THE
THEORY
OF
MORAL SENTIMENTS;
OR,
AN ESSAY
TOWARDS
An ANALYSIS of the PRINCIPLES by which MEN naturally judge concerning
the CONDUCT and CHARACTER, first of their NEIGHBOURS, and afterwards of
THEMSELVES.
TO WHICH IS ADDED,
A DISSERTATION
ON THE
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES.
BY ADAM SMITH, L.L.D. F.R.S.
Formerly Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow; and
Author of the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations.
THE SIXTH EDITION.
DUBLIN:
Printed for J. BEATTY and C. JACKSON, No. 32, SKINNER-ROW.
M,DCC,LXXVII.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
Of the Propriety of Action.
SECTION I.
Of the sense of propriety Page
1.
CHAP. I. _Of Sympathy_ ibid.
CHAP. II. _Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy_ 9
CHAP. III. _Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or
impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or
dissonance with our own_ 14
CHAP. IV. _The same subject continued_ 19
CHAP. V. _Of the amiable and respectable virtues_ 27
SECTION II.
Of the degrees of the different passions which are consistent
with propriety 33
CHAP. I. _Of the passions which take their origin from the body_ 34
CHAP. II. _Of those passions which take their origin from a
particular turn or habit of the imagination_ 41
CHAP. III. _Of the unsocial passions_ 46
CHAP. IV. _Of the social passions_ 54
CHAP. V. _Of the selfish passions_ 58
SECTION III.
Of the effects of prosperity and adversity upon the judgment of
mankind with regard to the propriety of action; and why it is
more easy to obtain their approbation in the one state than in
the other 64
CHAP. I. _That though our sympathy with sorrow is generally a
more lively sensation than our sympathy with joy, it commonly
falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt
by the person principally concerned_ ibid.
CHAP. II. _Of the origin of ambition, and of the distinction of
ranks_ 74
CHAP. III. _Of the stoical philosophy_ 89
PART II.
Of Merit and Demerit; or of the objects of reward and punishment.
SECTION I.
Of the sense of merit and demerit 97
CHAP. I. _That whatever appears to be the proper object of
gratitude, appears to deserve reward; and that, in the same
manner, whatever appears to be the proper object of resentment,
appears to deserve punishment_ 98
CHAP. II. _Of the proper objects of gratitude and resentment_ 102
CHAP. III. _That where there is no approbation of the conduct of
the person who confers the benefit, there is little sympathy
with the gratitude of him who receives it: and that, on the
contrary, where there is no disapprobation of the motives of
the person who does the mischief, there is no sort of sympathy
with the resentment of him who suffers it_ 106
CHAP. IV. _Recapitulation of the foregoing chapters_ 109
CHAP. V. _The analysis of the sense of merit and demerit_ 112
SECTION II.
Of justice and beneficence 119
CHAP. I. _Comparison of those two virtues_ ibid.
CHAP. II. _Of the sense of justice, of remorse, and of the
consciousness of merit_ 126
CHAP. III. _Of the utility of this constitution of nature_ 132
SECTION III.
Of the influence of fortune upon the sentiments of mankind, with
regard to the merit or demerit of actions 145
CHAP. I. _Of the causes of this influence of fortune_ 148
CHAP. II. _Of the extent of this influence of fortune_ 154
CHAP. III. _Of the final cause of this irregularity of
sentiments_ 167
PART III.
Of the foundation of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and
conduct, and of the sense of duty.
CHAP. I. _Of the consciousness of merited praise or blame_ 173
CHAP. II. _In what manner our own judgments refer to what ought
to be the judgments of others: and of the origin of general
rules_ 180
CHAP. III. _Of the influence and authority of the general rules
of morality, and that they are justly regarded as the laws of
the Deity_ 207
CHAP. IV. _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_ 223
PART IV.
Of the effect of utility upon the sentiments 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_ 237
CHAP. II. _Of the beauty which the appearance of utility bestows
upon the characters and actions of men; and how far the
perception of this beauty may be regarded as one of the
original principles of approbation_ 250
PART V.
Of the influence of custom and fashion upon the sentiments of moral
approbation and disapprobation.
CHAP. I. _Of the influence of custom and fashion upon our notions
of beauty and deformity_ 261
CHAP. II. _Of the influence of custom and fashion upon moral
sentiments_ 271
PART VI.
Of Systems of Moral Philosophy.
SECTION I.
Of the questions which ought to be examined in a theory of moral
sentiments 291
SECTION II.
Of the different accounts which have been given of the nature of
virtue 294
CHAP. I. _Of those systems which make virtue consist in
propriety_ 295
CHAP. II. _Of those systems which make virtue consist in
prudence_ 311
CHAP. III. _Of those systems which make virtue consist in
benevolence_ 321
CHAP. IV. _Of licentious systems_ 331
SECTION III.
Of the different systems which have been formed concerning the
principle of approbation 345
CHAP. I. _Of those systems which deduce the principle of
approbation from self-love_ 346
CHAP. II. _Of those systems which make reason the principle of
approbation_ 350
CHAP. III. _Of those systems which make sentiment the principle
of approbation_ 356
SECTION IV.
Of the manner in which different authors have treated of the
practical rules of morality 367
_Considerations concerning the first formation of languages, and
the different genius of original and compound languages_ 389
PART I.
Of the PROPRIETY of ACTION.
Consisting of three Sections.
SECTION I.
Of the SENSE of PROPRIETY.
CHAP. I.
_Of_ SYMPATHY.
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some
principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others,
and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing
from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or
compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we
either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That
we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact
too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment,
like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means
confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it
with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most
hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form
no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what
we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is
upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will
never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry
us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can
form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty
help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be
our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses
only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination
we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all
the same torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in some
measure him, and thence form some idea of his sensations and even feel
something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.
His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have
thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we
then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be
in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to
conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the
same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dullness of the
conception.
That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others,
that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come
either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be
demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought
sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just
ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink
and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel
it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob,
when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and
twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel
that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate
fibres and a weak constitution of body, complain that in looking on the
sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are
apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of
their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those
wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other;
because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would
suffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and
if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same
miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in
their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation
complained of. Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon
sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which
proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man
more delicate than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
Neither is it those circumstances only, which create pain or sorrow,
that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the passion which arises
from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous
emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of
every attentive spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes
of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for
their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more
real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude
towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their
difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against
those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In
every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of
the by-stander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to
himself, he imagines, should be the sentiments of the sufferer.
Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling
with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps,
originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made
use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.
Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a
certain emotion in another person. The passions, upon some occasions,
may seem to be transfused from one man to another, instantaneously, and
antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person
principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in
the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some
degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to
every body that sees it, a chearful object; as a sorrowful countenance,
on the other hand, is a melancholy one.
This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every
passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no sort
of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occasion to
them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious
behavior of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself
than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation,
we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like
the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation
of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed
from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize with
their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part
against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger.
If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of
the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the general idea of
some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe
them: and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little
influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person
who feels those emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of
resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are
concerned, and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of
good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who
has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy
with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches
us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of
its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it.
Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are
informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General
lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer,
create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some
disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is
very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen
you? Till this be answered, tho’ we are uneasy both from the vague idea
of his misfortune, and still more from torturing ourselves with
conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very
considerable.
Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the
passion, as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes
feel for another, a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether
incapable; because when we put ourselves in his case, that passion
arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his
from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another,
though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own
behavior; because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we
ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.
Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes
mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark
of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage
of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the
poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether
insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels,
therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of
any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must
arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if
he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is
impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present
reason and judgment.
What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the moanings of her infant
that during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her
idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own
consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown
consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own
sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant,
however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can
never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly secure, and in
its thoughtlessness and want of foresight possesses an antidote against
fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which
reason and philosophy will in vain attempt to defend it when it grows up
to a man.
We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real
importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we
are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but
can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think,
to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and
conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the
reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be
obliterated in a little time from the affections and almost from the
memory of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we
can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a
calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them
now, when they are in danger of being forgot by every body; and, by the
vain honors which we pay to their memory, we endeavor, for our own
misery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their
misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation seems to be
an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is
unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other distress, the regret,
the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to
them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness
of the dead, however, most assuredly, is affected by none of these
circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever
disturb the profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary
and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their
condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which has
been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our
putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be
allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and
thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from
this very illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our own
dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those
circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead,
makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the
most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great
poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of
mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards
and protects the society.
CHAP. II.
_Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy._
But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited,
nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling
with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked
as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all
our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love, think themselves
at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this
pleasure and this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness and
of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever
he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured
of that assistance; and grieves whenever he observes the contrary,
because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure
and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such
frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be
derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is mortified
when, after having endeavored to divert the company, he looks round and
sees that no body laughs at his jests but himself. On the contrary, the
mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this
correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest
applause.
Neither does his pleasure seem to arise altogether from the additional
vivacity which his mirth may receive from sympathy with theirs, nor his
pain from the disappointment he meets with when he misses this pleasure;
though both the one and the other, no doubt, do in some measure. When we
have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any
amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in
reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we
enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in
him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider
all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear
to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are
amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On
the contrary, we should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained
with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him.
It is the same case here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens
our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us. But though
this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one,
and to the pain which we feel from the other, it is by no means the sole
cause of either; and this correspondence of the sentiments of others
with our own appears to be a cause of pleasure, and the want of it a
cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manner. The
sympathy, which my friends express with my joy, might, indeed, give me
pleasure by enlivening that joy: but that which they express with my
grief could give me none, if it served only to enliven that grief.
Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by
presenting another source of satisfaction; and it alleviates grief by
insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it
is at that time capable of receiving.
It is to be observed accordingly, that we are still more anxious to
communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions,
that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the
former than from that with the latter, and that we are still more
shocked by the want of it.
How are the unfortunate relieved when they have sound out a person to
whom they can communicate the cause of their sorrow? Upon his sympathy
they seem to disburthen themselves of a part of their distress: he is
not improperly said to share it with them. He not only feels a sorrow of
the same kind with that which they feel, but as if he had derived a part
of it to himself, what he feels seems to alleviate the weight of what
they feel. Yet by relating their misfortunes, they in some measure renew
their grief. They awaken in their memory the remembrance of those
circumstances which occasion their affliction. Their tears accordingly
flow faster than before, and they are apt to abandon themselves to all
the weakness of sorrow. They take pleasure, however, in all this, and,
it is evident, are sensibly relieved by it; because the sweetness of his
sympathy more than compensates the bitterness of that sorrow, which, in
order to excite that sympathy, they had thus enlivened and renewed. The
cruelest insult, on the contrary, which can be offered to the
unfortunate, is to appear to make light of their calamities. To seem not
to be affected with the joy of our companions is but want of politeness;
but not to wear a serious countenance when they tell us their
afflictions, is real and gross inhumanity.
Love is an agreeable, resentment a disagreeable passion; and accordingly
we are not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our
friendships, as that they should enter into our resentments. We can
forgive them though they seem to be little affected with the favors
which we may have received, but lose all patience if they seem
indifferent about the injuries which may have been done to us: nor are
we half so angry with them for not entering into our gratitude, as for
not sympathizing with our resentment. They can easily avoid being
friends to our friends, but can hardly avoid being enemies to those with
whom we are at variance. We seldom resent their being at enmity with the
first, though upon that account we may sometimes affect to make an
awkward quarrel with them; but we quarrel with them in good earnest if
they live in friendship with the last. The agreeable passions of love
and joy can satisfy and support the heart without any auxiliary
pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more
strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.
As the person who is principally interested in any event is pleased with
our sympathy, and hurt by the want of it, so we, too, seem to be pleased
when we are able to sympathize with him, and to be hurt when we are
unable to do so. We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to
condole with the afflicted; and the pleasure which we find in the
conversation of one whom in all the passions of his heart we can
entirely sympathize with, seems to do more than compensate the
painfulness of that sorrow with which the view of his situation affects
us. On the contrary, it is always disagreeable to feel that we cannot
sympathize with him, and instead of being pleased with this exemption
from sympathetic pain, it hurts us to find that we cannot share his
uneasiness. If we hear a person loudly lamenting his misfortunes, which,
however, upon bringing the case home to ourselves, we feel, can produce
no such violent effect upon us, we are shocked at his grief; and,
because we cannot enter into it, call it pusillanimity and weakness. It
gives us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy or too
much elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune. We
are disobliged even with his joy, and, because we cannot go along with
it, call it levity and folly. We are even put out of humor if our
companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it deserves;
that is, than we feel that we ourselves could laugh at it.
CHAP. III.
_Of the manner in which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of the
affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with our own._
When the original passions of the person principally concerned are in
perfect concord with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they
necessarily appear to this last just and proper, and suitable to their
objects; and, on the contrary, when, upon bringing the case home to
himself, he finds that they do not coincide with what he feels, they
necessarily appear to him unjust and improper, and unsuitable to the
causes which excite them. To approve of the passions of another,
therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe
that we entirely sympathize with them; and not to approve of them as
such, is the same thing as to observe that we do not entirely sympathize
with them. The man who resents the injuries that have been done to me,
and observes that I resent them precisely as he does, necessarily
approves of my resentment. The man whose sympathy keeps time to my
grief, cannot but admit the reasonableness of my sorrow. He who admires
the same poem, or the same picture, and admires them exactly as I do,
must surely allow the justness of my admiration. He who laughs at the
same joke, and laughs along with me, cannot well deny the propriety of
my laughter. On the contrary, the person who, upon these different
occasions, either feels no such emotion as that which I feel, or feels
none that bears any proportion to mine, cannot avoid disapproving my
sentiments on account of their dissonance with his own. If my animosity
goes beyond what the indignation of my friend can correspond to; if my
grief exceeds what his most tender compassion can go along with; if my
admiration is either too high or too low to tally with his own; if I
laugh loud and heartily when he only smiles, or, on the contrary, only
smile when he laughs loud and heartily; in all these cases, as soon as
he comes from considering the object, to observe how I am affected by
it, according as there is more or less disproportion between his
sentiments and mine, I must incur a greater or less degree of his
disapprobation: and upon all occasions his own sentiments are the
standards and measures by which he judges of mine.
To approve of another man’s opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to
adopt them is to approve of them. If the same arguments which convince
you convince me likewise, I necessarily approve of your conviction; and
if they do not, I necessarily disapprove of it: neither can I possibly
conceive that I should do the one without the other. To approve or
disapprove, therefore, of the opinions of others is acknowledged, by
every body, to mean no more than to observe their agreement or
disagreement with our own. But this is equally the case with regard to
our approbation or disapprobation of the sentiments or passions of
others.
There are, indeed, some cases in which we seem to approve without any
sympathy or correspondence of sentiments, and in which, consequently,
the sentiment of approbation would seem to be different from the
perception of this coincidence. A little attention, however, will
convince us that even in these cases our approbation is ultimately
founded upon a sympathy or correspondence of this kind. I shall give an
instance in things of a very frivolous nature, because in them the
judgments of mankind are less apt to be perverted by wrong systems. We
may often approve of a jest, and think the laughter of the company quite
just and proper, though we ourselves do not laugh, because, perhaps, we
are in a grave humour, or happen to have our attention engaged with
other objects. We have learned, however, from experience, what sort of
pleasantry as upon most occasions capable of making us laugh, and we
observe that this is one of that kind. We approve, therefore, of the
laughter of the company, and feel that it is natural and suitable to its
object; because, though in our present mood we cannot easily enter into
it, we are sensible that upon most occasions we should very heartily
join in it.
The same thing often happens with regard to all the other passions. A
stranger passes by us in the street with all the marks of the deepest
affliction; and we are immediately told that he has just received the
news of the death of his father. It is impossible that, in this case, we
should not approve of his grief. Yet it may often happen, without any
defect of humanity on our part, that, so far from entering into the
violence of his sorrow, we should scarce conceive the first movements of
concern upon his account. Both he and his father, perhaps, are intirely
unknown to us, or we happen to be employed about other things, and do
not take time to picture out in our imagination the different
circumstances of distress which must occur to him. We have learned,
however, from experience, that such a misfortune naturally excites such
a degree of sorrow, and we know that if we took time to consider his
situation, fully and in all its parts, we should, without doubt, most
sincerely sympathize with him. It is upon the consciousness of this
conditional sympathy, that our approbation of his sorrow is founded,
even in those cases in which that sympathy does not actually take place;
and the general rules derived from our preceding experience of what our
sentiments would commonly correspond with, correct upon this, as upon
many other occasions, the impropriety of our present emotions.
The sentiment or affection of the heart from which any action proceeds,
and upon which its whole virtue or vice must ultimately depend, may be
considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations;
first, in relation to the cause which excites it, or the motive which
gives occasion to it; and secondly, in relation to the end which it
proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce.
In the suitableness or unsuitableness, in the proportion or
disproportion which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object
which excites it, consists the propriety or impropriety, the decency or
ungracefulness of the consequent action.
In the beneficial or hurtful nature of the effects which the affection
aims at, or tends to produce, consists the merit or demerit of the
action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward, or is deserving
of punishment.
Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of
affections, and have given little attention to the relation which they
stand in to the cause which excites them. In common life, however, when
we judge of any person’s conduct, and of the sentiments which directed
it, we constantly consider them under both these aspects. When we blame
in another man the excesses of love, of grief, of resentment, we not
only consider the ruinous effects which they tend to produce, but the
little occasion which was given for them. The merit of his favourite, we
say, is not so great, his misfortune is not so dreadful, his provocation
is not so extraordinary, as to justify so violent a passion. We should
have indulged, we say; perhaps, have approved of the violence of his
emotion, had the cause been in any respect proportioned to it.
When we judge in this manner of any affection, as proportioned or
disproportioned to the cause which excites it, it is scarce possible
that we should make use of any other rule or canon but the correspondent
affection in ourselves. If, upon bringing the case home to our own
breast, we find that the sentiments which it gives occasion to, coincide
and tally with our own, we necessarily approve of them as proportioned
and suitable to their objects; if otherwise, we necessarily disapprove
of them, as extravagant and out of proportion.
Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like
faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my
ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment,
of your love by my love. I neither have nor can have any other way of
judging about them.
CHAP. IV.
_The same subject continued._
We may judge of the propriety or impropriety of the sentiments of
another person by their correspondence or disagreement with our own,
upon two different occasions; either, first, when the objects which
excite them are considered without any peculiar relation, either to
themselves or to the person whose sentiments we judge of; or, secondly,
when they are considered as peculiarly affecting one or other of us.
1. With regard to those objects which are considered without any
peculiar relation either to ourselves or to the person whose sentiments
we judge of; wherever his sentiments intirely correspond with our own,
we ascribe to him the qualities of taste and good judgment. The beauty
of a plain, the greatness of a mountain, the ornaments of a building,
the expression of a picture, the composition of a discourse, the conduct
of a third person, the proportions of different quantities and numbers,
the various appearances which the great machine of the universe is
perpetually exhibiting, with the secret wheels and springs which produce
them; all the general subjects of science and taste, are what we and our
companions regard, as having no peculiar relation to either of us. We
both look at them from the same point of view, and we have no occasion
for sympathy, or for that imaginary change of situations from which it
arises, in order to produce, with regard to these, the most perfect
harmony of sentiments and affections. If, notwithstanding, we are often
differently affected, it arises either from the different degrees of
attention, which our different habits of life allow us to give easily to
the several parts of those complex objects, or from the different
degrees of natural acuteness in the faculty of the mind to which they
are addressed.
When the sentiments of our companion coincide with our own in things of
this kind, which are obvious and easy, and in which, perhaps, we never
found a single person who differed from us, though we, no doubt, must
approve of them, yet he seems to deserve no praise or admiration on
account of them. But when they not only coincide with our own, but lead
and direct our own; when in forming them he appears to have attended to
many things which we had overlooked, and to have adjusted them to all
the various circumstances of their objects; we not only approve of them,
but wonder and are surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acuteness
and comprehensiveness, and he appears to deserve a very high degree of
admiration and applause. For approbation heightened by wonder and
surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly palled admiration,
and of which applause is the natural expression. The decision of the man
who judges that exquisite beauty is preferable to the grossest
deformity, or that twice two are equal to four, must certainly be
approved of by all the world, but will not, surely, be much admired. It
is the acute and delicate discernment of the man of taste, who
distinguishes the minute, and scarce perceptible, differences of beauty
and deformity; it is the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced
mathematician, who unravels, with ease, the most intricate and perplexed
proportions; it is the great leader in science and taste, the man who
directs and conducts our own sentiments, the extent and superior
justness of whole talents astonish us with wonder and surprise, who
excites our admiration and seems to deserve our applause: and upon this
foundation is grounded the greater part of the praise which is bestowed
upon what are called the intellectual virtues.
The utility of those qualities, it may be thought, is what first
recommends them to us; and, no doubt, the consideration of this, when we
come to attend to it, gives them a new value. Originally, however, we
approve of another man’s judgment, not as something useful, but as
right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality: and it is evident
we attribute those qualities to it for no other reason but because we
find that it agrees with our own. Taste, in the same manner, is
originally approved of, not as useful, but as just, as delicate, and as
precisely suited to its object. The idea of the utility of all qualities
of this kind, is plainly an after-thought, and not what first
recommended them to our approbation.
2. With regard to those objects, which affect in a particular manner
either ourselves or the person whose sentiments we judge of, it is at
once more difficult to preserve this harmony and correspondence, and at
the same time, vastly more important. My companion does not naturally
look upon the misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has
been done me, from the same point of view in which I consider them. They
affect me much more nearly. We do not view them from the same station,
as we do a picture, or a poem, or a system of philosophy, and are,
therefore, apt to be very differently affected by them. But I can much
more easily overlook the want of this correspondence of sentiments with
regard to such indifferent objects as concern neither me nor my
companion, than with regard to what interests me so much as the
misfortune that has befallen me, or the injury that has been done me.
Though you despise that picture, or that poem, or even that system of
philosophy, which I admire, there is little danger of our quarrelling
upon that account. Neither of us can reasonably be much interested about
them. They ought all of them to be matters of great indifference to us
both; so that, though our opinions may be opposite, our affections may
still be very nearly the same. But it is quite otherwise with regard to
those objects by which either you or I are particularly affected. Though
your judgment in matters of speculation, though your sentiments in
matters of taste, are quite opposite to mine, I can easily overlook this
opposition; and if I have any degree of temper, I may still find some
entertainment in your conversation, even upon those very subjects. But
if you have either no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have met
with, or none that bears any proportion to the grief which distracts me,
or if you have either no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or
none that bears any proportion to the resentment which transports me, we
can no longer converse upon these subjects. We become intolerable to one
another. I can neither support your company, nor you mine. You are
confounded at my violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold
insensibility and want of feeling.
In all such cases, that there may be some correspondence of sentiments
between the spectator and the person principally concerned, the
spectator must, first of all, endeavour, as much as he can, to put
himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself
every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the
sufferer. He must adopt the whole case of his companion with all its
minutest incidents; and strive to render as perfect as possible, that
imaginary change of situation upon which his sympathy is founded.
After all this, however, the emotions of the spectator will still be
very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer.
Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has
befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the
person principally concerned. That imaginary change of situation, upon
which their sympathy is founded, is but momentary. The thought of their
own safety, the thought that they themselves are not really the
sufferers, continually intrudes itself upon them; and though it does not
hinder them from conceiving a passion somewhat analogous to what is felt
by the sufferer, hinders them from conceiving any thing that approaches
to the same degree of violence. The person principally concerned is
sensible of this, and, at the same time passionately desires a more
complete sympathy. He longs for that relief which nothing can afford him
but the entire concord of the affections of the spectators with his own.
To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his
own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole
consolation. But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion
to that pitch, in which the spectators are capable of going along with
him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of
its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the
emotions of those who are about him. What they feel, will, indeed,
always be, in some respects, different from what he feels, and
compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow; because
the secret consciousness that the change of situations, from which the
sympathetic sentiment arises, is but imaginary, not only lowers it in
degree, but in some measure, varies it in kind, and gives it a quite
different modification. These two sentiments, however, may, it is
evident, have such a correspondence with one another, as is sufficient
for the harmony of society. Though they will never be unisons, they may
be concords, and this is all that is wanted or required.
In order to produce this concord, as nature teaches the spectators to
assume the circumstances of the person principally concerned, so she
teaches this last in some measure to assume those of the spectators. As
they are continually placing themselves in this situation, and thence
conceiving emotions similar to what he feels; so he is as constantly
placing himself in theirs, and thence conceiving some degree of that
coolness about his own fortune, with which he is sensible that they will
view it. As they are constantly considering what they themselves would
feel, if they actually were the sufferers, so he is as constantly led to
imagine in what manner he would be affected if he was only one of the
spectators of his own situation. As their sympathy makes them look at
it, in some measure, with his eyes, so his sympathy makes him look at
it, in some measure, with theirs, especially when in their presence and
acting under their observation: and as the reflected passion, which he
thus conceives, is much weaker than the original one, it necessarily
abates the violence of what he felt before he came into their presence,
before he began to recollect in what manner they would be affected by
it, and to view his situation in this candid and impartial light.
The mind, therefore, is rarely so disturbed, but that the company of a
friend will restore it to some degree of tranquillity and sedateness.
The breast is, in some measure, calmed and composed the moment we come
into his presence. We are immediately put in mind of the light in which
he will view our situation, and we begin to view it ourselves in the
same light; for the effect of sympathy is instantaneous. We expect less
sympathy from a common acquaintance than from a friend: we cannot open
to the former all those little circumstances which we can unfold to the
latter: we assume, therefore, more tranquillity before him, and
endeavour to fix our thoughts upon those general outlines of our
situation which he is willing to consider. We expect still less sympathy
from an assembly of strangers, and we assume, therefore, still more
tranquillity before them, and always endeavour to bring down our passion
to that pitch, which the particular company we are in may be expected to
go along with. Nor is this only an assumed appearance: for if we are at
all masters of ourselves, the presence of a mere acquaintance will
really compose us, still more than that of a friend; and that of an
assembly of strangers still more than that of an acquaintance.
Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for
restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has
unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal
and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and
enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit
brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often
have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet
seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of
the world.
CHAP. V.
_Of the amiable and respectable virtues._
Upon these two different efforts, upon that of the spectator to enter
into the sentiments of the person principally concerned, and upon that
of the person principally concerned, to bring down his emotions to what
the spectator can go along with, are founded two different sets of
virtues. The soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues, the virtues of
candid condescension and indulgent humanity, are founded upon the one:
the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of
self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the
movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the
propriety of our own conduct require, derive their origin from the
other.
How amiable does he appear to be, whose sympathetic heart seems to
re-echo all the sentiments of those with whom he converses, who grieves
for their calamities, who resents their injuries, and rejoices at their
good fortune! When we bring home to ourselves the situation of his
companions, we enter into their gratitude, and feel what consolation
they must derive from the tender sympathy of so affectionate a friend.
And for a contrary reason, how disagreeable does he appear to be, whose
hard and obdurate heart feels for himself only, but is altogether
insensible of the happiness or misery of others! We enter, in this case
too, into the pain which his presence must give to every mortal with
whom he converses, to those especially with whom we are most apt to
sympathize, the unfortunate and the injured.
On the other hand, what noble propriety and grace do we feel in the
conduct of those who, in their own case, exert that recollection and
self-command which constitute the dignity of every passion, and which
bring it down to what others can enter into? We are disgusted with that
clamorous grief, which, without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion
with sighs and tears and importunate lamentations. But we reverence that
reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only
in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks,
and in the distant, but affecting, coldness of the whole behaviour. It
imposes the like silence upon us. We regard it with respectful
attention, and watch with anxious concern over our whole behaviour, lest
by any impropriety we should disturb that concerted tranquillity, which
it requires so great an effort to support.
The insolence and brutality of anger, in the same manner when we indulge
its fury without check or restraint, is, of all subjects, the most
detestable. But we admire that noble and generous resentment which
governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by the rage which they
are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation
which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator;
which allows no word, no gesture, to escape it beyond what this more
equitable sentiment would dictate; which never, even in thought,
attempts any greater vengeance, nor desires to inflict any greater
punishment, than what every indifferent person would rejoice to see
executed.
And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves,
that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections,
constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among
mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consist their
whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves
is the great law of christianity, so it is the great precept of nature
to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the
same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.
As taste and good judgment, when they are considered as qualities which
deserve praise and admiration, are supposed to imply a delicacy of
sentiment and an acuteness of understanding not commonly to be met with;
so the virtues of sensibility and self-command are not apprehended to
consist in the ordinary, but in the uncommon degrees of those qualities.
