Of the EFFECT of UTILITY upon the sentiment of approbation.
CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.
CHAP. I.
_Of the beauty which the appearance of_ UTILITY _bestows upon all the
productions of art, and of the extensive influence of this species of
beauty_.
That utility is one of the principal sources of beauty has been observed
by every body, who has considered with any attention what constitutes
the nature of beauty. The conveniency of a house gives pleasure to the
spectator as well as its regularity, and he is as much hurt when he
observes the contrary defect, as when he sees the correspondent windows
of different forms, or the door not placed exactly in the middle of the
building. That the fitness of any system or machine to produce the end
for which it was intended, bestows a certain propriety and beauty upon
the whole, and renders the very thought and contemplation of it
agreeable, is so very obvious that nobody has overlooked it.
The cause too, why utility pleases, has of late been assigned by an
ingenious and agreeable philosopher, who joins the greatest depth of
thought to the greatest elegance of expression, and possesses the
singular and happy talent of treating the abstrusest subjects not only
with the most perfect perspicuity, but with the most lively eloquence.
The utility of any object, according to him, pleases the master by
perpetually suggesting to him the pleasure or conveniency which it is
fitted to promote. Every time he looks at it, he is put in mind of this
pleasure; and the object in this manner becomes a source of perpetual
satisfaction and enjoyment. The spectator enters by sympathy into the
sentiments of the master, and necessarily views the object under the
same agreeable aspect. When we visit the palaces of the great, we cannot
help conceiving the satisfaction we should enjoy if we ourselves were
the masters, and were possessed of so much artful and ingeniously
contrived accommodation. A similar account is given why the appearance
of inconveniency should render any object disagreeable both to the owner
and to the spectator.
But that this fitness, this happy contrivance of any production of art,
should often be more valued, than the very end for which it was
intended; and that the exact adjustment of the means for attaining any
conveniency or pleasure, should frequently be more regarded, than that
very conveniency or pleasure, in the attainment of which their whole
merit would seem to consist, has not, so far as I know, been yet taken
notice of by any body. That this however is very frequently the case,
may be observed in a thousand instances, both in the most frivolous and
in the most important concerns of human life.
When a person comes into his chamber, and finds the chairs all standing
in the middle of the room, he is angry with his servant, and rather than
see them continue in that disorder, perhaps takes the trouble himself to
set them all in their places with their backs to the wall. The whole
propriety of this new situation arises from its superior conveniency in
leaving the floor free and disengaged. To attain this conveniency he
voluntarily puts himself to more trouble than all he could have suffered
from the want of it; since nothing was more easy, than to have set
himself down upon one of them, which is probably what he does when his
labour is over. What he wanted therefore, it seems, was not so much this
conveniency, as that arrangement of things which promotes it. Yet it is
this conveniency which ultimately recommends that arrangement, and
bestows upon it the whole of its propriety and beauty.
A watch, in the same manner, that falls behind above two minutes in a
day, is despised by one curious in watches. He sells it perhaps for a
couple of guineas, and purchases another at fifty, which will not lose
above a minute in a fortnight. The sole use of watches however, is to
tell us what o’clock it is, and to hinder us from breaking any
engagement, or suffering any other inconveniency by our ignorance in
that particular point. But the person so nice with regard to this
machine, will not always be found either more scrupulously punctual than
other men, or more anxiously concerned upon any other account, to know
precisely what time of day it is. What interests him is not so much the
attainment of this piece of knowledge, as the perfection of the machine
which serves to attain it.
How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of
frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the
utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it.
All their pockets are fluffed with little conveniencies. They contrive
new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a
greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in
weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew’s-box,
some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which
might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility
is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.
Nor is it only with regard to such frivolous objects that our conduct is
influenced by this principle; it is often the secret motive of the most
serious and important pursuits of both private and public life.
