquired, though they may be acknowledged to be perfectly natural, are, however, but little sympathized with. The imaginations of mankind, not having acquired that particular turn, cannot enter into them, and such passions, though they may be allowed to be almost unavoidable in some part of life, are always in some measure ridiculous. This is the case that strong attachment which naturally grows up between two persons of different sexes who have long fixed their thoughts upon one another.
Our imagination, not having run in the same channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter into the eagerness of his emotions. If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathize with his resentment, and grow angry with the very person with whom he is angry. If he has received a benefit, we readily enter into his gratitude, and have a very high sense of the merit of his benefactor. But if he is in love, though we may think his passion just as reasonable as any of the kind, yet we never think ourselves bound to conceive a passion of the same kind, and for the same person for whom he has conceived it. The passion appears to every body, but the man who feels it, entirely disproportioned to the value of the object, and love, though it is pardoned in a certain age because we know it is natural, is always laughed at because we cannot enter into it.
All serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person, and though a lover may be good company to his mistress, he is so to nobody else. He himself is sensible of this, and as long as he continues in his sober senses, endeavors to treat his own passion with raillery and ridicule. It is the only style in which we care to hear of it, because it is the only style in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it. We grow weary of the grave, pendantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and Petrarca, Who have never done with exaggerating the violence of their attachments, but the gaiety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are always agreeable. But though we feel no proper sympathy with an attachment of this kind, though we never approach even an imagination towards conceiving a passion for that particular person, yet, as we either have conceived, or may be disposed to conceive passions of the same kind, we readily enter into those high hopes of happiness which are proposed from its gratification, as well as into that exquisite distress which is feared from its disappointment.
It interests us not as a passion, but as a situation that gives occasion to other passions which interest us, to hope, to fear, to distress of every kind, In the same manner as in a description of a sea voyage, it is not the hunger which interests us, but the distress which that hunger occasions. Though we do not properly enter into the attachment of the lover, we readily go along with those expectations of romantic happiness which he derives from it. We feel how natural it is for the mind, in a certain situation, Relaxed with indolence, and fatigued with the violence of desire, to long for serenity and quiet, to hope to find them in the gratification of that passion which distracts it, and to frame to itself the idea of that life of pastoral tranquillity and retirement which is elegant, the tender, and the passionate to Bullis takes so much pleasure in describing.
A life like What the poets describe in the fortunate islands, a life of friendship, liberty, and repose, free from labor, and from care, and from all the turbulent passions which attend them. Even scenes of this kind interest us most, when they are painted rather as what is hoped than as what is enjoyed. The grossness of that passion, which mixes with and is, perhaps, the foundation of love, disappears when its gratification is far off and at a distance, but renders the whole offensive when described as what is immediately possessed. The happy passion, upon this account, interests us much less than the fearful and the melancholy. We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and agreeable hopes, and thus enter into all the anxiety and concern and distress of the lover.
Hence it is that, in some modern tragedies and romances, this passion appears so wonderfully interesting. It is not so much the love of Castiglio and Monomia which attaches us in the orphan, as the distress which that love occasions. The author who should introduce two lovers in a scene of perfect security, expressing their mutual fondness for one another, would excite laughter and not sympathy. If a scene of this kind is ever admitted into a tragedy, it is always in some measure improper, and is endured not from any sympathy with the passion that is expressed in it, but from concern for the dangers and difficulties with which the audience foresee that its gratification is likely to be attended.
The reserve which the laws of society oppose upon the fair sex with regard to this weakness rends it more peculiarly distressful in them, and, upon that very account, more deeply interesting. We are charmed with the love of Phaedra, as it is expressed in the French tragedy of that name, notwithstanding all the extravagance and guilt which attend it. That very extravagance and guilt may be said, in some measure, to recommend it to us. Her fear, her shame, her remorse, her horror, her despair, become thereby more natural and interesting. All the secondary passions, if I may be allowed to call them so, which arise from the situation of love, become necessarily more furious and violent, and it is with these secondary passions Only that we can properly be said to sympathize.
Of all the passions, however, which are so extravagantly disproportionate to the value of their objects, love is the only one that appears, even to the weakest minds, to have anything in it that is either graceful or agreeable. In itself, first of all, though it may be ridiculous, it is not Naturally odious, and though its consequences are often fatal and dreadful, its intentions are seldom mischievous. And then, though there is little propriety in the passion itself, there is a good deal in some of those which always accompany it. There is in love a strong mixture of humanity, generosity, kindness, friendship, esteem, passions with which, Of all others, for reasons which shall be explained immediately, we have the greatest propensity to sympathize, even notwithstanding we are sensible that they are, in some measure, excessive.
The sympathy which we feel with them renders the passion which they accompany less disagreeable, and supports it in our imagination notwithstanding all the vices which commonly go along with it, though in the one sex it necessarily leads to the last ruin and infamy, and though in the other, where it is apprehended to be least fatal, it is almost always attended with an incapacity for labor, a neglect of duty, a contempt of fame, and even of common reputation. Notwithstanding all this, the degree of sensibility and generosity with which it is supposed to be accompanied renders it to many the object of vanity, and they are fond of appearing capable of feeling what would do them no honor if they hadn't really felt it.
It is for a reason of the same kind that a certain reserve is necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, our own professions. All these are objects which we cannot Expect should interest our companions in the same degree in which they interest us, and it is for want of this reserve that the one half of mankind make bad company to the other. A philosopher is company to a philosopher only, a member of a club, to his own little knot of companions.
in the great state of Missouri.
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III.
Of the Unsocial Passions. There is another set of passions, which, though derived from the imagination, yet before we can enter into them, or regard them as graceful or becoming, must always be brought down to a pitch much lower than that to which undisciplined nature would raise them. These are hatred and resentment, with all their different modifications. With regard to all such passions, Our sympathy is divided between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them. The interests of these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy with the person who feels them would prompt us to wish for, our fellow-feeling with the other would lead us to fear. As they are both men, we are concerned for both, and our fear for what the one may suffer damps our resentment for what the other has suffered.
Our sympathy, therefore, with the man who has received the provocation, necessarily falls short of the passion which naturally animates him, not only upon account of those general causes which render all sympathetic passions inferior to the original ones, but upon account of that particular cause which is peculiar to itself, our opposite sympathy with another person. Before resentment, therefore, can become graceful and agreeable, it must be more humbled and brought down below that pitch to which it would naturally rise, than almost any other passion. Mankind, at the same time, have a very strong sense of the injuries that are done to another.
The villain, in a tragedy or romance, is as much the object of our indignation as the hero is that of our sympathy and affection. We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello, and delight as much in the punishment of the one as we are grieved at the distress of the other. But though mankind have so strong a fellow-feeling with the injuries that are done to their brethren, They do not always resent them the more that the sufferer appears to resent them. Upon most occasions, the greater his patience, his mildness, his humanity, provided it does not appear that he wants spirit, or that fear was the motive of his forbearance, the higher their resentment against the person who injured him. The amiableness of the character exasperates their sense of the atrocity of the injury.
Those passions, however, are regarded as necessary parts of the character of human nature. A person becomes contemptible, who tamely sits still and submits to insults without attempting either to repel or to revenge them. We cannot enter into his indifference and insensibility. We call his behavior mean-spiritedness, and are as really provoked by it as by the insolence of his adversary. Even the mob are enraged to see any man submit patiently to affronts and ill-usage. They desire to see this insolence resented, and resented by the person who suffers from it. They cry to him with fury to defend or to revenge himself. If his indignation rouses at last, they heartily applaud and sympathize with it.
It enlivens their own indignation against his enemy, whom they rejoice to see him attack in his turn, and are as really gratified by his revenge, provided it is not immoderate, as if the injury had been done to themselves. But though the utility of those passions to the individual by rendering it dangerous to insult or injure him, be acknowledged, and though their utility to the public, as the guardians of justice, and of the equality of its administration, be not less considerable, as shall be shown hereafter, yet there is something still disagreeable in the passions themselves, which makes the appearance of them and other men the natural object of our aversion. The expression of anger towards anybody present, If it exceeds a bare intimation that we are sensible of his ill-usage, is regarded not only as an insult to that particular person, but as a rudeness to the whole company.
Respect for them ought to have restrained us from giving way to so boisterous and offensive an emotion. It is the remote effects of these passions which are agreeable. The immediate effects are mischief to the person against whom they are directed. But it is the immediate and not the remote effects of objects which render them agreeable or disagreeable to the imagination. A prison is certainly more useful to the public than a palace, and the person who founds the one is generally directed by a much juster spirit of patriotism than he who builds the other. But the immediate effects of a prison The confinement of the wretches shut up in it are disagreeable, and the imagination either does not take time to trace out the remote ones, or sees them at too great a distance to be much affected by them.
A prison, therefore, will always be a disagreeable object, and the fitter it is for the purpose for which it was intended, it will be the more so. A palace, on the contrary, will always be agreeable. Yet its remote effects may often be inconvenient to the public. It may serve to promote luxury, and set the example of the dissolution of manners. Its immediate effects, however—the conveniency, the pleasure, and the gaiety of the people who live in it being all agreeable, and suggesting to the imagination a thousand agreeable ideas—the That faculty generally rests upon them, and seldom goes further in tracing its more distant consequences. Trophies of the instruments of music, or of agriculture, imitated in painting or in stucco, make a common and an agreeable ornament of our halls and dining-rooms.
A trophy of the same kind, composed of the instruments of surgery, of dissecting and amputation knives, of saws for cutting the bones, of trepanning instruments, etc., would be absurd and shocking. Instruments of surgery, however, are always more finely polished, and generally more nicely adapted to the purposes for which they are intended, than instruments of agriculture. The remote effects of them, too, the health of the patient, is agreeable. Yet as the immediate effect of them is pain and suffering, the sight of them always displeases us. Instruments of war are agreeable, though their immediate effect may seem to be in the same manner pain and suffering. But then it is the pain and suffering of our enemies, with whom we have no sympathy.
With regard to us, they are immediately connected with the agreeable ideas of courage, victory, and honor. They are themselves, therefore, supposed to make one of the noblest parts of dress, and the imitation of them one of the finest ornaments of architecture. It is the same case with the qualities of the mind. The ancient Stoics were of opinion that As the world was governed by the all-ruling providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every single event ought to be regarded as making a necessary part of the plan of the universe, and as tending to promote the general order and happiness of the whole, that the vices and follies of mankind, therefore, made as necessary a part of this plan as their wisdom or their virtue.
And by that eternal art which adduces good from ill, were made to tend equally to the prosperity and perfection of the great system of nature. No speculation of this kind, however, how deeply soever it might be rooted in the mind, could diminish our natural abhorrence for vice, whose immediate effects are so destructive, and whose remote ones are too distant to be traced by the imagination.
It is the same case with those passions we have been just now considering. Their immediate effects are so disagreeable that even when they are most justly provoked there is still something about them which disgusts us. These, therefore, are the only passions of which the expressions, as I formerly observed, do not dispose and prepare us to sympathize with them before we are informed of the cause which excites them. The plaintive voice of misery, when heard at a distance, will not allow us to be indifferent about the person from whom it comes. As soon as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his fortune, and, if continued, forces us almost involuntarily to fly to his assistance. The sight of a smiling countenance, in the same manner, elevates even the pensive into that gay and airy mood which disposes him to sympathize with and share the joy which it expresses.
And he feels his heart, Which with thought and care was before that shrunk and depressed, instantly expanded and elated. But it is quite otherwise with the expressions of hatred and resentment. The hoarse, boisterous, and discordant voice of anger, when heard at a distance, inspires us either with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards it, as to one who cries out with pain and agony. Women, and men of weak nerves, tremble and are overcome with fear, though sensible that themselves are not the object of the anger. They conceive fear, however, by putting themselves in the situation of the person who is so. Even those of stouter hearts are disturbed. Not indeed enough to make them afraid, but enough to make them angry.
For anger is the passion which they would feel in the situation of the other person. It is the same case with hatred. Mere expressions of spite inspire it against nobody but the man who uses them. Both these passions are by nature the objects of our aversion. Their disagreeable and boisterous appearance never excites, never prepares, and often disturbs our sympathy. Grief does not more powerfully engage and attract us to the person in whom we observe it than these, while we are ignorant of their cause, disgust and detach us from him. It was, it seems, the intention of nature, that those rougher and more unamiable emotions which drive men from one another should be less easily and more rarely communicated.
When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all of them passions which are naturally musical. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and melodious, and they naturally express themselves in periods which are distinguished by regular pauses, and which upon that account are easily adapted to the regular returns of the correspondent airs of a tune. The voice of anger, on the contrary, and of all the passions which are akin to it, is harsh and discordant. Its periods, too, are all irregular, sometimes very long, and sometimes very short, and distinguished by no regular pauses.
It is with difficulty, therefore, that music can imitate any of those passions, and the music which does imitate them is not the most agreeable. A whole entertainment may consist, without any impropriety, of the imitation of the social and agreeable passions. It would be a strange entertainment which consisted altogether of the imitations of hatred and resentment.
If those passions are disagreeable to the spectator, they are not less so to the person who feels them. Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind. There is, in the very feeling of those passions, something harsh, Jarring and convulsive, something that tears and distracts the breasts, and is altogether destructive of that composure and tranquillity of mind which is so necessary to happiness, and which is best promoted by the contrary passions of gratitude and love. It is not the value of what they lose by the perfidy and ingratitude of those they live with which the generous and humane are most apt to regret. Whatever they may have lost, they can generally be very happy without it.
What most disturbs them is the idea of perfidy and ingratitude exercised towards themselves, and the discordant and disagreeable passions which this excites constitute, in their own opinion, the chief part of the injury which they suffer.
How many things are requisite to render the gratification of resentment completely agreeable, and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathize with our revenge? The provocation must, first of all, be such that we should become contemptible, and be exposed to perpetual insults if we did not, in some measure, resent it. Smaller offenses are always better neglected. Nor is there anything more despicable than that froward and captious humor which takes fire upon every slight occasion of quarrel. We should resent more from a sense of the propriety of resentment, from a sense that mankind expect and require it of us, than because we feel in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable passion. There is no passion of which the human mind is capable concerning whose justice we ought to be so doubtful.
Concerning whose indulgence we ought so carefully to consult our natural sense of propriety, or so diligently to consider what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator. Magnanimity, or a regard to maintain our own rank and dignity in society, is the only motive which can ennoble the expressions of this disagreeable passion. This motive must characterize our whole style and deportment. These must be plain, Open and direct, determined without positiveness, and elevated without insolence, not only free from petulance and low scurrility, but generous, candid, and full of all proper regards, even for the person who has offended us. It must appear, in short, from our whole manner, without our laboring effectively to express it, that passion has not extinguished our humanity, and that if we yield to the dictates of revenge, it is with reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence of great and repeated provocations.
When resentment is guarded and qualified in this manner, it may be admitted to be even generous and noble.
Chapter Four of the Social Passions. As it is the divided sympathy which renders the whole set of passions just now mentioned, upon most occasions, so ungraceful and disagreeable, so there is another set opposite to these, which a redoubled sympathy renders almost always peculiarly agreeable and becoming. Generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem, All the social and benevolent affections, when expressed in the countenance or behavior, even towards those who are not peculiarly connected with ourselves, please the indifferent spectator upon almost every occasion. His sympathy with the person who feels those passions exactly coincides with his concern for the person who is the object of them.
The interest which, as a man, he is obliged to take in the happiness of this last, enlivens his fellow-feeling with the sentiments of the other whose emotions are employed about the same object. We have always, therefore, the strongest disposition to sympathize with the benevolent affections. They appear in every respect agreeable to us. We enter into the satisfaction both of the person who feels them and of the person who is the object of them. For as to be the object of hatred and indignation gives more pain than all the evil which a brave man can fear from his enemies, so there is a satisfaction in the consciousness of being beloved, which to a person of delicacy and sensibility is of more importance to happiness than all the advantage which he can expect to derive from it.
What character is so detestable as that of one who takes pleasure to sow dissension among friends, and to turn their most tender love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist? Is it in depriving them of the frivolous good offices which, had their friendship continued, they might have expected from one another? It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of each other's affections from which both derive so much satisfaction. It is in disturbing the harmony of their hearts, and putting an end to that happy commerce which had before subsisted between them. These affections, that harmony, this commerce, are felt not only by the tender and the delicate, but by the rudest vulgar of mankind, to be of more importance to happiness than all the little services which could be expected to flow from them.
The sentiment of love is, in itself, agreeable to the person who feels it. It soothes and composes the breast, seems to favor the vital motions, and to promote the healthful state of the human constitution. And it is rendered still more delightful by the consciousness of the gratitude and satisfaction which it must excite in him who is the object of it. Their mutual regard renders them happy in one another, and sympathy with this mutual regard makes them agreeable to every other person. With what pleasure do we look upon a family, through the whole of which reign mutual love and esteem, where the parents and children are companions for one another, without any other difference than what is made by respectful affection on the one side, and kind indulgence on the other?
Where freedom and fondness, mutual raillery and mutual kindness show that no opposition of interest divides the brothers, nor any rivalship of favor sets the sisters at variance, and where everything presents us with the idea of peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and contentment.
On the contrary, how uneasy are we made when we go into a house in which a jarring contention sets one half of those who dwell in it against the other? Where, amidst affected smoothness and complacence, suspicious looks and sudden starts of passion betray the mutual jealousies which burn within them, and which are every moment ready to burst out through all the restraints which the presence of the company imposes. Those amiable passions, even when they are acknowledged to be excessive, are never regarded with aversion. There is something agreeable even in the weakness of friendship and humanity. The too tender mother, the too indulgent father, the too generous and affectionate friend, may sometimes, perhaps, on account of the softness of their natures, be looked upon with a species of pity, in which, however, there is a mixture of love, but can never be regarded with hatred and aversion, nor even with contempt, unless by the most brutal and worthless of mankind.
It is always with concern, with sympathy and kindness, that we blame them for the extravagance of their attachment. There is a helplessness in the character of extreme humanity, which more than anything interests our pity. There is nothing in itself which renders it either ungraceful or disagreeable. We only regret that it is unfit for the world, because the world is unworthy of it. And because it must expose the person who is endowed with it as a prey to the perfidy and ingratitude of insinuating falsehood, and to a thousand pains and uneasiness, which of all men he the least deserves to feel, and which generally, too, he is, of all men, the least capable of supporting. It is quite otherwise with hatred and resentment.
Too violent a propensity to those detestable passions renders a person the object of universal dread and abhorrence who, like a wild beast, ought, we think, to be hunted out of all civil society.
V. Of the Selfish Passions Besides those two opposite sets of passions, the social and unsocial, there is another which holds a sort of middle place between them. It is never either so graceful as is sometimes the one set, nor is ever so odious as is sometimes the other. Grief and joy, when conceived upon account of our own private good or bad fortune, constitute this third set of passions. Even when excessive, they are never so disagreeable as excessive resentment, because no opposite sympathy can ever interest us against them. And when most suitable to their objects, they are never so agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence, because no double sympathy can ever interest us for them.
There is, however, this difference between grief and joy, that we are generally most disposed to sympathize with small joys and great sorrows. The man who, by some sudden revolution of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition of life greatly above what he had formerly lived in, may be assured that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere. An upstart, though of the greatest merit, is generally disagreeable, and a sentiment of envy commonly prevents us from heartily sympathizing with his joy. If he has any judgment, he is sensible of this, and instead of appearing to be elated with his good fortune, he endeavors, as much as he can, to smother his joy, and keep down that elevation of mind with which his new circumstances naturally inspire him.
He affects the same plainness of dress, and the same modesty of behavior which became him in his former station. He redoubles his attention to his old friends, and endeavors more than ever to be humble, assiduous, and complacent. And this is the behavior which in his situation we most approve of, because we expect, it seems, that he should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness than we have with his happiness. It is seldom that with all this he succeeds. We suspect the sincerity of his humility, and he grows weary of this constraint. In a little time, therefore, he generally leaves all his old friends behind him, some of the meanest of them excepted, who may, perhaps, condescend to become his dependents.
Nor does he always acquire any new ones, The pride of his new connections is as much affronted at finding him their equal as that of the old ones had been by his becoming their superior, and it requires the most obstinate and persevering modesty to atone for this mortification to either. He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked by the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by the saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first with neglect and the second with petulance, till at last he grows habitually insolent and forfeits the esteem of all. If the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved, as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness.
He is happiest, who advances more gradually to greatness whom the public destines to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy. And with regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes, or any envy in those he leaves behind.
Mankind, however, more readily sympathize with those smaller joys which flow from less important causes. It is decent to be humble amidst great prosperity, but we can scarce express too much satisfaction in all the little occurrences of common life, in the company with which we spent the evening last night, in the entertainment that was set before us, in what was said and what was done, in all the little incidents of the present conversation, and in all those frivolous nothings which fill up the void of human life. Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford. We readily sympathize with it.
It inspires us with the same joy, and makes every trifle turn up to us in the same agreeable aspect in which it presents itself to the person endowed with this happy disposition. Hence it is that youth, the season of gaiety, so easily engages our affections. That propensity to joy, which seems even to animate the bloom, and to sparkle from the eyes of youth and beauty, though in a person of the same sex, exalts even the aged to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been strangers, but which, when the presence of so much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are sorry to have ever been parted, and whom they embrace more heartily upon account of this long separation.
It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexations excite no sympathy, but deep affliction calls forth the greatest. The man who is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident, who is hurt if either the cook or the butler have failed in the least article of their duty, who feels every defect in the highest ceremonial of politeness, whether it be shown to himself or to any other person, who takes it amiss that his intimate friend did not bid him good morrow when they met in the forenoon, and that his brother hummed a tune all the time he himself was telling a story, who is put out of humor by the badness of the weather when in the country, by the badness of the road, When upon a journey, and by the want of company and dulness of all public diversions when in town, such a person, I say, though he should have some reason, will seldom meet with much sympathy.
Joy is a pleasant emotion, and we gladly abandon ourselves to it upon the slightest occasion. We readily, therefore, sympathize with it in others, whenever we are not prejudiced by envy. But grief is painful, and the mind, even when it is our own misfortune, naturally resists and recoils from it. We would endeavor either not to conceive it at all, or to shake it off as soon as we have conceived it. Our aversion to grief will not, indeed, always hinder us from conceiving it in our own case upon very trifling occasions. But it constantly prevents us from sympathizing with it in others when excited by the like frivolous causes, for our sympathetic passions are always less irresistible than our original ones.
There is, besides, a malice in mankind, which not only prevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses, but renders them in some measure diverting. Hence the delight which we take in raillery, and in the small vexation which we observe in our companion when he has pushed and urged and teased upon all sides. Men of the most ordinary good breeding dissemble the pain which any little incident may give them, and those who are more thoroughly formed to society turn, of their own accord, all such incidents into raillery, as they know their companions will do for them. The habit which a man, who lives in the world, has acquired of considering how everything that concerns himself will appear to others makes those frivolous calamities turn up in the same ridiculous light to him in which he knows they will certainly be considered by them.
Our sympathy, on the contrary, with deep distress, is very strong and very sincere. It is unnecessary to give an instance. We weep even at the feigned representation of a tragedy. If you labor, therefore, under any signaled calamity, if by some extraordinary misfortune you are fallen into poverty, into diseases, into disgrace and disappointment, even though your own fault may have been in part the occasion, yet you may generally depend upon the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and, as far as interest and honor will permit, upon their kindest assistance too. But if your misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have only been a little balked in your ambition, if you have only been jilted by your mistress, or only hen-pecked by your wife, lay your account with the raillery of all your acquaintance.
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V. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith.
Section Three of the effects of prosperity and adversity upon the judgment of mankind with regard to the propriety of action, and why it is more easy to obtain their approbation in the one state than in the other. Chapter One. That though our sympathy with sorrow is generally a more lively sensation than our sympathy with joy, it commonly falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
Our sympathy with sorrow, though not more real, has been more taken notice of than our sympathy with joy. The word sympathy, in its most proper and primitive signification, Denotes our fellow-feelings with the sufferings, not that with the enjoyments of others. A late ingenious and subtle philosopher thought it necessary to prove, by arguments, that we had a real sympathy with joy, and that congratulation was a principle of human nature. Nobody, I believe, ever thought it necessary to prove that compassion was such. First of all, Our sympathy with sorrow is, in some sense, more universal than that with joy. Though sorrow is excessive, we may still have some fellow-feeling with it. What we feel does not, indeed, in this case, amount to that complete sympathy, to that perfect harmony and correspondence of sentiments which constitutes approbation.
We do not weep and exclaim and lament with the sufferer. We are sensible, on the contrary, of his weakness and of the extravagance of his passion, and yet often feel a very sensible concern upon his account. But if we do not entirely enter into, and go along with, the joy of another, we have no sort of regard or fellow-feeling for it. The man who skips and dances about with that intemperate and senseless joy which we cannot accompany him in is the object of our contempt and indignation. Pain, besides, whether of mind or body, is a more pungent sensation than pleasure, and our sympathy with pain, though it falls greatly short of what is naturally felt by the sufferer, is generally a more lively and distinct perception than our sympathy with pleasure, though this last often approaches more nearly, as I shall show immediately, to the natural vivacity of the original passion.
Over and above all this, we often struggle to keep down our sympathy with the sorrow of others. Whenever we are not under the observation of the sufferer, we endeavor, for our own sake, to suppress it as much as we can, and we are not always successful. The opposition which we make to it, and the reluctance with which we yield to it, necessarily oblige us to take more particular notice of it. But we never have occasion to make this opposition to our sympathy with joy. If there is any envy in the case, we never feel the least propensity towards it, and if there is none, we give way to it without any reluctance. On the contrary, as we are always ashamed of our own envy, we often pretend, and sometimes really wish to sympathize with the joy of others, when by that disagreeable sentiment we are disqualified from doing so.
We are glad, we say on account of our neighbor's good fortune, when in our hearts, perhaps, we are really sorry. We often feel a sympathy with sorrow when we would wish to be rid of it, and we often miss that with joy when we would be glad to have it. The obvious observation, therefore, which it naturally falls in our way to make, is that our propensity to sympathize with sorrow must be very strong, and our inclination to sympathize with joy very weak. Notwithstanding this prejudice, however, I will venture to affirm that, when there is no envy in the case, our propensity to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow, and that our fellow-feeling for the agreeable emotion approaches much more nearly to the vivacity of what is naturally felt by the persons principally concerned than that which we conceive for the painful one.
We have some indulgence for that excessive grief which we cannot entirely go along with. We know what a prodigious effort is requisite before the sufferer can bring down his emotions to complete harmony and concord with those of the spectator. Though he fails, therefore, we easily pardon him. But we have no such indulgence for the intemperance of joy, because we are not conscious that any such vast effort is requisite to bring it down to what we can entirely enter into. The man who, under the greatest calamities, can command his sorrow seems worthy of the highest admiration. But he who, in the fullness of prosperity, can in the same manner master his joy seems hardly to deserve any praise. We are sensible that there is a much wider interval in the one case than in the other, between what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned, and what the spectator can entirely go along with.
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, All accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous, and if he is much elevated upon account of them, it must be the effect of the most frivolous levity. This situation, however, may very well be called the natural and ordinary state of mankind. Notwithstanding the present misery and depravity of the world, so justly lamented, this really is the state of the greater part of men. The greater part of men, therefore, cannot find any great difficulty in elevating themselves to all the joy which any accession to this situation can well excite in their companion.
But though little can be added to this state, much may be taken from it. Though between this condition and the highest pitch of human prosperity the interval is but a trifle, between it and the lowest depth of misery the distance is immense and prodigious. Adversity, on this account, necessarily depresses the mind of the sufferer much more below its natural state than prosperity can elevate him above it. The spectator, therefore, must find it much more difficult to sympathize entirely, and keep perfect time with his sorrow, than thoroughly to enter into his joy, and must depart much further from his own natural and ordinary temper of mind in the one case than in the other. It is on this account that though our sympathy with sorrow is often a more pungent sensation than our sympathy with joy, it always falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
It is agreeable to sympathize with joy, and wherever envy does not oppose it, our heart abandons itself with satisfaction to the highest transports of that delightful sentiment. But it is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter into it with reluctance. When we attend to the representation of a tragedy, we struggle against that sympathetic sorrow which the entertainment inspires as long as we can, and we give way to it at last only when we can no longer avoid it. We even then endeavor to cover our concern from the company. If we shed any tears, we carefully conceal them, and are afraid lest the spectators, not entering into this excessive tenderness, should regard it as effeminacy and weakness.
The wretch whose misfortunes call upon our compassion feels with what reluctance we are likely to enter into his sorrow, and therefore proposes his grief to us with fear and hesitation. He even smothers the half of it, and is ashamed, upon account of this hard-heartedness of mankind, to give vent to the fullness of his affliction. It is otherwise with the man who riots in joy and success. Wherever envy does not interest us against him, he expects our completest sympathy. He does not fear, therefore, to announce himself with shouts of exultation, in full confidence that we are heartily disposed to go along with him. Why should we be more ashamed to weep than to laugh before company? We may often have as real occasion to do the one as to do the other.
But we always feel that the spectators are more likely to go along with us in the agreeable than in the painful emotion. It is always miserable to complain, even when we are oppressed by the most dreadful calamities. But the triumph of victory is not always ungraceful. Prudence, indeed, would often advise us to bear our prosperity with more moderation. Because prudence would teach us to avoid that envy which this very triumph is, more than anything, apt to excite. How hardy are the acclamations of the mob, who never bear any envy to their superiors, at a triumph or a public entry? And how sedate and moderate is commonly their grief at an execution? Our sorrow at a funeral generally amounts to no more than an affected gravity.
But our mirth at a christening or a marriage is always from the heart, and without any affectation. Upon these, and all such joyous occasions, our satisfaction, though not so durable, is often as lively as that of the persons principally concerned. Whenever we cordially congratulate our friends, which, however, to the disgrace of human nature we do but seldom, their joy literally becomes our joy. We are, for the moment, as happy as they are, Our heart swells and overflows with real pleasure. Joy and complacency sparkle from our eyes and animate every feature of our countenance and every gesture of our body. But, on the contrary, when we condole with our friends and their afflictions, how little do we feel in comparison of what they feel?
We sit down by them, we look at them, and while they relate to us the circumstances of their misfortune, we listen to them with gravity and attention. But while their narration is every moment interrupted by those natural bursts of passion which often seem almost to choke them in the midst of it, how far are the languid emotions of our hearts from keeping time to the transports of theirs? We may be sensible at the same time that their passion is natural, and no greater than what we ourselves might feel upon the like occasion. We may even inwardly reproach ourselves with our own want of sensibility, and perhaps on that account work ourselves up into an artificial sympathy which, however, when it is raised, is always the slightest and most transitory imaginable, and generally, as soon as we have left the room, vanishes and is gone forever.
Nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that they were enough. and therefore did not command us to take any further share in those of others than what was necessary to prompt us to relieve them.
It is on account of this dull sensibility to the afflictions of others that magnanimity amidst great distress always appears so divinely graceful. His behavior is genteel and agreeable, who can maintain his cheerfulness amidst a number of frivolous disasters. But he appears to be more than mortal who can support in the same manner the most dreadful calamities. We feel what an immense effort is requisite to silence those violent emotions which naturally agitate and distract those in his situation. We are amazed to find that he can command himself so entirely. His firmness, at the same time, perfectly coincides with our insensibility. He makes no demand upon us for that more exquisite degree of sensibility which we find, and which we are mortified to find, that we do not possess.
There is the most perfect correspondence between his sentiments and ours, and on that account the most perfect propriety in his behavior. It is a propriety, too, which, from our experience of the usual weakness of human nature, we could not reasonably have expected he should be able to maintain. We wonder with surprise and astonishment at that strength of mind which is capable of so noble and generous an effort. The sentiment of complete sympathy and approbation, mixed and animated with wonder and surprise, constitutes what is properly called admiration, as has already been more than once taken notice of. Cato, surrounded on all sides by his enemies, unable to resist them, disdaining to submit to them, and reduced, by the proud maxims of that age, to the necessity of destroying himself, yet never shrinking from his misfortunes, never supplicating with the lamentable voice of wretchedness those miserable sympathetic tears which we are always so unwilling to give.
But on the contrary, Arming himself with manly fortitude, and the moment before he executes his fatal resolution, giving, with his usual tranquillity, all necessary orders for the safety of his friends, appears to Seneca, that great preacher of insensibility, a spectacle which even the gods themselves might behold with pleasure and admiration. Whenever we meet, in common life, with any examples of such heroic magnanimity, we are always extremely affected. We are more apt to weep and shed tears for such as, in this manner, seem to feel nothing for themselves, than for those who give way to all the weakness of sorrow. And in this particular case, the sympathetic grief of the spectator appears to go beyond the original passion in the person principally concerned.
The friends of Socrates all wept when he drank the last potion, while he himself expressed the gayest and most cheerful tranquillity. Upon all such occasions the spectator makes no effort, and has no occasion to make any, in order to conquer his sympathetic sorrow. He is under no fear that it will transport him to anything that is extravagant and improper. He is rather pleased with the sensibility of his own heart, and gives way to it with complaisance and self-approbation. He gladly indulges, therefore, the most melancholy views which can naturally occur to him concerning the calamity of his friend, for whom, perhaps, he never felt so exquisitely before, the tender and tearful passion of love.
But it is quite otherwise with the person principally concerned. He is obliged, as much as possible, to turn away his eyes from whatever is either naturally terrible or disagreeable in his situation. Too serious an attention to these circumstances, he fears, might make so violent an impression upon him that he could no longer keep within the bounds of moderation, or render himself the object of the complete sympathy and approbation of the spectators. He fixes his thoughts, therefore, upon those only which are agreeable, the applause and admiration which he is about to deserve by the heroic magnanimity of his behavior. To feel that he is capable of so noble and generous an effort, to feel that in this dreadful situation he can still act as he would desire to act, animates and transports him with joy, and enables him to support that triumphant gaiety which seems to exult in the victory he thus gains over his misfortunes.
On the contrary, he always appears, in some measure, mean and despicable, who is sunk in sorrow and dejection upon account of any calamity of his own. We cannot bring ourselves to feel for him what he feels for himself, and what, perhaps, we should feel for ourselves if in his situation. We therefore despise him, unjustly, perhaps, if any sentiment could be regarded as unjust, to which we are by nature irresistibly determined. The weakness of sorrow never appears in any respect agreeable, except when it arises from what we feel for others more than from what we feel for ourselves. A son, upon the death of an indulgent and respectable father, may give way to it without much blame. His sorrow is chiefly founded upon a sort of sympathy with his departed parent, and we readily enter into this humane emotion.
But if he should indulge the same weakness upon account of any misfortune which affected himself only, he would no longer meet with any such indulgence. If he should be reduced to beggary and ruin, if he should be exposed to the most dreadful dangers, if he should even be led out to a public execution, and there shed one single tear upon the scaffold, he would disgrace himself for ever in the opinion of all the gallant and generous part of mankind. Their compassion for him, however, would be very strong and very sincere. But as it would still fall short of this excessive weakness, they would have no pardon for the man who could thus expose himself in the eyes of the world. His behavior would affect them with shame rather than with sorrow, and the dishonor which he had thus brought upon himself would appear to them the most lamentable circumstance in his misfortune.
How did it disgrace the memory of the intrepid Duke of Beeron, who had so often braved death in the field, that he wept upon the scaffold, when he beheld the state to which he was fallen, and remembered the favor and the glory from which his own rashness had so unfortunately thrown him?
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6 06 - Part I, Section III: Chapter II 28:48
Of the Origin of Ambition and of the Distinction of Ranks.
It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as to be obliged to expose our distress to the view of the public, and to feel that, though our situation is open to the eyes of all mankind, no mortal conceives for us half of what we suffer. Nay, it is chiefly from this regard to the sentiments of mankind that we pursue riches and avoid poverty, for to what What purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power and preeminence? Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of the meanest laborer can supply them.
We see that they afford him food and clothing, the comfort of a house, and of a family. If we examined his economy with rigor, we should find that he spent a great part of them upon conveniences, which may regard it as superfluities, and that upon extraordinary occasions he can give something even to vanity and distinction. What, then, is the cause of our aversion to his situation? And why should those who have been educated in the higher ranks of life regard it as worse than death to be reduced to live, even without labor, upon the simple fare with him? To dwell under the same lowly roof, and to be clothed in the same humble attire. Do they imagine that their stomach is better, or that their sleep is sounder in a palace than in a cottage?
The contrary has been so often observed, and, indeed, is so very obvious, though it had never been observed, that there is nobody ignorant of it. From whence, then, arises that emulation which runs through all the different ranks of men? And what are the advantages which we propose by that great purpose of human life which we call bettering our condition? To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, all are the advantages which we can propose to derive from it. It is the vanity, not the ease or the pleasure, which interests us. But vanity is always founded upon the belief of our being the object of attention and approbation. The rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world, and that mankind are disposed to go along with him in all those agreeable emotions in which the advantages of his situation so readily inspire him.
At the thought of this, his heart seems to swell and dilate itself within him, and he is the fonder of his wealth, upon this account, than for all the other advantages it procures him. The poor man, on the contrary, is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the sight of mankind, or that if they take any notice of him, they have, however scarce, any fellow-feeling with the misery and distress which he suffers. He is mortified upon both accounts. For though to be overlooked and to be disapproved of are things entirely different, yet as obscurity covers us from the daylight of honor and approbition, to feel that we are taken no notice of necessarily damps the most agreeable hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire of human nature.
The poor man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel. Those humble cares and painful attentions which occupy those in his situation afford no amusement to the dissipated and the gay. They turn their eyes from him, or if the extremity of his distress forces them to look at him, it is only to spurn so disagreeable an object from among them. The fortunate and the proud wonder at the insolence of human wretchedness that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the loathsome aspect of its misery presume to disturb the serenity of their happiness. The man of rank and distinction, on the contrary, is observed by all the world.
Everybody is eager to look at him, and to conceive, at least by sympathy, that joy and exultation with which his circumstances naturally inspire him. His actions are the object of the public care. Scarce a word, scarce a gesture can fall from him that is altogether neglected. In a great assembly, he is the person upon whom all direct their eyes. It is upon him that their passions seem all to wait with expectation, in order to receive that movement and direction which he shall impress upon them. And if his behavior is not altogether absurd, he has every moment an opportunity of interesting mankind, and of rendering himself the object of the observation and fellow-feeling of everybody about him.
It is this which, notwithstanding the restraint it imposes, notwithstanding the loss of liberty with which it is attended, renders greatness the object of envy, and compensates, in the opinion of all those mortifications which must mankind, all that toil, all that anxiety, be undergone in the pursuit of it, and what is of yet more consequence, all that leisure, all that ease, all that careless security, which are forfeited forever by the acquisition. When we consider the condition of the great, in those delusive colors in which the imagination is apt to paint it, it seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state. It is the very state which, in all our waking dreams and idle reveries, we had sketched out to find ourselves as the final object of all our desires.
We feel, therefore, peculiar sympathy with the satisfaction of those who are in it. We favor all their inclinations, and forward all their wishes. What pity, we think, that anything should spoil and corrupt so agreeable a situation. We should even wish them immortal. And it seems hard to us that death should at last put an end to such perfect enjoyment. It is cruel, we think, in nature, to compel them from their exalted stations to that humble but hospitable home which she has provided for all her children. Great King, live forever! It is the compliment which, after the manner of Eastern adulation, we would readily make them if experience did not teach us its absurdity. Every calamity that befalls them, every injury that has done them, excites in the breast of the spectators ten times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt had the same things happened to other men.
It is the misfortunes of kings only which afford the proper subjects for tragedy. They resemble, in this respect, the misfortunes of lovers. Those two situations are the chief which interest us upon the theatre, because, in spite of all that reason and experience can tell us to the contrary, the prejudices of the imagination attach to these two states a happiness superior to any other. To disturb or to put an end to such perfect enjoyment seems to be the most atrocious of all injuries. The traitor who conspires against the life of his monarch is thought a greater monster than any other murderer. All the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I, a stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of the A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and suffering of those above them, would be apt to imagine that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank than to those of meaner stations.
Upon this disposition of mankind to go along with all the passions of the rich and powerful is founded the distinction of ranks and the order of society. Our obsequiousness to our superiors more frequently arises from our admiration for the advantages of their situation than from any private expectations of benefit from their goodwill. Their benefits can extend but to a few, but their fortunes interest almost everybody. We are eager to assist them in completing a system of happiness that approaches so near to perfection, and we desire to serve them for their own sake, without any other recompense but the vanity or the honor of obliging them. Neither is our deference to their inclinations founded chiefly or altogether upon a regard to the utility of such submission, and to the order of society which is best supported by it.
Even when the order of society seems to require that we should oppose them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. That kings are the servants of the people, to be obeyed, resisted, deposed, or punished, as the public conveniency may require, is the doctrine of reason and philosophy. But it is not the doctrine of nature. Nature would teach us to submit to them for their own sake, to tremble and bow down before their exalted station, to regard their smile as a reward sufficient to compensate any services, and to dread their displeasure, though no other evil were to follow from it as the severest of all mortifications. To treat them in any respect as men, to reason in dispute with them upon ordinary occasions, requires such resolution that there are few men whose magnanimity can support them in it, unless they are likewise assisted by familiarity and acquaintance.
The strongest motives, the most furious passions, fear, hatred, and resentment, are scarce sufficient to balance this natural disposition to respect them, and their conduct must, either justly or unjustly, have excited the highest degree of all those passions before the bulk of the people can be brought to oppose them with violence, or to desire to see them either punished or deposed. Even when the people have been brought to this length, they are apt to relent every moment and easily relapse into their habitual state of deference to those whom they have been accustomed to look upon as their natural superiors. They cannot stand the mortification of their monarch. Compassion soon takes the place of resentment, they forget all past provocations, and their old principles of loyalty revive, and they run to re-establish the ruined authority of their old masters with the same violence with which they had opposed it.
The death of Charles I brought about the restoration of the royal family. Compassion for James, the second, when he was seized by the populace in making his escape on shipboard, had almost prevented the revolution, and made it go on more heavily than before.
Do the great seamen sensible of the easy price at which they may acquire the public admiration? Or do they seem to imagine that to them, as to other men, it must be the purchase either of sweat or of blood? By what important accomplishments is the young nobleman instructed to support the dignity of his rank, and to render himself worthy of that superiority over his fellow-citizens, to which the virtue of his ancestors had raised them? Is it by knowledge, by industry, by patience, by self-denial, or by virtue of any kind? As all his words, as all his motions are attended to, he learns an habitual regard to every circumstance of ordinary behavior, and studies to perform all those small duties with the most exact propriety.
As he is conscious of how much he is observed, and how much mankind are disposed to favor all his inclinations, he acts, upon the most indifferent occasions, with the freedom and elevation which the thought of this naturally inspires. His air, his manner, his deportment, all mark of that elegant and graceful sense of his own superiority, which those who are born to inferior stations can hardly ever arrive at. These are the arts by which he proposes to make mankind more easily submit to his authority and to govern their inclinations according to his own pleasure, and in this he is seldom disappointed. These arts, supported by rank and preeminence, are, upon ordinary occasions, sufficient to govern the world.
Louis, the Fourteenth, during the greater part of his reign, was regarded, not only in France, but all over Europe, as the most perfect model of a great prince. But what were the talents and virtues by which he acquired this great reputation? Was it by the scrupulous and inflexible justice of all his undertakings, by the immense dangers and difficulties with which they were attended, or by the unwearied and unrelenting application with which he pursued them? Was it by his extensive knowledge, by his exquisite judgment, or by his heroic valor? It was by none of these qualities. But he was, first of all, the most powerful prince in Europe, and consequently held the highest rank among kings. And then, says his historian, he surpassed all his courtiers in the gracefulness of his shape and the majestic beauty of his features.
The sound of his voice, noble and affecting, gained those hearts which his presence intimidated. He had a step in a Portman, which would suit only him and his rank, and which would have been ridiculous in any other person. The embarrassment which he occasioned to those who spoke to him flattered that secret satisfaction with which he felt his own superiority. The old officer, who was confounded and faltered in asking him a favor, and not being able to conclude his discourse, said to him, Sir, your Majesty, I hope, will believe that I do not tremble thus before your enemies. had no difficulty to obtain what he demanded. These frivolous accomplishments, supported by his rank, and no doubt too by a degree of other talents and virtues, which seems, however, not to have been much above mediocrity, established this prince in the esteem of his own age, and have drawn, even from posterity, a good deal of respect for his memory.
Compared with these, in his own times and in his own presence, no other virtue, it seems, appeared to have any merit. Knowledge, industry, valour, beneficence trembled, were ashamed, and lost all dignity before them. But it is not by accomplishments of this kind that the man of inferior rank must hope to distinguish himself. Politeness is so much the virtue of the great that it will do little honour to anybody but themselves. The coxcomb who imitates their manner and affects to be eminent by the superior propriety of his ordinary behavior is rewarded with a double share of contempt for his folly and presumption. Why would the man who nobody thinks it's worthwhile to look at be very anxious about the manner in which he holds up his head or disposes of his arms while he walks through the room?
He is occupied, surely, with a very superfluous attention, and with an attention, too, that marks a sense of his own importance which no other mortal can go along with. The most perfect modesty and plainness, joined to as much negligence as is consistent with the respect due to the company, ought to be the chief characteristics of the behavior of a private man. If he ever hopes to distinguish himself, it must be by more important virtues. He must acquire dependents to balance the dependents of the greats, and he has no other fund to pay them from but the labor of his body and the activity of his mind. He must cultivate these, therefore. He must acquire superior knowledge in his profession and superior industry in the exercise of it.
He must be patient in labor, resolute in danger, and firm in distress. These talents he must bring into public view. By the difficulty, importance, and at the same time good judgment of his undertakings, and by the severe and unrelenting application with which he pursues them. Probity and prudence, generosity and frankness must characterize his behavior upon all ordinary occasions, and he must at the same time be forward to engage in all those situations in which it requires the greatest talents and virtues to act with propriety, but in which the greatest applause is to be acquired by those who can acquit themselves with honor. With what impatience does a man of spirit and ambition, who is depressed by his situation, look round for some great opportunity to distinguish himself?
No circumstances which can afford this appear to him undesirable. He even looks forward with satisfaction to the prospect of foreign war or civil dissension, and with secret transport and delight sees through all the confusion and bloodshed which attend them to the probability of those wished-for occasions presenting themselves in which he may draw upon himself the attention and admiration of mankind. The man of rank and distinction, on the contrary, whose whole glory consists in the propriety of his ordinary behavior, who is contented with the humble renown which this can afford him, and has no talents to acquire any other, is unwilling to embarrass himself with what can be attended either with difficulty or distress.
To figure out a ball is his great triumph, and to succeed in an intrigue of gallantry his highest exploit. He has an aversion to all public confusions, not from the love of mankind, for the great never look upon their inferiors as their fellow-creatures, nor yet from one of courage, for in that he is seldom defective, but from a consciousness that he possesses none of the virtues which are required in such situations, and that the public attention will certainly be drawn away from him by others. He may be willing to expose himself to some little danger, and to make a campaign when it appears to be the fashion. But he shudders with horror at the thought of any situation which demands the continual and long exertion of patience, industry, fortitude, and application of thought.
These virtues are hardly ever to be met with in men who are born to those high stations. In all governments accordingly, even in monarchies, the highest offices are generally possessed, and the whole detail of the administration conducted by men who were educated in the middle and inferior ranks of life Who have been carried forward by their own industry and abilities, though loaded with jealousy, and opposed by the resentment of all those who were born their superiors, and to whom the great, after having regarded them first with contempt and afterwards with envy, are at last contented to truckle in the same abject meanness with which they desire that the rest of mankind should behave to themselves.
It is the loss of this easy empire over the affections of mankind which renders the fall from greatness so insupportable. When the family of the king of Macedon was led in triumph by Paulus Aemilius, their misfortunes, it said, made them divide with their conqueror the attention of the Roman people. The sight of the royal children, whose tender age rendered them insensible of their situation, struck the spectators, amidst the public rejoicing in prosperity, with the tenderest sorrow and compassion. The king appeared next in the procession, and it seemed like one confounded and astonished, and bereft of all sentiment by the greatness of his calamities. His friends and ministers followed him. As they moved along, they often cast their eyes upon the fallen sovereign, and always burst into tears at the sight, their whole behavior demonstrating that they thought not of their own misfortunes, but were occupied entirely by the superior greatness of his.
The generous Romans, on the contrary, beheld him with disdain and indignation, and regarded as unworthy of all compassion the man who could be so mean-spirited as to bear to live under such calamities. Yet what do these calamities amount to? According to the greater part of historians, he was to spend the remainder of his days under the protection of a power inhumane people, in a state which in itself would seem worthy of envy, a state of plenty, ease, leisure, and security, from which it was impossible for him, even by his own folly, to fall. But he was no longer to be surrounded by the admiring mob of fools, flatterers, and dependents who had formerly been accustomed to attend upon all his motions.
He was no longer to be gazed upon by the multitudes, nor to have it in his power to render himself the object of their respect, their gratitude, their love, their admiration. The passions of nations were no longer to mold themselves upon his inclinations. This was that insupportable calamity which bereaved the king of all sentiment, which made his friends forget their own misfortunes, and which the Roman magnanimity could scarce conceive how any man could be so mean-spirited as to bear to survive. Love, says my lord Rochefoucault, is commonly succeeded by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love. That passion, once it has got entire possession of the breast, will admit neither a rival nor a successor.
To those who have been accustomed to the possession, or even to the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken the king. Of all the discarded statesmen who for their own ease have studied to get the better of ambition, and to despise those honors which they could no longer arrive at, how few have been able to succeed? The greater part have spent their time in the most listless and insipid indolence, chagrined at the thoughts of their own insignificancy, Incapable of being interested in the occupations of private life, without enjoyment, except when they talked of their former greatness, and without satisfaction, except when they were employed in some vain project to recover it. Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent?
There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution, and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from which so few have been able to return. Never come within the circle of ambition, nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half-mankind before you.
Of such mighty importance does it appear to be in the imaginations of men to stand in that situation which sets them most in the view of general sympathy and attention. And thus placed that great object which divides the wives of aldermen is the end-half of the labors of human life, and is the cause of all tumult and bustle, all the raping and injustice which avarice and ambition have introduced into this world. People of sense, it is said, indeed despise place. That is, they despise sitting at the head of the table, and are indifferent to who it is that is pointed out to the company by that frivolous circumstance which a smallest advantage is capable of overbalancing. But rank, distinction, preeminence, no man despises, unless he is either raised very much above or sunk very much below the ordinary standard of human nature.
Unless he is either so Confirmed in wisdom and real philosophy as to be satisfied that, while the propriety of his conduct renders him the just object of approbation, it is of little consequence, though he be neither attended to nor approved of. Or so habituated to the idea of its own meanness, so sunk in slothful and sottish indifference, as entirely to have forgot the desire, and almost the very wish, for superiority.
