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 these
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
endeavour to teach us how to indulge, but generally how to restrain
our fondness, our excessive attachment, the unjust preference which we
{124} 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 honour our fathers and mothers.
No mention is made of the love of our children. Nature has
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
praise-worthy, 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
mean time, 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
sophism by which it is supported can seldom serve any other purpose
than to blow up the hard insensibility 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, Racine and Voltaire; Richardson,
Maurivaux, and Riccoboni; are, in such cases, much better instructors
than the philosophers 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 of self-approbation.
It is otherwise in the misfortunes which affect ourselves immediately
{125} 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
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 neighbour, 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 rank in the society, not upon their
fortune, but upon their character and conduct, are always the most
approved of, and 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 honour. 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, {126} either to its censure or to its applause, neglect
and despise obloquy, and do not even deign to honour 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 characters, 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, a most
improper insensibility to real honour and infamy of character.
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 feeling 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 endeavours always, by
the violence of his 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 favour, 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 play-fellows 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 the 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, {127} 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 and
lamentations; and endeavours, 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 endeavours, 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 endeavours to entertain them, in
his usual way, upon indifferent subjects, or, if he feels himself
strong enough to venture to mention his misfortune, he endeavours 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, endeavours 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 {128} 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
his 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 tranquillity, 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 colouring, 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 spectators who might happen to be present, would be entirely
overlooked and disregarded.
The reward which Nature bestows upon good behaviour under misfortune,
is thus exactly proportioned to the degree of that good behaviour. The
only compensation she could possibly make for the bitterness of pain
and distress is thus, too, in equal degrees of good behaviour, exactly
proportioned to the degree of that pain and distress. In proportion to
the degree of 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 {129} 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-applause,
though it may not altogether extinguish, must certainly very much
alleviate his sense of his own sufferings.
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 honour, 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 exist in his mind separate and distinct from one another,
and each directing him to a behaviour different from that to which the
other directs him. When he follows that view which honour 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 of 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 sedateness and sobriety of 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 remainder 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 {130} 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 effort,
without 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 tranquillity
and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can be no enjoyment; and
where there is perfect tranquillity there is scarce any thing 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 tranquillity.
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 Bastile, after a certain time, the fashionable and
frivolous Count de Lauzun 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 over-rating the difference between one permanent
situation and another. Avarice over-rates 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 ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of
prudence or of 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, {131} 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 every thing against scarce
any thing. What the favourite 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
favourite:--I propose then, said the king, to enjoy myself with my
friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle.--And what
hinders your Majesty from doing so now? replied the favourite. 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 the 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 tomb-stone of
the man who had endeavoured to mend a tolerable constitution by taking
physic; '_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 a 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 tranquillity, 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 behaviour 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 tranquillity which a regard to his own dignity, which
manhood teaches the wise man to assume in the beginning. The case of
the man with the wooden {132} 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 tranquillity as the strongest
man. In all the irreparable calamities which affect himself
immediately and directly, a wise man endeavours, from the beginning,
to anticipate and to enjoy before-hand, that tranquillity 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
favour to disgrace, from power to insignificancy, 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
unfavourable 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 decease, 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 endeavoured 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 of
frantic expectation, the happy moment when her wishes were to be
gratified by the revival of her beloved Philip.[4]
[Footnote 4: See Robertson's Charles V. vol. ii. pp. 14 and 15, first
edit.]
{133} 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 neighbour, 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 necessarily 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 tranquillity.
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 {134} 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 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 neighbour, 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 honourable pursuits; and, on the contrary, men of the
most perfect self-command, whom no difficulty can discourage, no
danger appal, 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 over-rate 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
{135} 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 demeanour, you can gain their favour 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 dishonour 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, but
who would think it less dishonourable 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
dishonour upon the violator; but those laws themselves are, the
greater part of them, laid down with {136} very little regard to the
plainest and most obvious rules of justice. That the innocent, though
they may have some connexion 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 or 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 towards 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 candour, 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 zealots of both parties.
A true party-man hates and despises candour; 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 any where 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 corrupters of moral
sentiments, therefore, faction and fanaticism have always been by far
the greatest.
{137} 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 honour 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.
-----
CHAP. IV.--_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 authorising.
There are two different occasions upon which we examine our own
conduct, and endeavour 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 candour of an indifferent
person. The violent emotions which at that time agitate us, discolour
our views of things, even when we are endeavouring to place ourselves
{138} 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 every thing 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 Malebranche says, all
justify themselves, and seem reasonable and proportioned 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
judgment 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 unfavourable. 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 behaviour under so disagreeable an
aspect, we too often, foolishly and weakly, endeavour to exasperate
anew those unjust passions which had formerly misled us; we endeavour
by artifice to awaken our old hatreds, and irritate afresh our almost
forgotten resentments: we even exert ourselves for this miserable
purpose, and thus persevere in injustice, merely because we once were
unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so.
{139} 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 endued with a particular power of
perception which distinguished the beauty or deformity of passions and
affections; as then passions would be more immediately exposed to the
view of this faculty, it would judge more accurately 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 exposed to us.
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
every body around us express the same favourable opinion concerning
them. Every body is eager to honour 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 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 a certain general rule. The general
rule, on the contrary, is formed, by finding from experience, that all
actions of a {140} 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
blamable action. His detestation of this crime, it is evident, would
arise instantaneously and 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, an 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 {141}
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 any
thing that pursues him from behind. Such {142} 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.