The poor man’s son, whom Heaven in its anger has visited with ambition,
when he begins to look around him admires the condition of the rich. He
finds the cottage of his father too small for his accommodation, and
fancies he should be lodged more at his ease in a palace. He is
displeased with being obliged to walk a-foot, or to endure the fatigue
of riding on horseback. He sees his superiors carried about in machines,
and imagines that in one of these he could travel with less
inconveniency. He feels himself naturally indolent, and willing to serve
himself with his own hands as little as possible; and judges, that a
numerous retinue of servants would save him from a great deal of
trouble. He thinks if he had attained all these, he would sit still
contentedly, and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the
happiness and tranquillity of his situation. He is enchanted with the
distant idea of this felicity. It appears in his fancy like the life of
some superior rank of beings, and in order to arrive at it, he devotes
himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the
conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first year, nay in
the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body and more
uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his
life from the want of them. He studies to distinguish himself in some
laborious profession. With the most unrelenting industry he labours
night and day to acquire talents superior to all his competitors. He
endeavours next to bring those talents into public view, and with equal
assiduity solicits every opportunity of employment. For this purpose he
makes his court to all mankind, he serves those whom he hates, and is
obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he
pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may
never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at
all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he
should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable
to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it.
It is then, in the last dregs of life, his body wailed with toil and
diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand
injuries and disappointments which he imagines he has met with from the
injustice of his enemies, or from the perfidy and ingratitude of his
friends, that he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are
mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease
of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the lover of
toys; and like them too, more troublesome to the person who carries them
about with him than all the advantages they can afford him are
commodious. There is no other real difference between them, except that
the conveniencies of the one are somewhat more observable than those of
the other. The palaces, the gardens, the equipage, the retinue of the
great are objects of which the obvious conveniency strikes every body.
They do not require that their masters should point out to us wherein
consists their utility. Of our own accord we readily enter into it, and
by sympathy enjoy and thereby applaud the satisfaction which they are
fitted to afford him. But the curiosity of a tooth-pick, of an
ear-picker, of a machine for cutting the nails, or of any other trinket
of the same kind, is not so obvious. Their convenience may perhaps be
equally great, but it is not so striking, and we do not so readily enter
into the satisfaction of the man who possesses them. They are therefore
less reasonable subjects of vanity than the magnificence of wealth and
greatness; and in this consists the sole advantage of these last. They
more effectually gratify that love of distinction so natural to man. To
one who was to live alone in a desolate island it might be a matter of
doubt, perhaps, whether a palace, or a collection of such small
conveniencies as are commonly contained in a tweezer-case, would
contribute most to his happiness and enjoyment. If he is to live in
society, indeed, there can be no comparison, because in this, as in all
other cases, we constantly pay more regard to the sentiments of the
spectator, than to those of the person principally concerned, and
consider rather how his situation will appear to other people, than how
it will appear to himself. If we examine, however, why the spectator
distinguishes with such admiration the condition of the rich and the
great, we shall find that it is not so much upon account of the superior
ease or pleasure which they are supposed to enjoy, as of the numberless
artificial and elegant contrivances for promoting this ease or pleasure.
He does not even imagine that they are really happier than other people:
but he imagines that they possess more means of happiness. And it is the
ingenious and artful adjustment of those means to the end for which they
were intended, that is the principal source of his admiration. But in
the languor of disease, and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of
the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this
situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome
pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses
ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth,
pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed
for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In
this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced
either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation,
and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness.
Power and riches appear then to be what they are, enormous and operose
machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body,
consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in
order with the most anxious attention, and which in spite of all our
care are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their
ruins their unfortunate possessor. They are immense fabrics, which it
requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to
overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which while they stand,
though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect
him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off
the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much,
and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to
sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death.
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low
spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great
objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we
never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our
imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up
within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself
to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that
accommodation which reigns in the palaces and œconomy of the great; and
admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent
their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their
most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all
these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the
beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always
appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely
view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound
it in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious
movement of the system, the machine or œconomy by means of which it is
produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this
complex view, strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful
and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and
anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this
deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of
mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground,
to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and
improve all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human
life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have
turned the rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains, and
made the trackless and barren ocean a new fund of subsistence, and the
great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth.
The earth by these labours of mankind has been obliged to redouble her
natural fertility, and to maintain a greater multitude of inhabitants.
It is to no purpose, that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his
extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren,
in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest that grows upon them.