As to become the natural object of the joyous congratulations and sympathetic attentions of mankind is, in this manner, the circumstance which gives to prosperity all its dazzling splendor. So nothing darkens so much the gloom of adversity as to feel that our misfortunes are the objects, not of the fellow-feeling, but of the contempt and aversion of our brethren. It is upon this account that the most dreadful calamities are not always those in which it is most difficult to support. It is often more mortifying to appear in public under small disasters than under great misfortunes. The first excite no sympathy, but the second, though they may excite none that approaches to the anguish of the sufferer, call forth, however, a very lively compassion.
The sentiments of the spectators are, in the last case, less wide of those of the sufferer, and their imperfect fellow-feeling lends him some assistance in supporting his misery. Before a gay assembly, a gentleman would be more mortified to appear covered with filth and rags than with blood and wounds. This last situation would interest their pity. The other would provoke their laughter. The judge who orders a criminal to be set in the pillory dishonors him more than if he had condemned him to the scaffold. The great prince, who, some years ago, caned a general officer at the head of his army, disgraced him irrevocably. The punishment would have been much less had he shot him through the body.
But the laws of honor, to strike with a cane dishonors, to strike with a sword, does not, for an obvious reason. These slighter punishments, when inflicted on a gentleman to whom dishonor is the greatest of all evils, come to be regarded among a humane and generous people as the most dreadful of any. With regard to persons of that rank, therefore, they are universally laid aside, and the law, while it takes their life upon many occasions, respects their honor upon almost all. To scourge a person of quality, or to set a manipulary upon account of any crime whatever, is a brutality which no European government, except that of Russia, is capable.
A brave man is not rendered contemptible by being brought to the scaffold. He is by being set in the pillory. His behavior in the one situation may gain him universal esteem and admiration. No behavior in the other can render him agreeable. The sympathy of the spectator supports him in the one case, and saves him from that shame, that consciousness that his misery is felt by himself only, which is of all sentiments the most unsupportable. There is no sympathy in the other, or, if there is any, it is not with his pain, which is a trifle, but with his consciousness of the want of sympathy with which this pain is attended. It is with his shame, not with his sorrow. Those who pity him blush and hang down their heads for him.
He droops in the same manner, and he feels himself irrevocably degraded by the punishment, though not by the crime. The man, on the contrary, who dies with resolution, as he is naturally regarded with the erect aspect of esteem and approbation, so he wears himself the same undaunted countenance, and, if the crime does not deprive him of the respect of others, the punishment never will. He has no suspicion that his situation is the object of contempt or derision to anybody, and he can, with Propriety assume the air not only of perfect serenity, but of triumph and exultation.
Great dangers, says the Cardinal de Ritz, have their charms, because there is some glory to be got, even when we miscarry. But moderate dangers have nothing but what is horrible, because the loss of reputation always attends the want of success. His maxim has the same foundation with what we have just now been observing with regard to punishments. Human virtue is superior to pain, to poverty, to danger, and to death, nor does it even require its utmost efforts to despise them. But to have its misery exposed to insult and derision, to be led in triumph, to be set up for the hand of scorn to point at, is a situation in which its constancy is much more apt to fail. Compared with the contempt of mankind, all other external evils are easily supported.
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7 07 - Part I, Section III: Chapter III 12:37
Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition, To admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition. This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue, and that the contempt, which, vice and folly, are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contempted. But upon coming to the world, we soon find that the wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole object of respect, nor vice and folly as contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object, the one by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue, the other by the acquisition of wealth and greatness.
Two different characters are presented to our emulation, the one of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity, the other of humble, modesty and equitable justice. Two different models, two different pictures are held out to us according to which we may fashion our character and behavior. The one more gaudy and glittering in its coloring, the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline. The one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye, the other attracting the attention of scarce anybody but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly. A select, though I'm afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue, the great mob of mankind, are the admirers and worshipers in what may seem more extraordinary Most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers of wealth and greatness.
The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt, different from that which we conceive for wealth and greatness, and it requires no nice discernment to distinguish the difference. But notwithstanding this difference, those sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another, In some particular features they are, no doubt, different, but in the general air of the countenance they seem to be so very nearly the same that an attentive observers are very apt to mistake the one for the other. In equal degrees of merit, their scarcity may have not respect more the rich and the great than the poor and the humble, but most men, the presumption and vanity of the former, are much more admired than the real and solid merit of the latter.
It is scarcely agreeable to good morals, or even to good language, perhaps, to say that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect. We must acknowledge, however, that they almost constantly obtain it, and that they may, therefore, be considered as in some respects the natural objects of it. Those exalted stations may, no doubt, be completely degraded by vice and folly, but the vice and folly must be very great before they can operate this complete degradation. The proselycy of a man of fashion is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion than that of a man of meaner condition. In the latter, a single transgression of the rules of temperance and propriety is commonly more resented than the constant and avowed contempt of them ever is in the former.
In the middling and inferior stations of life, the road to virtue and that to fortune, to such fortune at least as men in such stations can reasonably expect to acquire, are happily in most cases very nearly the same. In all the middling and inferior professions, real and solid professional abilities, joined to prudent, just, firm and temperate conduct, can very seldom fail of success. Abilities will even sometimes prevail, where the conduct is by no means correct. Either habitual imprudence, however, or injustice, or weakness or proficiency, will always cloud, and sometimes depress altogether, the most splendid professional abilities, Men in the inferior and mental extinctions of life, besides, can never be great enough to be above the law, which must generally overaw them into some sort of respect for, at least, the most important rules of justice.
The success of such people, too, almost always depends upon the favor and good opinion of their neighbors and equals, and without a tolerably regular conduct these can very seldom be obtained. The good old proverb, therefore, that honesty is the best policy holds in such situations Almost all was perfectly true in such situations, therefore, we may generally expect a considerable degree of virtue, and fortunately for the good morals of society, these are the situations of by far the greater part of mankind.
In the superior stations of life, the case is unhappily not always the same. In the courts of princes and the drawing-rooms of the great were successors and perform and depend not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favor of ignorant presumptuous and proud superiors, flattery and falsehood, often prevail of their marion abilities. In such societies, the abilities to please are more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince or great man wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him.
The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the sought in masculine virtues of a warrior, a statement of philosopher or legislator. All the great and awful virtues, all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant flutterers who commonly figure the most in such corrupted societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision. When the Duke of Sully was called upon Louis, the thirteenth, to give his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favorites and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his unfashionable appearance, Whenever your majesty's father, said the old warrior statesman, did me the honor to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the antechamber.
It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to imitate the rich and the great, that they are enabled to sit, or to leave what is called the fashion, their dresses the fashionable dress, the language of their conversation the fashionable style, their air and deportment the fashionable behavior. Even their vices and follies are fashionable, and the greater part of men are proud to imitate and resemble them in the very qualities which dishonor and degrade them. Vain men often give themselves the airs of a fashionable profligacy, which in their hearts they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are not really guilty. They desire to be praised for what they themselves do not think praiseworthy.
and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practice in secret, and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration. There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue, and if vain man is apt to pretend to be what he is not in the one way and the cunning man is in the other, he assumes the equipage and splendid way of living of his superiors without considering that whatever may be praiseworthy in any of these derives its whole merit and propriety from its suitableness to that situation and fortune which both require and can easily support the expense. If making a poor man places his glory in being thought rich without considering that the duties, if one may call such follies by so venerable a name which that reputation imposes upon him, must soon reduce him to beggary, and render his situation still more, unlike that of those whom he admires and imitates, than it had been originally.
To attain to this end of the situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the path of virtue for unhappily. The road which leads to the one and that which leads to the other lies sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, will be enabled to act with such superior propriety grace that the lustre of its future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments, the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being called to account for the means by which they acquired it.
They often endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, The ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but that sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war, still planned and destroyed those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due to their crimes. But, though they should be so lucky as to attain that wish for greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy it in. It is not ease or pleasure, but always honor of one kind or another, though frequently in honor very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues, but the honor of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through which he rose to it.
Though by the profusion of every liberal expense, though by excessive indulgence in every profligate pleasure, the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters, though by the hurry of public business, Or, by prouder or more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavor to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done. That remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it, amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned.
Amidst the innocent, no more foolish acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse, and, while glory seems to surround him on all sides, he himself, in his own imagination, sees black and foul infamy fast pursuing him, and every moment ready to overtake him from behind. Even the great Caesar, though he had the magnanimity to dismiss his guards, could not dismiss his suspicions. The remembrance of Pharsalius still haunted and pursued him. One of the requests of the Senate, he had the generosity to pardon Marsalis. He told that assembly that he was not unaware of the designs which were carrying on against his life, but that, as he had lived long enough for both nature and for glory, he was contented to die, and therefore despised all conspiracies.
He had perhaps lived long enough for nature, but the man Who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment from those whose favor he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as his friends, had certainly lived to long for real glory, or for all the happiness which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem of his equals.
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Of Merit and Demerit. or, of the objects of reward and punishment consisting of three parts. I. Of the sense of merit and demerit.
Introduction. There is another set of qualities ascribed to the actions and conduct of mankind, distinct from their propriety or impropriety, their decency or ungracefulness, and which are the objects of a distinct species of approbation and disapprobation. These are merit and demerit, the qualities of deserving reward and of deserving punishment. It has already been observed that the sentiment or affection of the heart from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations. First, in relation to the cause or object which excites it, and secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce.
That upon the suitableness or unsuitableness, upon the proportion or disproportion which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, depends the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action, and that upon the beneficial or hurtful effects which the affection proposes or tends to produce, depends the merit or demerit, the good or ill desert of the action to which it gives occasion. Wherein consists our sense of the propriety or impropriety of actions has been explained in the former part of this discourse. We come now to consider wherein consists that of their good or ill desert. Chapter One. That whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude appears to deserve reward, and that in the same manner whatever appears to be the proper object of resentment appears to deserve punishment.
To us, therefore, that action must appear to deserve reward, which appears to be the proper and approved object of that sentiment, which most immediately and directly prompts us to reward, or to do good to another. And in the same manner, that action must appear to deserve punishment, which appears to be the proper and approved object of that sentiment, which most immediately and directly prompts us to punish, or to inflict evil upon another. The sentiment which most immediately and directly prompts us to reward is gratitude. That which most immediately and directly prompts us to punish is resentment. To us, therefore, that action must appear to deserve a reward which appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude, as, on the other hand, that action must appear to deserve punishment which appears to be the proper and approved object of resentment.
To reward is to recompense, to remunerate, to return good for good received. To punish, too, is to recompense, to remunerate, though in a different manner. It is to return evil for evil that has been done. There are some other passions, besides gratitude and resentment, which interest us in the happiness or misery of others, but there are none which so directly excite us to be the instruments of either. The love and esteem which grow upon acquaintance and habitual approbation necessarily lead us to be pleased with the good fortune of the man who is the object of such agreeable emotions, and, consequently, to be willing to lend a hand to promote it. Our love, however, is fully satisfied, though his good fortune should be brought about without our assistance.
All that this passion desires is to see him happy, without regarding who was the author of his prosperity. But gratitude is not to be satisfied in this manner. If the person to whom we owe many obligations is made happy without our assistance, though it pleases our love, it does not content our gratitude. Till we have recompensed him, till we ourselves have been instrumental in promoting his happiness, we feel ourselves still loaded with that debt which his past services have laid upon us. The hatred and dislike, in the same manner, which grow upon habitual disapprobation, would often lead us to take a malicious pleasure in the misfortune of the man whose conduct and character excite so painful a passion.
But though dislike and hatred harden us against all sympathy, and sometimes dispose us even to rejoice at the distress of another, yet if there is no resentment in the case, if neither we nor our friends have received any great personal provocation, These passions would not naturally lead us to wish to be instrumental in bringing it about. Though we could fear no punishment in consequence of our having had some hand in it, we would rather that it should happen by some other means. To one under the dominion of violent hatred it would be agreeable, perhaps, to hear that the person whom he abhorred and detested was killed by some accident. But if he had the least spark of justice, which, though this passion is not very favorable to virtue, he might still have, it would hurt him excessively to have been himself, even without design, the occasion of this misfortune.
Much more would the very thought of voluntarily contributing to it shock him beyond all measure. He would reject with horror even the imagination of so execrable a design, and if he could imagine himself capable of such an enormity, he would begin to regard himself in the same odious light in which he had considered the person who was the object of his dislike. But it is quite otherwise with resentment. If the person who had done us some great injury, who had murdered our father or our brother, for example, should soon afterwards die of a fever, or even be brought to the scaffold upon account of some other crime, though it might soothe our hatred, it would not fully gratify our resentment. Resentment would prompt us to desire not only that he should be punished, but that he should be punished by our means, and upon account of that particular injury which he had done to us.
Resentment cannot be fully gratified unless the offender is not only made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which we have suffered from him. He must be made to repent and be sorry for this very action, that others, through fear of the like punishment, may be terrified from being guilty of the like offense. The natural gratification of this passion tends, of its own accord, to produce all the political ends of punishment, the correction of the criminal, and the example to the public. Gratitude and resentment, therefore, are the sentiments which most immediately and directly prompt to reward and to punish. To us, therefore, he must appear to deserve reward who appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude, and he to deserve punishment who appears to be that of resentment.
Chapter Two. Of the Proper Objects of Gratitude and Resentiment.
To be the proper and approved object either of gratitude or resentment can mean nothing but to be the object of that gratitude and of that resentment which naturally seems proper and is approved of. But these, as well as all the other passions of human nature, seem proper and are approved of when the heart of every impartial spectator entirely sympathizes with them, when every indifferent bystander entirely enters into and goes along with them. He, therefore, appears to deserve reward, who, to some persons or persons, is the natural object of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to beat time to, and thereby applaud. And he, on the other hand, appears to deserve punishment, who, in the same manner, is to some persons or persons the natural object of a resentment which the breast of every reasonable man is ready to adopt and sympathize with.
To us, surely, that action must appear to deserve reward, which everybody who knows of it would wish to reward, and thereby delights to see rewarded, and that action must as surely appear to deserve punishment, which everybody who hears of it is angry with, and upon that account rejoices to see punished.
As we sympathize with the joy of our companions when in prosperity, so we join with them in the complacency and satisfaction with which they naturally regard whatever is the cause of their good fortune. We enter into the love and affection which they conceive for it, and begin to love it too. We should be sorry for their sakes if it was destroyed, or even if it was placed at too great a distance from them, and out of the reach of their care and protection, though they should lose nothing by its absence, except the pleasure of seeing it. If it is man who has thus been the fortunate instrument of the happiness of his brethren, this is still more peculiarly the case. When we see one man assisted, Protected, relieved by another, our sympathy with the joy of the person who receives the benefit serves only to animate our fellow-feeling with his gratitude towards him who bestows it.
When we look upon the person who is the cause of his pleasure with the eyes with which we imagine he must look upon him, his benefactor seems to stand before us in the most engaging and amiable light. We readily, therefore, sympathize with the grateful affection which he conceives for a person to whom he has been so much obliged, and consequently applaud the returns which he is disposed to make for the good offices conferred upon him. As we entirely enter into the affection from which these returns proceed, they necessarily seem every way proper and suitable to their object. In the same manner, as we sympathize with the sorrow of our fellow-creature whenever we see his distress, so we likewise enter into his abhorrence in aversion for whatever has given occasion to it.
Our heart, as it adopts and beats time to his grief, so is it likewise animated with that spirit by which he endeavors to drive away or destroy the cause of it. The indolent and passive fellow-feeling by which we accompany him in his sufferings readily gives way to that more vigorous and active sentiment by which we go along with him in the effort he makes either to repel them or to gratify his aversion to what has given occasion to them. This is still more peculiarly the case when it is a man who has caused them. When we see one man oppressed or injured by another, the sympathy which we feel with the distress of the sufferer seems to serve only to animate our fellow-feeling with his resentment against the offender.
We are rejoiced to see him attack his adversary in his turn, and are eager and ready to assist him whenever he exerts himself for defense, or even for vengeance within a certain degree. If the injured should perish in the quarrel, We not only sympathize with the real resentment of his friends and relations, but with the imaginary resentment which in fancy we lend to the dead, who is no longer capable of feeling that or any other human sentiment. But as we put ourselves in his situation, as we enter, as it were, into his body, and in our imaginations, in some measure animate anew the deformed and mangled carcass of the slain, when we bring home in this manner his case to our own bosoms, We feel upon this, as upon many other occasions, an emotion which the person principally concerned is incapable of feeling, and which yet we feel by an elusive sympathy with him.
The sympathetic tears which we shed for that immense and irretrievable loss, which in our fancy he appears to have sustained, seem to be but a small part of the duty which we owe him. The injury which he has suffered demands, we think, a principal part of our attention. We feel that resentment which we imagine he ought to feel, and which he would feel if in his cold and lifeless body there remained any consciousness of what passed upon earth. His blood, we think, calls aloud for vengeance. The very ashes of the dead seem to be disturbed at the thought that his injuries are to pass unrevenged. The horrors which are supposed to haunt the bed of the murderer, the ghosts which superstition imagines, rise from their graves to demand vengeance upon those who brought them to an untimely end, all take their origin from this natural sympathy with the imaginary resentment of the slain.
And with regard, at least, to this most dreadful of all crimes, nature, antecedent to all reflections upon the utility of punishment, has in this manner stamped upon the human heart, in the strongest and most indelible characters, an immediate and instinctive approbation of the sacred and necessary law of retaliation. Chapter Three That where there is no approbation of the conduct of the person who confers the benefit, there is little sympathy with the gratitude of him who receives it, and that on the contrary, where there is no disapprobation of the motives of the person who does the mischief, there is no sort of sympathy with the resentment of him who suffers it. It is to be observed, however, that how beneficial soever on the one hand, or how hurtful soever on the other, the actions or intentions of the person who acts may have been to the person who is, if I may say so, acted upon.
Yet if in the one case there appears to have been no propriety in the motives of the agent, if we cannot enter into the infections which influenced his conduct, we have little sympathy with the gratitude of the person who receives the benefit. Or if, in the other case, there appears to have been no impropriety in the motives of the agent, if, on the contrary, the affections which influenced his conduct are such as we must necessarily enter into, we can have no sort of sympathy with the resentment of the person who suffers. Little gratitude seems due in the one case, and all sort of resentment seems unjust in the other. The one action seems to merit little reward, the other to deserve no punishment.
First I say that wherever we cannot sympathize with the affections of the agent, wherever there seems to be no propriety in the motives which influenced his conduct, we are less disposed to enter into the gratitude of the person who received the benefit of his actions. A very small return seems due to that foolish and profuse generosity, which confers the greatest benefits from the most trivial motives, and gives an estate to a man merely because his name and surname happen to be the same with those of the giver. Such services do not seem to demand any proportionable recompense. Our contempt for the folly of the agent hinders us from thoroughly entering into the gratitude of the person to whom the good office has been done.
His benefactor seems unworthy of it. As when we place ourselves in the situation of the person obliged, we feel that we could conceive no great reverence for such a benefactor, we easily absolve him from a great deal of that submissive veneration and esteem which we should think due to a more respectable character. And provided he always treats his weak friend with kindness and humanity, we are willing to excuse him from many attentions and regards which we should demand to a worthier patron. Those princes who have heaped with the greatest profusion wealth, power, and honors upon their favorites have seldom excited that degree of attachment to their persons which has often been experienced by those who were more frugal of their favors.
The well-natured but Injudicious prodigality of James I of Great Britain seems to have attached nobody to his person, and that Prince, notwithstanding his social and harmless disposition, appears to have lived and died without a friend. The whole gentry and nobility of England exposed their lives and fortunes in the cause of his more frugal and distinguishing son, notwithstanding the coldness and distant severity of his ordinary deportment. Secondly, I say, that whenever the conduct of the agent appears to have been entirely directed by motives and affections which we thoroughly enter into and approve of, we can have no sort of sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer, how great soever the mischief which may have been done to him.
When two people quarrel, if we take part with, and entirely adopt, the resentment of one of them, it is impossible that we should enter into that of the other. Our sympathy with the person whose motives we go along with, and whom therefore we look upon as in the right, cannot but harden us against all fellow-feeling with the other whom we necessarily regard as in the wrong. Whatever this last therefore may have suffered, while it is no more than what we ourselves should have wished him to suffer, while it is no more than what our own sympathetic indignation would have prompted us to inflict upon him, it cannot either displease or provoke us. When an inhuman murderer is brought to the scaffold, though we have some compassion for his misery, we can have no sort of fellow-feeling with his resentment, if he should be so absurd as to express any against either his prosecutor or his judge.
The natural tendency of their just indignation against so vile a criminal is indeed the most fatal and ruinous to him. But it is impossible that we should be displeased with the tendency of a sentiment which, when we bring the case home to ourselves, we feel that we cannot avoid adopting.
Chapter Four. Recapitulation of the Foregoing Chapters. We do not, therefore, thoroughly and heartily sympathize with the gratitude of one man towards another, merely because this other has been the cause of his good fortune, Unless he has been the cause of it from motives which we entirely go along with. Our heart must adopt the principles of the agent, and go along with all the affections which influenced his conduct, before it can entirely sympathize with, and beat time to, the gratitude of the person who has been benefited by his actions. If in the conduct of the benefactor there appears to have been no propriety, how beneficial soever its effects, it does not seem to demand, or necessarily to require, any proportionable recompense.
But when to the beneficent tendency of the action is joined the propriety of the affection from which it proceeds, When we entirely sympathize and go along with the motives of the agent, the love which we conceive for him upon his own account enhances and enlivens our fellow-feeling with the gratitude of those who owe their prosperity to his good conduct. His actions seem then to demand, and, if I may say so, to call aloud for a proportionable recompense. We then entirely enter into that gratitude which prompts to bestow it. The benefactor seems, then, to be the proper object of reward when we thus entirely sympathize with and approve of that sentiment which prompts to reward him. When we approve of and go along with the affection from which the action proceeds, we must necessarily approve of the action, and regard the person towards whom it is directed as its proper and suitable object.
In the same manner, we cannot at all sympathize with the resentment of one man against another, merely because this other has been the cause of his misfortune, unless he has been the cause of it from motives which we cannot enter into. Before we can adopt the resentment of the sufferer, we must disapprove of the motives of the agent, and feel that our heart renounces all sympathy with the affections which influence his conduct. If there appears to have been no impropriety in these, how fatal soever the tendency of the action which proceeds from them to those against whom it is directed, it does not seem to deserve any punishment, or to be the proper object of any resentment. But when to the hurtfulness of the action is joined the impropriety of the affection from whence it proceeds, when our heart rejects with abhorrence all fellow-feeling with the motives of the agent, we then heartily and entirely sympathize with the resentment of the sufferer.
Such actions seem then to deserve, and, if I may say so, to call aloud for, a proportionable punishment, and we entirely enter into, and thereby approve of, that resentment which prompts to inflict it. The offender necessarily seems then to be the proper object of punishment, when we thus entirely sympathize with, and thereby approve of, that sentiment which prompts to punish. In this case, too, when we approve, and go along with, the affection from which the action proceeds, we must necessarily approve of the action, and regard the person against whom it is directed, as its proper and suitable object. V. The Analysis of the Sense of Merit and Demerit As our sense, therefore, of the propriety of conduct arises from what I shall call a direct sympathy with the affections and motives of the person who acts, so our sense of its merit arises from what I shall call an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of the person who is, if I may say so, acted upon.
As we cannot indeed enter thoroughly into the gratitude of the person who receives the benefit, unless we beforehand approve of the motives of the benefactor, so, upon this account, the sense of merit seems to be a compounded sentiment, and to be made up of two distinct emotions, a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent, and an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions. We may, upon many different occasions, plainly distinguish those two different emotions, combining and uniting together in our sense of the good desert of a particular character or action. When we read in history concerning actions of proper and beneficent greatness of mind, how eagerly do we enter into such designs?
How much are we animated by that high-spirited generosity which directs them? How keen are we for their success? How grieved at their disappointment? In imagination we become the very person whose actions are represented to us. We transport ourselves in fancy to the scenes of those distant and forgotten adventures, and imagine ourselves acting the part of a Scipio or a Camillus, a Timoleon or an Aristides. So far our sentiments are founded upon the direct sympathy with the person who acts, nor is the indirect sympathy with those who receive the benefit of such actions less sensibly felt. Whenever we place ourselves in the situation of these last, with what warm and affectionate fellow-feeling do we enter into their gratitude towards those who served them so essentially?
We embrace, as it were, their benefactor along with them. Our heart readily sympathizes with the highest transports of their grateful affection. No honors, no rewards, we think, can be too great for them to bestow upon him. When they make this proper return for his services, we heartily applaud go along with them, but are shocked beyond all measure if by their conduct they appear to have little sense of the obligations conferred upon them. Our whole sense, in short, of the merit and good desert of such actions, of the propriety and fitness of recompensing them, and making the person who performed them rejoice in his turn, arises from the sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love, with which, when we bring home to our own breast the situation of those principally concerned, we feel ourselves naturally transported towards the man who could act with such proper and noble beneficence.
In the same manner as our sense of the impropriety of conduct arises from a want of sympathy, or from a direct antipathy to the affections and motives of the agent, so our sense of its demerit arises from what I shall hereto call an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer. As we cannot indeed enter into the resentment of the sufferer unless our heart beforehand disapproves the motives of the agent, and renounces all fellow-feeling with them, So upon this account the sense of demerit, as well as that of merit, seems to be a compounded sentiment, and to be made up of two distinct emotions, a direct antipathy to the sentiments of the agent, and an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer.
We may here, too, upon many different occasions, plainly distinguish those two different emotions, combining and uniting together in our sense of the ill-desert of the particular character or action. When we read in history concerning the perfidy and cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, our heart rises up against the detestable sentiments which influence their conduct, and renounces with horror and abomination all fellow-feeling with such execrable motives. So far, our sentiments are founded upon the direct antipathy to the affections of the agent, and the indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferers is still more sensibly felt. When we bring home to ourselves the situation of the persons whom these scourges of mankind insulted, murdered, or betrayed, what indignation do we not feel against such insolent and inhuman oppressors of the earth?
Our sympathy with the unavoidable distress of the innocent sufferers is not more real nor more lively than our fellow-feeling with their just and natural resentment. The former sentiment only heightens the latter, and the idea of their distress serves only to inflame and blow up our animosity against those who occasioned it. When we think of the anguish of the sufferers, we take part with them more earnestly against their oppressors. We enter with more eagerness into all their schemes of vengeance, and feel ourselves every moment wreaking, in imagination, upon such violators of the laws of society that punishment which our sympathetic indignation tells us is due to their crimes. Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight which we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation which we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, our whole sense and feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of inflicting evil upon the person who is guilty of it, and of making him grieve in his turn, arises from the sympathetic indignation which naturally boils up in the breast of the spectator Whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the case of the sufferer.
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of merit and demerit, or of the objects of reward and punishment consisting of three parts. Section Two of Justice and Beneficence. Chapter One Comparison of those two virtues. Actions of a beneficent tendency which proceed from proper motives seem alone to require reward, because such alone are the approved objects of gratitude. or excite the sympathetic gratitude of the spectator. Actions of a hurtful tendency, which proceed from the improper motives, seem alone to deserve punishment, because such alone are the approved objects of resentment, or excite the sympathetic resentment of the spectator. Beneficence is always free. It cannot be extorted by force. The mere want of it exposes to no punishment.
Because the mere want of beneficence tends to do no real positive evil. It may disappoint of the good which might reasonably have been expected, and upon that account it may justly excite dislike and disapprobation. It cannot, however, provoke any resentment which mankind will go along with. The man who does not recompense his benefactor when he has it in his power And when his benefactor needs his assistance, is, no doubt, guilty of the blackest ingratitude. The heart of every impartial spectator rejects all fellow-feeling with the selfishness of his motives, and he is the proper object of the highest disapprobation. But still he does no positive hurt to anybody. He only does not do that good which in propriety he ought to have done.
He is the object of hatred, A passion which is naturally excited by impropriety of sentiment and behavior, not of resentment. A passion which is never properly called forth by actions which tend to do real and positive hurt to some particular persons. His want of gratitude, therefore, cannot be punished. To oblige him by force to perform what in gratitude he ought to perform, And what every impartial spectator would approve of him for performing would, if possible, be still more improper than his neglecting to perform it. His benefactor would dishonor himself if he attempted, by violence, to constrain him to gratitude, and it would be impertinent for any third person who was not the superior of either to intermeddle.
But of all the duties of beneficence, Those which gratitude recommends to us approach nearest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation. What friendship, what generosity, what charity would prompt us to do with universal approbation is still more free and can still less be extorted by force than the duties of gratitude. We talk of the debt of gratitude, not of charity or generosity, nor even of friendship. When friendship is mere steam, and has not been enhanced and complicated with gratitude for good offices. Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for defense, and for defense only. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence. It prompts us to beat off the mischief which is attempted to be done to us, and to retaliate that which is already done, that the offender may be made to repent of his injustice, and that others, through their fear of the like punishment, may be terrified from being guilty of the like offense.
It must be reserved, therefore, for these purposes, nor can the spectator ever go along with it when it is exerted for any other. But the mere want of the beneficent virtues, though it may disappoint us of the good which might reasonably be expected, neither does nor attempts to do any mischief. from which we can have occasion to defend ourselves. There is, however, another virtue, of which the observance is not left to the freedom of our own wills, which may be extorted by a force, and of which the violation exposes to resentment, and consequently to punishment. This virtue is justice. The violation of justice is injury, but does real and positive hurt to some particular persons. for motives which are naturally disapproved of.
It is, therefore, proper object of resentment and of punishment, which is the natural consequence of resentment. As mankind goes along with, and approve of, the violence employed to avenge the hurt which is done by injustice, so they much more go along with, and approve of, that which is employed to prevent and beat off the injury, and to restrain the offender from hurting his neighbors. The person himself who meditates an injustice is sensible of this, and feels that force may, with the utmost propriety, be made use of, both by the person whom he is about to injure, and by others, either to obstruct the execution of his crime, or to punish him when he has executed it. And upon this is founded that remarkable distinction between justice and all the other social virtues, which has of late been particularly insisted upon by an author of very great and original genius, that we feel ourselves to be under a stricter obligation to act according to justice than agreeably to friendship, charity, or generosity.
But the practice of these last-mentioned virtues seems to be left in some measure to our own choice, But that somehow or other we feel ourselves to be, in a peculiar manner, tied, bound, and obligated to the observation of justice. We feel, that is to say, that force may, with the utmost propriety and with the approbation of all mankind, be made use of to constrain us to observe the rules of the one, but not to follow the precepts of the other. We must always, however, carefully distinguish what is only blamable or the proper object of this disapprobation from what force may be employed either to punish or to prevent. That seems blamable which falls short of that ordinary degree of proper beneficence which experience teaches us to expect of everybody, and, on the contrary, that seems praiseworthy which goes beyond it.
The ordinary degree itself seems neither blamable nor praiseworthy. A father, a son, a brother, who behaves to the correspondent relation neither better nor worse than the greater part of men commonly do, seems properly to deserve neither praise nor blame. He who surprises us by extraordinary and unexpected, though still proper and suitable kindness, or, on the contrary, by extraordinary and unexpected, as well as unsuitable unkindness, Seems praiseworthy in the one case and blamable in the other.
Even the most ordinary degree of kindness or beneficence, however, cannot among equals be extorted by force. Among equals each individual is naturally an antecedent to the institution of civil government, regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to him. Every generous spectator not only approves of his conduct when he does this, but enters so far into his sentiments as often to be willing to assist him. When one man attacks, or robs, or attempts to murder another, all the neighbors take the alarm, and think that they do right when they run, either to revenge the person who has been injured, or to defend him who is in danger of being so.
But when a father fails in the ordinary degree of parental affection towards a son, when a son seems to want that filial reverence which might be expected to his father, when brothers are without the usual degree of brotherly affection, when a man shuts his breast against compassion and refuses to relieve the misery of his fellow-preachers, when he can with the greatest ease in all these cases Though everybody blames the conduct, nobody imagines that those who might have reason, perhaps, to expect more kindness have any right to extort it by force. The sufferer can only complain, and the spectator can intermittle in no other way than by advice and persuasion. Upon all such occasions, for equals to use force against one another would be thought the highest degree of insolence and presumption.
A superior may indeed, sometimes, with universal approbation, oblige those under his jurisdiction to behave in this respect. A superior may, indeed, sometimes, with universal Probation, obliged those under his jurisdiction to behave in this respect with a certain degree of propriety to one another. The laws of all civilized nations, obliged parents to maintain their children, and children to maintain their parents, and impose upon men many other duties of beneficence. The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the public peace by restraining injustice, but of promoting the prosperity of the commonwealth, by establishing good discipline, and by discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety.
He may prescribe rules, therefore, which not only prohibit mutual injuries among fellow-citizens, but command mutual good offices to a certain degree. When the sovereign commands what is merely indifferent, and what, antecedent to his orders, might have been omitted without any blame, it becomes not only blameable but punishable to disobey him. When he commands, therefore, what, antecedent to any such order, could not have been omitted without the greatest blame, It surely becomes much more punishable to be wanting in obedience. Of all the duties of a lawgiver, however, this, perhaps, is that which it requires the greatest delicacy and reserve to execute with propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking enormities.
And to push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice. Though the mere want of beneficence seems to merit no punishment from equals, the greater exertions of that virtue appear to deserve the highest reward. By being productive of the greatest good, they are the natural and approved objects of the liveliest gratitude. Though the breach of justice, on the contrary, exposes to punishment The observance of the rules of that virtue seems scarce to deserve any reward. There is no doubt of propriety in the practice of justice, and it merits upon that account all the approbation which is due to propriety. But as it does no real positive good, it is entitled to very little gratitude.
Here justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor. The man who barely abstains from violating either the person or the estate or the reputation of his neighbors has surely very little positive merit. He fulfills, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does everything which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfill all the rules of justice, By sitting still and doing nothing. As every man doth, so shall it be done to him, and retaliation seems to be the greatest law which is dictated to us by nature. Beneficence and generosity we think do to the generous and beneficence.
Those whose hearts never opened to the feelings of humanity should, we think, be shut out in the same manner from the affections of all their fellow-creatures and be allowed to live in the midst of society, as in a great desert where there is nobody to care for them, or to inquire after them. The violator of the laws of justice ought to be made to feel himself that evil which he has done to another, and since no regard to the sufferings of his brethren is capable of restraining him, he ought to be overawed by the fear of his own. The man who is barely innocent, Who only observes the laws of justice with regard to others, and merely abstains from hurting his neighbors, can merit only that his neighbors, in their turn, should respect his innocence, and that the same laws should be religiously observed with regard to him.
End of chapter one.
Chapter Two. of the sense of justice, of remorse, and of the consciousness of merit. There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbor. There can be no incitement to do evil to another, which mankind will go along with, except just indignation for evil which that other has done to us. To disturb his happiness merely because it stands in the way of our own, to take from him what is of real use to him, Merely because it may be of equal or more use to us, or to indulge in this manner at the expense of other people the natural preference which every man has for his own happiness above that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can go along with. Every man is, no doubt by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care.
And as he is fitter to take care of himself than any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so. Every man, therefore, is much more deeply interested in whatever immediately concerns himself than in what concerns any other man. And to hear, perhaps, of the death of another person with whom we have no particular connection will give us less concern Will spoil our stomach or break our rest much less than a very insignificant disaster which has befallen ourselves. But though the ruin of our neighbor may affect us much less than a very small misfortune of our own, we must not ruin him to prevent that small misfortune, nor even to prevent our own ruin. We must here, as in all other cases, View ourselves not so much according to that light in which we may naturally appear to ourselves as according to that in which we naturally appear to others.
That every man may, according to the proverb, be the whole world to himself. To the rest of mankind he is the most insignificant part of it. Though his own happiness may be of more importance to him than that of all the world besides, To every other person it is of no more consequence than that of any other man. Though it may be true, therefore, that every individual, in his own breast, naturally prefers himself to all mankind, yet he dares not look mankind in the face, and avow that he acts according to his principle. He feels that in this preference they can never go along with him, and that, how natural soever it may be to him, It must always appear excessive and extravagant to them. When he views himself in the light in which he is conscious that others will view him, he sees that to them he is but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other.
If he would act so as that an impartial spectator may enter into the principles of his conduct, which is what, of all things, he has the greatest desire to do. He must, upon this, as upon all other occasions, humble the arrogance of his self-love, and bring it down to something which other men can go along with. They will indulge it so far as to allow him to be more anxious about, and to pursue with more earnest assiduity, his own happiness, than that of any other person. Thus far, whenever they place themselves in his situation, they will readily go along with him. In the race for wealth and honors and profferments, he may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle in order to outstrip all his competitors.
But if he should jostle or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of. This man is to them, in every respect, as good as he. They do not enter into that self-love by which he prefers himself so much to this other, and cannot go along with the motive from which he hurt him. They readily, therefore, sympathize with the natural resentment of the injured, and the offender becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. He is sensible that he becomes so, and feels that those sentiments are ready to burst out from all sides against him. As the greater and more irreparable to evil that is done, the resentment of the sufferer runs naturally the higher.
So does likewise the sympathetic indignation of the spectator, as well as the sense of guilt in the agent. Death is the greatest evil which one man can inflict upon another, and excites the highest degree of resentment in those who are immediately connected with the slain. Murder, therefore, is the most atrocious of all crimes, which affect individuals only, in the sight both of mankind and of the person who has committed it. To be deprived of that which we are possessed of is a greater evil than to be disappointed of what we have only the expectation. Breach of property, therefore, theft and robbery, which take from us which we are possessed of, are greater crimes than breach of contract, which only disappoints us of what we expected.
The most sacred laws of justice, therefore, those whose violation seems to call loudest for vengeance and punishment, are the laws which guard the life and person of our neighbor. The next are those which guard his property and possessions. And last of all come those which guard what are called his personal rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others. The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect on the sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him, without feeling all the agonies of shame and horror and consternation. When his passion is gratified, and he begins coolly to reflect on his past conduct, he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it.
They appear now as detestable to him as they did always to other people. By sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence which other men must entertain for him, he becomes in some measure the object of his own hatred, and abhorrence. The situation of the person who suffered by his injustice now calls upon his pity. He is grieved at the thought of it, regrets the unhappy effects of his own conduct, and feels at the same time that they have rendered him the proper object of the resentment and indignation of mankind, and of what is the natural consequence of resentment, vengeance, and punishment. The thought of this perpetually haunts him, and fills him with terror and amazement. He dares no longer lift society in the face, but imagines himself as it were rejected and thrown out from the affections of all mankind.
He cannot hope for the consolation of sympathy in this his greatest and most dreadful distress. The remembrance of his crimes has shut out all fellow-feeling with him from the hearts of his fellow-creatures. The sentiments which they entertain with regard to him are the very thing which he is most afraid of. Everything seems hostile, and he would be glad to fly to some inhospitable desert, where he might never more behold the face of a human creature. Nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation of his crimes. But solitude is still more dreadful than society. His own thoughts can present him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate, and disastrous, the melancholy forebodings of incomprehensible misery and ruin.
The horror of solitude drives him back into society, and he comes again into the presence of mankind, astonished To appear before them, loaded with shame and distracted with fear, in order to suffocate from little protection from the countenance of those very judges, who he knows have already all unanimously condemned him. Such is the nature of that sentiment, which is properly called remorse, of all the sentiments which can enter the human breast, the most dreadful. It is made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct, of grief for the effects of it, of pity for those who suffer by it, and of the dread and terror of punishment from the consciousness of the justly provoked resentment of all rational creatures.
The opposite behavior naturally inspires the opposite sentiment. The man who, Not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them of the esteem and approbation of all mankind, and when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, He still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of the supposed impartial judge. In both these points of view, his own conduct appears to him every way agreeable. His mind, at the thought of it, is filled with cheerfulness, serenity, and composure.
He is in friendship and harmony with all mankind. and looks upon his fellow-creatures with confidence and benevolent satisfaction, secure that he has rendered himself worthy of their most favorable regards. In the combination of all these sentiments consists the consciousness of merit or of deserved reward.
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10 10 - Part II, Section II: Chapter III 25:03
of the utility of this constitution of nature.
It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made. All members of human society stand in need of each other's assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common center of mutual good offices.
But though the necessary assistance should not be afforded from such generous and disinterested motives, though among the different members of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. Society may subsist among different men as among different merchants from a sense of its utility. Without any mutual love or affection, and though no man in it should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it will still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation.
Society, however, cannot subsist among those Who are, at all times, ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity takes place, all the bands of it are broke asunder. The different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of the discordant affections. If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must, at least, according to their trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another beneficence. Therefore, it is less essential to the existence of society than justice.
Society must assist, though not in a most comfortable state, without beneficence. Had the prevalence of injustice met, utterly destroyed it.
Though nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence by the pleasing consciousness of deserved reward, she has not thought it necessary to guard and enforce the practice of it by the terrors of merited punishment, in case it should be neglected. It is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building, and which it was, therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means necessary to impose. Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society That fabric, which to raise and support seams in this world, if I may say so, to have been the particular and darling care of nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms in order to enforce the observation of justice.
Therefore, nature has implanted in the human breast a consciousness of ill desert, Those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safeguards of the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty. When, though naturally sympathetic, feel so little for another with whom they have no particular connections, in compassion of what they feel for themselves, The misery of one who is merely their fellow creature is of so little importance to them in comparison even of a small conveniency of their own. They have it so much in their power to hurt him, and may have so many temptations to do so, that if this principle not stand up within them in his defence, and all of them into respect for his innocence, they would, like wild beasts, be at all times ready to fly upon him, and a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
In every part of the universe, we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce. and in the mechanism of a plant or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual and the propagation of the species. But in these and all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final cause of the several motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion of several juices which are drawn from it are operations all of them necessary for the great purposes of animal life. Yet we never endeavour to account for them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates or that the foot digests of his own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion.
The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, They could not do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them, but to the watchmaker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish in this manner The effusion from the final cause. In accounting for those of the mind, we are very apt to confound these two different things with one another.
When, by natural principles, we are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man which in reality is the wisdom of God.
Upon a superficial view, this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it, and the system of human nature seems to be more simple and agreeable in all its different operations are in this manner deduced from a single principle.
As society cannot subsist unless the laws of justice are tolerably observed, as no social intercourse can take place among men who do not generally abstain from injuring one another, the consideration of this necessity, it has been thought, was the ground upon which we approved The enforcement of the laws of justice by the punishment of those who violated them. Man, it has been said, has a natural love for society, and desires that the union of mankind should be preserved for its own sake, and though he himself was to derive no benefit from it.
The orderly and flourishing state of the society is agreeable to him, and he takes delight in contemplating it. His disorder and confusion, on the contrary, is the object of his aversion, and he is judgment at whatever tends to produce it. He is sensible, too, that in his own interest he is connected with the prosperity of society, and that the happiness Perhaps the preservation of its existence depends upon its preservation. Upon every account, therefore, he has an abhorrence of whatever can tend to destroy society, and is willing to make use of every means which can hinder so hated and so dreadful an event. Injustice necessarily tends to destroy it, Every appearance of injustice, therefore alarms him, and he runs, if I may say so, to stop the progress of what, if allowed to go on, would quickly put an end to everything that is dear to him.
If he cannot restrain it by gentle and fair means, he must beat it down by force and violence. and at any rate must put a stop to its further progress. Hence it is, they say, that he often approves of the enforcement of the laws of justice, even by capital punishment, of those who violate them. The disturber of the public peace is hereby removed out of the world, and others are terrified by his fate from imitating his example.
Such is the account commonly given of our approbation of the punishment of injustice, and so far this account is undoubtedly true, and we frequently have occasion to confirm our natural sense of the propriety and fitness of punishment, reflecting how necessary it is for preserving the order of society. When the guilty is about to suffer the unjust retaliation, The natural indignation of mankind tells them is due to his crimes, that when the insolence of his injustice is broken and humbled by the terror of his approaching punishment, when he ceases to be an object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an object of pity.
The thought of what he is about to suffer Extinguishes their resentment from the sufferings of others to which he has given occasion. They are disposed to pardon and forgive him, and to save him from that punishment, which in all their cool hours they had considered as a retribution due to such crimes. Here, therefore, they have occasion to call to their assistance the consideration of the general interest of society. They counterbalance the impulse of this weak and partial humanity by the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and comprehensive. They reflect that mercy to the guilty, its cruelty to the innocent, and oppose to the emotions of compassion, which they feel for a particular person, a more enlarged compassion, which they feel for mankind.
Sometimes, too, we have occasion to defend the propriety of observing the general rules of justice by the consideration of the necessity to support society. We frequently hear the young and the licentious ridiculing the most sacred rules of morality, and professing, sometimes from the corruption, but more frequently from the vanity of their hearts, The most abominable maxims of conduct. Our indignation rouses, and we are eager to refute and expose such disestable principles. But though it is their intrinsic hatefulness and it is tableness which originally inflames us against them, we are unwilling to assign this as the sole reason why we condemn them, or to pretend That it is merely because we ourselves hate and detest them.
The reason, we think, would not appear to be conclusive. Yet, why should it not, if we hate and detest them because they are natural and proper objects of hatred and detestation? But when we are asked why we should not act in such or such manner, the very question seems to suppose that. To those who ask it, this manner of acting does not appear to be, for its own sake, the natural and proper object of those sentiments.
We must show them, therefore, that it ought to be so for the sake of something else. Upon this account, we generally cast about for other arguments, and the consideration which first occurs to us is the disorder and confusion of society which would result from the universal prevalence of such practices. We seldom fail, therefore, to insist upon this topic.
But though it commonly requires no great discreetment to see the destructive tendency of all licentious practices to the welfare of society, it is seldom this consideration which force animates us against them. All men, even the most stupid and unthink, abhor fraud, perfidy and injustice, and delight to see them punished. But few men have reflected upon the necessity of justice to the existence of society. How obvious, soever, that necessity may appear to be!
That it is not a regard to the preservation of society, which originally interests us in the punishment of crimes committed against individuals, may be demonstrated by many obvious considerations. The concern which we take in the fortune and happiness of individuals does not, in common cases, arise from that which we take in the fortune and happiness of society. We are no more concerned for the destruction or loss of a single man, because this man is a member or part of society, and because we should be concerned for the destruction of society, that we are concerned for the loss of a single guinea, because this guinea is a part of a thousand guineas, and because we should be concerned for the loss of the whole sum.
In neither case does our regard for the individuals arrive from our regard for the multitude, but in both cases our regard for the multitude is compounded and made up of the particular regards which we feel for the different individuals of which it is composed. As when a small sum is unjustly taken from us, we do not so much prosecute the injury from our regard. to the preservation of the whole fortune, as from a regard to that particular sum which we have lost. So when a single man is injured, or destroyed, we demand the punishment of the wrong that has been done to him, not so much from a concern for the general interest of society as from a concern for that very individual who has been injured.
It is to be observed, however, This concern does not necessarily include in it any degree of those exquisite sentiments which are commonly called love, esteem, and affection, and by which we distinguish our particular friends and acquaintance.
The concern which is requisite for this is no more than the general fellow-feeling which we have with every man merely because he is our fellow-creature. We enter into the resentment even of an odious person when he is injured by those to whom he has given no provocation.
Our disapprobation of this ordinary character and conduct does not in this case altogether prevent our fellow-feeling with its natural indignation, though with those who are not either extremely candid or who have not been accustomed To correct and regulate their natural sentiments by general rules, it is very apt to damp it.
Upon some occasions, indeed, we both punish and approve of punishment, merely from a view to the general interest of the society, which, we imagine, cannot otherwise be secured. Of this kind are all the punishments Inflicted for breaches of what is called either civil police or military discipline. Such crimes do not immediately or directly hurt any particular person, but the remote consequences it is supposed do produce or might produce either a considerable inconveniency or a great disorder in society.
A sentinel, for example, who falls asleep upon his watch, suffers death by the laws of war, because such callousness might endanger the whole army. This severity may, upon many occasions, appear necessary, and for that reason just and proper.
When the preservation of an individual is inconsistent with the safety of our multitude. Nothing can be more just than that the many should be preferred to the one. Yet this punishment, how necessary soever, always appears to be excessively severe. The natural atrocity of the crime seems to be so little, and the punishment so great, that it is with great difficulty that our heart can reconcile itself to it. Though such carelessness appears very blamable, yet the thought of this crime does not naturally excite any such resentment as would prompt us to take such dreadful revenge. A man of humanity must recollect himself, must make an effort, and exert his whole firmness and resolution before he can bring himself either to inflict it, or to go along with it when it is inflicted by others.
It is not, however, in this manner that he looks upon the just punishment of an ungrateful murderer or parasite. His art, in this case, applauds with ardour, and even with transport, the just retaliation which seems to do such testable crimes, and which, if, by any accident, They should happen to escape, he would be highly enraged and disappointed. The very different sentiments with which the spectator views the different punishments is a proof that his approbation of the one is far from being founded upon the same principles with that of the other. He looks upon the sentinel as an unfortunate victim, who, indeed, Must and ought to be devoted to the safety of numbers, but whom still, in his heart, he would be glad to save, and is only sorry that the interests of the many should oppose it.
But if the murderer should escape from punishment, it would excite his highest indignation, and would call upon God to avenge, in another world, That crime which the injustice of mankind had neglected to chastise upon earth.
For it well deserves to be taken notice of, that we are so far from imagining that injustice ought to be punished in this life, merely on account of the order of society, which cannot otherwise be maintained. That nature teaches us to hope. And religion, I suppose, are thrice as to expect that it will be punished, even in a life to come. Our senses of its ill desert pursues it, if I may say so, even beyond the grave. Though the example of this punishment there cannot serve to deter the rest of mankind, who see it not, who know it not, from being guilty of the like practices here. The justice of God, however, we think, still requires that he should hereafter avenge the injuries of the widow and the fatherless, who are here so often insulted with impunity.
In every religion, and in every superstition, that the world has ever beheld accordingly, There has been a tartarus as well as an elysium, a place provided for the punishment of the wicked, as well as one for the reward of the just.
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11 11 - Part II, Sectio n III: Intro - Chapter I 13:01
Introduction and Chapter One. Part Two. of merit and demerit, or of the objects of reward and punishment consisting of three parts. Section Three. Of the influence of fortune upon the sentiments of mankind, with regard to the merit or demerit of actions. Introduction. Whatever praise or blame can be due to any action, must belong either first to the intention or affection of the heart from which it proceeds, or secondly, to the external action or movement of the body. which this affection gives occasion to, or lastly, to the good or bad consequences, which actually, and in fact, proceed from it. These three different things constitute the whole nature and circumstance of the action, and must be the foundation of whatever quality can belong to it.
That the last two of these three circumstances cannot be the foundation of any praise or blame is abundantly evident, nor has the contrary ever been asserted by any body. The external action or movement of the body is often the same in the most innocent and in the most blamable actions. He who shoots a bird and he who shoots a man, both of them perform the same external movement. Each of them draws the trigger of a gun. The consequences, which actually and in fact happen to proceed from any action, are, if possible, still more indifferent either to praise or blame, than even the external movements of the body. As they depend, Not upon the agent, but upon fortune. They cannot be the proper foundation for any sentiment, of which his character and conduct are the objects.