The amiable virtue of humanity requires, surely, a sensibility, much
beyond what is possessed by the rude vulgar of mankind. The great and
exalted virtue of magnanimity undoubtedly demands much more than that
degree of self-command, which the weakest of mortals are capable of
exerting. As in the common degree of the intellectual qualities, there
are no abilities; so in the common degree of the moral, there is no
virtue. Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful,
which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary. The amiable virtues
consist in that degree of sensibility which surprises by its exquisite
and unexpected delicacy and tenderness. The awful and respectable, in
that degree of self-command which astonishes by its amazing superiority
over the most ungovernable passions of human nature.
There is, in this respect, a considerable difference between virtue and
mere propriety; between those qualities and actions which deserve to be
admired and celebrated, and those which simply deserve to be approved
of. Upon many occasions, to act with the most perfect propriety,
requires no more than that common and ordinary degree of sensibility or
self-command which the most worthless of mankind are possessed of, and
sometimes even that degree is not necessary. Thus, to give a very low
instance, to eat when we are hungry, is certainly, upon ordinary
occasions, perfectly right and proper, and cannot miss being approved of
as such by every body. Nothing, however, could be more absurd than to
say it is virtuous.
On the contrary, there may frequently be a considerable degree of virtue
in those actions, which fall short of the most perfect propriety;
because they may still approach nearer to perfection than could well be
expected upon occasions in which it was so extremely difficult to attain
it: and this is very often the case upon those occasions which require
the greatest exertions of self-command. There are some situations which
bear so hard upon human nature, that the greatest degree of
self-government, which can belong to so imperfect a creature as man, is
not able to stifle, altogether, the voice of human weakness, or reduce
the violence of the passions to that pitch of moderation, in which the
impartial spectator can entirely enter into them. Though in those cases,
therefore, the behaviour of the sufferer fall short of the most perfect
propriety, it may still deserve some applause, and even in a certain
sense, may be denominated virtuous. It may still manifest an effort or
generosity and magnanimity of which the greater part of men are
incapable; and though it fails of absolute perfection, it may be a much
nearer approximation towards perfection, than what, upon such trying
occasions, is commonly either to be found or to be expected.
In cases of this kind, when we are determining the degree of blame or
applause which seems due to any action, we very frequently make use of
two different standards. The first is the idea of complete propriety and
perfection, which, in those difficult situations, no human conduct ever
did, or even can come up to; and in comparison with which the actions of
all men must for ever appear blameable and imperfect. The second is the
idea of that degree of proximity or distance from this complete
perfection, which the actions of the greater part of men commonly arrive
at. Whatever goes beyond this degree, how far soever it may be removed
from absolute perfection, seems to deserve applause; and whatever falls
short of it, to deserve blame.
It is in the same manner that we judge of the productions of all arts
which address themselves to the imagination. When a critic examines the
work of any of the great masters for poetry or painting, he may
sometimes examine it by an idea of perfection, in his own mind, which
neither that nor any other human work will ever come up to; and as long
as he compares it with this standard, he can see nothing in it but
faults and imperfections. But when he come to consider the rank which it
ought to hold among other works of the same kind, he necessarily
compares it with a very different standard, the common degree of
excellence which is usually attained in this particular art; and when he
judges of it by this new measure, it may often appear to deserve the
highest applause, upon account of its approaching much nearer to
perfection than the greater part of those works which can be brought
into competition with it.
SECTION II.
Of the degrees of the different passions which are consistent with
propriety.
INTRODUCTION.
The propriety of every passion excited by objects peculiarly related to
ourselves the pitch which the spectator can go along with, must lie, it
is evident, in certain mediocrity. If the passion is too high, or if it
is too low, he cannot enter into it. Grief and resentment for private
misfortunes and injuries may easily, for example, be too high, and in
the greater part of mankind they are so. They may likewise, though this
more rarely happens, be too low. We denominate the excess, weakness and
fury: and we call the defect, stupidity, insensibility, and want of
spirit. We can enter into neither of them, but are astonished and
confounded to see them.
This mediocrity, however, in which the point of propriety consists, is
different in different passions. It is high in some, and low in others.
There are some passions which it is indecent to express very strongly,
even upon those occasions, in which it is acknowledged that we cannot
avoid feeling them in the highest degree. And there are others of which
the strongest expressions are upon many occasions extremely graceful,
even though the passions themselves do not, perhaps, arise so
necessarily. The first are those passions with which, for certain
reasons, there is little or no sympathy: the second are those with
which, for other reasons, there is the greatest. And if we consider all
the different passions of human nature, we shall find that they are
regarded as decent, or indecent, just in proportion as mankind are more
or less disposed to sympathize with them.
CHAP. I.
_Of the passions which take their origin from the body._
1. It is indecent to express any strong degree of those passions which
arise from a certain situation or disposition of the body; because the
company, not being in the same disposition, cannot be expected to
sympathize with them. Violent hunger, for example, though upon many
occasions not only natural, but unavoidable, is always indecent, and to
eat voraciously is universally regarded as a piece of ill manners. There
is, however, some degree of sympathy, even with hunger. It is agreeable
to see our companions eat with a good appetite, and all expressions of
loathing are offensive. The disposition of body which is habitual to a
man in health, makes his stomach easily keep time, if I may be allowed
so coarse an expression, with the one, and not with the other. We can
sympathize with the distress which excessive hunger occasions when we
read the description of it in the journal of a siege, or of a sea
voyage. We imagine ourselves in the situation of the sufferers, and
thence readily conceive the grief, the fear and consternation, which
must necessarily distract them. We feel, ourselves, some degree of those
passions, and therefore sympathize with them: but as we do not grow
hungry by reading the description, we cannot properly, even in this
case, be said to sympathize with their hunger.
It is the same case with the passion by which Nature unites the two
sexes. Though naturally the most furious of all passions, all strong
expressions of it are upon every occasion indecent, even between persons
in whom its most complete indulgence is acknowledged by all laws, both
human and divine, to be perfectly innocent. There seems, however, to be
some degree of sympathy even with this passion. To talk to a woman as we
should to a man is improper: it is expected that their company should
inspire us with more gaiety, more pleasantry, and more attention; and an
entire insensibility to the fair sex, renders a man contemptible in some
measure even to the men.
Such is our aversion for all the appetites which take their origin from
the body: all strong expressions of them are loathsome and disagreeable.
According to some ancient philosophers, these are the passions which we
share in common with the brutes, and which having no connexion with the
characteristical qualities of human nature, are upon that account
beneath its dignity. But there are many other passions which we share in
common with the brutes, such as resentment, natural affection, even
gratitude, which do not, upon that account, appear to be so brutal. The
true cause of the peculiar disgust which we conceive for the appetites
of the body when we see them in other men, is that we cannot enter into
them. To the person himself who feels them, as soon as they are
gratified, the object that excited them ceases to be agreeable: even its
presence often becomes offensive to him; he looks round to no purpose
for the charm which transported him the moment before, and he can now as
little enter into his own passion as another person. When we have dined,
we order the covers to be removed; and we should treat in the same
manner the objects of the most ardent and passionate desires, if they
were the objects of no other passions but those which take their origin
from the body.
In the command of those appetites of the body consists that virtue which
is properly called temperance. To restrain them within those bounds,
which regard to health and fortune prescribes, is the part of prudence.
But to confine them within those limits, which grace, which propriety,
which delicacy, and modesty, require, is the office of temperance.
2. It is for the same reason that to cry out with bodily pain, how
intolerable soever, appears always unmanly and unbecoming. There is,
however, a good deal of sympathy even with bodily pain. If, as has
already been observed, I see a stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon
the leg or arm, of another person, I naturally shrink and draw back my
own leg, or my own arm; and when it does fall, I feel it in some
measure, and am hurt by it as well as the sufferer. My hurt, however,
is, no doubt, excessively slight, and, upon that account, if he makes
any violent out-cry, as I cannot go along with him, I never fail to
despise him. And this is the case of all the passions which take their
origin from the body: they excite either no sympathy at all, or such a
degree of it, as is altogether disproportioned to the violence of what
is felt by the sufferer.
It is quite otherwise with those passions which take their origin from
the imagination. The frame of my body can be but little affected by the
alterations which are brought about upon that of my companion: but my
imagination is more ductile, and more readily assumes, if I may so, the
shape and configuration of the imaginations of those with whom I am
familiar. A disappointment in love, or ambition, will, upon this
account, call forth more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil. Those
passions arise altogether from the imagination. The person who has lost
his whole fortune, if he is in health, feels nothing in his body. What
he suffers is from the imagination only, which represents to him the
loss of his dignity, neglect from his friends, contempt from his
enemies, dependence, want, and misery, coming fast upon him; and we
sympathize with him more strongly upon this account, because our
imaginations can more readily mould themselves upon his imagination,
than our bodies can mould themselves upon his body.
The loss of a leg may generally be regarded as a more real calamity than
the loss of a mistress. It would be a ridiculous tragedy, however, of
which the catastrophe was to turn upon a loss of that kind. A misfortune
of the other kind, how frivolous soever it may appear to be, has given
occasion to many a fine one.
Nothing is so soon forgot as pain. The moment it is gone the whole agony
of it is over, and the thought of it can no longer give us any sort of
disturbance. We ourselves cannot then enter into the anxiety and anguish
which we had before conceived. An unguarded word from a friend will
occasion a more durable uneasiness. The agony which this creates is by
no means over with the word. What at first disturbs us is not the object
of the senses, but the idea of the imagination. As it is an idea,
therefore, which occasions our uneasiness, till time and other accidents
have in some measure effaced it from our memory, the imagination
continues to fret and rankle within, from the thought of it.
Pain never calls forth any very lively sympathy unless it is accompanied
with danger. We sympathize with the fear, though not with the agony of
the sufferer. Fear, however, is a passion derived altogether from the
imagination, which represents, with an uncertainty and fluctuation that
increases our anxiety, not what we really feel, but what we may
hereafter possibly suffer. The gout or the tooth-ache, though
exquisitely painful, excite very little sympathy; more dangerous
diseases, though accompanied with very little pain, excite the highest.
Some people faint and grow sick at the sight of a chirurgical operation,
and that bodily pain which is occasioned by tearing the flesh, seems, in
them, to excite the most excessive sympathy. We conceive in a much more
lively and distinct manner, the pain which proceeds from an external
cause, than we do that which arises from an internal disorder. I can
scarce form an idea of the agonies of my neighbour when he is tortured
with the gout, or the stone; but I have the clearest conception of what
he must suffer from an incision, a wound, or a fracture. The chief
cause, however, why such objects produce such violent effects upon us,
is their novelty. Once who has been witness to a dozen dissections, and
as many amputations, sees, ever after, all operations of this kind with
great indifference, and often with perfect insensibility. Though we have
read or seen represented more than five hundred tragedies, we shall
seldom feel so entire an abatement of our sensibility to the object
which they represent to us.
In some of the Greek tragedies there is an attempt to excite compassion,
by the representation of the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries
out and faints from the extremity of his sufferings. Hippolytus and
Hercules are both introduced as expiring under the severest tortures,
which, it seems, even the fortitude of Hercules was incapable of
supporting. In all these cases, however, it is not the pain which
interests us, but some other circumstance. It is not the sore foot, but
the solitude, of Philoctetes which affects us, and diffuses over that
charming tragedy, that romantic wildness, which is so agreeable to the
imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interested only
because we foresee that death is to be the consequence. If those heroes
were to recover, we should think the representation of their sufferings
perfectly ridiculous. What a tragedy would that be of which the distress
consisted in a colic. Yet no pain is more exquisite. These attempts to
excite compassion by the representation of bodily pain, may be regarded
as among the greatest breaches of decorum of which the Greek theatre has
set the example.
The little sympathy which we feel with bodily pain is the foundation of
the propriety of constancy and patience in enduring it. The man, who
under the severest tortures allows no weakness to escape him, vents no
groan, gives way to no passion which we do not entirely enter into,
commands our highest admiration. His firmness enables him to keep time
with our indifference and insensibility. We admire and entirely go along
with the magnanimous effort which he makes for this purpose. We approve
of his behaviour, and from our experience of the common weakness of
human nature, we are surprised, and wonder how he should be able to act
so as to deserve approbation. Approbation, mixed and animated by wonder
and surprise, constitutes the sentiment which is properly called
admiration, of which, applause is the natural expression, as has already
been observed.
CHAP. II.
_Of those passions which take their origin from a particular turn or
habit of the imagination._
Even of the passions derived from the imagination, those which take
their origin from a peculiar turn or habit it has acquired, though they
may be acknowledged to be perfectly natural, are, however, but little
sympathized with. The imaginations of mankind, not having acquired that
particular turn, cannot enter into them; and such passions, though they
may be allowed to be almost unavoidable in some part of life, are always
in some measure ridiculous. This is the case with that strong attachment
which naturally grows up between two persons of different sexes, who
have long fixed their thoughts upon one another. Our imagination not
having run in the same channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter
into the eagerness of his emotions. If our friend has been injured, we
readily sympathize with his resentment, and grow angry with the very
person with whom he is angry. If he has received a benefit, we readily
enter into his gratitude, and have a very high sense of the merit of his
benefactor. But if he is in love, though we may think his passion just
as reasonable as any of the kind, yet we never think ourselves bound to
conceive a passion of the same kind, and for the same person for whom he
has conceived it. The passion appears to every body, but the man who
feels it, entirely disproportioned to the value of the object; and love,
though it is pardoned in a certain age because we know it is natural, is
always laughed at, because we cannot enter into it. All serious and
strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person; and though
a lover may be good company to his mistress, he is so to nobody else. He
himself is sensible of this; and as long as he continues in his sober
senses, endeavours to treat his own passion with raillery and ridicule.
It is the only style in which we care to hear of it; because it is the
only style in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it. We grow
weary of the grave, pedantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and
Propertius, who never have done with exaggerating the violence of their
attachments; but the gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, are
always agreeable.
But though we feel no proper sympathy with an attachment of this kind,
though we never approach even in imagination towards conceiving a
passion for that particular person, yet as we either have conceived, or
may be disposed to conceive, passions of the same kind, we readily enter
into those high hopes of happiness which are proposed from its
gratification, as well as into that exquisite distress which is feared
from its disappointment. It interests us not as a passion, but as a
situation that gives occasion to other passions which interest us; to
hope, to fear, and to distress of every kind: in the same manner as in a
description of a sea voyage, it is not the hunger which interests us,
but the distress which that hunger occasions. Though we do not properly
enter into the attachment of the lover, we readily go along with those
expectations of romantic happiness which he derives from it. We feel how
natural it is for the mind, in a certain situation, relaxed with
indolence, and fatigued with the violence of desire, to long for
serenity and quiet, to hope to find them in the gratification of that
passion which distracts it, and to frame to itself the idea of that life
of pastoral tranquillity and retirement which the elegant, the tender,
and the passionate Tibullus takes so much pleasure in deferring; a life
like what the poets describe in the Fortunate Islands, a life of
friendship, liberty, and repose; free from labour, and from care, and
from all the turbulent passions which attend them. Even scenes of this
kind interest us most, when they are painted rather as what is hoped,
than as what is enjoyed. The grossness of that passion which mixes with,
and is, perhaps, the foundation of love, disappears when its
gratification is far off and at a distance; but renders the whole
offensive, when described as what is immediately possessed. The happy
passion, upon this account, interests us much less than the fearful and
the melancholy. We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and
agreeable hopes: and thus enter into all the anxiety, and concern, and
distress of the lover.
Hence it is, that, in some modern tragedies and romances, this passion
appears so wonderfully interesting. It is not so much the love of
Castalio and Monimia which attaches us in the Orphan, as the distress
which that love occasions. The author who should introduce two lovers,
in a scene of perfect security, expressing their mutual fondness for one
another, would excite laughter, and not sympathy. If a scene of this
kind is ever admitted into a tragedy, it is always, in some measure,
improper, and is endured, not from any sympathy with the passion that is
expressed in it, but from concern for the dangers and difficulties with
which the audience foresee that its gratification is likely to be
attended.
The reserve which the laws of society impose upon the fair sex, with
regard to this weakness, renders it more peculiarly distressful in them,
and, upon that very account, more deeply interesting. We are charmed
with the love of Phædra, as it is expressed in the French tragedy of
that name, notwithstanding all the extravagance and guilt which attends
it. That very extravagance and guilt may be said, in some measure, to
recommend it to us. Her fear, her shame, her remorse, her horror, her
despair, become thereby more natural and interesting. All the secondary
passions, if I may be allowed to call them so, which arise from the
situation of love, become necessarily more furious and violent: and it
is with these secondary passions only that we can properly be said to
sympathize.
Of all the passions, however, which are so extravagantly disproportioned
to the value of their objects, love is the only one that appears, even
to the weakest minds, to have any thing in it that is either graceful or
agreeable. In itself, first of all, though it may be ridiculous, it is
not naturally odious; and though its consequences are often fatal and
dreadful, its intentions are seldom mischievous. And then, though there
is little propriety in the passion itself, there is a good deal in some
of those which always accompany it. There is in love a strong mixture of
humanity, generality, kindness, friendship, esteem; passions with which,
of all others, for reasons which shall be explained immediately, we have
the greatest propensity to sympathize, even notwithstanding we are
sensible that they are, in some measure, excessive. The sympathy which
we feel with them, renders the passion which they accompany less
disagreeable, and supports it in our imagination, notwithstanding all
the vices which commonly go along with it; though in the one sex it
necessarily leads to ruin and infamy; and though in the other, where it
is apprehended to be least fatal, it is almost always attended with an
incapacity for labour, a neglect of duty, a contempt of fame, and even
of common reputation. Notwithstanding all this, the degree of
sensibility and generosity with which it is supposed to be accompanied,
renders it to many the object of vanity; and they are fond of appearing
capable of feeling what would do them no honour if they had really felt
it.
It is for a reason of the same kind, that a certain reserve is necessary
when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, our own professions.
All these are objects which we cannot expect should interest our
companions in the same degree in which they interest us. And it is for
want of this reserve, that the one half of mankind make bad company to
the other. A philosopher is company to a philosopher only; the member of
a club, to his own little knot of companions.
CHAP. III.
_Of the unsocial passions._
There is another set of passions, which though derived from the
imagination, yet before we can enter into them, or regard them as
graceful or becoming, must always be brought down to a pitch much lower
than that to which undisciplined nature would raise them. These are
hatred and resentment, with all their different modifications. With
regard to all such passions, our sympathy is divided between the person
who feels them and the person who is the object of them. The interests
of these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy with the person
who feels them would prompt us to wish for, our fellow-feeling with the
other would lead us to fear. As they are both men, we are concerned for
both, and our fear for what the one may suffer, damps our resentment for
what the other has suffered. Our sympathy, therefore, with the man who
has received the provocation, necessarily falls short of the passion
which naturally animates him, not only upon account of those general
causes which render all sympathetic passions inferior to the original
ones, but upon account of that particular cause which is peculiar to
itself, our opposite sympathy with another person. Before resentment,
therefore, can become graceful and agreeable, it must be more humbled
and brought down below that pitch to which it would naturally rise, than
almost any other passion.
Mankind, at the same time, have a very strong sense of the injuries that
are done to another. The villain, in a tragedy or romance, is as much
the object of our indignation, as the hero is that of our sympathy and
affection. We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello; and delight as
much in the punishment of the one, as we are grieved at the distress of
the other. But though mankind have so strong a fellow-feeling with the
injuries that are done to their brethren, they do not always resent them
the more that the sufferer appears to resent them. Upon most occasions,
the greater his patience, his mildness, his humanity, provided it does
not appear that he wants spirit, or that fear was the motive of his
forbearance, the higher the resentment against the person who injured
him. The amiableness of the character exasperates their sense of the
atrocity of the injury.
These passions, however, are regarded as necessary parts of the
character of human nature. A person becomes contemptible who tamely sits
still, and submits to insults, without attempting either to repel or to
revenge them. We cannot enter into his indifference and insensibility:
we call his behaviour mean-spiritedness, and are as really provoked by
it as by the insolence of his adversary. Even the mob are enraged to see
any man submit patiently to affronts and ill usage. They desire to see
this insolence resented, and resented by the person who suffers from it.
They cry to him with fury, to defend, or to revenge himself. If his
indignation rouses at last, they heartily applaud, and sympathize with
it. It enlivens their own indignation against his enemy, whom they
rejoice to see him attack in turn, and are as really gratified by his
revenge, provided it is not immoderate, as if the injury had been done
to themselves.
But though the utility of those passions to the individual, by rendering
it dangerous to insult or injure him, be acknowledged; and though their
utility to the public, as the guardians of justice, and of the equality
of its administration, be not less considerable, as shall be shewn
hereafter; yet there is still something disagreeable in the passions
themselves, which makes the appearance of them in other men the natural
object of our aversion. The expression of anger towards any body
present, if it exceeds a bare intimation that we are sensible of his ill
usage, is regarded not only as an insult to that particular person, but
as a rudeness to the whole company. Respect for them ought to have
restrained us from giving way to so boisterous and offensive an emotion.
It is the remote effects of these passions which are agreeable; the
immediate effects are mischief to the person against whom they are
directed. But it is the immediate, and not the remote effects of objects
which render them agreeable or disagreeable to the imagination. A prison
is certainly more useful to the public than a palace; and the person who
founds the one is generally directed by a much juster spirit of
patriotism, than he who builds the other. But the immediate effects of a
prison, the confinement of the wretches shut up in it, are disagreeable;
and the imagination either does not take time to trace out the remote
ones, or sees them at too great a distance to be much affected by them.
A prison, therefore, will always be a disagreeable object; and the
fitter it is for the purpose for which it was intended, it will be the
more so. A palace, on the contrary, will always be agreeable; yet its
remote effects may often be inconvenient to the public. It may serve to
promote luxury, and set the example of the dissolution of manners. Its
immediate effects, however, the conveniency, the pleasure, and the
gaiety of the people who live in it, being all agreeable, and suggesting
to the imagination a thousand agreeable ideas, that faculty generally
rests upon them, and seldom goes further in tracing its more distant
consequences. Trophies of the instruments of music or of agriculture,
imitated in painting or in stucco, make a common and an agreeable
ornament of our halls and dining-rooms. A trophy of the same kind,
composed of the instruments of surgery, of dissecting and
amputation-knives, of saws for cutting the bones, of trepanning
instruments, &c. would be absurd and shocking. Instruments of surgery,
however, are always more finely polished, and generally more nicely
adapted to the purposes for which they are intended, than instruments of
agriculture. The remote effects of them too, the health of the patient,
is agreeable, yet as the immediate effect of them is pain and suffering,
the sight of them always displeases us. Instruments of war are
agreeable, though their immediate effect may seem to be in the same
manner pain and suffering. But then it is the pain and suffering of our
enemies, with whom we have no sympathy. With regard to us, they are
immediately connected with the agreeable ideas of courage, victory, and
honour. They are themselves, therefore, supposed to make one of the
noblest parts of dress, and the imitation of them one of the finest
ornaments of architecture. It is the same case with the qualities of the
mind. The ancient stoics were of opinion, that as the world was governed
by the all-ruling providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every
single event ought to be regarded, as making a necessary part of the
plan of the universe, and as tending to promote the general order and
happiness of the whole: that the vices and follies of mankind,
therefore, made as necessary a part of this plan as their wisdom or
their virtue; and by that eternal art which educes good from ill, were
made to tend equally to the prosperity and perfection of the great
system of nature. No speculation of this kind, however, how deeply
soever it might be rooted in the mind, could diminish our natural
abhorrence for vice, whose immediate effects are so destructive, and
whose remote ones are too distant to be traced by the imagination.
It is the same case with those passions we have been just now
considering. Their immediate effects are so disagreeable, that even when
they are most justly provoked, there is still something about them which
disgusts us. These, therefore, are the only passions of which the
expressions, as I formerly observed, do not dispose and prepare us to
sympathize with them, before we are informed of the cause which excites
them. The plaintive voice of misery, when heard at a distance, will not
allow us to be indifferent about the person from whom it comes. As soon
as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his fortune, and, if
continued, forces us almost involuntarily to fly to his assistance. The
sight of a smiling countenance, in the same manner, elevates even the
pensive into that gay and airy mood, which disposes him to sympathize
with, and share the joy which it expresses; and he feels his heart,
which with thought and care was before that shrunk and depressed,
instantly expanded and elated. But it is quite otherwise with the
expressions of hatred and resentment. The hoarse, boisterous, and
discordant voice of anger, when heard at a distance, inspires us either
with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards it, as to one who cries out
with pain and agony. Women, and men of weak nerves, tremble and are
overcome with fear, though sensible that themselves are not the objects
of the anger. They conceive fear, however, by putting themselves in the
situation of the person who is so. Even those of stouter hearts are
disturbed; not indeed enough to make them afraid, but enough to make
them angry; for anger is the passion which they would feel in the
situation of the other person. It is the same case with hatred. Mere
expressions of spite inspire it against no body, but the man who uses
them. Both these passions are by nature the objects of our aversion.
Their disagreeable and boisterous appearance never excites, never
prepares, and often disturbs our sympathy. Grief does not more
powerfully engage and attract us to the person in whom we observe it,
than these, while we are ignorant of their cause, disgust and detach us
from him. It was, it seems, the intention of Nature, that those rougher
and more unamiable emotions, which drive men from one another, should be
less easily and more rarely communicated.
When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it either actually
inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which
disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger,
it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are
all of them passions which are naturally musical. Their natural tones
are all soft, clear, and melodious; and they naturally express
themselves in periods which are distinguished by regular pauses, and
which upon that account are easily adapted to the regular returns of the
correspondent airs of a tune. The voice of anger, on the contrary, and
of all the passions which are akin to it, is harsh and discordant. It
periods too are all irregular, sometimes very long, and sometimes very
short, and distinguished by no regular pauses. It is with difficulty,
therefore, that music can imitate any of those passions; and the music
which does imitate them is not the most agreeable. A whole entertainment
may consist, without any impropriety, of the imitation of the social and
agreeable passions. It would be a strange entertainment which consisted
altogether of the imitations of hatred and resentment.
If those passions are disagreeable to the spectator, they are not less
so to the person who feels them. Hatred and anger are the greatest
poison to the happiness of a good mind. There is, in the very feeling of
those passions, something harsh, jarring, and convulsive, something that
tears and distracts the breast, and is altogether destructive of that
composure and tranquillity of mind which is so necessary to happiness,
and which is best promoted by the contrary passions of gratitude and
love. It is not the value of what they lose by the perfidy and
ingratitude of those they live with, which the generous and humane are
most apt to regret. Whatever they may have lost, they can generally be
very happy without it. What most disturbs them is the idea of perfidy
and ingratitude exercised towards themselves; and the discordant and
disagreeable passions which this excites, constitutes, in their own
opinion, the chief part of the injury which they suffer.
How many things are requisite to render the gratification of resentment
compleatly agreeable, and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathize
with our revenge? The provocation must first of all be such that we
should become contemptible, and be exposed to perpetual insults, if we
did not, in some measure, resent it. Smaller offences are always better
neglected; nor is there any thing more despicable than that froward and
captious humour which takes fire upon every slight occasion of quarrel.
We should resent more from a sense of the propriety of resentment, from
a sense that mankind expect and require it of us, than because we feel
in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable passion. There is no
passion, of which the human mind is capable, concerning whose justness
we ought to be so doubtful, concerning whose indulgence we ought so
carefully to consult our natural sense of propriety, or so diligently to
consider what will be the sentiments of the impartial spectator.
Magnanimity, or a regard to maintain our own rank and dignity in
society, is the only motive which can ennoble the expressions of this
disagreeable passion. This motive must characterize our whole stile and
deportment. These must be plain, open, and direct; determined without
positiveness, and elevated without insolence; not only free from
petulance and low scurrility, but generous, candid, and full of all
proper regards, even for the person who has offended us. It must appear,
in short, from our whole manner, without our labouring affectedly to
express it, that passion has not extinguished our humanity; and that if
we yield to the dictates of revenge, it is with reluctance, from
necessity, and in consequence of great and repeated provocations. When
resentment is guarded and qualified in this manner, it may be admitted
to be even generous and noble.
CHAP. IV.
_Of the social passions._
As it is a divided sympathy which renders the whole set of passions just
now mentioned, upon most occasions, so ungraceful and disagreeable; so
there is another set opposite to these, which a redoubled sympathy
renders almost always peculiarly agreeable and becoming. Generosity,
humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem, all the
social and benevolent affections, when expressed in the countenance or
behaviour, even towards those who are peculiarly connected with
ourselves, please the indifferent spectator upon almost every occasion.