The homely and vulgar proverb, that the eye is larger than the belly,
never was more fully verified than with regard to him. The capacity of
his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and
will receive no more than that of the meanest peasant. The rest he is
obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner,
that little which he himself makes use of, among those who sit up the
palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide
and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets, which are
employed in the œconomy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his
luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they
would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice. The
produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of
inhabitants, which it is capable of maintaining. The rich only select
from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little
more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and
rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole
end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they
employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires,
they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They
are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the
necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been
divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without
intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society,
and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence
divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor
abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These
last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes
the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to
those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of
mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the
beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that
security which kings are fighting for.
The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the
beauty of order, of art and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend
those institutions, which tend to promote the public welfare. When a
patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public
police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the
happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly
from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners that a public-spirited
man encourages the mending of high roads. When the legislature
establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen or
woollen manufactures, its conduct seldom proceeds from pure sympathy
with the wearer of cheap or fine cloth, and much less from that with the
manufacturer, or merchant. The perfection of police, the extension of
trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. The
contemplation of them pleases us, and we are interested in whatever can
tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government,
and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony
and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection
of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any
obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of
its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only
in proportion, as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live
under them. This is their sole use and end. From a certain spirit of
system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we
sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to
promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to
perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from
any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy.
There have been men of the greatest public spirit, who have shewn
themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of
humanity. And on the contrary, there have been men of the greatest
humanity, who seem to have been entirely devoid of public spirit. Every
man may find in the circle of his acquaintance instances both of the one
kind and the other. Who had ever less humanity, or more public spirit,
than the celebrated legislator of Muscovy? The social and well natured
James the First of Great Britain seems, on the contrary, to have had
scarce any passion, either for the glory, or the interest of his
country. Would you awaken the industry of the man, who seems almost dead
to ambition, it will often be to no purpose to describe to him the
happiness of the rich and the great; to tell him that they are generally
sheltered from the sun and the rain, that they are seldom hungry, that
they are seldom cold, and that they are rarely exposed to weariness, or
to want of any kind. The most eloquent exhortation of this kind will
have little effect upon him. If you would hope to succeed, you must
describe to him the conveniency and arrangement of the different
apartments in their palaces, you must explain to him the propriety of
their equipages, and point out to him the number, the order, and the
different offices of all their attendants. If any thing is capable of
making impression upon him, this will. Yet all these things tend only to
keep off the sun and the rain, to save them from hunger and cold, from
want and weariness. In the same manner, if you would implant public
virtue in the breast of him, who seems heedless of the interest of his
country, it will often be to no purpose to tell him, what superior
advantages the subjects of a well-governed state enjoy; that they are
better lodged, that they are better clothed, that they are better fed.
These considerations will commonly make no great impression. You will be
more likely to persuade, if you describe the great system of public
police which procures these advantages, if you explain the connexions
and dependencies of its several parts, their mutual subordination to one
another, and their general subserviency to the happiness of the society;
if you show how this system might be introduced into his own country,
what it is that hinders it from taking place there at present, how those
obstructions might be removed, and all the several wheels of the machine
of government be made to move with more harmony and smoothness, without
grating upon one another, or mutually retarding one another’s motions.
It is scarce possible that a man should listen to a discourse of this
kind, and not feel himself animated to some degree of public spirit. He
will, at least for the moment, feel some desire to remove those
obstructions, and to put into motion so beautiful and so orderly a
machine. Nothing tends so much to promote public spirit as the study of
politics, of the several systems of civil government, their advantages
and disadvantages, of the constitution of our own country, its
situation, and interest with regard to foreign nations, its commerce,
its defence, the disadvantages it labours under, the dangers to which it
may be exposed, how to remove the one, and how to guard against the
other. Upon this account political disquisitions, if just and
reasonable, and practicable, are of all the works of speculation the
most useful. Even the weakest and the worst of them are not altogether
without their utility. They serve at least to animate the public
passions of men, and rouse them to seek out the means of promoting the
happiness of the society.
