---
type: article
status: Published
slug: "moral-sentiments"
title: "The Theory of Moral Sentiments"
author: "Adam Smith"
tradition: "european"
language: "en-18c"
genre: "moral philosophy"
period: "1759 (sixth edition text)"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67363"
certainty: observed
source: "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67363"
unknowns: none known
---
# The Theory of Moral Sentiments

## Original

### Part I, Section I, Chapter I

Part I: Of the PROPRIETY of ACTION. Consisting of three Sections.

Section I: Of the SENSE of PROPRIETY.

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.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter I

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.

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.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter 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.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 1

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.

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.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 2

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!

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 1

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.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 2

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.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter 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, Section I, Chapter I

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.

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.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter 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.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter I

Section II: Of justice and beneficence.

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.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter 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.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 1

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.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 2

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.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter I

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.

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.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 1

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.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 2

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.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter 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, Chapter I

Part III: Of the foundation of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and conduct, and of the sense of duty. CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.

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.

### Part III, Chapter II, 1

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.

### Part III, Chapter II, 2

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.

### Part III, Chapter II, 3

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.

### Part III, Chapter III, 1

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.

### Part III, Chapter III, 2

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.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 1

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.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 2

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.

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### Part IV, Chapter I, 1

Part IV: Of the EFFECT of UTILITY upon the sentiment of approbation. CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.

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.

### Part IV, Chapter I, 2

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.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 1

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.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 2

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.

### Part V, Chapter I, 1

Part V: Of the INFLUENCE of CUSTOM and FASHION upon the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation. CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.

Of the influence of custom and fashion upon our notions of beauty and deformity.

There are other principles besides those already enumerated, which have a considerable influence upon the moral sentiments of mankind, and are the chief causes of the many irregular and discordant opinions which prevail in different ages and nations concerning what is blameable or praise-worthy. These principles are custom and faction, principles which extend their dominion over our judgments concerning beauty of every kind.

When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. Though, independent of custom, there should be no real beauty in their union, yet when custom has thus connected them together, we feel an impropriety in their reparation. The one we think is awkward when it appears without its usual companion. We miss something which we expected to find, and the habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems to want something if they are without the most insignificant ornament which usually accompanies them, and we find a meanness or awkwardness in the absence even of a haunch button. When there is any natural propriety in the union, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to see things in a good taste, are more disgusted by whatever is clumsy or awkward. Where the conjunction is improper, custom either diminishes, or takes away altogether, our sense of the impropriety. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of furniture or dress which seem ridiculous to strangers, give no offence to the people who are used to them.

Fashion is different from custom, or rather is a particular species of it. That is not the fashion which every body wears, but which those wear who are of a high rank, or character. The graceful, the easy, and commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow upon it. As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something that is genteel and magnificent, and though in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account of this relation, to have something about it that is genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess before, and being now used only by the inferior ranks of people, seems to have something of their meanness and awkwardness.

Dress and furniture are allowed by all the world to be entirely under the dominion of custom and fashion. The influence of those principles, however, is by no means confined to so narrow a sphere, but extends itself to whatever is in any respect the object of taste, to music, to poetry, to architecture. The modes of dress and furniture are continually changing, and that fashion appearing ridiculous to-day which was admired five years ago, we are experimentally convinced that it owed its vogue chiefly or entirely to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture are not made of very durable materials. A well fancied coat is done in a twelve-month, and cannot continue longer to propagate, as the fashion, that form according to which it was made. The modes of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress; because furniture is commonly more durable. In five or six years, however, it generally undergoes an entire revolution, and every man in his own time sees the fashion in this respect change many different ways. The productions of the other arts are much more lasting, and, when happily imagined, may continue to propagate the fashion of their make for a much longer time. A well contrived building may endure many centuries: a beautiful air may be delivered down by a sort of tradition, through many successive generations: a well written poem may last as long as the world; and all of them continue for ages together, to give the vogue to that particular style, to that particular taste or manner, according to which each of them was composed. Few men have an opportunity of seeing in their own times the fashion in any of these arts change very considerably. Few men have so much experience and acquaintance with the different modes which have obtained in remote ages and nations, as to be thoroughly reconciled to them, or to judge with impartiality between them, and what takes place in their own age and country. Few men therefore are willing to allow that custom or fashion have much influence upon their judgments concerning what is beautiful, or otherwise, in the productions of any of those arts; but imagine, that all the rules, which they think ought to be observed in each of them, are founded upon reason and nature, not upon habit or prejudice. A very little attention, however, may convince them of the contrary, and satisfy them, that the influence of custom and fashion over dress and furniture, is not more absolute than over architecture, poetry, and music.

Can any reason, for example, be assigned why the Doric capital should be appropriated to a pillar, whose height is equal to eight diameters; the Ionic volute to one of nine; and the Corinthian foliage to one of ten? The propriety of each of those appropriations can be founded upon nothing but habit and custom. The eye having been used to see a particular proportion connected with a particular ornament, would be offended if they were not joined together. Each of the five orders has its peculiar ornaments, which cannot be changed for any other, without giving offence to all those who know any thing of the rules of architecture. According to some architects, indeed, such is the exquisite judgment with which the ancients have assigned to each order its proper ornaments, that no others can be found which are equally suitable. It seems, however, a little difficult to be conceived that these forms, though, no doubt, extremely agreeable, should be the only forms which can suit those proportions, or that there should not be five hundred others which, antecedent to established custom, would have fitted them equally well. When custom, however, has established particular rules of building, provided they are not absolutely unreasonable, it is absurd to think of altering them for others which are only equally good, or even for others which, in point of elegance and beauty, have naturally some little advantage over them. A man would be ridiculous who should appear in public with a suit of clothes quite different from those which are commonly worn, though the new dress should in itself be ever so graceful or convenient. And there seems to be an absurdity of the same kind in ornamenting a house after a quite different manner from that which custom and fashion have prescribed; though the new ornaments should in themselves be somewhat superior to the common ones.

According to the ancient rhetoricians, a certain measure or verse was by nature appropriated to each particular species of writing, as being naturally expressive of that character, sentiment, or passion, which ought to predominate in it. One verse, they said, was fit for grave and another for gay works, which could not, they thought, be interchanged without the greatest impropriety. The experience of modern times, however, seems to contradict this principle, though in itself it would appear to be extremely probable. What is the burlesque verse in English is the heroic verse in French. The tragedies of Racine and the Henriad of Voltaire, are in the same verse with,

Thus said to my lady the knight full of care.

The burlesque verse in French, on the contrary, is pretty much the same with the heroic verse of ten syllables in English. Custom has made the one nation associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and seriousness, to that measure which the other has connected with whatever is gay, flippant, and ludicrous. Nothing would appear more absurd in English than a tragedy written in the Alexandrine verses of the French, or in French, than a work of the same kind in verses of ten syllables.

### Part V, Chapter I, 2

An eminent artist will bring about a considerable change in the established modes of each of those arts, and introduce a new fashion of writing, music, or architecture. As the dress of an agreeable man of high rank recommends itself, and how peculiar and fantastical soever, comes soon to be admired and imitated; so the excellencies of an eminent matter recommend his peculiarities, and his manner becomes the fashionable style in the art which he practises. The taste of the Italians in music and architecture, has, within these fifty years, undergone a considerable change, from imitating the peculiarities of some eminent masters in each of those arts. Seneca is accused by Quintilian of having corrupted the taste of the Romans, and of having introduced a frivolous prettiness in the room of majestic reason and masculine eloquence. Sallust and Tacitus have by others been charged with the same accusation, tho’ in a different manner. They gave reputation, it is pretended, to a style, which though in the highest degree concise, elegant, expressive, and even poetical, wanted, however, ease, simplicity, and nature, and was evidently the production of the most laboured and studied affectation. How many great qualities must that writer possess who can thus render his very faults agreeable? After the praise of refining the taste of a nation, the highest eulogy, perhaps, which can be bestowed upon any author is to say, that he corrupted it. In our own language, Mr. Pope and Dr. Swift have each of them introduced a manner different from what was practised before, into all works that are written in rhyme, the one in long verses, the other in short. The quaintness of Butler has given place to the plainness of Swift. The rambling freedom of Dryden, and the correct but often tedious and prosaic languor of Addison, are no longer the objects of imitation, but all long verses are now written after the manner of the nervous precision of Mr. Pope.