His sympathy with the person who feels those passions, exactly coincides
with his concern for the person who is the object of them. The interest,
which, as a man, he is obliged to take in the happiness of this last,
enlivens his fellow-feeling with the sentiments of the other, whose
emotions are employed about the same object. We have always, therefore,
the strongest disposition to sympathize with the benevolent affections.
They appear in every respect agreeable to us. We enter into the
satisfaction both of the person who feels them, and of the person who is
the object of them. For as to be the object of hatred and indignation
gives more pain than all the evils which a brave man can fear from his
enemies; so there is a satisfaction in the consciousness of being
beloved, which, to a person of delicacy and sensibility, is of more
importance to happiness than all the advantage which he can expect to
derive from it. What character is so detectable as that of one who takes
pleasure to sow dissension among friends, and to turn their most tender
love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much
abhorred injury consist? Is it in depriving them of the frivolous good
offices, which had their friendship continued, they might have expected
from one another? It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in
robbing them of each others affections, from which both derived so much
satisfaction; it is in disturbing the harmony of their hearts, and
putting an end to that happy commerce which had before subsisted between
them. These affections, that harmony, this commerce, are felt, not only
by the tender and the delicate, but by the rudest vulgar of mankind, to
be of more importance to happiness than all the little services which
could be expected to flow from them.
The sentiment of love is, in itself, agreeable to the person who feels
it. It sooths and composes the breast, seems to favour the vital
motions, and to promote the healthful state of the human constitution;
and it is rendered still more delightful by the consciousness of the
gratitude and satisfaction which it must excite in him who is the object
of it. Their mutual regard renders them happy in one another, and
sympathy, with this mutual regard, makes them agreeable to every other
person. With what pleasure do we look upon a family, through the whole
of which reign mutual love and esteem, where the parents and children
are companions for one another, without any other difference than what
is made by respectful affection on the one side, and kind indulgence on
the other; where freedom and fondness, mutual raillery, and mutual
kindness, show that no opposition of interest divides the brothers, nor
any rivalship of favour sets the sisters at variance, and where every
thing presents us with the idea of peace, chearfulness, harmony, and
contentment? On the contrary, how uneasy are we made when we go into a
house in which jarring contention sets one half of those who dwell in it
against the other; where amidst affected smoothness and complaisance,
suspicious looks and sudden starts of passion betray the mutual
jealousies which burn within them, and which are every moment ready to
burst out through all the restraints which the presence of the company
imposes?
Those amiable passions, even when they are acknowledged to be excessive,
are never regarded with aversion. There is something agreeable even in
the weakness of friendship and humanity. The too tender mother, the too
indulgent father, the too generous and affectionate friend, may
sometimes, perhaps, on account of the softness of their natures, be
looked upon with a species of pity, in which, however, there is a
mixture of love, but can never be regarded with hatred and aversion, nor
even with contempt, unless by the most brutal and worthless of mankind:
It is always with concern, with sympathy and kindness, that we blame
them for the extravagance of their attachment. There is a helplessness
in the character of extreme humanity which more than any thing interests
our pity. There is nothing in itself which renders it either ungraceful
or disagreeable. We only regret that it is unfit for the world, because
the world is unworthy of it, and because it must expose the person who
is endowed with it as a prey to the perfidy and ingratitude of
insinuating falsehood, and to a thousand pains and uneasinesses, which,
of all men, he the least deserves to feel, and which generally too he
is, of all men, the least capable of supporting. It is quite otherwise
with hatred and resentment. Too violent a propensity to those detestable
passions, renders a person the object of universal dread and abhorrence,
who, like a wild beast, ought, we think, to be hunted out of all civil
society.
CHAP. V.
_Of the selfish passions._
Besides those two opposite sets of passions, the social and unsocial,
there is another which holds a sort of middle place between them; is
never either so graceful as is sometimes the one set, nor is ever so
odious as is sometimes the other. Grief and joy, when conceived upon
account of our own private good or bad fortune, constitute this third
set of passions. Even when excessive, they are never so disagreeable as
excessive resentment, because no opposite sympathy can ever interest us
against them: and when most suitable to their objects they are never so
agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence; because no double
sympathy can ever interest us for them. There is, however, this
difference between grief and joy, that we are generally most disposed to
sympathize with small joys and great sorrows. The man, who, by some
sudden revolution of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition
of life, greatly above what he had formerly lived in, may be assured
that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them
perfectly sincere. An upstart, though of the greatest merit, is
generally disagreeable, and a sentiment of envy commonly prevents us
from heartily sympathizing with his joy. If he has any judgment he is
sensible of this, and instead of appearing to be elated with his good
fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can, to smother his joy, and keep
down that elevation of mind with which his new circumstances naturally
inspire him. He affects the same plainness of dress, and the same
modesty of behaviour, which became him in his former station. He
redoubles his attention to his old friends, and endeavours more than
ever to be humble, assiduous, and complaisant. And this is the behaviour
which in his situation we most approve of; because we expect, it seems,
that he should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion to his
happiness, than we have with his happiness. It is seldom that with all
this he succeeds. We suspect the sincerity of his humility, and he grows
weary of this constraint. In a little time, therefore, he generally
leaves all his old friends behind him, some of the meanest of them
excepted, who may, perhaps, condescend to become his dependents: nor
does he always acquire any new ones; the pride of his new connections is
as much affronted at finding him their equal, as that of his old ones
had been by his becoming their superior: and it requires the most
obstinate and persevering modesty to atone for this mortification to
either. He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked, by the
sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by the saucy contempt of the
other, to treat the first with neglect, and the second with petulance,
till at last he grows habitually insolent, and forfeits the esteem of
all. If the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness
of being beloved, as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune
seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest who advances more
gradually to greatness, whom the public destines to every step of his
preferment long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon that account,
when it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy, and with regard to whom
it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes,
or any envy in those he leaves behind.
Mankind, however, more readily sympathize with those smaller joys which
flow from less important causes. It is decent to be humble amidst great
prosperity; but we can scarce express too much satisfaction in all the
little occurrences of common life, in the company with which we spent
the evening last night, in the entertainment that was set before us, in
what was said and what was done, in all the little incidents of the
present conversation, and in all those frivolous nothings which fill up
the void of human life. Nothing is more graceful than habitual
chearfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the
little pleasures which common occurrences afford. We readily sympathize
with it: it inspires us with the same joy, and makes every trifle turn
up to us in the same agreeable aspect in which it presents itself to the
person endowed with this happy disposition. Hence it is that youth, the
season of gaiety, so easily engages our affections. That propensity to
joy which seems even to animate the bloom, and to sparkle from the eyes
of youth and beauty, though in a person of the same sex, exalts, even
the aged, to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a time,
their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and
emotions to which they have long been strangers, but which, when the
presence of so much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their
place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are sorry to have
ever been parted, and whom they embrace more heartily upon account of
this long separation.
It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexations excite no sympathy,
but deep affliction calls forth the greatest. The man who is made uneasy
by every little disagreeable incident, who is hurt if either the cook or
the butler have failed in the least article of their duty, who feels
every defect in the highest ceremonial of politeness, whether it be
shewn to himself or to any other person, who takes it amiss that his
intimate friend did not bid him good-morrow when they met in the
forenoon, and that his brother hummed a tune all the time he himself was
telling a story; who is put out of humour by the badness of the weather
when in the country, by the badness of the roads when upon a journey,
and by the want of company, and dullness of all public diversions when
in town; such a person, I say, though he should have some reason, will
seldom meet with much sympathy. Joy is a pleasant emotion, and we gladly
abandon ourselves to it upon the slightest occasion. We readily,
therefore, sympathize with it in others, whenever we are not prejudiced
by envy. But grief is painful, and the mind, even when it is our own
misfortune, naturally resists and recoils from it. We would endeavour
either not to conceive it at all, or to shake it off as soon as we have
conceived it. Our aversion to grief will not, indeed, always hinder us
from conceiving it in our own case upon very trifling occasions, but it
constantly prevents us from sympathizing with it in others when excited
by the like frivolous causes: for our sympathetic passions are always
less irresistible than our original ones. There is, besides, a malice in
mankind, which not only prevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses,
but renders them in some measure diverting. Hence the delight which we
all take in raillery, and in the small vexation which we observe in our
companion, when he is pushed, and urged, and teased upon all sides. Men
of the most ordinary good-breeding dissemble the pain which any little
incident may give them; and those who are more thoroughly formed to
society, turn, of their own accord, all such incidents into raillery, as
they know their companions will do for them. The habit which a man, who
lives in the world, has acquired of considering how every thing that
concerns himself will appear to others, makes those frivolous calamities
turn up in the same ridiculous light to him, in which he knows they will
certainly be considered by them.
Our sympathy, on the contrary, with deep distress, is very strong and
very sincere. It is unnecessary to give an instance. We weep even at the
feigned representation of a tragedy. If you labour, therefore, under any
signal calamity, if by some extraordinary misfortune you are fallen into
poverty, into diseases, into disgrace and disappointment; even though
your own fault may have been, in part, the occasion, yet you may
generally depend upon the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and,
as far as interest and honour will permit, upon their kindest assistance
too. But if your misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have
only been a little baulked in your ambition, if you have only been
jilted by your mistress, or are only hen-pecked by your wife, lay your
account with the raillery of all your acquaintance.
SECTION III.
Of the effects of prosperity and adversity upon the judgment of mankind
with regard to the propriety of action; and why it is more easy to
obtain their approbation in the one state than in the other.
CHAP. I.
_That though our sympathy with sorrow is generally a more lively
sensation than our sympathy with joy, it commonly falls much more short
of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally
concerned._
Our sympathy with sorrow, though not more real, has been more taken
notice of than our sympathy with joy. The word sympathy, in its most
proper and primitive signification, denotes our fellow-feeling with the
sufferings, not that with the enjoyments, of others. A late ingenious
and subtile philosopher thought it necessary to prove, by arguments,
that we had a real sympathy with joy, and that congratulation was a
principle of human nature. Nobody, I believe, ever thought it necessary
to prove that compassion was such.
First of all, our sympathy with sorrow is, in some sense, more universal
than that with joy. Though sorrow is excessive, we may still have some
fellow-feeling with it. What we feel does not, indeed, in this case,
amount to that complete sympathy, to that perfect harmony and
correspondence of sentiments which constitutes approbation. We do not
weep, and exclaim, and lament, with the sufferer. We are sensible, on
the contrary, of his weakness, and of the extravagance of his passion,
and yet often feel a very sensible concern upon his account. But if we
do not entirely enter into, and go along with, the joy of another, we
have no sort of regard or fellow-feeling for it. The man who skips and
dances about with that intemperate and senseless joy which we cannot
accompany him in, is the object of our contempt and indignation.
Pain besides, whether of mind or body, is a more pungent sensation than
pleasure, and our sympathy with pain, though it falls greatly short of
what is naturally felt by the sufferer, is generally a more lively and
distinct perception than our sympathy with pleasure, though this last
often approaches more nearly, as I shall show immediately, to the
natural vivacity of the original passion.
Over and above all this, we often struggle to keep down our sympathy
with the sorrow of others. Whenever we are not under the observation of
the sufferer, we endeavour, for our own sake, to suppress it as much as
we can, and we are not always successful. The opposition which we make
to it, and the reluctance with which we yield to it, necessarily oblige
us to take more particular notice of it. But we never have occasion to
make this opposition to our sympathy with joy. If there is any envy in
the case, we never feel the least propensity towards it; and if there is
none, we give way to it without any reluctance. On the contrary, as we
are always ashamed of our own envy, we often pretend, and sometimes
really wish to sympathize with the joy of others, when by that
disagreeable sentiment we are disqualified from doing so. We are glad,
we say, on account of our neighbour’s good fortune, when in our hearts,
perhaps, we are really sorry. We often feel a sympathy with sorrow when
we wish to be rid of it; and we often miss that with joy when we would
be glad to have it. The obvious observation, therefore, which it
naturally falls in our way to make, is that our propensity to sympathize
with sorrow must be very strong, and our inclination to sympathize with
joy very weak.
Notwithstanding this prejudice, however, I will venture to affirm, that,
when there is no envy in the case, our propensity to sympathize with joy
is much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow; and that
our fellow-feeling for the agreeable emotion approaches much more nearly
to the vivacity of what is naturally felt by the persons principally
concerned, than that which we conceive for the painful one.
We have some indulgence for that excessive grief which we cannot
entirely go along with. We know what a prodigious effort is requisite
before the sufferer can bring down his emotions to compleat harmony and
concord with those of the spectator. Though he fails, therefore, we
easily pardon him. But we have no such indulgence for the intemperance
of joy; because we are not conscious that any such vast effort is
requisite to bring it down to what we can entirely enter into. The man
who, under the greatest calamities, can command his sorrow, seems worthy
of the highest admiration; but he who, in the fulness of prosperity, can
in the same manner master his joy, seems hardly to deserve any praise.
We are sensible that there is a much wider interval in the one case than
in the other, between what is naturally felt by the person principally
concerned, and what the spectator can entirely go along with.
What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is
out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, all
accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous; and if he
is much elevated upon account of them, it must be the effect of the most
frivolous levity. This situation, however, may very well be called the
natural and ordinary state of mankind. Notwithstanding the present
misery and depravity of the world, so justly lamented, this really is
the state of the greater part of men. The greater part of men,
therefore, cannot find any great difficulty in elevating themselves to
all the joy which any accession to this situation can well excite in
their companion.
But though little can be added to this state, much may be taken from it.
Though between this condition and the highest pitch of human prosperity,
the interval is but a trifle; between it and the lowest depth of misery
the distance is immense and prodigious. Adversity, on this account,
necessarily depresses the mind of the sufferer much more below its
natural state, than prosperity can elevate him above it. The spectator,
therefore, must find it much more difficult to sympathize entirely, and
keep perfect time, with his sorrow, than thoroughly to enter into his
joy, and must depart much further from his own natural and ordinary
temper of mind in the one case than in the other. It is on this account,
that, though our sympathy with sorrow is often a more pungent sensation
than our sympathy with joy, it always falls much more short of the
violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
It is agreeable to sympathize with joy; and wherever envy does not
oppose it, our heart abandons itself with satisfaction to the highest
transports of that delightful sentiment. But it is painful to go along
with grief, and we always enter into it with reluctance[1]. When we
attend to the representation of a tragedy, we struggle against that
sympathetic sorrow which the entertainment inspires as long as we can,
and we give way to it at last only when we can no longer avoid it: we
even then endeavour to cover our concern from the company. If we shed
any tears, we carefully conceal them, and are afraid lest the
spectators, not entering into this excessive tenderness, should regard
it as effeminacy and weakness. The wretch whose misfortunes call upon
our compassion feels with what reluctance we are likely to enter into
his sorrow, and therefore proposes his grief to us with fear and
hesitation: he even smothers the half of it, and is ashamed, upon
account of this hard-heartedness of mankind, to give vent to the fulness
of his affliction. It is otherwise with the man who riots in joy and
success. Wherever envy does not interest us against him, he expects our
compleatest sympathy. He does not fear, therefore, to announce himself
with shouts of exultation, in full confidence that we are heartily
disposed to go along with him.
Footnote 1:
It has been objected to me that as I found the sentiment of
approbation, which is always agreeable, upon sympathy, it is
inconsistent with my system to admit any disagreeable sympathy. I
answer, that in the sentiment of approbation there are two things to
be taken notice of; first the sympathetic passion of the spectator;
and, secondly, the emotion which arises from his observing the perfect
coincidence between this sympathetic passion in himself, and the
original passion in the person principally concerned. This last
emotion, in which the sentiment of approbation properly consists, is
always agreeable and delightful. The other may either be agreeable or
disagreeable, according to the nature of the original passion, whose
feature it must always, in some measure, retain. Two sounds I suppose,
may, each of them, taken singly, be austere, and yet, if they are
perfect concords, the perception of their harmony and coincidence may
be agreeable.
Why should we be more ashamed to weep than to laugh before company? We
may often have as real occasion to do the one as to do the other: But we
always feel that the spectators are more likely to go along with us in
the agreeable, than in the painful emotion. It is always miserable to
complain, even when we are oppressed by the most dreadful calamities.
But the triumph of victory is not always ungraceful. Prudence, indeed,
would often advise us to bear prosperity with more moderation; because
prudence would teach us to avoid that envy which this very triumph is,
more than any thing, apt to excite.
How hearty are the acclamations of the mob, who never bear any envy to
their superiors, at a triumph or a public entry? And how sedate and
moderate is commonly their grief at an execution? Our sorrow at a
funeral generally amounts to no more than affected gravity; but our
mirth at a christening or a marriage, is always from the heart, and
without any affectation. Upon these, and all such joyous occasions, our
satisfaction, though not so durable, is often as lively as that of the
persons principally concerned. Whenever we cordially congratulate our
friends, which, however, to the disgrace of human nature, we do but
seldom, their joy literally becomes our joy: we are for the moment, as
happy as they are: our heart swells and overflows with real pleasure:
joy and complacency sparkle from our eyes, and animate every feature of
our countenance, and every gesture of our body.
But, on the contrary, when we condole with our friends in their
afflictions, how little do we feel, in comparison of what they feel? We
sit down by them, we look at them, and while they relate to us the
circumstances of their misfortune, we listen to them with gravity and
attention. But while their narration is every moment interrupted by
those natural bursts of passion which often seem almost to choak them in
the midst of it; how far are the languid emotions of our hearts from
keeping time to the transports of theirs? We may be sensible, at the
same time, that their passion is natural, and no greater than what we
ourselves might feel upon the like occasion. We may even inwardly
reproach ourselves with our own want of sensibility, and perhaps on that
account, work ourselves up into an artificial sympathy, which, however,
when it is raised, is always the slightest and most transitory
imaginable; and generally, as soon as we have left the room, vanishes,
and is gone for ever. Nature, it seems, when she has loaded us with our
own sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did not
command us to take any further share in those of others, than what was
necessary to prompt us to relieve them.
It is on account of this dull sensibility to the afflictions of others,
that magnanimity amidst great distress appears always so divinely
graceful. His behaviour is genteel and agreeable who can maintain his
chearfulness amidst a number of frivolous disasters. But he appears to
be more than mortal who can support in the same manner the most dreadful
calamities. We feel what an immense effort is requisite to silence those
violent emotions which naturally agitate and distract those in his
situation. We are amazed to find that he can command himself so
intirely. His firmness, at the same time, perfectly coincides with our
insensibility. He makes no demand upon us for that more exquisite degree
of sensibility which we find, and which we are mortified to find, that
we do not possess. There is the most perfect correspondence between his
sentiments and ours, and on that account the most perfect propriety in
his behaviour. It is a propriety too, which, from our experience of the
usual weakness of human nature, we could not reasonably have expected he
should be able to maintain. We wonder with surprise and astonishment at
that strength of mind which is capable of so noble and generous an
effort. The sentiment of compleat sympathy and approbation, mixed and
animated with wonder and surprise, constitutes what is properly called
admiration, as has already been more than once taken notice of. Cato,
surrounded on all sides by his enemies, unable to resist them, and
disdaining to submit to them, and reduced by the proud maxims of that
age, to the necessity of destroying himself; yet never shrinking from
his misfortunes, never supplicating with the lamentable voice of
wretchedness, those miserable sympathetic tears which we are always so
unwilling to give; but on the contrary, arming himself with manly
fortitude, and the moment before he executes his fatal resolution,
giving, with his usual tranquillity, all necessary orders for the safety
of his friends; appears to Seneca, that great preacher of insensibility,
a spectacle which even the gods themselves might behold with pleasure
and admiration.
Whenever we meet, in common life, with any examples of such heroic
magnanimity, we are always extremely affected. We are more apt to weep
and shed tears for such as, in this manner, seem to feel nothing for
themselves, than for those who give way to all the weakness of sorrow:
and in this particular case, the sympathetic grief of the spectator
appears to go beyond the original passion in the person principally
concerned. The friends of Socrates all wept when he drank the last
potion, while he himself expressed the gayest and most chearful
tranquillity. Upon all such occasions the spectator makes no effort, and
has no occasion to make any, in order to conquer his sympathetic sorrow.
He is under no fear that it will transport him to any thing that is
extravagant and improper; he is rather pleased with the sensibility of
his own heart, and gives way to it with complacence and
self-approbation. He gladly indulges, therefore, the most melancholy
views which can naturally occur to him, concerning the calamity of his
friend, for whom, perhaps, he never felt so exquisitely before, the
tender and tearful passion of love. But it is quite otherwise with the
person principally concerned. He is obliged as much as possible, to turn
away his eyes from whatever is either naturally terrible or disagreeable
in his situation. Too serious an attention to those circumstances, he
fears, might make so violent an impression upon him, that he could no
longer keep within the bounds of moderation, or render himself the
object of the complete sympathy and approbation of the spectators. He
fixes his thoughts, therefore, upon those only which are agreeable; the
applause and admiration which he is about to deserve by the heroic
magnanimity of his behaviour. To feel that he is capable of so noble and
generous an effort, to feel that in this dreadful situation he can still
act as he would desire to act, animates and transports him with joy, and
enables him to support that triumphant gaiety which seems to exult in
the victory he thus gains over his misfortunes.
On the contrary, he always appears, in some measure, mean and
despicable, who is sunk in sorrow and dejection upon account of any
calamity of his own. We cannot bring ourselves to feel for him what he
feels for himself, and what, perhaps, we should feel for ourselves if in
his situation: we, therefore, despise him; unjustly, perhaps, if any
sentiment could be regarded as unjust, to which we are by nature
irresistibly determined. The weakness of sorrow never appears in any
respect agreeable, except when it arises from what we feel for others
more than from what we feel for ourselves. A son, upon the death of an
indulgent and respectable father, may give way to it without much blame.
His sorrow is chiefly founded upon a sort of sympathy with his departed
parent; and we readily enter into this humane emotion. But if he should
indulge the same weakness upon account of any misfortune which affected
himself only, he would no longer meet with any such indulgence. If he
should be reduced to beggary and ruin, if he should be exposed to the
most dreadful dangers, if he should even be led out to a public
execution, and there shed one single tear upon the scaffold, he would
disgrace himself for ever in the opinion of all the gallant and generous
part of mankind. Their compassion for him, however, would be very
strong, and very sincere; but as it would still fall short of this
excessive weakness, they would have no pardon for the man who could thus
expose himself in the eyes of the world. His behaviour would affect them
with shame rather than with sorrow; and the dishonour which he had thus
brought upon himself would appear to them the most lamentable
circumstance in his misfortune. How did it disgrace the memory of the
intrepid Duke of Biron, who had so often braved death in the field, that
he wept upon the scaffold, when he beheld the state to which he was
fallen, and remembered the favour and the glory from which his own
rashness had so unfortunately thrown him!
CHAP. II.
_Of the origin of ambition, and of the distinction of ranks._
It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our
joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches, and conceal
our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as to be obliged to expose our
distress to the view of the public, and to feel, that though our
situation is open to the eyes of all mankind, no mortal conceives for us
the half of what we suffer. Nay, it is chiefly from this regard to the
sentiments of mankind, that we pursue riches and avoid poverty. For to
what purpose is all the toil and bustle of this world? what is the end
of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, of power, and
pre-eminence? Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of
the meanest labourer can supply them. We see that they afford him food
and clothing, the comfort of a house, and of a family. If we examine his
œconomy with rigor, we should find that he spends a great part of them
upon conveniences, which may be regarded as superfluities, and that,
upon extraordinary occasions, he can give something even to vanity and
distinction. What then is the cause of our aversion to his situation,
and why should those who have been educated in the higher ranks of life,
regard it as worse than death, to be reduced to live, even without
labour, upon the same simple fare with him, to dwell under the same
lowly roof, and to be clothed in the same humble attire? Do they imagine
that their stomach is better, or their sleep sounder in a palace than in
a cottage? the contrary has been so often observed, and, indeed, is so
very obvious, though it had never been observed, that there is no body
ignorant of it. From whence, then, arises that emulation which runs
through all the different ranks of men, and what are the advantages
which we propose by that great purpose of human life which we call
bettering our condition? To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken
notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the
advantages which we can propose to derive from it. It is the vanity, not
the ease, or the pleasure, which interests us. But vanity is always
founded upon the belief of our being the object of attention and
approbation. The rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that
they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world, and that
mankind are disposed to go along with him in all those agreeable
emotions with which the advantages of his situation so readily inspire
him. At the thought of this, his heart seems to swell and dilate itself
within him, and he is fonder of his wealth upon this account, than for
all the other advantages it procures him. The poor man, on the contrary,
is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the
sight of mankind, or, that, if they take any notice of him, they have,
however, scarce any fellow-feeling with the misery and distress which he
suffers. He is mortified upon both accounts; for though to be
overlooked, and to be disapproved of, are things entirely different, yet
as obscurity covers us from the daylight of honour and approbation, to
feel that we are taken no notice of necessarily damps the most agreeable
hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature. The poor
man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a croud is
in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel. Those humble cares
and painful attentions which occupy those in his situation, afford no
amusement to the dissipated and the gay. They turn away their eyes from
him, or if the extremity of his distress forces them to look at him, it
is only to spurn so disagreeable an object from among them. The
fortunate and the proud wonder at the insolence of human wretchedness,
that it should dare to present itself before them, and with the
loathsome aspect of its misery, presume to disturb the serenity of their
happiness. The man of rank and distinction, on the contrary, is observed
by all the world. Every body is eager to look at him, and to conceive,
at least by sympathy, that joy and exultation with which his
circumstances naturally inspire him. His actions are the objects of the
public care. Scarce a word, scarce a gesture, can fall from him that is
altogether neglected. In a great assembly he is the person upon whom all
direct their eyes; it is upon him that their passions seem all to wait
with expectation, in order to receive that movement and direction which
he shall impress upon them; and if his behaviour is not altogether
absurd, he has, every moment, an opportunity of interesting mankind, and
of rendering himself the object of the observation and fellow-feeling of
every body about him. It is this, which notwithstanding the restraint it
imposes, notwithstanding the loss of liberty with which it is attended,
renders greatness the object of envy, and compensates in the opinion of
mankind, all that toil, all that anxiety, all those mortifications which
must be undergone in the pursuit of it; and what is of yet more
consequence, all that leisure, all that ease, all that careless
security, which are forfeited for ever by the acquisition.
When we consider the condition of the great, in those delusive colours
in which the imagination is apt to paint it, it seems to be almost the
abstract idea of a perfect and happy state. It is the very state which,
in all our waking dreams and idle reveries, we had sketched out to
ourselves as the final object of all our desires. We feel, therefore, a
peculiar sympathy with the satisfaction of those who are in it. We
favour all their inclinations, and forward all their wishes. What pity,
we think, that any thing should spoil and corrupt so agreeable a
situation! We could even wish them immortal; and it seems hard to us,
that death should at last put an end to such perfect enjoyment. It is
cruel, we think, in Nature, to compel them from their exalted stations
to that humble, but hospitable home, which she has provided for all her
children. Great King, live for ever! is the compliment, which after the
manner of eastern adulation, we should readily make them, if experience
did not teach us its absurdity. Every calamity that befalls them, every
injury that is done them, excites in the breast of the spectator ten
times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt, had the
same things happened to other men. It is the misfortunes of Kings only
which afford the proper subjects for tragedy. They resemble, in this
respect, the misfortunes of lovers. Those two situations are the chief
which interest us upon the theatre; because, in spite of all that reason
and experience can tell us to the contrary, the prejudices of the
imagination attach to these two states a happiness superior to any
other. To disturb, or to put an end to such perfect enjoyment, seems to
be the most atrocious of all injuries. The traitor who conspires against
the life of his monarch, is thought a greater monster than any other
murderer. All the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars,
provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I. A stranger to
human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their
inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the
misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine,
that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more
terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations.