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._
The characters of men, as well as the contrivances of art, or the
institutions of civil government, may be fitted either to promote or to
disturb the happiness both of the individual and of the society. The
prudent, the equitable, the active, resolute, and sober character
promises prosperity and satisfaction, both to the person himself and to
every one connected with him. The rash, the insolent, the slothful,
effeminate, and voluptuous, on the contrary, forebodes ruin to the
individual, and misfortune to all who have any thing to do with him. The
first turn of mind has at least all the beauty which can belong to the
most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most
agreeable purpose: and the second all the deformity of the most awkward
and clumsy contrivance. What institution of government could tend so
much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of
wisdom and virtue? All government is but an imperfect remedy for the
deficiency of these. Whatever beauty, therefore, can belong to civil
government upon account of its utility, must in a far superior degree
belong to these. On the contrary, what civil policy can be so ruinous
and destructive as the vices of men? The fatal effects of bad government
arise from nothing, but that it does not sufficiently guard against the
mischiefs which human wickedness gives occasion to.
This beauty and deformity which characters appear to derive from their
usefulness or inconveniency, are apt to strike, in a peculiar manner,
those who consider, in an abstract and philosophical light, the actions
and conduct of mankind. When a philosopher goes to examine why humanity
is approved of, or cruelty condemned, he does not always form to
himself, in a very clear and distinct manner, the conception of any one
particular action either of cruelty or of humanity, but is commonly
contented with the vague and indeterminate idea which the general names
of those qualities suggest to him. But it is in particular instances
only that the propriety or impropriety, the merit or demerit of actions
is very obvious and discernible. It is only when particular examples are
given that we perceive distinctly either the concord or disagreement
between our own affections and those of the agent, or feel a social
gratitude arise towards him in the one case, or a sympathetic resentment
in the other. When we consider virtue and vice in an abstract and
general manner, the qualities by which they excite these several
sentiments seem in a great measure to disappear, and the sentiments
themselves become less obvious and discernible. On the contrary, the
happy effects of the one and the fatal consequences of the other seem
then to rise up to the view, and as it were to stand out and distinguish
themselves from all the other qualities of either.
The same ingenious and agreeable author who first explained why utility
pleases, has been so struck with this view of things, as to resolve our
whole approbation of virtue into a perception of this species of beauty
which results from the appearance of utility. No qualities of the mind,
he observes, are approved of as virtuous, but such as are useful or
agreeable either to the person himself or to others; and no qualities
are disapproved of as vicious but such as have a contrary tendency. And
Nature, indeed, seems to have so happily adjusted our sentiments of
approbation and disapprobation, to the conveniency both of the
individual and of the society, that after the strictest examination it
will be found, I believe, that this is universally the case. But still I
affirm, that it is not the view of this utility or hurtfulness which is
either the first or principal source of our approbation and
disapprobation. These sentiments are no doubt enhanced and enlivened by
the perception of the beauty or deformity which results from this
utility or hurtfulness. But still, I say, they are originally and
essentially different from this perception.
For first of all, it seems impossible that the approbation of virtue
should be a sentiment of the same kind with that by which we approve of
a convenient and well contrived building, or that we should have no
other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest
of drawers.
And secondly, it will be found, upon examination, that the usefulness of
any disposition of mind is seldom the first ground of our approbation;
and that the sentiment of approbation always involves in it a sense of
propriety quite distinct from the perception of utility. We may observe
this with regard to all the qualities which are approved of as virtuous,
both those which, according to this system, are originally valued as
useful to ourselves, as well as those which are esteemed on account of
their usefulness to others.
The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior
reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the
remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage
or detriment which is likely to result from them: and secondly,
self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure
or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to
avoid a greater pain in some future time. In the union of those two
qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues that which
is most useful to the individual.
With regard to the first of those qualities, it has been observed on a
former occasion, that superior reason and understanding are originally
approved of as just and right and accurate, and not merely as useful or
advantageous. It is in the abstruser sciences, particularly in the
higher parts of mathematics, that the greatest and most admired
exertions of human reason have been displayed. But the utility of those
sciences, either to the individual or to the public, is not very
obvious, and to prove it requires a discussion which is not always very
easily comprehended. It was not, therefore, their utility which first
recommended them to the public admiration. This quality was but little
insisted upon, till it became necessary to make some reply to the
reproaches of those, who, having themselves no taste for such sublime
discoveries, endeavoured to depreciate them as useless.