Neither is it only over the productions of the arts, that custom and fashion exert their dominion. They influence our judgments, in the same manner, with regard to the beauty of natural objects. What various and opposite forms are deemed beautiful in different species of things? The proportions which are admired in one animal, are altogether different from those which are esteemed in another. Every class of things has its own peculiar conformation, which is approved of, and has a beauty of its own, distinct from that of every other species. It is upon this account that a learned Jesuit, father Buffier, has determined that the beauty of every object consists in that form and colour, which is most usual among things of that particular sort to which it belongs. Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each feature lies in a certain middle equally removed from a variety of other forms that are ugly. A beautiful nose, for example, is one that is neither very long, nor very short, neither very straight, nor very crooked, but a sort of middle among all these extremes, and less different from any one of them, than all of them are from one another. It is the form which Nature seems to have aimed at in them all, which, however, she deviates from in a great variety of ways, and very seldom hits exactly; but to which all those deviations still bear a very strong resemblance. When a number of drawings are made after one pattern, though they may all miss it in some respects, yet they will all resemble it more than they resemble one another; the general character of the pattern will run through them all; the most singular and odd will be those which are most wide of it; and though very few will copy it exactly, yet the most accurate delineations will bear a greater resemblance to the most careless, than the careless ones will bear to one another. In the same manner, in each species of creatures, what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong. And thus the beauty of each species, though in one sense the rarest of all things, because few individuals hit this middle form exactly, yet in another, is the most common, because all the deviations from it resemble it more than they resemble one another. The most customary form, therefore, is in each species of things, according to him, the most beautiful. And hence it is that a certain practice and experience in contemplating each species of objects is requisite, before we can judge of its beauty, or know wherein the middle and most usual form consists. The nicest judgment concerning the beauty of the human species, will not help us to judge of that of flowers, or horses, or any other species of things. It is for the same reason that in different climates and where different customs and ways of living take place, as the generality of any species receives a different conformation from those circumstances, so different ideas of its beauty prevail. The beauty of a Moorish is not exactly the same with that of an English horse. What different ideas are formed in different nations concerning the beauty of the human shape and countenance? A fair complexion is a shocking deformity upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are a beauty. In some nations long ears that hang down upon the shoulders are the objects of universal admiration. In China if a lady’s foot is so large as to be fit to walk upon, she is regarded as a monster of ugliness. Some of the savage nations in North America tie four boards round the heads of their children, and thus squeeze them, while the bones are tender and gristly, into a form that is almost perfectly square. Europeans are astonished at the absurd barbarity of this practice, to which some missionaries have imputed the singular stupidity of those nations among whom it prevails. But, when they condemn those savages, they do not reflect that the ladies in Europe had, till within these very few years, been endeavouring, for near a century past, to squeeze the beautiful roundness of their natural shape into a square form of the same kind. And that notwithstanding the many distortions and diseases which this practice was known to occasion, custom had rendered it agreeable among some of the most civilized nations, which, perhaps, the world ever beheld.

Such is the system of this learned and ingenious father, concerning the nature of beauty; of which the whole charm, according to him, would thus seem to arise from its falling in with the habits which custom had impressed upon the imagination, with regard to things of each particular kind. I cannot, however, be induced to believe that our sense even of external beauty is founded altogether on custom. The utility of any form, its fitness for the useful purposes for which it was intended, evidently recommends it, and renders it agreeable to us independent of custom. Certain colours are more agreeable than others, and give more delight to the eye the first time it ever beholds them. A smooth surface is more agreeable than a rough one. Variety is more pleasing than a tedious undiversified uniformity. Connected variety, in which each new appearance seems to be introduced by what went before it, and in which all the adjoining parts seem to have some natural relation to one another, is more agreeable than a disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected objects. But though I cannot admit that custom is the sole principle of beauty, yet I can so far allow the truth of this ingenious system as to grant, that there is scarce any one external form so beautiful as to please, if quite contrary to custom and unlike whatever we have been used to in that particular species of things: or so deformed as not to be agreeable, if custom uniformly supports it, and habituates us to see it in every single individual of the kind.

### Part V, Chapter II, 1

Of the influence of custom and fashion upon moral sentiments.

Since our sentiments concerning beauty of every kind are so much influenced by custom and fashion, it cannot be expected, that those, concerning the beauty, of conduct, should be entirely exempted from the dominion of those principles. Their influence here, however, seems to be much less than it is every where else. There is, perhaps, no form of external objects, how absurd and fantastical soever, to which custom will not reconcile us, or which fashion will not render even agreeable. But the characters and conduct of a Nero, or a Claudius, are what no custom will ever reconcile us to, what no fashion will ever render agreeable; but the one will always be the object of dread and hatred; the other of scorn and derision. The principles of the imagination, upon which our sense of beauty depends, are of a very nice and delicate nature, and may easily be altered by habit and education: but the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation, are founded on the strongest and most vigorous passions of human nature; and though they may be somewhat warpt, cannot be entirely perverted.

But though the influence of custom and fashion, upon moral sentiments, is not altogether so great, it is however perfectly similar to what it is every where else. When custom and fashion coincide with the natural principles of right and wrong, they heighten the delicacy of our sentiments, and increase our abhorrence for every thing which approaches to evil. Those who have been educated in what is really good company, not in what is commonly called such, who have been accustomed to see nothing in the persons whom they esteemed and lived with, but justice, modesty, humanity, and good order, are more shocked with whatever seems to be inconsistent with the rules which those virtues prescribe. Those, on the contrary, who have had the misfortune to be brought up amidst violence, licentiousness, falsehood, and injustice, lose, though not all sense of the impropriety of such conduct, yet all sense of its dreadful enormity, or of the vengeance and punishment due to it. They have been familiarized with it from their infancy, custom has rendered it habitual to them, and they are very apt to regard it as, what is called the way of the world, something which either may, or must be practised, to hinder us from being the dupes of our own integrity.

Fashion too will sometimes give reputation to a certain degree of disorder, and on the contrary discountenance qualities which deserve esteem. In the reign of Charles II. a degree of licentiousness was deemed the characteristic of a liberal education. It was connected, according to the notions of those times, with generosity, sincerity, magnanimity, loyalty, and proved that the person who acted in this manner, was a gentleman, and not a puritan; severity of manners, and regularity of conduct, on the other hand, were altogether unfashionable, and were connected, in the imagination of that age, with cant, cunning, hypocrisy, and low manners. To superficial minds, the vices of the great seem at all times agreeable. They connect them, not only with the splendour of fortune, but with many superiour virtues, which they ascribe to their superiors; with the spirit of freedom and independency, with frankness, generosity, humanity, and politeness. The virtues of the inferior ranks of people, on the contrary, their parsimonious frugality, their painful industry, and rigid adherence to rules, seem to them mean and disagreeable. They connect them, both with the meanness of the station to which those qualities commonly belong, and with many great vices, which, they suppose, usually accompany them; such as an abject, cowardly, ill-natured, lying, pilfering disposition.

The objects with which men in the different professions and states of life are conversant, being very different, and habituating them to very different passions, naturally form in them very different characters and manners. We expect in each rank and procession, a degree of those manners, which, experience has taught us, belong to it. But as in each species of things, we are particularly pleased with the middle conformation, which in every part and feature agrees most exactly with the general standard which nature seems to have established for things of that kind; so in each rank, or, if I may say so, in each species of men, we are particularly pleased, if they have neither too much, nor too little of the character which usually accompanies their particular condition and situation. A man, we say, should look like his trade and profession; yet the pedantry of every profession is disagreeable. The different periods of life have, for the same reason, different manners assigned to them. We expect in old age, that gravity and sedateness which its infirmities, its long experience, and its worn-out sensibility seem to render both natural and respectable; and we lay our account to find in youth that sensibility, that gaiety and sprightly vivacity which experience teaches us to expect from the lively impressions that all interesting objects are apt to make upon the tender and unpractised senses of that early period of life. Each of those two ages, however, may easily have too much of these peculiarities which belong to it. The flirting levity of youth, and the immoveable insensibility of old age, are equally disagreeable. The young, according to the common saying, are most agreeable when in their behaviour there is something of the manners of the old, and the old, when they retain something of the gaiety of the young. Either of them, however, may easily have too much of the manners of the other. The extreme coldness, and dull formality, which are pardoned in old age, make youth ridiculous. The levity, the carelessness, and the vanity, which are indulged in youth, render old age contemptible.

The peculiar character and manners which we are led by custom to appropriate to each rank and profession, have sometimes perhaps a propriety independent of custom; and are what we should approve of for their own sakes, if we took into consideration all the different circumstances which naturally affect those in each different state of life. The propriety of a person’s behaviour, depends not upon its suitableness to any one circumstance of his situation, but to all the circumstances, which, when we bring his case home to ourselves we feel, should naturally call upon his attention. If he appears to be so much occupied by any one of them, as entirely to neglect the rest, we disapprove of his conduct, as something which we cannot entirely go along with, because not properly adjusted to all the circumstances of his situation: yet, perhaps, the emotion he expresses for the object which principally interests him, does not exceed what we should entirely sympathize with, and approve of, in one whose attention was not required by any other thing. A parent in private life might, upon the loss of an only son, express without blame, a degree of grief and tenderness, which would be unpardonable in a general at the head of an army, when glory, and the public safety demanded so great a part of his attention. As different objects ought, upon common occasions, to occupy the attention of men of different professions, so different passions ought, naturally to become habitual to them; and when we bring home to ourselves their situation in this particular respect, we must be sensible, that every occurrence should naturally affect them more or less, according as the emotion which it excites, coincides or disagrees with the fixt habit and temper of their minds. We cannot expect the same sensibility to the gay pleasures and amusements of life in a clergyman which we lay our account with in an officer. The man whose peculiar occupation it is to keep the world in mind of that awful futurity which awaits them, who is to announce what may be the fatal consequences of every deviation from the rules of duty, and who is himself to set the example of the most exact conformity, seems to be the messenger of tidings, which cannot, in propriety, be delivered either with levity or indifference. His mind is supposed to be continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, to leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay. We readily feel therefore, that, independent of custom, there is a propriety in the manners which custom has allotted to this profession; and that nothing can be more suitable to the character of a clergyman, than that grave, that austere and abstracted severity, which we are habituated to expect in his behaviour. These reflections are so very obvious, that there is scarce any man so inconsiderate, as not, at some time, to have made them, and to have accounted to himself in this manner for his approbation of the usual character of this order.