Upon this disposition of mankind, to go along with all the passions of
the rich and the powerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the
order of society. Our obsequiousness to our superiors more frequently
arises from our admiration for the advantages of their situation, than
from any private expectations of benefit from their good-will. Their
benefits can extend but to a few; but their fortunes interest almost
every body. We are eager to assist them in compleating a system of
happiness that approaches so near to perfection; and we desire to serve
them for their own sake, without any other recompense but the vanity or
the honour of obliging them. Neither is our deference to their
inclinations founded chiefly, or altogether, upon a regard to the
utility of such submission, and to the order of society, which is best
supported by it. Even when the order of society seems to require that we
should oppose them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. That kings
are the servants of the people, to be obeyed, resisted, deposed, or
punished, as the public conveniency may require, is the doctrine of
reason and philosophy; but it is not the doctrine of Nature. Nature
would teach us to submit to them, for their own sake, to tremble and bow
down before their exalted station, to regard their smile as a reward
sufficient to compensate any services, and to dread their displeasure,
though no other evil was to follow from it, as the severest of all
mortifications. To treat them in any respect as men, to reason and
dispute with them upon ordinary occasions, requires such resolution,
that there are few men whose magnanimity can support them in it, unless
they are likewise assisted by familiarity and acquaintance. The
strongest motives, the most furious passions, fear, hatred, and
resentment, are scarce sufficient to balance this natural disposition to
respect them: and their conduct must, either justly or unjustly, have
excited the highest degree of all those passions, before the bulk of the
people can be brought to oppose them with violence, or to desire to see
them either punished or deposed. Even when the people have been brought
this length, they are apt to relent every moment, and easily relapse
into their habitual state of deference to those whom they have been
accustomed to look upon as their natural superiors. They cannot stand
the mortification of their monarch. Compassion soon takes the place of
resentment, they forget all past provocations, their old principles of
loyalty revive, and they run to re-establish the ruined authority of
their old master, with the same violence with which they had opposed it.
The death of Charles I. brought about the Restoration of the royal
family. Compassion for James II. when he was seized by the populace in
making his escape on ship-board, had almost prevented the Revolution,
and made it go on more heavily than before.
Do the great seem insensible of the easy price at which they may acquire
the public admiration; or do they seem to imagine that to them, as to
other men, it must be the purchase either of sweat or of blood? By what
important accomplishments is the young nobleman instructed to support
the dignity of his rank, and to render himself worthy of that
superiority over his fellow-citizens, to which the virtue of his
ancestors had raised them? Is it by knowledge, by industry, by patience,
by self-denial, or by virtue of any kind? As all his words, as all his
motions are attended to, he learns an habitual regard to every
circumstance of ordinary behaviour, and studies to perform all those
small duties with the most exact propriety. As he is conscious how much
he is observed, and how much mankind are disposed to favour all his
inclinations, he acts, upon the most indifferent occasions, with that
freedom and elevation which the thought of this naturally inspires. His
air, his manner, his deportment, all mark that elegant and graceful
sense of his own superiority, which those who are born to inferior
stations can hardly ever arrive at: these are the arts by which he
proposes to make mankind more easily submit to his authority, and to
govern their inclinations according to his own pleasure: and in this he
is seldom disappointed. These arts, supported by rank and pre-eminence,
are, upon ordinary occasions, sufficient to govern the world. Lewis XIV.
during the greater part of his reign, was regarded, not only in France,
but over all Europe, as the most perfect model of a great prince. But
what were the talents and virtues by which he acquired this great
reputation? Was it by the scrupulous and inflexible justice of all his
undertakings, by the immense dangers and difficulties with which they
were attended, or by the unwearied and unrelenting application with
which he pursued them? Was it by his extensive knowledge, by his
exquisite judgment, or by his heroic valour? It was by none of these
qualities. But he was, first of all, the most powerful prince in Europe,
and consequently held the highest rank among kings; and then, says his
historian, “he surpassed all his courtiers in the gracefulness of his
shape, and the majestic beauty of his features. The sound of his voice,
noble and affecting, gained those hearts which his presence intimidated.
He had a step and deportment which could suit only him and his rank, and
which would have been ridiculous in any other person. The embarrassment
which he occasioned to those who spoke to him, flattered that secret
satisfaction with which he felt his own superiority. The old officer,
who was confounded and faultered in asking him a favour, and not being
able to conclude his discourse, said to him, Sir, your majesty, I hope,
will believe that I do not tremble thus before your enemies: had no
difficulty to obtain what he demanded.” These frivolous accomplishments,
supported by his rank, and, no doubt, too, by a degree of other talents
and virtues, which seems, however, not to have been much above
mediocrity, established this prince in the esteem of his own age, and
have drawn, even from posterity, a good deal of respect for his memory.
Compared with those of his own times, and in his own presence, no other
virtue, it seems, appeared to have any merit. Knowledge, industry,
valour, and beneficence, trembled, were abashed, and lost all dignity
before them.
But it is not by accomplishments of this kind, that the man of inferior
rank must hope to distinguish himself. Politeness is so much the virtue
of the great, that it will do little honour to any body but themselves.
The coxcomb, who imitates their manner, and affects to be eminent by the
superior propriety of his ordinary behaviour, is rewarded with a double
share of contempt for his folly and presumption. Why should the man,
whom nobody thinks it worth while to look at, be very anxious about the
manner in which he holds up his head, or disposes of his arms while he
walks through a room? He is occupied surely with a very superfluous
attention, and with an attention too that marks a sense of his own
importance, which no other mortal can go along with. The most perfect
modesty and plainness, joined to as much negligence as is consistent
with the respect due to the company, ought to be the chief
characteristics of the behaviour of a private man. If ever he hopes to
distinguish himself, it must be by more important virtues. He must
acquire dependants to balance the dependants of the great, and he has no
other fund to pay them from, but the labour of his body, and the
activity of his mind. He must cultivate these therefore: he must acquire
superior knowledge in his profession, and superior industry in the
exercise of it. He must be patient in labour, resolute in danger, and
firm in distress. These talents he must bring into public view, by the
difficulty, importance, and, at the same time, good judgment of his
undertakings, and by the severe and unrelenting application with which
he pursues them. Probity and prudence, generosity and frankness, must
characterize his behaviour upon all ordinary occasions; and he must, at
the same time, be forward to engage in all those situations in which it
requires the greatest talents and virtues to act with propriety, but in
which the greatest applause is to be acquired by those who can acquit
themselves with honour. With what impatience does the man of spirit and
ambition, who is depressed by his situation, look round for some great
opportunity to distinguish himself? No circumstances, which can afford
this, appear to him undesirable. He even looks forward with satisfaction
to the prospect of foreign war, or civil dissension; and, with secret
transport and delight, sees through all the confusion and bloodshed
which attend them, the probability of those wished for occasions
presenting themselves, in which he may draw upon himself the attention
and admiration of mankind. The man of rank and distinction, on the
contrary, whose whole glory consists in the propriety of his ordinary
behaviour, who is contented with the humble renown which this can afford
him, and has no talents to acquire any other, is unwilling to embarrass
himself with what can be attended either with difficulty or distress. To
figure at a ball is his great triumph, and to succeed in an intrigue of
gallantry, his highest exploit. He has an aversion to all public
confusions, not from the love of mankind, for the great never look upon
their inferiors as their fellow-creatures; nor yet from want of courage,
for in that he is seldom defective; but from a consciousness that he
possesses none of the virtues which are required in such situations, and
that the public attention will certainly be drawn away from him by
others. He may be willing to expose himself to some little danger, and
to make a campaign when it happens to be the fashion. But he shudders
with horror at the thought of any situation which demands the continual
and long exertion of patience, industry, fortitude, and application of
thought. These virtues are hardly ever to be met with in men who are
born to those high stations. In all governments accordingly, even in
monarchies, the highest offices are generally possessed, and the whole
detail of the administration conducted by men who were educated in the
middle and inferior ranks of life, who have been carried forward by
their own industry and abilities, though loaded with the jealousy, and
opposed by the resentment of all those who were born their superiors,
and to whom the great, after having regarded them first with contempt,
and afterwards with envy, are at last contented to truckle with the same
abject meanness with which they desire that the rest of mankind should
behave to themselves.
It is the loss of this easy empire over the affections of mankind which
renders the fall from greatness so insupportable. When the family of the
King of Macedon was led in triumph by Paulus Æmilius, their misfortunes,
it is said, made them divide with their conqueror the attention of the
Roman people. The sight of the royal children, whose tender age rendered
them insensible of their situation, struck the spectators, amidst the
public rejoicings and prosperity, with the tenderest sorrow and
compassion. The King appeared next in the procession; and seemed like
one confounded and astonished, and bereft of all sentiment, by the
greatness of his calamities. His friends and ministers followed after
him. As they moved along, they often cast their eye upon their fallen
sovereign, and always burst into tears at the sight; their whole
behaviour demonstrating that they thought not of their misfortunes, but
were occupied entirely by the superior greatness of his. The generous
Romans, on the contrary, beheld him with disdain and indignation, and
regarded as unworthy of all compassion the man who could be so
mean-spirited as to bear to live under such calamities. Yet what did
those calamities amount to? According to the greater part of historians,
he was to spend the remainder of his days under the protection of a
powerful and humane people, in a state which in itself should seem
worthy of envy, a state of plenty, ease, leisure, and security, from
which it was impossible for him even by his own folly to fall. But he
was no longer to be surrounded by that admiring mob of fools,
flatterers, and dependants, who had formerly been accustomed to attend
upon all his motions. He was no longer to be gazed upon by multitudes,
nor to have it in his power to render himself the object of their
respect, their gratitude, their love, their admiration. The passions of
nations were no longer to mould themselves upon his inclinations. This
was that insupportable calamity which bereaved the King of all
sentiment; which made his friends forget their own misfortunes; and
which the Roman magnanimity could scarce conceive how any man could be
so mean-spirited as to bear to survive.
“Love, says my Lord Rochefoucault, is commonly succeeded by ambition;
but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love.” That passion when once
it has got entire possession of the breast, will admit neither a rival
nor a successor. To those who have been accustomed to the possession, or
even to the hope of public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and
decay. Of all the discarded statesmen who for their own ease have
studied to get the better of ambition, and to despise those honours
which they could no longer arrive at, how few have been able to succeed?
The greater part have spent their time in the most listless and insipid
indolence, chagrined at the thoughts of their own insignificancy,
incapable of being interested in the occupations of private life,
without enjoyment except when they talked of their former greatness, and
without satisfaction except when they were employed in some vain project
to recover it. Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty
for the lordly servitude of a Court, but to live free, fearless, and
independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous
resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so
few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition;
nor even bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth
who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.
Of such mighty importance does it appear to be, in the imaginations of
men, to stand in that situation which sets them most in the view of
general sympathy and attention. And thus, place, that great object which
divides the wives of aldermen, is the end of half the labours of life;
and is the cause of all the tumult and bustle, all the rapine and
injustice, which avarice and ambition have introduced into this world.
People of sense, it is said, indeed despise place; that is, they despise
sitting at the head of the table, and are indifferent who it is that is
pointed out to the company by that frivolous circumstance, which the
smallest advantage is capable of overbalancing. But rank, distinction,
pre-eminence, no man despises, unless he is either raised very much
above, or sunk very much below, the ordinary standard of human nature;
unless he is either so confirmed in wisdom and real philosophy, as to be
satisfied that, while the propriety of his conduct renders him the just
object of approbation, it is of little consequence though he be neither
attended to, nor approved of; or so habituated to the idea of his own
meanness, so sunk in slothful and sottish indifference, as entirely to
have forgot the desire, and almost the very wish, for superiority.
CHAP. III.
_Of the stoical philosophy._
When we examine in this manner into the ground of the different degrees
of estimation which mankind are apt to bestow upon the different
conditions of life, we shall find, that the excessive preference, which
they generally give to some of them above others, is in a great measure
without any foundation. If to be able to act with propriety, and to
render ourselves the proper objects of the approbation of mankind, be,
as we have been endeavouring to show, what chiefly recommends to us one
condition above another, this may equally be attained in them all. The
noblest propriety of conduct may be supported in adversity, as well as
in prosperity; and though it is somewhat more difficult in the first, it
is upon that very account more admirable. Perils and misfortunes are not
only the proper school of heroism, they are the only proper theatre
which can exhibit its virtue to advantage, and draw upon it the full
applause of the world. The man, whose whole life has been one even and
uninterrupted course of prosperity, who never braved any danger, who
never encountered any difficulty, who never surmounted any distress, can
excite but an inferior degree of admiration. When poets and
romance-writers endeavour to invent a train of adventures, which shall
give the greatest lustre to those characters for whom they mean to
interest us, they are all of a different kind. They are rapid and sudden
changes of fortune, situations the most apt to drive those who are in
them to frenzy and distraction, or to abject despair; but in which their
heroes act with so much propriety, or at least with so much spirit and
undaunted resolution, as still to command our esteem. Is not the
unfortunate magnanimity of Cato, Brutus, and Leonidas, as much the
object of admiration, as that of the successful Cæsar or Alexander? To a
generous mind, therefore, ought it not to be as much the object of envy?
If a more dazzling splendor seems to attend the fortunes of successful
conquerors, it is because they join together the advantages of both
situations, the lustre of prosperity to the high admiration which is
excited by dangers encountered, and difficulties surmounted, with
intrepidity and valour.
It was upon this account that, according to the stoical philosophy, to a
wise man all the different conditions of life were equal. Nature, they
said, had recommended some objects to our choice, and others to our
disapprobation. Our primary appetites directed us to the pursuit of
health, strength, ease, and perfection, in all the qualities of mind and
body; and of whatever could promote or secure these, riches, power,
authority: and the same original principle taught us to avoid the
contrary. But in chusing or rejecting, in preferring or postponing,
those first objects of original appetite and aversion, Nature had
likewise taught us, that there was a certain order, propriety, and
grace, to be observed, of infinitely greater consequence to happiness
and perfection, than the attainment of those objects themselves. The
objects of our primary appetites or aversions were to be pursued or
avoided, chiefly because a regard to this grace and propriety required
such conduct. In directing all our actions according to these, consisted
the happiness and glory of human nature. In departing from those rules
which they prescribed to us, its greatest wretchedness and most complete
depravity. The outward appearance of this order and propriety was indeed
more easily maintained in some circumstances than in others. To a fool,
however, to one whose passions were subjected to no proper controul, to
act with real grace and propriety, was equally impossible in every
situation. Though the giddy multitude might admire him, though his
vanity might sometimes be elevated by their ignorant praises into
something that resembled self-approbation, yet still when he turned his
view to what passed within his own breast, he was secretly conscious to
himself of the absurdity and meanness of all his motives, and inwardly
blushed and trembled at the thoughts of the contempt which he knew he
deserved, and which mankind would certainly bestow upon him if they saw
his conduct in the light in which in his own heart he was obliged to
regard it. To a wise man, on the contrary, to one whose passions were
all brought under perfect subjection to the ruling principles of his
nature, to reason and the love of propriety, to act so as to deserve
approbation was equally easy upon all occasions. Was he in prosperity,
he returned thanks to Jupiter for having joined him with circumstances
which were easily mastered, and in which there was little temptation to
do wrong. Was he in adversity, he equally, returned thanks to the
director of this spectacle of human life, for having opposed to him a
vigorous athlete, over whom, though the contest was likely to be more
violent, the victory was more glorious, and equally certain. Can there
be any shame in that distress which is brought upon us without any fault
of our own, and in which we behave with perfect propriety? There can
therefore, be no evil, but, on the contrary, the greatest good and
advantage. A brave man exults in those dangers, in which, from no
rashness of his own, his fortune has involved him. They afford an
opportunity of exercising that heroic intrepidity, whose exertion gives
the exalted delight which flows from the consciousness of superior
propriety and deserved admiration. One who is master of all his
exercises has no aversion to measure his strength and activity with the
strongest. And in the same manner, one who is master of all his
passions, does not dread any circumstances in which the superintendant
of the universe may think proper to place him. The bounty of that Divine
Being has provided him with virtues which render him superior to every
situation. If it is pleasure, he has temperance to refrain from it; if
it is pain, he has constancy to bear it; if it is danger or death, he
has magnanimity and fortitude to despise it. He never complains of the
destiny of providence, nor thinks the universe in confusion when he is
out of order. He does not look upon himself, according to what self-love
would suggest, as a whole, separated and detached from every other part
of nature, to be taken care of by itself, and for itself. He regards
himself in the light in which he imagines the great Genius of human
nature, and of the world, regards him. He enters, if I may say so, into
the sentiments of that Divine Being, and considers himself as an atom, a
particle, of an immense and infinite system, which must, and ought to be
disposed of, according to the conveniency of the whole. Assured of the
wisdom which directs all the events of human life, whatever lot befalls
him, he accepts it with joy, satisfied that, if he had known all the
connexions and dependencies of the different parts of the universe, it
is the very lot which he himself would have wished for. If it is life,
he is contented to live: and if it is death, as Nature must have no
further occasion for his presence here, he willingly goes where he is
appointed. I accept, said a stoical philosopher, with equal joy and
satisfaction, whatever fortune can befal me. Riches or poverty, pleasure
or pain, health or sickness, all is alike: nor would I desire that the
gods should in any respect change my destination. If I was to ask of
them any thing, beyond what their bounty has already bestowed, it should
be that they would inform me beforehand what it was their pleasure
should be done with me, that I might of my own accord place myself in
this situation, and demonstrate the chearfulness with which I embraced
their allotment. If I am going to fail, says Epictetus, I chuse the best
ship, and the best pilot, and I wait for the fairest weather that my
circumstances and duty will allow. Prudence and propriety, the
principles which the gods have given me for the direction of my conduct,
require this of me; but they require no more: and if, notwithstanding, a
storm arises, which neither the strength of the vessel, nor the skill of
the pilot are likely to withstand, I give myself no trouble about the
consequence. All that I had to do, is done already. The directors of my
conduct never command me to be miserable, to be anxious, desponding, or
afraid. Whether we are to be drowned, or to come to a harbour, is the
business of Jupiter, not mine. I leave it entirely to his determination,
nor ever break my rest with considering which way he is likely to decide
it, but receive whatever comes with equal indifference and security.
Such was the philosophy of the stoics, a philosophy which affords the
noblest lessons of magnanimity, is the best school of heroes and
patriots, and to the greater part of whose precepts there can be no
objection, except that honourable one, that they teach us to aim at a
perfection altogether beyond the reach of human nature. I shall not at
present stop to examine it. I shall only observe, in confirmation of
what has formerly been said, that the most dreadful calamities are not
always those which it is most difficult to support. It is often more
mortifying to appear in public, under small disasters, than under great
misfortunes. The first excite no sympathy; but the second, though they
may excite none that approaches to the anguish of the sufferer, call
forth, however, a very lively compassion. The sentiments of the
spectators are, in this last case, therefore, less wide of those of the
sufferer, and their imperfect fellow-feeling lends him some assistance
in supporting his misery. Before a gay assembly, a gentleman would be
more mortified to appear covered with filth and rags than with blood and
wounds. This last situation would interest their pity; the other would
provoke their laughter. The judge who orders a criminal to be set in the
pillory, dishonours him more than if he had condemned him to the
scaffold. The great prince, who, some years ago, caned a general officer
at the head of his army, disgraced him irrecoverably. The punishment
would have been much less had he shot him through the body. By the laws
of honour, to strike with a cane dishonours, to strike with a sword does
not, for an obvious reason. Those slighter punishments when inflicted on
a gentleman, to whom dishonour is the greatest of all evils, come to be
regarded among a humane and generous people, as the most dreadful of
any. With regard to persons of that rank, therefore, they are
universally laid aside, and the law, while it takes their life upon many
occasions, respects their honour upon almost all. To scourge a person of
quality, or to set him in the pillory, upon account of any crime
whatever, is a brutality of which no European government, except that of
Russia, is capable.
A brave man is not rendered contemptible by being brought to the
scaffold; he is, by being set in the pillory. His behaviour in the one
situation may gain him universal esteem and admiration. No behaviour in
the other can render him agreeable. The sympathy of the spectators
supports him in the one case, and saves him from that shame, that
consciousness that his misery is felt by himself only, which is of all
sentiments the most unsupportable. There is no sympathy in the other;
or, if there is any, it is not with his pain, which is a trifle, but
with his consciousness of the want of sympathy with which this pain is
attended. It is with his shame, not with his sorrow. Those who pity him,
blush and hang down their heads for him. He droops in the same manner,
and feels himself irrecoverably degraded by the punishment, though not
by the crime. The man, on the contrary, who dies with resolution, as he
is naturally regarded with the erect aspect of esteem and approbation,
so he wears himself the same undaunted countenance; and, if the crime
does not deprive him of the respect of others, the punishment never
will. He has no suspicion that his situation is the object of contempt
or derision to any body, and he can, with propriety, assume the air, not
only of perfect serenity, but of triumph and exaltation.
“Great dangers,” says the Cardinal de Retz, “have their charms, because
there is some glory to be got, even when we miscarry. But moderate
dangers have nothing but what is horrible, because the loss of
reputation always attends the want of success.” His maxim has the same
foundation with what we have been just now observing with regard to
punishments.
Human virtue is superior to pain, to poverty, to danger, and to death;
nor does it even require its utmost efforts to despise them. But to have
its misery exposed to insult and derision, to be led in triumph, to be
set up for the hand of scorn to point at, is a situation in which its
constancy is much more apt to fail. Compared with the contempt of
mankind, all other evils are easily supported.
PART II.
Of MERIT and DEMERIT; or, of the Objects of REWARD and PUNISHMENT.
CONSISTING OF THREE SECTIONS.
SECTION I.
Of the sense of merit and demerit.
INTRODUCTION.
There is another set of qualities ascribed to the actions and conduct of
mankind, distinct from their propriety or impropriety, their decency or
ungracefulness, and which are the objects of a distinct species of
approbation and disapprobation. These are merit and demerit, the
qualities of deserving reward, and of deserving punishment.
It has already been observed, that the sentiment or affection of the
heart, from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue
or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in
two different relations: first, in relation to the cause or object which
excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or
to the effect which it tends to produce: that upon the suitableness or
unsuitableness, upon the proportion or disproportion, which the
affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, depends
the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the
consequent action; and that upon the beneficial or hurtful effects which
the affection proposes or tends to produce, depends the merit or
demerit, the good or ill desert of the action to which it gives
occasion. Wherein consists our sense of the propriety or impropriety of
actions, has been explained in the former part of this discourse. We
come now to consider, wherein consists that of their good or ill desert.
CHAP. I.
_That whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude, appears to
deserve reward; and that, in the same manner, whatever appears to be the
proper object of resentment, appears to deserve punishment._
To us, therefore, that action must appear to deserve reward, which
appears to be the proper and approved object of that sentiment, which
most immediately and directly prompts us to reward, or to do good to
another. And in the same manner, that action must appear to deserve
punishment, which appears to be the proper and approved object of that
sentiment which most immediately and directly prompts us to publish, or
inflict evil upon another.
The sentiment which most immediately and directly prompts us to reward,
is gratitude; that which most immediately and directly prompts us to
punish, is resentment.
To us, therefore, that action must appear to deserve reward, which
appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude; as, on the
other hand, that action must appear to deserve punishment, which appears
to be the proper and approved object of resentment.
To reward, is to recompense, to remunerate, to return good for good
received. To punish, too, is to recompense, to remunerate, though in a
different manner; it is to return evil for evil that has been done.
There are some other passions, besides gratitude and resentment, which
interest us in the happiness or misery of others; but there are none
which so directly excite us to be the instruments of either. The love
and esteem which grow upon acquaintance and habitual approbation,
necessarily lead us to be pleased with the good fortune of the man who
is the object of such agreeable emotions, and consequently, to be
willing to lend a hand to promote it. Our love, however, is fully
satisfied, though his good fortune should be brought about without our
assistance. All that this passion desires is to see him happy, without
regarding who was the author of his prosperity. But gratitude is not to
be satisfied in this manner. If the person to whom we owe many
obligations, is made happy without our assistance, though it pleases our
love, it does not content our gratitude. Till we have recompensed him,
till we ourselves have been instrumental in promoting his happiness, we
feel ourselves still loaded with that debt which his past services have
laid upon us.
The hatred and dislike, in the same manner, which grow upon habitual
disapprobation, would often lead us to take a malicious pleasure in the
misfortune of the man whose conduct and character excite so painful a
passion. But though dislike and hatred harden us against all sympathy,
and sometimes dispose us even to rejoice at the distress of another,
yet, if there is no resentment in the case, if neither we nor our
friends have received any great personal provocation, these passions
would not naturally lead us to wish to be instrumental in bringing it
about. Tho’ we could fear no punishment in consequence of our having had
some hand it, we would rather that it should happen by other means. To
one under the dominion of violent hatred it would be agreeable, perhaps,
to hear, that the person whom he abhorred and detested was killed by
some accident. But if he had the least spark of justice, which, though
this passion is not very favourable to virtue, he might still have, it
would hurt him excessively to have been himself, even without design,
the occasion of this misfortune. Much more would the very thought of
voluntarily contributing to it shock him beyond all measure. He would
reject with horror even the imagination of so execrable a design; and if
he could imagine himself capable of such an enormity, he would begin to
regard himself in the same odious light in which he had considered the
person who was the object of his dislike. But it is quite otherwise with
resentment: if the person who had done us some great injury, who had
murdered our father or our brother, for example, should soon afterwards
die of a fever, or even be brought to the scaffold upon account of some
other crime, though it might sooth our hatred, it would not fully
gratify our resentment. Resentment would prompt us to desire, not only
that he should be punished, but that he should be punished by our means,
and upon account of that particular injury which he had done to us.
Resentment cannot be fully gratified, unless the offender is not only
made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong
which we have suffered from him. He must be made to repent and be sorry
for this very action, that others, through fear of the like punishment,
may be terrified from being guilty of the like offence. The natural
gratification of this passion tends, of its own accord, to produce all
the political ends of punishment; the correction of the criminal, and
the example to the public.
Gratitude and resentment, therefore, are the sentiments which most
immediately and directly prompt to reward and to punish. To us,
therefore, he must appear to deserve reward, who appears to be the
proper and approved object of gratitude; and he to deserve punishment,
who appears to be that of resentment.
CHAP. II.
_Of the proper objects of gratitude and resentment._
To be the proper and approved object either of gratitude or resentment,
can mean nothing but to be the object of that gratitude, and of that
resentment, which naturally seems proper, and is approved of.
But these, as well as all the other passions of human nature, seem
proper and are approved of, when the heart of every impartial spectator
entirely sympathizes with them, when every indifferent by-stander
entirely enters into, and goes along with them.
He, therefore, appears to deserve reward, who, to some person or
persons, is the natural object of a gratitude which every human heart is
disposed to beat time to, and thereby applaud: and he, on the other
hand, appears to deserve punishment, who in the same manner is to some
person or persons the natural object of a resentment which the breast of
every reasonable man is ready to adopt and sympathize with. To us,
surely, that action must appear to deserve reward, which every body who
knows of it would wish to reward, and therefore delights to see
rewarded: and that action must as surely appear to deserve punishment,
which every body who hears of it is angry with, and upon that account
rejoices to see punished.
1. As we sympathize with the joy of our companions when in prosperity,
so we join with them in the complacency and satisfaction with which they
naturally regard whatever is the cause of their good fortune. We enter
into the love and affection which they conceive for it, and begin to
love it too. We should be sorry for their sakes if it was destroyed, or
even if it was placed at too great a distance from them, and out of the
reach of their care and protection, though they should lose nothing by
its absence except the pleasure of seeing it. If it is man who has thus
been the fortunate instrument of the happiness of his brethren, this is
still more peculiarly the case. When we see one man assisted, protected,
relieved by another, our sympathy with the joy of the person who
receives the benefit serves only to animate our fellow-feeling with his
gratitude towards him who bestows it. When we look upon the person who
is the cause of his pleasure with the eyes with which we imagine he must
look upon him, his benefactor seems to stand before us in the most
engaging and amiable light. We readily therefore sympathize with the
grateful affection which he conceives for a person to whom he has been
so much obliged; and consequently applaud the returns which he is
disposed to make for the good offices conferred upon him. As we entirely
enter into the affection from which these returns proceed, they
necessarily seem every way proper and suitable to their object.