That self-command, in the same manner, by which we restrain our present
appetites, in order to gratify them more fully upon another occasion, is
approved of, as much under the aspect of propriety, as under that of
utility. When we act in this manner, the sentiments which influence our
conduct seem exactly to coincide with those of the spectator. The
spectator does not feel the felicitations of our present appetites. To
him the pleasure which we are to enjoy a week hence, or a year hence, is
just as interesting as that which we are to enjoy this moment. When for
the sake of the present, therefore, we sacrifice the future, our conduct
appears to him absurd and extravagant in the highest degree, and he
cannot enter into the principles which influence it. On the contrary,
when we abstain from present pleasure, in order to secure greater
pleasure to come, when we act as if the remote object interests us as
much as that which immediately presses upon the senses, as our
affections exactly correspond with his own, he cannot fail to approve of
our behaviour: and as he knows from experience, how few are capable of
this self-command, he looks upon our conduct with a considerable degree
of wonder and admiration. Hence arises that eminent esteem with which
all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of
frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other
purpose than the acquisition of fortune. The resolute firmness of the
person who acts in this manner, and in order to obtain a great though
remote advantage, not only gives up all present pleasures, but endures
the greatest labour both of mind and body, necessarily commands our
approbation. That view of his interest and happiness which appears to
regulate his conduct, exactly tallies with the idea which we naturally
form of it. There is the most perfect correspondence between his
sentiments and our own, and at the same time, from our experience of the
common weakness of human nature, it is a correspondence which we could
not reasonably have expected. We not only approve, therefore, but in
some measure admire his conduct, and think it worthy of a considerable
degree of applause. It is the consciousness of this merited approbation
and esteem which is alone capable of supporting the agent in this tenour
of conduct. The pleasure which we are to enjoy ten years hence interests
us so little in comparison with that which we may enjoy to-day, the
passion which the first excites, is naturally so weak in comparison with
that violent emotion which the second is apt to give occasion to, that
one could never be any balance to the other, unless it was supported by
the sense of propriety, by the consciousness that we merited the esteem
and approbation of every body, by acting in the one way, and that we
became the proper objects of their contempt and derision by behaving in
the other.
Humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit, are the qualities most
useful to others. Wherein consists the propriety of humanity and justice
has been explained upon a former occasion, where it was shewn how much
our esteem and approbation of those qualities depended upon the concord
between the affections of the agent and those of the spectators.
The propriety of generosity and public spirit is founded upon the same
principle with that of justice. Generosity is different from humanity.
Those two qualities, which at first sight seem so nearly allied, do not
always belong to the same person. Humanity is the virtue of a woman,
generosity of a man. The fair sex, who have commonly much more
tenderness than ours, have seldom so much generosity. That women rarely
make considerable donations is an observation of the civil law[7].
Humanity consists merely in the exquisite fellow-feeling which the
spectator entertains with the sentiments of the persons principally
concerned, so as to grieve for their sufferings, to resent their
injuries, and to rejoice at their good fortune. The most humane actions
require no self-denial, no self-command, no great exertion of the sense
of propriety. They consist only in doing what this exquisite sympathy
would of its own accord prompt us to do. But it is otherwise with
generosity. We never are generous except when in some respect we prefer
some other person to ourselves, and sacrifice some great and important
interest of our own to an equal interest of a friend or of a superior.
The man who gives up his pretensions to an office that was the great
object of his ambition, because he imagines that the services of another
are better entitled to it, the man who exposes his life to defend that
of his friend, which he judges to be of more importance, neither of them
act from humanity, or because they feel more exquisitely what concerns
that other person than what concerns themselves. They both consider
those opposite interests not in the light in which they naturally appear
to themselves, but in that in which they appear to others. To every
by-stander, the success or preservation of this other person may justly
be more interesting than their own; but it cannot be so to themselves.