The foundation of the customary character of some other professions is not so obvious, and our approbation of it is founded entirely in habit, without being either confirmed, or enlivened by any reflections of this kind. We are led by custom, for example, to annex the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as of some degree of dissipation, to the military profession: yet, if we were to consider what mood or tone of temper would be most suitable to this situation, we should be apt to determine, perhaps, that the most serious and thoughtful turn of mind, would best become those whose lives are continually exposed to uncommon danger; and who should therefore be more constantly occupied with the thoughts of death and its consequences than other men. It is this very circumstance, however, which is not improbably the occasion why the contrary turn of mind prevails so much among men of this profession. It requires so great an effort to conquer the fear of death, when we survey it with steadiness and attention, that those who are constantly exposed to it, find it easier to turn away their thoughts from it altogether, to wrap themselves up in careless security and indifference, and to plunge themselves, for this purpose, into every sort of amusement and dissipation. A camp is not the element of a thoughtful or a melancholy man: persons of that cast, indeed, are often abundantly determined, and are capable, by a great effort, of going on with inflexible resolution to the most unavoidable death. But to be exposed to continual, though less imminent danger, to be obliged to exert, for a long time, a degree of this effort, exhausts and depresses the mind, and renders it incapable of all happiness and enjoyment. The gay and careless, who have occasion to make no effort at all, who fairly resolve never to look before them, but to lose in continual pleasures and amusements, all anxiety about their situation, more easily support such circumstances. Whenever, by any peculiar circumstances, an officer has no reason to lay his account with being exposed to any uncommon danger, he is very apt to lose the gaiety and dissipated thoughtlessness of his character. The captain of a city guard is commonly as sober, careful, and penurious an animal as the rest of his fellow-citizens. A long peace is, for the same reason, very apt to diminish the difference between the civil and the military character. The ordinary situation, however, of men of this profession, renders gaiety, and a degree of dissipation, so much their usual character; and custom has, in our imagination, so strongly connected this character with this state of life, that we are very apt to despise any man, whose peculiar humour or situation, renders him incapable of acquiring it. We laugh at the grave and careful faces of a city guard, which, so little resemble those of their profession. They themselves seem often to be ashamed of the regularity of their own manners, and, not to be out of the fashion of their trade, are fond of affecting that levity, which is by no means natural to them. Whatever is the deportment which we have been accustomed to see in a respectable order of men, it comes to be so associated in our imagination with that order, that whenever we see the one, we lay our account that we are to meet with the other, and when disappointed, miss something which we expected to find. We are embarrassed, and put to a stand, and know not how to address ourselves to a character, which plainly affects to be of a different species from those with which we should have been disposed to class it.

The different situations of different ages and countries, are apt, in the same manner, to give different characters to the generality of those who live in them, and their sentiments concerning the particular degree of each quality, that is either blameable, or praise-worthy, vary according to that degree, which is usual in their own country, and in their own times. That degree of politeness, which would be highly esteemed, perhaps, would be thought effeminate adulation, in Russia, would be regarded as rudeness and barbarism at the court of France. That degree of order and frugality, which, in a Polish nobleman, would be considered as excessive parsimony, would be regarded as extravagance in a citizen of Amsterdam. Every age and country look upon that degree of each quality, which is commonly to be met with in those who are esteemed among themselves, as the golden mean of that particular talent or virtue. And as this varies, according as their different circumstances render different qualities more or less habitual to them, their sentiments concerning the exact propriety of character and behaviour vary accordingly.

Among civilized nations, the virtues which are founded upon humanity, are more cultivated than those which are founded upon self-denial and the command of the passions. Among rude and barbarous nations, it is quite otherwise, the virtues of self-denial are more cultivated than those of humanity. The general security and happiness which prevail in ages of civility and politeness afford little exercise to the contempt of danger, to patience in enduring labour, hunger, and pain. Poverty may easily be avoided, and the contempt of it therefore, almost ceases to be a virtue. The abstinence from pleasure, becomes less necessary, and the mind is more at liberty to unbend itself, and to indulge its natural inclinations in all those particular respects.

### Part V, Chapter II, 2

Among savages and barbarians it is quite otherwise. Every savage undergoes a sort of Spartan discipline, and by the necessity of his situation is inured to every sort of hardship. He is in continual danger: He is often exposed to the greatest extremities of hunger, and frequently dies of pure want. His circumstances not only habituate him to every sort of distress, but teach him to give way to none of the passions which that distress is apt to excite. He can expect from his countrymen no sympathy or indulgence for such weakness. Before we can feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves. If our own misery pinches us very severely, we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbour: And all savages are too much occupied with their own wants and necessities, to give much attention to those of another person. A savage, therefore, whatever be the nature of his distress, expects no sympathy from those about him, and disdains, upon that account, to expose himself, by allowing the least weakness to escape him. His passions, how furious and violent soever, are never permitted to disturb the serenity of his countenance or the composure of his conduct and behaviour. The savages in North America, we are told, assume upon all occasions the greatest indifference, and would think themselves degraded if they should ever appear in any respect to be overcome, either by love, or grief, or resentment. Their magnanimity and self-command, in this respect, are almost beyond the conception of Europeans. In a country in which all men are upon a level, with regard to rank and fortune, it might be expected that the mutual inclinations of the two parties should be the only thing considered in marriages, and should be indulged without any sort of controul. This, however, is the country in which all marriages, without exception, are made up by the parents, and in which a young man would think himself disgraced for ever, if he shewed the least preference of one woman above another, or did not express the most complete indifference, both about the time when, and the person to whom he was to be married. The weakness of love, which is so much indulged in ages of humanity and politeness, is regarded among savages as the most unpardonable effeminacy. Even after the marriage the two parties seem to be ashamed of a connexion which is founded upon so sordid a necessity. They do not live together. They see one another by stealth only. They both continue to dwell in the houses of their respective fathers, and the open cohabitation of the two sexes, which is permitted without blame in all other countries, is here considered as the most indecent and unmanly sensuality. Nor is it only over this agreeable passion that they exert this absolute self-command. They often bear in the sight of all their countrymen with injuries, reproach, and the grossest insults with the appearance of the greatest insensibility, and without expressing the smallest resentment. When a savage is made prisoner of war, and receives, as is usual, the sentence of death from his conquerors, he hears it without expressing any emotion, and afterwards submits to the most dreadful torments, without ever bemoaning himself, or discovering any other passion but contempt of his enemies. While he is hung by the shoulders over a slow fire, he derides his tormentors, and tells them with how much more ingenuity, he himself had tormented such of their countrymen as had fallen into his hands. After he has been scorched and burnt, and lacerated in all the most tender and sensible parts of his body for several hours together, he is often allowed, in order to prolong his misery, a short respite, and is taken down from the stake: he employs this interval in talking upon all indifferent subjects, inquires after the news of the country, and seems indifferent about nothing but his own situation. The spectators express the same insensibility; the sight of so horrible an object seems to make no impression upon them; they scarce look at the prisoner, except when they lend a hand to torment him. At other times they smoke tobacco, and amuse themselves with any common object, as if no such matter was going on. Every savage is said to prepare himself from his earliest youth for this dreadful end. He composes, for this purpose, what they call the song of death, a song which he is to sing when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies, and is expiring under the tortures which they inflict upon him. It consists of insults upon his tormentors, and expresses the highest contempt of death and pain. He sings this song upon all extraordinary occasions, when he goes out to war, when he meets his enemies in the field, or whenever he has a mind to show that he has familiarised his imagination to the most dreadful misfortunes, and that no human event can daunt his resolution, or alter his purpose. The same contempt of death and torture prevails among all other savage nations. There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.

This heroic and unconquerable firmness, which the custom and education of his country demand of every savage, is not required of those who are brought up to live in civilized societies. If these last complain when they are in pain, if they grieve when they are in distress, if they allow themselves either to be overcome by love, or to be discomposed by anger, they are easily pardoned. Such weaknesses are not apprehended to affect the essential parts of their character. As long as they do not allow themselves to be transported to do any thing contrary to justice or humanity, they lose but little reputation, though the serenity of their countenance or the composure of their discourse and behaviour should be somewhat ruffled and disturbed. A humane and polished people, who have more sensibility to the passions of others, can more readily enter into an animated and passionate behaviour, and can more easily pardon some little excess. The person principally concerned is sensible of this; and being assured of the equity of his judges, indulges himself in stronger expressions of passion, and is less afraid of exposing himself to their contempt by the violence of his emotions. We can venture to express more emotion in the presence of a friend than in that of a stranger, because we expect more indulgence from the one than from the other. And in the same manner the rules of decorum among civilized nations, admit of a more animated behaviour, than is approved of among barbarians. The first converse together with the openness of friends; the second with the reserve of strangers. The emotion and vivacity with which the French and the Italians, the two most polished nations upon the continent, express themselves on occasions that are at all interesting, surprise at first those strangers who happen to be travelling among them, and who, having been educated among a people of duller sensibility, cannot enter into this passionate behaviour, of which they have never seen any example in their own country. A young French nobleman will weep in the presence of the whole court upon being refused a regiment. An Italian, says the abbot Dû Bos, expresses more emotion on being condemned in a fine of twenty shillings, than an Englishman on receiving the sentence of death. Cicero, in the times of the highest Roman politeness, could, without degrading himself, weep with all the bitterness of sorrow in the sight of the whole senate and the whole people; as it is evident he must have done in the end of almost every oration. The orators of the earlier and ruder ages of Rome could not probably, consistent with the manners of the times, have expressed themselves with so much emotion. It would have been regarded, I suppose, as a violation of nature and propriety in the Scipios, in the Leliuses, and in the elder Cato, to have exposed so much tenderness to the view of the public. Those ancient warriors could express themselves, with order, gravity, and good judgment; but are said to have been strangers to that sublime and passionate eloquence which was first introduced into Rome, not many years before the birth of Cicero, by the two Gracchi, by Crassus, and by Sulpitius. This animated eloquence, which has been long practiced, with or without success, both in France and Italy, is but just beginning to be introduced into England. So wide is the difference between the degrees of self-command which are required in civilized and in barbarous nations, and by such different standards do they judge of the propriety of behaviour.