The only consequences for which he can be answerable, or by which he can deserve either approbation or disapprobation of any kind, are those which were some way or other intended, or those which, at least, show some agreeable or disagreeable quality in the intention of the heart, from which he acted. To the intention or affection of the heart, therefore, To the propriety or impropriety, to the beneficence or hurtfulness of a design, all praise or blame, all approbation or disapprobation, of any kind, which can justly be bestowed upon any action, must ultimately belong. When this maxim is thus proposed, in abstract or general terms, there is nobody who does not agree to it. Its self-evident justice is acknowledged by all the world, and there is not a dissenting voice among all mankind.
Everybody allows, that however different soever the accidental, the unintended and unforeseen consequences of different actions, yet, if the intentions or affections from which they arose were, on the other hand, equally proper and equally beneficent, or, on the other, equally improper and equally malevolent, the merit or demerit of the actions is still the same, and the agent is equally the suitable object either of gratitude or of resentment. But how well soever we may seem to be persuaded of the truth of this equitable maxim, when we consider it after this matter in abstract, yet when we come to particular cases, the actual consequences which happen to proceed from any action have a very great effect upon our sentiments concerning its merit or demerit, and almost always either enhance or diminish our sense of both.
Scarce, in any one instance perhaps, will our sentiments be found, after examination, To be entirely regulated by this rule, which we all acknowledge ought entirely to regulate them. This irregularity of sentiment, which everybody feels, which scarce anybody is sufficiently aware of, and which nobody is willing to acknowledge, I proceed now to explain, and I shall consider first, the cause which gives occasion to it, or the mechanism by which nature produces it. Secondly, the extent of its influence, and last of all, The end which it answers, or the purpose which the author of nature seems to have intended by it. Chapter One. Of the causes of this influence of fortune. The causes of pleasure and pain, whatever they are, or however they operate, seem to be the objects which, in all animals, immediately excite those two passions of gratitude and resentment.
They are excited by inanimated, as well as by animated objects. We are angry, for a moment, Even at the stone that hurts us. A child beats it. A dog barks at it. A choleric man is apt to curse it. The least reflection, indeed, corrects this sentiment, and we soon become sensible, that what has no feeling is a very improper object of revenge. When the mischief, however, is very great, the object which caused it becomes disagreeable to us ever after, and we take pleasure to burn or destroy it. We should treat in this manner the instrument which had accidentally been the cause of the death of a friend, and we should often think ourselves guilty of a sort of inhumanity if we neglected to vent this absurd sort of vengeance upon it.
We conceive in the same manner a sort of gratitude for those inanimate objects which have been the causes of great or frequent pleasure to us. The sailor who, as soon as he got ashore, should mend his fire with the plank upon which he had just escaped from a shipwreck, would seem to be guilty of an unnatural action. We should expect that he would rather preserve it with care and affection, as a monument that was, in some measure, dear to him. A man grows fond of a snuff-box, of a penknife, of a staff which he has made long use of, and conceives something like a real love and affection for them. If he breaks or loses them, he is vexed out of all proportion to the value of the damage. The house which we have long lived in, the tree, whose verdure and shade we have long enjoyed, are both looked upon with a sort of respect, it seems, due to such benefactors.
The decay of one, or the ruin of the other, affects us with a kind of melancholy, though we should sustain no loss by it. The Dryads and Lleries of the Ancients, a sort of genie of trees and houses, were probably first suggested by this sort of affection, which the authors of those superstitions felt for such objects, and which seemed unreasonable if there were nothing animated about them. But before any thing can be the proper object of gratitude or resentment, it must not only be the cause of pleasure or pain, it must likewise be capable of feeling them. Without this other quality, those passions cannot vent themselves with any sort of satisfaction upon it. As they are excited by the causes of pleasure and pain, so their gratification consists in retaliating those sensations upon which gave occasion to them, which it is to no purpose to attempt upon that which has no sensibility.
Animals, therefore, are less improper objects of gratitude and resentment than inanimated objects. The dog that bites, the ox that gores, are both of them punished. If they have been the causes of the death of any person, neither the public nor the relations of the slain can be satisfied unless they are put to death in their turn. Nor is this merely for the security of the living, but in some measure to revenge the injury of the dead. Those animals, on the contrary, that had been remarkably serviceable to their masters, become the objects of a very lively gratitude. We are shocked at the brutality of that officer, mentioned in the Turkish spy, who stabbed the horse that had carried him across an arm of the sea, lest that animal should afterwards distinguish some other person by a similar adventure.
But though animals are not the only causes of pleasure and pain, but are also capable of feeling those sensations, they are still far from being complete and perfect objects. Either of gratitude or resentment, and those passions still feel that there is something wanting to their entire gratification. What gratitude chiefly desires is not only to make the benefactor feel pleasure in his turn, but to make him conscious that he meets with his reward on account of his past conduct, to make him pleased with that conduct, and to satisfy him that the person upon whom he bestowed his good offices was not unworthy of them. What most of all charms us in our benefactor is the concord between his sentiments and our own, with regard to what interests us so nearly as the worth of our own character, and the esteem that is due to us.
We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that which we distinguish ourselves. To maintain in him these agreeable and flattering sentiments is one of the chief ends proposed by the returns we are disposed to make of him. A generous mind often disdains the interest of thought of extorting new favours from its benefactor by what may be called the importunities of its gratitude. But to preserve and to increase his esteem is an interest which the greatest mind does not think unworthy of its attention. And this is the foundation of what I formerly observed, that when we cannot enter into the motives of our benefactor, when his conduct and character appear unworthy of our approbation, let his services have been ever so great, Our gratitude is always sensibly diminished.
We are less flattered by the distinction, and to preserve the esteem of so weak or so worthless a patron seems to be an object which does not deserve to be pursued for its own sake. The object, on the contrary, which resentment is chiefly intent upon, is not so much to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, as to make him conscious that he feels it upon account of his past conduct, to make him repent of that conduct, and to make him sensible That the person whom he injured did not deserve to be treated in that manner. What chiefly enrages us against the man who injures or insults us is the little account which he seems to make of us, the unreasonable preference which he gives to himself above us, and that absurd self-love by which he seems to imagine that other people may be sacrificed at any time, to his conveniency or his humour.
The glaring impropriety of his conduct, the gross insolence and injustice which it seems to involve in it, Often shock and exasperate us more than all the mischief which we have suffered. To bring him back to a more just sense of what is due to other people, to make him sensible of what he owes us, and of the wrong that he has done to us, is frequently the principal end proposed in our revenge, which is always imperfect when it cannot accomplish this. When our enemy appears to have done us no injury, when we are sensible that he acted quite properly, that, in his situation, we should have done the same thing. and that we deserve from him all the mischief we met with. In that case, if we have the least spark either of candour or justice, we can entertain no sort of resentment.
Before anything, therefore, can be the complete or proper object either of gratitude or resentment, it must possess three different qualifications. First, it must be the cause of pleasure in the one case, and of pain in the other. Secondly, it must be capable of feeling those sensations. And thirdly, It must not only have produced those sensations, but it must have produced them from design, and from a design that is approved of in the one case, and disapproved of in the other. It is by the first qualification that any object is capable of exciting those passions. It is by the second that it is in any respect capable of gratifying them. The third qualification is not only necessary for their complete satisfaction, but as it gives a pleasure or pain that is both exquisite and peculiar, It is likewise an additional exciting cause of those passions.
As what gives pleasure or pain, either in one way or another, is the sole exciting cause of gratitude and resentment, though the intentions of any person should ever be so proper and beneficial on the one hand, or ever so improper and malevolent on the other. Yet, if he has failed in producing either the good or the evil which he intended, as one of the exciting causes is wanting in both cases, less gratitude seems due to him in the one, and less resentment in the other. And, on the contrary, though in the intentions of any person there was no laudable degree of benevolence on the one hand, or no blameable degree of malice on the other, yet, if his actions should produce either great good or great evil, as one of the exciting causes takes place upon both these occasions, some gratitude is apt to arise towards him in the one, and some resentment in the other.
A shadow of merit seems to fall upon him in the first, a shadow of demerit in the second. And, as the consequences of actions are altogether under the empire of fortune, hence arises her influence upon the sentiments of mankind with regard to merit and demerit.
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12 12 - Part II, Section III: Chapter II 21:35
OF THE EXTENT OF THIS INFLUENCE OF FORTUNE. The effect of this influence of fortune is, first, to diminish our sense of the merit or demerit of those actions which arose from the most laudable or blamable intentions when they fail of producing their proposed effects, and, secondly, to increase our sense of the merit or demerit of actions beyond what is due to the motives or affections from which they proceed, when they accidentally give occasion either to extraordinary pleasure or pain. I. First, I say, Though the intentions of any person should be ever so proper and beneficent on one hand, or ever so improper and benevolent on the other, yet if they fail in producing their effects, his merit seems imperfect in the one case, and his demerit incomplete in the other.
Nor is this irregularity of sentiment felt only by those who are immediately affected by the consequences of any action. It is felt, in some measure, even by the impartial spectator. The man who solicits an office for another without obtaining it is regarded as his friend, and seems to deserve his love and affection, but the man who not only solicits but procures it is more peculiarly considered as his patron and benefactor, and is entitled to his respect and gratitude. The person obliged, we are apt to think, may, with some justice, imagine himself on a level with the first, but we cannot enter into his sentiments if he does not feel himself inferior to the second. It is common, indeed, to say that we are equally obliged to the man who has endeavored to serve us as to him who actually did so.
It is the speech which we constantly make upon every unsuccessful attempt of this kind, but which, like all other fine speeches, must be understood with a grain of allowance. The sentiments which a man of generosity entertains for the friend who fails may often, indeed, be nearly the same as those which he conceives for him who succeeds, and the more generous he is, the more nearly will those sentiments approach To an exact level. With the truly generous, to be beloved, to be esteemed by those whom they think worthy of esteem, gives more pleasure, and thereby excites more gratitude, than all the advantages which they can ever expect from those sentiments. When they lose those advantages, therefore, they seem to lose but a trifle, which is scarce worth regarding.
They still, however, lose something. Their pleasure is therefore, and consequently their gratitude, is not perfectly complete. And accordingly, if between the friend who fails and the friend who succeeds all other circumstances are equal, there will even in the noblest and the best mind be some little difference of affection in favor of him who succeeds. Nay, so unjust are mankind in this respect that though the Tended benefit should be procured, yet if it is not procured by the means of a particular benefactor, they are apt to think that the less gratitude is due to the man, who with the best intentions in the world could do no more than help it a little forward. As their gratitude is in this case divided among the different persons who contributed to their pleasure, a smaller share of it seems due to any one.
Such a person, we hear men commonly say, intended no doubt to serve us, and we really believe exerted himself to the utmost of his abilities for that purpose. We are not, however, obliged to him for this benefit, since, had it not been for the concurrence of others, all that he could have done would never have brought it about. This consideration, they imagine, should, even in the eyes of the impartial spectator, diminish the debt which they owe him. The person himself, who has unsuccessfully endeavored to confer a benefit, has by no means the same dependency upon the gratitude of the man whom he meant to oblige, nor the same sense of his own merit toward him, which he would have had in the case of success.
Even in the merit of talents and abilities which some accident has hindered from producing their effects, seems in some measure imperfect even to those who are fully convinced of their capacity to produce them. The general, who has been hindered by the envy of ministers from gaining some great advantage over the enemies of his country, regrets the loss of this opportunity for ever after. Nor is it only upon account of the public that he regrets it. He laments that he was hindered from performing an action which would have added a new lustre to the character in his own eyes, as well as in those of every other person. It satisfies neither himself nor others to reflect that the plan or design was all that depended on him, that no greater capacity was required to execute it than what was necessary to concert it, that he was allowed to be, every way capable of executing it, and that he had been permitted to go on.
Success was infallible. Still, he did not execute it, and though he might deserve all the approbation which is due a magnanimous and great design, he still wanted the actual merit of having performed a great action. To take the management of any affair of public concern from the man who has almost brought it to a conclusion is regarded as the most invidious injustice. As he had done so much, he should, we think, have been allowed to acquire the complete merit of putting an end to it. It was objected to Pompey that he came in upon the victories of Lucullus, and gathered those laurels which were due to the fortune and valor of another. The glory of Lucullus, it seems, was less complete even in the opinion of his own friends, when he was not permitted to finish that conquest which his conduct and courage had put in the power of almost any man to finish.
It mortifies an architect when his plans are either not executed at all, or when they are so far altered as to spoil the effect of the building. The plan, however, is all that depends upon the architect. The whole of his genius is, to good judges, as completely discovered in that as in the actual execution. But a plan does not, even to the most intelligent, give the same pleasure as a noble and magnificent building. They may discover as much both of taste and genius in the one as in the other, but their effects are still vastly different, and the amusement derived from the first never approaches to the wonder and admiration which are sometimes excited by the second. We may believe of many men that their talents are superior to those of Caesar and Alexander, and that in the same situations they would perform still greater actions.
In the meantime, however, we do not behold them with that astonishment and admiration with which those two heroes have been regarded in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind may approve of them more, but they want the splendor of great actions to dazzle and transport it. The superiority of virtues and talents has not, even upon those who acknowledge that superiority, the same effect with the superiority of achievements. As the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good seems thus, in the eyes of ungrateful mankind, to be diminished by the miscarriage, so does likewise the demerit of an unsuccessful attempt to do evil. The design to commit a crime, how clearly soever it may be proved, is scarce ever punished with the same severity as the actual commission of it.
The case of treason is perhaps the only exception. That crime immediately affecting the being of the government itself The government is naturally more jealous of it than of any other. In the punishment of treason, the sovereign resents the injuries which are immediately done to himself. In the punishment of other crimes, he resents those which are done to other men. In his own resentment which he indulges in the one case, it is that of his subjects which by sympathy he enters into the other. In the first case, therefore, as he judges in his own cause, he is very apt to be more violent and sanguinary in his punishments than the impartial spectator can approve of. His resentment, too, rises here upon smaller occasions, and does not always, as in other cases, wait for the perpetration of the crime, or even for the attempt to commit it.
A treasonable concert, Though nothing has been done, or even attempted in the consequence of it, nay, a treasonable conversation, is in many countries punished in the same manner as the actual commission of treason. With regard to all other crimes, the mere design, upon which no attempt is followed, is seldom punished at all, and is never punished severely. A criminal design, and a criminal action, it may be said indeed, do not necessarily suppose the same degree of depravity, and ought not therefore to be subjected to the same punishment. We are capable, it may be said, of resolving, and even of taking measures to execute many things which, when it comes to the point, we feel ourselves altogether incapable of executing.
But this reason can have no place when the design has been carried the length of the last attempt. The man, however, who fires a pistol at his enemy but misses him, is punished with death by the laws of scarce any country. By the old law of Scotland, though he should wound him, yet unless death ensues within a certain time, the assassin is not liable to the last punishment. The resentment of mankind, however, runs so high against this crime, their terror for the man who shows himself capable of committing it is so great that the mere attempt to commit it ought in all countries to be capital. The attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always punished very lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all.
The thief, whose hand has been caught in his neighbor's pocket before he had taken anything out of it, is punished with ignominy only. If he had got time to take away a handkerchief, he would have been put to death. The housebreaker who has been found setting a ladder to his neighbor's window, but has not got into it, is not exposed to the capital punishment. The attempt to ravish is not punished as a rape. The attempt to seduce a married woman is not punished at all, though seduction is punished severely. Our resentment against the person who only attempted to do a mischief is seldom so strong as to bear us out in inflicting the same punishment upon him which we should have thought due if he had actually done it.
In the one case, the joy of our deliverance alleviates our sense of the atrocity of his conduct. In the other, our grief of our misfortune increases it. His real demerit, however, is undoubtedly the same in both cases, since his intentions were equally criminal, and there is in this respect, therefore, an irregularity in the sentiments of all men, and a consequent relaxation of discipline in the laws of, I believe, all nations, of the most civilized, as well as of the most barbarous. The humanity of a civilized people disposes them either to dispense with or to mitigate punishments wherever their natural indignation is not goaded on by the consequences of the crime. Barbarians, on the other hand, when no actual consequence has happened from any action, are not apt to be very delicate or inquisitive about the motives.
The person himself who, either from passion or from the influence of bad company, has resolved, and perhaps taken measures to perpetrate some crime, but who has fortunately been prevented by an accident which put it out of his power, is sure, if he has any remains of conscience, to regard this event all his life after as a great and signal deliverance. He can never think of it without returning thanks to heaven for having been thus graciously pleased to save him from the guilt in which he was just ready to plunge himself, and to hinder him from rendering all the rest of his life a scene of horror, remorse, and repentance. But though his hands are innocent, he is conscious that his heart is equally guilty as if he had actually executed what he was so fully resolved upon.
It gives great ease to his conscience, however, to consider that the crime was not executed, though he knows that the failure arose from no virtue in him. He still considers himself as less deserving of punishment and resentment, and this good fortune either diminishes or takes away altogether all sense of guilt. To remember how much he was resolved upon it has no other effect than to make him regard his escape as the greater and more miraculous, for he still fancies that he has escaped, and he looks back upon the danger to which his peace of mind was exposed with that terror with which one who is in safety may sometimes remember the hazard he was in of falling over a precipice and shudder with horror at the thought.
Two. The second effect of this influence of fortune is to increase our sense of the merit or demerit of actions beyond what is due to the motives or affection from which they proceed when they happen to give occasion to extraordinary pleasure or pain. The agreeable or disagreeable effects of the action often throw a shadow of merit or demerit upon the agent, though in his intention there was nothing that deserved either praise or blame, or at least that deserved them in the degree in which we are apt to bestow them. Thus, even the messenger of bad news is disagreeable to us, and, on the contrary, we feel a sort of gratitude for the man who brings us good tidings. For a moment we look upon them both as the authors, the one of our good, the other of our bad fortune, and regard them in some measure as if they had really brought about the events which they only give an account of.
The first author of our joy is naturally the object of a transitory gratitude. We embrace him with warmth and affection, and should be glad, during the instant of our prosperity, to reward him as for some signal service. By the custom of all courts, the officer who brings the news of a victory is entitled to considerable preferments, and the general always chooses one of his principal favorites to go upon so agreeable an errand. The first author of our sorrow is, on the contrary, just as naturally the object of a transitory resentment. We can scarce avoid looking upon him with chagrin and uneasiness, and the rude and brutal are apt to vent upon him that spleen which his intelligence gives occasion to.
Tigranes, the king of Armenia, struck off the head of a man who brought him the first account of the approach of a formidable enemy. To punish in this manner the author of bad tidings seems barbarous and inhuman, yet to reward the messenger of good news is not disagreeable to us. We think it suitable to the bounty of kings. But why do we make this difference, since if there is no fault in the one, neither is there any merit in the other? It is because any sort of reason seems sufficient to authorize the exertion of the social and benevolent affections. But it requires the most solid and substantial to make us enter into that of the unsocial and malevolent. But though in general we are adverse to enter into the unsocial and malevolent affections, though we lay it down for a rule that we ought never to approve of their gratification, unless so far as the malicious and unjust intention of the person, against whom they are directed, renders them the proper object, yet upon some occasions we relax of this severity.
When the negligence of one man has occasioned some unintended damage to another, we generally enter so far into the resentment of the sufferer as to approve of his inflicting a punishment upon the offender much beyond what the offense would have appeared to deserve, and no such unlucky consequence followed from it.
There is a degree of negligence which would appear to deserve some chastisement, though it should occasion no damage to anybody. Thus If a person should throw a large stone over a wall into a public street without giving warning to those who might be passing by, and without regarding where it is likely to fall, he would undoubtedly deserve some chastisement. A very accurate police would punish so absurd an action, even though it had done no mischief. The person who has been guilty of it shows an insolent contempt of the happiness and safety of others. There is real injustice in its conduct. He wantonly exposes his neighbor to what no man in his senses would choose to expose himself, and evidently wants that sense of what is due to his fellow-creatures which is the basis of justice and of society.
Gross negligence is, therefore, in the law, and said to be almost equal to malicious design. When any unlucky consequences happen from such carelessness, the person who has been guilty of it is often punished as if he had really intended these consequences, And his conduct, which was only thoughtless and insolent, and what deserved some chastisement, is considered as atrocious, and is liable to the severest punishment. Thus, if by the imprudent action above mentioned he should accidentally kill a man, he is, by the laws of many countries, particularly by the law of old Scotland, liable to the last punishment. And though this is no doubt excessively severe, it is not altogether inconsistent with our natural sentiments.
Our just indignation against the folly and inhumanity of his conduct is exacerbated by our sympathy with the unfortunate sufferer. Nothing, however, would appear more shocking to our natural sense of equity than to bring a man to the scaffold merely for having thrown a stone carelessly into the street without hurting anybody. The folly and inhumanity of his conduct, however, would in this case be the same, but still our sentiments would be very different. The consideration of this difference may satisfy us how much the indignation, even of the spectator, is apt to be animated by the actual consequences of the action. In cases of this kind there will, if I am not mistaken, be found a great degree of severity in the laws of almost all nations, as I have already observed that in those of an opposite kind there was a very general relaxation of discipline.
There is another degree of negligence which does not involve in it any sort of injustice. The person who is guilty of it treats his neighbors as he treats himself, means no harm to anybody, and is far from entertaining any insolent contempt for the safety and happiness of others. He is not, however, so careful and circumspect in his conduct as he ought to be, and deserves upon this account some degree of blame and censure, but no sort of punishment. Yet if by a negligence of this kind he should occasion some damage to another person, he is by the laws of, I believe all countries, obliged to compensate it. And though this is no doubt a real punishment, And what no mortal would have thought of inflicting upon him, had it not been for the unlucky accident which his conduct gave occasion to, yet this decision of the law is approved of by the natural sentiments of all mankind.
Nothing, we think, can be more just than that one man should not suffer by the carelessness of another, and that the damage occasioned by blameable negligence should be made up by the person who was guilty of it.
There is another species of negligence, which consists merely in a want of the most anxious timidity and circumspection with regard to all the possible consequences of our actions. The want of this painful attention, when no bad consequences follow from it, is so far from being regarded as blamable that the contrary quality is rather considered as such. That timid circumspection which is afraid of everything is never regarded as a virtue, but as a quality which more than any other incapacitates for action and business. Yet when from a want of this excessive care a person happens to occasion some damage to another, he is often by the law obliged to compensate it. Thus, by the Aquilian law, the man, who not being able to manage a horse that had accidentally taken fright, should happen to ride down a neighbor's slave, is obliged to compensate the damage.
When an accident of this kind happens, we are apt to think that he ought not to have rode such a horse, and to regard his attempting it as an unpardonable levy, though without this accident we should not only have made no such reflection, but should have regarded his refusing it as the effect of a timid weakness, and of an anxiety about merely possible events, which it is to no purpose to be aware of. The person himself, who by an accident even of this kind has involuntarily hurt another, seems to have some sense of his own ill-desert with regard to him. He naturally runs up to the sufferer to express his concern for what has happened, and to make every acknowledgment in his power. If he has any sensibility, he necessarily desires to compensate the damage, and do everything he can to appease that animal resentment, which he is sensible will be apt to rise in the breast of the sufferer.
To make no apology, to offer no atonement, is regarded as the highest brutality. Yet why should he make an apology any more than any other person? Why should he, since he was equally innocent with any other bystander, be thus singled out from among all mankind to make up for the bad fortune of another? This task would surely never be imposed upon him.
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13 13 - Part II, Section III: Chapter III - Notes 21:57
Such is the effect of the good or bad consequences of actions upon the sentiments both of the person who performs them and of others, and thus fortune, which governs the world, has some influence where we should be least willing to allow her any, and directs in some measure the sentiments of mankind with regard to the character and conduct both of themselves and others. That the world judges by the event and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great discouragement of virtue. Everybody agrees to the general maxim that, as the event does not depend on the agent, it ought to have no influence upon our sentiments with regard to the merit or propriety of his conduct. But when we come to particulars, we find that our sentiments are scarce in any one instance exactly conformable to what this equitable maxim would direct.
The happy or unprosperous event of any action is not only apt to give us a good or bad opinion of the prudence with which it was conducted, but almost always too animates our gratitude or resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the design.
Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species. If the hurtfulness of the design, if the malevolence of the affection, were alone the causes which excited our resentment, we should feel all the furies of that passion against any person in whose breast we suspected or believed such designs or affections were harbored, although they had never broke out into any action. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions would become the objects of punishment, and if the indignation of mankind run as high against them as against actions, if the baseness of the thought which had given birth to no action seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for vengeance as the baseness of the action, every court of judicature would become a real inquisition.
There would be no safety for the most innocent and circumspect conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs might still be suspected, and while these excited the same indignation with bad conduct, while bad intentions were as much resented as bad actions, they would equally expose the person to punishment and resentment. Actions, therefore, which either produce actual evil or attempt to produce it, and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it, are, by the author of nature, rendered the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment. Sentiments, designs, affections, though it is from these that according to cool human reason actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal.
That necessary rule of justice, therefore, that men in this life are liable to punishment for their actions only, not for their designs and intentions, is founded upon this salutary and useful irregularity in human sentiments concerning merit or demerit, which at first sight appear so absurd and unaccountable. But every part of nature, when attentively surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its author, and we may admire the wisdom and goodness of God, even in the weakness and folly of man.
Nor is that irregularity of sentiment altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes, appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances, both of himself and others, as may seem most favorable to the happiness of all. He must not be satisfied with indolent benevolence, nor fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world. That he may call forth the whole vigor of his soul, and strain every nerve, in order to produce those ends which it is the purpose of his being to advance.
Nature has taught him that neither himself nor mankind can be fully satisfied with his conduct, nor bestow upon it the full measure of applause unless he has actually produced them. He is made to know that the praise of good intentions, without the merit of good offices, will be but of little avail to excite their loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self-applaus. The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and deportment expresses the justest, the noblest's, and the most generous sentiments, can be entitled to demand no very high reward, even though his inutility should be owing to nothing but the want of an opportunity to serve.
We can still refuse it him without blame. We can still ask him, What have you done? What actual service can you produce to entitle you to so great a recompense? We esteem you and love you, but we owe you nothing. To reward, indeed, that latent virtue which has been useless for want of an opportunity to serve, to bestow upon it those honors and preferments which, though in some measure it may be said to deserve them, It could not with propriety have insisted upon is the effect of the most divine benevolence. To punish, on the contrary, for the affections of the heart only, where no crime has been committed, is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny. The benevolent affections seem to deserve most praise, and when they do not wait until it becomes almost a crime for them not to exert themselves, The malevolent, on the contrary, can scarce be too tardy, too slow, or deliberate.
It is even of considerable importance that the evil which is done without design should be regarded as a misfortune to the juror as well as to the sufferer. Man is thereby taught to reverence the happiness of his brethren. To tremble lest he should, even unknowingly, do anything that can hurt them, and to dread that animal resentment which he feels is ready to burst out against him if he should without design be the unhappy instrument of their calamity. As in the ancient heathen religion, that holy ground which had been consecrated to some god, was not to be trod upon, but solemn and necessary occasions, and the man who even ignorantly violated it became piacular from that moment, and until proper atonement could be made, incurred the vengeance of that powerful and invisible being to whom it had been set apart.
So, by the wisdom of nature, The happiness of every innocent man is, in the same manner, rendered holy, consecrated, and hedged around against the approach of every other man, not to be wantonly trod upon, not even to be in any respect, ignorantly and involuntarily violated, without requiring some expiation, some atonement, in proportion to the greatness of such undesigned violation. A man of humanity, who accidentally, and without the smallest degree of blamable negligence, has been the cause of the death of another man, feels himself vehicular, though not guilty. During his whole life he considers this accident as one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the family of the slain is poor, and he himself in tolerable circumstances, he immediately takes them under his protection, and without any other merit thinks them entitled to every degree of favor and kindness.
If they are in better circumstances, he endeavors by every submission, by every expression of sorrow, by rendering them every good office which he can devise or they accept of, to atone for what has happened, and to appropriate as much as possible their, perhaps natural, though no doubt most unjust resentment for that great Though involuntary, offense which he has given them.
The distress which an innocent person feels, who, by some accident, has been led to do something which, if it had been done with knowledge and design, would have justly exposed him to the deepest reproach, has given occasion to some of the finest and most interesting scenes, both of ancient and modern drama. It is this fallacious sense of guilt, if I may call it so, which constitutes the whole distress of Oedipus and Jocasta upon the Greek, of Monimia and Isabella upon the English theatre. They are all of them in the highest degree piacular, though not one of them is in the smallest degree guilty. Notwithstanding, however, all of these seeming irregularities of sentiment, if man should unfortunately either Give occasion to those evils which he did not intend, or fail in producing that good which he had intended, Nature has not left his innocence altogether without consolation, nor his virtue altogether without reward.
He then calls to his assistance that just and equitable maxim, that those events which did not depend upon our conduct ought not to diminish the esteem that is due to us. He summons up his whole magnanimity and firmness of soul, and strives to regard himself not in the light in which he at present appears, but in that in which he ought to appear, in which he would have appeared had his generous designs been crowned with success, and in which he would still appear, notwithstanding their miscarriage, if the sentiments of mankind were either altogether candid and equitable, or even perfectly consistent. with themselves. The more candid and humane part of mankind entirely go along with the effort which he thus makes to support himself in his own opinion.
They exert their whole generosity and greatness of mind to correct in themselves this irregularity of human nature, and endeavor to regard his unfortunate magnanimity in the same light in which, had it been successful, They would, without any such generous exertion, have naturally been disposed to consider it.
To ascribe in this manner our natural sense of the ill desert of human actions to a sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer may seem to the greater part of people to be a degradation of that sentiment. Resentment is commonly regarded as so odious a passion that they will be apt to think it impossible that so laudable a principle, as the sense of the ill desert of vice, should in any respect be founded upon it. They will be more willing, perhaps, to admit that our sense of the merit of good actions is founded upon a sympathy with the gratitude of the persons who receive the benefit of them. Because gratitude, as well as all the other benevolent passions, is regarded as an amiable principle, which can take nothing from the worth of whatever is founded upon it.
Gratitude and resentment, however, are in every respect, it is evident, counterparts to one another. And if our sense of merit arises from a sympathy with the one, our sense of demerit can scarce miss to proceed from a fellow-feeling with the other.
Let it be considered, too, that resentment, though, in the degrees in which we too often see it, the most odious, perhaps, of all the passions, is not disapproved of when properly humbled and entirely brought down to the level of the sympathetic indignation of the spectator. When we, who are the bystanders, feel that our own animosity entirely corresponds with that of the sufferer, when the resentment of this last does not in Any respect go beyond our own. When no word, no gesture, escapes him that denotes an emotion more violent than what we can keep time to, and when he never aims at inflicting any punishment beyond what we should rejoice to see inflicted, or what we ourselves would upon this account even desire to be the instruments of inflicting, It is impossible that we should not entirely approve of his sentiments.
Our own emotion in this case must, in our eyes, undoubtedly justify his, and as experience teaches us how much the greater part of mankind are incapable of this moderation, and how great an effort must be made in order to bring down the The rude and undisciplined impulse of this resentment to this suitable temper, we cannot avoid conceiving a considerable degree of esteem and admiration for one who appears capable of exerting so much self-command over one of the most ungovernable passions of his nature. When, indeed, the animosity of the sufferer exceeds, as it almost always does, what we can go along with, As we cannot enter into it, we necessarily disapprove of it. We even disapprove of it more than we should of an equal excess of almost any other passion derived from the imagination.
And this too violent resentment, instead of carrying us along with it, becomes itself the object of our resentment and indignation. We enter into the opposite resentment of the person who is the object of this unjust emotion, and who is in danger of suffering from it. Revenge, therefore, the excess of resentment, appears to be the most detestable of all the passions, and is the object of the horror and indignation of everybody. And as in the way in which this passion commonly discovers itself among mankind, it is excessive a hundred times for once that it is moderate. We are very apt to consider it as altogether odious and detestable, because in its most ordinary appearances it is so. Nature, however, even in the present depraved state of mankind, does not seem to have dealt so unkindly with us as to have endowed us with any principle which is wholly and in every respect evil, or which in no degree and in no direction can be the proper object of praise and approbation.
Upon some occasions we are sensible that this passion, which is generally too strong, may likewise be too weak. We sometimes complain that a particular person shows too little spirit and has too little sense of the injuries that have been done to him, and we are as ready to despise him for the defect as to hate him for the excess of this passion. The inspired writers would not surely have talked so frequently or so strongly of the wrath and anger of God if they had regarded every degree of those passions as vicious and evil, Even in so weak and imperfect a creature as man.
Let it be considered, too, that the present inquiry is not concerning a matter of right, if I may say so, but concerning a matter of fact. We are not at present examining upon what principles a perfect being would approve of the punishment of bad actions, but upon what principles so weak and imperfect a creature as man actually and in fact approves of it. The principles which I have just now mentioned, it is evident, have a very great effect upon his sentiments, and it seems wisely ordered that it should be so. The very existence of society requires that unmerited and unprovoked malice should be restrained by proper punishments, and, consequently, that to inflict those punishments should be regarded as a proper and laudable action.
Though man, therefore, be naturally endowed with a desire of the welfare and preservation of society, yet the author of nature has not entrusted it to his reason to find out that a certain application of punishments is the proper means of attaining this end, but has endowed him with an immediate and instinctive approbation of that very application which is most proper to attain it.
The economy of nature is, in this respect, exactly a piece of what it is upon many other occasions. With regard to all those ends, which, upon account of their peculiar importance, may be regarded, if such an expression is allowable, as the favorable ends of nature, she has constantly, in this manner, not only endowed mankind with an appetite for the end which she proposes, but likewise with an appetite for the means by which, alone, this end can be brought about, for their own sakes, and independent of their tendency to produce it. Thus, self-preservation and the propagation of the species are the great ends which nature seems to have proposed in the formation of all animals. Mankind are endowed with a desire of those ends, and an aversion to the contrary, with a love of life and a dread of dissolution, with a desire of the continuance and perpetuity of the species, and with an aversion to the thoughts of its entire extinction.
But though we are in this manner endowed with a very strong desire to those ends, it has not been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain—the Prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great director of nature intended to produce by them.
Before I conclude this note, I must take notice of a difference between the approbation of propriety and that of merit or beneficence. Before we approve of the sentiments of any person as proper and suitable to their objects, we must not only be affected in the same manner as he is, but we must perceive this harmony and correspondence of sentiments between him and ourselves. Thus, though upon hearing of a misfortune that had befallen my friend, I should conceive precisely that degree of concern which he gives way to. Yet, till I am informed of the manner in which he behaves, till I perceive the harmony between his emotions and mine, I cannot be said to approve of the sentiments which influence his behavior.
The approbation of propriety, therefore, requires not only that we should entirely sympathize with the person who acts, but that we should perceive this perfect concord between his sentiments and our own. On the contrary, when I hear of a benefit that has been bestowed upon another person, let him who has received it be affected by what manner he pleases. If, by bringing his case home to myself, I feel gratitude arise in my own breast, I necessarily approve of the conduct of his behavior, and regard it as meritous and the proper object of reward. Whether the person who has received the benefit conceives gratitude or not cannot, it is evident, in any degree, alter our sentiments with regard to the merit of him who has bestowed it.
No actual correspondence of sentiments, therefore, is here required. It is sufficient that if he was grateful, they would correspond. And our sense of merit is often founded upon one of those elusive sympathies by which we bring home to ourselves the case of another. We are often affected in a manner in which the person principally concerned is incapable of being affected. There is a similar difference between our disapprobation of demerit and that of impropriety. Two. La de colpe prope dolemest. Three. Culpa levis for Culpa Levisima.
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III. Of the foundation of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and conduct, and of the sense of duty consisting of one section. Chapter One. Of the principle of self-approbation and of self-disapprobation. In the two foregoing parts of this discourse, I have chiefly considered the origin and foundation of our judgments concerning the sentiments and conduct of others. I come now to consider more particularly the origin of those concerning our own. The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct seems to be altogether the same with that by which we exercise the like judgments concerning the character of other people. We either approve or disapprove of the conduct of another man, according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we either can or cannot entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives which directed it.
And in the same manner, we either approve or disapprove of our own conduct, according as we feel that, when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it as it were with his eyes and from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it. We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them, unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavor to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavoring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them.
Whatever judgment we can form concerning them, accordingly, must always bear some secret reference, either to what are, Or to what, upon a certain condition, would be, or to what we imagine ought to be the judgment of others. We endeavor to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it. If, upon placing ourselves in his situation, we thoroughly enter into all the passions and motives which influenced it, we approve of it, by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed equitable judge. If otherwise, we enter into his disapprobation. and condemn it. Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face.
All these objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at, and with regard to which he has provided with no mirror which can present them to his view, bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behavior of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments. And it is here that he first views the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and deformity of his own mind. To a man who from his birth was a stranger to society, the objects of his passions, the external bodies which either pleased or hurt him, would occupy his whole attention.
The passions themselves, the desires or aversions, the joys or sorrows which those objects excited, though of all things the most immediately present to him, could scarce ever be the objects of his thoughts. The idea of them could never interest him so much as to call upon his attentive consideration. The consideration of his joy could in him excite no new joy, nor that of his sorrow any new sorrow, though the consideration of the causes of those passions might often excite both. Bring him into society, and all his own passions will immediately become the causes of new passions. He will observe that mankind approve of some and are disgusted by others. He will be elevated in the one case, and cast down in the other.
His desires and aversions, his joys and sorrows, will now often become the causes of new desires and new aversions, new joys and new sorrows. They will now, therefore, interest him deeply, and often call upon his most attentive consideration.
Our first ideas of personal beauty and deformity are drawn from the shape and appearance of others, not from our own. We soon become sensible, however, that others exercise the same criticism upon us. We are pleased when they approve of our figure, and are disobliged when they seem to be disgusted. We become anxious to know how far our appearance deserves either their blame or approbation. We examine our persons limb by limb, and by placing ourselves before a looking-glass, or by some such expedient, endeavor as much as possible to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other people. If, after this examination, we are satisfied with our own appearance, we can more easily support the most disadvantageous judgments of others.
If, on the contrary, we are sensible that we are the natural objects of distaste, every appearance of their disapprobation mortifies us beyond all measure. A man who is tolerably handsome will allow you to laugh at any little irregularity in his person, but all such jokes are commonly unsupportable to one who is really deformed. It is evident, however, that we are anxious about our own beauty and deformity only upon account of its effect upon others. If we had no connection with society, we should be altogether indifferent about either.
In the same manner, our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduct of other people, and we are all very forward to observe how each of these affects us. But we soon learn that other people are equally frank with regard to our own. We become anxious to know how far we deserve their censure or applause, and whether to them we must necessarily appear those agreeable or disagreeable creatures which they represent us. We begin, upon this account, to examine our own passions and conduct, and to consider how these must appear to them by considering how they would appear to us if in their situation. We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us.
This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct. If in this view it pleases us, we are tolerably satisfied. We can be more indifferent about the applause, and in some measure, despise the censure of the world, secure that, however misunderstood or misrepresented, we are the natural and proper objects of approbation. On the contrary, if we are doubtful about it, we are often, upon that very account, more anxious to gain their approbation, and, provided we have not already, as they say, shaken hands with infamy, we are altogether distracted at the thoughts of their censure, which then strikes us with double severity.
When I endeavor to examine my own conduct, when I endeavor to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons, and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of. The first is the spectator, whose sentiments with regard to my own conduct I endeavor to enter into, by placing myself in his situation, and by considering how it would appear to me when seen from that particular point of view. The second is the agent, the person whom I properly call myself, and of whose conduct, under the character of a spectator, I was endeavoring to form some opinion.
The first is the judge, the second the person judged of. But that the judge should, in every respect, be the same with the person judged of is as impossible as that the cause should, in every respect, be the same with the effect. To be amiable and to be meritorious, that is, to deserve love and to deserve reward, are the great characters of virtue, and to be odious and punishable of vice. But all these characters have an immediate reference to the sentiments of others. Virtue is not said to be amiable, or to be meritorious, because it is the object of its own love, or of its own gratitude, but because it excites those sentiments in other men. The consciousness that it is the object of such favorable regards is the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction with which it is naturally attended, as the suspicion of the contrary gives occasion to the torments of vice.
What so great happiness is to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery is to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
Chapter Two. Of the Love of Praise, and of that of Praiseworthiness, and of the Dread of Blame, and of that of Blameworthiness. Man naturally desires not only to be loved, But to be lovely, or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. He naturally dreads not only to be hated, but to be hateful, or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of hatred. He desires not only praise, but praiseworthiness, or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise. He dreads not only blame, but blameworthiness, or to be that thing which, though it should be blamed by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of blame.
The love of praiseworthiness is by no means derived altogether from the love of praise. Those two principles, though they resemble one another, though they are connected and often blended with one another, are yet in many respects distinct and independent of one another. The love and admiration which we naturally conceive for those whose character and conduct we approve of necessarily dispose us to desire to become ourselves the objects of the like agreeable sentiments, and to be as amiable and as admirable as those whom we love and admire the most. Emulation, the anxious desire that we ourselves should excel, is originally founded in our admiration of the excellence of others. Neither can we be satisfied with being merely admired for what other people are admired.
We must at least believe ourselves to be admirable for what they are admirable. But in order to attain this satisfaction, we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct. We must endeavor to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. When seen in this light, if they appear to us as we wish, we are happy and contented. But it greatly confirms this happiness and contentment when we find that other people, viewing them with those very eyes with which we, in imagination only, were endeavoring to view them, see them precisely in the same light in which we ourselves had seen them. Their approbation necessarily confirms our own self-approbation.
Their praise necessarily strengthens our own sense of our own praiseworthiness. In this case, so far is the love of praiseworthiness from being derived altogether from that of praise, that the love of praise seems, at least in a great measure, to be derived from that of praiseworthiness. The most sincere praise can give little pleasure when it cannot be considered as some sort of proof of praiseworthiness. It is by no means sufficient that, from ignorance or mistake, esteem and admiration should, in some way or other, be bestowed upon us. If we are conscious that we do not deserve to be so favorably thought of, and that if the truth were known, we should be regarded with very different sentiments, our satisfaction is far from being complete.
The man who applauds us either for actions which we did not perform or for motives which had no sort of influence upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another person. We can derive no sort of satisfaction from his praises. To us they should be more mortifying than any censure, and should perpetually call to our minds the most humbling of all reflections, the reflection of what we ought to be, but what we are not. A woman who paints could derive, one should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to her complexion. These, we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of the sentiments which her real complexion would excite, and mortify her the more by the contrast. To be pleased with such groundless applause is a proof of the most superficial levity and weakness.
It is what is properly called vanity. It is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying, follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from. The foolish liar, who endeavors to excite the admiration of the company by the relation of adventures which never had any existence, the important coxcomb, who gives himself airs of rank and distinction which he well knows he has no just pretensions to, are both of them, no doubt, pleased with the applause which they fancy they meet with. But their vanity arises from so gross an illusion of the imagination that it is difficult to conceive how any rational creature should be imposed upon by it.
When they place themselves in the situation of those whom they fancy they have deceived, they are struck with the highest admiration for their own persons. They look upon themselves not in that light in which they know they ought to appear to their companions, but in that in which they believe their companions actually look upon them. Their superficial weakness and trivial folly hindered them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own consciences must tell them that they would appear to everybody if the real truth should ever come to be known. As ignorant and groundless praise can give no solid joy, no satisfaction that will bear any serious examination, So, on the contrary, it often gives real comfort to reflect that though no praise should actually be bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has been such as to deserve it, and has been in every respect suitable to those measures and rules by which praise and approbation are naturally and commonly bestowed.
We are pleased not only with praise, but with having done what is praiseworthy. We are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation should ever actually be bestowed upon us, and we are mortified to reflect that we have justly merited the blame of those we live with, though that sentiment should never actually be exerted against us. The man who is conscious to himself that he has exactly observed those measures of conduct which experience informs him are generally agreeable, reflects with satisfaction on the propriety of his own behavior. When he views it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he thoroughly enters into all the motives which influenced it.
He looks back upon every part of it with pleasure and approbation, and though mankind should never be acquainted with what he has done, he regards himself not so much according to the light in which they actually regard him, as according to that in which they would regard him If they were better informed. He anticipates the applause and admiration which in this case would be bestowed upon him, and he applauds and admires himself by sympathy with sentiments which do not indeed actually take place, but which the ignorance of the public alone hinders from taking place, which he knows are the natural and ordinary effects of such conduct, which his imagination strongly connects with it, and which he has acquired a habit of conceiving as something that naturally and impropriety ought to follow from it.
Men have voluntarily thrown away life to acquire, after death, a renown which they could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in the meantime, anticipated that fame which was in future times to be bestowed upon them. Those applauses which they were never to hear rung in their ears, the thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they were never to feel, Played about their hearts, banished from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears, and transported them to perform actions which seem almost beyond the reach of human nature. But in point of reality, there is surely no great difference between that approbation which is not to be bestowed till we can no longer enjoy it, and that which, indeed, is never to be bestowed, but which would be bestowed if the world was ever made to understand properly the real circumstances of our behavior.
If the one often produces such violin effects, we cannot wonder that the other should always be highly regarded. Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favorable, and pain in their unfavorable, regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake, and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive. But this desire of the approbation, and this aversion to the disapprobation of his brethren, would not alone have rendered him fit for that society for which he was made. Nature, accordingly, has endowed him not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of, or of being what he himself approves of in other men.
The first desire could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society. The second was necessary in order to render him anxious to be really fit. The first could only have prompted him to the affectation of virtue and to the concealment of vice. The second was necessary in order to inspire him with the real love of virtue and with the real abhorrence of vice. In every well-formed mind, this second desire seems to be the strongest of the two. It is only the weakest and most superficial of mankind who can be much delighted with that praise which they themselves know to be altogether unmerited. A weak man may sometimes be pleased with it, but a wise man rejects it upon all occasions. But though a wise man feels little pleasure from praise where he knows there is no praiseworthiness, he often feels the highest in doing what he knows to be praiseworthy, though he knows equally well that no praise is ever to be bestowed upon it.
To obtain the approbation of mankind, where no approbation is due, can never be an object of any real importance to him. To obtain that approbation where it is really due may sometimes be an object of no great importance to him. But to be that thing which desires approbation must always be an object of the highest. To desire, or even to accept of praise, where no praise is due, can be the effect only of the most contemptible vanity. To desire it where it is really due is to desire no more than that a most essential act of justice should be done to us. The love of just fame, of true glory, even for its own sake, and independent of any advantage which he can derive from it, is not unworthy even of a wise man.
He sometimes, however, neglects and even despises it, and he is never more apt to do so than when he has the most perfect assurance of the perfect propriety of every part of his own conduct. His self-approbation, in this case, stands in need of no confirmation from the approbation of other men. It is alone sufficient, and he is contented with it. This self-approbation, if not the only, is at least the principal object about which he can or ought to be anxious. The love of it is the love of virtue. As the love and admiration which we naturally conceive for some characters dispose us to wish to become ourselves the proper objects of such agreeable sentiments, so the hatred and contempt which we as naturally conceive for others dispose us, perhaps still more strongly, to dread the very thought of resembling them in any respect.
Neither is it in this case, too, so much the thought of being hated and despicable that we are afraid of as that of being hateful and despicable. We dread the thought of doing anything which can render us the just and proper objects of the hatred and contempt of our fellow-creatures, even though we had the most perfect security that those sentiments were never actually to be exerted against us. The man who has broke through all those measures of conduct which can alone render him agreeable to mankind, though he should have the most perfect assurance that what he had done was forever to be concealed from every human eye, It is all to no purpose. When he looks back upon it, and views it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, He finds that he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it.
He is abashed and confounded at the thoughts of it, and necessarily feels a very high degree of that shame which he would be exposed to if his actions should ever come to be generally known. His imagination, in this case, too, anticipates the contempt and derision from which nothing saves him but the ignorance of those he lives with. He still feels that he is the natural object of these sentiments, and still trembles at the thought of what he would suffer. If they were ever actually exerted against him. But if what he had been guilty of was not merely one of those improprieties, which are the objects of simple disapprobation, but one of those enormous crimes which excite detestation and resentment, he could never think of it, as long as he had any sensibility left, without feeling all the agony of horror and remorse.
And though he could be assured that no man was ever to know it, and could even bring himself to believe that there was no god to revenge it, He would still feel enough of both these sentiments to embitter the whole of his life. He would still regard himself as the natural object of the hatred and indignation of all his fellow-creatures, and, if his heart was not grown callous by the habit of crimes, he could not think without terror and astonishment even of the manner in which mankind would look upon him, of what would be the expression of their countenance and of their eyes if the dreadful truth should ever come to be known. These natural pangs of an affrighted conscience are the demons, the avenging furies, which in this life haunt the guilty, which allow them neither quiet nor repose, which often drive them to despair and distraction, from which no assurance of secrecy can protect them, from which no principles of irreligion can entirely deliver them, and from which nothing can free them but the vilest and most abject of all states—a complete insensibility to honor and infamy.
to vice and virtue. Men of the most detestable characters who, in the execution of the most dreadful crimes, had taken their measures so coolly as to avoid even the suspicion of guilt, have sometimes been driven, by the horror of their situation, to discover of their own accord what no human sagacity could ever have investigated. By acknowledging their guilt, by submitting themselves to the resentment of their offended fellow-citizens, and by thus satiating that vengeance of which they were sensible that they had become the proper objects, they hoped, by their death, to reconcile themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural sentiments of mankind, to be able to consider themselves as less worthy of hatred and resentment, to atone in some measure for their crimes, and by thus becoming the objects Rather of compassion than of horror, if possible, to die in peace and with the forgiveness of all their fellow-creatures.
Compared to what they felt before the discovery, even the thought of this, it seems, was happiness. In such cases, the horror of blameworthiness seems, even in persons who cannot be suspected of any extraordinary delicacy or sensibility of character, completely to conquer the dread of blame. In order to allay that horror, in order to pacify in some degree the remorse of their own consciences, they voluntarily submitted themselves both to the reproach and to the punishment which they knew were due to their crimes, but which, at the same time, they might easily have avoided. They are the most frivolous and superficial of mankind only who can be much delighted with that praise which they themselves know to be altogether unmerited.
Unmerited reproach, however, is frequently capable of mortifying very severely even men of more than ordinary constancy. Men of the most ordinary constancy indeed easily learn to despise those foolish tales which are so frequently circulated in society, and which, from their own absurdity and falsehood, never fail to die away in the course of a few weeks, or of a few days. But an innocent man, though of more than ordinary constancy, is often not only shocked, but most severely mortified by the serious, though false, imputation of a crime, especially when that imputation happens, unfortunately, to be supported by some circumstances which give it an air of probability. He is humble to find that anybody should think so meanly of his character as to suppose him capable of being guilty of it.