2. In the same manner, as we sympathize with the sorrow of our
fellow-creature whenever we see his distress, so we likewise enter into
his abhorrence and aversion for whatever has given occasion to it. Our
heart, as it adopts and beats time to his grief, so is it likewise
animated with that spirit by which he endeavours to drive away or
destroy the cause of it. The indolent and passive fellow-feeling, by
which we accompany him in his sufferings, readily gives way to that more
vigorous and active sentiment by which we go along with him in the
effort he makes, either to repel them, or to gratify his aversion to
what has given occasion to them. This is still more peculiarly the case,
when it is man who has caused them. When we see one man oppressed or
injured by another, the sympathy which we feel with the distress of the
sufferer seems to serve only to animate our fellow-feeling with his
resentment against the offender. We are rejoiced to see him attack his
adversary in his turn, and are eager and ready to assist him whenever he
exerts himself for defence, or even for vengeance within a certain
degree. If the injured should perish in the quarrel, we not only
sympathize with the real resentment of his friends and relations, but
with the imaginary resentment which in fancy we lend to the dead, who is
no longer capable of feeling that or any other human sentiment. But as
we put ourselves in his situation, as we enter, as it were, into his
body, and in our imaginations, in some measure, animate anew the
deformed and mangled carcass of the slain, when we bring home in this
manner his case to our own bosoms, we feel upon this, as upon many other
occasions, an emotion which the person principally concerned is
incapable of feeling, and which yet we feel by an illusive sympathy with
him. The sympathetic tears which we shed for that immense and
irretrievable loss, which in our fancy he appears to have sustained,
seem to be but a small part of the duty which we owe him. The injury
which he has suffered demands, we think, a principal part of our
attention. We feel that resentment which we imagine he ought to feel,
and which he would feel, if in his cold and lifeless body there remained
any consciousness of what passes upon earth. His blood, we think, calls
aloud for vengeance. The very ashes of the dead seem to be disturbed at
the thought that his injuries are to pass unrevenged. The horrors which
are supposed to haunt the bed of the murderer, the ghosts which,
superstition imagines, rise from their graves to demand vengeance upon
those who brought them to an untimely end, all take their origin from
this natural sympathy with the imaginary resentment of the slain. And
with regard, at least, to this most dreadful of all crimes, Nature,
antecedent to all reflections upon the utility of punishment, has in
this manner stamped upon the human heart, in the strongest and most
indelible characters, an immediate and instinctive approbation of the
sacred and necessary law of retaliation.
CHAP. III.
_That where there is no approbation of the conduct of the person who
confers the benefit, there is little sympathy with the gratitude of him
who receives it: and that, on the contrary, where there is no
disapprobation of the motives of the person who does the mischief, there
is no sort of sympathy with the resentment of him who suffers it._
It is to be observed, however, that, how beneficial soever on the one
hand, or how hurtful soever on the other, the actions or intentions of
the person who acts may have been to the person who is, if I may say so,
acted upon, yet if in the one case there appears to have been no
propriety in the motives of the agent, if we cannot enter into the
affections which influenced his conduct, we have little sympathy with
the gratitude of the person who receives the benefit: or if, in the
other case, there appears to have been no impropriety in the motives of
the agent, if, on the contrary, the affections which influenced his
conduct are such as we must necessarily enter into, we can have no sort
of sympathy with the resentment of the person who suffers. Little
gratitude seems due in the one case, and all sort of resentment seems
unjust in the other. The one action seems to merit little reward, the
other to deserve no punishment.
1. First, I say, that wherever we cannot sympathize with the affections
of the agent, wherever there seems to be no propriety in the motives
which influenced his conduct, we are less disposed to enter into the
gratitude of the person who received the benefit of his actions. A very
small return seems due to that foolish and profuse generosity which
confers the greatest benefits from the most trivial motives, and gives
an estate to a man merely because his name and surname happen to be the
same with those of the giver. Such services do not seem to demand any
proportionable recompense. Our contempt for the folly of the agent
hinders us from thoroughly entering into the gratitude of the person to
whom the good office has been done. His benefactor seems unworthy of it.
As when we place ourselves in the situation of the person obliged, we
feel that we could conceive no great reverence for such a benefactor, we
easily absolve him from a great deal of that submissive veneration and
esteem which we should think due to a more respectable character; and
provided he always treats his weak friend with kindness and humanity, we
are willing to excuse him from many attentions and regards which we
should demand to a worthier patron. Those Princes, who have heaped, with
the greatest profusion, wealth, power, and honours, upon their
favourites, have seldom excited that degree of attachment to their
persons which has often been experienced by those who were more frugal
of their favours. The well-natured, but injudicious prodigality of James
the First of Great Britain seems to have attached no body to his person;
and that Prince, notwithstanding his social and harmless disposition,
appears to have lived and died without a friend. The whole gentry and
nobility of England exposed their lives and fortunes in the cause of his
more frugal and distinguishing son, notwithstanding the coldness and
distant severity of his ordinary deportment.
2. Secondly, I say, That wherever the conduct of the agent appears to
have been entirely directed by motives and affections which we
thoroughly enter into and approve of, we can have no sort of sympathy
with the resentment of the sufferer, how great soever the mischief which
may have been done to him. When two people quarrel, if we take part
with, and entirely adopt the resentment of one of them, it is impossible
that we should enter into that of the other. Our sympathy with the
person whose motives we go along with, and whom therefore we look upon
as in the right, cannot but harden us against all fellow-feeling with
the other, whom we necessarily regard as in the wrong. Whatever this
last, therefore, may have suffered, while it is no more than what we
ourselves should have wished him to suffer, while it is no more than
what our own sympathetic indignation would have prompted us to inflict
upon him, it cannot either displease or provoke us. When an inhuman
murderer is brought to the scaffold, though we have some compassion for
his misery, we can have no sort of fellow-feeling with his resentment,
if he should be so absurd as to express any against either his
prosecutor or his judge. The natural tendency of their just indignation
against so vile a criminal is indeed the most fatal and ruinous to him.
But it is impossible that we should be displeased with the tendency of a
sentiment, which, when we bring the case home to ourselves, we feel that
we cannot avoid adopting.
CHAP. IV.
_Recapitulation of the foregoing Chapters._
We do not, therefore, thoroughly and heartily sympathize with the
gratitude of one man towards another, merely because this other has been
the cause of his good fortune, unless he has been the cause of it from
motives which we entirely go along with. Our heart must adopt the
principles of the agent, and go along with all the affections which
influenced his conduct, before it can entirely sympathize with, and beat
time to, the gratitude of the person who has been benefited by his
actions. If in the conduct of the benefactor there appears to have been
no propriety, how beneficial soever its effects, it does not seem to
demand, or necessarily to require, any proportionable recompense.
But when to the beneficent tendency of the action is joined the
propriety of the affection from which it proceeds, when we entirely
sympathize and go along with the motives of the agent, the love which we
conceive for him upon his own account, enhances and enlivens our
fellow-feeling with the gratitude of those who owe their prosperity to
his good conduct. His actions seem then to demand, and, if I may say so,
to call aloud for a proportionable recompense. We then entirely enter
into that gratitude which prompts to bestow it. The benefactor seems
then to be the proper object of reward, when we thus entirely sympathize
with, and approve of, that sentiment which prompts to reward him. When
we approve of, and go along with, the affection from which the action
proceeds, we must necessarily approve of the action, and regard the
person towards whom it is directed as its proper and suitable object.
2. In the same manner, we cannot at all sympathize with the resentment
of one man against another, merely because this other has been the cause
of his misfortune, unless he has been the cause of it from motives which
we cannot enter into. Before we can adopt the resentment of the
sufferer, we must disapprove of the motives of the agent, and feel that
our heart renounces all sympathy with the affections which influenced
his conduct. If there appears to have been no impropriety in these, how
fatal soever the tendency of the action which proceeds from them to
those against whom it is directed, it does not seem to deserve any
punishment, or to be the proper object of any resentment.
But when to the hurtfulness of the action is joined the impropriety of
the affection from whence it proceeds, when our heart rejects with
abhorrence all fellow-feeling with the motives of the agent, we then
heartily and entirely sympathize with the resentment of the sufferer.
Such actions seem then to deserve, and, if I may say so, to call aloud
for, a proportionable punishment; and we entirely enter into, and
thereby approve of, that resentment which prompts to inflict it. The
offender necessarily seems then to be the proper object of punishment,
when we thus entirely sympathize with, and thereby approve of, that
sentiment which prompts to punish. In this case too, when we approve,
and go along with, the affection from which the action proceeds, we must
necessarily approve of the action, and regard the person against whom it
is directed, as its proper and suitable object.
CHAP. V.
_The analysis of the sense of merit and demerit._
1. As our sense, therefore, of the propriety of conduct arises from what
I shall call a direct sympathy with the affections and motives of the
person who acts, so our sense of its merit arises from what I shall call
an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of the person who is, if I may
say so, acted upon.
As we cannot indeed enter thoroughly into the gratitude of the person
who receives the benefit, unless we beforehand approve of the motives of
the benefactor, so, upon this account, the sense of merit seems to be a
compounded sentiment, and to be made up of two distinct emotions; a
direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent, and an indirect
sympathy with the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his
actions.
We may, upon many different occasions, plainly distinguish those two
different emotions combining and uniting together in our sense of the
good desert of a particular character or action. When we read in history
concerning actions of proper and beneficent greatness of mind, how
eagerly do we enter into such designs? How much are we animated by that
high-spirited generosity which directs them? How keen are we for their
success? How grieved at their disappointment? In imagination we become
the very person whose actions are represented to us: we transport
ourselves in fancy to the scenes of those distant and forgotten
adventures, and imagine ourselves acting the part of a Scipio or a
Camillus, a Timoleon or an Aristides. So far our sentiments are founded
upon the direct sympathy with the person who acts. Nor is the indirect
sympathy with those who receive the benefit of such actions less
sensibly felt. Whenever we place ourselves in the situation of these
last, with what warm and affectionate fellow-feeling do we enter into
their gratitude towards those who served them so essentially? We
embrace, as it were, their benefactor along with them. Our heart readily
sympathizes with the highest transports of their grateful affection. No
honours, no rewards, we think, can be too great for them to bestow upon
him. When they make this proper return for his services, we heartily
applaud and go along with them; but are shocked beyond all measure, if
by their conduct they appear to have little sense of the obligations
conferred upon them. Our whole sense, in short, of the merit and good
desert of such actions, of the propriety and fitness of recompensing
them, and making the person who performed them rejoice in his turn,
arises from the sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love, with which,
when we bring home to our own breast the situation of those principally
concerned, we feel ourselves naturally transported towards the man who
could act with such proper and noble beneficence.
2. In the same manner as our sense of the impropriety of conduct arises
from a want of sympathy, or from a direct antipathy to the affections
and motives of the agent, so our sense of its demerit arises from what I
shall here too call an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the
sufferer.
As we cannot indeed enter into the resentment of the sufferer, unless
our heart beforehand disapproves the motives of the agent, and renounces
all fellow-feeling with them; so upon this account the sense of demerit,
as well as that of merit, seems to be a compounded sentiment, and to be
made up of two distinct emotions; a direct antipathy to the sentiments
of the agent, and an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the
sufferer.
We may here too, upon many different occasions, plainly distinguish
those two different emotions combining and uniting together in our sense
of the ill desert of a particular character or action. When we read in
history concerning the perfidy and cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, our
heart rises up against the detestable sentiments which influenced their
conduct, and renounces with horror and abomination all fellow-feeling
with such execrable motives. So far our sentiments are founded upon the
direct antipathy to the affections of the agent: and the indirect
sympathy with the resentment of the sufferers is still more sensibly
felt. When we bring home to ourselves the situation of the persons whom
those scourges of mankind insulted, murdered, or betrayed, what
indignation do we not feel against such insolent and inhuman oppressors
of the earth? Our sympathy with the unavoidable distress of the innocent
sufferers is not more real nor more lively, than our fellow-feeling with
their just and natural resentment. The former sentiment only heightens
the latter, and the idea of their distress serves only to inflame and
blow up our animosity against those who occasioned it. When we think of
the anguish of the sufferers, we take part with them more earnestly
against their oppressors; we enter with more eagerness into all their
schemes of vengeance, and feel ourselves every moment wreaking, in
imagination, upon such violators of the laws of society, that punishment
which our sympathetic indignation tells us is due to their crimes. Our
sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight
which we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation
which we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, our whole sense and
feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of
inflicting evil upon the person who is guilty of it, and of making him
grieve in his turn, arises from the sympathetic indignation which
naturally boils up in the breast of the spectator, whenever he
thoroughly brings home to himself the case of the sufferer[2].
Footnote 2:
To ascribe in this manner our natural sense of the ill desert of human
actions to a sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer, may seem,
to the greater part of people, to be a degradation of that sentiment.
Resentment is commonly regarded as so odious a passion, that they will
be apt to think it impossible that so laudable a principle, as the
sense of the ill desert of vice, should in any respect be founded upon
it. They will be more willing, perhaps, to admit that our sense of the
merit of good actions is founded upon a sympathy with the gratitude of
the persons who receive the benefit of them; because gratitude, as
well as all the other benevolent passions, is regarded as an amiable
principle, which can take nothing from the worth of whatever is
founded upon it. Gratitude and resentment, however, are in every
respect, it is evident, counterparts to one another; and if our sense
of merit arises from a sympathy with the one, our sense of demerit can
scarce miss to proceed from a fellow-feeling with the other.
Let it be considered too that resentment, though, in the degrees in
which we too often see it, the most odious, perhaps, of all the
passions, is not disapproved of when properly humbled and entirely
brought down to the level of the sympathetic indignation of the
spectator. When we, who are the bystanders, feel that our own
animosity entirely corresponds with that of the sufferer, when the
resentment of this last does not in any respect go beyond our own,
when no word, no gesture, escapes him that denotes an emotion more
violent than what we can keep time to, and when he never aims at
inflicting any punishment beyond what we should rejoice to see
inflicted, or what we ourselves would upon this account even desire to
be the instruments of inflicting, it is impossible that we should not
entirely approve of his sentiments. Our own emotion in this case must,
in our eyes, undoubtedly justify his. And as experience teaches us how
much the greater part of mankind are incapable of this moderation, and
how great an effort must be made in order to bring down the rude and
undisciplined impulse of resentment to this suitable temper, we cannot
avoid conceiving a considerable degree of esteem and admiration for
one who appears capable of exerting so much self-command over one of
the most ungovernable passions of his nature. When indeed the
animosity of the sufferer exceeds, as it almost always does, what we
can go along with, as we cannot enter into it, we necessarily
disapprove of it. We even disapprove of it more than we should of an
equal excess of almost any other passion derived from the imagination.
And this too violent resentment, instead of carrying us along with it,
becomes itself the object of our resentment and indignation. We enter
into the opposite resentment of the person who is the object of this
unjust emotion, and who is in danger of suffering from it. Revenge,
therefore, the excess of resentment, appears to be the most detestable
of all the passions, and is the object of the horror and indignation
of every body. And as in the way in which this passion commonly
discovers itself among mankind, it is excessive a hundred times for
once that it is moderate, we are very apt to consider it as altogether
odious and detestable, because in its most ordinary appearances it is
so. Nature, however, even in the present depraved state of mankind,
does not seem to have dealt so unkindly with us, as to have endowed us
with any principle which is wholly in every respect evil, or which, in
no degree and in no direction, can be the proper object of praise and
approbation. Upon some occasions we are sensible that this passion,
which is generally too strong, may likewise be too weak. We sometimes
complain that a particular person shows too little spirit, and has too
little sense of the injuries that have been done to him; and we are as
ready to despise him for the defect, as to hate him for the excess of
this passion.
The inspired writers would not surely have talked so frequently or so
strongly of the wrath and anger of God, if they had regarded every
degree of those passions as vicious and evil, even in so weak and
imperfect a creature as man.
Let it be considered too, that the present inquiry is not concerning a
matter of right, if I may say so, but concerning a matter of fact. We
are not at present examining upon what principles a perfect being
would approve of the punishment of bad actions; but upon what
principles so weak and imperfect a creature as man actually and in
fact approves of it. The principles which I have just now mentioned,
it is evident, have a very great effect upon his sentiments; and it
seems wisely ordered that it should be so. The very existence of
society requires that unmerited and unprovoked malice should be
restrained by proper punishments; and consequently, that to inflict
those punishments should be regarded as a proper and laudable action.
Though man, therefore, be naturally endowed with a desire of the
welfare and preservation of society, yet the Author of nature has not
entrusted it to his reason to find out that a certain application of
punishments is the proper means of attaining this end; but has endowed
him with an immediate and instinctive approbation of that very
application which is most proper to attain it. The œconomy of nature
is in this respect exactly of a piece with what it is upon many other
occasions. With regard to all those ends which, upon account of their
peculiar importance, may be regarded, if such an expression is
allowable, as the favourite ends of nature, she has constantly in this
manner not only endowed mankind with an appetite for the end which she
proposes, but likewise with an appetite for the means by which alone
this end can be brought about, for their own sakes, and independent of
their tendency to produce it. Thus self-preservation, and the
propagation of the species, are the great ends which Nature seems to
have proposed in the formation of all animals. Mankind are endowed
with a desire of those ends, and an aversion to the contrary; with a
love of life, and a dread of dissolution; with a desire of the
continuance and perpetuity of the species, and with an aversion to the
thoughts of its entire extinction. But though we are in this manner
endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has not been
entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason, to
find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed
us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts.
Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of
pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for
their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to
those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to
produce by them.
Before I conclude this note, I must take notice of a difference
between the approbation of propriety and that of merit or beneficence.
Before we approve of the sentiments of any person as proper and
suitable to their objects, we must not only be affected in the same
manner as he is, but we must perceive this harmony and correspondence
of sentiments between him and ourselves. Thus, though upon hearing of
a misfortune that had befallen my friend, I should conceive precisely
that degree of concern which he gives way to; yet till I am informed
of the manner in which he behaves, till I perceive the harmony between
his emotions and mine, I cannot be said to approve of the sentiments
which influence his behaviour. The approbation of propriety therefore
requires, not only that we should intirely sympathize with the person
who acts, but that we should perceive this perfect concord between his
sentiments and our own. On the contrary, when I hear of a benefit that
has been bestowed upon another person, let him who has received it be
affected in what manner he pleases, if, by bringing his case home to
myself, I feel gratitude arise in my own breast, I necessarily approve
of the conduct of his benefactor, and regard it as meritorious, and
the proper object of reward. Whether the person who has received the
benefit conceives gratitude or not, cannot, it is evident, in any
degree alter our sentiments with regard to the merit of him who has
bestowed it. No actual correspondence of sentiments, therefore, is
here required. It is sufficient that if he was grateful, they would
correspond; and our sense of merit is often founded upon one of those
illusive sympathies, by which, when we bring home to ourselves the
case of another, we are often affected in a manner in which the person
principally concerned is incapable of being affected. There is a
similar difference between our disapprobation of demerit, and that of
impropriety.
SECTION II.
Of justice and beneficence.
CHAP. I.
_Comparison of those two virtues._
Actions of a beneficent tendency, which proceed from proper motives,
seem alone to require reward; because such alone are the approved
objects of gratitude, or excite the sympathetic gratitude of the
spectator.
Actions of a hurtful tendency, which proceed from improper motives, seem
alone to deserve punishment; because such alone are the approved objects
of resentment, or excite the sympathetic resentment of the spectator.
Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force, the mere
want of it exposes to no punishment; because the mere want of
beneficence tends to do no real positive evil. It may disappoint of the
good which might reasonably have been expected, and upon that account it
may justly excite dislike and disapprobation: it cannot, however,
provoke any resentment which mankind will go along with. The man who
does not recompense his benefactor, when he has it in his power, and
when his benefactor needs his assistance, is, no doubt, guilty of the
blackest ingratitude. The heart of every impartial spectator rejects all
fellow-feeling with the selfishness of his motives, and he is the proper
object of the highest disapprobation. But still he does no positive hurt
to any body. He only does not do that good which in propriety he ought
to have done. He is the object of hatred, a passion which is naturally
excited by impropriety of sentiment and behaviour; not of resentment, a
passion which is never properly called forth but by actions which tend
to do real and positive hurt to some particular persons. His want of
gratitude, therefore, cannot be punished. To oblige him by force to
perform what in gratitude he ought to perform, and what every impartial
spectator would approve of him for performing, would if possible, be
still more improper than his neglecting to perform it. His benefactor
would dishonour himself if he attempted by violence to constrain him to
gratitude, and it would be impertinent for any third person, who was not
the superior of either, to intermeddle. But of all the duties of
beneficence, those which gratitude recommends to us approach nearest to
what is called a perfect and complete obligation. What friendship, what
generosity, what charity, would prompt us to do with universal
approbation, is still more free, and can still less be extorted by force
than the duties of gratitude. We talk of the debt of gratitude, not of
charity, or generosity, nor even of friendship, when friendship is mere
esteem, and has not been enhanced and complicated with gratitude for
good offices.
Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for defence, and for
defence only. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of
innocence. It prompts us to beat off the mischief which is attempted to
be done to us, and to retaliate that which is already done; that the
offender may be made to repent of his injustice, and that others,
through fear of the like punishment, may be terrified from being guilty
of the like offence. It must be reserved therefore for these purposes,
nor can the spectator ever go along with it when it is exerted for any
other. But the mere want of the beneficent virtues, though it may
disappoint us of the good which might reasonably be expected, neither
does, nor attempts to do, any mischief from which we can have occasion
to defend ourselves.
There is however another virtue, of which the observance is not left to
the freedom of our own wills, which may be extorted by force, and of
which the violation exposes to resentment, and consequently to
punishment. This virtue is justice: the violation of justice is injury:
it does real and positive hurt to some particular persons, from motives
which are naturally disapproved of. It is, therefore, the proper object
of resentment, and of punishment, which is the natural consequence of
resentment. As mankind go along with, and approve of, the violence
employed to avenge the hurt which is done by injustice, so they much
more go along with, and approve of, that which is employed to prevent
and beat off the injury, and to restrain the offender from hurting his
neighbours. The person himself who meditates an injustice is sensible of
this, and feels that force may, with the utmost propriety, be made use
of, both by the person whom he is about to injure, and by others, either
to obstruct the execution of his crime, or to punish him when he has
executed it. And upon this is founded that remarkable distinction
between justice and all the other social virtues, which has of late been
particularly insisted upon by an author of very great and original
genius, that we feel ourselves to be under a stricter obligation to act
according to justice, than agreeably to friendship, charity, or
generosity; that the practice of these last mentioned virtues seems to
be left in some measure to our own choice, but that, somehow or other,
we feel ourselves to be in a peculiar manner tied, bound, and obliged to
the observation of justice. We feel, that is to say, that force may,
with the utmost propriety and with the approbation of all mankind, be
made use of to constrain us to observe the rules of the one, but not to
follow the precepts of the other.
We must always, however, carefully distinguish what is only blamable, or
the proper object of disapprobation, from what force may be employed
either to punish or to prevent. That seems blamable which falls short of
that ordinary degree of proper beneficence which experience teaches us
to expect of every body; and on the contrary, that seems praise-worthy
which goes beyond it. The ordinary degree itself, seems neither blamable
nor praise-worthy. A father, a son, a brother, who behaves to the
correspondent relation, neither better nor worse than the greater part
of men commonly do, seems properly to deserve neither praise nor blame.
He who surprises us by extraordinary and unexpected, though still proper
and suitable kindness, or on the contrary, by extraordinary and
unexpected, as well as unsuitable unkindness, seems praise-worthy in the
one case, and blamable in the other.
Even the most ordinary degree of kindness or beneficence, however,
cannot, among equals, be extorted by force. Among equals each individual
is naturally, and antecedent to the institution of civil government,
regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to
exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to
him. Every generous spectator not only approves of his conduct when he
does this, but enters so far into his sentiments as often to be willing
to assist him. When one man attacks, or robs, or attempts to murder
another, all the neighbours take the alarm, and think that they do right
when they run, either to revenge the person who has been injured, or to
defend him who is in danger of being so. But when a father fails in the
ordinary degree of parental affection towards a son, when a son seems to
want that filial reverence which might be expected to his father; when
brothers are without the usual degree of brotherly affection; when a man
shuts his breast against compassion, and refuses to relieve the misery
of his fellow-creatures, when he can with the greatest ease; in all
these cases, though every body blames the conduct, nobody imagines that
those who might have reason, perhaps, to expect more kindness, have any
right to extort it by force. The sufferer can only complain, and the
spectator can intermeddle no other way than by advice and persuasion.
Upon all such occasions, for equals to use force against one another,
would be thought the highest degree of insolence and presumption.
A superior may, indeed, sometimes, with universal approbation, oblige
those under his jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain
degree of propriety to one another. The laws of all civilized nations
oblige parents to maintain their children, and children to maintain
their parents, and impose upon men many other duties of beneficence. The
civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of preserving the
public peace by retraining injustice, but of promoting the prosperity of
the commonwealth, by establishing good discipline, and by discouraging
every sort of vice and impropriety; he may prescribe rules, therefore,
which not only prohibit mutual injuries among fellow-citizens, but
command mutual good offices to a certain degree. When the sovereign
commands what is merely indifferent, and what, antecedent to his orders,
might have been omitted without any blame, it becomes not only blamable
but punishable to disobey him. When he commands, therefore, what,
antecedent to any such order, could not have been omitted without the
greatest blame, it surely becomes much more punishable to be wanting in
obedience. Of all the duties of a law-giver, however, this, perhaps, is
that which it requires the greatest delicacy and reserve to execute with
propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the
commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking enormities, and to
push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice.
Though the mere want of beneficence seems to merit no punishment from
equals, the greater exertions of that virtue appear to deserve the
highest reward. By being productive of the greatest good, they are the
natural and approved objects of the liveliest gratitude. Though the
breach of justice, on the contrary, exposes to punishment, the
observance of the rules of that virtue seems scarce to deserve any
reward. There is, no doubt, a propriety in the practice of justice, and
it merits, upon that account, all the approbation which is due to
propriety. But as it does no real positive good, it is entitled to very
little gratitude. Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative
virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour. The man who
barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the
reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He
fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice,
and does everything which his equals can with propriety force him to do,
or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the
rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.
As every man doth, so shall it be done to him, and retaliation seems to
be the great law which is dictated to us by Nature. Beneficence and
generosity we think due to the generous and beneficent. Those whose
hearts never open to the feelings of humanity, should, we think, be shut
out in the same manner, from the affections of all their
fellow-creatures, and be allowed to live in the midst of society, as in
a great desert where there is nobody to care for them, or to inquire
after them. The violator of the laws of justice ought to be made to feel
himself that evil which he has done to another; and since no regard to
the sufferings of his brethren are capable of restraining him, he ought
to be over-awed by the fear of his own. The man who is barely innocent,
who only observes the law of justice with regard to others, and merely
abstains from hurting his neighbours, can merit only that his neighbours
in their turn should respect his innocence, and that the same laws
should be religiously observed with regard to him.
CHAP. II.
_Of the sense of justice, of remorse, and of the consciousness of
merit._
There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbour, there can be no
incitement to do evil to another, which mankind will go along with,
except just indignation for evil which that other has done to us. To
disturb his happiness merely because it stands in the way of our own, to
take from him what is of real use to him merely because it may be of
equal or more use to us, or to indulge, in this manner, at the expence
of other people, the natural preference which every man has for his own
happiness above that of other people, is what no impartial spectator can
go along with. Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally
recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself
than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.
Every man, therefore, is much more deeply interested in whatever
immediately concerns himself, than in what concerns any other man: and
to hear, perhaps, of the death of another person, with whom we have no
particular connexion, will give us less concern, will spoil our stomach,
or break our rest much less than a very insignificant disaster which has
befallen ourselves. But though the ruin of our neighbour may affect us
much less than a very small misfortune of our own, we must not ruin him
to prevent that small misfortune, nor even to prevent our own ruin. We
must, here, as in all other cases, view ourselves not so much according
to that light in which we may naturally appear to ourselves, as
according to that in which we naturally appear to others. Though every
man may, according to the proverb, be the whole world to himself, to the
rest of mankind he is a most insignificant part of it. Though his own
happiness may be of more importance to him than that of all the world
besides, to every other person it is of no more consequence than that of
any other man. Though it may be true, therefore, that every individual,
in his own breast, naturally prefers himself to all mankind, yet he
dares not look mankind in the face, and avow that he acts according to
this principle. He feels that in this preference they can never go along
with him, and that how natural soever it may be to him, it must always
appear excessive and extravagant to them. When he views himself in the
light in which he is conscious that others will view him, he sees that
to them he is but one of the multitude in no respect better than any
other in it. If he would act so as that the impartial spectator may
enter into the principles of his conduct, which is what of all things he
has the greatest desire to do, he must, upon this, as upon all other
occasions, humble the arrogance of his self-love, and bring it down to
something which other men can go along with. They will indulge it so far
as to allow him to be more anxious about, and to pursue with more
earnest assiduity, his own happiness than that of any other person. Thus
far, whenever they place themselves in his situation, they will readily
go along with him. In the race for wealth and honours, and preferments,
he may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle,
in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle, or
throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at
an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of. This
man is to them, in every respect, as good as he: they do not enter into
that self-love by which he prefers himself so much to this other, and
cannot go along with the motive from which he hurt him. They readily,
therefore, sympathize with the natural resentment of the injured, and
the offender becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. He is
sensible that he becomes so, and feels that those sentiments are ready
to burst out from all sides against him.