This difference gives occasion to many others that are not less essential. A polished people being accustomed to give way, in some measure, to the movements of nature, become frank, open, and sincere. Barbarians, on the contrary, being obliged to smother and conceal the appearance of every passion, necessarily acquire the habits of falsehood and dissimulation. It is observed by all those who have been conversant with savage nations, whether in Asia, Africa, or America, that they are all equally impenetrable, and that, when they have a mind to conceal the truth, no examination is capable of drawing it from them. They cannot be trepanned by the most artful questions. The torture itself is incapable of making them confess any thing which they have no mind to tell. The passions of a savage too, though they never express themselves by any outward emotion, but lie concealed in the breast of the sufferer, are, notwithstanding, all mounted to the highest pitch of fury. Though he seldom shows any symptoms of anger, yet his vengeance, when he comes to give way to it, is always sanguinary and dreadful. The least affront drives him to despair. His countenance and discourse indeed are still sober and composed, and express nothing but the most perfect tranquillity of mind: But his actions are often the most furious and violent. Among the North-Americans it is not uncommon for persons of the tenderest age and more fearful sex to drown themselves upon receiving only a slight reprimand from their mothers, and this too without expressing any passions or saying any thing, except, you shall no longer have a daughter. In civilized nations the passions of men are not commonly so furious or so desperate. They are often clamorous and noisy, but are seldom very hurtful; and seem frequently to aim at no other satisfaction, but that of convincing the spectator, that they are in the right to be so much moved, and of procuring his sympathy and approbation.

All these effects of custom and fashion, however, upon the moral sentiments of mankind, are inconsiderable in comparison of those which they give occasion to in some other cases; and it is not concerning the general style of character and behaviour, that those principles produce the greatest perversion of judgment, but concerning the propriety or impropriety of particular usages.

The different manners which custom teaches us to approve of in the different professions and states of life, do not concern things of the greatest importance. We expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a young, from a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it is in matters of small moment only that we look for the distinguishing marks of their respective characters. With regard to these too, there is often some unobserved circumstance which, if it was attended to, would show us, that, independent of custom, there was a propriety in the character which custom had taught us to allot to each profession. We cannot complain, therefore, in this case, that the perversion of natural sentiment is very great. Though the manners of different nations require different degrees of the same quality, in the character which they think worthy of esteem, yet the worst that can be said to happen even here, is that the duties of one virtue are sometimes extended so as to encroach a little upon the precincts of some other. The rustic hospitality that is in fashion among the Poles encroaches, perhaps, a little upon œconomy and good order; and the frugality that is esteemed in Holland, upon generosity and good-fellowship. The hardiness demanded of savages diminishes their humanity; and, perhaps, the delicate sensibility required in civilized nations sometimes destroys the masculine firmness of the character. In general, the style of manners which takes place in any nation, may commonly upon the whole be said to be that which is most suitable to its situation. Hardiness is the character most suitable to the circumstances of a savage; sensibility to those of one who lives in a very civilized society. Even here, therefore, we cannot complain that the moral sentiments of men are very grossly perverted.

It is not therefore in the general style of conduct or behaviour that custom authorizes the widest departure from what is the natural propriety of action. With regard to particular usages its influence is often much more destructive of good morals, and it is capable of establishing, as lawful and blameless, particular actions, which shock the plainest principles of right and wrong.

Can there be greater barbarity, for example, than to hurt an infant? Its helplessness, its innocence, its amiableness, call forth the compassion even of an enemy, and not to spare that tender age is regarded as the most furious effort of an enraged and cruel conqueror. What then should we imagine must be the heart of a parent who could injure that weakness which even a furious enemy is afraid to violate? Yet the exposition, that is, the murder of newborn infants, was a practice allowed of in almost all the states of Greece, even among the polite and civilized Athenians; and whenever the circumstances of the parent rendered it inconvenient to bring up the child, to abandon it to hunger, or to wild beasts, was regarded without blame or censure. This practice had probably begun in times of the most savage barbarity. The imaginations of men had been first made familiar with it in that earliest period of society, and the uniform continuance of the custom had hindered them afterwards from perceiving its enormity. We find, at this day, that this practice prevails among all savage nations; and in that rudest and lowest state of society it is undoubtedly more pardonable than in any other. The extreme indigence of a savage is often such that he himself is frequently exposed to the greatest extremity of hunger, he often dies of pure want, and it is frequently impossible for him to support both himself and his child. We cannot wonder, therefore, that in this case he should abandon it. One who in flying from an enemy, whom it was impossible to resist, should throw down his infant, because it retarded his flight, would surely be excusable; since, by attempting to save it, he could only hope for the consolation of dying with it. That in this state of society, therefore, a parent should be allowed to judge whether he can bring up his child, ought not to surprise us so greatly. In the latter ages of Greece, however, the same thing was permitted from views of remote interest or conveniency, which could by no means excuse it. Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorized the practice, that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by far-fetched considerations of public utility. Aristotle talks of it as of what the magistrate ought upon many occasions to encourage. The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, no where marks this practice with disapprobation. When custom can give sanction to so dreadful a violation of humanity, we may well imagine that there is scarce any particular practice so gross which it cannot authorize. Such a thing, we hear men every day saying, is commonly done, and they seem to think this a sufficient apology for what, in itself, is the most unjust and unreasonable conduct.

There is an obvious reason why custom should never pervert our sentiments with regard to the general style and character of conduct and behaviour, in the same degree as with regard to the propriety or unlawfulness of particular usages. There never can be any such custom. No society could subsist a moment, in which the usual strain of mens conduct and behaviour was of a piece with the horrible practice I just now mentioned.

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### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 1

Part VI: Of Systems of MORAL PHILOSOPHY. CONSISTING OF FOUR SECTIONS.

Section I: Of the questions which ought to be examined in a theory of moral sentiments. If we examine the most celebrated and remarkable of the different theories which have been given concerning the nature and origin of our moral sentiments, we shall find that almost all of them coincide with some part or other of that which I have been endeavouring to give an account of; and that if every thing which has already been said be fully considered, we shall be at no loss to explain what was the view or aspect of nature which led each particular author to form his particular system. From some one or other of those principles which I have been endeavouring to unfold, every system of morality that ever had any reputation in the world has, perhaps, ultimately been derived. As they are all of them, in this respect, founded upon natural principles, they are all of them in some measure in the right. But as many of them are derived from a partial and imperfect view of nature, there are many of them too in some respects in the wrong. In treating of the principles of morals there are two questions to be considered. First, wherein does virtue consist? Or what is the tone of temper, and tenour of conduct, which constitutes the excellent and praise-worthy character, the character which is the natural object of esteem, honour, and approbation? and secondly, by what power or faculty in the mind is it, that this character, whatever it be, is recommended to us? Or in other words, how and by what means does it come to pass, that the mind prefers one tenour of conduct to another, denominates the one right and the other wrong; considers the one as the object of approbation, honour, and reward, and the other of blame, censure, and punishment? We examine the first question when we consider whether virtue consists in benevolence, as Dr. Hutcheson imagines; or in acting suitably to the different relations we stand in, as Dr. Clarke supposes; or in the wise and prudent pursuit of our own real and solid happiness, as has been the opinion of others. We examine the second question, when we consider, whether the virtuous character, whatever it consists in, be recommended to us by self-love, which makes us perceive that this character, both in ourselves and others, tends most to promote our own private interest or by reason, which points out to us the difference between one character and another, in the same manner as it does that between truth and falsehood; or by a peculiar power of perception, called a moral sense, which this virtuous character gratifies and pleases, as the contrary disgusts and displeases it; or last of all, by some other principle in human nature, such as a modification of sympathy, or the like. I shall begin with considering the systems which have been formed concerning the first of these questions, and shall proceed afterwards to examine those concerning the second. [Illustration]

Section II: Of the different accounts which have been given of the nature of virtue. INTRODUCTION. The different accounts which have been given of the nature of virtue, or of the temper of mind which constitutes the excellent and praise-worthy character, may be reduced to three different classes. According to some, the virtuous temper of mind does not consist in any one species of affections, but in the proper government and direction of all our affections, which may be either virtuous or vicious according to the objects which they pursue, and the degree of vehemence with which they pursue them. According to these authors, therefore, virtue consists in propriety. According to others, virtue consists in the judicious pursuit of our own private interest and happiness, or in the proper government and direction of those selfish affections which aim solely at this end. In the opinion of these authors, therefore, virtue consists in prudence. Another set of authors make virtue consist in those affections only which aim at the happiness of others, not in those which aim at our own. According to them, therefore, disinterested benevolence is the only motive which can stamp upon any action the character of virtue. The character of virtue, it is evident, must either be ascribed indifferently to all our affections, when under proper government and direction; or it must be confined to some one class or division of them. The great division of our affections is into the selfish and the benevolent. If the character of virtue, therefore, cannot be ascribed indifferently to all our affections, when under proper government and direction, it must be confined either to those which aim directly at our own private happiness, or to those which aim directly at that of others. If virtue, therefore, does not consist in propriety, it must consist either in prudence or in benevolence. Besides these three, it is scarce possible to imagine that any other account can be given of the nature of virtue. I shall endeavour to shew hereafter how all the other accounts, which are seemingly different from any of these, coincide at bottom with some one or other of them.