Though perfectly conscious of his own innocence, the very imputation seems often, even in his own imagination, to throw a shadow of disgrace and dishonor upon his character. His just indignation, too, as so very gross an injury, which, however it may frequently be improper, and sometimes even impossible to revenge, is itself a very painful sensation. There is no greater tormentor of the human breast than violent resentment which cannot be gratified. An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune which it is possible for innocents to suffer. The agony of his mind may, in this case, frequently be greater than that of those who suffer for the like crimes of which they have been actually guilty.
Profligate criminals, such as common thieves and highwaymen, have frequently little sense of the baseness of their own conduct, and consequently no remorse. Without troubling themselves about the justice or injustice of the punishment, they have always been accustomed to look upon the gibbet as a lot very likely to fall to them. When it does fall to them, therefore, they consider themselves only as not quite so lucky as some of their companions, and submit to their fortune without any other uneasiness than what may arise from the fear of death, a fear which, even by such worthless wretches, we frequently see, can be so easily and so very completely conquered. The innocent man, on the contrary, over and above the uneasiness which this fear may occasion, is tormented by his own indignation at the injustice which has been done to him.
He is struck with horror at the thoughts of the infamy, which the punishment may shed upon his memory, and foresees with the most exquisite anguish that he is hereafter to be remembered by his dearest friends and relations not with regret and affection, but with shame, and even with horror for his supposed disgraceful conduct, and the shades of death appear to close round him with a darker and more melancholy gloom than naturally belongs to them. Such fatal accidents. For the tranquillity of mankind, it is to be hoped, happen very rarely in any country. But they happen sometimes, in all countries, even in those where justice is in general very well administered. The unfortunate Calasse, a man of much more than ordinary constancy, broke upon the wheel and burnt at the loose for the supposed murder of his own son, of which he was perfectly innocent, seemed with his last breath to deprecate not so much the cruelty of the punishment as the disgrace which the imputation might bring upon his memory.
After he had been broke, and was just going to be thrown into the fire, the monk who attended the execution exhorted him to confess the crime for which he had been condemned. "'My father,' said Kallas, "'can you yourself bring yourself to believe that I am guilty?' To persons in such unfortunate circumstances, that humble philosophy which confines its views to this life can afford perhaps but little consolation. Everything that could render either life or death respectable is taken from them. They are condemned to death and to everlasting infamy. Religion can alone afford them any effectual comfort. She alone can tell them That it is of little importance what man may think of their conduct, while the all-seeing judge of the world approves of it.
She alone can present to them the view of another world, a view of more candor, humanity, and justice than the present, where their innocence is in due time to be declared, and their virtue to be finally rewarded, and the same great principle which can alone strike terror into triumphant vice, affords the only effectual consolation to disgraced and insulted innocence.
In smaller offenses, as well as in greater crimes, it frequently happens that a person of sensibility is much more hurt by the unjust imputation than the real criminal is by the actual guilt. A woman of gallantry laughs even at the well-founded surmises which are circulated concerning her conduct. The worst-founded surmise of the same kind is a mortal stab to an innocent virgin. The person who is deliberately guilty of a disgraceful action, we may lay it down, I believe, as general rule, can seldom have much sense of the disgrace, and the person who is habitually guilty of it can scarce ever have any.
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III.
CHAPTER II.
When every man, even of middling understanding, so readily despises unmerited applause, how it comes to pass that unmerited reproach should often be capable of mortifying so severely men of the soundest and best judgment may, perhaps, deserve some consideration. Pain, I have already had occasion to observe, is, in almost all cases, a more pungent sensation than the opposite and correspondent pleasure. The one almost always depresses us much more below the ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of our happiness, than the other ever raises us above it. A man of sensibility is apt to be more humiliated by just censure than he is ever elevated by just applause. Unmerited applause a wise man rejects with contempt upon all occasions, but he often feels very severely the injustice of unmerited censure.
By suffering himself to be applauded for what he has not performed, by assuming a merit which does not belong to him, he feels that he is guilty of a mean falsehood, and deserves not the admiration, but the contempt of those very persons who, by mistake, had been led to admire him. It may, perhaps, give him some well-founded pleasure to find that he has been, by many people, thought capable of performing what he did not perform. But though he may be obliged to his friends for their good opinion, he would think himself guilty of the greatest baseness if he did not immediately undeceive them. It gives him little pleasure to look upon himself in the light in which other people actually look upon him, when he is conscious that, if they knew the truth, they would look upon him in a very different light.
A weak man, however, is often much delighted with viewing himself in this false and delusive light. He assumes the merit of every laudable action that is ascribed to him, and pretends to that of many which nobody ever thought of ascribing to him. He pretends to have done what he never did, to have written what another wrote, to have invented what another discovered, and is led into all the miserable vices of plagiarism and common lying. But though no man of middling good sense can derive much pleasure from the imputation of a laudable action which he never performed, yet a wise man may suffer great pain from the serious imputation of a crime which he never committed. Nature, in this case, has rendered the pain not only more pungent than the opposite in correspondent pleasure, but she has rendered it so in a much greater than the ordinary degree.
A denial rids the man at once of the foolish and ridiculous pleasure, but it will not always rid him of the pain. When he refuses the merit which is ascribed to him, nobody doubts his veracity. It may be doubted when he denies the crime which he is accused of. He is at once enraged at the falsehood of the imputation, and mortified to find that any credit should be given to it. He feels that his character is not sufficient to protect him. He feels that his brethren, far from looking upon him in that light in which he anxiously desires to be viewed by them, think him capable of being guilty of what he is accused of. He knows perfectly that he has not been guilty. He knows perfectly what he has done, but perhaps scarce any man can know perfectly what he himself is capable of doing.
What the peculiar constitution of his own mind may or may not admit of is perhaps more or less a matter of doubt to every man. The trust and good opinion of his friends and neighbors tends more than anything to relieve him from this most disagreeable doubt, their distrust and unfavorable opinion, to increase it. He may think himself very confident that their unfavorable judgment is wrong, but this confidence can seldom be so great as to hinder that judgment from making some impression upon him, and the greater his sensibility, the greater his delicacy, the greater his worth, in short, this impression is likely to be the greater. The agreement or disagreement, both of the sentiments and judgments of other people with our own, is in all cases, it must be observed, of more or less importance to us, exactly in proportion as we ourselves are more or less uncertain about the propriety of our own sentiments, about the accuracy of our own judgments.
A man of sensibility may sometimes feel great uneasiness, lest he should have yielded too much even to what may be called an honorable passion, to his just indignation, perhaps, at the injury which may have been done either to himself or to his friend. He is anxiously afraid lest, meaning only to act with spirit and to do justice, he may, from the too great vehemence of his emotion, have done a real injury to some other person, who, though not innocent, may not have been altogether so guilty as he at first apprehended. The opinion of other people becomes, in this case, of the utmost importance to him. Their approbation is the most healing balsam, their disapprobation the bitterest and most tormenting poison that can be poured into his uneasy mind.
When he is perfectly satisfied with every part of his own conduct, the judgment of other people is often of less importance to him. There are some very noble and beautiful arts in which the degree of excellence can be determined only by a certain nicety of taste, of which the decisions, however, appear always, in some measure, uncertain. There are others in which the success admits either of clear demonstration or very satisfactory proof. Among the candidates for excellence in those different arts, the anxiety about the public opinion is always much greater in the former than in the latter. The beauty of poetry is a matter of such nicety that a young beginner can scarce ever be certain that he has attained it.
Nothing delights him so much, therefore, as the favorable judgments of his friends and of the public, and nothing mortifies him so severely as the contrary. The one establishes, the other shakes, the good opinion which he is anxious to entertain concerning his own performances. Experience and success may in time give him a little more confidence in his own judgment. He is at all times, however, liable to be most severely mortified by the unfavorable judgments of the public. Racine was so disgusted by the indifferent success of his Phaedra, the finest tragedy, perhaps, that is extant in any language, that, though in the vigor of his life and at the height of his abilities, he resolved to write no more for this stage.
That great poet used frequently to tell his son that the most paltry and impertinent criticism had always given him more pain than the highest and just as eulogy had ever given him pleasure. The extreme sensibility of Voltaire to the slightest censure of the same kind is well known to everybody. The donciate of Mr. Pope is an everlasting monument of how much the most correct, as well as the most elegant and harmonious of all the English poets had been hurt by the criticisms of the lowest and most contemptible authors. Gray, who joins to the sublimity of Milton the elegance and harmony of Pope, and to whom nothing is wanting to render him perhaps the first poet in the English language but to have written a little more, is said to have been so much hurt by a foolish and impertinent parody of two of his finest odes that he never afterwards attempted any considerable work.
Those men of letters who value themselves upon what is called fine writing and prose approach somewhat to the sensibility of poets. Mathematicians, on the contrary, who may have the most perfect assurance both of the truth and of the importance of their discoveries, are frequently very indifferent about the reception which they may meet with from the public. The two greatest mathematicians that I have ever had the honor to be known to, and, I believe, the two greatest that have lived in my time, Dr. Robert Simpson of Glasgow and Dr. Matthew Stewart of Edinburgh, never seem to feel even the slightest uneasiness from the neglect with which the ignorance of the public received some of their most valuable works.
The great work of Sir Isaac Newton, his mathematical principles of natural philosophy, I have been told, was for several years neglected by the public. The tranquillity of that great man, it is probable, never suffered upon that account the interruption of a single quarter of an hour. Natural philosophers, in their independency upon the public opinion, approach nearly to mathematicians, and in their judgments concerning the merit of their own discoveries and observations enjoy some degree of the same security and tranquillity. The morals of those different classes of men of letters are, perhaps, sometimes somewhat affected by this very great difference in their situation with regard to the public.
Mathematicians and natural philosophers, from their independency upon the public opinion, have little temptation to form themselves into factions and cabals, either for the support of their own reputation or for the depression of that of their rivals. They are almost always men of the most amiable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony with one another, are the friends of one another's reputation, enter into no intrigue in order to secure the public applause, but are pleased when their works are approved of, without being either much vexed or very angry when they are neglected. It is not always the same case with poets, or with those who value themselves upon what is called fine writing.
They are very apt to divide themselves into a sort of literary faction, each cabal being often avowedly and almost always secretly the mortal enemy of the reputation of every other, and employing all the mean arts of intrigue and solicitation to preoccupy the public opinion in favor of the works of its own members, and against those of its enemies and rivals. In France, Despriots and Racine did not think it below them to set themselves at the head of a literary cabal in order to depress the reputation first of Quineau and Perrault, and afterwards of Fontenelle and Lamotte, and even Addison did not think it unworthy of his gentle and modest character to set himself at the head of a little cabal of the same kind in order to keep down the rising reputation of Mr.
Pope. Mr. Fontenelle, in writing the lives and characters of the members of the Academy of Sciences, a society of mathematicians and natural philosophers, has frequent opportunities of celebrating the amiable simplicity of their manners, a quality which, he observes, was so universal among them as to be characteristical, rather of that whole class of men of letters than of any individual Mr. de Lambert, In writing the lives and characters of the members of the French Academy, a society of poets and fine writers, or of those who were supposed to be such, seems not to have had such frequent opportunities of making any remark of this kind, and nowhere pretends to represent this amiable quality as characteristic of that class of men of letters whom he celebrates.
Our uncertainty concerning our own merit, and our anxiety to think favorably of it, Should together, naturally enough, make us desirous to know the opinion of other people concerning it, to be more than ordinarily elevated when that opinion is favorable, and to be more than ordinarily mortified when it is otherwise. But they should not make us desirous either of obtaining the favorable, or of avoiding the unfavorable opinion by intrigue and cabal. When a man has bribed all the judges, the most unanimous decision of the court, though it may gain him his lawsuit, cannot give him any assurance that he was in the right. And had he carried on his lawsuit merely to satisfy himself that he was in the right, he never would have bribed the judges.
But though he wished to find himself in the right, he wished likewise to gain his lawsuit, and therefore he bribed the judges. If praise were of no consequence to us but as a proof of our own praiseworthiness, We should never endeavor to obtain it by unfair means. But though to wise men it is, at least in doubtful cases, of principal consequence upon this account, it is likewise of some consequence upon its own account, and therefore we cannot indeed upon such occasions call them wise men, but men very much above the common level have sometimes attempted both to obtain praise and to avoid blame by very unfair means. Praise and blame express what actually are praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, what naturally ought to be the sentiments of other people with regard to our character and conduct.
The love of praise is the desire of obtaining the favorable sentiments of our brethren. The love of praiseworthiness is the desire of rendering ourselves the proper objects of those sentiments. So far, those two principles resemble and are akin to one another. The like affinity and resemblance take place between the dread of blame and that of blameworthiness. The man who desires to do, or who actually does, a praiseworthy action, may likewise desire the praise which is due to it, and sometimes perhaps more than is due to it. The two principles are in this case blended together. How far his conduct may have been influenced by the one, and how far by the other, may frequently be unknown even to himself.
It must almost always be so to other people. They who are disposed to lessen the merit of his conduct impute it chiefly or altogether to the mere love of praise, or to what they call mere vanity. They who are disposed to think more favorably of it, impute it chiefly or altogether to the love of praiseworthiness, to the love of what is really honorable and noble in human conduct, to the desire not merely of obtaining, but of deserving, the approbation and applause of his brethren. The imagination of the spectator throws it either the one color or the other, according either to his habits or thinking, or to the favor or dislike which he may bear to the person whose conduct he is considering. Some splenitic philosophers, in judging of human nature, have done as peevish individuals are apt to do in judging of the conduct of one another, and have imputed to the love of praise, or to what they call vanity, every action which ought to be ascribed to that of praiseworthiness.
I shall hereafter have occasion to give an account of some of their systems, and shall not at present stop to examine them. Very few men can be satisfied with their own private consciousness that they have attained those qualities or performed those actions which they admire and think praiseworthy in other people, unless it is, at the same time, generally acknowledged that they possess the one or have performed the other, or, in other words, unless they have actually obtained that praise which they think due both to the one and to the other. In this respect, however, men differ considerably from one another. Some may seem indifferent about the praise when, in their own minds, they are perfectly satisfied that they have attained the praiseworthiness.
Others appear much less anxious about the praiseworthiness than about the praise. No man can be completely, or even tolerably satisfied, with having avoided everything blameworthy in his conduct, unless he has likewise avoided the blame or the reproach. A wise man may frequently neglect praise, even when he has best deserved it, but in all matters of serious consequence he will most carefully endeavor so to regulate his conduct as to avoid, not only blameworthiness, but as much as possible, every probable imputation of blame. He will never, indeed, avoid blame by doing anything which he judges blameworthy, by omitting any part of his duty, or by neglecting any opportunity of doing anything which he judges to be really and greatly praiseworthy.
But with these modifications he will most anxiously and carefully avoid it. To show much anxiety about praise, even for praiseworthy actions, is seldom a mark of great wisdom, but generally of some degree of weakness. But, in being anxious to avoid the shadow of blame or reproach, there may be no weakness, but frequently the most praiseworthy prudence. Many people, says Cicero, despise glory who are yet most severely mortified by unjust reproach, and that most inconsistently. This inconsistency, however, seems to be founded in the unalterable principles of human nature. The all-wise author of Nature has, in this manner, taught man to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren, to be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct, and to be more or less hurt when they disapprove of it.
He has made man, if I may say so, the immediate judge of mankind, and has in this respect, as in many others, created him after his own image, and appointed him his vicegerent upon earth, to superintend the behavior of his brethren. They are taught by nature to acknowledge that power and jurisdiction which has thus been conferred upon him, to be more or less humbled and mortified when they have incurred his censure, and to be more or less elated when they have obtained his applause. But though man has in this manner been rendered the immediate judge of mankind, he has been rendered so only in the first instance, and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, To that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, to that of the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct.
The jurisdictions of those two tribunals are founded upon principles which, though in some respects resembling and akin, are, however, in reality different and distinct. The jurisdiction of the man without is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise, and in the aversion to actual blame. The jurisdiction of the man within is founded altogether in the desire of praiseworthiness, and in the aversion to blameworthiness, in the desire of possessing those qualities and performing those actions which we love and admire in other people, and in the dread of possessing those qualities and performing those actions which we hate and despise in other people. If the man without should applaud us, either for actions which we have not performed, or for motives which had no influence upon us, the man within can immediately humble that pride and elevation of mind which such groundless acclamations might otherwise occasion by telling us that as we know that we do not deserve them, we render ourselves despicable by accepting them.
If, on the contrary, the man without should reproach us, either for actions which we never performed, or for motives which had no influence upon those which we may have performed, the man within may immediately correct this false judgment, and assure us that we are by no means the proper objects of that censure which has been so unjustly bestowed upon us. But in this and in some other cases, the man within seemed sometimes, as it were, astonished and confounded by the vehemence and clamour of the man without. The violence and loudness, with which blame is sometimes poured out upon us, seems to stupefy and benumb our natural sense of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. And the judgments of the man within, though not perhaps absolutely altered or perverted, are, however, so much shaken in the steadiness and firmness of their decision that their natural effect, in securing the tranquillity of the mind, is frequently, in a great measure, destroyed.
We scarce dare to absolve ourselves when all our brethren appear loudly to condemn us. The supposed impartial spectator of our conduct seems to give his opinion in our favor with fear and hesitation, when that of all the real spectators, when that of all those with whose eyes and from whose station he endeavors to consider it, is unanimously and violently against us. In such cases, this demigod within the breast appears, like the demigods of the poets, though partly of immortal, yet partly too of mortal extraction. When his judgments are steadily and firmly directed by the sense of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, he seems to act suitably to his divine extraction. But when he suffers himself to be astonished and confounded by the judgments of ignorant and weak man, he discovers his connection with mortality, and appears to act suitably rather to the human than to the divine part of his origin.
In such cases, the only effectual consolation of humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still higher tribunal, to that of the all-seeing judge of the world, whose eye can never be deceived, and whose judgments can never be perverted. A firm confidence in the unerring rectitude of this great tribunal, before which his innocence is in due time to be declared, and his virtue to be finally rewarded, can alone support him under the weakness and despondency of his own mind, under the perturbation and astonishment of the man within the breast, whom nature has set up as, in this life, the great guardian not only of his innocence, but of his tranquillity. Our happiness in this life is thus, upon many occasions, dependent upon the humble hope and expectation of a life to come.
A hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature, which can alone support its lofty ideas of its own dignity, can alone illumine the dreary prospect of its continually approaching mortality, and maintain its cheerfulness under all the heaviest calamities to which, from the disorders of this life, it may sometimes be exposed. That there is a world to come, where exact justice will be done to every man, where every man will be ranked with those who, in the moral and intellectual qualities, are really his equals, Where the owner of those humble talents and virtues which, from being depressed by fortune, had in this life no opportunity of displaying themselves, which were unknown, not only to the public, but which he himself could scarce be sure that he possessed, and for which even the man within the breast could scarce venture to afford him any distinct and clear testimony, where that modest, silent, and unknown merit will be placed upon a level, and sometimes above those who, in this world, had enjoyed the highest reputation, and who, from the advantage of their situation, had been enabled to perform the most splendid and dazzling actions, is a doctrine in every respect so venerable So comfortable to the weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human nature, that the virtuous man who has the misfortune to doubt of it cannot possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to believe it.
It could never have been exposed to the derision of the scoffer had not the distribution of rewards and punishments which some of its most zealous assertors have taught us was to be made in that world to come been too frequently in direct opposition to all our moral sentiments. That the assiduous courtier is often more favored than the faithful and active servant, that attendance and adulation are often shorter and surer roads to preferment than merit or service, and that a campaign at Versailles or St. James is often worth two, either in Germany or Flanders, is a complaint which we have all heard from many a venerable but discontented old officer. But what is considered as the greatest reproach, even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns, has been ascribed, as an act of justice, to divine perfection, and the duties of devotion, the public and private worship of the deity, have been represented, even by men of virtue and abilities, as the sole virtues which can either be entitled to reward or exempt from punishment in the life to come.
They were the virtues perhaps most suitable to their station, and in which they themselves chiefly excelled, and we are all naturally disposed to overrate the excellencies of our own characters. In the discourse which the eloquent and philosophical Massillon pronounced on giving his benediction to the standards of the regiment at Catanat, there is the following address to the officers. What is most deplorable in your situation, gentlemen, is that in a life hard and painful, in which the services and the duties sometimes go beyond the rigor and severity of the most austere cloisters, you suffer always in vain for the life to come, and frequently even for this life. Alas, the solitary monk in his cell, obliged to mortify the flesh and to subject it to the spirit, is supported by the hope of an assured recompense, and by the secret unction of that grace which softens the yoke of the Lord.
But you, on the bed of death, can you dare to represent to him your fatigues and the daily hardships of your employment? Can you dare to solicit him for any recompense? And in all the exertions that you have made, in all the violences that you have done to yourselves, what is there that he ought to place to your own account? The best days of your life, however, have been sacrificed to your profession, and ten years' service has more worn out your body than would, perhaps, have done a whole life of repentance and mortification. Alas, my brother, one single day of those sufferings, consecrated by the Lord, would perhaps have obtained you in eternal happiness. One single action, painful to nature and offered up to him, would perhaps have secured to you the inheritance of the saints.
And you have done all this, and in vain, for this world. To compare, in this manner, the futile mortifications of a monastery to the ennobling hardships and hazards of war, to suppose that one day or one hour employed in the former should, in the eye of the great judge of the world, have more merit than a whole life spent honorably in the latter, is surely contrary to all our moral sentiments, to all the principles by which nature has taught us to regulate our contempt or admiration. It is this spirit, however, which, while it has reserved the celestial regions for monks and friars, or for those whose conduct and conversation resembled those of monks and friars, has condemned to the infernal all the heroes, all the statesmen and lawgivers, All the poets and philosophers of former ages, all those who have invented, improved, or excelled in the arts which contribute to the subsistence, to the conveniency, or to the ornament of human life, all the great protectors, instructors, and benefactors of mankind, all those to whom our natural sense of praiseworthiness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and most exalted virtue.
Can we wonder that so strange an application of this most respectable doctrine should sometimes have exposed it to contempt and derision with those at least who had themselves, perhaps, no great taste or turn for the devout and contemplative virtues?
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Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty, Consisting of One Section. Chapter Three. Of the Influences and Authority of Conscience. But though the approbation of his own conscience can scarce, upon some extraordinary occasions, content the weakness of man, Though the testimony of the supposed impartial spectator, of the great inmate of the breast, cannot always alone support him, yet the influence and authority of this principle is upon all occasions very great. And it is only by consulting this judge within that we can ever see what relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions, or that we can ever make any proper comparison Between our own interests and those of other people.
As to the eye of the body, objects appear great or small not so much according to their real dimensions as according to the nearness or distance of their situation. So do they likewise to what may be called the natural eye of the mind. And we remedy the defects of both these organs pretty much in the same manner. In my present situation, An immense landscape of lawns and woods and distant mountains seems to do no more than cover the little window which I ride by, and to be out of all proportion less than the chamber in which I am sitting. I can form a just comparison between those great objects and the little objects around me, in no other way than by transporting myself, at least in fancy, to a different station, From whence I can survey both at nearly equal distances, and thereby form some judgment of their real proportions.
Habit and experience have taught me to do this so easily and so readily that I am scarce sensible that I do it. And a man must be in some measure acquainted with the philosophy of vision before he can be thoroughly convinced how little those distant objects would appear to the eye, If the imagination, from a knowledge of their real magnitudes, did not swell and dilate them.
In the same manner, to the selfish and original passions of human nature, the loss or gain of a very small interest of our own appears to be of vastly more importance, excites a much more passionate joy or sorrow, a much more ardent desire or aversion. than the greatest concern of another with whom we have no particular connection. His interests, as long as they are surveyed from this station, can never be put into the balance with our own, can never restrain us from doing whatever may tend to promote our own. How ruinous soever to him! Before we can make any proper comparison of those opposite interests, we must change our position. We must view them neither from our own place nor yet from his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the place and with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connection with either, and who judges with impartiality between us.
Here, too, habit and experience have taught us to do this so easily and so readily that we are scarce sensible that we do it. And it requires, in this case too, some degree of reflection, and even of philosophy, to convince us how little interest we should take in the greatest concerns of our neighbor, how little we should be affected by whatever relates to him, if the sense of propriety and justice did not correct the otherwise natural inequality of our sentiments.
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake. And let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people. He would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labors of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would, too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general.
And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, He would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night, but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, And the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them?
Human nature startles with horror at the thought. And the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves than by whatever concerns other men, What is it which prompts the generous upon all occasions and the mean upon many to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity. It is not that feeble spirit of benevolence which nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love.
It is a stronger power. A more forcible motive which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he, who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect Better than any other in it, and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and a natural misrepresentation of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator.
It is he who shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice, the propriety of resigning the greatest interests of our own for the yet greater interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbor, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, A more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions. The love of what is honorable and noble, of the grandeur and dignity and superiority of our own characters. When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many.
The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much, and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren. Neither is this sentiment confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed upon every tolerably good soldier, who feels that he would become the scorn of his companions if he could be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating, either to expose or to throw away his life when the good of the service required it.
One individual must never prefer himself so much even to any other individual as to hurt or injure that other, in order to benefit himself, though the benefit to the one should be much greater than the hurt or injury to the other. The poor man must neither defraud nor steal from the rich, Though the acquisition might be much more beneficial to the one than the loss could be hurtful to the other. The man within immediately calls to him, in this case too, that he is no better than his neighbor, and that by this unjust preference he renders himself the proper object of the contempt and indignation of mankind. As well as of the punishment which that contempt and indignation must naturally dispose them to inflict, for having thus violated one of those sacred rules, upon the tolerable observation of which depend the whole security and peace of human society.
There is no commonly honest man who does not more dread the inward disgrace of such an action, the indelible stain which it would forever stamp upon his own mind. than the greatest external calamity, which without any fault of his own could possibly befall him. And who does not inwardly feel the truth of that great stoical maxim, that for one man to deprive another unjustly of anything, or unjustly to promote his own advantage by the loss or disadvantage of another, is more contrary to nature, than death, than poverty, than pain, than all the misfortunes which can affect him, either in his body or in his external circumstances.
When the happiness or misery of others, indeed in no respect, depends upon our conduct, when our interests are altogether separated and detached from theirs, so that there is neither connection nor competition between them, we do not always think it so necessary to restrain Either our natural and perhaps improper anxiety about our own affairs, or our natural and perhaps equally improper indifference about those of other men. The most vulgar education teaches us to act upon all important occasions with some sort of impartiality between ourselves and others, and even the ordinary commerce of the world is capable of adjusting our active principles to some degree of propriety. But it is the most artificial and refined education only, it has been said, which can correct the inequalities of our passive feelings, and we must, for this purpose, it has been pretended, have recourse to the severest as well as to the profoundest philosophy.
Two different sets of philosophers have attempted to teach us this hardest of all the lessons of morality. One set have labored to increase our sensibility to the interests of others, Another to diminish that to our own. The first would have us feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves. The second would have us feel for ourselves as we naturally feel for others. Both, perhaps, have carried their doctrines a good deal beyond the just standard of nature and propriety. The first are those whining and melancholy moralists who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness, While so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which does not think of the many wretches, that are at every instant laboring under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppression of their enemies.
Commiseration for those miseries which we never saw, which we never heard of, but which we may be assured are at all times infesting such numbers of our fellow-creatures, ought they think to damp the pleasures of the fortunate, and to render a certain melancholy dejection habitual to all men. But first of all, this extreme sympathy with misfortunes which we know nothing about seems altogether absurd and unreasonable. Take the whole earth, at an average, For one man who suffers pain or misery, you will find twenty in prosperity and joy, or at least in tolerable circumstances. No reason surely can be assigned why we should rather weep with the one than rejoice with the twenty. This artificial commiseration, besides, is not only absurd, but seems altogether unattainable, and those who affect this character have commonly nothing but a certain affected and sentimental sadness, which without reaching the heart serves only to render the countenance and conversation impertinently dismal and disagreeable.
And last of all, this disposition of mind, though it could be attained, would be perfectly useless, and could serve no other purpose than to render miserable the person who possessed it. Whatever interest we take in the fortune of those with whom we have no acquaintance or connection, and who are placed altogether out of the sphere of our activity, can produce only anxiety in ourselves without any manner of advantage to them. To what purpose should we trouble ourselves about the world and the moon? All men, even those at the greatest distance, are no doubt entitled to our good wishes. And our good wishes we naturally give them. But if notwithstanding they should be unfortunate, to give ourselves any anxiety upon that account seems to be no part of our duty.
That we should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are, in every respect, so very remote from us, seems wisely ordered by nature. And if it were possible to alter in this respect the original constitution of our frame, We could yet gain nothing by the change.
It has never objected to us that we have too little fellow-feeling with the joy of success. Wherever envy does not prevent it, the favor which we bear to prosperity is rather apt to be too great. And the same moralists who blame us for want of sufficient sympathy with the miserable Reproach us for the levity with which we are too apt to admire and almost to worship the fortunate, the powerful, and the rich. Among the moralists who endeavor to correct the natural inequality of our passive feelings by diminishing our sensibility to what peculiarly concerns ourselves, we may count all the ancient sects of philosophers, but particularly the ancient Stoics. Man, according to the Stoics, ought to regard himself not as something separated and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature.
To the interest of this great community he ought at all times to be willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed. Whatever concerns himself ought to affect him no more than whatever concerns any other equally important part of this immense system. We should view ourselves not in the light in which our own selfish passions are apt to place us, but in the light in which any other citizen of the world would view us.
What befalls ourselves we should regard as what befalls our neighbor, or what comes to the same thing as our neighbor regards what befalls us. When our neighbor, says Epictetus, loses his wife or his son, There is nobody who is not sensible that this is a human calamity, a natural event altogether according to the ordinary course of things. But when the same thing happens to ourselves, then we cry out as if we had suffered the most dreadful misfortune. We ought, however, to remember how we were affected when this accident happened to another, and such as we were in his case, such ought we to be in our own. Those private misfortunes For which our feelings are apt to go beyond the bounds of propriety are of two different kinds.
There are either such as affect us only indirectly, by affecting in the first place some other persons who are particularly dear to us, such as our parents, our children, our brothers and sisters, our intimate friends, or there are such as affect ourselves immediately and directly, either in our body, in our fortune, or in our reputation, such as pain, sickness, approaching death, poverty, disgrace, etc. In misfortunes of the first kind, our emotions may no doubt go very much beyond what exact propriety will admit of. But they may likewise fall short of it, and they frequently do so. The man who should feel no more for the death or distress of his own father or son than for those of any other man's father or son Would appear neither a good son nor a good father.
Such unnatural indifference, far from exciting our applause, would incur our highest disapprobation. Of those domestic affections, however, some are most apt to offend by their excess, and others by their defect. Nature, for the wisest purposes, has rendered in most men, perhaps in all men, parental tenderness a much stronger affection than filial piety. The continuance and propagation of the species depend altogether upon the former, and not upon the latter. In ordinary cases, the existence and preservation of the child depend altogether upon the care of the parents. Those of the parents seldom depend upon that of the child. Nature, therefore, has rendered the former affection so strong that it generally requires not to be excited but to be moderated.
And moralists seldom endeavor to teach us how to indulge, but generally how to restrain our fondness, our excessive attachment, the unjust preference which we are disposed to give to our own children above those of other people. They exhort us, on the contrary, to an affectionate attention to our parents, and to make a proper return to them in their old age for the kindness which they had shown to us in our infancy and youth. In the decalogue, we are commanded to honor our fathers and mothers. No mention is made of the love of our children. Nature had sufficiently prepared us for the performance of this latter duty. Men are seldom accused of affecting to be fonder of their children than they really are.
They have sometimes been suspected of displaying their piety to their parents with too much ostentation. The ostentatious sorrow of widows has, for a like reason, been suspected of insincerity. We should respect, could we believe it sincere, even the excess of such kind affections, and though we might not perfectly approve, we should not severely condemn it.
That it appears praiseworthy, at least in the eyes of those who affect it, the very affectation is a proof. Even the excess of those kind affections which are most apt to offend by their excess, though it may appear blamable, never appears odious. We blame the excessive fondness and anxiety of a parent as something which may, in the end, prove hurtful to the child, and which, in the meantime, is excessively inconvenient to the parent, but we easily pardon it, and never regard it with hatred and detestation. But the defect of this usually Excessive affection appears always peculiarly odious. The man who appears to feel nothing for his own children, but who treats them upon all occasions with unmerited severity and harshness, seems of all brutes the most detestable.
The sense of propriety, so far from requiring us to eradicate altogether that extraordinary sensibility which we naturally feel for the misfortunes of our nearest connections, is always much more offended by the defect than it ever is by the excess of that sensibility. The stoical apathy is in such cases never agreeable, and all the metaphysical sophisms by which it is supported can seldom serve any other purpose than to blow up the hardened sensibility of a coxcomb to ten times its native impertinence. The poets and romance writers who best paint the refinements and delicacies of love and friendship, and of all other private and domestic affections, Brassin and Voltaire, Richardson, Morivaux and Riccoboni, are in such cases much better instructors than Zeno, Chrysippus or Epictetus.
That moderated sensibility to the misfortunes of others, which does not disqualify us for the performance of any duty, The melancholy and affectionate remembrance of our departed friends, the pang, as Gray says, to secret sorrow dear, are by no means undelicious sensations. Though they outwardly wear the features of pain and grief, they are all inwardly stamped with the ennobling characters of virtue and self-approbation. It is otherwise in the misfortunes which affect ourselves immediately and directly. Either in our body, in our fortune, or in our reputation. The sense of propriety is much more apt to be offended by the excess than by the defect of our sensibility, and there are but very few cases in which we can approach too near to the stoical apathy and indifference.
That we have very little fellow-feeling with any of the passions which take their origin from the body has already been observed. That pain which is occasioned by an evident cause, such as the cutting or tearing of the flesh, is perhaps the affection of the body with which the spectator feels the most lively sympathy. The approaching death of his neighbor, too, seldom fails to affect him a good deal.
In both cases, however, he feels so very little in comparison of what the person principally concerned feels that the latter can scarce ever offend the former by appearing to suffer with too much ease.
The mere want of fortune, mere poverty, excites little compassion. Its complaints are too apt to be the objects rather of contempt than of fellow-feeling. We despise a beggar, and though his importunities may extort an alms from us, he is scarce ever the object of any serious commiseration. The fall from riches to poverty, as it commonly occasions the most real distress to the sufferer, so it seldom fails to excite the most sincere commiseration in the spectator. Though in the present state of society this misfortune can seldom happen without some misconduct, and some very considerable misconduct, too, in the sufferer. Yet he is almost always so much pitied that he is scarce ever allowed to fall into the lowest state of poverty.
But by the means of his friends, frequently by the indulgence of those very creditors who have much reason to complain of his imprudence, is almost always supported in some degree of decent, though humble, mediocrity. To persons under such misfortunes, we could perhaps easily pardon some degree of weakness. But at the same time, they who carry the firmest countenance who accommodate themselves with the greatest ease to their new situation, who seem to feel no humiliation from the change, but to rest their rankings in the society, not upon their fortune, but upon their character and conduct, are always the most approved of, and never fail to command our highest and most affectionate admiration.
As of all the external misfortunes which can affect an innocent man immediately and directly, The undeserved loss of reputation is certainly the greatest. So a considerable degree of sensibility to whatever can bring on so great a calamity does not always appear ungraceful or disagreeable. We often esteem a young man the more when he resents, though with some degree of violence, any unjust reproach that may have been thrown upon his character or his honor. The affliction of an innocent young lady on account of the groundless surmises which may have been circulated concerning her conduct, appears often perfectly amiable. Persons of an advanced age whom long experience of the folly and injustice of the world has taught to pay little regard, either to its censure or to its applause, neglect and despise obloquy, and do not even deign to honor its futile authors with any serious resentment.
This indifference, which is founded altogether on a firm confidence in their own well-tried and well-established character, would be disagreeable in young people, who neither can nor ought to have any such confidence. It might in them be supposed to forebode, in their advancing years, almost improper insensibility to real honor and infamy. In all other private misfortunes, which affect ourselves immediately and directly, We can very seldom offend by appearing to be too little affected. We frequently remember our sensibility to the misfortunes of others with pleasure and satisfaction. We can seldom remember that to our own, without some degree of shame and humiliation.
If we examine the different shades and gradations of weakness and self-command, as we meet with them in common life, We shall very easily satisfy ourselves that this control of our passive feelings must be acquired not from the abstruse syllogisms of a quibbling dialectic, but from that great discipline which nature has established for the acquisition of this and of every other virtue, a regard to the sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct.
A very young child has no self-command. But whatever are its emotions, whether fear, or grief, or anger, it endeavors always by the violence of its outcries to alarm as much as it can the attention of its nurse, or of its parents. While it remains under the custody of such partial protectors, its anger is the first, and perhaps the only passion, which it is taught to moderate. By noise and threatening, they are, for their own ease, Often obliged to frighten it into good temper, and the passion which incites it to attack is restrained by that which teaches it to attend to its own safety. When it is old enough to go to school or to mix with its equals, it soon finds that they have no such indulgent partiality.
It naturally wishes to gain their favor, and to avoid their hatred or contempt. Regard even to its own safety teaches it to do so, and it soon finds that it can do so in no other way than by moderating not only its anger but all its other passions, to the degree which its playfellows and companions are likely to be pleased with. It thus enters into the great school of self-command. It studies to be more and more master of itself, and begins to exercise over its own feelings a discipline which the practice of the longest life is very seldom sufficient to bring to complete perfection.
In all private misfortunes, in pain, in sickness, in sorrow, the weakest man, when his friend, and still more when a stranger visits him, is immediately impressed with a view in which they are likely to look upon his situation. Their view calls off his attention from his own view, and his breast is in some measure becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously, and as it were mechanically. But with a weak man, it is not of long continuance. His own view of his situation immediately recurs upon him. He abandons himself as before to sighs and tears of lamentations, and endeavors like a child that has not yet gone to school to produce some sort of harmony between his own grief, and the compassion of the spectator, not by moderating the former, but by importunately calling upon the latter.
With a man of a little more firmness, the effect is somewhat more permanent. He endeavors, as much as he can, to fix his attention upon the view which the company are likely to take of his situation. He feels, at the same time, the esteem and approbation which they naturally conceive for him, when he thus preserves his tranquillity, and though under the pressure of some recent and great calamity, appears to feel for himself no more than what they really feel for him. He approves and applauds himself by sympathy with their approbation.
And the pleasure which he derives from this sentiment supports and enables him more easily to continue this generous effort. In most cases, he avoids mentioning his own misfortune, and his company, if they are tolerably well-bred, are careful to say nothing which can put him in mind of it. He endeavors to entertain them in his usual way upon indifferent subjects, or if he feels himself strong enough to venture to mention his misfortune, he endeavors to talk of it as he thinks they are capable of talking of it, and even to feel it no further than they are capable of feeling it. If he has not, however, been well inured to the hard discipline of self-command, he soon grows weary of this restraint.
A long visit fatigues him, and towards the end of it he is constantly in danger of doing what he never fails to do the moment it is over, of abandoning himself to all the weakness of excessive sorrow. Modern good manners, which are extremely indulgent to human weakness, forbid for some time the visits of strangers to persons under great family distress, and permit those only of the nearest relations and most intimate friends. The presence of the latter, it is thought, will impose less restraint than that of the former, and the sufferers can more easily accommodate themselves to the feelings of those from whom they have reason to expect a more indulgent sympathy. Secret enemies who fancy that they are not known to be such are frequently fond of making those charitable visits as early as the most intimate friends.
The weakest man in the world, in this case, endeavors to support his manly countenance, and from indignation and contempt of their malice, to behave with as much gaiety and ease as he can. The man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man, who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command, In the bustle and business of the world, exposed perhaps to the violence and injustice of faction, and to the hardships and hazards of war, maintains this control of his passive feelings upon all occasions, and whether in solitude or in society, wears nearly the same countenance, and is affected very nearly in the same manner. In success and in disappointment, in prosperity and in adversity, before friends and before enemies, He has often been under the necessity of supporting this manhood.
He has never dared to forget for one moment the judgment which the impartial spectator would pass upon his sentiments and conduct. He has never dared to suffer the man within the breast to be absent one moment from his attention. With the eyes of this great inmate, he has always been accustomed to regard whatever relates to himself. This habit has become perfectly familiar to him. He has been in the constant practice, and indeed under the constant necessity of modelling or of endeavouring to model, not only his outward conduct and behaviour, but as much as he can even his inward sentiments and feelings, according to those of this awful and respectable judge. He does not merely affect the sentiments of the impartial spectator.
He really adopts them. He almost identifies himself with, he almost becomes himself that impartial spectator, and scarce even feels but as that great arbiter of his conduct directs him to feel.
The degree of the self-approbation with which every man, upon such occasions, surveys his own conduct, is higher or lower exactly in proportion to the degree of self-command which is necessary in order to obtain that self-approbation. Where little self-command is necessary, little self-approbation is due. The man who has only scratched his finger cannot much applaud himself, though he should immediately appear to have forgot this paltry misfortune. The man who has lost his leg by a cannon-shot, and who the moment after speaks and acts with his usual coolness and tranquility, as he exerts a much higher degree of self-command, So he naturally feels a much higher degree of self-approbation. With most men, upon such an accident, their own natural view of their own misfortune would force itself upon them with such a vivacity and strength of coloring as would entirely efface all thought of every other view.
They would feel nothing, they could attend to nothing but their own pain and their own fear. And not only the judgment of the ideal man within the breast, But that of the real spectator who might happen to be present would be entirely overlooked and disregarded. The reward which nature bestows upon good behavior under misfortune is thus exactly proportioned to the degree of that good behavior. The only compensation she could possibly make for the bitterness of pain and distress is thus, too, in equal degrees of good behavior exactly proportioned to the degree of that pain and distress. In proportion to the degree of the self-command which is necessary in order to conquer our natural sensibility, the pleasure and pride of the conquest are so much the greater, and this pleasure and pride are so great that no man can be altogether unhappy who completely enjoys them.
Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast in which dwells complete self-satisfaction. And though it may be too much, perhaps, to say with the Stoics, that under such an accident as that above mentioned, the happiness of a wise man is in every respect equal to what it could have been under any other circumstances. Yet it must be acknowledged, at least, that this complete enjoyment of his own self-applaus, though it may not altogether extinguish, must certainly very much alleviate his sense of his own sufferings. End of section 16. Recorded by Ariadna Solovyovna.
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17 17 - Part III: Chapter IIIb 27:28
Of the Foundation of our Judgments, Concerning our own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty, Consisting of one Section. Chapter III. Continued. Of the Influences and Authority of Conscience.
In such paroxysms of distress, if I may be allowed to call them so, The wisest and firmest man, in order to preserve his equanimity, is obliged, I imagine, to make a considerable and even a painful exertion. His own natural feeling of his own distress, his own natural view of his own situation, presses hard upon him, and he cannot, without a very great effort, fix his attention upon that of the impartial spectator. Both views present themselves to him at the same time. His sense of honor, his regard to his own dignity, directs him to fix his whole attention upon the one view. His natural, his untaught and undisciplined feelings are continually calling it off to the other. He does not, in this case, perfectly identify himself with the ideal man within the breast.
He does not become himself the impartial spectator of his own conduct. The different views of both characters Exists in his mind separate and distinct from one another, and each directing him to a behavior different from that to which the other directs him. When he follows that view which honor and dignity point out to him, nature does not indeed leave him without a recompense. He enjoys his own complete self-approbation and the applause of every candid and impartial spectator. By her unalterable laws, however, he still suffers, and the recompense which she bestows, though very considerable, is not sufficient completely to compensate the sufferings which those laws inflict. Neither is it fit that it should.
If it did completely compensate them, he could, from self-interest, have no motive for avoiding an accident which must necessarily diminish his utility, both to himself and to society. and nature from her parental care both meant that he should anxiously avoid all such accidents. He suffers, therefore, and though in the agony of the paroxysm he maintains not only the manhood of his countenance, but the sedateness and sobriety of his judgment, it requires his utmost and most fatiguing exertions to do so. By the constitution of human nature, however, agony can never be permanent. And if he survives the paroxysm, he soon comes, without any effort, to enjoy his ordinary tranquillity. A man with a wooden leg suffers, no doubt, and foresees that he must continue to suffer, during the reminder of his life, a very considerable inconveniency.
He soon comes to view it, however, exactly as every impartial spectator views it, as an inconveniency under which he can enjoy all the ordinary pleasures, Both of solitude and of society. He soon identifies himself with the ideal man within the breast. He soon becomes himself the impartial spectator of his own situation. He no longer weeps. He no longer laments. He no longer grieves over it, as a weak man may sometimes do in the beginning. The view of the impartial spectator becomes so perfectly habitual to him that, without any effort, without any exertion, he never thinks of surveying his misfortune in any other view. The never-failing certainty with which all men, sooner or later, accommodate themselves to whatever becomes their permanent situation may perhaps induce us to think that the Stoics were, at least, thus far very nearly in the right.
That between one permanent situation and another there was, with regard to real happiness, no essential difference, or that, if there were any difference, it was no more than just sufficient to render some of them the objects of simple choice or preference. but not of any earnest or anxious desire, and others of simple rejection, as being fit to be set aside or avoided, but not of any earnest or anxious aversion. Happiness consists in tranquility and enjoyment. Without tranquility there can be no enjoyment, and where there is perfect tranquility there is scarce anything which is not capable of amusing. But in every permanent situation where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility.
In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state. In adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it. In the confinement and solitude of the Bastille, after a certain time, the fashionable and frivolous Count de Lausanne recovered tranquillity enough to be capable of amusing himself with feeding a spider. A mind better furnished would perhaps have both sooner recovered its tranquillity, and sooner found in its own thoughts a much better amusement.
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference Between one permanent situation and another. Avarice overrates the difference between poverty and riches. Ambition, that between a private and a public station. Vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person, under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him that in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented.
Some of those situations may no doubt deserve to be preferred to others, but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules, either of prudence or justice, or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation The man who does attempt it plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes everything against scarce anything. What the favorite of the king of Epirus said to his master may be applied to men in all the ordinary situations of human life.
When the king had recounted to him, in their proper order, all the conquests which he proposed to make, and had come to the last of them. And what does your majesty propose to do then? said the favored. "'I propose then,' said the king, "'to enjoy myself with my friends, and endeavor to be good company over a bottle.' "'And what hinders your majesty from doing so now?' replied the favored. "'In the most glittering and exalted situation that our idle fancy can hold out to us, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness are almost always the same.' With those which in our actual, though humble, station we have at all times at hand, and in our power. Except the frivolous pleasures of vanity and superiority, we may find in a most humble station where there is only personal liberty, every other which the most exalted can afford.
And the pleasures of vanity and superiority are seldom consistent with perfect tranquillity, the principle and foundation of all real and satisfactory enjoyment.
Neither is it always certain that in the splendid situation which we aim at, those real and satisfactory pleasures can be enjoyed with the same security as in the humble one which we are so very eager to abandon. Examine the records of history. Recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience. Consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or heard of or remember. And you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and to be contented. The inscription upon the tombstone of the man who had endeavored to mend a tolerable constitution by taking physique.
I was well. I wished to be better. Here I am. May generally be applied with great justness to the distress of disappointed, avarice, and ambition.
It may be thought as singular, but I believe it to be a just observation, that in the misfortunes which admit of some remedy, the greater part of men do not either so readily or so universally recover their natural and usual tranquility as in those which plainly admit of none. In misfortunes of the latter kind, it is chiefly in what may be called the paroxysm, or in the first attack, that we can discover any sensible difference between the sentiments and behavior of the wise and those of the weak man. In the end, time, the great and universal comforter, gradually composes the weak man to the same degree of tranquility which a regard to his own dignity and manhood teaches the wise man to assume in the beginning.
The case of the man with the wooden leg is an obvious example of this. In the irreparable misfortunes, occasioned by the death of children, or of friends and relations, even a wise man may for some time indulge himself in some degree of moderated sorrow. An affectionate but weak woman is often upon such occasions almost perfectly distracted. Time, however, in a longer or shorter period, never fails to compose the weakest woman to the same degree of tranquility as the strongest man. In all the irreparable calamities which affect himself immediately and directly, a wise man endeavors from the beginning to anticipate and to enjoy beforehand. That tranquility which he foresees the course of a few months or a few years will certainly restore to him in the end.
In the misfortunes for which the nature of things admits or seems to admit of a remedy, but in which the means of applying that remedy are not within the reach of the sufferer, his vain and fruitless attempts to restore himself to his former situation, his continual anxiety for their success, his repeated disappointments upon their miscarriage, are what chiefly hinder him from resuming his natural tranquillity, and frequently render miserable during the whole of his life a man to whom a greater misfortune But which, plainly admitted of no remedy, would not have given a fortnight's disturbance. In the fall from royal favor to disgrace, from power to insignificance, from riches to poverty, from liberty to confinement, from strong health to some lingering, chronical, and perhaps incurable disease, The man who struggles the least, who most easily and readily acquiesces in the fortune which has fallen to him, very soon recovers his usual and natural tranquillity, and surveys the most disagreeable circumstances of his actual situation in the same light, or perhaps in a much less unfavorable light, than that in which the most indifferent spectator is disposed to survey them.
Faction, intrigue, and cabal disturb the quiet of the unfortunate statesman, Extravagant projects, visions of gold mines, interrupt the repose of the ruined bankrupt. The prisoner, who is continually plotting to escape from his confinement, cannot enjoy that careless security which even a prison can afford him. The medicines of the physician are often the greatest torment of the incurable patient. The monk, who in order to comfort Joanna of Castile upon the death of her husband Philip, told her of a king who, fourteen years after his disease, had been restored to life again by the prayers of his afflicted queen, was not likely by his legendary tale to restore sedateness to the distempered mind of that unhappy princess.
She endeavored to repeat the same experiment in hopes of the same success, resisted for a long time the burial of her husband, soon after raised his body from the grave, attended it almost constantly herself, and watched with all the impatient anxiety and frantic expectation the happy moment when her wishes were to be gratified by the revival of her beloved Philip. Our sensibility to the feelings of others, so far from being inconsistent with the manhood of self-command, is the very principle upon which that manhood is founded. The very same principle or instinct, which in the misfortune of our neighbor prompts us to compassionate his sorrow, in our own misfortune prompts us to restrain the abject and miserable lamentations of our own sorrow.
The same principle or instinct, which in his prosperity and success prompts us to congratulate his joy, in our own prosperity and success prompts us to restrain the levity and intemperance of our own joy. In both cases, the propriety of our own sentiments and feelings seems to be exactly in proportion to the vivacity and force with which we enter into and conceive his sentiments and feelings. The man of the most perfect virtue, the man whom we naturally love and revere the most, is he who joins to the most perfect command of his own original and selfish feelings The most exquisite sensibility, both to the original and sympathetic feelings of others. The man, who to all the soft, the amiable, and the gentle virtues joins all the great, the awful, and the respectable, must surely be the natural and proper object of our highest love and admiration.