As the greater and more irreparable the evil that is done, the
resentment of the sufferer runs naturally the higher, so does likewise
the sympathetic indignation of the spectator, as well as the sense of
guilt in the agent. Death is the greatest evil which one man can inflict
upon another, and excites the highest degree of resentment in those who
are immediately connected with the slain. Murder, therefore, is the most
atrocious of all crimes which affect individuals only, in the sight both
of mankind, and of the person who has committed it. To be deprived of
that which we are possessed of, is a greater evil than to be
disappointed of what we have only the expectation. Breach of property,
therefore, theft and robbery, which take from us what we are possessed
of, are greater crimes than breach of contract, which only disappoints
us of what we expected. The most sacred laws of justice, therefore,
those whose violation seems to call the loudest for vengeance and
punishment, are the laws which guard the life and person of our
neighbour; the next are those which guard his property and possessions;
and last of all come those which guard what are called his personal
rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others.
The violator of the more sacred laws of justice can never reflect on the
sentiments which mankind must entertain with regard to him, without
feeling all the agonies of shame, and horror, and consternation. When
his passion is gratified, and he begins coolly to reflect upon his
conduct, he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it. They
appear now as detestable to him as they did always to other people. By
sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence which other men must
entertain for him, he becomes in some measure the object of his own
hatred and abhorrence. The situation of the person, who suffered by his
injustice, now calls upon his pity. He is grieved at the thought of it;
regrets the unhappy effects of his own conduct, and feels at the same
time that they have rendered him the proper object of the resentment and
indignation of mankind, and of what is the natural consequence of
resentment, vengeance and punishment. The thought of this perpetually
haunts him, and fills him with terror and amazement. He dares no longer
look society in the face, but imagines himself as it were rejected, and
thrown out from the affections of all mankind. He cannot hope for the
consolation of sympathy in this his greatest, and most dreadful
distress. The remembrance of his crimes has shut out all fellow-feelings
with him from the hearts of his fellow-creatures. The sentiments which
they entertain with regard to him, are the very thing which he is most
afraid of. Every thing seems hostile, and he would be glad to fly to
some inhospitable desert, where he might never more behold the face of a
human creature, nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation
of his crimes. But solitude is still more dreadful than society. His own
thoughts can present him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate,
and disastrous, the melancholy forebodings of incomprehensible misery
and ruin. The horror of solitude drives him back into society, and he
comes again into the presence of mankind, astonished to appear before
them, loaded with shame and distracted with fear, in order to supplicate
some little protection from the countenance of those very judges, who he
knows have already all unanimously condemned him. Such is the nature of
that sentiment, which is properly called remorse; of all the sentiments
which can enter the human breast the most dreadful. It is made up of
shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct; of grief for
the effects of it; of pity for those who suffer by it; and of the dread
and terror of punishment from the consciousness of the justly provoked
resentment of all rational creatures.
The opposite behaviour naturally inspires the opposite sentiment. The
man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has
performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has
served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and
gratitude, and, by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of
all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he
acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator
will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds
himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial
judge. In both these points of view his own conduct appears to him every
way agreeable. His mind, at the thought of it, is filled with
chearfulness, serenity, and composure. He is in friendship and harmony
with all mankind, and looks upon his fellow-creatures with confidence
and benevolent satisfaction, secure that he has rendered himself worthy
of their most favourable regards. In the combination of all these
sentiments consists the consciousness of merit, or of deserved reward.
CHAP. III.
_Of the utility of this constitution of nature._
It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was fitted by
nature to that situation for which he was made. All the members of human
society stand in need of each others assistance, and are likewise
exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is
reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship and
esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members
of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection,
and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices.
But though the necessary assistance should not be afforded from such
generous and disinterested motives, though among the different members
of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the
society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be
dissolved. Society may subsist among different men, as among different
merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or
affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation, or be
bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be upheld by a mercenary
exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation.
Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready
to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the
moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of
it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted
are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and
opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society among
robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite
observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another.
Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the exigence of society
than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable
state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly
destroy it.
Though Nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence, by the
pleasing consciousness of deserved reward, she has not thought it
necessary to guard and enforce the practice of it by the terrors of
merited punishment in case it should be neglected. It is the ornament
which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building, and
which it was, therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means
necessary to impose. Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that
upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense
fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in
this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care
of Nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce the
observation of justice, therefore, Nature has implanted in the human
breast that consciousness of ill desert, those terrors of merited
punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safe-guards of
the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent,
and to chastise the guilty. Men, though naturally sympathetic, feel so
little for another, with whom they have no particular connexion, in
comparison for what they feel for themselves; the misery of one, who is
merely their fellow-creature, is of so little importance to them in
comparison even of a small conveniency of their own; they have it so
much in their power to hurt him, and may have so many temptations to do
so, that if this principle did not stand up within them in his defence,
and overawe them into a respect for his innocence, they would, like wild
beasts, be at all times ready to fly upon him; and a man would enter an
assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest
artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the
mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is
contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of
the individual, and the propagation of the species. But in these, and in
all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final
cause of their several motions and organizations. The digestion of the
food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion of the several
juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for
the great purposes of animal life. Yet we never endeavour to account for
them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine
that the blood circulates, or that the food digests of its own accord,
and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or
digestion. The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end
for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various
motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they
were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not
do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them,
but to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put in motion by a
spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But
though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to
distinguish in this manner the efficient from the final cause, in
accounting for those of the mind, we are very apt to confound those two
different things with one another. When by natural principles we are led
to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason should
recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their
efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those
ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is
the wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view this cause seems sufficient
to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and the system of human
nature seems to be more simple and agreeable when all its different
operations are in this manner deduced from a single principle.
As society cannot subsist unless the laws of justice are totally
observed, as no social intercourse can take place among men who do not
generally abstain from injuring one another; the consideration of this
necessity, it has been thought, was the ground upon which we approved of
the enforcement of the laws of justice by the punishment of those who
violated them. Man, it has been said, has a natural love for society,
and desires that the union of mankind should be preserved for its own
sake, and though he himself was to derive no benefit from it. The
orderly and flourishing state of society is agreeable to him, and he
takes delight in contemplating it. Its disorder and confusion, on the
contrary, is the object of his aversion, and he is chagrined at whatever
tends to produce it. He is sensible too that his own interest is
connected with the prosperity of society, and that the happiness,
perhaps the preservation of his existence, depends upon its
preservation. Upon every account, therefore, he has an abhorrence at
whatever can tend to destroy society, and is willing to make use of
every means, which can hinder so hated and so dreadful an event.
Injustice necessarily tends to destroy it. Every appearance of
injustice, therefore, alarms him, and he runs, if I may say so, to stop
the progress of what, if allowed to go on, would quickly put an end to
every thing that is dear to him. If he cannot restrain it by gentle and
fair means, he must bear it down by force and violence, and at any rate
must put a stop to its further progress. Hence it is, they say, that he
often approves of the enforcement of the law of justice even by the
capital punishment of those who violate them. The disturber of the
public peace is hereby removed out of the world, and others are
terrified by his fate from imitating his example.
Such is the account commonly given of our approbation of the punishment
of injustice. And so far this account is undoubtedly true, that we
frequently have occasion to confirm our natural sense of the propriety
and fitness of punishment, by reflecting how necessary it is for
preserving the order of society. When the guilty is about to suffer that
just retaliation, which the natural indignation of mankind tells them is
due to his crimes; when the insolence of his injustice is broken and
humbled by the terror of his approaching punishment; when he ceases to
be an object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an
object of pity. The thought of what he is about to suffer extinguishes
their resentment for the sufferings of others to which he has given
occasion. They are disposed to pardon and forgive him, and to save him
from that punishment, which in all their cool hours they had considered
as the retribution due to such crimes. Here, therefore, they have
occasion to call to their assistance the consideration of the general
interest of society. They counterbalance the impulse of this weak and
partial humanity by the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and
comprehensive. They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the
innocent, and oppose to the emotions of compassion which they feel for a
particular person, a more enlarged compassion which they feel for
mankind.
Sometimes too we have occasion to defend the propriety of observing the
general rules of justice by the consideration of their necessity to the
support of society. We frequently hear the young and the licentious
ridiculing the most sacred rules of morality, and professing, sometimes
from the corruption, but more frequently from the vanity of their
hearts, the most abominable maxims of conduct. Our indignation rouses,
and we are eager to refute and expose such detestable principles. But
though it is their intrinsic hatefulness and detestableness, which
originally inflames us against them, we are unwilling to assign this as
the sole reason why we condemn them, or to pretend that it is merely
because we ourselves hate and detest them. The reason, we think, would
not appear to be conclusive. Yet why should it not; if we hate and
detest them because they are the natural and proper objects of hatred
and detestation? But when we are asked why we should not act in such or
such a manner, the very question seems to suppose that, to those who ask
it, this manner of acting does not appear to be for its own sake the
natural and proper object of those sentiments. We must show them,
therefore, that it ought to be so for the sake of something else. Upon
this account we generally cast about for other arguments, and the
consideration which first occurs to us is the disorder and confusion of
society which would result from the universal prevalence of such
practices. We seldom fail, therefore, to insist upon this topic.
But though it commonly requires no great discernment to see the
destructive tendency of all licentious practices to the welfare of
society, it is seldom this consideration which first animates us against
them. All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud,
perfidy, and injustice, and delight to see them punished. But few men
have reflected upon the necessity of justice to the existence of
society, how obvious soever that necessity may appear to be.
That it is not a regard to the preservation of society, which originally
interests us in the punishment of crimes committed against individuals,
may be demonstrated by many obvious considerations. The concern which we
take in the fortune and happiness of individuals does not, in common
cases, arise from that which we take in the fortune and happiness of
society. We are no more concerned for the destruction or loss of a
single man, because this man is a member or part of society, and because
we should be concerned for the destruction of society, than we are
concerned for the loss of a single guinea, because this guinea is a part
of a thousand guineas, and because we should be concerned for the loss
of the whole sum. In neither case does our regard for the individuals
arise from our regard for the multitude: but in both cases our regard
for the multitude is compounded and made up of the particular regards
which we feel for the different individuals of which it is composed. As
when a small sum is unjustly taken from us we do not so much prosecute
the injury from a regard to the preservation of our whole fortune, as
from a regard to that particular sum which we have lost; so when a
single man is injured or destroyed, we demand the punishment of the
wrong that has been done to him, not so much from a concern for the
general interest of society, as from a concern for that very individual
who has been injured. It is to be observed, however, that this concern
does not necessarily include in it any degree of those exquisite
sentiments which are commonly called love, esteem, and affection, and by
which we distinguish our particular friends and acquaintance. The
concern which is requisite for this is no more than the general
fellow-feeling which we have with every man merely because he is our
fellow-creature. We enter into the resentment even of an odious person,
when he is injured by those to whom he has given no provocation. Our
disapprobation of his ordinary character and conduct, does not in this
case altogether prevent our fellow-feeling with his natural indignation;
though with those who are not either extremely candid, or who have not
been accustomed to correct and regulate their natural sentiments by
general rules, it is very apt to damp it.
Upon some occasions, indeed, we both punish and approve of punishment,
merely from a view to the general interest of society, which, we
imagine, cannot otherwise be secured. Of this kind are all the
punishments inflicted for breaches of what is called either civil
police, or military discipline. Such crimes do not immediately or
directly hurt any particular person; but their remote consequences, it
is supposed, do produce, or might produce, either a considerable
inconveniency, or a great disorder in the society. A centinel, for
example, who falls asleep upon his watch, suffers death by the law of
war, because such carelessness might endanger the whole army. This
severity may, upon many occasions, appear necessary, and, for that
reason, just and proper. When the preservation of an individual is
inconsistent with the safety of a multitude, nothing can be more just
than that the many should be preferred to the one. Yet this punishment,
how necessary soever, always appears to be excessively severe. The
natural atrocity of the crime seems to be so little, and the punishment
so great, that it is with great difficulty that our hearts can reconcile
itself to it. Though such carelessness appears very blamable, yet the
thought of this crime does not naturally excite any such resentment, as
would prompt us to take such dreadful revenge. A man of humanity must
recollect himself, must make an effort, and exert his whole firmness and
resolution, before he can bring himself either to inflict it, or to go
along with it when it is inflicted by others. It is not, however, in
this manner, that he looks upon the just punishment of an ungrateful
murderer or parricide. His heart, in this case, applauds with ardour,
and even with transport, the just retaliation which seems due to such
detestable crimes, and which, if, by any accident, they should happen to
escape, he would be highly enraged and disappointed. The very different
sentiment with which the spectator views those different punishments, is
a proof that his approbation of the one is far from being founded upon
the same principles with that of the other. He looks upon the centinel
as an unfortunate victim, who, indeed, must, and ought to be, devoted to
the safety of numbers, but whom still, in his heart, he would be glad to
save; and he is only sorry, that the interest of the many should oppose
it. But if the murderer should escape from punishment, it would excite
his highest indignation, and he would call upon God to avenge, in
another world, that crime which the injustice of mankind had neglected
to chastise upon earth.
For it well deserves to be taken notice of, that we are so far from
imagining that injustice ought to be punished in this life, merely on
account of the order of society, which cannot otherwise be maintained,
that Nature teaches us to hope, and religion, we suppose, authorizes us
to expect, that it will be punished, even in a life to come. Our sense
of its ill desert pursues it, if I may say so, even beyond the grave,
though the example of its punishment there cannot serve to deter the
rest of mankind, who see it not, who know it not, from being guilty of
the like practices here. The justice of God, however, we think, still
requires, that he should hereafter avenge the injuries of the widow and
the fatherless, who are here so often insulted with impunity.
That the Deity loves virtue and hates vice, as a voluptuous man loves
riches and hates poverty, not for their own sakes, but for the effects
which they tend to produce; that he loves the one, only because it
promotes the happiness of society, which his benevolence prompts him to
desire; and that he hates the other, only because it occasions the
misery of mankind, which the same divine quality renders the object of
his aversion; is not the doctrine of untaught nature, but of an
artificial refinement of reason and philosophy. Our untaught, natural
sentiments, all prompt us to believe, that as perfect virtue is supposed
necessarily to appear to the Deity, as it does to us, for its own sake,
and without any further view, the natural and proper object of love and
reward, so must vice, of hatred and punishment. That the gods neither
resent nor hurt, was the general maxim of all the different sects of the
ancient philosophy: and if, by resenting, be understood, that violent
and disorderly perturbation, which often distracts and confounds the
human breast; or if, by hurting, be understood, the doing mischief
wantonly, and without regard to propriety or justice, such weakness is
undoubtedly unworthy of the divine perfection. But if it be meant, that
vice does not appear to the Deity to be, for its own sake, the object of
abhorrence and aversion, and what, for its own sake, it is fit and right
should be punished, the truth of this maxim seems repugnant to some very
natural feelings. If we consult our natural sentiments, we are even apt
to fear, lest, before the holiness of God, vice should appear to be more
worthy of punishment than the weakness and imperfection of human virtue
can ever seem to be of reward. Man, when about to appear before a Being
of infinite perfection, can feel but little confidence in his own merit,
or in the imperfect propriety of his own conduct. In the presence of his
fellow-creatures, he may even justly elevate himself, and may often have
reason to think highly of his own character and conduct, compared to the
still greater imperfection of theirs. But the case is quite different
when about to appear before his infinite Creator. To such a Being, he
fears, that his littleness and weakness can scarce ever appear the
proper object, either of esteem or of reward. But he can easily
conceive, how the numberless violations of duty, of which he has been
guilty, should render him the proper object of aversion and punishment;
and he thinks he can see no reason why the divine indignation should not
be let loose without any restraint, upon so vile an insect, as he
imagines that he himself must appear to be. If he would still hope for
happiness, he suspects that he cannot demand it from the justice, but
that he must entreat it from the mercy of God. Repentance, sorrow,
humility, contrition at the thought of his past conduct, seem, upon this
account, the sentiments which become him, and to be the only means which
he has left for appeasing that wrath which, he knows, he has justly
provoked. He even distrusts the efficacy of all these, and naturally
fears, lest the wisdom of God should not, like the weakness of man, be
prevailed upon to spare the crime by the most importunate lamentations
of the criminal. Some other intercession, some other sacrifice, some
other atonement, he imagines must be made for him, beyond what he
himself is capable of making, before the purity of the divine justice
can be reconciled to his manifold offences. The doctrines of revelation
coincide, in every respect, with those original anticipations of nature;
and as they teach us how little we can depend upon the imperfection of
our own virtue, so they show us, at the same time, that the most
powerful intercession has been made, and that the most dreadful
atonement has been paid for our manifold transgressions and iniquities.
SECTION III.
Of the influence of fortune upon the sentiments of mankind, with regard
to the merit or demerit of actions.
INTRODUCTION.
Whatever praise or blame can be due to any action, must belong either,
first, to the intention or affection of the heart, from which it
proceeds; or, secondly, to the external action or movement of the body,
which this affection gives occasion to; or, last, to all the good or bad
consequences, which actually, and in fact, proceed from it. These three
different things constitute the whole nature and circumstances of the
action, and must be the foundation of whatever quality can belong to it.
That the two last of these three circumstances cannot be the foundation
of any praise or blame, is abundantly evident; nor has the contrary ever
been asserted by any body. The external action or movement of the body
is often the same in the most innocent and in the most blamable actions.
He who shoots a bird, and he who shoots a man, both of them perform the
same external movement: each of them draws the tricker of a gun. The
consequences which actually, and in fact, happen to proceed from any
action, are, if possible, still more indifferent either to praise or
blame, than even the external movement of the body. As they depend, not
upon the agent, but upon fortune, they cannot be the proper foundation
for any sentiment, of which his character and conduct are the objects.
The only consequences for which he can be answerable, or by which he can
deserve either approbation or disapprobation of any kind, are those
which were some way or other intended, or those which, at least, show
some agreeable or disagreeable quality in the intention of the heart,
from which he acted. To the intention or affection of the heart,
therefore, to the propriety or impropriety, to the beneficence or
hurtfulness of the design, all praise or blame, all approbation or
disapprobation, of any kind, which can justly be bestowed upon any
action, must ultimately belong.
When this maxim is thus proposed in abstract and general terms, there is
no body who does not agree to it. Its self-evident justice is
acknowledged by all the world, and there is not a dissenting voice among
all mankind. Every body allows, that how different soever the
accidental, the unintended and unforeseen consequences of different
actions, yet, if the intentions or affections from which they arose
were, on the one hand, equally proper and equally beneficent, or, on the
other, equally improper and equally malevolent, the merit or demerit of
the actions is still the same, and the agent is equally the suitable
object either of gratitude or of resentment.
But how well soever we may seem to be persuaded of the truth of this
equitable maxim, when we consider it after this manner, in abstract, yet
when we come to particular cases, the actual consequences which happen
to proceed from any action, have a very great effect upon our sentiments
concerning its merit or demerit, and almost always either enhance or
diminish our sense of both. Scarce, in any one instance, perhaps, will
our sentiments be found, after examination, to be entirely regulated by
this rule, which we all acknowledge ought entirely to regulate them.
This irregularity of sentiment, which every body feels, which scarce any
body is sufficiently aware of, and which no body is willing to
acknowledge, I proceed now to explain; and I shall consider, first, the
cause which gives occasion to it, or the mechanism by which nature
produces it; secondly, the extent of its influence; and, last of all,
the end which it answers, or the purpose which the Author of nature
seems to have intended by it.
CHAP. I.
_Of the causes of this influence of fortune._
The causes of pain and pleasure, whatever they are, or however they
operate, seem to be the objects, which, in all animals, immediately
excite those two passions of gratitude and resentment. They are excited
by inanimated, as well as by animated objects. We are angry, for a
moment, even at the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barks
at it, a choleric man is apt to curse it. The least reflection, indeed,
corrects this sentiment, and we soon become sensible, that what has no
feeling is a very improper object of revenge. When the mischief,
however, is very great, the object which caused it becomes disagreeable
to us ever after, and we take pleasure to burn or destroy it. We should
treat, in this manner, the instrument which had accidentally been the
cause of the death of a friend, and we should often think ourselves
guilty of a sort of inhumanity, if we neglected to vent this absurd sort
of vengeance upon it.
We conceive, in the same manner, a sort of gratitude for those
inanimated objects, which have been the causes of great, or frequent
pleasure to us. The sailor, who, as soon as he got ashore, should mend
his fire with the plank upon which he had just escaped from a shipwreck,
would seem to be guilty of an unnatural action. We should expect that he
would rather preserve it with care and affection, as a monument that
was, in some measure, dear to him. A man grows fond of a snuff-box, of a
pen-knife, of a staff which he has long made use of, and conceives
something like a real love and affection for them. If he breaks or loses
them, he is vexed out of all proportion to the value of the damage. The
house which we have long lived in, the tree, whose verdure and shade we
have long enjoyed, are both looked upon with a sort of respect that
seems due to such benefactors. The decay of the one, or the ruin of the
other, affects us with a kind of melancholy, though we should sustain no
loss by it. The Dryads and the Lares of the ancients, a sort of genii of
trees and houses, were probably first suggested by this sort of
affection, which the authors of those superstitions felt for such
objects, and which seemed unreasonable, if there was nothing animated
about them.
But, before any thing can be the proper object of gratitude or
resentment, it must not only be the cause of pleasure or pain, it must
likewise be capable of feeling them. Without this other quality, those
passions cannot vent themselves with any sort of satisfaction upon it.
As they are excited by the causes of pleasure and pain, so their
gratification consists in retaliating those sensations upon what gave
occasion to them; which it is to no purpose to attempt upon what has no
sensibility. Animals, therefore, are less improper objects of gratitude
and resentment than inanimated objects. The dog that bites, the ox that
gores, are both of them punished. If they have been the causes of the
death of any person, neither the public, nor the relations of the slain,
can be satisfied, unless they are put to death in their turn: nor is
this merely for the security of the living, but in some measure, to
revenge the injury of the dead. Those animals, on the contrary, that
have been remarkably serviceable to their masters, become the objects of
a very lively gratitude. We are shocked at the brutality of that
officer, mentioned in the Turkish Spy, who stabbed the horse that had
carried him a-cross an arm of the sea, lest that animal should
afterwards distinguish some other person by a similar adventure.
But, though animals are not only the causes of pleasure and pain, but
are also capable of feeling those sensations, they are still far from
being complete and perfect objects, either of gratitude or resentment;
and those passions still feel, that there is something wanting to their
entire gratification. What gratitude chiefly desires, is not only to
make the benefactor feel pleasure in his turn, but to make him conscious
that he meets with this reward on account of his past conduct, to make
him pleased with that conduct, and to satisfy him that the person upon
whom he bestowed his good offices was not unworthy of them. What most of
all charms us in our benefactor, is the concord between his sentiments
and our own, with regard to what interests us so nearly as the worth of
our own character, and the esteem that is due to us. We are delighted to
find a person who values us as well as we value ourselves, and
distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike
that with which we distinguish ourselves. To maintain in him these
agreeable and flattering sentiments, is one of the chief ends proposed
by the returns we are disposed to make to him. A generous mind often
disdains the interested thought of extorting new favours from its
benefactor, by what may be called the importunities of its gratitude.
But to preserve and to increase his esteem, is an interest which the
greatest mind does not think unworthy of its attention. And this is the
foundation of what I formerly observed, that when we cannot enter into
the motives of our benefactor, when his conduct and character appear
unworthy of our approbation, let his services have been ever so great,
our gratitude is always sensibly diminished. We are less flattered by
the distinction; and to preserve the esteem of so weak, or so worthless
a patron, seems to be an object which does not deserve to be pursued for
its own sake.
The object, on the contrary, which resentment is chiefly intent upon, is
not so much to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, as to make him
conscious that he feels it upon account of his past conduct, to make him
repent of that conduct, and to make him sensible, that the person whom
he injured did not deserve to be treated in that manner. What chiefly
enrages us against the man who injures or insults us, is the little
account which he seems to make of us, the unreasonable preference which
he gives to himself above us, and that absurd self-love, by which he
seems to imagine, that other people may be sacrificed at any time, to
his conveniency or his humour. The glaring impropriety of this conduct,
the gross insolence and injustice which it seems to involve in it, often
shock and exasperate us more than all the mischief which we have
suffered. To bring him back to a more just sense of what is due to other
people, to make him sensible of what he owes us, and of the wrong that
he has done to us, is frequently the principal end proposed in our
revenge, which is always imperfect when it cannot accomplish this. When
our enemy appears to have done us no injury, when we are sensible that
he acted quite properly, that, in his situation, we should have done the
same thing, and that we deserved from him all the mischief we met with;
in that case, if we have the least spark either of candour or justice,
we can entertain no sort of resentment.
Before any thing, therefore, can be the complete and proper object,
either of gratitude or resentment, it must possess three different
qualifications. First, it must be the cause of pleasure in the one case,
and of pain in the other. Secondly, it must be capable of feeling those
sensations. And, thirdly, it must not only have produced those
sensations, but it must have produced them from design, and from a
design that is approved of in the one case, and disapproved of in the
other. It is by the first qualification, that any object is capable of
exciting those passions: it is by the second, that it is in any respect
capable of gratifying them: the third qualification is both necessary
for their complete satisfaction, and as it gives a pleasure or pain that
is both exquisite and peculiar, it is likewise an additional exciting
cause of those passions.
As what gives pleasure or pain, therefore, either in one way or another,
is the sole exciting cause of gratitude and resentment; though the
intentions of any person should be ever so proper and beneficent, on the
one hand, or ever so improper and malevolent on the other; yet, if he
has failed in producing either the good or evil which he intended, as
one of the exciting causes is wanting in both cases, less gratitude
seems due to him in the one, and less resentment in the other. And, on
the contrary, though in the intentions of any person, there was either
no laudable degree of benevolence on the one hand, or no blamable degree
of malice on the other; yet, if his actions should produce either great
good or great evil, as one of the exciting causes takes place upon both
these occasions, some gratitude is apt to arise towards him in the one,
and some resentment in the other. A shadow of merit seems to fall upon
him in the first, a shadow of demerit in the second. And, as the
consequences of actions are altogether under the empire of Fortune,
hence arises her influence upon the sentiments of mankind, with regard
to merit and demerit.
CHAP. II.
_Of the extent of this influence of fortune._
The effect of this influence of fortune is, first, to diminish our sense
of the merit or demerit of those actions which arose from the most
laudable or blamable intentions, when they fail of producing their
proposed effects: and, secondly, to increase our sense of the merit or
demerit of actions, beyond what is due to the motives or affections from
which they proceed, when they accidentally give occasion either to
extraordinary pleasure or pain.
1. First, I say, though the intentions of any person should be ever so
proper and beneficent, on the one hand, or ever so improper and
malevolent, on the other, yet, if they fail in producing their effects,
his merit seems imperfect in the one case, and his demerit incomplete in
the other. Nor is this irregularity of sentiment felt only by those who
are immediately affected by the consequences of any action. It is felt,
in some measure, even by the impartial spectator. The man who solicits
an office for another, without obtaining it, is regarded as his friend,
and seems to deserve his love and affection. But the man who not only
solicits, but procures it, is more peculiarly considered as his patron
and benefactor, and is entitled to his respect and gratitude. The person
obliged, we are apt to think, may with some justice, imagine himself on
a level with the first: but we cannot enter into his sentiments, if he
does not feel himself inferior to the second. It is common indeed to
say, that we are equally obliged to the man who has endeavoured to serve
us, as to him who actually did so. It is the speech which we constantly
make upon every unsuccessful attempt of this kind; but which, like all
other fine speeches, must be understood with a grain of allowance. The
sentiments which a man of generosity entertains for the friend who
fails, may often indeed be nearly the same with those which he conceives
for him who succeeds: and the more generous he is, the more nearly will
those sentiments approach to an exact level. With the truly generous, to
be beloved, to be esteemed by those whom they themselves think worthy of
esteem, gives more pleasure, and thereby excites more gratitude, than
all the advantages which they can ever expect from those sentiments.
When they lose those advantages therefore, they seem to lose but a
trifle, which is scarce worth regarding. They still however lose
something. Their pleasure therefore, and consequently their gratitude,
is not perfectly complete: and accordingly if, between the friend who
fails and the friend who succeeds, all other circumstances are equal,
there will, even in the noblest and the best mind, be some little
difference of affection in favour of him who succeeds. Nay, so unjust
are mankind in this respect, that though the intended benefit should be
procured, yet if it is not procured by the means of a particular
benefactor, they are apt to think that less gratitude is due to the man,
who with the best intentions in the world could do no more than help it
a little forward. As their gratitude is in this case divided among the
different persons who contributed to their pleasure, a smaller share of
it seems due to any one. Such a person, we hear men commonly say,
intended no doubt to serve us; and we really believe exerted himself to
the utmost of his abilities for that purpose. We are not, however,
obliged to him for this benefit; since had it not been for the
concurrence of others, all that he could have done would never have
brought it about. This consideration, they imagine, should, even in the
eyes of the impartial spectator, diminish the debt which they owe to
him. The person himself who has unsuccessfully endeavoured to confer a
benefit, has by no means the same dependency upon the gratitude of the
man whom he meant to oblige, nor the same sense of his own merit towards
him, which he would have had in the case of success.