Of those systems which make virtue consist in propriety.

According to Plato, to Aristotle, and to Zeno, virtue consists in the propriety of conduct, or in the suitableness of the affection from which we act to the object which excites it.

I. In the system of Plato[8] the soul is considered as something like a little state or republic, composed of three different faculties or orders.

Footnote 8:

See Plato de Rep. lib. iv.

The first is the judging faculty, the faculty which determines not only what are the proper means for attaining any end, but also what ends are fit to be pursued, and what degree of relative value we ought to put upon each. This faculty Plato called, as it is very properly called reason, and considered it as what had a right to be the governing principle of the whole. Under this appellation, it is evident, he comprehended not only that faculty by which we judge of truth and falsehood, but that by which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of desires and affections.

The different passions and appetites, the natural subject of this ruling principle, but which are so apt to rebel against their master, he reduced to two different classes or orders. The first consisted of those passions, which are founded in pride and resentment, or in what the schoolmen called the irascible part of the soul; ambition, animosity, the love of honour, and the dread of shame, the desire of victory, superiority, and revenge; all those passions, in short, which are supposed either to rise from, or to denote what, by a metaphor in our language, we commonly call spirit or natural fire. The second consisted of those passions which are founded in the love of pleasure, or in what the schoolmen called the concupiscible part of the soul. It comprehended all the appetites of the body, the love of ease and security, and of all sensual gratifications.

It rarely happens that we break in upon that plan of conduct, which the governing principle prescribes, and which in all our cool hours we had laid down to ourselves as what was most proper for us to pursue, but when prompted by one or other of those two different sets of passions; either by ungovernable ambition and resentment, or by the importunate solicitations of present ease and pleasure. But though these two orders of passions are so apt to mislead us, they are still considered as necessary parts of human nature: the first having been given to defend us against injuries, to assert our rank and dignity in the world, to make us aim at what is noble and honourable, and to make us distinguish those who act in the same manner; the second to provide for the support and necessities of the body.

In the strength, acuteness, and perfection of the governing principle was placed the essential virtue of prudence, which, according to Plato, consisted in a just and clear discernment, founded upon general and scientific ideas, of the ends which were proper to be pursued, and of the means which were proper for attaining them.

When the first set of passions, those of the irascible part of the soul, had that degree of strength and firmness, which enabled them, under the direction of reason, to despise all dangers in the pursuit of what was honourable and noble; it constituted the virtue of fortitude and magnanimity. This order of passions, according to this system, was of a more generous and noble nature than the other. They were considered upon many occasions as the auxiliaries of reason, to check and restrain the inferior and brutal appetites. We are often angry at ourselves, it was observed, we often become the objects of our own resentment and indignation, when the love of pleasure prompts to do what we disapprove of; and the irascible part of our nature is in this manner called in to assist the rational against the concupiscible.

When all those three different parts of our nature were in perfect concord with one another, when neither the irascible nor concupiscible passions ever aimed at any gratification which reason did not approve of, and when reason never commanded any thing, but what these of their own accord were willing to perform; this happy composure, this perfect and complete harmony of soul, constituted that virtue which in their language is expressed by a word which we commonly translate temperance, but which might more properly be translated good temper, or sobriety and moderation of mind.

Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues, took place, according to this system, when each of those three faculties of the mind confined itself to its proper office, without attempting to encroach upon that of any other; when reason directed and passion obeyed, and when each passion performed its proper duty, and exerted itself towards its proper object easily and without reluctance, and with that degree of force and energy, which was suitable to the value of what it pursued. In this consisted that complete virtue, that perfect propriety of conduct, which Plato, after some of the ancient Pythagoreans, denominated Justice.

The word, it is to be observed, which expresses justice in the Greek language, has several different meanings; and as the correspondent word in all other languages, so far as I know, has the same, there must be some natural affinity among those various significations. In one sense we are said to do justice to our neighbour when we abstain from doing him any positive harm, and do not directly hurt him, either in his person, or in his estate, or in his reputation. This is that justice which I have treated of above, the observance of which may be extorted by force, and the violation of which exposes to punishment. In another sense we are said not to do justice to our neighbour unless we conceive for him all that love, respect and esteem, which his character, his situation, and his connexion with ourselves, render suitable and proper for us to feel, and unless we act accordingly. It is in this sense that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit who is connected with us, tho’ we abstain from hurting him in every respect, if we do not exert ourselves to serve him and to place him in that situation in which the impartial spectator would be pleased to see him. The first sense of the word coincides with what Aristotle and the Schoolmen call commutative justice, and with what Grotius calls the justitia expletrix, which consists in abstaining from what is another’s, and in doing voluntarily whatever we can with propriety be forced to do. The second sense of the word coincides with what some have called distributive justice[9], and with the justitia attributrix of Grotius, which consists in proper beneficence, in the becoming use of what is our own, and in the applying it to those purposes either of charity or generosity, to which it is most suitable, in our situation, that it should be applied. In this sense justice comprehends all the social virtues. There is yet another sense in which the word justice is sometimes taken, still more extensive than either of the former, though very much akin to the last; and which runs too, so far as I know, through all languages. It is in this last sense that we are said to be unjust, when we do not seem to value any particular object with that degree of esteem, or to pursue it with that degree of ardour which to the impartial spectator it may appear to deserve or to be naturally fitted for exciting. Thus we are said to do injustice to a poem or a picture, when we do not admire them enough, and we are said to do them more than justice when we admire them too much. In the same manner we are said to do injustice to ourselves when we appear not to give sufficient attention to any particular object of self-interest. In this last sense, what is called justice means the same thing with exact and perfect propriety of conduct and behaviour, and comprehends in it, not only the offices of both commutative and distributive justice, but of every other virtue, of prudence, of fortitude, of temperance. It is in this last sense that Plato evidently understands what he calls justice, and which, therefore, according to him, comprehends in it the perfection of every sort of virtue.

Footnote 9:

The distributive justice of Aristotle is somewhat different. It consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public stock of a community. See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. l. 5. c. 2.

Such is the account given by Plato of the nature of virtue, or of that temper of mind which is the proper object of praise and approbation. It consists, according to him, in that state of mind in which every faculty confines itself within its proper sphere without encroaching upon that of any other, and performs its proper office with that precise degree of strength and vigour which belongs to it. His account, it is evident, coincides in every respect with what we have said above concerning the propriety of conduct.

II. Virtue, according to Aristotle[10], consists in the habit of mediocrity according to right reason. Every particular virtue, according to him, lies in a kind of middle between two opposite vices, of which the one offends from being too much, the other from being too little affected by a particular species of objects. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the middle between the opposite vices of cowardice and of presumptuous rashness, of which the one offends from being too much, and the other from being too little affected by the objects of fear. Thus too the virtue of frugality lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, of which the one consists in an excess, the other in a defect of the proper attention to the objects of self interest. Magnanimity, in the same manner, lies in a middle between the excess of arrogance and the defect of pusillanimity, of which the one consists in too extravagant, the other in too weak a sentiment of our own worth and dignity. It is unnecessary to observe that this account of virtue corresponds too pretty exactly with what has been said above concerning the propriety and impropriety of conduct.

Footnote 10:

See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. l. 2. c. 5. et seq. et l. 3. c. 5. et seq.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 2

According to Aristotle[11], indeed, virtue did not so much consist in those moderate and right affections, as in the habit of this moderation. In order to understand this, it is to be observed, that virtue may be considered either as the quality of an action, or as the quality of a person. Considered as the quality of an action, it consists, even according to Aristotle, in the reasonable moderation of the affection from which the action proceeds, whether this disposition be habitual to the person or not. Considered as the quality of a person, it consists in the habit of this reasonable moderation, in its having become the customary and usual disposition of the mind. Thus the action which proceeds from an occasional fit of generosity is undoubtedly a generous action, but the man who performs it, is not necessarily a generous person, because it may be the single action of the kind which he ever performed. The motive and disposition of heart, from which this action was performed, may have been quite just and proper: but as this happy mood seems to have been the effect rather of accidental humour than of any thing steady or permanent in the character, it can reflect no great honour on the performer. When we denominate a character generous or charitable, or virtuous in any respect, we mean to signify that the disposition expressed by each of those appellations is the usual and customary disposition of the person. But single actions of any kind, how proper and suitable soever, are of little consequence to show that this is the case. If a single action was sufficient to stamp the character of any virtue upon the person who performed it, the most worthless of mankind might lay claim to all the virtues; since there is no man who has not, upon some occasions, acted with prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. But though single actions, how laudable soever, reflect very little praise upon the person who performs them, a single vicious action performed by one whose conduct is usually very regular, greatly diminishes and sometimes destroys altogether our opinion of his virtue. A single action of this kind sufficiently shows that his habits are not perfect, and that he is less to be depended upon, than, from the usual train of his behaviour, we might have been apt to imagine.