The person best fitted by nature for acquiring the former of those two sets of virtues is likewise best fitted for acquiring the latter. The man who feels the most for the joys and sorrows of others is best fitted for acquiring the most complete control of his own joys and sorrows. The man of the most exquisite humanity is naturally the most capable of acquiring the highest degree of self-command. He may not, however, always have acquired it, and it very frequently happens that he has not. He may have lived too much in ease and tranquility. He may have never been exposed to the violence of faction or to the hardships and hazards of war. He may have never experienced the insolence of his superiors, the jealous and malignant envy of his equals, or the pilfering injustice of his inferiors.
When in an advanced age some accidental change of fortune exposes him to all these, they all make too great an impression upon him. He has the disposition which fits him for acquiring the most perfect self-command, But he has never had the opportunity of acquiring it. Exercise and practice have been wanting, and without these no habit can ever be tolerably established. Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue. But these are all masters to whom nobody willingly puts himself to school. The situations in which the gentle virtue of humanity can be most happily cultivated are by no means the same with those which are best fitted for forming the austere virtue of self-command.
The man who is himself at ease can best attend to the distress of others. The man who is himself exposed to hardships is most immediately called upon to attend to and to control his own feelings. In the mild sunshine of undisturbed tranquillity, in the calm retirement of undissipated and philosophical leisure, the soft virtue of humanity flourishes the most, and is capable of the highest improvement. But in such situations the greatest and noblest exertions of self-command have little exercise. Under the boisterous and stormy sky of war and faction, of public tumult and confusion, the sturdy severity of self-command The children prospers the most, and can be the most successfully cultivated. But in such situations, the strongest suggestions of humanity must frequently be stifled or neglected, and every such neglect necessarily tends to weaken the principle of humanity.
As it may frequently be the duty of a soldier not to take, so it may sometimes be his duty not to give quarter. And the humanity of the man who has been several times under the necessity of submitting to this disagreeable duty can scarce fail to suffer a considerable diminution. For his own ease, he is too apt to learn to make light of the misfortunes which he is so often under the necessity of occasioning, And the situations which call forth the noblest exertions of self-command, by imposing the necessity of violating sometimes the property and sometimes the life of our neighbor, always tend to diminish and too often to extinguish altogether that sacred regard to both, which is the foundation of justice and humanity.
It is upon this account that we so frequently find in the world men of great humanity who have little self-command, but who are indolent and irresolute, and easily disheartened, either by difficulty or danger, from the most honorable pursuit. And, on the contrary, men of the most perfect self-command, whom no difficulty can discourage, no danger appall, and who are at all times ready for the most daring and desperate enterprises, but who at the same time seem to be hardened against all sense, either of justice or humanity. In solitude, we are apt to feel too strongly whatever relates to ourselves. We are apt to overrate the good offices we may have done, and the injuries we may have suffered.
We are apt to be too much elated by our own good, and too much dejected by our own bad fortune. The conversation of a friend brings us to a better—that of a stranger to a still better temper. The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty by the presence of the real spectator, and it is always from that spectator from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence that we are likely to learn the most complete lesson of self-command. Are you in adversity? Do not mourn in the darkness of solitude. Do not regulate your sorrow according to the indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends. Return as soon as possible to the daylight of the world and of society.
Live with strangers, with those who know nothing or care nothing about your misfortune. Do not even shun the company of enemies, but give yourself the pleasure of mortifying their malignant joy by making them feel how little you are affected by your calamity and how much you are above it. Are you in prosperity? Do not confine the enjoyment of your good fortune to your own house, to the company of your own friends, perhaps of your flatterers, of those who build upon your fortune the hopes of mending their own. Frequent those who are independent of you, who can value you only for your character and conduct, and not for your fortune. Neither seek nor shun, neither intrude yourself into, nor run away from, the society of those who were once your superiors, and who may be hurt at finding you their equal, or perhaps even their superior.
The impertinence of their pride may perhaps render their company too disagreeable, but if it should not, be assured that it is the best company you can possibly keep, and if by the simplicity of your unassuming demeanor you can gain their favor and kindness, you may rest satisfied that you are modest enough, and that your head has been in no respect turned by your good fortune. The propriety of our moral sentiments is never so apt to be corrupted as when the indulgent and partial spectator is at hand. While the indifferent and impartial one is at a great distance. Of the conduct of one independent nation towards another, neutral nations are the only indifferent and impartial spectators. But they are placed at so great a distance that they are almost quite out of sight.
When two nations are at variance, the citizen of each pays little regard to the sentiments which foreign nations may entertain concerning his conduct. His whole ambition is to obtain the approbation of his own fellow-citizens. And as they are all animated by the same hostile passions which animate himself, he can never please them so much as by enraging and offending their enemies. The partial spectator is at hand, the impartial one at a great distance. In war and negotiation, therefore, the laws of justice are very seldom observed. Truth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded. Treaties are violated, and the violation, if some advantage is gained by it, sheds scarce any dishonor upon the violator.
The ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation is admired and applauded. The just man who disdains either to take or to give any advantage, or who would think it less dishonorable to give than to take one. The man who in all private transactions would be the most beloved and the most esteemed, In those public transactions is regarded as a fool and an idiot who does not understand his business, and he incurs always the contempt and sometimes even the detestation of his fellow-citizens. In war, not only what are called the laws of nations are frequently violated without bringing, among his own fellow-citizens, whose judgments he only regards, any considerable dishonor upon the violator, but those laws themselves are, the greater part of them, laid down with very little regard to the plainest and most obvious rules of justice.
That the innocent, though they may have some connection or dependency upon the guilty, which perhaps they themselves cannot help, should not upon that account suffer or be punished for the guilty, is one of the plainest and most obvious rules of justice. In the most unjust war, however, it is commonly the sovereign of the rulers only who are guilty. The subjects are almost always perfectly innocent. Whenever it suits the conveniency of a public enemy, however, the goods of the peaceable citizens are seized, both at land and at sea. Their lands are laid waste, their houses are burnt, and they themselves, if they presume to make any resistance, are murdered or led into captivity, and all this in the most perfect conformity to what are called the laws of nations.
The animosity of hostile factions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is often still more furious than that of hostile nations, and their conduct toward one another is often still more atrocious. What may be called the laws of faction have often been laid down by grave authors with still less regard to the rules of justice than what are called the laws of nations. The most ferocious patriot never stated it as a serious question. Whether faith ought to be kept with public enemies, whether faith ought to be kept with rebels, whether faith ought to be kept with heretics, are questions which have been often furiously agitated by celebrated doctors, both civil and ecclesiastical. It is needless to observe, I presume, that both rebels and heretics are those unlucky persons who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to be of the weaker party.
In a nation distracted by faction, there are no doubt always a few, though commonly but a very few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. They seldom amount to more than here and there a solitary individual without any influence, excluded by his own candor from the confidence of either party, and who, though he may be one of the wisest, is necessarily upon that very account one of the most insignificant men in the society. All such people are held in contempt and derision, frequently in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party man hates and despises candor, and in reality there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party man as that single virtue.
The real, revered, and impartial spectator, therefore, is upon no occasion at a greater distance than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties. To them it may be said that such a spectator scarce exists anywhere in the universe. Even to the great judge of the universe they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that divine being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions. Of all the corruptors of moral sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest. Concerning the subject of self-command, I shall only observe further That our admiration for the man who, under the heaviest and most unexpected misfortunes, continues to behave with fortitude and firmness, always supposes that his sensibility to those misfortunes is very great, and such as it requires a very great effort to conquer or command.
The man who was altogether insensible to bodily pain could deserve no applause from enduring the torture with the most perfect patience and equanimity. The man who had been created without the natural fear of death could claim no merit from preserving his coolness and presence of mind in the midst of the most dreadful dangers. It is one of the extravagancies of Seneca that the stoical wise man was in this respect superior even to a god, that the security of the god was altogether the benefit of nature, which had exempted him from suffering, but that the security of the wise man was his own benefit, and derived altogether from himself and from his own exertions. The sensibility of some men, however, to some of the objects which immediately affect themselves, is sometimes so strong as to render all self-command impossible.
No sense of honor can control the fears of the man who is weak enough to faint or to fall into convulsions upon the approach of danger. Whether such weakness of nerves, as it has been called, may not by gradual exercise and proper discipline admit of some cure may perhaps be doubtful. It seems certain that it ought never to be trusted or employed.
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Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty Consisting of One Section. Chapter Four of the Nature of Self-Deceit and of the Origin and Use of General Rules. In order to pervert the rectitude of our own judgments concerning the propriety of our own conduct, it is not always necessary that the real and impartial spectator should be at a great distance. When he is at hand, when he is present, the violence and injustice of our own selfish passions are sometimes sufficient to induce the man within the breast to make a report very different, from what the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing. There are two different occasions upon which we examine our own conduct, and endeavor to view it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it.
First, when we are about to act, and secondly, after we have acted. Our views are apt to be very partial in both cases, but they are apt to be most partial when it is of most importance that they should be otherwise. When we are about to act, The eagerness of passion will seldom allow us to consider what we are doing, with the candor of an indifferent person. The violent emotions which at the time agitate us discolor our views of things. Even when we are endeavoring to place ourselves in the situation of another, and to regard the objects that interest us in the light in which they will naturally appear to him, the fury of our own passions constantly calls us back to our own place, where everything appears magnified and misrepresented by self-love.
Of the manner in which those objects would appear to another, of the view which he would take of them, we can obtain, if I may say so, but instantaneous glimpses, which vanish in a moment, and which, even while they last, are not altogether just. We cannot even for that moment divest ourselves entirely of the heat and keenness with which our peculiar situation inspires us, nor consider what we are about to do with the complete impartiality of an equitable judge. The passions upon this account, as Father Malebronck says, all justify themselves, and seem reasonable in proportion to their objects, as long as we continue to feel them. When the action is over, indeed, and the passions which prompted it have subsided, we can enter more coolly into the sentiments of the indifferent spectator.
What before interested us is now become almost as indifferent to us as it always was to him, and we can now examine our own conduct with his candour and impartiality. The man of today is no longer agitated by the same passions which distracted the man of yesterday, and when the paroxysm of emotion, in the same manner as when the paroxysm of distress is fairly over, we can identify ourselves, as it were, with the ideal man within the breast, and in our own character view, as in the one case our own situation, so in the other our own conduct, with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator. But our judgments now are often of little importance in comparison of what they were before, and can frequently produce nothing but vain regret and unavailing repentance, without always securing us from the like errors in time to come.
It is seldom, however, that they are quite candid even in this case. The opinion which we entertain of our own character depends entirely on our judgments concerning our past conduct. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves that we often purposely turn away our view from those circumstances which might render that judgment unfavorable. He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person, and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our own behavior under so disagreeable an aspect, We too often, foolishly and weakly, endeavor to exasperate anew those unjust passions which had formerly misled us.
We endeavor by artifice to awaken our old hatreds and irritate afresh our most forgotten resentments. We even exert ourselves for this miserable purpose, and thus persevere in injustice, merely because we were once unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so. So partial are the views of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and after it, and so difficult is it for them to view it in the light in which any indifferent spectator would consider it. But if it was by a peculiar faculty, such as the moral sense is supposed to be, that they judged of their own conduct, if they were imbued with a particular power of perception, which distinguished the beauty or deformity of passions and affections, As their own passions would be more immediately exposed to the view of this faculty, it would judge with more accuracy concerning them, than concerning those of other men, of which it had only a more distant prospect.
This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all, a reformation would generally be unavoidable. We could not otherwise endure the sight. Nature, however, has not left this weakness, which is of so much importance, altogether without a remedy, nor has she abandoned us entirely to the delusions of self-love. Our continual observations upon the conduct of others insensibly lead us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided. Some of their actions shock all our natural sentiments.
We hear every body about us express the like detestation against them. This still further confirms, and even exasperates, our natural sense of their deformity. It satisfies us that we view them in the proper light, when we see other people view them in the same light. We resolve never to be guilty of the like, nor ever, upon any account, to render ourselves in this manner the objects of universal disapprobation. We thus naturally lay down to ourselves a general rule, that all such actions are to be avoided, as tending to render us odious, contemptible, or punishable, the objects of all those sentiments for which we have the greatest dread and aversion. Other actions, on the contrary, call forth our approbation, and we hear everybody around us express the same favorable opinion concerning them.
Everybody is eager to honor and reward them. They excite all those sentiments for which we have by nature the strongest desire, the love, the gratitude, the admiration of mankind. We become ambitious of performing the like, and thus naturally lay down to ourselves a rule of another kind, that every opportunity of acting in this manner is carefully to be sought after. It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve or disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular actions, because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with the general rule.
The general rule, on the contrary, is formed by finding from experience that all actions of a certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved or disapproved of. To the man who first saw an inhuman murder, committed from avarice, envy, or unjust resentment, and upon one, too, that loved and trusted the murderer, who beheld the last agonies of the dying person, who heard him, with his expiring breath, complain more of the perfidy and ingratitude of his false friend than of the violence which had been done to him, there could be no occasion, in order to conceive how horrible such an action was, that he should reflect that one of the most sacred rules of conduct was what prohibited the taking away the life of an innocent person, that this was a plain violation of that rule, and consequently a very blameable action.
His detestation of this crime, it is evident, would arise instantaneously an antecedent to his having formed to himself any such general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, which he might afterwards form, would be founded upon the detestation which he felt necessarily arise in his own breast, at the thought of this, and every other particular action of the same kind. When we read in history or romance the account of actions either of generosity or of baseness The admiration which we conceive for the one, and the contempt which we feel for the other, neither of them arise from reflecting that there are certain general rules which declare all actions of the one kind admirable, and all actions of the other contemptible.
Those general rules, on the contrary, are all formed from the experience we have had of the effects which actions of all different kinds naturally produce upon us. An amiable action, a respectable action, and horrid action, Are all of them actions which naturally excite for the person who performs them the love, the respect, or the horror of the spectator. The general rules which determine what actions are and what are not, the objects of each of those sentiments, can be formed no other way than by observing what actions actually and in fact excite them. When these general rules, indeed, have been formed, when they are universally acknowledged and established by the concurring sentiments of mankind, we frequently appeal to them as to the standards of judgment, in debating concerning the degree of praise or blame that is due to certain actions of a complicated and dubious nature.
They are upon these occasions commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust in human conduct, and this circumstance seems to have misled several very eminent authors to draw up their systems in such a manner as if they had supposed that the original judgments of mankind with regard to right and wrong were formed like the decisions of a court of judicatory, by considering first the general rule, and then secondly, whether the particular action under consideration fell properly within its comprehension. Those general rules of conduct, when they have been fixed in our mind by habitual reflection, are of great use in correcting the misrepresentations of self-love concerning what is fit and proper to be done in our particular situation.
The man of furious resentment, if he was to listen to the dictates of that passion, Would perhaps regard the death of his enemy as but a small compensation for the wrong he imagines he has received, which, however, may be no more than a very slight provocation. But his observations upon the conduct of others have taught him how horrible all such sanguinary revenges appear. Unless his education has been very singular, he has laid it down to himself as an inviolable rule, to abstain from them upon all occasions. This rule preserves its authority with him, and renders him incapable of being guilty of such a violence. Yet the fury of his own temper may be such that, had this been the first time in which he considered such an action, he would undoubtedly have determined it to be quite just and proper, and what every impartial spectator would approve of.
But that reverence for the rule which past experience has impressed upon him checks the impetuosity of his passion, and helps him to correct the too partial views which self-love might otherwise suggest of what was proper to be done in his situation. If he should allow himself to be so far transported by passion as to violate this rule, yet even in this case he cannot throw off altogether the awe and respect with which he has been accustomed to regard it. At the very time of acting, at the moment in which passion mounts the highest, he hesitates and trembles at the thought of what he is about to do. He is secretly conscious to himself that he is breaking through those measures of conduct which, in all his cool hours, he had resolved never to infringe, which he had never seen infringed by others without the highest disapprobation, and of which the infringement his own mind forebodes, must soon render him the object of the same disagreeable sentiments.
Before he can take the last fatal resolution, He is tormented with all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty. He is terrified at the thought of violating so sacred a rule, and at the same time is urged and goaded on by the fury of his desires to violate it. He changes his purpose every moment. Sometimes he resolves to adhere to his principle, and not indulge a passion which may corrupt the remaining part of his life with the horrors of shame and repentance. And a momentary calm takes possession of his breast from the prospect of that security and tranquillity which he will enjoy when he thus determines not to expose himself to the hazard of a contrary conduct. But immediately the passion rouses anew, and with fresh fury drives him on to commit what he had the instant before resolved to abstain from.
Wearied and distracted with those continual irresolutions, he at length, from a sort of despair, makes the last fatal and irrecoverable step. But with that terror and amazement with which one flying from an enemy throws himself over a precipice, where he is sure of meeting with more certain destruction than from anything that pursues him from behind, such are his sentiments, even at the time of acting, though he is then, no doubt, less sensible of the impropriety of his own conduct than afterwards, When his passion being gratified and palled, he begins to view what he has done in the light in which others are apt to view it, and actually feels what he had only foreseen very imperfectly before.
The stings of remorse and repentance begin to agitate and torment him.
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19 19 - Part III: Chapter V 28:39
of the influence and authority of the general rules of morality, and that they are justly regarded as the laws of deity. The regard to those general rules of conduct is what is properly called a sense of duty, a principle of the greatest consequence in human life, and the only principle by which the bulk of mankind are capable of directing directions. Many men behave very decently, and through the whole of their lives avoid any considerable degree of blame. who yet perhaps never felt the sentiment upon the propriety of which we found our approbation of their conduct, but acted merely from a regard to what they saw were the established rules of behaviour. The man who has received great benefits from another person may, by the natural coldness of his temper, feel but a very small degree of the sentiment of gratitude.
If he has been virtuously educated, however, he will often have been made to observe how odious those actions appear which denote a want of this sentiment, and how amiable the contrary. Though his heart therefore is not warmed with any grateful affection, he will strive to act as if it was, and will endeavour to pay all those regards and attentions to his patron which the liveliest gratitude could suggest. He will visit him regularly. He will behave to him respectfully. He will never talk of him but with expressions of the highest esteem, and of the many obligations which he owes to him. And what is more, he will carefully embrace every opportunity of making a proper return for his past services.
He may do all this, too, without any hypocrisy or blameable dissimulation, without any selfish intention of obtaining new favours, and without any design of imposing either upon his benefactor or the public. The motive of his actions may be no other than a reverence for the established rule of duty, a serious and earnest desire of acting in every respect According to the law of gratitude. A wife, in the same manner, may sometimes not feel that tender regard for her husband which is suitable to the relation that subsists between them. If she has been virtuously educated, however, she will endeavour to act as if she felt it, to be careful, officious, faithful, and sincere, and to be deficient in none of those attentions which the sentiment of conjugal affection could have prompted her to perform.
Such a friend, and such a wife, Are neither of them undoubtedly the very best of their kinds, and though both of them may have the most serious and earnest desire to fulfill every part of their duty, yet they will fail in many nice and delicate regards. They will miss many opportunities of obliging, which they could never have overlooked if they had possessed the sentiment that is proper to their situation. Though not the very first of their kinds, however, they are perhaps the second. And if the regard to the general rules of conduct has been very strongly impressed upon them, neither of them will fail in any very essential part of their duty. None but those of the happiest mold are capable of suiting, with exact justness, their sentiments and behavior to the smallest difference of situation, and of acting upon all occasions with the most delicate and accurate propriety.
The coarse clay of which the bulk of mankind are formed cannot be wrought up to such perfection. There is scarce any man, however, who by discipline, education, and example may not be so impressed with a regard to general rules as to act upon almost every occasion with tolerable decency, and through the whole of his life to avoid any considerable degree of blame. Without this sacred regard to general rules, there is no man whose conduct can be much depended upon. It is this which constitutes the most essential difference between a man of principle and honor, and a worthless fellow. The one adheres, on all occasions, steadily and resolutely to his maxims, and preserves through the whole of his life one even tenor of conduct.
The other acts variously and accidentally, as humor, inclination, or interest chance to be uppermost. Nay, such are the inequalities of humor to which all men are subject, that without this principle the man who, in all his cool hours, Had the most delicate sensibility to the propriety of conduct, might often be led to act absurdly upon the most frivolous occasions, and when it was scarce possible to assign any serious motive for his behaving in this manner. Your friend makes you a visit, when you happen to be in a humor which makes it disagreeable to receive him. In your present mood his civility is very apt to appear an impertinent intrusion, and if you were to give way to the views of things which at this time occur, Though civil in your temper, you would behave to him with coldness and contempt.
What renders you incapable of such a rudeness is nothing but a regard to the general rules of civility and hospitality which prohibit it. That habitual reverence which your former experience has taught you for these enables you to act upon all such occasions with nearly equal propriety, and hinders those inequalities of temper to which all men are subject, from influencing your conduct in any very sensible degree. But if without regard to these general rules, even the duties of politeness which are so easily observed, and which one can scarce have any serious motive to violate, would yet be so frequently violated, what would become of the duties of justice, of truth, of chastity, of fidelity, which it is often so difficult to observe, and which there may be so many strong motives to violate?
But upon the tolerable observance of these duties depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct. This reverence is still further enhanced by an opinion which is first impressed by nature, and afterwards confirmed by reasoning and philosophy, that those important rules of morality are the commands and laws of the deity, who will finally reward the obedient, and punish the transgressors of their duty. This opinion, or apprehension, I say, seems first to be impressed by nature. Men are naturally led to ascribe to those mysterious beings, whatever they are, which happen in any country to be the objects of religious fear, all their own sentiments and passions.
They have no other. They can conceive no other to ascribe to them. Those unknown intelligences which they imagine but see not, must necessarily be formed with some sort of resemblance to those intelligences of which they have experience. During the ignorance and darkness of pagan superstition, mankind seemed to have formed the ideas of their divinities with so little delicacy that they ascribed to them indiscriminately all the passions of human nature, those not excepted which do the least honor to our species, such as lust, hunger, Avars, envy, revenge. They could not fail, therefore, to ascribe to those beings, for the excellence of whose nature they still conceived the highest admiration, those sentiments and qualities which are the great ornaments of humanity, and which seem to raise it to a resemblance of divine perfection, the love of virtue and beneficence, and the abhorrence of vice and injustice.
The man who was injured called upon Jupiter to be witness of the wrong that was done to him. and could not doubt but that divine being would behold it with the same indignation which would animate the meanest of mankind who looked on when injustice was committed. The man who did the injury felt himself to be the proper object of the detestation and resentment of mankind, and his natural fears led him to impute the same sentiments to those awful beings whose presence he could not avoid, and whose power he could not resist. These natural hopes and fears and suspicions were propagated by sympathy and confirmed by education, and the gods were universally represented and believed to be the rewarders of humanity and mercy, and the avengers of perfidy and injustice.
And thus religion, even in its rudest form, gave a sanction to the rules of morality long before the age of artificial reasoning and philosophy. That the terrors of religion should thus enforce the natural sense of duty was of too much importance to the happiness of mankind for nature to leave it dependent upon the slowness and uncertainty of philosophical researches. These researches, however, when they came to take place, confirmed those original anticipations of nature. Upon whatever we suppose that our moral faculties are founded, Whether upon a certain modification of reason, upon an original instinct called a moral sense, or upon some other principle of our nature, it cannot be doubted that they were given us for the direction of our conduct in this life.
They carry along with them the most evident badges of this authority, which denote that they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all our actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites, and to judge how far each of them was either to be indulged or restrained. Our moral faculties are by no means, as some have pretended, upon a level in this respect with the other faculties and appetites of our nature, endowed with no more right to restrain these last, than these last are to restrain them. No other faculty or principle of action judges of any other. Love does not judge of resentment, nor resentment of love. Those two passions may be opposite to one another, but cannot with any propriety be said to approve or disapprove of one another.
But it is the peculiar office of those faculties now under our consideration to judge, to bestow censure or applause upon all the other principles of our nature. They may be considered as a sort of senses of which those principles are the objects. Every sense is supreme over its own objects. There is no appeal from the eye with regard to the beauty of colors. Nor from the ear with regard to the harmony of sounds, nor from the taste with regard to the agreeableness of flavors. Each of those senses judges in the last resort of its own objects. Whatever gratifies the taste is sweet, whatever pleases the eye is beautiful, whatever suits the ear is harmonious. The very essence of each of those qualities consists in its being fitted to please the sense to which it is addressed.
It belongs to our moral faculties, in the same manner to determine when the ear ought to be soothed, when the eye ought to be indulged, when the taste ought to be gratified, when and how far every other principle of our nature ought either to be indulged or restrained. What is agreeable to our moral faculties is fit and right, and proper to be done, the contrary, wrong, unfit, and improper. The sentiments which they approve of are graceful and becoming, the contrary ungraceful and unbecoming. The very words, right, wrong, fit, improper, graceful, unbecoming, mean only what pleases or displeases those faculties. Since these, therefore, were plainly intended to be the governing principles of human nature, the rules which they prescribe are to be regarded as the commands and laws of the deity, Promulgated by those vice-gerents which he has thus set up within us.
All general rules are commonly denominated laws. Thus the general rules which bodies observe in the communication of motion are called the laws of motion. But those general rules which our moral faculties observe in approving or condemning whatever sentiment or action is subjected to their examination may much more justly be denominated such. They have a much greater resemblance to what are properly called laws, those general rules which the sovereign lays down to direct the conduct of his subjects. Like them, they are rules to direct the free actions of men. They are prescribed most surely by a lawful superior, and are attended to with the sanction of rewards and punishments. Those vicegerents of God within us never fail to punish the violation of them by the torments of inward shame, and self-condemnation, and on the contrary, always reward obedience with tranquility of mind, with contentment, and self-satisfaction.
There are innumerable other considerations which serve to confirm the same conclusion. The happiness of mankind, as well as of all other rational creatures, seems to have been the original purpose intended by the author of Nature when he brought them into existence. No other end seems worthy of that supreme wisdom and divine benignity which we necessarily ascribe to him, and this opinion, which we are led to by the abstract consideration of his infinite perfections, is still more confirmed by the examination of the works of nature, which seem all intended to promote happiness and to guard against misery. But by acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, We necessarily pursue the most effectual means for promoting the happiness of mankind, and may therefore be said, in some sense, to co-operate with the deity, and to advance, as far as in our power, the plan of providence.
By acting other ways, on the contrary, we seem to obstruct, in some measure, the scheme which the author of nature has established for the happiness and perfection of the world, and to declare ourselves, if I may say so, in some measure the enemies of God. Hence we are naturally encouraged to hope for his extraordinary favor and reward in the one case, and to dread his vengeance and punishment in the other. There are besides many other reasons and many other natural principles which all tend to confirm and inculcate the same salutary doctrine. If we consider the general rules by which external prosperity and adversity are commonly distributed in this life, We shall find that notwithstanding the disorder in which all things appear to be in this world, yet even here every virtue naturally meets with its proper reward, with the recompense which is most fit to encourage and promote it, and this too so surely that it requires a very extraordinary concurrence of circumstances entirely to disappoint it.
What is the reward most proper for encouraging industry, prudence, and circumspection? Success in every sort of business. And is it possible that in the whole of life these virtues should fail of attaining it? Wealth and external honors are their proper recompense, and the recompense which they can seldom fail of acquiring. What reward is most proper for promoting the practice of truth, justice, and humanity? The confidence, the esteem, and love of those we live with. Humanity does not desire to be great, but to be beloved. It is not in being rich that truth and justice would rejoice, but in being trusted and believed, recompenses which those virtues must almost always acquire. By some very extraordinary and unlucky circumstance, a good man may come to be suspected of a crime of which he was altogether incapable, and upon that account be most unjustly exposed for the remaining part of his life to the horror and aversion of mankind.
By an accident of this kind he may be said to lose his all, notwithstanding his integrity and justice, in the same manner as a cautious man, notwithstanding his utmost circumspection, may be ruined by an earthquake or an inundation. Accidents of the first kind, however, are perhaps still more rare, and still more contrary to the common course of things, than those of the second, and it still remains true, that the practice of truth, justice, and humanity is a certain and almost infallible method of acquiring what those virtues chiefly aim at—the confidence and love of those we live with. A person may be very easily misrepresented with regard to a particular action, but it is scarce possible that he should be so with regard to the general tenor of his conduct.
An innocent man may be believed to have done wrong, This, however, will rarely happen. On the contrary, the established opinion of the innocence of his manners will often lead us to absolve him where he has really been in fault, notwithstanding very strong presumptions. A knave, in the same manner, may escape censure, or even meet with applause for a particular knavery in which his conduct is not understood. But no man was ever habitually such without being almost universally known to be so. and without being even frequently suspected of guilt, when he was in reality perfectly innocent. And so far as vice and virtue can be either punished or rewarded by the sentiments and opinions of mankind, they both, according to the common course of things, meet even here with something more than exact and impartial justice.
But though the general rules by which prosperity and adversity are commonly distributed, When considered in this cool and philosophical light, appear to be perfectly suited to the situation of mankind in this life, yet they are by no means suited to some of our natural sentiments. Our natural love and admiration for some virtues is such that we should wish to bestow on them all sorts of honours and rewards, even those which we must acknowledge to be the proper recompenses of other qualities, with which those virtues are not always accompanied. Our detestation, on the contrary, for some feces, is such that we should desire to heap upon them every sort of disgrace and disaster, those not excepted which are the natural consequences of very different qualities.
Magnamity, generosity, and justice command so high a degree of admiration that we desire to see them crowned with wealth and power, and honors of every kind, the natural consequences of prudence, industry, and application. qualities with which those virtues are not inseparably connected. Fraud, falsehood, brutality, and violence, on the other hand, excite in every human breast such scorn and abhorrence, that our indignation rouses to see them possess those advantages which they may in some sense be said to have merited, by the diligence and industry with which they are sometimes attended. The industrious knave cultivates the soil. The indolent good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to reap the harvest?
Who starve, and who live in plenty? The natural course of things decides it in favor of the knave, the natural sentiments of mankind in favor of the men of virtue. Man judges that the good qualities of the one are greatly over-recompensed by the advantages which they tend to procure him, and that the omissions of the other are by far too severely punished by the distress which they naturally bring upon him. And human loss, the consequences of human sentiments, forfeit the life and the estate of the industrious and cautious trader, and reward by extraordinary recompenses the fidelity and public spirit of the improvident and careless good citizen. Thus man is by nature directed to correct, in some measure, that distribution of things which she herself would otherwise have made.
The rules for which this purpose she prompts him to follow are different from those which she herself observes. She bestows upon every virtue, and upon every vice, that precise reward or punishment which is best fitted to encourage the one, or to restrain the other. She is directed by this sole consideration, and pays little regard to the different degrees of merit and demerit, which they may seem to possess in the sentiments and passions of man. Man, on the contrary, pays regard to this only, and would endeavor to render the state of every virtue precisely proportioned to that degree of love and esteem, and of every vice to that degree of contempt and abhorrence which he himself conceives for it.
The rules which she follows are fit for her, those which he follows for him, but both are calculated to promote the same great end, the order of the world, and the perfection and happiness of human nature. But though man is thus employed to alter that distribution of things which natural events would make if left to themselves, though like the gods of the poets he is perpetually interposing, by extraordinary means, in favor of virtue and in opposition to vice, and like them endeavours to turn away the arrow that is aimed at the head of the righteous, but to accelerate the sword of destruction that is lifted up against the wicked, Yet he is by no means able to render the fortune of either quite suitable to his own sentiments and wishes.
The natural course of things cannot be entirely controlled by the impotent endeavors of man. The current is too rapid and too strong for him to stop it, and though the rules which direct it appear to have been established for the wisest and best purposes, they sometimes produce effects which shock all his natural sentiments. That a great combination of men should prevail over a small one, that those who engage in an enterprise with forethought and all necessary preparation should prevail over such as oppose them without any, and that every end should be acquired by those means only which nature has established for acquiring it, seems to be a rule, not only necessary and unavoidable in itself, but even useful and proper for rousing the industry and attention of mankind.
Yet, when in consequence of this rule, violence and artifice prevail over sincerity and justice, what indignation does it not excite in the breast of every human spectator? What sorrow and compassion for the sufferings of the innocent, and what furious resentment against the success of the oppressor? We are equally grieved and enraged at the wrong that is done, but often find it altogether out of our power to redress it. When we thus despair of finding any force upon earth which can check the triumph of injustice, we naturally appeal to heaven, and hope that the great author of our nature will himself execute hereafter, but all the principles which he has given us for the direction of our conduct prompt us to attempt even here, that he will complete the plan which he himself has thus taught us to begin, and will, in a life to come, render to every one According to the works which he has performed in this world.
And thus we are led to the belief of a future state, not only by the weaknesses, by the hopes and fears of human nature, but by the noblest and best principles which belong to it, by the love of virtue, and by the abhorrence of vice and injustice. Does it suit the greatness of God, says the eloquent and philosophical bishop of Clermont, with that passionate and exaggerating force of imagination, which seems to sometimes exceed the bounds of decorum. Does it suit the greatness of God to leave the world which he has created in so universal a disorder? To see the wicked prevail almost always over the just, the innocent dethroned by the usurper, the father become the victim of the ambition of an unnatural son, the husband expiring under the stroke of a barbarous and fateless wife, From the height of his greatness ought God to behold those melancholy events, as a fantastical amusement, without taking any share in them?
Because he is great, should he be weak, or unjust, or barbarous? Because men are little, ought they to be allowed either to be dissolute without punishment, or virtuous without reward? O God, if this is the character of your supreme being, if it is you whom we adore under such dreadful ideas, I can no longer acknowledge you for my father, for my protector, for the comforter of my sorrow, the support of my weakness, the rewarder of my fidelity. You would, then, be no more than an indolent and fantastical tyrant who sacrifices mankind to his insolent vanity, and who has brought them out of nothing, only to make them serve for the sport of his leisure and of his caprice. When the general rules which determine the merit and demerit of actions come thus to be regarded as the laws of an all-powerful being who watches over our conduct, and who in a lifetime to come will reward the observance, and punish the breach of them, they necessarily acquire a new sacredness from this consideration.
That our regard to the will of the deity ought to be the supreme rule of our conduct can be doubted of by nobody who believes his existence. The very thought of disobedience Appears to involve in it the most shocking impropriety. How vain, how absurd would it be for man, either to oppose or to neglect the commands that were laid upon him by infinite wisdom and infinite power! How unnatural, how impiously ungrateful, not to reverence, the precepts that were prescribed to him by the infinite goodness of his Creator, even though no punishment was to follow their violation! The sense of propriety, too, is here well supported by the strongest motives of self-interest. The idea that, however we may escape the observation of man, or be placed above the reach of human punishment, yet we are always acting under the eye and exposed to the punishment of God, the great avenger of injustice, is a motive capable of restraining the most headstrong passions.
With those at least who, by constant reflection, have rendered it familiar to them. It is in this manner that religion enforces the natural sense of duty, and hence it is that mankind are generally disposed to place great confidence in the probity of those who seem deeply impressed with religious sentiments. Such persons, they imagine, act under an additional tie, besides those which regulate the conduct of other men. The regard to the propriety of action as well as to reputation The regard to the applause of his own breast as well as to that of others are motives which they suppose have the same influence over the religious man as over the man of the world. But the former lies under another restraint, and never acts deliberately but as in the presence of that great superior who is finally to recompense him according to his deeds.
A greater trust is reposed upon this account in the regularity and exactness of his conduct. And wherever the natural principles of religion are not corrupted by the factious and party zeal of some worthless cabal, wherever the first duty which it requires is to fulfill all the obligations of morality, wherever men are not taught to regard frivolous observances as more immediate duties of religion than acts of justice and beneficence, and to imagine that by sacrifices and ceremonies and vain supplications They can bargain with the deity for fraud and perfidi and violence. The world undoubtedly judges right in this respect, and justly places a double confidence in the rectitude of the religious man's behavior.
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In what cases the sense of duty ought to be the sole of our conduct, and in what cases it ought to concur with other motives.
Religion affords such strong motives to the practice of virtue, and guards us by such powerful restraints from the temptations of vice, that many have been led to suppose that religious principles were the sole laudable motives of action. We ought neither, they said, to reward from gratitude Nor punish from resentment. We ought neither to protect the helplessness of our children, nor afford support to the infirmities of our parents from natural affection. All affections for particular objects ought to be extinguished in our breast, and one great affection take place of all others, the love of the deity, the desire of rendering ourselves agreeable to him, and of directing our conduct in every respect according to his will.
We ought not to be grateful from gratitude. We ought not to be charitable from humanity. We ought not to be public-spirited from the love of our country, nor generous and just from the love of mankind. The sole principle and motive of our conduct in the performance of all those different duties ought to be a sense that God has commanded us to perform them.
I shall not at present take time to examine this opinion particularly. I shall only observe that we should not have expected to have found it entertained by any sect who professed themselves of a religion in which, as it is the first precept to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength, so it is the second to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and we love ourselves surely for our own sakes, and not merely because we are commanded to do so. That the sense of duty should be the sole principle of our conduct is nowhere the precept of Christianity, but that it should be the ruling and the governing one, as philosophy and as, indeed, common sense directs.
It may be a question, however, in what cases our actions ought to arise chiefly or entirely from a sense of duty, or from a regard to general rules, and in what cases some other sentiment or affection ought to concur and have a principal influence.
The decision of this question, which cannot perhaps be given with any great accuracy, will depend upon two different circumstances. First, upon the natural agreeableness or deformity of the sentiment or affection which would prompt us to any action independent of all regard to general rules, and secondly, upon the precision and exactness, or the looseness and inaccuracy of the general rules themselves.
First, I say, it will depend upon the natural agreeableness or deformity of the affection itself, how far our actions ought to arise from it, or entirely proceed from a regard to the general rule. All those graceful and admired actions, to which the benevolent affections would prompt us, ought to proceed as much from the passions themselves as from any regard to the general rules of conduct. A benefactor thinks himself but ill-requited if the person upon whom he has bestowed his good offices repays them merely from a cold sense of duty, and without any affection to his person. A husband is dissatisfied with the most obedient wife when he imagines her conduct is animated by no other principle besides her regard to what the relation she stands in requires.
Though a son should fail in none of the offices of filial duty, yet if he wants that affectionate reverence which so well becomes him to feel, the parent may justly complain of his indifference. Nor could a son be quite satisfied with a parent who, though he performed all the duties of his situation, had nothing of that fatherly fondness which might have been expected of him. With regard to all such benevolent and social affections, it is agreeable to see the sense of duty employed rather to restrain than to enliven them, rather to hinder us from doing too much, than to prompt us to do what we ought. It gives us pleasure to see a father obliged to check his own fondness, a friend obliged to set bounds to his natural generosity, a person who has received a benefit obliged to restrain the too-sanguine gratitude of his own temper.
The contrary maxim takes place with regard to the malevolent and unsocial passions. We ought to reward from the gratitude and generosity of our hearts without any reluctance, and without being obliged to reflect how great the propriety of rewarding. But we ought always to punish with reluctance, and more from a sense of the propriety of punishing than from any savage disposition to revenge. Nothing is more graceful than the behavior of the man who appears to resent the greatest injuries, more from a sense that they deserve and are the proper objects of resentment, than from feeling himself the furies of that disagreeable passion, who, like a judge, considers only the general rule, which determines what vengeance is due for each particular offense.
Who, in executing that role, feels less for what himself has suffered than for what the offender is about to suffer. Who, though in wrath, remembers mercy, and is disposed to interpret the rule in the most general and favorable manner, and to allow all the alleviations which the most candid humanity could, consistently with good sense, admit of.
As the selfish passions, according to what has formerly been observed, hold, in other respects, a sort of middle place between the social and unsocial affections, so do they likewise in this. The pursuit of the objects of private interest, in all common, little, and ordinary causes, ought to flow rather from a regard to the general rules which prescribe such conduct, than from any passion for the objects themselves. Upon more important and extraordinary occasions, we should be awkward, insipid, and ungraceful if the objects themselves did not appear to animate us with a considerable degree of passion. To be anxious, or to be laying a plot, either to gain or to save a shilling, would degrade the most vulgar tradesman in the opinion of all his neighbors.
Let his circumstances be ever so mean, no attention to any such small matters. For the sake of the things themselves must appear in his conduct. His situation may require the most severe economy and the most exact assiduity, but each particular exertion of that economy and assiduity must proceed, not so much from a regard for that particular saving or gain, as for the general rule which to him prescribes, with the utmost rigor, such a tenor of conduct. His parsimony to-day must not arise from the desire of the particular three pence which he will save by it, nor his attendance to his shop from a passion for the particular ten pence which he will acquire by it. Both the one and the other ought to proceed solely from a regard to the general rule, which prescribes with the most unrelenting severity this plan of conduct to all persons in his way of life.
In this consists the difference between the character of a miser and that of a person of exact economy and assiduity. The one is anxious about small matters for their own sake, the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life which he has laid down to himself.
It is quite otherwise with regard to the most extraordinary and important objects of self-interest. A person appears mean-spirited, who does not pursue with some degree of earnestness for their own sake. We should despise a prince who is not anxious about conquering or defending a province. We should have little respect for a private gentleman who did not exert himself to gain an estate, or even a considerable office, when he could acquire them without either meanness or injustice. A member of Parliament who shews no keenness about his own election is abandoned by his friends, as altogether unworthy of their attachment. Even a tradesman is thought a poor-spirited fellow among his neighbors, who does not bestir himself to get what they call an extraordinary job or some uncommon advantage.
This spirit and keenness constitutes the difference between the man of enterprise and the man of dull regularity. Those great objects of self-interest, of which the loss or acquisition quite changes the rank of the person, are the objects of the passion properly called ambition. A passion, which, when it keeps within the bounds of prudence and justice, is always admired in the world, and has even sometimes a certain irregular greatness, which dazzles the imagination when it passes the limits both of these virtues, and is not only unjust, but extravagant. Hence the general admiration for heroes and conquerors, and even for statesmen whose projects have been very daring and extensive, though altogether devoid of justice, such as those of the cardinals of Richelieu and Retz.
The objects of avarice and ambition differ only in their greatness. A miser is as furious about a halfpenny as a man of ambition about the conquest of a kingdom.
Two. Secondly, I say, it will depend partly upon the precision and exactness, or the looseness and inaccuracy of the general rules themselves, how far our conduct ought to proceed entirely from a regard to them.
The general rule of almost all the virtues, the general rules which determine what are the offices of prudence, of charity, of generosity, of gratitude, of friendship, are in many respects loose and inaccurate. Admit of many exceptions, and require so many modifications that it is scarce possible to regulate our conduct entirely by a regard to them. The common proverbial maxims of prudence, being founded in universal experience, are perhaps the best general rules which can be given about it. To effect, however, a very strict and literal adherence to them would evidently be the most absurd and ridiculous pedantry. Of all the virtues I have just now mentioned, gratitude is that perhaps of which the rules are the most precise, and admit of the fewest exceptions.
That as soon as we can, we should make a return of equal, and if possible, of superior value to the services we have received, would seem to be a pretty plain rule, and one which admitted of scarce any exceptions. Upon the most superficial examination, however, this rule will appear to be in the highest degree loose and inaccurate, and to admit of ten thousand exceptions. If your benefactor attended you in your sickness, ought you to attend him in his? Or can you fulfill the obligation of gratitude by making a return of a different kind? If you ought to attend to him, how long ought you to attend him, the same time which he attended you, or longer, and how much longer? If your friend lent you money in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his?
How much ought you to lend him? When ought you to lend him? Now or tomorrow or next month? And for how long a time? It is evident that no general rule can be laid down by which a precise answer can, in all cases, be given to any of these questions. The difference between his character and yours, between his circumstances and yours, may be such that you may be perfectly grateful and justly refuse to lend him a halfpenny, and on the contrary, you may be willing to lend or give to him ten times the sum which he lent you, and yet justly be accused of the blackest ingratitude, and of not having fulfilled the hundredth part of the obligation you lie under. As the duties of gratitude, however, are perhaps the most sacred of all those which the beneficent virtues prescribe to us, so the general rules which determine them are, as I said before, the most accurate.
Those which ascertain the actions required by friendship, humanity, hospitality, generosity, are still more vague and indeterminate.
There is, however, one virtue which the general rules determine with the greatest exactness Every external action which it requires. This virtue is justice. The rules of justice are accurate in the highest degree, and admit of no exceptions or modifications, but such as may be ascertained as accurately as the rules themselves, and which generally, indeed, flow from the very same principles with them. If I owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that I should precisely pay him ten pounds, either at the time agreed upon or when he demands it. What I ought to perform, how much I ought to perform, when and where I ought to perform it, the whole nature and circumstances of the action prescribed, all of them precisely fixed and determined.
Though it may be awkward and pedantic, therefore, to affect too strict an adherence to the common rules of prudence or generosity, there is no pedantry in sticking fast by the rules of justice. On the contrary, the most sacred regard is due to them, and the actions which this virtue requires are never so properly performed as when the chief motive for performing them is a reverential and religious regard to those general rules which require them. In the practice of the other virtues, our conduct should rather be directed by a certain idea of propriety, by a certain taste for a particular tenor of conduct, than by any regard to a precise maxim or rule. And we should consider the end and foundation of the rule more than the rule itself.
But it is otherwise with regard to justice, The man who in that refines the least, and adheres with the most obstinate steadfastness to the general rules themselves, is the most commendable, and the most to be dependent upon. Though the end of the rules of justice be to hinder us from hurting our neighbor, it may frequently be a crime to violate them, though we could pretend, with some pretext of reason, that this particular violation could do no hurt. A man often becomes a villain the moment he begins, even in his own heart, to chicane in this manner. The moment he thinks of departing from the most staunch and positive adherence to what those inviolable precepts prescribe to him, he is no longer to be trusted, and no man can say what degree of guilt he may not arrive at.
The thief imagines he does no evil when he steals from the rich. What he supposes they may easily want, and what possibly they may never even know has been stolen from them. The adulterer imagines he does no evil when he corrupts the wife of his friend, provided he covers his intrigue from the suspicion of the husband, and does not disturb the peace of the family. When once we begin to give way to such refinements, There is no enormity so gross of which we may not be capable.
The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar, the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition. The one are precise, accurate, and indispensable. The others are loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with the general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it. A man may learn to write grammatically by rule with the most absolute infallibility, and so, perhaps, he may be taught to act justly. But there are no rules whose observance will infallibly lead us to the attainment of elegance or sublimity in writing. Though there are some which may help us, in some measure, to correct and ascertain the vague ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those perfections.
And there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence, Though there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain in several respects the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those virtues.
It may sometimes happen that with the most serious and earnest desire of acting so as to deserve approbation, we may mistake the proper rules of conduct, and thus be misled by that very principle which ought to direct us. It is vain to expect that in this case mankind should entirely approve of our behavior. They cannot enter into that absurd idea of duty which influenced us, nor go along with any of the actions which follow from it. There is still, however, something respectable in the character and behavior of one who is thus betrayed into vice by a wrong sense of duty, or by what is called an erroneous conscience. How fatally soever he may be misled by it, he is still, with the generous and humane, more the object of commiseration than of hatred or resentment.
They lament the weakness of human nature which exposes us to such unhappy delusions, even while we are most sincerely laboring after perfection, and endeavoring to act according to the best principle which can possibly direct us.
False notions of religion are almost the only causes which can occasion any very gross perversion of our natural sentiments in this way, and that principle which gives the greatest authority to the rules of duty is alone capable of distorting our ideas of them in any considerable degree. In all other cases, common sense is sufficient to direct us, if not to the most exquisite propriety of conduct, yet to something which is not very far from it. And provided we are in earnest desirous to do well, our behavior will always, upon the whole, be praiseworthy. That to obey the will of the deity is the first rule of duty, all men are agreed. But concerning the particular commandments which that will may impose upon us, they differ wildly from one another.
In this, therefore, the greatest mutual forbearance and toleration is due. And though the deference of society requires that crimes should be punished from whatever motives they proceed, yet a good man will always punish them with reluctance when they evidently proceed from false notions of religious duty. He will never feel against those who commit them that indignation which he feels against other criminals, but will rather regret, and sometimes even admire, their unfortunate firmness and magnanimity at the very time that he punishes their crime. In the tragedy of Mahomet, one of the finest of Mr. Voltaire's, it is well represented what ought to be our sentiments for crimes which proceed from such motives.
In that tragedy, two young people of different sexes, of the most innocent and virtuous dispositions, and without any other weakness except what endears them the more to us, a mutual fondness for one another, are instigated by the strongest motives of a false religion to commit a horrid murder that shocks all the principles of human nature. A venerable old man, who had expressed the most tender affection for them both, for whom, notwithstanding, he was the avowed enemy of their religion. They had both conceived the highest reverence and esteem, and who was in reality their father, though they did not know him to be such, is pointed out to them as a sacrifice which God had expressly required at their hands, and they are commanded to kill him.
While they are about executing this crime, they are tortured with all the agonies which can arise from the struggle between the idea of the indispensableness of religious duty on one side, and compassion, gratitude, reverence for the age, and love for the humanity and virtue of the person whom they are going to destroy on the other. The representation of this exhibits one of the most interesting, and perhaps the most instructive spectacle that was ever introduced upon any theatre. The sense of duty, however, at last prevails over all the amiable weaknesses of human nature. They execute the crime imposed upon them, but immediately discover their error, and the fraud which had deceived them, and are distracted with horror, remorse, and resentment.
Such as are our sentiments for the unhappy Said in Palmyra. Such ought we to feel for every person who is in this manner misled by religion, when we are sure that it is really religion which misleads him, and not the pretence of it, which is made a cover to some of the worst human passions.
As a person may act wrong following a wrong sense of duty, so nature may sometimes prevail, and lead him to act right in opposition to it. We cannot in this case be displeased to see that motive prevail which we think ought to prevail, though the person himself is so weak as to think otherwise. As his conduct, however, is the effect of weakness, not principle, we are far from bestowing upon it anything that approaches to complete approbation. A bigoted Roman Catholic, who, during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, has been so overcome by compassion as to save some unhappy Protestants, whom he thought it his duty to destroy, would not seem to be entitled to that high applause which we should have bestowed upon him, had he exerted the same generosity with complete self-approbation.
We might be pleased with the humanity of his temper, but we should still regard him with a sort of pity which is altogether inconsistent with the admiration that is due to perfect virtue.
It is the same case with all the other passions. We do not dislike to see them exert themselves properly, even when a false notion of duty would direct the person to restrain them. A very devout Quaker, Who, upon being struck upon one cheek, instead of turning up the other, should go so far to forget his literal interpretation of our Saviour's precept, as to bestow some good discipline upon the brute that insulted him, would not be disagreeable to us. We should laugh and be diverted with his spirit, and rather like him the better for it. But we should by no means regard him with that respect and esteem which would seem due to one who, upon a like occasion, had acted properly from a just sense of what was proper to be done.