-----
CHAP. V.--_Of the Influence and Authority of the general Rules of
Morality, and that they are justly regarded as the Laws of the
Deity._
THE regard of 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 their actions. 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 past services. He may do all
this too without any hypocrisy or blamable 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 {143}
kinds; and though both of them may have the most serious and earnest
desire to fulfil 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 mould are capable
of suiting, with exact justness, their sentiments and behaviour 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 honour 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 humour, inclination, or interest chance to be uppermost. Nay, such
are the inequalities of humour 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
humour 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 {144} 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 seem 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 honour to our species, such as lust, hunger,
avarice, 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
{145} 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 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 colours, nor from the
ear with regard to the harmony of sounds, nor from the taste with
regard to the agreeableness of flavours. 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 soothes 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
vicegerents 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 {146}
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 too 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 tranquillity of mind, with
full 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 accordingly 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 otherwise, 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
favour and reward in the one case, and to dread his sure 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 honours 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, the 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 {147} 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 these 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 the 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 vices
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. Magnanimity, generosity, and
justice, command so high a degree of admiration, that we desire to see
them crowned with wealth, and power, and honours of every kind, the
natural consequences of prudence, industry, and application; qualities
with which those virtues are not inseparably connected. Fraud,
falsehood, brutality, and {148} 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 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 favour of the knave: the natural sentiments of
mankind in favour of the man of virtue. Man judges, that the good
qualities of the one are greatly over-recompensed by those 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 laws, the consequences of human sentiments,
forfeit the life and the estate of the industrious and cautious
traitor, 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 which
for 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 endeavour 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, as, those which he
follows are 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 favour 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
endeavours 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 {149} 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 what 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 sometimes to 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 faithless 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 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 life to come, will
reward {150} 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 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 fulfil 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 perfidy, and violence,
the world undoubtedly judges right in this respect, and justly places
a double confidence in the rectitude of the religious man's behaviour.
-----
CHAP. VI.--_In what Cases the Sense of Duty ought to be the sole
Principle 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
{151} 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 the 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 neighbour 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 no where 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 on our conduct.
The decision of this question, which cannot, perhaps, be given with
any very 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 rules themselves.
I. 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 {152} 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 it 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 from
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 for his children, 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 own 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 behaviour 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 offence; who, in executing that rule, feels less for what
himself has suffered, than for what the offender is about to suffer;
who, though in wrath, does ever remember mercy, and is disposed to
interpret the rule in the most gentle and favourable 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
cases, ought to flow rather from a regard to the general rules which
prescribe such conduct, than from any passion for the objects
themselves; but 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 single
shilling, would degrade the most vulgar tradesman in the opinion of
all his neighbours. 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 oeconomy and the {153} most exact assiduity: but each
particular exertion of that oeconomy 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 rigour, such a
tenor of conduct. His parsimony to-day must not arise from a desire of
the particular three-pence which he will save by it, nor his
attendance in 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 oeconomy 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 more extraordinary and
important objects of self-interest. A person appears mean-spirited,
who does not pursue these with some degree of earnestness for their
own sake. We should despise a prince who was 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 neighbours, 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 of both 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 Richlieu and of 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.
II. Secondly, I say, it will depend partly upon the precision and upon
the exactness, or the looseness and the inaccuracy of the general
rules themselves, how far our conduct ought to proceed entirely from a
regard to them.
The general rules of almost all the virtues, the general rules which
{154} 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 affect, 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 fulfil the obligation of
gratitude, by making a return of a different kind? If you ought to
attend 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 to-morrow,
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 half-penny:
and, on the contrary, you may be willing to lend, or even to give 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 of 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
{155} ought to perform it, the whole nature and circumstances of the
action prescribed, are 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
depended upon. Though the end of the rules of justice be, to hinder us
from hurting our neighbour, 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 other, are loose, vague,
and indeterminate, and present us rather with a 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 {156} 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--the rules of
justice.
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 in vain to expect, that in this case mankind
should entirely approve of our behaviour. 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 behaviour 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 maybe 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
labouring after perfection, and endeavouring 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 behaviour 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 widely from one another. In this,
therefore, the greatest mutual forbearance and toleration is due; and
though the defence 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 {157} 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 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 the 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 Seid and Palmira, 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 too often a cover to some of the worst
of human passions.
As a person may act wrong by 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 any
thing that approaches to complete approbation. A bigoted Roman
Catholic, who, during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, had 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 so far 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
{158} 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.
-----
_Part IV. Of the Effect of Utility upon the Sentiment of
Approbation._
CHAP. I.--_ Of the Beauty which the Appearance of Utility bestows
upon all the 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 every body, 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 obvious that nobody
has over-looked 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
why 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
{159} notice of by any body. 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 labour 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
alone which may ultimately recommend 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 o'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 enables him 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 conveniences.
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 Jew's-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 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 {160}
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 tranquillity 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 for ever 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 labours night and day to acquire talents
superior to all his competitors. He endeavours next to bring those
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 tranquillity 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 are commodious. 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 every body. 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 enjoy and thereby applaud the
satisfaction which they are fitted to afford him. But the {161}
curiosity of a tooth-pick, of an ear-picker, of a machine for cutting
the nails, or of 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
conveniencies 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 is 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 for ever, 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 labour 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
inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer {162}
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 splenetic 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
humour, 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 every thing around us. We are then charmed with the
beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and
oeconomy of the great: and admire how every thing 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 oeconomy 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.