Footnote 11:

See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. lib. ii. ch. 1., 2., 3. and 4.

Aristotle too[12], when he made virtue to consist in practical habits, had it probably in his view to oppose the doctrine of Plato, who seems to have been of opinion that just sentiments and reasonable judgments concerning what was fit to be done or to be avoided, were alone sufficient to constitute the most perfect virtue. Virtue, according to Plato, might be considered as a species of science, and no man, he thought, could see clearly and demonstratively what was right and what was wrong, and not act accordingly. Passion might make us act contrary to doubtful and uncertain opinions, not to plain and evident judgments. Aristotle, on the contrary, was of opinion, that no conviction of the understanding was capable of getting the better of inveterate habits, and that good morals arose not from knowledge but from action.

Footnote 12:

See Aristotle Mag. Mor. lib. i. ch. 1.

III. According to Zeno[13], the founder of the stoical doctrine, every animal was by nature recommended to its own care, and was endowed with the principle of self-love, that it might endeavour to preserve, not only its existence, but all the different parts of its nature, in the best and most perfect state of which they were capable.

Footnote 13:

See Cicero de finibus, lib. iii. also Diogenes Laertius in Zenone, lib. vii. segment 84.

The self-love of man embraced, if I may say so, his body and all its different members, his mind and all its different faculties and powers, and desired the preservation and maintenance of them all in their best and most perfect condition. Whatever tended to support this state of existence was, therefore, by nature pointed out to him as fit to be chosen; and whatever tended to destroy it, as fit to be rejected. Thus health, strength, agility, and ease of body, as well as the external conveniencies which could promote these, wealth, power, honours, the respect and esteem of those we live with, were naturally pointed out to us as things eligible, and of which the possession was preferable to the contrary. On the other hand, sickness, infirmity, unwieldiness, pain of body, as well as all the external inconveniencies which tended to occasion or bring on any of them, poverty, the want of authority, the contempt or hatred of those we live with; were, in the same manner, pointed out to us as things to be shunned and avoided. In each of those two different classes of objects there were some which appeared to be more the objects either of choice or rejection than others in the same class. Thus, in the first class, health appeared evidently preferable to strength, and strength to agility; reputation to power, and power to riches. And thus too, in the second class, sickness was more to be avoided than unwieldiness of body, ignominy than poverty, and poverty than the want of authority. Virtue and the propriety of conduct consisted in choosing and rejecting all different objects and circumstances according as they were by nature rendered more or less the objects of choice or rejection; in selecting always from among the several objects of choice presented to us, that which was most to be chosen, when we could not obtain them all: and in selecting too out of the several objects of rejection offered to us, that which was least to be avoided, when it was not in our power to avoid them all. By choosing and rejecting with this just and accurate discernment, by thus bestowing upon every object the precise degree of attention it deserved, according to the place which it held in this natural scale of things, we maintained, according to the Stoics, that perfect rectitude of conduct which constituted the essence of virtue. This was what they called to live consistently, to live according to nature, and to obey those laws and directions which nature, or the Author of nature, had prescribed for our conduct.

So far the Stoical idea of propriety and virtue is not very different from that of Aristotle and the ancient peripatetics. What chiefly distinguished those two systems from one another was the different degrees of self-command which they required. The peripatetics allowed of some degree of perturbation as suitable to the weakness of human nature, and as useful to so imperfect a creature as man. If his own misfortunes excited no passionate grief, if his own injuries called forth no lively resentment, reason, or a regard to the general rules which determined what was right and fit to be done, would commonly, they thought, be too weak to prompt him to avoid the one or to beat off the other. The Stoics, on the contrary, demanded the most perfect apathy, and regarded every emotion which could in the smallest degree disturb the tranquillity of the mind, as the effect of levity and folly. The Peripatetics seem to have thought that no passion exceeded the bounds of propriety as long as the spectator, by the utmost effort of humanity, could sympathize with it. The Stoics, on the contrary, appear to have regarded every passion as improper, which made any demand upon the sympathy of the spectator, or required him to alter in any respect the natural and ordinary state of his mind, in order to keep time with the vehemence of its emotions. A man of virtue, they seem to have thought, ought not to depend upon the generosity of those he lives with for pardon or approbation.

According to the Stoics, every event should, to a wise man, appear indifferent, and what for its own sake could be the object neither of desire, nor aversion, neither of joy, nor sorrow. If he preferred some events to others, if some situations were the objects of his choice, and others of his rejection,[14] it was not, because he regarded the one as, in themselves, in any respect better than the other, or thought that his own happiness would be more complete in, what is called, the fortunate, than in what is commonly regarded as the distressful situation; but because the propriety of action, the rule which the gods had given him for the direction of his conduct, required him to choose and reject in this manner. Among the primary objects of natural inclination, or among those things which nature had originally recommended to us as eligible, was the prosperity, of our family, of our relations, of our friends, of our country, of mankind, and of the universe in general. Nature too had taught us that as the prosperity of two was preferable to that of one, that of many or of all must be infinitely more so. That we ourselves were but one, and that consequently wherever our prosperity was inconsistent with that, either of the whole, or of any considerable part of the whole, it ought, even in our own choice, to yield to what was so vastly preferable. As all the events in this world were conducted by the providence of a wise, powerful and good God, we might be assured that whatever happened, tended to the prosperity and perfection of the whole, if we ourselves, therefore, were in poverty, in sickness, or in any other calamity, we ought, first of all, to use our utmost endeavours, so far as justice and our duty to others would allow, to rescue ourselves from this disagreeable circumstance. But if after all we could do, we found this impossible, we ought to rest satisfied that the order and perfection of the universe required that we should in the mean time continue in this situation. And as the prosperity of the whole should, even to us, appear preferable to so insignificant a part as ourselves, our situation, whatever it was, ought from that moment to become the object of our choice, and even of our desire, if we would maintain that complete propriety and rectitude of sentiment and conduct in which the perfection of our nature consists. If, indeed, any opportunity of extricating ourselves should offer, it became our duty to embrace it. The order of the universe, it was evident, no longer required our continuance in this situation, and the great director of the world plainly called upon us to leave it, by so clearly pointing out the road which we were to follow. It was the same case with the adversity of our relations, our friends, our country. If without violating any more sacred obligation, it was in our power to prevent or to put an end to their calamity, it undoubtedly was our duty to do so. The propriety of action, the rule which Jupiter had given us for the direction of our conduct, evidently required this of us. But if it was altogether out of our power to do either, we ought then to consider this event as the most fortunate which could possibly have happened: Because we might be assured that it tended most to the prosperity and order of the whole: which was what we ourselves, if we were wise and equitable, ought most of all to desire. “In what sense, says Epictetus, are some things said to be according to our nature, and others contrary to it? It is in that sense in which we consider ourselves as separated and detached from all other things. For thus it may be said to be according to the nature of the foot to be always clean. But if you consider it as a foot, and not as something detached from the rest of the body, it must behove it sometimes to trample in the dirt, and sometimes to tread upon thorns, and sometimes too to be cut off for the sake of the whole body; and if it refuses this, it is no longer a foot. Thus too ought we to conceive with regard to ourselves. What are you? A man. If you consider yourself as something separated and detached, it is agreeable to your nature to live to old age, to be rich, to be in health. But if you consider yourself as a man, and as a part of a whole, upon account of that whole it will behoove you sometimes to be in sickness, sometimes to be exposed to the inconveniency of a sea voyage, sometimes to be in want; and at last, perhaps, to die before your time. Why then do you complain? Don’t you know that by doing so, as the foot ceases to be a foot, so you cease to be a man?”[15]

Footnote 14:

Some of these expressions sound a little awkward in the English language: they are literal translations of the technical terms of the Stoics.

Footnote 15:

Arrian. lib. II. c. 5.

This submission to the order of the universe, this entire indifference with regard to whatever concerns ourselves, when put into the balance with the interest of the whole, could derive its propriety, it is evident, from no other principle besides that, upon which I have endeavoured to show, the propriety of justice was founded. As long as we view our own interests with our own eyes, it is scarce possible that we should willingly acquiesce in their being thus sacrificed to the interests of the whole. It is only when we view those opposite interests with the eyes of others, that what concerns ourselves can appear to be so contemptible in the comparison, as to be resigned without any reluctance. To every body but the person principally concerned, nothing can appear more agreeable to reason and propriety than that the part should give place to the whole. But what is agreeable to the reason of all other men, ought not to appear contrary to his. He himself therefore ought to approve of this sacrifice, and acknowledge its conformity to reason. But all the affections of a wise man, according to the stoics, are perfectly agreeable to reason and propriety, and of their own accord coincide with whatever these ruling principles prescribe. A wise man, therefore, could never feel any reluctance to comply with this disposition of things.