Even the merit of talents and abilities which some accident has hindered
from producing their effects, seems in some measure imperfect, even to
those who are fully convinced of their capacity to produce them. The
general who has been hindered by the envy of ministers from gaining some
great advantage over the enemies of his country, regrets the loss of the
opportunity for ever after. Nor is it only upon account of the public
that he regrets it. He laments that he was hindered from performing an
action which would have added a new lustre to his character in his own
eyes, as well as in those of every other person. It satisfies neither
himself nor others to reflect that the plan or design was all that
depended on him, that no greater capacity was required to execute it
than what was necessary to concert it: that he was allowed to be every
way capable of executing it, and that had he been permitted to go on,
success was infallible. He still did not execute it; and though he might
deserve all the approbation which is due to a magnanimous and great
design, he still wanted the actual merit of having performed a great
action. To take the management of any affair of public concern from the
man who has almost brought it to a conclusion, is regarded as the most
invidious injustice. As he had done so much, he should, we think, have
been allowed to acquire the complete merit of putting an end to it. It
was objected to Pompey, that he came in upon the victories of Lucullus,
and gathered those laurels which were due to the fortune and valour of
another. The glory of Lucullus, it seems, was less complete even in the
opinion of his own friends, when he was not permitted to finish that
conquest which his conduct and courage had put in the power of almost
any man to finish. It mortifies an architect when his plans are either
not executed at all, or when they are so far altered as to spoil the
effect of the building. The plan, however, is all that depends upon the
architect. The whole of his genius is, to good judges, as completely
discovered in that as in the actual execution. But a plan does not, even
to the most intelligent, give the same pleasure as a noble and
magnificent building. They may discover as much both of taste and genius
in the one as in the other. But their effects are still vastly
different, and the amusement derived from the first, never approaches to
the wonder and admiration which are sometimes excited by the second. We
may believe of many men, that their talents are superior to those of
Cæsar and Alexander; and that in the same situations they would perform
still greater actions. In the mean time, however, we do not behold them
with that astonishment and admiration with which those two heroes have
been regarded in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind
may approve of them more, but they want the splendor of great actions to
dazzle and transport it. The superiority of virtues and talents have
not, even upon those who acknowledge that superiority, the same effect
with the superiority of atchievements.
As the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good seems thus, in the
eyes of ungrateful mankind, to be diminished by the miscarriage, so does
likewise the demerit of an unsuccessful attempt to do evil. The design
to commit a crime, how clearly soever it may be proved, is scarce ever
punished with the same severity as the actual commission of it. The case
of treason is perhaps the only exception. That crime immediately
affecting the being of the government itself, the government is
naturally more jealous of it than of any other. In the punishment of
treason, the sovereign resents the injuries which are immediately done
to himself: in the punishment of other crimes, he resents those which
are done to other men. It is his own resentment which he indulges in the
one case: it is that of his subjects which by sympathy he enters into it
in the other. In the first case, therefore, as he judges in his own
cause, he is very apt to be more violent and sanguinary in his
punishments than the impartial spectator can approve of. His resentment
too rises here upon smaller occasions, and does not always, as in other
cases, wait for the perpetration of the crime, or even for the attempt
to commit it. A treasonable concert, though nothing has been done, or
even attempted in consequence of it, nay, a treasonable conversation, is
in many countries punished in the same manner as the actual commission
of treason. With regard to all other crimes, the mere design, upon which
no attempt has followed, is seldom punished at all, and is never
punished severely. A criminal design, and a criminal action, it may be
said indeed, do not necessarily suppose the same degree of depravity,
and ought not therefore to be subjected to the same punishment. We are
capable, it may be said, of resolving, and even of taking measures to
execute, many things which, when it comes to the point, we feel
ourselves altogether incapable of executing. But this reason can have no
place when the design has been carried the length of the last attempt.
The man, however, who fires a pistol at his enemy, but misses him, is
punished with death by the laws of scarce any country. By the old law of
Scotland, though he should wound him, yet, unless death ensues within a
certain time, the assassin is not liable to the last punishment. The
resentment of mankind, however, runs so high against this crime, their
terror for the man who shows himself capable of committing it, is so
great, that the mere attempt to commit it ought in all countries to be
capital. The attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always punished
very lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all. The thief, whose
hand has been caught in his neighbour’s pocket before he had taken any
thing out of it, is punished with ignominy only. If he had got time to
take away an handkerchief, he would have been put to death. The
house-breaker, who has been found setting a ladder to his neighbour’s
window, but had not got into it, is not exposed to the capital
punishment. The attempt to ravish is not punished as a rape. The attempt
to seduce a married woman is not punished at all, though seduction is
punished severely. Our resentment against the person who only attempted
to do a mischief, is seldom so strong as to bear us out in inflicting
the same punishment upon him, which we should have thought due if he had
actually done it. In the one case, the joy of our deliverance alleviates
our sense of the atrocity of his conduct; in the other, the grief of our
misfortune increases it. His real demerit, however, is undoubtedly the
same in both cases, since his intentions were equally criminal: and
there is in this respect, therefore, an irregularity in the sentiments
of all men, and a consequent relaxation of discipline in the laws of, I
believe, all nations, of the most civilized, as well as of the most
barbarous. The humanity of a civilized people disposes them either to
dispense with, or to mitigate punishments wherever their natural
indignation is not goaded on by the consequences of the crime.
Barbarians, on the other hand, when no actual consequence has happened
from any action, are not apt to be very delicate or inquisitive about
the motives.
The person himself who either from passion, or from the influence of bad
company, has resolved, and perhaps taken measures to perpetrate some
crime, but who has fortunately been prevented by an accident which put
it out of his power, is sure, if he has any remains of conscience, to
regard this event all his life after as a great and signal deliverance.
He can never think of it without returning thanks to Heaven for having
been thus graciously pleased to save him from the guilt in which he was
just ready to plunge himself, and to hinder him from rendering all the
rest of his life a scene of horror, remorse, and repentance. But though
his hands are innocent, he is conscious that his heart is equally guilty
as if he had actually executed what he was so fully resolved upon. It
gives great ease to his conscience, however, to consider that the crime
was not executed, though he knows that the failure arose from no virtue
in him. He still considers himself as less deserving of punishment and
resentment; and this good fortune either diminishes, or takes away
altogether, all sense of guilt. To remember how much he was resolved
upon it, has no other effect than to make him regard his escape as the
greater and more miraculous: for he still fancies that he has escaped,
and he looks back upon the danger to which his peace of mind was
exposed, with that terror, with which one who is in safety may sometimes
remember the hazard he was in of falling over a precipice, and shudder
with horror at the thought.
2. The second effect of this influence of fortune, is to increase our
sense of the merit or demerit of actions beyond what is due to the
motives or affection from which they proceed, when they happen to give
occasion to extraordinary pleasure or pain. The agreeable or
disagreeable effects of the action often throw a shadow of merit or
demerit upon the agent, though in his intention there was nothing that
deserved either praise or blame, or at least that deserved them in the
degree in which we are apt to bestow them. Thus, even the messenger of
bad news is disagreeable to us, and, on the contrary, we feel a sort of
gratitude for the man who brings us good tidings. For a moment we look
upon them both as the authors, the one of our good, the other of our bad
fortune, and regard them in some measure as if they had really brought
about the events which they only give an account of. The first author of
our joy is naturally the object of a transitory gratitude: we embrace
him with warmth and affection, and should be glad, during the instant of
our prosperity, to reward him as for some signal service. By the custom
of all courts, the officer who brings the news of a victory, is entitled
to considerable preferments, and the general always chuses one of his
principal favourites to go upon so agreeable an errand. The first author
of our sorrow is, on the contrary, just as naturally the object of a
transitory resentment. We can scarce avoid looking upon him with chagrin
and uneasiness; and the rude and brutal are apt to vent upon him that
spleen which his intelligence gives occasion to. Tigranes, King of
Armenia, struck off the head of the man who brought him the first
account of the approach of a formidable enemy. To punish in this manner
the author of bad tidings, seems barbarous and inhuman: yet, to reward
the messenger of good news, is not disagreeable to us; we think it
suitable to the bounty of kings. But why do we make this difference,
since, if there is no fault in the one, neither is there any merit in
the other? It is because any sort of reason seems sufficient to
authorize the exertion of the social and benevolent affections; but it
requires the most solid and substantial to make us enter into that of
the unsocial and malevolent.
But though in general we are averse to enter into the unsocial and
malevolent affections, though we lay it down for a rule that we ought
never to approve of their gratification, unless so far as the malicious
and unjust intention of the person, against whom they are directed
renders him their proper object; yet, upon some occasions, we relax of
this severity. When the negligence of one man has occasioned some
unintended damage to another, we generally enter so far into the
resentment of the sufferer, as to approve of his inflicting a punishment
upon the offender much beyond what the offence will have appeared to
deserve, had no such unlucky consequence followed from it.
There is a degree of negligence, which would appear to deserve some
chastisement though it should occasion no damage to any body. Thus, if a
person should throw a large stone over a wall into a public street
without giving warning to those who might be passing by, and without
regarding where it was likely to fall, he would undoubtedly deserve some
chastisement. A very accurate police would punish so absurd an action,
even though it had done no mischief. The person who has been guilty of
it, shows an insolent contempt of the happiness and safety of others.
There is real injustice in his conduct. He wantonly exposes his
neighbour to what no man in his senses would chuse to expose himself,
and evidently wants that sense of what is due to his fellow-creatures
which is the basis of justice and of society. Gross negligence therefore
is, in the law, said to be almost equal to malicious design[3]. When any
unlucky consequences happen from such carelessness, the person who has
been guilty of it is often punished as if he had really intended those
consequences; and his conduct, which was only thoughtless and insolent,
and what deserved some chastisement, is considered as atrocious, and as
liable to the severest punishment. Thus if, by the imprudent action
above-mentioned, he should accidentally kill a man, he is, by the laws
of many countries, particularly by the old law of Scotland, liable to
the last punishment. And though this is no doubt excessively severe, it
is not altogether inconsistent with our natural sentiments. Our just
indignation against the folly and inhumanity of his conduct is
exasperated by our sympathy with the unfortunate sufferer. Nothing
however would appear more shocking to our natural sense of equity, than
to bring a man to the scaffold merely for having thrown a stone
carelessly into the street without hurting any body. The folly and
inhumanity of his conduct, however, would in this case be the same; but
still our sentiments would be very different. The consideration of this
difference may satisfy us how much the indignation, even of the
spectator, is apt to be animated by the actual consequences of the
action. In cases of this kind there will, if I am not mistaken, be found
a great degree of severity in the laws of almost all nations; as I have
already observed that in those of an opposite kind there was a very
general relaxation of discipline.
Footnote 3:
Lata culpa prope dolum est.
There is another degree of negligence which does not involve in it any
sort of injustice. The person who is guilty of it treats his neighbour
as he treats himself, means no harm to any body, and is far from
entertaining any insolent contempt for the safety and happiness of
others. He is not, however, so careful and circumspect in his conduct as
he ought to be, and deserves upon this account some degree of blame and
censure, but no sort of punishment. Yet if by a negligence[4] of this
kind he should occasion some damage to another person, he is by the laws
of, I believe, all countries, obliged to compensate it. And though this
is no doubt a real punishment, and what no mortal would have thought of
inflicting upon him, had it not been for the unlucky accident which his
conduct gave occasion to; yet this decision of the law is approved of by
the natural sentiments of all mankind. Nothing, we think, can be more
just than that one man should not suffer by the carelessness of another;
and that the damage occasioned by blamable negligence should be made up
by the person who was guilty of it.
Footnote 4:
Culpa levis.
There is another species of negligence[5], which consists merely in a
want of the most anxious timidity and circumspection, with regard to all
the possible consequences of our actions. The want of this painful
attention, when no bad consequences follow from it, is so far from being
regarded as blamable, that the contrary quality is rather considered as
such. That timid circumspection which is afraid of every thing, is never
regarded as a virtue, but as a quality which more than any other
incapacitates for action and business. Yet when, from a want of this
excessive care, a person happens to occasion some damage to another, he
is often by the law obliged to compensate it. Thus, by the Aquilian law,
the man, who not being able to manage a horse that had accidentally
taken fright, should happen to ride down his neighbour’s slave, is
obliged to compensate the damage. When an accident of this kind happens,
we are apt to think that he ought not to have rode such a horse, and to
regard his attempting it as an unpardonable levity; though without this
accident we should not only have made no such reflection, but should
have regarded his refusing it as the effect of timid weakness, and of an
anxiety about merely possible events, which it is to no purpose to be
aware of. The person himself, who by an accident even of this kind has
involuntarily hurt another, seems to have some sense of his own ill
desert, with regard to him. He naturally runs up to the sufferer to
express his concern for what has happened, and to make every
acknowledgment in his power. If he has any sensibility, he necessarily
desires to compensate the damage, and to do every thing he can to
appease that animal resentment, which he is sensible will be apt to
arise in the breast of the sufferer. To make no apology, to offer no
atonement, is regarded as the highest brutality. Yet why should he make
an apology more than any other person? Why should he, since he was
equally innocent with any other by-stander, be thus singled out from
among all mankind, to make up for the bad fortune of another? This task
would surely never be imposed upon him, did not even the impartial
spectator feel some indulgence for what may be regarded as the unjust
resentment of that other.
Footnote 5:
Culpa levissima.
CHAP. III.
_Of the final cause of this irregularity of sentiments._
Such is the effect of the good or bad consequence of actions upon the
sentiments both of the person who performs them, and of others; and
thus, Fortune, which governs the world, has some influence where we
should be least willing to allow her any, and directs in some measure
the sentiments of mankind, with regard to the character and conduct both
of themselves and others. That the world judges by the event, and not by
the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great
discouragement of virtue. Every body agrees to the general maxim, that
as the event does not depend on the agent, it ought to have no influence
upon your sentiments, with regard to the merit or propriety of his
conduct. But when we come to particulars, we find that our sentiments
are scarce in any one instance exactly conformable to what this
equitable maxim would direct. The happy or unprosperous event of any
action, is not only apt to give us a good or bad opinion of the prudence
with which it was conducted, but almost always too animates our
gratitude or resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the
design.
Nature, however, when the implanted the seeds of this irregularity in
the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended
the happiness and perfection of the species. If the hurtfulness of the
design, if the malevolence of the affection, were alone the causes which
excited our resentment, we should feel all the furies of that passion
against any person in whose breast we suspected or believed such designs
or affections were harboured, though they had never broke out into any
actions. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions, would become the objects of
punishment; and if the indignation of mankind ran as high against them
as against actions; if the baseness of the thought which had given birth
to no action, seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for
vengeance as the baseness of the action, every court of judicature would
become a real inquisition. There would be no safety for the most
innocent and circumspect conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs,
might still be suspected; and while these excited the same indignation
with bad conduct, while bad intentions were as much resented as bad
actions, they would equally expose the person to punishment and
resentment. Actions therefore which either produce actual evil, or
attempt to produce it, and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it,
are by the Author of nature rendered the only proper and approved
objects of human punishment and resentment. Sentiments, designs,
affections, though it is from these that according to cool reason human
actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great
Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are
reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal. That necessary
rule of justice, therefore, that men in this life are liable to
punishment for their actions only, not for their designs and intentions,
is founded upon this salutary and useful irregularity in human
sentiments concerning merit or demerit, which at first sight appears so
absurd and unaccountable. But every part of nature, when attentively
surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its Author, and
we may admire the wisdom and goodness of God even in the weakness and
folly of men.
Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility,
by which the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more
that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes, appears to be imperfect.
Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties
such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others,
as may seem most favourable to the happiness of all. He must not be
satisfied with indolent benevolence, nor fancy himself the friend of
mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the
world. That he may call forth the whole vigour of his soul, and strain
every nerve, in order to produce those ends which it is the purpose of
his being to advance, Nature has taught him, that neither himself nor
mankind can be fully satisfied with his conduct, nor bestow upon it the
full measure of applause, unless he has actually produced them. He is
made to know, that the praise of good intentions, without the merit of
good offices, will be but of little avail to excite either the loudest
acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self-applause.
The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose
whole conversation and deportment express the justest, the noblest, and
most generous sentiments, can be entitled to demand no very high reward,
even though his inutility should be owing to nothing but the want of an
opportunity to serve. We can still refuse it him without blame. We can
still ask him, what have you done? What actual service can you produce,
to entitle you to so great a recompense? We esteem you, and love you;
but we owe you nothing. To reward indeed that latent virtue which has
been useless only for want of an opportunity to serve, to bestow upon it
those honours and preferments, which, though in some measure it may be
said to deserve them, it could not with propriety have insisted upon, is
the effect of the most divine benevolence. To punish, on the contrary,
for the affections of the heart only, where no crime has been committed,
is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny. The benevolent affections
seem to deserve most praise, when they do not wait till it becomes
almost a crime for them not to exert themselves. The malevolent, on the
contrary, can scarce be too tardy, too slow, or deliberate.
It is even of use that the evil which is done without design should be
regarded as a misfortune to the doer as well as to the sufferer. Man is
thereby taught to reverence the happiness of his brethren, to tremble
lest he should, even unknowingly, do any thing that can hurt them, and
to dread that animal resentment which he feels is ready to burst out
against him, if he should without design be the unhappy instrument of
their calamity.
Notwithstanding, however, all these seeming irregularities of sentiment,
if man should unfortunately either give occasion to those evils which he
did not intend, or fail in producing that good which he intended, nature
has not left his innocence altogether without consolation, nor his
virtue altogether without reward. He then calls to his assistance that
just and equitable maxim, that those events which did not depend upon
our conduct ought not to diminish the esteem that is due to us. He
summons up his whole magnanimity and firmness of soul, and strives to
regard himself, not in the light in which he at present appears, but in
that in which he ought to appear, in which he would have appeared had
his generous designs been crowned with success, and in which he would
still appear, notwithstanding their miscarriage, if the sentiments of
mankind were either altogether candid and equitable, or even perfectly
consistent with themselves. The more candid and humane part of mankind
entirely go along with the efforts which he thus makes to support
himself in his own opinion. They exert their whole generosity and
greatness of mind, to correct in themselves this irregularity of human
nature, and endeavour to regard his unfortunate magnanimity in the same
light in which, had it been successful, they would, without any such
generous exertion, have naturally been disposed to consider it.
PART III.
Of the foundation of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and
conduct, and of the sense of duty.
CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.
CHAP. I.
_Of the consciousness of merited praise or blame._
In the two foregoing parts of this discourse, I have chiefly considered
the origin and foundation of our judgments concerning the sentiments and
conduct of others. I come now to consider the origin of those concerning
our own.
The desire of the approbation and esteem of those we live with, which is
of such importance to our happiness, cannot be fully and entirely
contented but by rendering ourselves the just and proper objects of
those sentiments, and by adjusting our own character and conduct
according to those measures and rules by which esteem and approbation
are naturally bestowed. It is not sufficient, that from ignorance or
mistake, esteem and approbation should some way or other be bestowed
upon us. If we are conscious that we do not deserve to be so favourably
thought of, and that if the truth was known, we should be regarded with
very opposite sentiments, our satisfaction is far from being complete.
The man who applauds us either for actions which we did not perform, or
for motives which had no sort of influence upon our conduct, applauds
not us, but another person. We can derive no sort of satisfaction from
his praises. To us they should be more mortifying than any censure, and
should perpetually call to our minds, the most humbling of all
reflections, the reflection upon what we ought to be, but what we are
not. A woman who paints to conceal her ugliness, could derive, one
should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to
her beauty. These, we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of
the sentiments which her real complexion would excite, and mortify her
more by the contrast. To be pleased with such groundless applause is a
proof of the most superficial levity and weakness. It is what is
properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and
contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies
which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should
imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from. The foolish
liar, who endeavours to excite the admiration of the company by the
relation of adventures which never had any existence, the important
coxcomb who gives himself airs of rank and distinction which he well
knows he has no just pretensions to, are both of them, no doubt, pleased
with the applause which they fancy they meet with. But their vanity
arises from so gross an illusion of the imagination, that it is
difficult to conceive how any rational creature should be imposed upon
by it. When they place themselves in the situation of those whom they
fancy they have deceived, they are struck with the highest admiration
for their own persons. They look upon themselves, not in that light in
which, they know, they ought to appear to their companions, but in that
in which they believe their companions actually look upon them. Their
superficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning
their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point
of view in which their own consciences should tell them that they would
appear to every body, if the real truth should ever come to be known.
As ignorant and groundless praise can give no solid joy, no satisfaction
that will bear any serious examination, so, on the contrary, it often
gives real comfort to reflect, that though no praise should actually be
bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has been such as to deserve it,
and has been in every respect suitable to those measures and rules by
which praise and approbation are naturally and commonly bestowed. We are
pleased not only with praise, but with having done what is
praise-worthy. We are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves
the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation, should ever
actually be bestowed upon us: and we are mortified to reflect that we
have justly incurred the blame of those we live with, though that
sentiment should never actually be exerted against us. The man who is
conscious to himself that he has exactly observed those measures of
conduct which experience informs him are generally agreeable, reflects
with satisfaction on the propriety of his own behaviour; when he views
it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he
thoroughly enters into all the motives which influenced it; he looks
back upon every part of it with pleasure and approbation, and though
mankind should never be acquainted with what he has done, he regards
himself not so much according to the light in which they actually regard
him, as according to that, in which they would regard him if they were
better informed. He anticipates the applause and admiration which in
this case would be bestowed upon him, and he applauds and admires
himself by sympathy with sentiments which do not indeed actually take
place, but which the ignorance of the public alone hinders from taking
place, which he knows are the natural and ordinary effects of such
conduct, which his imagination strongly connects with it, and which he
has acquired a habit of conceiving as something that naturally and in
propriety ought to flow from it. Men have often voluntarily thrown away
life to acquire after death a renown which they could no longer enjoy.
Their imagination, in the mean time, anticipated that fame which was
thereafter to be bestowed upon them. Those applauses which they were
never to hear rung in their ears; the thoughts of that admiration, whose
effects they were never to feel, played about their hearts, banished
from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears, and transported
them to perform actions which seem aimed beyond the reach of human
nature. But in point of reality there is surely no great difference
between that approbation which is not to be bestowed till we can no
longer enjoy it, and that which indeed is never to be bestowed, but
which would be bestowed if the world was ever made to understand
properly the real circumstances of our behaviour. If the one often
produces such violent effects, we cannot wonder that the other should
always be highly regarded.
On the contrary, the man who has broke through all those measures of
conduct, which can alone render him agreeable to mankind, tho’ he should
have the most perfect assurance that what he had done was for ever to be
concealed from every human eye, it is all to no purpose. When he looks
back upon it, and views it in the light in which the impartial spectator
would view it, he finds that he can enter into none of the motives which
influenced it. He is abashed and confounded at the thoughts of it, and
necessarily feels a very high degree of that shame which he would be
exposed to, if his actions should ever come to be generally known. His
imagination, in this case too, anticipates the contempt and derision
from which nothing saves him but the ignorance of those he lives with.
He still feels that he is the natural object of these sentiments, and
still trembles at the thought of what he would suffer if they were ever
actually exerted against him. But if what he had been guilty of was not
merely one of those improprieties which are the objects of simple
disapprobation, but one of those enormous crimes which excite
detestation and resentment, he could never think of it, as long as he
had any sensibility left, without feeling all the agony of horror and
remorse; and though he could be assured that no man was ever to know it,
and could even bring himself to believe that there was no God to revenge
it, he would still feel enough of both these sentiments to embitter the
whole of his life: He would still regard himself as the natural object
of the hatred and indignation of all his fellow-creatures; and if his
heart was not grown callous by the habit of crimes, he could not think
without terror and astonishment even of the manner in which mankind
would look upon him, of what would be the expression of their
countenance and of their eyes, if the dreadful truth should ever come to
be known. These natural pangs of an affrighted conscience are the
dæmons, the avenging furies which in this life haunt the guilty, which
allow them neither quiet nor repose, which often drive them to despair
and distraction, from which no assurance of secrecy can protect them,
from which no principles of irreligion can entirely deliver them, and
from which nothing can free them but the vilest and most abject of all
states, a complete insensibility of honour and infamy, to vice and
virtue. Men of the most detestable characters, who, in the execution of
the most dreadful crimes, had taken their measures so coolly as to avoid
even the suspicion of guilt, have sometimes been driven, by the horror
of their situation, to discover of their own accord, what no human
sagacity could ever have investigated. By acknowledging their guilt, by
submitting themselves to the resentment of their offended citizens, and
by thus satiating that vengeance of which they were sensible that they
were become the proper objects, they hoped by their death to reconcile
themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural sentiments
of mankind, to be able to consider themselves as less worthy of hatred
and resentment, to atone in some measure for their crimes, and, if
possible, to die in peace and with the forgiveness of all their
fellow-creatures. Compared to what they felt before the discovery, even
the thought of this, it seems, was happiness.
CHAP. II.
_In what manner our own judgments refer to what ought to be the
judgments of others: and of the origin of general rules._
A great part, perhaps the greatest part, of human happiness and misery
arises from the view of our past conduct, and from the degree of
approbation or disapprobation which we feel from the consideration of
it. But in whatever manner it may affect us, our sentiments of this kind
have always some secret reference either to what are, or to what upon a
certain condition would be, or to what we imagine ought to be the
sentiments of others. We examine it as we imagine an impartial spectator
would examine it. If upon placing ourselves in his situation we
thoroughly enter into all the passions and motives which influenced it,
we approve of it by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed
equitable judge. If otherwise, we enter into his disapprobation and
condemn it.
Was it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some
solitary place without any communication with his own species, he could
no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his
own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind,
than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these are objects
which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at; and
with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can present
them to his view. Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided
with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance
and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter
into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he
first views the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the
beauty and deformity of his own mind. To a man who from his birth was a
stranger to society, the objects of his passions, the external bodies
which either pleased or hurt him, would occupy his whole attention. The
passions themselves, the desires or aversions, the joys or sorrows,
which those objects excited, though of all things the most immediately
present to him, could scarce ever be the objects of his thoughts. The
idea of them could never interest him so much as to call upon his
attentive consideration. The consideration of his joy could in him
excite no new joy, nor that of his sorrow any new sorrow, though the
consideration of the causes of those passions might often excite both.
Bring him into society, and all his own passions will immediately become
the causes of new passions. He will observe that mankind approve of some
of them, and are disgusted by others. He will be elevated in the one
case, and cast down in the other; his desires and aversions, his joys
and sorrows will now often become the causes of new desires and new
aversions, new joys and new sorrows: they will now therefore interest
him deeply, and often call upon his most attentive consideration.
Our first ideas of personal beauty and deformity, are drawn from the
shape and appearance of others, not from our own. We soon become
sensible, however, that others exercise the same criticism upon us. We
are pleased when they approve of our figure, and are disobliged when
they seem to be disgusted. We become anxious to know how far our
appearance deserves either their blame or approbation. We examine our
own persons limb by limb, and by placing ourselves before a
looking-glass, or by some such expedient, endeavour, as much as
possible, to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other
people. If after this examination we are satisfied with our own
appearance, we can more easily support the most disadvantageous
judgments of others: if, on the contrary, we are sensible that we are
the natural objects of distaste, every appearance of their
disapprobation mortifies us beyond all measure. A man who is tolerably
handsome, will allow you to laugh at any little irregularity in his
person; but all such jokes are commonly insupportable to one who is
really deformed. It is evident, however, that we are anxious about our
own beauty and deformity only on account of its effect upon others. If
we had no connexion with society, we should be altogether indifferent
about either.