No action can properly be called virtuous which is not accompanied with the sentiment of self-approbation.
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21 21 - Part IV: Chapter I 23:42
XXI. The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Recording by Ariadna Solovyova.
Part Four. Of the effect of utility upon the sentiment of approbation, consisting of one section.
Chapter One. Of the beauty which the appearance of utility bestows upon all productions of art, and of the extensive influence of this species of beauty.
That utility is one of the principal sources of beauty. has been observed by everybody who has considered with any attention what constitutes the nature of beauty. The conveniency of a house gives pleasure to the spectator as well as its regularity, and he is as much hurt when he observes the contrary defect as when he sees the correspondent windows of different forms or the door not placed exactly in the middle of the building. That the fitness of any system or machine to produce the end for which it was intended bestows a certain propriety and beauty upon the whole, and renders the very thought and contemplation of it agreeable, is so very obvious that nobody has overlooked it. The cause, too, why utility pleases, has of late been assigned by an ingenious and agreeable philosopher, who joins the greatest depth of thought to the greatest elegance of expression, and possesses the singular and happy talent of treating the abstrusest subjects not only with the most perfect perspicuity, but with the most lively eloquence.
The utility of any object, according to him, pleases the master by perpetually suggesting to him the pleasure or conveniency which it is fitted to promote. Every time he looks at it, he is put in mind of this pleasure, and the object in this manner becomes a source of perpetual satisfaction and enjoyment. The spectator enters by sympathy into the sentiments of the master, and necessarily views the object under the same agreeable aspect. When we visit the palaces of the great, we cannot help conceiving the satisfaction we should enjoy if we ourselves were the masters, and were possessed of so much artful and ingeniously contrived accommodation. A similar account is given by the appearance of inconveniency should render any object disagreeable, both to the owner and to the spectator.
But that this fitness, this happy contrivance of any production of art, should often be more valued than the very end for which it was intended, and that the exact adjustment of the means for attaining any conveniency or pleasure should frequently be more regarded than that very conveniency or pleasure, in the attainment of which their whole merit would seem to consist, has not, so far as I know, been yet taken notice of by anybody. That this, however, is very frequently the case, may be observed in a thousand instances, both in the most frivolous and in the most important concerns of human life. When a person comes into his chamber, and finds the chairs all standing in the middle of the room, He is angry with his servant, and rather than see them continue in that disorder, perhaps takes the trouble himself to set them all in their places, with their backs to the wall.
The whole propriety of this new situation arises from its superior conveniency in leaving the floor free and disengaged. To attain this conveniency, he voluntarily puts himself to more trouble than all he could have suffered from the want of it, since nothing was more easy than to have set himself down upon one of them, which is probably what he does when his labor is over. What he wanted, therefore, it seems, was not so much this conveniency as that arrangement of things which promotes it. Yet it is this conveniency which ultimately recommends that arrangement, and bestows upon it the whole of its propriety and beauty. A watch, in the same manner, that falls behind above two minutes in a day, is despised by one curious in watches.
He sells it, perhaps, for a couple of guineas, and purchases another at fifty, which will not lose above a minute in a fortnight. The sole use of watches, however, is to tell us what a clock it is, and to hinder us from breaking any engagement, or suffering any other inconveniency by our ignorance in that particular point. But the person so nice with regard to this machine will not always be found either more scrupulously punctual than other men, or more anxiously concerned upon any other account, to know precisely what time of day it is. What interests him is not so much the attainment of this piece of knowledge as the perfection of the machine which serves to attain it. How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility?
What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniencies. They contrive new pockets unknown in the clothes of other people in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value, not inferior to an ordinary juice-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden. Nor is it only with regard to such frivolous objects that our conduct is influenced by this principle.
It is often the secret motive of the most serious and important pursuits of both private and public life. The poor man's son, whom heaven, in its anger, has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich. He finds the cottage of his father too small for his accommodation, and fancies he should be lodged more at his ease in a palace. He is displeased with being obliged to walk a foot or to endure the fatigue of riding on horseback. He sees his superiors carried about in machines, and imagines that in one of these he could travel with less inconveniency. He feels himself naturally indolent, and willing to serve himself with his own hands as little as possible, and judges that a numerous retinue of servants would save him from a great deal of trouble.
He thinks if he had attained all these, he would sit still contentedly and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the happiness and tranquility of his situation. He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity. It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the conveniences which these afford, he submits in the first year Nay, in the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body and more uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them. He studies to distinguish himself in some laborious profession.
With the most unrelenting industry, he labors day and night to acquire talents superior to all his competitors. He endeavors next to bring these talents into public view, and with equal assiduity solicits every opportunity of employment. For this purpose, he makes his court to all mankind. He serves those whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life, he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose, which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, If in the extremity of old age he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it.
It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with from the injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his friends, That he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquility of mind than the tweezer cases of the lover of toys. And like them, too, more troublesome to the person who carries them about with him than all the advantages they can afford him, Archimodius. There is no other real difference between them, except that the conveniences of the one are somewhat more observable than those of the other.
The palaces, the gardens, the equipage, the retinue of the great, are objects of which the obvious conveniency strikes everybody. They do not require that their masters should point out to us wherein consists their utility. Of our own accord, we readily enter into it, and by sympathy and joy, and thereby applaud the satisfaction which they are fitted to afford him. But the curiosity of a toothpick, of an ear-picker, of a machine for cutting the nails, or any other trinket of the same kind, is not so obvious. Their conveniency may perhaps be equally great, but it is not so striking, and we do not so readily enter into the satisfaction of the man who possesses them. They are, therefore, Less reasonable subjects of vanity than the magnificence of wealth and greatness.
And in this consists the sole advantage of these last. They more effectually gratify that love of distinction so natural to man. To one who was to live alone in a desolate island, it might be a matter of doubt, perhaps, whether a palace or a collection of such small conveniences as are commonly contained in a tweezer case, would contribute most to his happiness and enjoyment. If he is to live in society, indeed there can be no comparison, because in this, as in all other cases, we constantly pay more regard to the sentiments of the spectator than to those of the person principally concerned, and consider rather how his situation will appear to other people than how it will appear to himself. If we examine, however, Why the spectator distinguishes with such admiration the condition of the rich and the great, we shall find that it is not so much upon account of the superior ease or pleasure which they are supposed to enjoy, as of the numberless artificial and elegant contrivances for promoting this ease or pleasure.
He does not even imagine that they are really happier than other people, but he imagines that they possess more means of happiness. And it is the ingenious and artful adjustment of those means to the end for which they were intended, that is the principal source of his admiration. But in the languor of disease, and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one in this situation they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled forever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed, for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction.
In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man, when reduced, either by spleen or disease, to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be what they are, enormous and operose machines, contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics which it requires the labor of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniences, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season.
They keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much and sometimes more exposed than before to anxiety, to fear and to sorrow, to diseases, to danger, and to death.
But though this planetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humor, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity, expands itself to everything around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation, which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great, and admire how everything is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires.
If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it. It will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, Strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts which ennoble and embellish human life, which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned the rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains, and made the trackless and barren ocean a new fund of subsistence, and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth. The earth, by these labors of mankind, has been obliged to redouble her natural fertility, and to maintain a greater multitude of inhabitants.
It is to no purpose that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, an imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them. The homely and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly, Never was more fully verified than with regard to him. The capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will receive no more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is obliged to distribute among those who prepare in the nicest manner that little which he himself makes use of, Among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of the greatness, all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice that share of the necessaries of life which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice.
The produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining. The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labors of the thousands whom they employ be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements.
They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus, without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, It neither forgot nor abandoned those who seem to have been left out in the partition. These last two enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway possesses that security which kings are fighting for.
The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the beauty of order, of art, and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare. When a patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and wagoners that a public-spirited man encourages the mending of high rows. When the legislature establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen or woolen manufacturers, its conduct seldom proceeds from pure sympathy with the bearer or cheap of fine cloth, and much less from that with the manufacturer or merchant.
The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufacturers, are noble and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, And we are interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end.
From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. There have been men of the greatest public spirit who have shown themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of humanity. And on the contrary, there have been men of the greatest humanity who seem to have been entirely devoid of public spirit. Every man may find in the circle of his acquaintance instances both of the one kind and the other.
Who had ever less humanity or more public spirit than the celebrated legislator of Muscovy?
The social and well-natured James I of Great Britain seems, on the contrary, to have had scarce any passion, either for the glory or the interest of his country. Would you awaken the industry of the man who seems almost dead to ambition? It will often be... To no purpose to describe to him the happiness of the rich and the great, to tell him that they are generally sheltered from the sun and the rain, that they are seldom hungry, that they are seldom cold, and that they are rarely exposed to weariness or to want of any kind. The most eloquent exhortation of this kind will have little effect upon him. If he would hope to succeed, You must describe to him the conveniency and arrangement of the different apartments in their palaces.
You must explain to him the propriety of their equipages, and point out to him the number, the order, and the different offices of all their attendants. If anything is capable of making impression upon him, this will. Yet all these things tend only to keep off the sun and the rain, to save them from hunger and cold, from want and weariness. In the same manner, if you would implant public virtue in the breast of him who seems heedless of the interest of his country, it will often be to no purpose to tell him what superior advantages the subjects of a well-governed state enjoy, that they are better lodged, that they are better clothed, that they are better fed. These considerations will commonly make no great impression.
You will be more likely to persuade if you describe the great system of public police which procures these advantages, if you explain the connections and dependencies of its several parts, their mutual subordination to one another, and their general subserviency to the happiness of the society, if you show how this system might be introduced into his own country, What it is that hinders it from taking place there at present, how those obstructions might be removed, and all the several wheels of the machine of government be made to move with more harmony and smoothness, without grating upon one another, or mutually retarding one another's motions. It is scarce possible that a man should listen to a discourse of this kind, and not feel himself animated to some degree of public spirit.
He will, at least for the moment, feel some desire to remove those obstructions, and to put into motion so beautiful and so orderly a machine. Nothing tends so much to promote public spirit as the study of politics, of the several systems of civil government, their advantages and disadvantages, of the constitution of our own country, its situation and interest with regard to foreign nations, its commerce, its defense, its disadvantages it labors under, the dangers to which it may be exposed, How to remove the one, and how to guard against the other. Upon this account, political disquisitions, if just and reasonable and practicable, are of all the works of speculation the most useful. Even the weakest and the worst of them are not altogether without their utility.
They serve at least to animate the public passions of men, and rouse them to seek out the means of promoting the happiness of the society. End of section 21. Recorded by Ariadna Solovyova.
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22 22 - Part IV: Chapter II 19:48
XXII. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Part IV.
Of the Effective Utility Upon the Sentiment of Approbation, Consisting of One Section.
CHAPTER II. OF THE BEAUTY WHICH THE APPEARANCE OF UTILITY BESTOWS UPON THE CHARACTERS AND ACTIONS OF MEN. AND HOW FAR THE PERCEPTION OF THIS BEAUTY MAY BE REGARDED AS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL PRINCIPLES OF APPROBATION. THE CHARACTERS OF MEN, AS WELL AS THE CONTRIVANCES OF ART, or the institutions of civil government, may be fitted either to promote or to disturb the happiness both of the individual and of the society. The prudent, the equitable, the active, resolute and sober character promises prosperity and satisfaction, both to the person himself and to everyone connected with him. The rash, The insolent, the slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous, on the contrary, forbodes ruin to the individual, and misfortune to all who have anything to do with him.
The first turn of mind has at least all the beauty which can belong to the most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose, and the second, all the deformity of the most awkward and clumsy contrivance. What institution of government could tend so much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? All government is but an imperfect remedy for the deficiency of these. Whatever beauty, therefore, can belong to civil government, upon account of its utility, must in a far superior degree belong to these. On the contrary, what civil policy can be so ruinous and destructive as the vices of men? The fatal effects of bad government arise from nothing but that it does not sufficiently guard against the mischiefs which human wickedness gives occasion to.
This beauty and deformity, which characters appear to derive from their usefulness or inconveniency, are apt to strike in a peculiar manner those who consider, in an abstract and philosophical light, the actions and conduct of mankind. When a philosopher goes to examine why humanity is approved of, or cruelty condemned, he does not always form to himself in a very clear and distinct manner the conception of any one particular action, either of cruelty or of humanity, but is commonly contented with the vague and indeterminate idea which the general names of those qualities suggest to him. But it is in particular instances only that the propriety or impropriety, the merit or demerit of actions, is very obvious and discernible.
It is only when particular examples are given that we perceive distinctly either the concord or disagreement between our own affections and those of the agent, or feel a social gratitude arise towards him in the one case, or a sympathetic resentment in the other. When we consider virtue and vice in an abstract and general manner, the qualities by which they excite these several sentiments seem in a great measure to disappear, and the sentiments themselves become less obvious and discernible. On the contrary, the happy effects of the one and the fatal consequences of the other seem then to rise up to the view and as it were to stand out and distinguish themselves from all the other qualities of either.
The same ingenious and agreeable author, who first explained why utility pleases, has been so struck with this view of things as to resolve our whole approbation of virtue into a perception of this species of beauty, which results from the appearance of utility. No qualities of the mind, he observes, are approved of as virtuous, but such as are useful or agreeable, either to the person himself or to others, and no qualities are disapproved of as vicious, but such as have a contrary tendency. And nature, indeed, seems to have so happily adjusted our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, to the conveniency both of the individual and of the society, that after the strictest examination it will be found, I believe, that this is universally the case.
But still I affirm that it is not the view of this utility or hurtfulness which is either the first or principal source of our approbation and disapprobation.
These sentiments are no doubt enhanced and enlivened by the perception of the beauty or deformity which results from this utility or hurtfulness. But still I say, they are originally and essentially different from this perception. For, first of all, it seems impossible that the approbation of virtue should be a sentiment of the same kind with that by which we approve of a convenient and well-contrived building, or that we should have no other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers. And secondly, it will be found, upon examination, that the usefulness of any disposition of mind is seldom the first ground of our approbation. and that the sentiment of approbation always involves in it a sense of propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility.
We may observe this with regard to all the qualities which are approved of as virtuous, both those which according to this system are originally valued as useful to ourselves, as well as those which are esteemed on account of their usefulness to others. The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them, and, secondly, self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure, or to endure present pain in order to obtain a greater pleasure, or to avoid a greater pain in some future time.
In the union of those two qualities, Consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues, that which is most useful to the individual. With regard to the first of those qualities, it has been observed on a former occasion that superior reason and understanding are originally approved of as just and right and accurate, and not merely as useful or advantageous. It is in the abstruser sciences, particularly in the higher parts of mathematics, that the greatest and most admired exertions of human reason have been displayed. But the utility of those sciences, either to the individual or to the public, is not very obvious, and to prove it requires a discussion which is not always very easily comprehended.
It was not, therefore, their utility which first recommended them to the public admiration. This quality was but little insisted upon, till it became necessary to make some reply to the reproaches of those who, having themselves no taste for such sublime discoveries, endeavored to depreciate them as useless.
That self-command, in the same manner by which we restrain our present appetites, in order to gratify them more fully upon another occasion, is approved of, as much under the aspect of propriety, as under that of utility. When we act in this manner, the sentiments which influence our conduct seem exactly to coincide with those of the spectator. The spectator does not feel the solicitations of our present appetites. To him, the pleasure which we are to enjoy a week hence, or a year hence, is just as interesting as that which we are to enjoy this moment. When for the sake of the present, therefore, We sacrifice the future. Our conduct appears to him absurd and extravagant in the highest degree, and he cannot enter into the principles which influence it.
On the contrary, when we abstain from present pleasure in order to secure greater pleasure to come, when we act as if the remote object interested us as much as that which immediately presses upon the senses, As our affections exactly correspond with his own, he cannot fail to approve of our behavior, and as he knows from experience how few are capable of this self-command, he looks upon our conduct with a considerable degree of wonder and admiration. Hence arises that eminent esteem with which all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune. The resolute firmness of the person who acts in this manner, and in order to obtain a great though remote advantage, not only gives up all present pleasures, but endures the greatest labor both of mind and body, necessarily commands our approbation.
That view of his interest and happiness, which appears to regulate his conduct, exactly tallies with the idea which we naturally form of it. There is the most perfect correspondence between his sentiments and our own, and at the same time, from our experience of the common weakness of human nature, it is a correspondence which we could not reasonably have expected. We not only approve, therefore, but in some measure admire his conduct, and think it worthy of a considerable degree of applause. It is the consciousness of this merited approbation and esteem which is alone capable of supporting the agent in this manner of conduct. The pleasure, which we are to enjoy ten years hence, interests us so little in comparison with that which we may enjoy to-day.
The passion which the first excites is naturally so weak in comparison with that violent emotion which the second is apt to give occasion to, that the one could never be any balance to the other, Unless it was supported by the sense of propriety, by the consciousness that we merited the esteem and approbation of everybody, by acting in the one way, and that we became the proper objects of their contempt and derision by behaving in the other.
Humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit are the qualities most useful to others. Wherein consists the propriety of humanity and justice has been explained upon a former occasion. Where it was shown how much our esteem and approbation of these qualities depended upon the concord between the affections of the agent and those of the spectators. The propriety of generosity and public spirit is founded upon the same principle with that of justice. Generosity is different from humanity. Those two qualities, which at first sight seem so nearly allied, do not always belong to the same person. Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity of a man. The fair sex, who have commonly much more tenderness than ours, have seldom so much generosity.
That women rarely make considerable donations is an observation of the civil law. Humanity consists merely in the exquisite fellow-feeling, which the spectator entertains with the sentiments of the persons principally concerned, so as to grieve for their sufferings, to resent their injuries, and to rejoice at their good fortune. The most humane actions require no self-denial, no self-command, no great exertion of the sense of propriety. They consist only in doing what this exquisite sympathy would of its own accord prompt us to do. But it is otherwise with generosity. We never are generous except when in some respect we prefer some other person to ourselves, and sacrifice some great and important interest of our own to an equal interest of a friend or of a superior.
The man who gives up his pretensions to an office that was the great object of his ambition because he imagines that the services of another are better entitled to it. The man who exposes his life to defend that of his friend, which he judges to be of more importance. Neither of them act from humanity, or because they feel more exquisitely what concerns that other person than what concerns themselves. They both consider those opposite interests not in the light in which they naturally appear to themselves, but in that in which they appear to others. To every bystander, the success or preservation of this other person may justly be more interesting than their own, but it cannot be so to themselves.
When to the interest of this other person, therefore, they sacrifice their own, they accommodate themselves to the sentiments of the spectator, and by an effort of magnanimity act according to those views of things which they feel must naturally occur to any third person. The soldier who throws away his life in order to defend that of his officer would perhaps be but little affected by the death of that officer, If it should happen without any fault of his own, and a very small disaster which had befallen himself might excite a much more lively sorrow. But when he endeavors to act so as to deserve applause, and to make the impartial spectator enter into the principles of his conduct, he feels that to everybody but himself his own life is a trifle compared with that of his officer.
And that when he sacrifices the one to the other, he acts quite properly and agreeably to what would be the natural apprehensions of every impartial bystander. It is the same case with the greater exertions of public spirit. When a young officer exposes his life to acquire some inconsiderable addition to the dominions of his sovereign, it is not because the acquisition of the new territory is to himself an object more desirable than the preservation of his own life. To him his own life is of infinitely more value than the conquest of a whole kingdom for the state which he serves. But when he compares those two objects with one another, he does not view them in the light in which they naturally appear to himself, but in that in which they appear to the nation he fights for.
To them the success of the war is of the highest importance, the life of a private person of scarce any consequence. When he puts himself in their situation, he immediately feels that he cannot be too prodigal of his blood if by shedding it he can promote so valuable a purpose. In thus thwarting from a sense of duty and propriety the strongest of all natural propensities consists the heroism of his conduct. There is many an honest Englishman, who in his private station would be more seriously disturbed by the loss of a guinea than by the national loss of Menorca. Who yet, had it been in his power to defend that fortress, would have sacrificed his life a thousand times, rather than through his fault have let it fall into the hands of the enemy.
When the first Brutus led forth his own sons to a capital punishment, because they had conspired against the rising liberty of Rome, he sacrificed what, if he had consulted his own breast only, would appear to be the stronger to the weaker affection. Brutus ought naturally to have felt much more for the death of his own sons than for all that probably Rome could have suffered from the want of so great an example. But he viewed them not with the eyes of a father, but with those of a Roman citizen. He entered so thoroughly into the sentiments of this last character that he paid no regard to that tie by which he himself was connected with them. And to a Roman citizen, the sons even of Brutus seemed contemptible when put into the balance with the smallest interest of Rome.
In these, and in all other cases of this kind, our admiration is not so much founded upon the utility as upon the unexpected, and on that account the great, the noble, and exalted propriety of such actions. This utility, when we come to view it, bestows upon them undoubtedly a new beauty, and upon that account still further recommends them to our approbation. This beauty, however, is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and speculation, and is by no means the quality which first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind. It is to be observed that so far as the sentiment of approbation arises from the perception of this beauty of utility, It has no reference of any kind to the sentiments of others.
If it was possible, therefore, that a person should grow up to manhood without any communication with society, his own actions might notwithstanding be agreeable or disagreeable to him on account of their tendency to his happiness or disadvantage. He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance, and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behavior. He might view his own temper and character with that sort of satisfaction with which we consider a well-contrived machine in the one case, or with that sort of distaste and dissatisfaction with which we regard a very awkward and clumsy contrivance in the other. As these perceptions, however, are merely a matter of taste, and have all the feebleness and delicacy of that species of perceptions, upon the justness of which what is properly called taste is founded.
They probably would not be much attended to by one in this solitary and miserable condition. Even though they should occur to him, they would by no means have the same effect upon him, antecedent to his connection with society, which they would have in consequence of that connection. He would not be cast down with inward shame at the thought of this deformity. Nor would he be elevated with secret triumph of mind from the consciousness of the contrary beauty. He would not exult from the notion of deserving reward in the one case, nor tremble from the suspicion of meriting punishment in the other. All such sentiments suppose the idea of some other being, who is the natural judge of the person that feels them, And it is only by sympathy with the decisions of this arbiter of his conduct that he can conceive either the triumph of self-applaus or the shame of self-condemnation.
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23 23 - Part V: Chapter I 18:00
Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation Consisting of one section. Chapter One. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon Our Notions of Beauty and Deformity. There are other principles, besides those already enumerated, which have a considerable influence upon the moral sentiments of mankind, and are the chief causes of the many irregular and discordant opinions which prevail in different ages and nations concerning what is blamable or praiseworthy. These principles are custom and fashion, principles which extend their dominion over our judgments concerning beauty of every kind. When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other.
If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord, they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. Though, independent of custom, there should be no real beauty in their union, yet, when custom has thus connected them together, we feel an impropriety in their separation. The one we think is awkward when it appears without its usual companion. We miss something which we expected to find, and the habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems to want something if they are without the most insignificant ornament which usually accompanies them, and we find a meanness or awkwardness in the absence even of a haunch-button.
When there is any natural propriety in the union, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to see things in a good taste are more disgusted by whatever is clumsy or awkward. Where the conjunction is improper, custom either diminishes, or takes away altogether, are sense of the impropriety. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of furniture or dress, which seem ridiculous to strangers, give no offense to the people who are used to them. Fashion is different from custom. or rather is a particular species of it.
That is not the fashion which everybody wears, but which those wear who are of a high rank or character. The graceful, the easy, and commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow upon it. As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something that is genteel and magnificent, And though in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account of this relation, to have something about it that is genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess before, and being now used only by the inferior ranks of people, seems to have something of their meanness and awkwardness.
Dress and furniture are allowed by all the world to be entirely under the dominion of custom and fashion. The influence of those principles, however, is by no means confined to so narrow a sphere, but extends itself to whatever is, in any respect, the object of taste—to music, to poetry, to architecture. The modes of dress and furniture are continually changing, and that fashion appearing ridiculous to-day, which was admired five years ago, we are experimentally convinced that it owed its vogue chiefly, or entirely, to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture are not made of very durable materials. A well-fancied coat is done in a twelvemonth, and cannot continue longer to propagate, as the fashion, that form according to which it was made.
The modes of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress, because furniture is commonly more durable. In five or six years, however, it generally undergoes an entire revolution, And every man in his own time sees the fashion in this respect change many different ways. The productions of the other arts are much more lasting, and, when happily imagined, may continue to propagate the fashion of their make for a much longer time. A well-contrived building may endure many centuries. A beautiful air may be delivered down by a sort of tradition through many successive generations. A well-written poem may last as long as the world, and all of them continue for ages together, to give the vogue to that particular style, to that particular taste or manner, according to which each of them was composed.
Few men have an opportunity of seeing in their own times the fashion in any of these arts change very considerably. Few men have so much experience and acquaintance with the different modes which have obtained in remote ages and nations as to be thoroughly reconciled to them, or to judge with impartiality between them and what takes place in their own age and country. Few men, therefore, are willing to allow that custom or fashion have much influence upon their judgments concerning what is beautiful or otherwise in the productions of any of those arts. But imagine that all the rules which they think ought to be observed in each of them are founded upon reason and nature, not upon habit or prejudice.
A very little attention, however, may convince them of the contrary, and satisfy them that the influence of custom and fashion over dress and furniture is not more absolute than over architecture, poetry, and music. Can any reason, for example, be assigned why the Doric capital should be appropriated to a pillar whose height is equal to eight diameters, the Ionic volute to one of nine, and the Corinthian foliage to one of ten. The propriety of each of these appropriations can be founded upon nothing but habit and custom. The eye, having been used to see a particular proportion connected with a particular ornament, would be offended if they were not joined together. Each of the five orders has its peculiar ornaments, which cannot be changed for any other, without giving offence to all those who know anything of the rules of architecture.
According to some architects, indeed, such is the exquisite judgment with which the ancients have assigned to each order its proper ornaments, that no others can be found which are equally suitable. It seems, however, a little difficult to be conceived, that these forms, though, no doubt, extremely agreeable, should be the only forms which can suit those proportions. Or that there should not be five hundred others, which, antecedent to established custom, would have fitted them equally well. When custom, however, has established particular rules of building, provided they are not absolutely unreasonable, it is absurd to think of altering them for others which are only equally good, or even for others which, in point of elegance and beauty, have naturally some little advantage over them.
A man would be ridiculous who should appear in public with a suit of clothes quite different from those which are commonly worn, though the new dress should in itself be ever so graceful or convenient. And there seems to be an absurdity of the same kind in ornamenting a house after a quite different manner from that which custom and fashion have prescribed, though the new ornaments should in themselves be somewhat superior to the common ones.
According to the ancient rhetoricians, A certain measure of verse was, by nature, appropriated to each particular species of writing, as being naturally expressive of that character, sentiment, or passion which ought to predominate in it. One verse, they said, was fit for grave, and another for gay works, which could not, they thought, be interchanged without the greatest impropriety. The experience of modern times, however, seems to contradict this principle. Though, in itself, it would appear to be extremely probable. What is the burlesque verse in English is the heroic verse in French. The tragedies of Racine and the Henriade of Voltaire are nearly in the same verse with, Let me have your advice and await the affair.
The burlesque verse in French, on the contrary, is pretty much the same with the heroic verse of ten syllables in English. Custom has made the one nation associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and seriousness to that measure which the other has connected with whatever is gay, flippant, and ludicrous. Nothing would appear more absurd in English than a tragedy written in the Alexandrine verses of the French, or in French than a work of the same kind in verses of ten syllables. An eminent artist will bring about a considerable change in the established modes of each of those arts, and introduce a new fashion of writing, music, or architecture. As the dress of an agreeable man of high rank recommends itself, and how peculiar and fantastical soever, comes soon to be admired and imitated.
So the excellencies of an eminent master recommend his peculiarities, and his manner becomes the fashionable style in the art which he practices. The taste of the Italians in music and architecture has, within these fifty years, undergone a considerable change, from imitating the peculiarities of some eminent masters in each of those arts. Seneca is accused by Quintilian of having corrupted the taste of the Romans, and of having introduced a frivolous prettiness in the room of majestic reason and masculine eloquence. Sallust and Tacitus have, by others, been charged with the same accusation, though in a different manner. They gave reputation, it is pretended, to a style which, though in the highest degree concise, elegant, expressive, and even poetical, wanted, however, ease, simplicity, and nature, and was evidently the production of the most labored and studied affectation.
How many great qualities must that writer possess who can thus render his very faults agreeable? After the praise of refining the taste of a nation, after the praise of refining the taste of a nation, the highest eulogy, perhaps, which can be bestowed upon any author, is to say that he corrupted it. In our own language, Mr. Pope and Dr. Swift have, each of them, introduced a manner different from what was practiced before, into all works that are written in rhyme, the one in long verses, the other in short. The quaintness of Butler has given place to the plainness of Swift. The rambling freedom of Dryden, and the correct but often tedious and prosaic languor of Addison, are no longer the objects of imitation, but all long verses are now written after the manner of the nervous precision of Mr.
Pope. Neither is it only over the productions of the arts that custom and fashion exert their dominion. They influence our judgments in the same manner with regard to the beauty of natural objects. What various and opposite forms are deemed beautiful in different species of things? The proportions which are admired in one animal are altogether different from those which are esteemed in another. Every class of things has its own peculiar conformation, which is approved of, and has a beauty of its own, distinct from that of every other species. It is upon this account that a learned Jesuit, Fr. Bouffia, has determined that the beauty of every object consists in that form and color which is most usual among things of that particular sort to which it belongs.
Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each feature lies in a certain middle, equally removed from a variety of other forms that are ugly. A beautiful nose, for example, is one that is neither very long nor very short, neither very straight nor very crooked, but a sort of middle among all these extremes, and less different from any one of them than all of them are from one another. It is the form which nature seems to have aimed at in the mall, which, however, she deviates from in a great variety of ways, and very seldom hits exactly, but to which all those deviations still bear a very strong resemblance. When a number of drawings are made after one pattern, though they may all miss it in some respects, yet they will all resemble it more than they resemble one another.
The general character of the pattern will run through the mall, The most singular and odd will be those which are most wide of it, and though very few will copy it exactly, yet the most accurate delineations will bear a greater resemblance to the most careless than the careless ones will bear to one another. In the same manner, in each species of creatures, what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong.
And thus the beauty of each species, though in one sense the rarest of all things, because few individuals hit this middle form exactly, yet in another is the most common, because all the deviations from it resemble it more than they resemble one another. The most customary form, therefore, is, in each species of things, according to him, the most beautiful. And hence it is that a certain practice and experience in contemplating each species of objects is requisite, before we can judge of its beauty, or know wherein the middle and most usual form consists. The nicest judgment concerning the beauty of the human species will not help us to judge that of flowers, or horses, or any other species of things.
It is for the same reason that, in different climates, and where different customs and ways of living take place, as the generality of any species receives a different confirmation from those circumstances, so different ideas of its beauty prevail. The beauty of a Moorish is not exactly the same with that of an English horse. What different ideas are formed in different nations concerning the beauty of the human shape and countenance? A fair complexion is a shocking deformity upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are a beauty. In some nations, long ears that hang down upon the shoulders are the objects of universal admiration. In China, if a lady's foot is so large as to be fit to walk upon, she is regarded as a monster of ugliness.
Some of the savage nations in North America tie four boards round the heads of their children, and thus squeeze them, while the bones are tender and gristly, into a form that is almost perfectly square. Europeans are astonished at the absurd barbarity of this practice, to which some missionaries have imputed the singular stupidity of those nations, among whom it prevails. But when they condemn those savages, They do not reflect that the ladies in Europe had, till within these very few years, been endeavoring, for near a century past, to squeeze the beautiful roundness of their natural shape into a square form of the same kind, and that, notwithstanding the many distortions and diseases which this practice was known to occasion, custom had rendered it agreeable among some of the most civilized nations which perhaps the world ever beheld.
Such is the system of this learned and ingenious father concerning the nature of beauty, of which the whole charm, according to him, would thus seem to arise from its falling in with the habits which custom had impressed upon the imagination, with regard to things of each particular kind. I cannot, however, be induced to believe that our sense, even of external beauty, is founded altogether on custom. The utility of any form, Its fitness for the useful purposes for which it was intended evidently recommends it, and renders it agreeable to us, independent of custom. Certain colors are more agreeable than others, and give more delight to the eye the first time it ever beholds them. A smooth surface is more agreeable than a rough one.
Variety is more pleasing than a tedious, undiversified uniformity. Connected variety, in which each new appearance seems to be introduced by what went before it, and in which all the adjoining parts seem to have some natural relation to one another, is more agreeable than a disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected objects. But though I cannot admit that custom is the sole principle of beauty, Yet I can so far allow the truth of this ingenious system as to grant that there is scarce any one external form so beautiful as to please, if quite contrary to custom, and unlike whatever we have been used to in that particular species of things, or so deformed as not to be agreeable, if custom uniformly supports it, and habituates us to see it in every single individual of the kind.
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24 24 - Part V: Chapter II 34:03
Since our sentiments concerning beauty of every kind are so much influenced by custom and fashion, it cannot be expected that those concerning the beauty of conduct should be entirely exempted from the dominion of those principles. Their influence here, however, seems to be much less than it is everywhere else. There is, perhaps, no form of external object, how absurd and fanatical soever, to which custom will not or which fashion will not render even agreeable. But the characters and conduct of an earl or Claudius are what no custom will ever reconcile us to, what no fashion will ever render agreeable, but the one will always be the object of dread and hatred, the other of scorn and derision.
The principles of the imagination, upon which our sense of beauty depends, are of a very nice and delicate nature, and may easily be altered by habit and education. But the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation are founded on the strongest and most vigorous passions of human nature, and though they may be somewhat warped, cannot be entirely perverted. But though the influence of custom and fashion upon moral sentiments is not altogether so great, it is, however, perfectly similar to what it is everywhere else. When custom and fashion coincide with the natural principles of right or wrong. They heighten the delicacy of our sentiments, and increase our abhorrence for every thing which approaches to evil.
Those who have been educated in what is really good company, not in what is commonly called such, who have been accustomed to see nothing in the persons whom they esteemed and lived with but justice, modesty, humanity, and good order, are more shocked with whatever seems to be inconsistent with the rules which those virtues prescribe. Those, on the contrary, who have had the misfortune to be brought up amidst violence, licentiousness, Falsehood and injustice lose, though not all sense of the impropriety of such conduct, yet all sense of its dreadful enormity or of the vengeance and punishment do it. They have been familiar with it from their infancy. Custom has rendered it habitual to them, and they are very apt to regard it as, what is called, the way of the world, something which either may or must be practiced to hinder us from being the dupes of our own integrity.
Fashion, too, will sometimes give reputation to a certain degree of disorder, and, on the contrary, discountenance qualities which deserve esteem. In the reign of Charles, the second, a degree of licentiousness was deemed the characteristic of a liberal education. It was connected, according to the notion of those times, with generosity, sincerity, magnanimity, loyalty, and proof that the person who acted in this manner was a gentleman, and not a Puritan. Severity of manners and regularity of conduct, on the other hand, were altogether unfashionable, and were connected, in the imagination of that age, with cant, cunning, hypocrisy, and low manners. To superficial minds, the vices of the great seem at all times agreeable.
They connect them not only with the splendor of fortune, but with many superior virtues which they ascribe to their superiors. With the spirit of freedom and independency, with frankness, generosity, humanity, and politeness. The virtues of the inferior ranks of people, on the contrary, their parsimonious frugality, their painful industry, and rigid adherence to rules, seems to them mean and disagreeable. They connect them both. with the meanness of the station to which those qualities commonly belong, and with many great vices which they suppose usually accompany them, such as an abject, cowardly, ill-natured, lying, pilfering disposition. The objects with which men in different professions and states of life are conversant, being very different, and habituating them to very different passions, naturally form in them Very different characters and manners.
We expect in each rank and profession a degree of those manners which experience has taught us belong to it, but as in each species of things, we are particularly pleased with the middle conformation which, in every part and feature, agrees most exactly with the general standard which nature seems to have established for things of that kind. So, in each rank, or, if I may say so, in each species of men, we are particularly pleased if they have neither too much nor too little of the character which usually accompanies their particular condition and situation. A man, we say, should look like his trade and profession, yet the pedantry of every profession is disagreeable. The different Periods of life have, for the same reason, different manners assigned to them.
We expect, in old age, that gravity and sedateness, which its infirmities, its long experience, and its worn-out sensibility seem to render both natural and respectable. And we lay our account to find in youth that sensibility, that gaiety, and sprightly vivacity which experience teaches us to expect from the lively impressions that all interesting objects are apt to make upon the tender and unpractised senses of that early period of life. Each of those two ages, however, may easily have too much of the peculiarities which belong to it. The flirting levity of youth and the immovable insensibility of old age are equally disagreeable. The young, according to the common saying, are most agreeable when in their behavior there is something of the manners of the old, and the old when they retain something of the gaiety of the young.
Either of them, however, may easily have too much of the manners of the other. The extreme coldness and dull formality, which are pardoned in old age, make youth ridiculous. The levity, the carelessness, and the vanity, which are indulged in youth, render old age contemptible. The peculiar character and manners which we are led by custom to appropriate to each rank and profession have sometimes perhaps a propriety independent of custom, and what we should approve of for their own sakes, if we took into consideration All the different circumstances which naturally affect those in each different state of life. The propriety of a person's behavior depends not upon its suitableness to any one circumstance of his situation, but to all the circumstances which, when we bring his case home to ourselves, We feel should naturally call upon his attention.
If he appears to be so much occupied by any one of them as entirely to neglect the rest, we disapprove of all conduct as something which we cannot entirely go along with, because not properly adjusted to all the circumstances of his situation. Yet, perhaps, the emotion he expresses for the object which principally interests him does not exceed what we should entirely sympathize with. and approve of in one whose attention was not required by any other thing. A parent in private life might, upon the loss of an only son, express without blame a degree of grief and tenderness, which would be unpardonable in a general at the head of an army, when glory and the public safety demanded so great a part of his attention.
As different objects ought, upon common occasions, to occupy the attention of men of different professions, So different passions ought naturally to become habitual to them, and when we bring home to ourselves their situation in this particular respect, we must be sensible that every occurrence should naturally affect them more or less, according as the emotion which it excites coincides or disagrees with the fixate habit and temper of their minds. We cannot expect the same sensibility to the gay pleasures and amusements of life in a clergyman. which we lay our account with in an office. The man whose peculiar occupation it is to keep the world in mind of that awful futurity which awaits them, who is to announce what may be the fatal consequences of every deviation from the rules of duty, and who is himself to set the example of the most exact conformity, seems to be the messenger of tidings, which cannot in propriety be delivered either with liberty or indifference.
His mind is supposed to be continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, To leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay. We readily feel, therefore, that, independent of custom, there is a propriety in the manners which custom has allotted to this profession, and that nothing can be more suitable to the character of a clergyman than that grave, that austere and abstracted severity which we are habituated to expect in his behavior. These reflections are so very obvious that there is scarce any man so inconsiderate as not at some time to have made them, and to accounted to himself in this manner, for his approbation of the usual character of this order.
The foundation of the customary character of some other professions is not so obvious, and our approbation of it is founded entirely in habit, without being either confirmed or enlivened by any reflections of this kind. We are led by custom, for example, to annex the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as some degree of dissipation, to the military profession. Yet, if we were to consider what mood or tone of temper would be most suitable to this situation, we should be apt to determine, perhaps, that the most serious and thoughtful train of mind Would best become those whose lives are continually exposed to uncommon danger, and who should therefore be more constantly occupied with the thoughts of death and its consequences than other men.
It is this very circumstance, however, which is not improbably the occasion why the contrary turn of mind prevails so much among men of this profession. It requires so great an effort to conquer the fear of death when we survey it with steadiness and attention That those who are constantly exposed to it find it easier to turn away their thoughts from it altogether, to wrap themselves up in careless security and indifference, and to plunge themselves for this purpose into every sort of amusement and dissipation. A camp is not the element of a thoughtful or a melancholy man. Persons of that caste, indeed, are often abundantly determined and are capable, by a great effort, Of going on with the inflexible resolution to the most unavoidable death, but to be exposed to a continual, though less imminent, danger.
To be obliged to exert for a long time a degree of this effort exhausts and depresses the mind, and renders it incapable of all happiness and enjoyment. The gay and the careless, who have occasion to make no effort at all, who fairly resolve never to look before them, But to lose in continual pleasures and amusements all anxiety about their situation. More easily support such circumstances. Whenever, by any peculiar circumstances, an officer has no reason to lay his account with being exposed to any uncommon danger, he is very apt to lose the gaiety and dissipated thoughtlessness of his character. The captain of a city guard is commonly as sober, careful, and canaryous an animal as the rest of his fellow citizens.
A long piece is, for the same reason, very apt to diminish the difference between the civil and the military character. The ordinary situation, however, of men of this profession renders gaiety and agree of dissipation so much their usual character and custom has in our imagination so strongly connected this character with the state of life that we are very apt to despise any man whose peculiar humor or situation Renders him incapable of acquiring it. We laugh at the grave and careful faces of a city guard, which so little resembled those of their profession. They themselves seem often to be ashamed of the regularity of their own manners, and, not to be out of the fashion of their trade, are fond of effecting that levity, which is by no means natural to them.
Whatever is the deportment which we have been accustomed to see in a respectable order of men, It comes to be so associated in our imagination with that order that, whenever we see the one, we lay our account that we are too elite with the other, and when disappointed, miss something which we expected to find. We are embarrassed and put to a stand, and know not how to address ourselves to a character which plainly affects to be of a different species from those with which we should have been disposed to class it. The different situations of different ages and countries are apt, in the same manner, to give different characters to the generality of those who live in them, and their sentiments concerning the particular degree of each quality, that is either blamable or praiseworthy, very, according to that degree which is usual in their own country, and in their own times.
That degree of politeness, which would be highly esteemed, perhaps would be thought effeminate adulation, in Russia, Would be regarded as rudeness and barbarism at the court of France. That degree of order and frugality, which, in a Polish nobleman, would be considered as excessive parsimony, would be regarded as an extravagance in a citizen of Amsterdam. Every age and country look upon that degree of each quality, which is commonly to be met with, and those who are esteemed among themselves, as the golden mean of that particular talent or virtue. And, as this varies according to their different circumstances, rendering different qualities more or less habitual to them, their sentiments concerning the exact propriety of character and behavior vary accordingly.
Among civilized nations, the virtues which are founded upon humanity are more cultivated than those which are founded upon self-denial and the command of the passions. Among rude and barbarous nations, it is quite otherwise. The virtues of self-denial are more cultivated than those of humanity. The general security and happiness which prevail in the ages of civility and politeness afford little exercise to the contempt of danger, to patience in enduring labor, hunger, and pain. Poverty may easily be avoided. And the contempt of it, therefore, almost ceases to be a virtue. The abstinence from pleasure becomes less necessary, and the mind is more at liberty to unbend itself, and to indulge its natural inclinations in all those particular respects.
Among savages and barbarians it is quite otherwise. Every savage undergoes a sort of Spartan discipline, and by the necessity of his situation is inured to every sort of hardship. He is in continual danger. He is often exposed to the greatest extremities of hunger, and frequently dies of pure want. The circumstances not only habituate him to every sort of distress, but teach him to give way to none of the passions which that distress is apt to excite. He can expect from his countrymen no sympathy or indulgence for such weakness. Before we can feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves. If our own misery pinches us very severely, we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbor.
And all savages are too much occupied with their own wants and necessities to give much attention to those of another person. A savage, therefore, may be whatever the nature of his distress, expects no sympathy from those about him, and disdains, upon that account, to expose himself by allowing the least weakness to escape him. His passions, how furious and violent soever, are never permitted to disturb the serenity of his countenance or the composure of his Conduct and Behavior. The savages in North America, we are told, assume upon all occasions the greatest indifference, and would think themselves degraded if they should ever appear in any respect to be overcome, either by love or grief or resentment.
Their magnanimity and self-command in this respect are almost beyond the conception of Europeans. In a country in which all men, upon a level, with regard to rank and fortune, it might be expected that the mutual inclinations of the two parties should be the only thing considered in marriages, and should be indulged without any sort of control. This, however, is the country in which all marriages, without exception, are made up by the parents, and in which a young man would think himself disgraced forever if he should have the least preference for one woman above another. Or did not express the most complete indifference, both about the time when and the person to whom he was to be married. The weakness of love, which is so much indulged in ages of humanity and politeness, is regarded among savages as the most unpardonable effeminacy.
Even after the marriage, the two parties seem to be ashamed of a connection which is founded upon so sordid a necessity. They do not live together. They see one another by stealth only. They both continue to dwell in the houses of their respective fathers, and the open cohabitation of the two sexes, which is permitted without blame in all other countries, is here considered as the most indecent and unmanly sensuality. Nor is it only over this agreeable passion that they exert this absolute self-command. They often bear, in the sight of all their countrymen, With injuries, reproach, and the grossest insults, with the appearance of the greatest insensibility, and without expressing the smallest resentment.
When a savage is made prisoner of war, and receives, as is usual, the sentence of death from his conquerors, he hears it without expressing any emotion, and afterwards submits to the most dreadful torments, without ever bemoaning himself, or discovering any other passion but contempt of his enemies. While he is hung by the shoulders over a slow fire, he derides his tormentors and tells them with how much more ingenuity he himself had tormented such of their countrymen as had fallen into his hands. After he has been scorched and burned, and lacerated in all the most tenser and sensible parts of his body for several hours together, he is often allowed, in order to prolong his misery, a short respite.
and is taken down from the stake. He employs this interval in talking upon all indifferent subjects, inquires after the news of the country, and seems indifferent about nothing but his own situation. The spectators express the same insensibility. The sight of so horrible an object seems to make no impression upon them. They scarce look at the prisoner, Except when they lend a hand to torment him. At other times they smoke tobacco and amuse themselves with any common object, as if no such matter was going on. Every savage is said to prepare himself from his earliest youth for this dreadful end. He composes for this purpose what they call the Song of Death, a song which he is to sing when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies and is expiring under the tortures which they inflict upon him.
It consists of insults upon his tormentors, and expresses the highest contempt of death and pain. He sings this song upon all extraordinary occasions, when he goes out to war, when he meets his enemies in the field, or whenever he has a mind to show that he has familiarized his imagination to the most dreadful misfortunes. And that no human can daunt his resolution or alter his purpose. The same contempt of death and torture prevails among all other savage nations. There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of a sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possessed the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose love of brutality, and baseness, so justly exposed them to the contempt of the vanquished.
This heroic and unconquerable firmness, which the custom and education of his country demand of every savage, is not required of those who are brought up to live in civilized societies. If these last complain when they are in pain, If they grieve when they are in distress, if they allow themselves either to be overcome by love or to be discomposed by anger, they are easily pardoned. Such weaknesses are not apprehended to affect the essential parts of their character. As long as they do not allow themselves to be transported to do anything contrary to justice or humanity, they lose but little reputation, though the serenity of their countenance, or the composure of their discourse and behavior should be somewhat ruffled and disturbed.
A humane and polished people, who have more sensibility to the passions of others can more readily enter into an animated and passionate behavior, and can more easily pardon some little excess. The person principally concerned is sensible at this, and, being assured of the equity of his judges, indulges himself in stronger expressions of passion, and is less afraid of exposing himself to their contempt by the violence of his emotions. He can venture to express more emotion in the presence of a friend than In that of a stranger, because we expect more indulgence from the one than the other. And in the same manner, the rules of decorum among civilized nations admit of a more animated behavior than is approved of among barbarians.
The first conversed together with open friends, the second with a reserve of strangers. The emotion and vivacity with which the French and the Italians The two most polished nations upon the continent express themselves on occasions that are at all interesting. Surprised at first those strangers who happened to be travelling among them, and who, having been educated among the people of duller sensibility, cannot enter into this passionate behaviour of which they have never seen any example in their own country. A young French nobleman, will weep in the presence of the whole court upon being refused a regiment. An Italian, says the abbot de Gaulle, expresses more emotion on being condemned in a fine of twenty shillings than an Englishman on receiving the sentence of death.
Cicero, in the times of the highest Roman politeness, could, without degrading himself, Weep with all the bitterness of sorrow in the sight of the whole Senate and the whole people, as it is evident he must have done in the end of almost every oration. The orators of the earlier and reader ages of Rome could not probably, consistent with the manners of the times, have expressed themselves with so much emotion. It would have been regarded, I suppose, as a violation of nature and propriety in the Scipios and the Elias's and in the elder Tato, to have exposed so much tenderness to the public view. Those ancient warriors could express themselves with order, gravity, and good judgment, but are said to have been strangers to that sublime and passionate eloquence which was first introduced into Rome, not many years before the birth of Cicero, by the two gracchides, by crosses, and by Sulphagess.
This animated eloquence, which has been long practiced with or without success, both in France and Italy, is but just beginning to be introduced into England. So wide is the difference between the degrees of self-command, which are required in civilized and in barbarous nations, and by such different standards do they judge of the propriety of behavior. This difference gives occasion to many others that are not less essential. A polished people, upon being accustomed to give away, in some measure, to the movements of nature, Become frank, open, and sincere. Barbarians, on the contrary, being obliged to smother and conceal the appearance of every passion, necessarily acquire the habits of falsehood and dissimulation.
It is observed by all those who have been conversant with savage nations, whether in Asia, Africa, or America, that they are all equally impenetrable, and that, When they have a mind to conceal the truth, no examination is capable of drawing it from them. They cannot be trepanned to the most artful questions. The torture itself is incapable of making them confess anything which they have no mind to tell. The passions of a savage, too, Though they never express themselves by any outward emotion, but lie concealed in the breast of the sufferer, are, notwithstanding, all mounted to the highest pitch of fury. Though he seldom shows any symptoms of anger, yet his vengeance, when he comes to give way to it, is always sanguinary and dreadful.
The least affront drives him to despair. His countenance and discourse, indeed, are still sober and composed, and express nothing but the most perfect tranquility of mind, but his actions are often the most furious and violent. Among the North Americans, it is not uncommon for the persons of the tenderest age and more fearful sex to drown themselves upon receiving only a slight reprimand from their mothers, and this, too, without expressing any passion or saying anything. Except, you shall no longer have a daughter. In civilized nations, the passions of men are not commonly so furious or so desperate. They are often clamorous and noisy, but they are seldom very hurtful, and seem frequently to aim at no other satisfaction but that of convincing the spectator that they are in the right to be so much moved, and of procuring his sympathy and approbation.
All these effects of custom and fashion, however, upon the moral sentiments of mankind were inconsiderable, In comparison of those which they give occasion to in some other cases, and it is not concerning the general style of character and behavior that those principles produce the greatest perversion of judgment, but concerning the propriety or impropriety of particular usages. The different manners which custom teaches us to approve of in the different professions and states of life do not concern things of the greatest importance. We expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a young man. Young, from a clergyman as well as an officer, and it is in matters of small moment only that we look for the distinguishing marks of their respective characters.