IV. Besides these ancient, there are some modern systems, according to which virtue consists in propriety; or in the suitableness of the affection from which we act, to the cause or object which excites it. The system of Dr. Clarke, which places virtue in acting according to the relations of things, in regulating our conduct according to the fitness or incongruity which there may be in the application of certain actions to certain things, or to certain relations: That of Mr. Woolaston, which places it in acting according to the truth of things, according to their proper nature and essence, or in treating them as what they really are, and not as what they are not: that of my lord Shaftesbury, which places it in maintaining a proper balance of the affections, and in allowing no passion to go beyond its proper sphere; are all of them more or less inaccurate descriptions of the same fundamental idea.

The description of virtue which is either given, or at least meant and intended to be given in each of those systems, for some of the modern authors are not very fortunate in their manner of expressing themselves, is no doubt quite just, so far as it goes. There is no virtue without propriety, and wherever there is propriety, some degree of approbation is due. But still this description is imperfect. For though propriety is an essential ingredient in every virtuous action, it is not always the sole ingredient. Beneficent actions have in them another quality by which they appear not only to deserve approbation but recompense. None of those systems account either easily or sufficiently for that superior degree of esteem which seems due to such actions, or for that diversity of sentiment which they naturally excite. Neither is the description of vice more complete. For in the same manner, though impropriety is a necessary ingredient in every vicious action, it is not always the sole ingredient, and there is often the highest degree of absurdity and impropriety in very harmless and insignificant actions. Deliberate actions, of a pernicious tendency to those we live with, have, besides their impropriety, a peculiar quality of their own by which they appear to deserve, not only disapprobation, but punishment; and to be the objects, not of dislike merely, but of resentment and revenge: and none of those systems easily and sufficiently account for that superior degree of detestation which we feel for such actions.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter II

Of those systems which make virtue consist in prudence.

The most ancient of those systems which make virtue consist in prudence, and of which any considerable remains have come down to us, is that of Epicurus, who is said, however, to have borrowed all the leading principles of his philosophy, from some of those who had gone before him, particularly From Aristippus; though it is very probable, notwithstanding this allegation of his enemies, that at least his manner of applying those principles was altogether his own.

According to Epicurus,[16] bodily pleasure and pain were the sole ultimate objects of natural desire and aversion. That they were always the natural objects of those passions, he thought required no proof. Pleasure might, indeed, appear sometimes to be avoided; not, however, because it was pleasure, but because, by the enjoyment of it, we should either forfeit some greater pleasure, or expose ourselves to some pain that was more to be avoided than this pleasure was to be desired. Pain, in the same manner, might appear sometimes to be eligible; not, however, because it was pain, but because by enduring it we might either avoid a still greater pain, or acquire some pleasure of much more importance. That bodily pain and pleasure, therefore, were always the natural objects of desire and aversion, was, he thought, abundantly evident. Nor was it less so, he imagined, that they were the sole ultimate objects of those passions. Whatever else was either desired or avoided was so, according to him, upon account of its tendency to produce one or other of those sensations. The tendency to procure pleasure rendered power and riches desirable, as the contrary tendency to produce pain made poverty and insignificancy the objects of aversion. Honour and reputation were valued, because the esteem and love of those we live with were of the greatest consequence both to procure pleasure and to defend us from pain. Ignominy and bad fame, on the contrary, were to be avoided, because the hatred, contempt, and resentment of those we lived with destroyed all security, and necessarily exposed us to the greatest bodily evils.

Footnote 16:

See Cicero de finibus, lib. i. Diogenes Laert. 1. x.

All the pleasures and pains of the mind were, according to Epicurus, ultimately derived from those of the body. The mind was happy when it thought of the past pleasures of the body, and hoped for others to come: and it was miserable when it thought of the pains which the body had formerly endured, and dreaded the same or greater thereafter.

But the pleasures and pains of the mind, though ultimately derived from those of the body, were vastly greater than their originals. The body felt only the sensation of the present instant, whereas the mind felt also the past and the future, the one by remembrance, the other by anticipation, and consequently both suffered and enjoyed much more. When we are under the greatest bodily pain, he observed, we shall always find, if we attend to it, that it is not the suffering of the present instant which chiefly torments us, but either the agonizing remembrance of the past, or the yet more horrible dread of the future. The pain of each instant, considered by itself, and cut off from all that goes before and all that comes after it, is a trifle not worth the regarding. Yet this is all which the body can ever be said to suffer. In the same manner, when we enjoy the greatest pleasure, we shall always find that the bodily sensation, the sensation of the present instant makes but a small part of our happiness, that our enjoyment chiefly arises either from the chearful recollection of the past, or the still more joyous anticipation of the future, and that the mind always contributes by much the largest share of the entertainment.

Since our happiness and misery, therefore, depended chiefly on the mind, if this part of our nature was well disposed, if our thoughts and opinions were as they should be, it was of little importance in what manner our body was affected. Though under great bodily pain, we might still enjoy a considerable share of happiness, if our reason and judgment maintained their superiority. We might entertain ourselves with the remembrance of past, and with the hopes of future pleasure; we might soften the rigour of our pains, by recollecting what it was which, even in this situation, we were under any necessity of suffering. That this was merely the bodily sensation, the pain of the present instant, which by itself could never be very great. That whatever agony we suffered from the dread of its continuance was the effect of an opinion of the mind, which might be corrected by juster sentiments; by considering that, if our pains were violent, they would probably be of short duration; and that if they were of long continuance, they would probably be moderate, and admit of many intervals of ease; and that, at any rate, death was always at hand and within call to deliver us, which as, according to him, it put an end to all sensation, either of pain or pleasure, could not be regarded as an evil. When we are, said he, death is not; and when death is, we are not; death therefore can be nothing to us.

If the actual sensation of positive pain was in itself so little to be feared, that of pleasure was still less to be desired. Naturally the sensation of pleasure was much less pungent than that of pain. If, therefore, this last could take so very little from the happiness of a well-disposed mind, the other could add scarce any thing to it. When the body was free from pain and the mind from fear and anxiety, the superadded sensation of bodily pleasure could be of very little importance; and though it might diversify, could not be properly be said to increase the happiness of this situation.

In ease of body, therefore, and in security or tranquillity of mind, consisted, according to Epicurus, the most perfect state of human nature, the most complete happiness which man was capable of enjoying. To obtain this great end of natural desire was the sole object of all the virtues, which, according to him, were not desirable upon their own account, but upon account of their tendency to bring about this situation.

Prudence, for example, though according to this philosophy, the source and principle of all the virtues, was not desirable upon its own account. That careful and laborious and circumspect state of mind, ever watchful and ever attentive to the most distant consequences of every action, could not be a thing pleasant or agreeable for its own sake, but upon account of its tendency to procure the greatest goods and to keep off the greatest evils.

To abstain from pleasure too, to curb and restrain our natural passions for enjoyment, which was the office of temperance, could never be desirable for its own sake. The whole value of this virtue arose from its utility, from its enabling us to postpone the present enjoyment for the sake of a greater to come, or to avoid a greater pain that might ensue from it. Temperance, in short, was nothing but prudence with regard to pleasure.

To support labour, to endure pain, to be exposed to danger or to death, the situations which fortitude would often lead us into, were surely still less the objects of natural desire. They were chosen only to avoid greater evils. We submitted to labour, in order to avoid the greater shame and pain of poverty, and we exposed ourselves to danger and to death in defence of our liberty and property, the means and instruments of pleasure and happiness; or in defence of our country, in the safety of which our own was necessarily comprehended. Fortitude enabled us to do all this chearfully, as the best which, in our present situation, could possibly be done, and was in reality no more than prudence, good judgment, and presence of mind in properly appreciating pain, labour, and danger, always choosing the less in order to avoid the greater.

It is the same case with justice. To abstain from what is anothers was not desirable on its own account, and it could not surely be better for you, that I should possess what is my own, than that you should possess it. You ought however, to abstain from whatever belongs to me, because by doing otherwise you will provoke the resentment and indignation of mankind. The security and tranquillity of your mind will be entirely destroyed. You will be filled with fear and consternation at the thought of that punishment which you will imagine that men are at all times ready to inflict upon you, and from which no power, no art, no concealment, will ever, in your own fancy, be sufficient to protect you. That other species of justice which consists in doing proper good offices to different persons, according to the various relations of neighbours, kinsmen, friends, benefactors, superiors, or equals, which they may stand in to us, is recommended by the same reasons. To act properly in all these different relations procures us the esteem and love of those we live with; as to do otherwise excites their contempt and hatred. By the one we naturally secure, by the other we necessarily endanger our own ease and tranquillity, the great and ultimate objects of all our desires. The whole virtue of justice, therefore, the most important of all the virtues, is no more than discreet and prudent conduct with regard to our neighbours.

Such is the doctrine of Epicurus concerning the nature of virtue. It may seem extraordinary that this philosopher, who is described as a person of the most amiable manners, should never have observed, that, whatever may be the tendency of those virtues, or of the contrary vices, with regard to our bodily ease and security, the sentiments which they naturally excite in others are the objects of a much more passionate desire or aversion than all their other consequences; That to be amiable, to be respectable, to be the proper object of esteem, is by every well-disposed mind more valued than all the ease and security which love, respect, and esteem can procure us; That, on the contrary, to be odious, to be contemptible, to be the proper object of indignation, is more dreadful than all that we can suffer in our body from hatred, contempt, or indignation; and that consequently our desire of the one character, and our aversion to the other, cannot arise from any regard to the effects which either of them is likely to produce upon the body.