In the same manner our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the
characters and conduct of other people; and we are all very forward to
observe how each of these affects us. But we soon learn, that others are
equally frank with regard to our own. We become anxious to know how far
we deserve their censure or applause, and whether to them we must
necessarily appear those agreeable or disagreeable creatures which they
represent us. We begin upon this account to examine our own passions and
conduct, and to consider how these must appear to them, by considering
how they would appear to us if in their situation. We suppose ourselves
the spectators of our own behaviour, and endeavour to imagine what
effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only
looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of others,
scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct. If in this view it pleases
us, we are tolerably satisfied. We can be more indifferent about the
applause, and, in some measure, despise the censure of others; secure
that, however misunderstood or misrepresented, we are the natural and
proper objects of approbation. On the contrary, if we are displeased
with it, we are often upon that very account more anxious to gain their
approbation, and, provided we have not already, as they say, shaken
hands with infamy, we are altogether distracted at the thoughts of their
censure, which then strikes us with double severity.
When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass
sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident
that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons,
and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from
that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.
The first is the spectator, whose sentiments with regard to my own
conduct I endeavour to enter into, by placing myself in his situation,
and by considering how it would appear to me when seen from that
particular point of view. The second is the agent, the person whom I
properly call myself, and of whose conduct, under the character of a
spectator, I was endeavouring to form some opinion. The first is the
judge; the second the pannel. But that the judge should, in every
respect, be the same with the pannel, is as impossible, as that the
cause should, in every respect, be the same with the effect.
To be amiable and to be meritorious, that is, to deserve love and to
deserve reward, are the great characters of virtue, and to be odious and
punishable, of vice. But all these characters have an immediate
reference to the sentiments of others. Virtue is not said to be amiable
or to be meritorious, because it is the object of its own love, or of
its own gratitude; but because it excites those sentiments in other men.
The consciousness that it is the object of such favourable regards is
the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction with which
it is naturally attended, as the suspicion of the contrary gives
occasion to the torments of vice. What so great happiness as to be
beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery
as to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
Man is considered as a moral, because he is regarded as an accountable
being. But an accountable being, as the word expresses, is a being that
must give an account of its actions to some other, and that consequently
must regulate them according to the good liking of this other. Man is
accountable to God and his fellow-creatures. But though he is, no doubt,
principally accountable to God; in the order of time, he must
necessarily conceive himself as accountable to his fellow-creatures,
before he can form any idea of the Deity, or of the rules by which that
divine being will judge of his conduct. A child surely conceives itself
as accountable to its parents, and is elevated or cast down by the
thought of their merited approbation or disapprobation, long before it
forms any idea of its accountableness to the Deity, or of the rules by
which that divine being will judge of its conduct.
The great judge of the world, has, for the wisest reasons, thought
proper to interpose, between the weak eye of human reason, and the
throne of his eternal justice, a degree of obscurity and darkness, which
though it does not entirely cover that great tribunal from the view of
mankind, yet renders the impression of it faint and feeble in comparison
of what might be expected from the grandeur and importance of so mighty
an object. If those infinite rewards and punishments which the Almighty
has prepared for those who obey or transgress his will, were perceived
as distinctly as we foresee the frivolous and temporary retaliations
which we may expect from one another, the weakness of human nature,
astonished at the immensity of objects so little fitted to its
comprehension, could no longer attend to the little affairs of this
world; and it is absolutely impossible that the business of society
could have been carried on, if, in this respect, there had been a fuller
revelation of the intentions of Providence than that which has already
been made. That men, however, might never be without a rule to direct
their conduct by, nor without a judge whose authority should enforce its
observation, the Author of nature has made man the immediate judge of
mankind, and has, in this respect, as in many others, created him after
his own image, and appointed him his vicegerent upon earth, to
superintend the behaviour of his brethren. They are taught by nature to
acknowledge that power and jurisdiction which has thus been conferred
upon him, and to tremble and exult according as they imagine that they
have either merited his censure, or deserved his applause.
But whatever may be the authority of this inferior tribunal which is
continually before their eyes, if at any time it should decide contrary
to those principles and rules, which Nature has established for
regulating its judgments, men feel that they may appeal from this unjust
decision, and call upon a superior tribunal, the tribunal established in
their own breasts, to redress the injustice of this weak or partial
judgment.
There are certain principles established by Nature for governing our
judgment concerning the conduct of those we live with. As long as we
decide according to those principles, and neither applaud nor condemn
any thing which Nature has not rendered the proper object of applause or
condemnation, nor any further than she has rendered it such, as our
sentence is, in this case, if I may say so, quite agreeable to law, it
is liable neither to repeal nor to correction of any kind. The person
concerning whom we form these judgments, must himself necessarily
approve of them. When he puts himself into our situation, he cannot
avoid viewing his own conduct in the very same light in which we appear
to view it. He is sensible, that to us, and to every impartial
spectator, he must necessarily appear the natural and proper object of
those sentiments which we express with regard to him. Those sentiments,
therefore, must necessarily produce their full effect upon him, and he
cannot fail to conceive all the triumph of self-approbation from, what
appears to him, such merited applause, as well as all the horrors of
shame from, what, he is sensible, is such deserved condemnation.
But it is otherwise, if we have either applauded or condemned him,
contrary to those principles and rules which Nature has established for
the direction of our judgments concerning every thing of this kind. If
we have either applauded or condemned him for what, when he put himself
into our situation, does not appear to him to be the object either of
applause or condemnation; as in this case he cannot enter into our
sentiments, provided he has any constancy or firmness, he is but little
affected by them, and can neither be much elevated by the favourable,
nor greatly mortified by the unfavourable decision. The applause of the
whole world will avail but little, if our own conscience condemn us; and
the disapprobation of all mankind is not capable of oppressing us, when
we are absolved by the tribunal within our own breast, and when our own
mind tells us that mankind are in the wrong.
But though this tribunal within the breast be thus the supreme arbiter
of all our actions, though it can reverse the decisions of all mankind
with regard to our character and conduct, and mortify us amidst the
applause, or support us under the censure of the world; yet, if we
inquire into the origin of its institution, its jurisdiction we shall
find is in a great measure derived from the authority of that very
tribunal, whose decisions it so often and so justly reverses.
When we first come into the world, from the natural desire to please, we
accustom ourselves to consider what behaviour is likely to be agreeable
to every person we converse with, to our parents, to our masters, to our
companions. We address ourselves to individuals, and for some time
fondly pursue the impossible and absurd project of gaining the good-will
and approbation of every body. We are soon taught by experience,
however, that this universal approbation is altogether unattainable. As
soon as we come to have more important interests to manage, we find,
that by pleasing one man, we almost certainly disoblige another, and
that by humouring an individual, we may often irritate a whole people.
The fairest and most equitable conduct must frequently obstruct the
interests, or thwart the inclinations of particular persons, who will
seldom have candour enough to enter into the propriety of our motives,
or to see that this conduct, how disagreeable soever to them, is
perfectly suitable to our situation. In order to defend ourselves from
such partial judgments, we soon learn to set up in our own minds a judge
between ourselves and those we live with. We conceive ourselves as
acting in the presence of a person quite candid and equitable, of one
who has no particular relation either to ourselves, or to those whose
interests are affected by our conduct, who is neither father, nor
brother, nor friend either to them or to us, but is merely a man in
general, an impartial spectator who considers our conduct with the same
indifference with which we regard that of other people. If, when we
place ourselves in the situation of such a person, our own actions
appear to us under an agreeable aspect, if we feel that such a spectator
cannot avoid entering into all the motives which influenced us, whatever
may be the judgments of the world, we must still be pleased with our own
behaviour, and regard ourselves, in spite of the censure of our
companions, as the just and proper objects of approbation.
On the contrary, if the man within condemns us, the loudest acclamations
of mankind appear but as the noise of ignorance and folly, and whenever
we assume the character of this impartial judge, we cannot avoid viewing
our own actions with this distaste and dissatisfaction. The weak, the
vain, and the frivolous, indeed, may be mortified by the most groundless
censure, or elated by the most absurd applause. Such persons are not
accustomed to consult the judge within concerning the opinion which they
ought to form of their own conduct. This inmate of the breast, this
abstract man, the representative of mankind, and substitute of the
Deity, whom Nature has constituted the supreme judge of all their
actions, is seldom appealed to by them. They are contented with the
decision of the inferior tribunal. The approbation of their companions,
of the particular persons whom they have lived and conversed with, has
generally been the ultimate object of all their wishes. If they obtain
this, their joy is complete; and if they fail, they are entirely
disappointed. They never think of appealing to the superior court. They
have seldom inquired after its decisions, and are altogether
unacquainted with the rules and forms of its procedure. When the world
injures them, therefore, they are incapable of doing themselves justice,
and are, in consequence, necessarily the slaves of the world. But it is
otherwise with the man who has, upon all occasions, been accustomed to
have recourse to the judge within, and to consider, not what the world
approves or disapproves of, but what appears to this impartial
spectator, the natural and proper object of approbation or
disapprobation. The judgment of this supreme arbiter of his conduct, is
the applause, which he has been accustomed principally to court, is the
censure which he has been accustomed principally to fear. Compared with
this final decision, the sentiments of all mankind, though not
altogether indifferent, appear to be but of small moment; and he is
incapable of being either much elevated by their favourable, or greatly
depressed by their most disadvantageous judgment.
It is only by consulting this judge within, that we can see whatever
relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions, or that we can
make any proper comparison between our own interests and those of other
men.
As to the eye of the body, objects appear great or small, not so much
according to their real dimensions, as according to the nearness or
distance of their situation; so do they likewise to what may be called
the natural eye of the mind: and we remedy the defects of both these
organs pretty much in the same manner. In my present situation an
immense landscape of lawns, and woods, and distant mountains, seems to
do no more than cover the little window which I write by, and to be out
of all proportion less than the chamber in which I am sitting. I can
form a just comparison between those great objects and the little
objects around me, in no other way, than by transporting myself, at
least in fancy, to a different station, from whence I can survey both at
nearly equal distances, and thereby form some judgment of their real
proportions. Habit and experience have taught me to do this so easily
and so readily, that I am scarce sensible that I do it; and a man must
be, in some measure, acquainted with the philosophy of vision, before he
can be thoroughly convinced, how little those distant objects would
appear to the eye, if the imagination, from a knowledge of their real
magnitudes, did not swell and dilate them.
In the same manner, to the selfish and original passions of human
nature, the loss or gain of a very small interest of our own, appears to
be of vastly more importance, excites a much more passionate joy or
sorrow, a much more ardent desire or aversion, than the greatest concern
of another with whom we have no particular connexion. His interests, as
long as they are surveyed from this station, can never be put into the
balance with our own, can never restrain us from doing whatever may tend
to promote our own, how ruinous soever to him. Before we can make any
proper comparison of those opposite interests, we must change our
position. We must view them, neither from our own place, nor yet from
his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the place, and
with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connexion with
either, and who judges with impartiality between us. Here too, habit and
experience have taught us to do this so easily and so readily, that we
are scarce sensible that we do it; and it requires, in this case too,
some degree of reflection, and even of philosophy to convince us, how
little interest we should take in the greatest concerns of our
neighbour, how little we should be affected by whatever relates to him,
if the sense of propriety and justice did not correct the otherwise
natural inequality of our sentiments.
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of
inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us
consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion
with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving
intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of
all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy
people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the
precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man,
which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if
he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the
effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe,
and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this
fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once
fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his
repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquility, as if no
such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could
befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose
his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but provided
he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over
the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of
that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him,
than this paultry misfortune of his own. To prevent therefore, this
paultry misfortune to himself would a man of humanity be willing to
sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he
had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought,
and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced
such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes
this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid
and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be
so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply
affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other
men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the
mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater
interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not
that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the
human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest
impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive,
which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle,
conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great
judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he, who, whenever we are about
to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us with a voice
capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we
are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it;
and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to
others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and
execration. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of
ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural
misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this
impartial spectator. It is he who shows us the propriety of generality
and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of resigning the greatest
interests of our own, for the yet greater interests of others, and the
deformity of doing the smallest injury to another, in order to obtain
the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbour,
it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to
the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more
powerful affection which generally takes place upon such occasions, the
love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and
superiority of our own characters.
When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our
conduct, we dare not, as self-love would suggest to us, prefer any
little interest of our own, to the yet greater interest of our
neighbour. We feel that we should become the proper objects of the
resentment and indignation of our brethren, and the sense of the
impropriety of this affection is supported and enlivened by the yet
stronger sense of the demerit of the action, which it would in this case
give occasion to. But when the happiness or misery of others in no
respect depends upon our conduct, when our own interests are altogether
separated and detached from theirs, so that there is neither connexion
nor competition between them, as the sense of demerit does not in this
case interpose, the mere sense of impropriety is seldom able to restrain
us from abandoning ourselves to our natural anxiety about our own
affairs, and to our natural indifference about those of other men. The
most vulgar education teaches us to act, upon all important occasions,
with some sort of impartiality between ourselves and others, and even
the ordinary commerce of the world is capable of adjusting our active
principles to some degree of propriety. But it is the most artificial
and refined education only, which pretends to correct the inequalities
of our passive feelings, and we must for this purpose have recourse to
the severest, as well as to the profoundest philosophy.
Two different sets of philosophers have attempted to teach us this
hardest of all the lessons of morality. One set have laboured to
increase our sensibility to the interests of others; another to diminish
that to our own. The first would have us feel for others as we naturally
feel for ourselves. The second would have us feel for ourselves, as we
naturally feel for others.
The first are those melancholy moralists, who are perpetually
reproaching us with our happiness, while so many of our brethren are in
misery,[6] who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which
does not think of the many wretches that are at every instant labouring
under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony
of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppression of
their enemies. Commiseration for those miseries which we never saw,
which we never heard of, but which we may be assured are at all times
infecting such numbers of our fellow-creatures, ought, they think, to
damp the pleasures of the fortunate, and to render a certain melancholy
dejection habitual to all men. But first of all, this extreme sympathy
with misfortunes, which we know nothing about, seems altogether absurd
and unreasonable. Take the whole earth at an average, for one man who
suffers pain or misery, you will find twenty in prosperity and joy, or
at least in tolerable circumstances. No reason, surely, can be assigned
why we should rather weep with the one than rejoice with the twenty.
This artificial commiseration, besides, is not only absurd, but seems
altogether unattainable; and those who affect this character have
commonly nothing but a certain hypocritical sadness, which, without
reaching the heart, serves only to render the countenance and
convocation impertinently dismal and disagreeable. And last of all, this
disposition of mind, though it could be attained, would be perfectly
useless, and could serve no other purpose than to render miserable the
person who was possessed of it. Whatever interest we take in the fortune
of those with whom we have no acquaintance or connexion, and who are
placed altogether out of the sphere of our activity, can produce only
anxiety to ourselves, without any manner of advantage to them. To what
purpose should we trouble ourselves about the world in the moon? All
men, even those at the greatest distance, are no doubt entitled to our
good wishes, and our good wishes we naturally give them. But if,
notwithstanding, they should be unfortunate, to give ourselves any
anxiety upon that account, seems to be no part of our duty. That we
should be but little interested, therefore, in the fortune of those whom
we can neither serve nor hurt, and who are in every respect so very
remote from us, seems wisely ordered by nature; and if it were possible
to alter in this respect the original constitution of our frame, we
could yet gain nothing by the change.
Footnote 6:
See Thomson’s Seasons, Winter:
“Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,” &c.
See also Pascal.
Among the moralists who endeavour to correct the natural inequality of
our passive feelings by diminishing our sensibility to what peculiarly
concerns ourselves, we may count all the ancient sects of philosophers,
but particularly the ancient stoics. Man, according to the stoics, ought
to regard himself, not as something separated and detached, but as a
citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature. To
the interest of this great community, he ought at all times to be
willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed. Whatever
concerns himself, ought to affect him no more than whatever concerns any
other equally important part of this immense system. We should view
ourselves, not in the light in which our own selfish passions are apt to
place us, but in the light in which any other citizen of the world would
view us. What befalls ourselves we should regard as what befalls our
neighbour, or, what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour regards
what befalls us. “When our neighbour,” says Epictetus, “loses his wife
or his son, there is nobody who is not sensible that this is a human
calamity, a natural event altogether, according to the ordinary course
of things: but when the same thing happens to ourselves, then we cry
out, as if we had suffered the most dreadful misfortune. We ought,
however, to remember how we were affected when this accident happened to
another, and such as we were in his case, such ought we to be in our
own.” How difficult soever it may be to attain this supreme degree of
magnanimity and firmness, it is by no means either absurd or useless to
attempt it. Though few men have the stoical idea of what this perfect
propriety requires, yet all men endeavour in some measure to command
themselves, and to bring down their selfish passions to something which
their neighbour can go along with. But this can never be done so
effectually as by viewing whatever befalls themselves in the light in
which their neighbours are apt to view it. The stoical philosophy, in
this respect, does little more than unfold our natural ideas of
perfection. There is nothing absurd or improper, therefore, in aiming at
this perfect self-command. Neither would the attainment of it be
useless, but, on the contrary, the most advantageous of all things, as
establishing our happiness upon the most solid and secure foundation, a
firm confidence in that wisdom and justice which governs the world, and
an entire resignation of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves
to the all-wise disposal of this ruling principle in nature.
It scarce ever happens, however, that we are capable of adjusting our
passive feelings to this perfect propriety. We indulge ourselves, and
even the world indulges us, in some degree of irregularity in this
respect. Though we should be too much affected by what concerns
ourselves, and too little by what concerns other men, yet, if we always
act with impartiality between ourselves and others, if we never actually
sacrifice any great interest of others, to any little interest of our
own, we are easily pardoned: and it were well, if, upon all occasions,
those who desire to do their duty were capable of maintaining even this
degree of impartiality between themselves and others. But this is very
far from being the case. Even in good men, the judge within is often in
danger of being corrupted by the violence and injustice of their selfish
passions, and is often induced to make a report very different from what
the real circumstances of the case are capable of authorizing.
There are two different occasions, upon which we examine our own
conduct, and 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 very partial in both cases, but they
are most so, 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 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 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. But our judgments now are
of little importance, compared to what they were before; and when they
are most severely impartial, can commonly produce nothing but vain
regret, and unavailing repentance, without securing us from the like
errors for the future. 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.
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 their own passions would be more immediately exposed to
the view of this faculty, it would judge with more accuracy concerning
them, than concerning those of other men, of which it had only a more
distant prospect.
This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half
the disorders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which
others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all, a
reformation would generally be unavoidable. We could not otherwise
endure the sight.
Nature, however, has not left this weakness, which is of so much
importance, altogether without a remedy; nor has she abandoned us
entirely to the delusions of self-love. Our continual observations upon
the conduct of others, insensibly lead us to form to ourselves certain
general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to
be avoided. Some of their actions shock all our natural sentiments. We
hear every body about us express the like detestation against them. This
still further confirms, and even exasperates our natural sense of their
deformity. It satisfies us that we view them in the proper light, when
we see other people view them in the same light. We resolve never to be
guilty of the like, nor ever, upon any account, to render ourselves in
this manner the objects of universal disapprobation. We thus naturally
lay down to ourselves a general rule, that all such actions are to be
avoided, as tending to render us odious, contemptible, or punishable,
the objects of all those sentiments for which we have the greatest dread
and aversion. Other actions, on the contrary, call forth our
approbation, and we hear 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 carefully to be sought after.
It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are
ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our
moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve, or
disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular
actions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or
inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the
contrary, is formed by finding from experience, that all actions of a
certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved or
disapproved of. To the man who first saw an inhuman murder, committed
from avarice, envy, or unjust resentment, and upon one too that loved
and trusted the murderer, who beheld the last agonies of the dying
person, who heard him, with his expiring breath, complain more of the
perfidy and ingratitude of his false friend, than of the violence which
had been done to him, there could be no occasion, in order to conceive
how horrible such an action was, that he should reflect, that one of the
most sacred rules of conduct was what prohibited the taking away the
life of an innocent person, that this was a plain violation of that
rule, and consequently a very 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 the love, the respect, or the horror
of the spectator, for the person who performs them. 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 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 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. III.
_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 to those general rules of conduct, is what is properly called
a sense of duty, a principle of the greatest consequence in human life,
and the only principle by which the bulk of mankind are capable of
directing 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. Tho’ 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 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 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 impressed with a regard to general
rules, as to act upon almost every occasion with tolerable decency, and
through the whole of his life 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 tenour 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 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 behaviour 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 this 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 can scarce have any
serious motive to violate, would yet be so frequently violated, what
would become of the duties of justice, of truth, of chastity, of
fidelity, which it is often so difficult to observe, and which there may
be so many strong motives to violate? But upon the tolerable observance
of these duties, depends the very existence of human society, which
would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with
a reverence for those important rules of conduct.
This reverence is still further enhanced by an opinion which is first
impressed by nature, and afterwards confirmed by reasoning and
philosophy, that those important rules of morality, are the commands and
laws of the Deity, who will finally reward the obedient, and punish the
transgressors of their duty.
This opinion or apprehension, I say, seems first to be impressed by
nature. Men are naturally led to ascribe to those mysterious beings,
whatever they are, which happen, in any country, to be the objects of
religious fear, all their own sentiments and passions. They have no
other, they can conceive no other to ascribe to them. Those unknown
intelligences which they imagine but see not, must necessarily be formed
with some sort of resemblance to those intelligences of which they have
experience. During the ignorance and darkness of pagan superstition,
mankind 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 detestation and resentment of
mankind; and his natural fears led him to impute the same sentiments to
those awful beings, whose presence he could not avoid, and whose power
he could not resist. These natural hopes and fears, and suspicions, were
propagated by sympathy, and confirmed by education; and the gods were
universally represented and believed to be the rewarders of humanity and
mercy, and the avengers of perfidy and injustice. And thus religion,
even in its rudest form, gave a sanction to the rules of morality, long
before the age of artificial reasoning and philosophy. That the terrors
of religion should thus enforce the natural sense of duty, was of too
much importance to the happiness of mankind, for nature to leave it
dependent upon the slowness and uncertainty of philosophical researches.
These researches, however, when they came to take place, confirmed those
original anticipations of nature. Upon whatever we suppose that our
moral faculties are founded, whether upon a certain modification of
reason, upon an original instinct, called a moral sense, or upon some
other principle of our nature, it cannot be doubted, that they were
given us for the direction of our conduct in this life. They carry along
with them the most evident badges of this authority, which denote that
they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all our
actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites, and to
judge how far each of them was either to be indulged or restrained. Our
moral faculties are by no means, as some have pretended, upon a level in
this respect with the other faculties and appetites of our nature,
endowed with no more right to restrain these last, than these last are
to restrain them. No other faculty or principle of action judges of any
other. Love does not judge of resentment, nor resentment of love. Those
two passions may be opposite to one another, but cannot, with any
propriety, be said to approve or disapprove of one another. But it is
the peculiar office of those faculties now under our consideration to
judge, to bestow censure or applause upon all the other principles of
our nature. They may be considered as a sort of senses of which those
principles are the objects. Every sense is supreme over its own objects.
There is no appeal from the eye with regard to the beauty of 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 sooths
the ear is harmonious. The very essence of each of those qualities
consists in 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 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 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 general
rules which the sovereign lays down to direct the conduct of his
subjects. Like them they are rules to direct the free actions of men:
they are prescribed most surely by a lawful superior, and are attended
to in 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 contentment, and
self-satisfaction.
There are innumerable other considerations which serve to confirm the
same conclusion. The happiness of mankind, as well as of all other
rational creatures, seems to have been the original purpose intended by
the Author of nature, when he brought them into existence. No other end
seems worthy of that supreme wisdom and divine benignity which we
necessarily ascribe to him; and this opinion, which we are led to by the
abstract consideration of his infinite perfections, is still more
confirmed by the examination of the works of nature, which seem all
intended to promote happiness, and to guard against misery. But by
acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily
pursue the most effectual means for promoting the happiness of mankind,
and may therefore be said, in some sense, to co-operate with the Deity,
and to advance as far as in our power the plan of Providence. By acting
otherways, 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 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, and love of those we live with. Humanity does
not desire to be great, but to be beloved. It is not in being rich that
truth and justice would rejoice, but in being trusted and believed,
recompenses which those virtues must almost always acquire. By some very
extraordinary and unlucky circumstance, a good man may come to be
suspected of a crime of which he was altogether incapable, and upon that
account be most unjustly exposed for the remaining part of his life to
the horror and aversion of mankind. By an accident of this kind he may
be said to lose his all, notwithstanding his integrity and justice; in
the same manner as a cautious man, notwithstanding his utmost
circumspection, may be ruined by an earthquake or an inundation.
Accidents of the first kind, however, are perhaps still more rare, and
still more contrary to the common course of things than those of the
second; and still it remains true, that the practice of truth, justice,
and humanity, is a certain and almost infallible method of acquiring
what those virtues chiefly aim at, the confidence and love of those we
live with. A person may be very easily misrepresented with regard to a
particular action; but it is scarce possible that he should be so with
regard to the general tenor of his conduct. An innocent man may be
believed to have done wrong: this, however, will rarely happen. On the
contrary, the established opinion of the innocence of his manners, will
often lead us to absolve him where he has really been in the fault,
notwithstanding very strong presumptions. A knave, in the same manner
may escape censure, or even meet 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 violence, on the
other hand, excite in every human breast such scorn and abhorrence, that
our indignation rouses to see them possess those advantages which they
may in some sense be said to have merited, by the diligence and industry
with which they are sometimes attended. The industrious knave cultivates
the soil; the indolent good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to
reap the harvest? Who starve, and who live in plenty? The natural course
of things decides it in 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, those which he follows for him: but both are
calculated to promote the same great end, the order of the world, and
the perfection and happiness of human nature.
But though man is thus employed to alter that distribution of things
which natural events would make, if left to themselves; though, like the
gods of the poets, he is perpetually interposing, by extraordinary
means, in 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 accelerates 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 controuled 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
enterprise with fore-thought 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 humane 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 insolent vanity, and
who has brought them out of nothing, only to make them serve for the
sport of his leisure, and of his caprice.”
When the general rules which determine the merit and demerit of actions,
come thus to be regarded, as the laws of an All-powerful Being, who
watches over our conduct, and who, in a life to come, will reward the
observance, and punish the breach of them; they necessarily acquire a
new sacredness from this consideration. That our regard to the will of
the Deity, ought to be the supreme rule of our conduct, can be doubted
of by no body 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 tye, 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 that of others, are
motives which they suppose have the same influence over the religious
man, as over the man of the world. But the former lies under another
restraint, and never acts deliberately but as in the presence of that
Great Superior who is finally to recompense him according to his deeds.
A greater trust is reposed, upon this account, in the regularity and
exactness of his conduct. And wherever the natural principles of
religion are not corrupted by the factious and party zeal of some
worthless cabal; wherever the first duty which it requires, is to 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. IV.
_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
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 governing one, as
philosophy, and as, indeed, common sense directs. It may be a question
however, in what cases our actions ought to arise chiefly or entirely
from a sense of duty, or from a regard to general rules; and in what
cases some other sentiment or affection ought to concur, and have a
principal influence.
The decision of this question, which cannot, perhaps, be given with any
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 general 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 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, 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 what the offender is about to suffer; who, though in
wrath remembers 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 œconomy, and the most
exact assiduity: but each particular exertion of that œconomy 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 tenour 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 œconomy 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
exactness, or the looseness and inaccuracy of the general rules
themselves, how far our conduct ought to proceed entirely from a regard
to them.
The general rules of almost all the virtues, the general rules which
determine what are the offices of prudence, of charity, of generosity,
of gratitude, of friendship, are in many respects loose and inaccurate,
admit of many exceptions, and require so many modifications, that it is
scarce possible to regulate our conduct entirely by a regard to them.
The common proverbial maxims of prudence, being founded in universal
experience, are perhaps the best general rules which can be given about
it. To 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 halfpenny: 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 ought to perform
it, the whole nature and circumstances of the action prescribed, are all
of them precisely fixt 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 tenour 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
stedfastness, 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 prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence. Though
there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain in several
respects, the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained
of those virtues.
It may sometimes happen, that with the most serious and earnest desire
of acting so as to deserve approbation, we may mistake the proper rules
of conduct, and thus be misled by that very principle which ought to
direct us. It is 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 may be misled by it, he is still, with the generous
and humane, more the object of commiseration than of hatred or
resentment. They lament the weakness of human nature, which exposes us
to such unhappy delusions, even while we are most sincerely 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 praise-worthy. 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 venerable old man, who had
expressed the most tender affection for them both, for whom,
notwithstanding he was the avowed enemy of their religion, they had both
conceived the highest reverence and esteem, and who was in reality their
father, though they did not know him to be such, is pointed out to them
as a sacrifice which God had expressly required at their hands, and they
are commanded to kill him. While they are about executing this crime,
they are tortured with all the agonies which can arise from the struggle
between the idea of the indispensableness of religious duty on 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 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 bigotted 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 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.
[Illustration]