With regard to these two, there is often some unobserved circumstance which, if it was attended to, would show us that, independent of custom, there was a propriety in the character which custom had taught us to allot to each profession. We cannot complain, therefore, in this case, that the perversion of natural sentiment is very great. Though the manners of different nations require different degrees of the same quality, in the character which they think worthy of esteem, yet the worst that can be said to happen even here is that the duties of one virtue are sometimes extended so as to encroach a little upon the precincts of some other. The rustic hospitality that is in fashion among the poles encroaches, perhaps, a little upon economy and good order, and the frugality that is esteemed in Holland upon generosity and good fellowship.
The hardiness demanded of savages diminishes their humanity, and, perhaps, the delicate sensibility required in civilized nations sometimes destroys the masculine firmness of the character. In general, the style of manners which takes place in any nation may commonly, upon the whole, be said to be that which is most suitable to its situation. Hardiness is the character most suitable to the circumstances of a savage. Sensibility to those of one who lives in a very civilized society. Even here, therefore, we cannot complain that the moral sentiments of men are very grossly perverted. It is not, therefore, in the general style of conduct or behavior that custom authorizes the widest departure from what is in the natural propriety of action.
With regard to particular usages, its influence is often much more destructive of good morals, and is capable of establishing, as lawful and blameless, particular notions which stock the plainest principles of right and wrong. Can there be greater barbarity, for example, than to hurt an infant? Its helplessness, its innocence, its Amiableness, call forth the compassion even of an enemy, and not to spare that tender age is regarded as the most furious effort of an enraged and cruel conqueror. What, then, should we imagine, must be the heart of a parent who could injure that weakness which even a furious enemy is afraid to violate. Get the exposition. That is, the murder of a newborn infant was a practice allowed in almost all the states of Greece, even among the polite and civilized Athenians.
And whatever the circumstances of the parent rendered it inconvenient to bring up the child, to abandon it to hunger, or to wild beasts, was regarded without blame or censure. This practice had probably begun in times of the most savage barbarity. The imaginations of the men had been first made familiar with it in the earliest period of society, and the uniform continuance of the custom had hindered them afterwards from perceiving its enormity. We find at this day that this practice prevails among all savage nations, and in that rudest and lowest state of society it is undoubtedly more pardonable than in any other. The extreme indigents The importance of a savage is often such that he himself is frequently exposed to the greatest extremity of hunger.
He often dies of pure want, and it is frequently impossible for him to support both himself and his child. He cannot wonder, therefore, that in this case he should abandon it, one who, in flying from an enemy, Whom it was impossible to resist, should throw down his infant because it retarded his flight, would surely be excusable, since, by attempting to save it, he could only hope for the consolation of dying with it. That, in the state of society, therefore, a parent should be allowed to judge whether he can bring up his child, ought not to surprise us so greatly. In the later ages of Greece, however, the same thing was permitted from views of remote interest or conveniency, which could by no means excuse it.
Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorized the practice that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse by far-fetched considerations of public utility. Talks of it as what the magistrate ought upon many occasions to encourage. The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, nowhere marks this practice with disapprobation. When custom can give sanction to so dreadful a violation of humanity that there is scarce any particular practice so gross which it cannot authorize.
Such a thing we hear men every day saying is commonly done, and they seem to think that it is a sufficient apology for what, in itself, is the most unjust and unreasonable conduct. This is an obvious reason why customs should never pervert our sentiments with regard to the general style and character of conduct and behavior, in the same degree with regard to the propriety or unlawfulness of particular usages. There can never be any such custom. No society could subsist a moment in which the usual strain of men's conduct and behavior was of a piece with the horrible practice I have just now mentioned.
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25 25 - Part VI: Section I 20:28
XXV. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Recording by Jude Cater The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. Part Six. Section One.
Part Six. Of the Character of Virtue, consisting of three sections. Introduction.
When we consider the character of any individual, we naturally view it under two different aspects. First, As it may affect his own happiness, and secondly, as it may affect that of other people. Part Six. Of the Character of Virtue, consisting of three sections.
Section One.
Of the Character of the Individual, so far as it affects his own happiness, or of Prudence, The preservation and healthful state of the body seem to be the objects which nature first recommends to the care of every individual. The appetites of hunger and thirst, the agreeable or disagreeable sensations of pleasure and pain, of heat and cold, etc., may be considered as lessons delivered by the voice of nature herself, directing him what he ought to choose, and what he ought to avoid for this purpose. The first lessons which he has taught by those to whom his childhood is entrusted tend, the greater part of them, to the same purpose. Their principal object is to teach him how to keep out of harm's way.
As he grows up, he soon learns that some care and foresight are necessary for providing the means of gratifying those natural appetites, of procuring pleasure in avoiding pain, Of procuring the agreeable and avoiding the disagreeable temperature of heat and cold. In the proper direction of this care and foresight consists the art of preserving and increasing what is called his external fortune. Though it is in order to supply the necessities and conveniences of the body, that the advantages of external fortune are originally recommended to us, Yet we cannot live long in the world without perceiving that the respect of our equals, our credit and rank in the society we live in, depend very much upon the degree in which we possess, or are supposed to possess, those advantages.
The desire of becoming the proper objects of this respect, of deserving and obtaining this credit and rank among our equals, is, perhaps, the strongest of all our desires. And our anxiety to obtain the advantages of fortune is accordingly much more excited and irritated by this desire than that by of supplying all the necessities and conveniences of the body which are always very easily supplied. Our rank and credit among our equals, too, depend very much upon what, perhaps, a virtuous man would wish them to depend entirely—our character and conduct, or upon the confidence, esteem, and goodwill which these naturally excite in the people we live with. The care of the health, of the fortune, of the rank and reputation of the individual, the objects upon which his comfort and happiness in this life are supposed to principally depend, is considered as the proper business of that virtue which is commonly called prudence.
We suffer more, it has already been observed, when we fall from a better to a worse situation than we ever enjoy when we rise from a worse to a better. Security, therefore, is the first and the principal object of prudence. It is averse to expose our health, our fortune, our rank, or reputation to any sort of hazard. It is rather cautious than enterprising, And more anxious to preserve the advantages which we already possess than forward to prompt us to the acquisition of still greater advantages. The methods of improving our fortune, which it principally recommends to us, are those which expose to no loss or hazard. Real knowledge and skill in our trade or profession, assiduity and industry in the exercise of it, frugality, and even some degree of parsimony, In all our expenses.
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it. And though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavors to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor Nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious, even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation.
For reputation in his profession, he is naturally disposed to rely a good deal upon the solidity of his knowledge and abilities, and he does not always think of cultivating the favor of those little clubs and cabals who, in the superior arts and sciences, so often erect themselves into the supreme judges of merit, and who make it their business to celebrate the talents and virtues of one another, and to decry whatever can come into competition with them. If he ever connects himself with any society of this kind, it is merely in self-defense, not with a view to impose upon the public, but to hinder the public from being imposed upon, to his disadvantage, by the clamors, the whispers, or the intrigues, either of that particular society, or of some other of the same kind.
The prudent man is always sincere. and feels horror at the very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he is not always frank and open, and though he never tells anything but the truth, he does not always think himself bound, when not properly called upon, to tell the whole truth. As he is cautious in his actions, so he is reserved in his speech, and never rashly or unnecessarily obtrudes his opinion concerning either things or persons. The prudent man, though not always distinguished by the most exquisite sensibility, is always very capable of friendship. But his friendship is not that ardent and passionate, but too often transitory affection, which appears so delicious to the generosity of youth and inexperience.
It is a sedate but steady and faithful attachment to a few well-tried and well-chosen companions, in the choice of whom he is not guided by the giddy admiration of shining accomplishments, but by the sober esteem of modesty, discretion, and good conduct. But though capable of friendship, he is not always much disposed to general sociality. He rarely frequents, and more rarely figures, in those convivial societies which are distinguished for the jollity and gaiety of their conversation. Their way of life might too often interfere with the regularity of his temperance, might interrupt the steadiness of his industry, or break in upon the strictness of his frugality. But though his conversation may not always be very sprightly or diverting, It is always perfectly inoffensive.
He hates the thought of being guilty of any petulance or rudeness. He never assumes impertinently over anybody, and, upon all common occasions, is willing to place himself rather below than above his equals. Both in his conduct and conversation, he is an exact observer of decency. and respects with an almost religious scrupulosity all the established decorums and ceremonials of society. And in this respect, he sets a much better example than has frequently been done by men of much more splendid talents and virtues, who, in all ages, from that of Socrates and Aristippus, down to that of Dr. Swift and Voltaire, and from that of Philip and Alexander the Great, Down to that of the great Tsar Peter of Moscovy, have too often distinguished themselves by the most improper and even insolent contempt of all the ordinary decorums of life and conversation, and who have thereby set the most pernicious example to those who wish to resemble them, and who too often content themselves with imitating their follies, without even attempting to attain their perfections.
In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the representative of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast. The impartial spectator does not feel himself worn out by the present labor of those whose conduct he surveys, nor does he feel himself solicited by the importunate calls of their present appetites. To him, their present, and what is likely to be their future situation, are very nearly the same.
He sees them at nearly the same distance, and is affected by them very nearly in the same manner. He knows, however, that to the persons principally concerned they are very far from being the same, and that they naturally affect them in a very different manner. He cannot therefore but approve, and even applaud, that proper exertion of self-command, which enables them to act as if their present and their future situation affected them nearly in the same manner in which they affect him. The man who lives within his income is naturally contented with his situation, which, by continual, though small, accumulations, is growing better and better every day. He is enabled gradually to relax, both in the rigor of his parsimony and in the severity of his application, and he feels with double satisfaction this gradual increase of ease and enjoyment from having felt before the hardship which attended the want of them.
He has no anxiety to change so comfortable a situation, and does not go in quest of new enterprises and adventures which might endanger, but could not well increase, the secure tranquility which he actually enjoys. If he enters into any new projects or enterprises, they are likely to be well concerted and well prepared. He can never be hurried or drove into them by any necessity, But has always time and leisure to deliberate soberly and coolly concerning what are likely to be their consequences. The prudent man is not willing to subject himself to any responsibility which his duty does not impose upon him. He is not a bustler in business where he has no concern, is not a meddler in other people's affairs, is not a professed counselor or advisor who obtrudes his advice where nobody is asking it.
He confines himself, as much as his duty will permit, to his own affairs, and he has no taste for that foolish importance which many people wish to derive from appearing to have some influence in the management of those of other people. He is averse to enter into any party disputes, hates faction, and is not always very forward to listen to the voice even of noble and great ambition. When distinctly called upon, he will not decline the service of his country, but he will not cabal in order to force himself into it, and would be much better pleased that the public business were managed by some other person than that he himself should have the trouble and incur the responsibility of managing it.
In the bottom of his heart, he would prefer the undisturbed enjoyment of secure tranquility, Not only to all the vain splendor of successful ambition, but to the real and solid glory of performing the greatest and most magnanimous actions. Prudence, in short, when directed merely to the care of the health, of the fortune, of the rank and reputation of the individual, though it is regarded as the most respectable, and even in some degree as an amiable and agreeable quality, Yet it is never considered as one, either of the most endearing or of the most ennobling of the virtues. It commands a certain cold esteem, but seems not entitled to any very ardent love or admiration. Wise and judicious conduct, when directed to greater and nobler purposes than the care of the health, the fortune, the rank, and the reputation of the individual, is frequently and very properly called prudence.
We talk of the prudence of the great general, of the great statesman, of the great legislator. Prudence is, in all these cases, combined with many greater and more splendid virtues, with valor, with extensive and strong benevolence, with a sacred regard to the rules of justice, and all these supported by a proper degree of self-command. This superior prudence, when carried to the highest degree of perfection, necessarily supposes the art, the talent, and the habit or disposition of acting with the most perfect propriety in every possible circumstance and situation. It necessarily supposes the utmost perfection of all the intellectual and of all the moral virtues. It is the best head joined to the best heart.
It is the most perfect wisdom combined with the most perfect virtue. It constitutes very nearly the character of the academical or peripatetic sage, as the inferior prudence does that of the Epicurean. Mere imprudence, or the mere want of the capacity to take care of oneself, is, with the generous and humane, the object of compassion, with those of less delicate sentiments, of neglect, Or, at worst, of contempt, but never of hatred or indignation. When combined with other vices, however, it aggravates in the highest degree the infamy and disgrace which would otherwise attend them. The artful knave, whose dexterity and address exempt him, though not from strong suspicions, yet from punishment or distinct detection, is too often received in the world with an indulgence which he by no means deserves.
The awkward and foolish one who, for the want of this dexterity and address, is convicted and brought to punishment, is the object of universal hatred, contempt, and derision. In countries where great crimes frequently pass unpunished, the most atrocious actions become almost familiar, and ceased to impress the people with that horror which is universally felt in countries where an exact administration of justice takes place. The injustice is the same in both countries, but the imprudence is often very different. In the latter, great crimes are evidently great follies. In the former, they are not always considered as such. In Italy, during the greater part of the 16th century, Assassinations, murders, and even murders under trust seem to have been almost familiar among the superior ranks of people.
Caesar Borgia invited four of the little princes in his neighborhood, who all possessed little sovereignties and commanded little armies of their own, to a friendly conference at Senegaglia, where, as soon as they arrived, he put them all to death. This infamous action Though certainly not approved of even in that age of crimes, seems to have contributed very little to the discredit, and not in the least to the ruin of the perpetrator. That ruin happened a few years after from causes altogether disconnected with this crime. Machiavel, not indeed a man of the nicest morality even for his own times, was resident, as minister from the Republic of Florence, at the court of Caesar Borgia when this crime was committed.
He gives a very particular account of it, and in that pure, elegant, and simple language which distinguishes all his writings. He talks of it very coolly, is pleased with the address with which Caesar Borgia conducted it, has much contempt for the dupery and weakness of the sufferers, but no compassion for their miserable and untimely death. And no sort of indignation at the cruelty and falsehood of their murderer. The violence and injustice of the great conquerors are often regarded with foolish wonder and admiration. Those of petty thieves, robbers, and murderers, with contempt, hatred, and even horror upon all occasions. The former, though they are a hundred times more mischievous and destructive, Yet, when successful, they often pass for deeds of the most heroic magnanimity.
The latter are always viewed with hatred and aversion, as the follies as well as the crimes of the lowest and most worthless of mankind. The injustice of the former is certainly, at least, as great as that of the latter, but the folly and imprudence are not near so great. A wicked and worthless man of parts often goes through the world with much more credit than he deserves. A wicked and worthless fool appears always, of all mortals, the most hateful as well as the most contemptible. As prudence combined with other virtues constitutes the noblest, so imprudence combined with other vices constitutes the vilest of all characters.
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26 26 - Part VI: Section II 34:18
XXVI. The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Recording by Jude Cater.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. Part Six of the Character of Virtue, consisting of three sections. Section Two of the Character of the Individual, so far as it can affect the happiness of other people. Introduction.
The character of every individual, so far as it can affect the happiness of other people, must do so by its disposition either to hurt or to benefit them. Proper resentment for injustice attempted, or actually committed, is the only motive which, in the eyes of the impartial spectator, can justify our hurting or disturbing in any respect the happiness of our neighbor. To do so from any other motive is itself a violation of the laws of justice, which force ought to be employed either to restrain or to punish. The wisdom of every state or commonwealth endeavors, as well as it can, to employ the force of the society to restrain those who are subject to its authority from hurting or disturbing the happiness of one another.
The rules which it establishes for this purpose constitute the civil and criminal law of each particular state or country. The principles upon which those rules either are or ought to be founded are the subject of a particular science, of all sciences by far the most important, but hitherto, perhaps, the least cultivated, that of natural jurisprudence, concerning which it belongs not to our present subject to enter into any detail. A sacred and religious regard not to hurt or disturb in any respect the happiness of our neighbor, even in those cases where no law can properly protect him, constitutes the character of the perfectly innocent and just man, a character which, when carried to a certain delicacy of attention, is always highly respectable and even venerable for its own sake, and can scarce ever fail to be accompanied with many other virtues.
With great feeling for other people, with great humanity and great benevolence. It is a character sufficiently understood, and requires no further explanation. In the present section, I shall only endeavor to explain the foundation of that order which nature seems to have traced out for the distribution of our good offices, or for the direction and employment of our very limited powers of beneficence. First, Towards individuals, and secondly, towards societies. The same unerring wisdom, it will be found, which regulates every other part of her conduct, directs in this respect, too, the order of her recommendations, which are always stronger or weaker in proportion as our beneficence is more or less necessary, or can be more or less useful.
Part Six. Of the character of virtue consisting of three sections. Section Two. Of the character of the individual, so far as it can affect the happiness of other people. Chapter One. Of the order in which individuals are recommended by nature to our care and attention. Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care. And every man is, certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations, the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance, the latter The Shadow.
After himself, the members of his own family, those who usually live in the same house with him, his parents, his children, his brothers and sisters, are naturally the objects of his warmest affections. They are, naturally and usually, the persons upon whose happiness or misery his conduct must have the greatest influence. He is more habituated to sympathize with them. He knows better how everything is likely to affect them, and his sympathy with them is more precise and determinate than it can be with the greater part of other people. It approaches nearer, in short, to what he feels for himself. This sympathy, too, and the affections which are founded on it, are by nature more strongly directed towards his children than towards his parents, And his tenderness for the former seems generally a more active principle than his reverence and gratitude towards the latter.
In the natural state of things, it has already been observed the existence of the child, for some time after it comes into the world, depends altogether upon the care of the parent. That of the parent does not naturally depend upon the care of the child. In the eye of nature, it would seem, A child is a more important object than an old man, and excites a much more lively as well as a much more universal sympathy. It ought to do so. Everything may be expected, or at least hoped, from the child. In ordinary cases, very little can be expected or hoped from the old man. The weakness of childhood interests the affections of the most brutal and hard-hearted. It is only to the virtuous and humane that the infirmities of old age are not the objects of contempt and aversion.
In ordinary cases, an old man dies without much being regretted by anybody. Scarce a child can die without rending asunder the heart of somebody. The earliest friendships, the friendships which are naturally contracted when the heart is most susceptible of that feeling, are those among brothers and sisters. Their good agreement, while they remain in the same family, is necessary for its tranquility and happiness. They are capable of giving more pleasure or pain to one another than to the greater part of other people. Their situation renders their mutual sympathy of the utmost importance to their common happiness, and, by the wisdom of nature, the same situation By obliging them to accommodate to one another renders that sympathy more habitual, and thereby more lively, more distinct, and more determinate.
The children of brothers and sisters are naturally connected by the friendship which, after separating into different families, continues to take place between their parents. Their good agreement improves the enjoyment of that friendship. Their discord would disturb it. As they seldom live in the same family, however, though of more importance to one another than to the greater part of other people, they are of much less than brothers and sisters. As their mutual sympathy is less necessary, so it is less habitual, and therefore proportionably weaker. The children of cousins, being still less connected, are of still less importance to one another. And the affection gradually diminishes as the relation grows more and more remote.
What is called affection is in reality nothing but habitual sympathy. Our concern in the happiness or misery of those who are objects of what we call our affections, our desire to promote the one and to prevent the other, are either the actual feeling of that habitual sympathy, or the necessary consequences of that feeling. Relations being usually placed in situations which naturally create this habitual sympathy, it is expected that a suitable degree of affection should take place among them. We generally find that it actually does take place. We therefore naturally expect that it should. And we are, upon that account, more shocked when, upon any occasion, We find that it does not. The general rule is established, that persons related to one another in a certain degree ought always to be affected towards one another in a certain manner, and that there is always the highest impropriety, and sometimes even a sort of impiety, in their being affected in a different manner.
A parent without parental tenderness, a child, devoid of all filial reverence, appear monsters, the objects not of hatred only, but of horror. Though in a particular instance, the circumstances which usually produce those natural affections, as they are called, may, by some accident, not have taken place, yet respect for the general rule will frequently, in some measure, supply their place, and produce something which, though not altogether the same, May bear, however, a very considerable resemblance to those affections. A father is apt to be less attached to a child who, by some accident, has been separated from him in its infancy, and who does not return to him till it is grown up to manhood.
The father is apt to feel less paternal tenderness for the child, the child less filial reverence for the father. Brothers and sisters, when they have been educated in distant countries, are apt to feel a similar diminution of affection. With the dutiful and the virtuous, however, respect for the general rule will frequently produce something which, though by no means the same, yet may very much resemble those natural affections. Even during the separation, the father and the child, the brothers or the sisters, are by no means indifferent to one another. They all consider one another as persons to and from whom certain affections are due, and they live in the hopes of being some time or another in a situation to enjoy that friendship, which ought naturally to have taken place among persons so nearly connected.
Till they meet, the absent son, the absent brother, are frequently the favorite son, the favorite brother. They have never offended, or, if they have, it is so long ago that the offense is forgotten, as some childish trick not worth the remembering. Every account they have heard of one another, if conveyed by people of any tolerable good nature, has been, in the highest degree, flattering and favorable. The absent son The absent brother is not like other ordinary sons and brothers, but an all-perfect son, an all-perfect brother, and the most romantic hopes are entertained of the happiness to be enjoyed in the friendship and conversation of such persons. When they meet, it is often with so strong a disposition to conceive that habitual sympathy which constitutes the family affection That they are very apt to fancy they have actually conceived it, and to behave to one another as if they had.
Time and experience, however, I am afraid, too frequently undeceive them. Upon a more familiar acquaintance, they frequently discover in one another habits, humors, and inclinations different from what they expected, to which, from want of habitual sympathy, From want of the real principle and foundation of what is properly called family affection, they cannot now easily accommodate themselves. They have never lived in the situation which almost necessarily forces that easy accommodation, and though they may now be sincerely desirous to assume it, they have really become incapable of doing so. Their familiar conversation and intercourse soon become less pleasing to them, and, upon that account, less frequent.
They may continue to live with one another in the mutual exchange of all essential good offices, and with every other external appearance of decent regard. But that cordial satisfaction, that delicious sympathy, that confidential openness and ease, which naturally take place in the conversation of those who have lived long and familiarly with one another, It seldom happens that they can completely enjoy. It is only, however, with the dutiful and the virtuous, that the general rule has even this slender authority. With the dissipated, the profligate, and the vain, it is entirely disregarded. They are so far from respecting it that they seldom talk of it but with the most indecent derision, And an early and long separation of this kind never fails to estrange them most completely from one another.
With such persons, respect for the general rule can at best produce only a cold and affected civility, a very slender semblance of real regard. And even this, the slightest offense, the smallest opposition of interest, commonly puts an end to altogether. The education of boys at distant great schools, of young men at distant colleges, of young ladies in distant nunneries and boarding schools, seems, in the higher ranks of life, to have hurt most essentially the domestic morals and, consequently, the domestic happiness, both of France and England. Do you wish to educate your children to be dutiful to their parents, To be kind and affectionate to their brothers and sisters. Put them under the necessity of being dutiful children, of being kind and affectionate brothers and sisters.
Educate them in your own house. From their parents' house they may, with propriety and advantage, go out every day to attend public schools. But let their dwelling be always at home. Respect for you must always impose a very useful restraint upon their conduct, and respect for them may frequently impose no useless restraint upon your own. Surely no acquirement, which can possibly be derived from what is called a public education, can make any sort of compensation for what is almost certainly and necessarily lost by it. Domestic education is the institution of nature. Public education, the contrivance of man. It is surely unnecessary to say which is likely to be the wisest. In some tragedies and romances, we meet with many beautiful and interesting scenes, founded upon what is called the force of blood, or upon the wonderful affection which near relations are supposed to conceive for one another, even before they know that they have any such connection.
This force of blood, however, I am afraid, exists nowhere but in tragedies and romances. Even in tragedies and romances, it is never supposed to take place between any relations but those who are naturally bred up in the same house, between parents and children, between brothers and sisters. To imagine any such mysterious affection between cousins, or even between aunts or uncles, and nephews or nieces would be too ridiculous. In pastoral countries, and in all countries where the authority of law is not alone sufficient to give perfect security to every member of the state, all the different branches of the same family commonly choose to live in the neighborhood of one another. Their association is frequently necessary for their common defense.
They are all, from the highest to the lowest, of more or less importance to one another. Their concord strengthens their necessary association. Their discord always weakens and might destroy it. They have more intercourse with one another than with the members of any other tribe. The remotest members of the same tribe claim some connection with one another, and, where all other circumstances are equal, Expect to be treated with more distinguished attention than is due to those who have no such pretensions. It is not many years ago that, in the highlands of Scotland, the chieftain used to consider the poorest man of his clan as his cousin and relation. The same extensive regard to kindred is said to take place among the Tartars, the Arabs, the Turcomans, and, I believe, among all other nations who are nearly in the same state of society in which the Scots Highlanders were about the beginning of the present century.
In commercial countries, where the authority of law is always perfectly sufficient to protect the meanest man in the state, the descendants of the same family, having no such motive for keeping together, naturally separate and disperse As interest or inclination may direct. They soon cease to be of importance to one another, and, in a few generations, not only lose all care about one another, but all remembrance of their common origin, and of the connection which took place among their ancestors. Regard for remote relations becomes, in every country, less and less, According as this state of civilization has been longer and more completely established. It has been longer and more completely established in England than in Scotland, and remote relations are, accordingly, more considered in the latter country than in the former, though, in this respect, the difference between the two countries is growing less and less every day.
Great lords, indeed, are, in every country, proud of remembering and acknowledging their connection with one another, however remote. The remembrance of such illustrious relations flatters not a little the family pride of them all, and it is neither from affection, nor of anything which resembles affection, but from the most frivolous and childish of all vanities, that this remembrance is so carefully kept up. Should some more humble, though perhaps much nearer kinsman, Presumed to put such great men in mind of his relation to their family, they seldom fail to tell him that they are bad genealogists and miserably ill-informed concerning their own family history. It is not in that order, I am afraid, that we are to expect any extraordinary extension of what is called natural affection.
I consider what is called natural affection as more the effect of the moral than of the supposed physical connection between the parent and the child. A jealous husband, indeed, notwithstanding the moral connection, notwithstanding the child's having been educated in his own house, often regards with hatred and aversion that unhappy child which he supposes to be the offspring of his wife's infidelity, It is the lasting monument of a most disagreeable adventure, of his own dishonor, and of the disgrace of his family.
Among well-disposed people, the necessity or conveniency of mutual accommodation very frequently produces a friendship not unlike that which takes place among those who are born to live in the same family. Colleagues in office, partners in trade, Call one another brothers, and frequently feel towards one another as if they really were so. Their good agreement is an advantage to all, and, if they are tolerably reasonable people, they are naturally disposed to agree. We expect that they should do so, and their disagreement is a sort of a small scandal. The Romans express this sort of attachment by the word necessitudo, which, from the etymology, seems to denote that it was imposed by the necessity of the situation.
Even the trifling circumstance of living in the same neighborhood has some effect of the same kind. We respect the face of a man whom we see every day, provided he has never offended us. Neighbors can be very convenient, and they can be very troublesome to one another. If they are good sort of people, they are naturally disposed to agree. We expect their good agreement. And to be a bad neighbor is a very bad character. There are certain small good offices, accordingly, which are universally allowed to be due to a neighbor in preference to any other person who has no such connection. This natural disposition to accommodate and to assimilate As much as we can, our own sentiments, principles, and feelings, to those which we see fixed and rooted in the persons whom we are obliged to live and converse a great deal with, is the cause of the contagious effects of both good and bad company.
The man who associates chiefly with the wise and the virtuous, though he may not himself become either wise or virtuous, cannot help conceiving a certain respect at least for wisdom and virtue, and the man who associates chiefly with the profligate and the dissolute, though he may not himself become profligate and dissolute, must soon lose, at least, all his original abhorrence of profligacy and dissolution of manners. The similarity of family characters which we so frequently see transmitted through several successive generations may perhaps be partly owing to this disposition, to assimilate ourselves to those whom we are obliged to live and converse a great deal with. The family character, however, like the family countenance, seems to be owing not altogether to the moral, but partly to the physical connection.
The family countenance is certainly altogether owing to the latter. But of all attachments to an individual, that which is founded altogether upon the esteem and approbation of his good conduct and behavior, confirmed by much experience and long acquaintance, is, by far, the most respectable. Such friendships, arising not from a constrained sympathy, Not from a sympathy which has been assumed and rendered habitual for the sake of conveniency and accommodation, but from a natural sympathy, from an involuntary feeling that the persons to whom we attach ourselves are the natural and proper objects of esteem and approbation, can exist only among men of virtue. Men of virtue only can feel that entire confidence in the conduct and behavior of one another, which can, at all times, assure them that they can never either offend or be offended by one another.
Vice is always capricious. Virtue only is regular and orderly. The attachment which is founded upon the love of virtue, as it is certainly of all attachments the most virtuous, so it is likewise the happiest, as well as the most permanent and secure. Such friendships need not be confined to a single person, but may safely embrace all the wise and virtuous with whom we have been long and intimately acquainted, and upon whose wisdom and virtue we can, upon that account, entirely depend. They who would confine friendship to two persons seem to confound the wise security of friendship with the jealousy and folly of love. The hasty, fond, and foolish intimacies of young people, founded commonly upon some slight similarity of character, altogether unconnected with good conduct, upon a taste, perhaps, for the same studies, the same amusements, the same diversions, or upon their agreement in some singular principle or opinion not commonly adopted.
Those intimacies which a freak begins, and which a freak puts an end to, How agreeable soever they may appear while they last can by no means deserve the sacred and venerable name of friendship. Of all the persons, however, whom nature points out for our peculiar beneficence, there are none to whom it seems more properly directed than to those whose beneficence we have ourselves already experienced. Nature, which formed men for that mutual kindness, So necessary for their happiness, renders every man the peculiar object of kindness to the persons to whom he himself has been kind. Though their gratitude should not always correspond to his beneficence, yet the sense of his merit, the sympathetic gratitude of the impartial spectator will always correspond to it.
The general indignation of other people against the baseness of their ingratitude will even sometimes increase the general sense of his merit. No benevolent man ever lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence. If he does not always gather them from the persons from whom he ought to have gathered them, he seldom fails to gather them, and with a tenfold increase, from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness. And if to be beloved by our brethren be the great object of our ambition, the surest way of obtaining it is by our conduct to show that we really love them. After the persons who are recommended to our beneficence, either by their connection with ourselves, by their personal qualities, or by their past services, come those who are pointed out, not indeed to what is called our friendship, But to our benevolent attention and good offices, those who are distinguished by their extraordinary situation, the greatly fortunate and the greatly unfortunate, the rich and the powerful, the poor and the wretched.
The distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, are in great measure founded upon the respect which we naturally conceive for the former, The relief and consolation of human misery depend altogether upon our compassion for the latter. The peace and order of society is of more importance than even the relief of the miserable. Our respect for the great, accordingly, is most apt to offend by its excess. Our fellow-feeling for the miserable, by its defect. Moralists exhort us to charity and compassion. They warn us against the fascination of greatness. This fascination, indeed, is so powerful that the rich and the great are too often preferred to the wise and the virtuous. Nature has wisely judged that the distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, would rest more securely upon the plain and palpable difference of birth and fortune than upon the invisible and often uncertain difference of wisdom and virtue.
The undistinguishing eyes of the great mob of mankind can well enough perceive the former. It is with difficulty that the nice discernment of the wise and the virtuous can sometimes distinguish the latter. In the order of all those recommendations, the benevolent wisdom of nature is equally evident. It may perhaps be unnecessary to observe That the combination of two or more of those exciting causes of kindness increases the kindness. The favor and partiality which, when there is no envy in the case, we naturally bear to greatness, are much increased when it is joined with wisdom and virtue. If, notwithstanding that wisdom and virtue, the great man should fall into those misfortunes, those dangers and distresses, To which the most exalted stations are often the most exposed, we are much more deeply interested in his fortune than we should be in that of a person equally virtuous, but in a more humble situation.
The most interesting subjects of tragedies and romances are the misfortunes of virtuous and magnanimous kings and princes. If, by the wisdom and manhood of their exertions, they should extricate themselves from those misfortunes, and recover completely their former superiority and security. We cannot help viewing them with the most enthusiastic and even extravagant admiration. The grief which we felt for their distress, the joy which we feel for their prosperity, seem to combine together in enhancing that partial admiration which we naturally conceive both for the station and the character. When those different beneficent affections happen to draw different ways, to determine by any precise rules in what cases we ought to comply with the one and in what with the other is, perhaps, altogether impossible.
In what cases friendship ought to yield to gratitude or gratitude to friendship In what cases the strongest of all natural affections ought to yield to a regard for the safety of those superiors upon whose safety often depends that of the whole society, and in what cases natural affection may, without impropriety, prevail over that regard, must be left altogether to the decision of the man within the breast, the supposed impartial spectator, The great judge and arbiter of our conduct. If we place ourselves completely in his situation, if we really view ourselves with his eyes, and as he views us, and listen with diligent and reverential attention to what he suggests to us, his voice will never deceive us.
We shall stand in need of no casuistic rules to direct our conduct. These it is often impossible to accommodate to all the different shades and gradations of circumstance, character, and situation, to differences and distinctions which, though not imperceptible, are, by their nicety and delicacy, often altogether undefinable. In that beautiful tragedy of Voltaire, the orphan of China, while we admire the magnanimity of Zampti, Who is willing to sacrifice the life of his own child in order to preserve that of the only feeble remnant of his ancient sovereigns and masters. We not only pardon, but love the maternal tenderness of Iramae, who, at the risk of discovering the important secret of her husband, reclaims her infant from the cruel hands of the Tartars, into which it had been delivered.
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27 27 - Part VI: Section III Chapter Ia 28:56
The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith Part Six Section Three Chapter One Part Six of the character of virtue consisting of three sections. Section Three. Chapter One. Of Self-Command.
The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtuous. But the most perfect knowledge of those rules will not alone enable him to act in this manner. His own passions are very apt to mislead him, sometimes to drive him, and sometimes to seduce him to violate all the rules which he himself, in all his sober and cool hours, approves of. The most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty. Some of the best of the ancient moralists seem to have considered those passions as divided into two different classes. First, into those which it requires a considerable exertion of self-command to restrain, even for a single moment, and secondly, into those which it is easy to restrain for a single moment, or even for a short period of time, But which, by their continual and almost incessant solicitations, are, in the course of a life, very apt to mislead into great deviations.
Fear and anger, together with some other passions which are mixed or connected with them, constitute the first class. The love of ease, of pleasure, of applause, and of many other selfish gratifications constitute the second. Extravagant fear and furious anger, it is often difficult to restrain even for a single moment. The love of ease, of pleasure, of applause, and other selfish gratifications, it is always easy to restrain for a single moment, or even for a short period of time, but by their continual solicitations, they often mislead us into many weaknesses which we have afterwards much reason to be ashamed of. The former set of passions may often be said to drive, the latter to seduce us from our duty.
The command of the former was by the ancient moralists above alluded to denominated fortitude, manhood, and strength of mind, that of the latter temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation. The command of each of those two sets of passions, independent of the beauty which it derives from its utility, from its enabling us, upon all occasions, to act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and of proper benevolence, has a beauty of its own, and seems to deserve, for its own sake, a certain degree of esteem and admiration. In the one case, the strength and greatness of the exertion Excites some degree of that esteem and admiration. In the other, the uniformity, the equality, and unremitting steadiness of that exertion.
The man who, in danger, in torture, upon the approach of death, preserves his tranquillity, unaltered, and suffers no word, no gesture to escape him which does not perfectly accord with the feelings of the most indifferent spectator, Necessarily commands a very high degree of admiration. If he suffers, in the cause of liberty and justice, for the sake of humanity and the love of his country, the most tender compassion for his sufferings, the strongest indignation against the injustice of his persecutors, the warmest sympathetic gratitude for his beneficent intentions, the highest sense of his merit, All join and mix themselves with the admiration of his magnanimity, and often inflame that sentiment into the most enthusiastic and rapturous veneration.
The heroes of ancient and modern history, who are remembered with the most peculiar favor and affection, are, many of them, those who, in the cause of truth, liberty, and justice, have perished upon the scaffold, And who behaved there with that ease and dignity which became them. Had the enemies of Socrates suffered him to die quietly in his bed, the glory even of that great philosopher might possibly never have acquired that dazzling splendor in which it has been beheld in all succeeding ages. In the English history, when we look over the illustrious heads which have been engraven by Virtue and Howebräken, there is scarce anybody, I imagine, who does not feel that the axe, the emblem of having been beheaded, which is engraved under some of the most illustrious of them, under those of the Sir Thomas More's, of the Raleigh's, the Russell's, the Sidney's, etc., Sheds a real dignity and interestingness over the characters to which it is affixed, much superior to what they can derive from all the futile ornaments of heraldry with which they are sometimes accompanied.
Nor does this magnanimity give luster only to the characters of innocent and virtuous men. It draws some degree of favorable regard even upon those of the greatest criminals, And when a robber or highwayman is brought to the scaffold, and behaves there with decency and firmness, though we perfectly approve of his punishment, we often cannot help regretting that a man who possessed such great and noble powers should have been capable of such mean enormities. War is the great school, both for acquiring and exercising this species of magnanimity. Death, as we say, is the king of terrors, and the man who has conquered the fear of death is not likely to lose his presence of mind at the approach of any other natural evil.
In war, men become familiar with death, and are thereby necessarily cured of that superstitious horror with which it is viewed by the weak and unexperienced. They consider it merely as the loss of life, and as no further the object of aversion than as life may happen to be that of desire. They learn from experience, too, that many seemingly great dangers are not so great as they appear, and that with courage, activity, and presence of mind, there is often a good probability of extricating themselves with honor from situations where at first they could see no hope. The dread of death is thus greatly diminished, and the confidence or hope of escaping it augmented. They learn to expose themselves to danger with less reluctance, they are less anxious to get out of it, and less apt to lose their presence of mind while they are in it.
It is the habitual contempt of danger and death which ennobles the profession of a soldier, and bestows upon it, in the natural apprehensions of mankind, A rank and dignity superior to that of any other profession. The skillful and successful exercise of this profession in the service of their country seems to have constituted the most distinguishing feature in the character of the favorite heroes of all ages. Great warlike exploit! Though undertaken contrary to every principle of justice, and carried on without any regard to humanity, sometimes interests us, and commands even some degree of a certain sort of esteem for the very worthless characters which conduct it. We are interested even in the exploits of the buccaneers, and read with some sort of esteem and admiration the history of the most worthless men, who, in pursuit of the most criminal purposes, endured greater hardships, surmounted greater difficulties, and encountered greater dangers than perhaps any which the ordinary course of history gives an account of.
The command of anger appears upon many occasions not less generous and noble than that of fear. The proper expression of just indignation composes many of the most splendid and admired passages, both of ancient and modern eloquence. The Philippics of Demosthenes, the Catilinarians of Cicero, derive their whole beauty from the noble propriety with which this passion is expressed. But this just indignation is nothing but anger restrained and properly attempered to what the impartial spectator can enter into. The blustering and noisy passion which goes beyond this is always odious and offensive, and interests us not for the angry man, but for the man with whom he is angry. The nobleness of pardoning appears upon many occasions superior even to the most perfect propriety of resenting.
When either proper acknowledgments have been made by the offending party, or even without any such acknowledgments, when the public interest requires that the most mortal enemies should unite for the discharge of some important duty, the man who can cast away all animosity and act with confidence and cordiality towards the person who had most grievously offended him seems justly to merit our highest admiration. The command of anger, however, does not always appear in such splendid colors. Fear is contrary to anger, and is often the motive which restrains it, and, in such cases, the meanness of the motive takes away all the nobleness of the restraint. Anger prompts to attack, and the indulgence of it seems sometimes to shew a sort of courage and superiority to fear.
The indulgence of anger is sometimes an object of vanity, that of fear never is. Vain and weak men, among their inferiors, or those who dare not resist them, often affect to be ostentatiously passionate, and fancy that they show what is called spirit in being so. A bully tells many stories of his own insolence which are not true, and imagines that he thereby renders himself, if not more amiable and respectable, at least more formidable to his audience. Modern manners, which by favoring the practice of duelling may be said in some cases to encourage private revenge, contribute, perhaps a good deal, to render in modern times the restraint of anger by fear still more contemptible than it might otherwise appear to be.
There is always something dignified in the command of fear, whatever may be the motive upon which it is founded. It is not so with the command of anger. Unless it is founded altogether in the sense of decency, of dignity, and propriety, it never is perfectly agreeable.
To act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is no temptation to do otherwise. But to act with cool deliberation in the midst of the greatest dangers and difficulties, to observe religiously the sacred rules of justice in spite both of the greatest interests which might tempt and the greatest injuries which might provoke us to violate them, Never to suffer the benevolence of our temper. To be damped or discouraged by the malignity and ingratitude of the individuals towards whom it may have been exercised is the character of the most exalted wisdom and virtue. Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal luster.
The command of fear, the command of anger, are always great and noble powers. When they are directed by justice and benevolence, they are not only great virtues, but increase the splendour of those other virtues. They may, however, sometimes be directed by very different motives, and in this case, though still great and respectable, they may be excessively dangerous. The most intrepid valor may be employed in the cause of the greatest injustice. Amidst great provocations, apparent tranquility and good humor may sometimes conceal the most determined and cruel resolution to revenge. The strength of mind requisite for such dissimulation, though always and necessarily contaminated by the baseness of falsehood, has, however, been often much admired by many people of no contemptible judgment.
The dissimulation of Catherine of Medites is often celebrated by the profound historian Davila, that of Lord Digby, afterwards Earl of Bristol, by the grave and conscientious Lord Clarendon, that of the first Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, by the judicious Mr. Locke. Even Cicero seems to consider this deceitful character Not indeed as of the highest dignity, but as not unsuitable to a certain flexibility of manners, which he thinks may notwithstanding be upon the whole both agreeable and respectable. He exemplifies it by the characters of Homer's Ulysses, of the Athenian Themistocles, of the Spartan Lysander, and of the Roman Marcus Crassus. This character of dark and deep dissimulation occurs most commonly in times of great public disorder, amidst the violence of faction and civil war.
When law has become in a great measure impotent, when the most perfect innocence cannot alone insure safety, regard to self-defense obliges the greater part of men to have recourse to dexterity, to address, and to apparent accommodation to whatever happens to be, at the moment, the prevailing party. This false character, too, is frequently accompanied with the coolest and most determined courage. The proper exercise of it supposes that courage, as death is commonly the certain consequence of detection. It may be employed indifferently, Either to exasperate or to allay those furious animosities of adverse factions which impose the necessity of assuming it. And though it may sometimes be useful, it is at least equally liable to be excessively pernicious.
The command of the less violent and turbulent passions seems much less liable to be abused to any pernicious purpose. Temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation are always amiable, and can seldom be directed to any bad end. It is from the unremitting steadiness of those gentler exertions of self-command that the amiable virtue of chastity, that the respectable virtues of industry and frugality, derive all that sober lustre which attends them. The conduct of all those who are contented to walk in the humble paths of private and peaceable life derives from the same principle the greater part of the beauty and grace which belong to it. A beauty and grace which, though much less dazzling, is not always less pleasing than those which accompany the more splendid actions of the hero, the statesman, or the legislator.
After what has already been said in several different parts of this discourse concerning the nature of self-command, I judge it unnecessary to enter into any further detail concerning those virtues. I shall only observe, at present, that the point of propriety, the degree of any passion which the impartial spectator approves of, is differently situated in different passions. In some passions, the excess is less disagreeable than the defect, and in such passions the point of propriety seems to stand high, or nearer to the excess than to the defect. In other passions the defect is less disagreeable than the excess, and in such passions the point of propriety seems to stand low, or nearer to the defect than to the excess.
The former are the passions which the spectator is most, the latter those which he is least disposed to sympathize with. The former, too, are the passions of which the immediate feeling or sensation is agreeable to the person principally concerned, the latter those of which it is disagreeable. It may be laid down as a general rule that the passions which the spectator is most disposed to sympathize with and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may be said to stand high, are those of which the immediate feeling or sensation is more or less agreeable to the person principally concerned, and that, on the contrary, the passions which the spectator is least disposed to sympathize with, and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may be said to stand low, are those of which the immediate feeling or sensation is more or less disagreeable or even painful to the person principally concerned.
This general rule, so far as I have been able to observe, admits not of a single exception. A few examples will at once both sufficiently explain it and demonstrate the truth of it.
The disposition to the affections which tend to unite men in society to humanity—kindness, natural affection, friendship, esteem—may sometimes be excessive. Even the excess of this disposition, however, renders a man interesting to everybody. Though we blame it, we still regard it with compassion, and even with kindness, and never with dislike. We are more sorry for it than angry at it. To the person himself the indulgence even of such excessive affections is upon many occasions not only agreeable but delicious. Upon some occasions, indeed, especially when directed, as is too often the case, towards unworthy objects, it exposes him to much real and heartfelt distress. Even upon such occasions, however, a well-disposed mind regards him with the most exquisite pity, and feels the highest indignation against those who affect to despise him for his weakness and imprudence.
The defect of this disposition, on the contrary, what is called hardness of heart, while it renders a man insensible to the feelings and distresses of other people, renders other people equally insensible to his, and, by excluding him from the friendship of all the world, excludes him from the best and most comfortable of all social enjoyments.
The disposition to the affections which drive men from one another, and which tend, as it were, to break the bands of human society—the disposition to anger, hatred, envy, malice, revenge—is, on the contrary, much more apt to offend by its excess than by its defect. The excess renders a man wretched and miserable in his own mind, and the object of hatred, and sometimes even of horror, to other people. The defect is very seldom complained of. It may, however, be defective. The want of proper indignation is a most essential defect in the manly character, and upon many occasions renders a man incapable of protecting either himself or his friends from insult and injustice. Even that principle, in the excess and improper direction of which consists the odious and detestable passion of envy, may be defective.
Envy is that passion which views with malignant dislike the superiority of those who are really entitled to all the superiority they possess. The man, however, who in matters of consequence tamely suffers other people, Who are entitled to no such superiority, to rise above him or get before him, is justly condemned as mean-spirited. This weakness is commonly founded in indolence, sometimes in good nature, in an aversion to opposition, to bustle and solicitation, and sometimes, too, in a sort of ill-judged magnanimity, which fancies that it can always continue to despise the advantage which it then despises, and therefore so easily gives up. Such weakness, however, is commonly followed by much regret and repentance, and what had some appearance of magnanimity in the beginning frequently gives place to a most malignant envy in the end, and to a hatred of that superiority, which those who have once attained it may often become really entitled to, by the very circumstance of having attained it.
In order to live comfortably in the world, it is upon all occasions as necessary to defend our dignity and rank as it is to defend our life or our fortune. Our sensibility to personal danger and distress, like that to personal provocation, is much more apt to offend by its excess than by its defect. No character is more contemptible than that of a coward. No character is more admired than that of a man who faces death with intrepidity, and maintains his tranquility and presence of mind amidst the most dreadful dangers. We esteem the man who supports pain and even torture with manhood and firmness, and we can have little regard for him who sinks under them and abandons himself to useless outcries and womanish lamentations.
A fretful temper which feels with too much sensibility every little cross accident renders a man miserable in himself and offensive to other people. A calm one, which does not allow its tranquillity to be disturbed, either by the small injuries or by the little disasters incident to the usual course of human affairs, but which, amidst the natural and moral evils infesting the world, lays its account, and is contented to suffer a little from both, is a blessing to the man himself, and gives ease and security to all his companions. Our sensibility, however, both to our own injuries and to our own misfortunes, though generally too strong, may likewise be too weak. The man who feels little for his own misfortunes must always feel less for those of other people, and be less disposed to relieve them.
The man who has little resentment for the injuries which are done to himself must always have less for those which are done to other people. and be less disposed either to protect or to avenge them. A stupid insensibility to the events of human life necessarily extinguishes all that keen and earnest attention to the propriety of our own conduct, which constitutes the real essence of virtue. We can feel little anxiety about the propriety of our own actions when we are indifferent about the events which may result from them. The man who feels the full distress of the calamity which has befallen him, who feels the whole baseness of the injustice which has been done to him, but who feels still more strongly what the dignity of his own character requires, who does not abandon himself to the guidance of the undisciplined passions which his situation might naturally inspire, but who governs his whole behavior and conduct, According to those restrained and corrected emotions, which the great inmate, the great demi-god within the breast prescribes and approves of, is alone the real man of virtue, the only real and proper object of love, respect, and admiration.
Insensibility and that noble firmness, that exalted self-command, which is founded in the sense of dignity and propriety, are so far from being altogether the same, that in proportion as the former takes place, the merit of the latter is in many cases entirely taken away.
But though the total want of sensibility to personal injury, to personal danger and distress, would in such situations take away the whole merit of self-command, that sensibility, however, may very easily be too exquisite, and it frequently is so. When the sense of propriety, when the authority of the judge within the breast, can control this extreme sensibility, that authority must no doubt appear very noble and very great. But the exertion of it may be too fatiguing, it may have too much to do. The individual, by a great effort, may behave perfectly well. But the contest between the two principles, the warfare within the breast, may be too violent to be at all consistent with internal tranquillity and happiness.
The wise man whom nature has endowed with this too exquisite sensibility, and whose too lively feelings have not been sufficiently blunted and hardened by early education and proper exercise, will avoid, as much as duty and propriety will permit, the situations for which he is not perfectly fitted. The man whose feeble and delicate constitution renders him too sensible to pain, to hardship, and to every sort of bodily distress, should not wantonly embrace the profession of a soldier. The man of too much sensibility to injury should not rashly engage in the contests of faction. Though the sense of propriety should be strong enough to command all those sensibilities, The composure of the mind must always be disturbed in the struggle.
In this disorder the judgment cannot always maintain its ordinary acuteness and precision, and though he may always mean to act properly, he may often act rashly and imprudently, and in a manner which he himself will, in the succeeding part of his life, be for ever ashamed of. A certain intrepidity A certain firmness of nerves and hardiness of constitution, whether natural or acquired, are undoubtedly the best preparatives for all the great exertions of self-command.
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Though war and faction are certainly the best schools for forming every man to this hardiness and firmness of temper, though they are the best remedies for curing him of the opposite weaknesses, yet if the day of trial should happen to come before he has completely learned his lesson, before the remedy has had time to produce its proper effect, the consequences might not be agreeable. Our sensibility to the pleasures, to the amusements and enjoyments of human life, may offend in the same manner either by its excess or by its defect. Of the two, however, the excess seems less disagreeable than the defect. Both to the spectator and to the person principally concerned, a strong propensity to joy is certainly more pleasing than a dull insensibility to the objects of amusement and diversion.
We are charmed with the gaiety of youth, and even with the playfulness of childhood, but we soon grow weary of the flat and tasteless gravity which too frequently accompanies old age. When this propensity, indeed, is not restrained by the sense of propriety, when it is unsuitable to the time or to the place, to the age or to the situation of the person, when to indulge it he neglects either his interest or his duty, it is justly blamed as excessive and as hurtful both to the individual and to the society. In the greater part of such cases, however, what is chiefly to be found fault with is not so much the strength of the propensity to joy as the weakness of the sense of propriety and duty. A young man who has no relish for the diversions and amusements that are natural and suitable to his age, who talks of nothing but his books or his business, is disliked as formal and pedantic, and we give him no credit for his abstinence even from improper indulgences to which he seems to have so little inclination.