When to the interest of this other person, therefore, they sacrifice
their own, they accommodate themselves to the sentiments of the
spectator, and by an effort of magnanimity act according to those views
of things which they feel, must naturally occur to any third person. The
soldier who throws away his life in order to defend that of his officer,
would perhaps be but little affected by the death of that officer, if it
should happen without any fault of his own; and a very small disaster
which had befallen himself might excite a much more lively sorrow. But
when he endeavours to act so as to deserve applause, and to make the
impartial spectator enter into the principles of his conduct, he feels,
that to every body but himself, his own life is a trifle compared with
that of his officer, and that when he sacrifices the one to the other,
he acts quite properly and agreeably to what would be the natural
apprehensions of every impartial by-stander.
Footnote 7:
Raro mulieres donare solent.
It is the same case with the greater exertions of public spirit. When a
young officer exposes his life to acquire some inconsiderable addition
to the dominions of his sovereign, it is not, because the acquisition of
the new territory is, to himself, an object more desireable than the
preservation of his own life. To him his own life is of infinitely more
value than the conquest of a whole kingdom for the state which he
serves. But when he compares those two objects with one another, he does
not view them in the light in which they naturally appear to himself,
but in that in which they appear to the nation he fights for. To them
the success of the war is of the highest importance; the life of a
private person of scarce any consequence. When he puts himself in their
situation, he immediately feels that he cannot be too prodigal of his
blood, if by shedding it, he can promote so valuable a purpose. In thus
thwarting, from a sense of duty and propriety, the strongest of all
natural propensities, consists the heroism of his conduct. There is many
an honest Englishman, who, in his private station, would be more
seriously disturbed by the loss of a guinea, than by the national loss
of Minorca, who yet, had it been in his power to defend that fortress,
would have sacrificed his life a thousand times rather than, through his
fault, have let it fall into the hands of the enemy. When the first
Brutus led forth his own sons to a capital punishment, because they had
conspired against the rising liberty of Rome, he sacrificed what, if he
had consulted his own breast only, would appear to be the stronger to
the weaker affection. Brutus ought naturally to have felt much more for
the death of his own sons, than for all that probably Rome could have
suffered from the want of so great an example. But he viewed them, not
with the eyes of a father, but with those of a Roman citizen. He entered
so thoroughly into the sentiments of this last character, that he paid
no regard to that tye, by which he himself was connected with them; and
to a Roman citizen, the sons even of Brutus seemed contemptible, when
put into the balance with the smallest interest of Rome. In these and in
all other cases of this kind, our admiration is not so much founded upon
the utility, as upon the unexpected, and on that account the great, the
noble, and exalted propriety of such actions. This utility, when we come
to view it, bestows upon them, undoubtedly, a new beauty, and upon that
account still further recommends them, to our approbation. This beauty,
however, is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and speculation, and
is by no means the quality which first recommends such actions to the
natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind.
It is to be observed, that so far as the sentiment of approbation arises
from the perception of this beauty of utility, it has no reference of
any kind to the sentiments of others. If it was possible, therefore,
that a person should grow up to manhood without any communication with
society, his own actions might, notwithstanding, be agreeable or
disagreeable to him on account of their tendency to his happiness or
disadvantage. He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence,
temperance, and good conduct, and a deformity in the opposite behaviour:
He might view his own temper and character with that sort of
satisfaction with which we consider a well contrived machine, in the one
case; or with that sort of distaste and dissatisfaction with which we
regard a very awkward and clumsy contrivance, in the other. As these
perceptions, however, are merely a matter of taste, and have all the
feebleness and delicacy of that species of perceptions, upon the
justness of which what is properly called taste is founded, they
probably would not be much attended to by one in his solitary and
miserable condition. Even though they should occur to him, they would by
no means have the same effect upon him, antecedent to his connexion with
society, which they would have in consequence of that connexion. He
would not be cast down with inward shame at the thought of this
deformity; nor would he be elevated with secret triumph of mind from the
consciousness of the contrary beauty. He would not exult from the notion
of deserving reward in the one case, nor tremble from the suspicion of
meriting punishment in the other. All such sentiments suppose the idea
of some other being, who is the natural judge of the person that feels
them; and it is only by sympathy with the decisions of this arbiter of
his conduct, that he can conceive, either the triumph of self-applause,
or the shame of self-condemnation.