The principle of self-estimation may be too high, and it may likewise be too low. It is so very agreeable to think highly, and so very disagreeable to think meanly of ourselves, that to the person himself it cannot be well doubted, but that some degree of excess must be much less disagreeable than any degree of defect. But to the impartial spectator it may perhaps be thought things must appear quite differently, and that to him the defect must always be less disagreeable than the excess, and in our companions, no doubt, we much more frequently complain of the latter than of the former. When they assume upon us, or set themselves before us, their self-estimation mortifies our own. Our own pride and vanity prompt us to accuse them of pride and vanity, and we cease to be the impartial spectators of their conduct.
When the same companions, however, suffer any other man to assume over them a superiority which does not belong to him, we not only blame them, but often despise them, as mean-spirited. When, on the contrary, among other people, they push themselves a little more forward, and scramble to an elevation disproportioned, as we think, to their merit, though we may not perfectly approve of their conduct, we are not often, upon the whole, diverted with it. And, when there is no envy in the case, we are almost always much less displeased with them than we should have been had they suffered themselves to sink below their proper station. In estimating our own merit, in judging of our own character and conduct, there are two different standards to which we naturally compare them.
The one is the idea of exact propriety and perfection, so far as we are each of us capable of comprehending that idea. The other is that degree of approximation to this idea which is commonly attained in the world, and which the greater part of our friends and companions, of our rivals and competitors, may have actually arrived at. We very seldom—I am disposed to think we never—we attempt to judge of ourselves without giving more or less attention to both these different standards. But the attention of different men, and even of the same man at different times, is often very unequally divided between them, and is sometimes principally directed toward the one, and sometimes toward the other. So far as our attention is directed toward the first standard, the wisest and best of us all can, in his own character and conduct, see nothing but weakness and imperfection, can discover no ground for arrogance and presumption, but a great deal for humility, regret, and repentance.
So far as our attention is directed toward the second, we may be affected either in the one way or in the other, and feel ourselves either really above or really below the standard to which we compare ourselves. The wise and virtuous man directs his principal attention to the first standard, the idea of exact propriety and perfection. There exists in the mind of every man an idea of this kind, gradually formed from his observations upon the character and conduct both of himself and of other people. It is the slow, gradual, and progressive work of the great demigod within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct. This idea is in every man more or less accurately drawn. Its coloring is more or less just, its outlines are more or less exactly designed, according to the delicacy and acuteness of that sensibility with which those observations were made, and according to the care and attention employed in making them.
In the wise and virtuous man they have been made with the most acute and delicate sensibility, and the utmost care and attention have been employed in making them. Every day some feature is improved. Every day some blemish is corrected. He has studied this idea more than other people. He comprehends it more distinctly, he has formed a much more correct image of it, and is much more deeply enamored of its exquisite and divine beauty. He endeavors as well as he can to assimilate his own character to this archetype of perfection, but he imitates the work of a divine artist which can never be equaled. He feels the imperfect success of all his best endeavors, and sees, with grief and affliction, in how many different features the mortal copy falls short of the immortal original.
He remembers, with concern and humiliation, how often, from want of attention, from want of judgment, from want of temper, he has, both in words and actions, both in conduct and conversation, violated the exact rules of perfect propriety, and has so far departed from that model, according to which he wished to fashion his own character and conduct. When he directs his attention toward the second standard, indeed that degree of excellence which his friends and acquaintances have commonly arrived at, he may be sensible of his own superiority. But, as his principal attention is always directed toward the first standard, he is necessarily much more humbled by the one comparison than he ever can be elevated by the other.
He is never so elated as to look down with insolence even upon those who are really below him. He feels so well his own imperfection, he knows so well the difficulty with which he attained his own distant approximation to rectitude, that he cannot regard with contempt the still greater imperfection of other people. Far from insulting over their inferiority, he views it with the most indulgent commiseration, and, by his advice as well as example, is at all times willing to promote their further advancement. If, in any particular qualification, they happen to be superior to him, For who is so perfect as not to have many superiors in many different qualifications? Far from envying their superiority, he, who knows how difficult it is to excel, esteems and honors their excellence, and never fails to bestow upon it the full measure of applause which it deserves.
His whole mind, in short, is deeply impressed, his whole behavior and deportment are distinctly stamped with the character of real modesty, with that of a very moderate estimation of his own merit, and, at the same time, of a full sense of the merit of other people. In all the liberal and ingenious arts, in painting, in poetry, in music, in eloquence, in philosophy, the great artist feels always the real imperfection of his own best works, and is more sensible than any man how much they fall short of that ideal perfection in which he has formed some conception, which he imitates as well as he can, but which he despairs of ever equalling. It is the inferior artist only who is ever perfectly satisfied with his own performances.
He has little conception of this ideal perfection, about which he has little employed his thoughts, and it is chiefly to the works of other artists, of, perhaps a still lower order, that he deigns to compare his own works. Boilot, the great French poet, in some of his works perhaps not inferior to the greatest poet of the same kind, either ancient or modern, used to say that no great man was ever completely satisfied with his own works. His acquaintance, A writer of latin verses, and who, on account of that schoolboy accomplishment, had the weakness to fancy himself a poet, assured him that he himself was always completely satisfied with his own. Boileau replied, with perhaps an arch ambiguity, that he certainly was the only great man that ever was so.
Boileau, in judging of his own works, compared them with the standard of ideal perfection, which, in his own particular branch of the poetic art, he had, I presume, meditated as deeply and conceived as distinctly as it is possible for man to conceive it. Santoul, in judging of his own works, compared them, I suppose, chiefly to those of the other Latin poets of his own time, to the greater part of whom he was certainly very far from being inferior. But to support and finish off, if I may say so, the conduct and conversation of a whole life to some resemblance of this ideal perfection is surely much more difficult than to work up to an equal resemblance any of the productions of any of the ingenious arts.
The artist sits down to his work undisturbed, at leisure, in the full possession and recollection of all his skill, experience, and knowledge. The wise man must support the propriety of his own conduct in health and in sickness, in success and in disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy indolence, as well as in that of the most awakened attention. The most sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and distress must never surprise him. The injustice of other people must never provoke him to injustice. The violence of faction must never confound him. All the hardships and hazards of war must never either dishearten or appal him. Of the persons who, in estimating their own merit, in judging of their own character and conduct, direct by far the greater part of their attention to the second standard, to that ordinary degree of excellence which is commonly attained by other people, there are some who really and justly feel themselves very much above it, and who, by every intelligent and impartial spectator, are acknowledged to be so.
The attention of such persons, however, being always principally directed, not to the standard of ideal, but to that of ordinary perfection, they have little sense of their own weaknesses and imperfections. They have little modesty, are often assuming, arrogant and presumptuous, great admirers of themselves, and great condemners of other people. Though their characters are in general much less correct, and their merit much inferior to that of the man of real and modest virtue, yet their excessive presumption, founded upon their own excessive self-admiration, dazzles the multitude, and often imposes even upon those who are much superior to the multitude. The frequent and often wonderful success of the most ignorant quacks and impostors, both civil and religious, sufficiently demonstrate how easily the multitude are imposed upon by the most extravagant and groundless pretensions.
But when those pretensions are supported by a very high degree of real and solid merit, when they are displayed with all the splendor which ostentation can bestow upon them, when they are supported by high rank and great power, when they have often been successfully exerted, and are, upon that account, attended by the loud acclamations of the multitude, even the man of sober judgment often abandons himself to the general admiration. The very noise of those foolish acclamations often contributes to confounding his understanding, and while he sees those great men only at a certain distance, he is often disposed to worship them with a sincere admiration, superior even to that with which they appear to worship themselves.
When there is no envy in the case, we all take pleasure in admiring, and are, upon that account, naturally disposed in our own fancies to render complete and perfect in every respect the characters which, in many respects, are so very worthy of admiration. The excessive self-admiration of these great men is well understood, perhaps, and even seen through with some degree of derision by those wise men who are much in their familiarity, and who secretly smile at those lofty pretensions which, by people at a distance, are often regarded with reverence and almost with adoration. Such, however, have been, in all ages, the greater part of those men who have procured to themselves the most noisy fame, the most extensive reputation, A fame and reputation, too, which have often descended to the remotest posterity.
Great success in the world, great authority over the sentiments and opinions of mankind, have very seldom been acquired without some degree of this excessive self-admiration. The most splendid characters, the men who have performed the most illustrious actions, who have brought about the greatest revolutions, both in the situations and opinions of mankind, The most successful warriors, the greatest statesmen and legislators, the eloquent founders and leaders of the most numerous and most successful sects and parties, have many of them been, not more distinguished for their very great merit, than for a degree of presumption and self-admiration altogether disproportioned even to that very great merit.
This presumption was, perhaps, necessary, not only to prompt them to undertakings which a more sober mind would never have thought of, but to command the submission and obedience of their followers to support them in such undertakings. When crowned with success, accordingly, this presumption has often betrayed them into a vanity that approached almost to insanity and folly. Alexander the Great appears not only to have wished that other people should think him a god, but to have been at least very well disposed to fancy himself such. Upon his death-bed, the most ungodlike of all situations, he requested of his friends that, to the respectable list of deities into which himself had long before been inserted, his old mother Olympia might likewise have the honor of being added.
Amidst the respectful admiration of his followers and disciples, amidst the universal applause of the public, after the oracle, which probably had followed the voice of that applause, had pronounced him the wisest of men. The great wisdom of Socrates, though it did not suffer him to fancy himself a god, yet was not great enough to hinder him from fancying that he had secret and frequent intimations from some invisible and divine being. The sound head of Caesar was not so perfectly sound as to hinder him from being much pleased with his divine genealogy from the goddess Venus, and, before the temple of this pretended great-grandmother, to receive, without rising from his seat, the Roman Senate, when that illustrious body came to present him with some decrees conferring upon him the most extravagant honors.
This insolence, joined to some other acts of an almost childish vanity, little to be expected from an understanding at once so very acute and comprehensive, seems, by exasperating the public jealousy, to have emboldened his assassins, and to have hastened the execution of their conspiracy. The religion and manners of modern times give our great men little encouragement to fancy themselves either gods or even prophets. Success, however, joined to great popular favor, has often so far turned the heads of the greatest of them as to make them ascribe to themselves both an importance and a nobility much beyond what they really possessed, and by this presumption to precipitate themselves into many rash and sometimes ruinous adventures.
It is a characteristic almost peculiar to the great Duke of Marlborough that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid success as scarce any other general could boast of never betrayed him into a single rash action, scarce into a single rash word or expression. The same temperate coolness and self-command cannot, I think, be ascribed to any other great warrior of later times—not to Prince Eugène, not to the late King of Prussia, not to the great Prince of Condé, not even to Gustavus Adolphus. Touraine seems to have approached the nearest to it, but several different transactions of his life sufficiently demonstrate that it was in him by no means so perfect as in the great Duke of Marlborough.
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XXXIX. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. Part Six, Section Three of Self-Command.
In the humble project of private life, as well as in the ambitious and proud pursuit of high stations, great abilities and successful enterprise in the beginning have frequently encouraged to undertakings which necessarily led to bankruptcy and ruin in the end.
The esteem and admiration which every impartial spectator conceives for the real merit of those spirited, magnanimous, and high-minded persons As it is a just and well-founded sentiment, so it is a steady and permanent one, and altogether independent of their good or bad fortune. It is otherwise with that admiration which he is apt to conceive for their excessive self-estimation and presumption. While they are successful, indeed, he is often perfectly conquered and overborne by them. Success covers from his eyes not only the great imprudence, but frequently the great injustice of their enterprises, and, far from blaming this defective part of their character, he often views it with the most enthusiastic admiration.
When they are unfortunate, however, things change their colors and their names. What was before heroic magnanimity resumes its proper appellation of extravagant rashness and folly. And the blackness of that avidity and injustice which was before hid under the splendor of prosperity comes full into view, and blots the whole luster of their enterprise. Had Caesar, instead of gaining, lost the Battle of Pharsalia, his character would, at this hour, have ranked a little above that of Catiline, and the weakest man would have viewed his enterprise against the laws of his country in blacker colours than perhaps even Cato, with all the animosity of a party man ever viewed it at the time. His real merit, the justness of his taste, the simplicity and elegance of his writings, the propriety of his eloquence, his skill in war, his resources in distress, his cool and sedate judgment in danger, his faithful attachment to his friends, his unexampled generosity to his enemies, would all have been acknowledged, as the real merit of Cataline, who had many great qualities, is acknowledged at this day.
But the insolence and injustice of his all-grasping ambition would have darkened and extinguished the glory from all that real merit. Fortune has in this, as well in some other respects already mentioned, great influence over the moral sentiments of mankind, and, according as she is, either favorable or adverse, can render the same character the object either of general love and admiration, or of universal hatred and contempt. This great disorder in our moral sentiments is by no means, however, without its utility, and we may on this, as well as on many other occasions, admire the wisdom of God even in the weakness and folly of man. Our admiration of success is founded upon this same principle with our respect for wealth and greatness, and it is equally necessary for establishing the distinction of ranks and the order of society.
By this admiration of success, we are taught to submit more easily to those superiors whom the course of human affairs may assign to us, to regard with reverence, and sometimes even with a sort of respectful affection, that fortunate violence which we are no longer capable of resisting, not only the violence of such splendid characters as those of a Caesar or Alexander, but often that of the most brutal and savage barbarians, of an Attila, or a Genghis, or a Tamerlane, To all such mighty conquerors, the great mob of mankind are naturally disposed to look up with a wondering, though no doubt with a very weak and foolish admiration. By this admiration, however, they are taught to acquiesce with less reluctance under that government which an irresistible force imposes upon them, and from which no reluctance could deliver them.
Though in prosperity, however, the man of excessive self-estimation may sometimes appear to have some advantage over the man of correct and modest virtue, although the applause of the multitude, and of those who see them both only at a distance, is often much louder in favor of the one than it is ever in favor of the other. Yet, all things fairly computed, the real balance of advantage is, perhaps in all cases, greatly in favor of the latter and against the former. The man who neither ascribes to himself nor wishes that other people should ascribe to him any other merit besides that which really belongs to him, fears no humiliation, dreads no detection, but rests contented and secure upon the genuine truth and solidity of his own character.
His admirers may neither be very numerous nor very loud in their applauses, but the wisest man who sees him the nearest and knows him the best admires him the most. To a real wise man, the judicious and well-weighted approbation of a single wise man gives more heartfelt satisfaction than all the noisy applauses of ten thousand ignorant, though enthusiastic, admirers. He may say with Parmenides, who, upon reading a philosophical discourse before public display at Athens, and observing that except Plato the whole company had left him, continued, Notwithstanding, to read on, and said that Plato alone was audience sufficient for him.
It is otherwise with a man of excessive self-estimation. The wise men who see him the nearest admire him the least. Amidst the intoxication of prosperity, their sober and just esteem falls so short of the extravagance of his own self-admiration that he regards it as merely malignity and envy. He suspects his best friends. Their company becomes offensive to him. He drives them from his presence, and often rewards their services not only with ingratitude, but with cruelty and injustice. He abandons his confidence to flatterers and traitors, who pretend to idolize his vanity and presumption, and that character which in the beginning, though in some respects defective, was upon the whole both amiable and respectable, becomes contemptible and Odious in the end.
Amidst the intoxication of prosperity, Alexander killed Clytus, for having preferred the exploits of his father Philip to his own, put Coliscentes to death in torture for having refused to adore him in the Persian manner, and murdered the great friend of his father, the venerable Parmenio, after having, upon the most Groundless suspicions, sent first to the torture and afterwards to the scaffold the only remaining son of that old man, the rest having all died before in his own service. This was that Parmenio of whom Philip used to say that the Athenians were very fortunate who could find ten generals every year, while he himself, in the whole course of his life, could never find but one Parmenio.
It was upon the vigilance and attention of this Parmenio that he reposed at all times with confidence and security. In the hours of his mirth and jollity, he used to say, Let us drink, my friends. We may do it with safety, for Parmenio never drinks. It was the same Parmenio with whose presence and counsel it had been said Alexander had gained all of his victories, and without whose presence and counsel he had never gained a single victory. The humble, admiring, and flattering friends whom Alexander left in power and authority behind him, divided his empire among themselves, and after having thus robbed his family and kindred of their inheritance, put, one after another, every single surviving individual of them, whether female or male, to death.
We frequently not only pardon, but thoroughly enter into and sympathize with the excessive self-estimation of those splendid characters in which we observe a great and distinguished superiority above the common level of mankind. We call them spirited, magnanimous, and high-minded, words which all involve in their meaning a considerable degree of praise and admiration. But we cannot enter into and sympathize with the excessive self-estimation of those characters in which we can discern no such distinguished superiority. We are disgusted and revolted by it, and it is with some difficulty that we can either pardon or suffer it. We call it pride or vanity, two words of which the latter always, and the former for the most part, involve in their meeting a considerable degree of blame.
These two vices, however, though resembling in some respects as being both modifications of excessive self-estimation, are yet, in many respects, very different from one another.
The proud man is sincere, and in the bottom of his heart is convinced of his own superiority, though it may sometimes be difficult to guess upon what that conviction has founded. He wishes you to view him in no light other than that in which, when he places himself in your situation, he really views himself. He demands no more of you than, what he thinks, justice. If you appear not to respect him as he respects himself, he is more offended than mortified, and feels the same indignant resentment as if he had suffered a real injury.
He does not even then, however, deign to explain the grounds of his own pretensions. He disdains to court your esteem. He affects even to despise it, and endeavours to maintain his assumed station, not so much by making you sensible of his superiority, as of your own meanness. He seems to wish not so much to excite your esteem for himself as to mortify that for yourself.
The vain man is not sincere, and in the bottom of his heart is very seldom convinced of that superiority which he wishes you to ascribe him. He wishes you to view him in much more splendid colors than those in which, when he places himself in your situation and supposes you to know all that he knows, he can really view himself. When you appear to view him, therefore, in different colors, perhaps in his proper colors, he is much more mortified than offended. The grounds of his claim to that character which he wishes you to ascribe to him, he takes every opportunity of displaying, both by the most ostentatious and unnecessary exhibition of good qualities and accomplishments, which he possesses in some tolerable degree, and sometimes even by false pretensions to those which he either possesses in no degree, or in so very slender a degree that he may well enough be said to possess them in no degree.
Far from despising your esteem, he courts it with most anxious assiduity. Far from wishing to mortify your self-estimation, he is happy to cherish it, in hopes that in return you will cherish his own. He flatters in order to be flattered. He studies to please, and endeavours to bribe you into a good opinion of him by politeness and complacence, and sometimes even by real and essential good offices, Though often displayed perhaps with unnecessary ostentation. The vain man sees the respect which is paid to rank and fortune, and wishes to usurp this respect, as well as that for talents and virtues. His dress, his equipage, his way of living, accordingly, all announce both a higher rank and greater fortune than really belong to him.
And in order to support this foolish imposition for a few years in the beginning of his life, He often reduces himself to poverty and distress long before the end of it. As long as he can continue his expense, however, his vanity is delighted with viewing himself, not in the light in which you would view him if you knew all that he knows, but that in which he imagines he has, by his own address, induced you actually to view him. Of all the illusions of vanity, this is perhaps the most common. Obscure strangers who visit foreign countries, or who from a remote province come to visit, for a short time, the capital of their own country, most frequently attempt to practice it. The folly of the attempt, though always very great and most unworthy of a man of sense, may not be altogether so great upon such as upon most other occasions.
If their stay is short, they may escape any disgraceful detection, and, after indulging their vanity for a few months or a few years, They may return to their own homes and repair, by future parsimony, the waste of their past profusion.
The proud man can very seldom be accused of this folly. His sense of his own dignity renders him careful to preserve his independency, and, when his fortune happens not to be large, though he wishes it to be decent, he studies to be frugal and attentive in all his expenses. The ostentatious expense of the vain man is highly offensive to him. It outshines, perhaps, his own. It provokes his indignation as an insolent assumption of a rank which is by no means due, and he never talks of it without loading it with the harshest and severest reproaches.
The proud man does not always feel himself at his ease in the company of his equals, and still less in that of his superiors. He cannot lay down his lofty pretensions, and the countenance and conversation of such company over-awe him so much that he dare not display them.
He has recourse to humbler company, for which he has little respect, which he would not willingly choose, and which is by no means agreeable to him, that of his inferiors, his flatterers, and dependents. He seldom visits his superiors, or, if he does, it's rather to show that he's entitled to live in such company than for any real satisfaction that he enjoys in it. It is, as Lord Clarendon says of the Earl of Arundel, that he sometimes went to court because he could there only find a greater man than himself, but that he went very seldom because he found there a greater man than himself.
It is quite otherwise with the vain man. He courts the company of his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it. Their splendor, he seems to think, reflects a splendor upon those who are much about them. He haunts the courts of kings and the levies of ministers. He gives himself the air of being a candidate for fortune and preferment, when in reality he possesses the much more precious happiness, if he knew how to enjoy it, of not being one. He is fond of being admitted to the tables of the great, and still more fond of magnifying to other people the familiarity with which he is honored there. He associates himself as much as he can with fashionable people, those who are supposed to direct the public opinion, with the witty, with the learned, with the popular, and he shuns the company of his best friends whenever the very uncertain current of public favor happens to run in any respect against them.
With the people to whom he wishes to recommend himself, he is not always very delicate about the means which he employs for that purpose. Unnecessary ostentation, groundless pretensions, constant assentation, frequently flattery, though for the most part a pleasant and sprightly flattery, and very seldom the gross and fulsome flattery of a parasite. The proud man, on the contrary, never flatters, and is frequently scarce civil to anybody.
Notwithstanding all its groundless pretensions, however, vanity is almost always a sprightly and a gay and often very good-natured passion. Pride is always a grave, a sullen and a severe one. Even the falsehoods of the vain man are all innocent falsehoods, meant to raise himself, not to lower other people. To do the proud man justice, he very seldom stoops to the baseness of falsehood. When he does, however, his falsehoods are by no means so innocent. They are all mischievous, and meant to lower other people. He is full of indignation and the unjust superiority, as he thinks it which is given them. He views them with malignity and envy, and in Talking of them often endeavours, as much as he can, to extenuate and lessen whatever are the grounds upon which their superiority is supposed to be founded.
Whatever tales are circulated to their disadvantage, though he seldom forges them himself, yet he often takes pleasure in believing them, is by no means unwilling to repeat them, and even sometimes with a degree of exaggeration. The worst falsehoods of vanity are all what we call white lies. Those of pride, whenever it condescends to falsehood, are all of the opposite complexion. Our dislike to pride and vanity generally disposes us to rank the persons whom we accuse of those vices rather below than above the common level. In this judgment, however, I think we are most frequently in the wrong, and that both the proud and the vain man are often, perhaps for the most part, a good deal above it, though not near so much as either the one really thinks himself, or as the other wishes you to think him.
If we compare them with their own pretensions, they may appear the just objects of contempt. But when we compare them with what the greater part of their rivals and competitors really are, and they may appear quite otherwise, and very much above the common level, where there is real superiority, pride is frequently attended with many respectable virtues, with truth, with integrity, with a high sense of honor, with cordial and steady friendship, with one of the most inflexible firmness and resolution. Vanity with many amiable ones, with humanity, with politeness, with a desire to oblige in all little matters, and sometimes with a real generosity in great ones. A generosity, however, which it often wishes to display in the most splendid colors it can.
By their rivals and enemies, the French, in the last century, were accused of vanity, the Spaniards of pride, And foreign nations were disposed to consider the one as the more amiable, the other as the more respectable people. The words vain and vanity are never taken in a good sense. We sometimes say of a man, when we are talking of him in good humor, that he is the better for his vanity, or that his vanity is more diverting than offensive. But we still consider it as a foible and as a ridicule in his character. The words Proud and Pride, on the contrary, are sometimes taken in a good sense. We frequently say of a man that he's too proud or that he has too much noble pride ever to suffer himself to do a mean thing.
Pride is, in this case, confounded with magnanimity. Aristotle, a philosopher who certainly knew the world, in drawing the character of the magnanimous man, paints him with many features which, in the last two centuries, were commonly ascribed to this Spanish character. That he was deliberate in all his resolutions, slow, and even tardy in all his actions. That his voice was grave, his speech deliberate, his step and motion slow. That he appeared indolent and even slothful, not at all disposed to bustle about little matters, but to act with a most determined and vigorous resolution upon all great and illustrious occasions. That he was not a lover of danger, or forward to expose himself to little dangers, but to great dangers, and that when he exposed himself to danger, he was altogether regardless of his life.
The proud man is commonly too well contented with himself to think that his character requires any amendment. The man who feels himself all perfect naturally enough despises all further improvement. His self-sufficiency and absurd conceit of his own superiority commonly attend him from his youth to his most advanced age, and he dies, as Hamlet says, with all his sins upon his head, unanointed. Unannealed.
It is frequently otherwise with a vain man. The desire of the esteem and admiration of other people, when for qualities and talents which are the natural and proper objects of esteem and admiration, is the real love of true glory, a passion which, if not the very best passion of human nature, is certainly one of the best. Vanity is very frequently no more than an attempt to prematurely usurp that Glory before it is due. Though your son, under five-and-twenty years of age, should be but a coxcomb, do not upon that account despair of his becoming, before he is forty, a very wise and worthy man, and a real proficient in all those talents and virtues to which, at present, he may only be an ostentatious and empty pretender.
The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects. Never suffer him to value himself upon trivial accomplishments, but do not always discourage his pretensions to those that are of real importance. He would not pretend to them if he did not earnestly desire to possess them. Encourage this desire. Afford him every means to facilitate the acquisition, and do not take too much offense, although he should sometimes assume the air of having Attained it a little before the time. Such, I say, are the distinguishing characteristics of pride and vanity, when each of them acts according to its proper character. But the proud man is often vain, and the vain man is often proud. Nothing can be more natural than that man, who thinks much more highly of himself than he deserves, should wish that other people should think still more highly of him, or that the man, who wishes that other people should think more highly of him than he thinks of himself, should, at the same time, think much more highly of himself than he deserves.
These two vices being frequently in the same character, the characteristics of both are necessarily confounded, and we sometimes find the superficial and impertinent ostentation of vanity joined to the most malignant and derisive insolence of pride. We are sometimes, upon that account, at a loss how to rank a particular character, or whether to place it among the proud or among the vain.
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Men of merit considerably above the common level sometimes underrate as well as overrate themselves. Such characters, though not very dignified, are often in private society far from being disagreeable. His companions all feel themselves much at their ease in the society of a man so perfectly modest and unassuming. If those companions, however, have not both more discernment and more generosity than ordinary, though they may have some kindness for him, They seldom have much respect, and in the warmth of their kindness is very seldom sufficient to compensate the coldness of their respect. Men of no more than ordinary discernment never rate any person higher than he appears to rate himself. He seems doubtful himself, they say, whether he is perfectly fit for such a situation or such an office, and immediately give the preference to some imprudent blockhead who entertains no doubt about his own qualifications.
Though they should have discernment, yet if they want generosity, they never fail to take advantage of his simplicity, and to assume over him an impertinent superiority which they are by no means entitled to. His good nature may enable him to bear this for some time, but he grows weary at last, and frequently when it is too late, and when that rank, which he ought to have assumed, is lost irrevocably and usurped in consequence of his own backwardness, by some of his more forward, though much less meritous companions. A man of this character must have been very fortunate in the early choice of his companions, if, in going through the world, he meets always with fair justice, even from those whom, from his own past kindness, he might have some reason to consider as his best friends.
And a youth, too unassuming and too unambitious, is frequently followed by an insignificant complaining, and discontented old age.
Those unfortunate persons whom nature has formed a good deal below the common level seem sometimes to rate themselves still more below it than they really are. This humility appears sometimes to sink them into idiotism. Whoever has taken the trouble to examine idiots with attention will find that in many of them the faculties of the understanding are by no means weaker than in several other people, who, though acknowledged to be dull and stupid, are not by anybody accounted idiots. Many idiots with no more than ordinary education have been taught to read, write, and account tolerably well. Many persons, never accounted idiots, notwithstanding the most careful education, and notwithstanding that, in their advanced age, they have had spirit enough to attempt to learn what their early education had not taught them, have never been able to acquire, in any tolerable degree, any one of those three accomplishments.
By an instinct of pride, however, they set themselves upon a level with their equals in age and situation, and with courage and firmness maintain their proper station among their companions. By an opposite instinct, the idiot feels himself below every company into which you can introduce him. Ill-usage, to which he is extremely liable, is capable of throwing him into the most violent fits of rage and fury. But no good usage, no kindness or indulgence, can ever raise him to converse with you as your equal. If you can bring him to converse with you at all, however, you will frequently find his answers sufficiently pertinent and even sensible. They are always stamped with a distinct consciousness of his own great inferiority.
He seems to shrink and, as it were, to retire from your look and conversation. And to feel when he places himself in your situation that, notwithstanding your apparent condescension, you cannot help considering him as immensely below you. Some idiots, perhaps the greater part, seem to be so, chiefly or together, from a certain numbness or torpidity in the faculties of the understanding. But there are others in whom those faculties do not appear more torpid or benumbed than in many other people who are not accounted idiots. But that instinct of pride, necessary to support them upon an equality with their brethren, seems totally wanting in the former, and not in the latter.
That degree of self-estimation, therefore, which contributes most to the happiness and contentment of the person himself, seems likewise most agreeable to the impartial spectator. The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction. The proud and the vain man, on the contrary, are constantly dissatisfied. The one is tormented with indignation at the unjust superiority, as he thinks of it, of other people. The other is in continual dread of the shame which, he foresees, would attend upon the detection of his groundless pretensions.
Even the extravagant pretensions of the man of real magnanimity, though, when supported by splendid abilities and virtues, and, above all, by good fortune, they impose upon the multitude whose applauses he little regards, do not impose upon those wise men whose approbation he can only value. and whose esteem he is most anxious to acquire. He feels that they see through, and suspects that they despise his excessive presumption, and he often suffers the cruel misfortune of becoming, first the jealous and secret, and at last the open, furious and vindictive enemy of those very persons whose friendship it would have given him the greatest happiness to enjoy with unsuspicious security.
Though our dislike of the proud and vain often disposes us to rank them rather below than above their proper station, yet unless we are provoked by some particular and personal impertinence, we very seldom venture to use them ill. In common cases, we endeavor, for our own ease, rather to acquiesce, and, as well as we can, to accommodate ourselves to their folly. But, to the man who underrates himself, unless we have both more discernment and more generosity than belong to the greater part of men, we seldom fail to do, at least, all the injustice which he does to himself, and frequently a great deal more. He is not only more unhappy in his own feelings than either the proud or the vain, but he is much more liable to every sort of ill-usage from other people.
In almost all cases, it is better to be a little too proud than in any respect too humble, and in the sentiment of self-estimation, some degree of excess seems, both to the person and to the impartial spectator, to be less disagreeable than any degree of defect.
In this, therefore, as well as in every other emotion, passion, and habit, The degree that is most agreeable to the impartial spectator is likewise most agreeable to the person himself, and according as either the excess or the defect is least offensive to the former, so either with the one or the other is in proportion at least disagreeable to the latter.
Concerned for our own happiness recommends to us the virtue of prudence. Concerned for that of other people, the virtues of justice and beneficence. Of which the one restrains us from hurting, the other prompts us to promote that happiness. Independent of any regard either to what are, or what ought to be, or what upon a certain condition would be, the sentiments of other people, the first of those three virtues, is originally recommended to us by our selfish, the other too by our benevolent affections. Regard to the sentiments of other people, however, comes afterward both to enforce and to direct the practice of all those virtues, and no man during either the whole of his life, or that of any considerable part of it, ever trod steadily and uniformly in the paths of prudence, of justice, or of proper beneficence, whose conduct was not principally directed by a regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator.
Of the great inmate of the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct. If, in the course of the day, we have swerved in any respect from the rules which he prescribes to us, if we have either exceeded or relaxed in our frugality, if we have either exceeded or relaxed in our industry, if through If we have neglected a plain and proper opportunity of promoting that interest in happiness, it is this inmate who, in the evening, calls us to an account for all those omissions and violations, and his reproaches often make us blush inwardly, both for our folly and inattention to our own happiness. and for our still greater indifference and inattention, perhaps, to that of other people.
But though the virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence may, upon different occasions, be recommended to us almost equally by two different principles, those of self-command are, upon most occasions, principally and almost entirely recommended to us by one. By the sense of propriety, by regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator. Without the restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own gratification. Anger would follow the suggestions of its own fury, fear those of its own violent agitations. Regard to no time or place would induce vanity to refrain from the loudest and most impertinent ostentation, or voluptuousness from the most open, indecent, and scandalous indulgence.
Respect for what are, or for what ought to be, or for what upon a certain condition would be, the sentiments of other people, is the sole principle which in most occasions over-awes all those munitious and turbulent passions into that tone and temper which the impartial spectator can enter into and sympathize with.
Upon some occasions, indeed, those passions are restrained not so much by a sense of their impropriety as by prudential considerations of the bad consequences which might follow from their indulgence. In such cases, the passions, though restrained, are not always subdued, but often remain lurking in the breast with all their original fury. The man whose anger is restrained by fear does not always lay aside his anger, but only reserves its gratification for a more safe opportunity. But the man who, in relating to some other person the injury which has been done to him, feels at once the fury of his passion cooled and becalmed by sympathy with the more moderate sentiments of his companion, who at once adopts those more moderate sentiments, and comes to view that injury not in the black and atrocious colors which he had originally beheld it, but in the much milder and fairer light in which his companion naturally views it.
not only restrains, but in some measure subdues his anger. The passion becomes really less than it was before, and is less capable of exciting him to the violent and bloody revenge which, at first, perhaps, he might have thought of inflicting.
Those passions which are restrained by the sense of propriety are all in some degree moderated and subdued by it. But those which are restrained Only by prudential considerations of any kind are, on the contrary, frequently inflamed by the restraint, and sometimes, long after the provocation given and when nobody is thinking about it, burst out absurdly and unexpectedly, and with tenfold fury and violence.
Anger, however, as well as every other passion, May upon some occasions be very properly restrained by prudential considerations. Some exertion of manhood and self-command is even necessary for this sort of restraint, and the impartial spectator may sometimes view it with that sort of cold esteem due to that species of conduct which he considers as a mere matter of vulgar prudence. But never with that affectionate admiration which he surveys the same passions, when, by the sense of propriety, they are moderated and subdued to what he himself can readily enter into. In the former species of restraint, he may frequently discern some degree of propriety, and, if he will, even a virtue. But it is a propriety and virtue of a much inferior order to those which he always feels with transport and admiration in the latter.
The virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence have no tendency to produce any but the most agreeable effects. Regard to those effects, as it originally recommends them to the actor, so does it afterwards to the impartial spectator. In our approbation of the character of the prudent man, we feel with peculiar complacency the security which he must enjoy while he walks under the safeguard of that sedate and deliberate virtue. In our approbation of the character of the just man, we feel with equal complacency that security which all those connected with him, whether in neighborhood, society, or business, must arrive from his scrupulous anxiety, never either to hurt or to offend. In our approbation of the character of the beneficent man, we enter into the gratitude of all those who are within the sphere of his good offices, and conceive with them the highest sense of his merit.
In our approbation of all those virtues, our sense of the agreeable effects of their utility, either to the person who exercises them, or to some other persons, joins with our sense of their propriety, and constitutes always a considerable, frequently the greater part of that approbation.
But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency with the effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but a small part, of that approbation. Those effects may sometimes be agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable, and though our approbation is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valor may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice, And though it is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and in all the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of their exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to make and to maintain that exertion.
The effects are too often, but too little, regarded.
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The same principles that direct the order in which individuals are recommended to our beneficence, likewise that direct in which societies are recommended to it. Those to which it is, or may be of most importance, are first and principally recommended to it. The state or sovereignty in which we have been born and educated, and under the protection of which we continue to live, is, in ordinary cases, The greatest society upon whose happiness or misery our good or bad conduct can have much influence. It is, accordingly, by nature, most strongly recommended to us. Not only we ourselves, but all the objects of our kindest affections, our children, our parents, our relations, our friends, our benefactors, all those whom we naturally love and revere the most, are commonly comprehended within it.
And their prosperity and safety depend in some measure upon its prosperity and safety. It is by nature, therefore, endeared to us not only by all our selfish, but by all our private benevolent affections. Upon account of our own connection with it, its prosperity and glory seem to reflect some sort of honor upon ourselves. When we compare it to other societies of the same kind, we are proud of its superiority, and mortified in some degree if it appears in any respect below them. All the illustrious characters which it has produced in former times fought against those of our own times. Envy may sometimes prejudice us a little. Its warriors, its statesmen, its poets, its philosophers, and men of letters of all kinds.
We are disposed to view with the most partial admiration, and to rank them Sometimes most unjustly, above those of all other nations. The patriot who lays down his life for the safety, or even for the vainglory, of his society, appears to act with the most exact propriety. He appears to view himself in the light in which the impartial spectator naturally and necessarily views him, as but one of the multitude, in the light of that equitable judge of no more consequence than any other in it, but bound at all times to sacrifice and devote himself to the safety, to the service, and even to the glory of the greater number. But though the sacrifice appears to be perfectly just and proper, We know how difficult it is to make it, and how few people are capable of making it.
His conduct, therefore, excites not only our entire approbation, but our highest wonder and admiration, and seems to merit all the applause which can be due to the most heroic virtue. The traitor, on the contrary, who, in some Peculiar fashion fancies he can promote his own little interest by betraying to the public enemy that of his native country, who, regardless of the judgment of the man within the breast, prefers himself, in this respect so shamefully and so basely, to all those whom he has any connection, appears to be, of all villains, the most detestable.
The love of our own nation often disposes us to view with the most malignant jealousy and envy the prosperity and aggrandizement of any other neighboring nation. Independent and neighboring nations having no common superior to decide their disputes all live in continual dread and suspicion of one another. Each sovereign, expecting little justice from his neighbors, is disposed to treat them with as little as he expects from them. The regard for the laws of nations, or for those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think themselves bound to observe in their dealings with one another, is often very little more than mere pretense and profession. From the smallest interest upon the slightest provocation, we see these rules every day either evaded or directly violated, without shame or remorse.
Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandizement of any of its neighbors, and the mean principle of national prejudice is often founded upon the noble one of the love of our own country. The sentence with which the elder Cato is said to have concluded every speech which he made in the Senate, whatever might be its subject, it is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought to be destroyed. was the natural expression of the savage patriotism of a strong but coarse mind, enraged almost to madness against a foreign nation from which his own had suffered so much. The much more humane sentence with which Scipio Nisicae is said to have concluded all his speeches, it is my opinion likewise that Carthage ought not to be destroyed, was the liberal expression of a more enlarged and enlightened mind, who felt no aversion to the prosperity even of an old enemy.
When reduced to a state which could no longer be formidable to Rome. France and England may each of them have some reason to dread the increase of the naval and military power of the other, but for either of them to envy the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its lands, the advancement of its manufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its ports and harbors, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences, is surely beneath the dignity of two great nations. These are all real improvements of the world we live in. Mankind are benefited. Human nature is ennobled by them. In such improvements, each nation ought not only to endeavor itself to excel, but from the love of mankind to promote instead of obstructing the excellence of its neighbors.
These are all proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice or envy.
The love of our own country seems not to be derived from the love of mankind. The former sentiment is altogether independent of the latter, and seems sometimes even to dispose us to act inconsistently with it. France may contain, perhaps, near three times the number of inhabitants which Great Britain contains. In the great society of mankind, therefore, the prosperity of France should appear to be an object of much greater importance than that of Great Britain. The British subject, however, who upon that account should prefer upon all occasions the prosperity of the former to that of the latter country, would not be thought a good citizen of Great Britain. We do not love our country merely as part of the great society of mankind.
We love it for our own sake, and independently of any such consideration. That wisdom which contrived this system of human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature, seems to have judged that the interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it which was most within the sphere, both of his abilities and of his understanding.
National prejudices and hatreds seldom extend beyond neighboring nations. We very weakly and foolishly, perhaps, call the French our natural enemies, and they, perhaps, as weakly and foolishly, consider us in the same manner. Neither they nor we bear any sort of envy to the prosperity of China or Japan. It very rarely happens, however, that our good-will toward such distant countries can be exerted with much effect. The most extensive public benevolence which can commonly be exerted with any considerable effect is that of the statesmen, who project and form alliances among neighboring or not very distant nations, for the preservation either of what is called the balance of power, or of the general peace and tranquility to the states within the circle of their negotiations.
The statesmen, however, who plan and execute such treaties, have seldom anything in view but the interest of their respective countries. Sometimes, indeed, their views are more extensive. The Count de Vaux, the Plenipotentiary of France, at the Treaty of Munster, would have been willing to sacrifice his life, according to the Cardinal de Retz, a man not overly credulous in the virtue of other people, in order to have restored by that treaty the general tranquillity of Europe. King William seems to have had a real zeal for the liberty and independency of the greater part of the sovereign states of Europe, which perhaps might be a good deal stimulated by his particular aversion to France, the state from which, during his time, that liberty and independency were principally in danger.
Some share of this same spirit seems to have descended to the first ministry of Queen Anne.
Every independent state is divided into many different orders and societies. Each of which has its own particular powers, privileges, and immunities. Every individual is naturally more attached to his own particular order or society than to any other. His own interest, his own vanity, the interest and vanity of many of his friends and companions, are commonly a good deal connected with it. He is ambitious to extend its privileges and immunities. He is zealous to defend them against the encroachments of every other order or society.
Upon the manner in which any state is divided into the different orders and societies which compose it, and upon the particular distribution which has been made of their respective powers, privileges, and immunities, depends what is called the constitution of that particular state. Upon the ability of each particular order or society to maintain its own powers, privileges, and immunities against the encroachments of every other depends the stability of that particular constitution. That particular constitution is necessarily more or less altered whenever any of its subordinate parts is either raised above or depressed below whatever had been its former rank and condition. All those different orders and societies are dependent upon the state to which they owe their security and protection.
That they are all subordinate to that state, and established only in subserviency to its prosperity and preservation, is a truth acknowledged by the most partial member of every one of them. It may often, however, be hard to convince him that the prosperity and preservation of the state require any diminution of the powers, privileges, and immunities of his own particular order or society.
This partiality, though it may sometimes be unjust, may not, upon that account, be useless. It checks the spirit of innovation. It tends to preserve whatever is the established balance among the different orders and societies into which the state is divided. And while it sometimes appears to obstruct some alterations of government, which may be fashionable and popular at the time, It contributes in reality to the stability and permanency of the whole system. The love of our country seems, in ordinary cases, to involve it in two different principles. First, a certain respect and reverence for that constitution or form of government which is actually established, and secondly, an earnest desire to render the condition of our fellow citizens as safe, respectable, and happy as we can.
He is not a citizen who is disposed to respect the laws and to obey the civil magistrate. He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow-citizens. In peaceable and quiet times, those two principles generally coincide and lead to the same conduct. The support of the established government seems evidently the best expedient for maintaining the safe, Respectable, and happy situation of our fellow citizens, when we see that this government actually maintains them in that situation. But in times of public discontent, faction, and order, those two different principles may draw different ways, and even a wise man may be disposed to think some alteration necessary in that constitution or form of government, which in its actual condition appears plainly unable to maintain the public tranquility.
In such cases, however, it often requires perhaps the highest effort of political wisdom to determine when a real patriot ought to support and endeavor to re-establish the authority of the old system, and when he ought to give way to the more daring, but often dangerous, spirit of innovation.
Foreign war and civil faction are the two situations which afford the most splendid opportunities for the display of public spirit. The hero who serves his country successfully in foreign war gratifies the wishes of the whole nation, and is, upon that account, the object of universal gratitude and admiration. In times of civil discord, the leaders of the contending parties, though they may be admired by one half of their fellow-citizens, are commonly execrated by the other. Their characters and the merit of their respective services appear commonly more doubtful. The glory which is acquired by foreign war is, upon this account, Almost always more pure and more splendid than that which can be acquired in civil faction.
The leader of this successful party, however, if he has authority enough to prevail upon his own friends to act with proper temper and moderation, which he frequently has not, may sometimes render to his country a service much more essential and important than the greatest victories and the most extensive conquests. He may re-establish and improve the Constitution, and from the very doubtful and ambiguous character of the leader of a party, he may assume the greatest and noblest of all characters, that of the reformer and legislator of a great state, and by the wisdom of his institutions, secure the internal tranquility and happiness of his fellow-citizens for many succeeding generations.
Amidst the turbulence and disorder of a faction, a certain spirit of system is apt to mix itself with that public spirit which is founded upon the love of humanity, upon a real fellow-feeling with the inconveniences and distresses to which some of our fellow-citizens may be exposed. This spirit of system commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit, always animates it, and often inflames it even to the madness of fanaticism. The leaders of the discontented party seldom fail to hold out some plausible plan of reformation which they pretend will not only remove the inconveniences and relieve the distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent, in all time coming, any return of the like inconveniences and distresses.
They often propose upon this account to new model the Constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential parts, That system of government under which the subjects of a great empire have enjoyed, perhaps peace, security, and even glory, during the course of several centuries together. The great body of the party are commonly intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system, of which they have no experience, but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling colors in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it. Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant nothing but their own aggrandizement, become many of them in time's dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers.
Even though the leaders should have preserved in their own heads, as indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare not disappoint the expectation of their followers, but are often obliged, though contrary to their principles and their conscience, to act as if they were under the same delusion. The violence of the party, refusing all palliatives, all temperaments, and all reasonable accommodations by requiring too much frequently obtains nothing, and those inconveniences and distresses which, with a little moderation, might in a great measure have been removed and relieved, are left altogether without hope of remedy.
The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence will respect the established powers and privileges, even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force, but will religiously observe what by Cicero is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people, and will remedy, as well as he can, the inconveniences which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to.
When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong. But like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavor to establish the best that people can bear.
The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit, and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely, and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them, but that in the great chessboard of human society every single piece has a principle motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislator might choose to impress upon it.
If these two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
Some general, and even systematical, idea of perfection of policy and law may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him, and not he to them. It is upon this account that, of all political speculators, sovereign princes are by far the most dangerous. This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them.
They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment. When such imperial and royal reformers, therefore, condescend to contemplate the constitution of the country which is committed to their government, they seldom see anything so wrong in it as the obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of their own will. They hold in contempt the divine maxim of Plato, and consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for the state. The great object of their reformation, therefore, is to remove those obstructions, to reduce the authority of the nobility, to take away the privileges of cities and provinces, and to render both the greatest individuals and the greatest orders of the state as incapable of opposing their commands as the weakest and most insignificant.
Part VI. CHAPTER III. of universal benevolence.
Though our effectual good offices can very seldom be extended to any wider society than that of our own country, our good will is circumscribed by no boundary, but may embrace the immensity of the universe. We cannot form the idea of any innocent and sensible being whose happiness we should not desire, or whose misery, when distinctly brought home to the imagination, we should not have some degree of aversion. The idea of a mischievous, though sensible, being, indeed, naturally provokes our hatred, but the ill-will which, in this case, we bear to it, is really the effect of our universal benevolence. It is the effect of the sympathy which we feel with the misery and resentment of those other innocent and sensible beings whose happiness is disturbed by its malice.
This universal benevolence, how noble and generous soever, can be the source of no solid happiness to any man who is not thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants of the universe, the meanest as well as the greatest, are under the immediate care and protection of that great, benevolent, and all-wise being, who directs all the movements of nature, and who is determined, by his own unalterable perfections, to maintain in it at All times the greatest possible quantity of happiness. To this universal benevolence, on the contrary, the very suspicion of a fatherless world must be the most melancholy of all reflections, from the thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness.
All the splendor of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily overshadow the imagination, nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary system.
The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest of his own particular order or society. He is at all times willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part. He should, therefore, be equally willing that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe, and to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate administrator and director. If he is deeply impressed with the habitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and all-wise being can emit into the system of his government no partial evil which is not necessary for the universal good, he must consider all the misfortunes which may befall himself, his friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for the prosperity of the universe, and therefore as what he ought not Only to submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he had known all the connections and dependencies of things, ought sincerely and devoutly to have wished for.
Nor does this magnanimous resignation to the will of the great Director of the Universe seem in any respect beyond the reach of human nature. Good soldiers, who both love and trust their general, frequently march with more gaiety and accolarity to the forlorn station, from which they never expect a return, than they would to one where there was neither difficulty nor danger. In marching to the latter, they could feel no other sentiment than that of the dullness of ordinary duty. In marching to the former, they feel that they are making the noblest exertion which it is possible for man to make. They know that their general would not have ordered them upon this station had it not been necessary for the safety of the army, for the success of the war.
They cheerfully sacrifice their own little systems to the prosperity of a greater system. They take an affectionate leave of their comrades, to whom they wish all happiness and success, and march out, not only with submissive obedience, but often with shouts of the most joyful exultation to that fatal But splendid and honorable station to which they are appointed. No conductor of an army can deserve more unlimited trust, more ardent and zealous affection, than the great conductor of the universe. In the greatest public as well as private disasters, a wise man ought to consider that he himself, his friends and countrymen, have only been ordered upon the forlorn station of the universe that had it not been necessary for the good of the whole, and they would not have been so ordered, and that it is their duty, not only with humble resignation, to submit to this allotment, but to endeavor to embrace it with accolarity and joy.
A wise man should surely be capable of doing what a good soldier holds himself at all times in readiness to do.
The idea of that divine being, whose benevolence and wisdom has, from all eternity, contrived and conducted the immense machine of the universe, so as at all times to produce the greatest possible quantity of happiness, is certainly of all the objects of human contemplation by far the most sublime. Every other thought necessarily appears mean in comparison. The man whom we believe to be principally occupied in this sublime contemplation seldom fails to be the object of our highest veneration, and though his life should be altogether contemplative, we often regard him with a sort of religious respect much superior to that which we look upon the most active and useful servant of the Commonwealth.
The meditations of Marcus Antoninus, which turn principally upon this subject, have contributed more, perhaps, to the general admiration of his character than all the different transactions of his just, merciful, and beneficent reign.
The administration of the great system of the universe, however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God, and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers and to the narrowness of his comprehension, the care of his own happiness, that of his family, his friends, his country. That he is occupied in contemplating the more sublime can never be an excuse for his neglecting the more humble department. And he must not expose himself to the charge which Havidius Cassius is said to have brought, perhaps unjustly, against Marcus Antoninus, that while he employed himself in the philosophical speculations, and contemplated the prosperity of the universe, he neglected that of the Roman Empire.
The most sublime speculation of the contemplative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of the smallest active duty.