This system is, no doubt, altogether inconsistent with that which I have been endeavouring to establish. It is not difficult, however, to discover from what phasis, if I may say so, from what particular view or aspect of nature, this account of things derives its probability. By the wise contrivance of the Author of nature, virtue is upon all ordinary occasions, even with regard to this life, real wisdom, and the surest and readiest means of obtaining both safety and advantage. Our success or disappointment in our undertakings must very much depend upon the good or bad opinion which is commonly entertained of us, and upon the general disposition of those we live with, either to assist or to oppose us. But the best, the surest, the easiest, and the readiest way of obtaining the advantageous and of avoiding the unfavourable judgments of others, is undoubtedly to render ourselves the proper objects of the former and not of the latter. “Do you desire, said Socrates, the reputation of a good musician? The only sure way of obtaining it, is to become a good musician. Would you desire in the same manner to be thought capable of serving your country either as a general or as a statesman? The best way in this case too is really to acquire the art and experience of war and government, and to become really fit to be a general or a statesman. And in the same manner if you would be reckoned sober, temperate, just, and equitable, the best way of acquiring this reputation is to become sober, temperate, just, and equitable. If you can really render yourself amiable, respectable, and the proper object of esteem, there is no fear of your not soon acquiring the love, the respect, and esteem of those you live with.” Since the practice of virtue, therefore, is in general so advantageous, and that of vice so contrary to our interest, the consideration of those opposite tendencies undoubtedly stamps an additional beauty and propriety upon the one, and a new deformity and impropriety upon the other. Temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence, come thus to be approved of, not only under their proper characters, but under the additional character of the highest wisdom and most real prudence. And in the same manner the contrary vices of intemperance, pusillanimity, injustice, and either malevolence or sordid selfishness, come to be disapproved of, not only under their proper characters, but under the additional character of the most short-sighted folly and weakness. Epicurus appears in every virtue to have attended to this species of propriety only. It is that which is most apt to occur to those who are endeavouring to persuade others to regularity of conduct. When men by their practice, and perhaps too by their maxims, manifestly show that the natural beauty of virtue is not like to have much effect upon them, how is it possible to move them but by representing the folly of their conduct, and how much they themselves are in the end likely to suffer by it?

By running up all the different virtues too to this one species of propriety, Epicurus indulged a propensity, which is natural to all men, but which philosophers in particular are apt to cultivate with a peculiar fondness, as the great means of displaying their ingenuity, the propensity to account for all appearances from as few principles as possible. And he, no doubt, indulged this propensity still further, when he referred all the primary objects of natural desire and aversion to the pleasures and pains of the body. The great patron of the atomical philosophy, who took so much pleasure in deducing all the powers and qualities of bodies from the most obvious and familiar, the figure, motion, and arrangement of the small parts of matter, felt no doubt a similar satisfaction, when he accounted, in the same manner, for all the sentiments and passions of the mind from those which are most obvious and familiar.

The system of Epicurus agreed with those of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, in making virtue consist in acting in the most suitable manner to obtain the [17]primary objects of natural desire. It differed from all of them in two other respects; first, in the account which it gave of those primary objects of natural desire; and secondly, in the account which it gave of the excellence of virtue, or of the reason why that quality ought to be esteemed.

Footnote 17:

Prima naturæ.

The primary objects of natural desire consisted, according to Epicurus, in bodily pleasure and pain, and in nothing else whereas, according to the other three philosophers, there were many other objects, such as knowledge, such as the happiness of our relations, of our friends, of our country, which were ultimately desirable for their own sakes.

Virtue too, according to Epicurus, did not deserve to be pursued for its own sake, nor was itself one of the ultimate objects of natural appetite, but was eligible only upon account of its tendency to prevent pain and to procure ease and pleasure. In the opinion of the other three, on the contrary, it was desirable, not merely as the means of procuring the other primary objects of natural desire, but as something which was in itself more valuable than them all. Man, they thought, being born for action, his happiness must consist, not merely in the agreeableness of his passive sensations, but also in the propriety of his active exertions.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter III

Of those systems which make virtue consist in benevolence.

The system which makes virtue consist in benevolence, though I think not so ancient as all of those which I have already given an account of, is, however, of very great antiquity. It seems to have been the doctrine of the greater part of those philosophers who, about and after the age of Augustus, called themselves Eclectics, who pretended to follow chiefly the opinions of Plato and Pythagoras, and who upon that account are commonly known by the name of the later Platonists.

In the divine nature, according to these authors, benevolence or love was the sole principle of action, and directed the exertion of all the other attributes. The wisdom of the Deity was employed in finding out the means for bringing about those ends which his goodness suggested, as his infinite power was exerted to execute them. Benevolence, however, was still the supreme and governing attribute, to which the others were subservient, and from which the whole excellency, or the whole morality, if I may be allowed such an expression, of the divine operations, was ultimately derived. The whole perfection and virtue of the human mind consisted in some resemblance or participation of the divine perfections, and, consequently, in being filled with the same principle of benevolence and love which influenced all the actions of the deity. The actions of men which flowed from this motive were alone truly praise-worthy, or could claim any merit in the sight of the deity. It was by actions of charity and love only that we could imitate, as became us, the conduct of God, that we could express our humble and devout admiration of his infinite perfections, that by fostering in our own minds the same divine principle, we could bring our own affections to a greater resemblance with his holy attributes, and thereby become more proper objects of his love and esteem; till at last we arrived at that immediate converse and communication with the deity to which it was the great object of this philosophy to raise us.

This system, as it was much esteemed by many ancient fathers of the christian church, so after the reformation it was adopted by several divines of the most eminent piety and learning, and of the most amiable manners; particularly, by Dr. Ralph Cudworth, by Dr. Henry More, and by Mr. John Smith of Cambridge. But of all the patrons of this system, ancient or modern, the late Dr. Hutcheson, was undoubtedly beyond all comparison, the most acute, the most distinct, the most philosophical, and what is of the greatest consequence of all, the soberest and most judicious.

That virtue consists in benevolence is a notion supported by many appearances in human nature. It has been observed already that proper benevolence is the most graceful and agreeable of all the affections, that it is recommended to us by a double sympathy, that as its tendency is necessarily beneficent, it is the proper object of gratitude and reward, and that upon all these accounts it appears to our natural sentiments to possess a merit superior to any other. It has been observed too that even the weakness of benevolence are not very disagreeable to us, whereas those of every other passion are always extremely disgusting. Who does not abhor excessive malice, excessive selfishness, or excessive resentment? But the most excessive indulgence even of partial friendship is not so offensive. It is the benevolent passions only which can exert themselves without any regard or attention to propriety, and yet retain something about them which is engaging. There is something pleasing even in mere instinctive good-will which goes on to do good offices without once reflecting whether by this conduct it is the proper object either of blame or approbation. It is not so with the other passions. The moment they are deserted, the moment they are unaccompanied by the sense of propriety, they cease to be agreeable.

As benevolence bestows upon those actions which proceed from it, a beauty superior to all others, so the want of it, and much more the contrary inclination, communicates a peculiar deformity to whatever evidences such a disposition. Pernicious actions are often punishable for no other reason than because they show a want of sufficient attention to the happiness of our neighbour.

Besides all this, Dr. Hutcheson[18] observed, that whenever in any action, supposed to proceed from benevolent affections, some other motive had been discovered, our sense of the merit of this action was just so far diminished as this motive was believed to have influenced it. If an action, supposed to proceed, from gratitude, should be discovered to have arisen from an expectation of some new favour, or if what was apprehended to proceed from public spirit, should be found out to have taken its origin from the hope of a pecuniary reward, such a discovery would entirely destroy all notion of merit or praise-worthiness in either of these actions. Since, therefore, the mixture of any selfish motive, like that of a base alloy, diminished or took away altogether the merit which would otherwise have belonged to any action, it was evident, he imagined, that virtue must consist in pure and disinterested benevolence alone.

Footnote 18:

See Inquiry concerning virtue, sect. 1. and 2.

When those actions, on the contrary, which are commonly supposed to proceed from a selfish motive, are discovered to have arisen from a benevolent one, it greatly enhances our sense of their merit. If we believed of any person that he endeavoured to advance his fortune from no other view but that of doing friendly offices, and of making proper returns to his benefactors, we should only love and esteem him the more. And this observation seemed still more to confirm the conclusion, that it was benevolence only which could stamp upon any action the character of virtue.

Last of all, what, he imagined, was an evident proof of the justness of this account of virtue, in all the disputes of casuists concerning the rectitude of conduct, the public good, he observed, was the standard to which they constantly referred; thereby universally acknowledging that whatever tended to promote the happiness of mankind was right and laudable and virtuous, and the contrary, wrong, blameable, and vicious. In the late debates about passive obedience and the right of resistance, the sole point in controversy among men of sense was, whether universal submission would probably be attended with greater evils than temporary insurrections when privileges were invaded. Whether what, upon the whole, tended most to the happiness of mankind, was not also morally good, was never once, he said, made a question.

Since benevolence, therefore, was the only motive which could bestow upon any action the character of virtue, the greater the benevolence which was evidenced by any action, the greater the praise which must belong to it.

Those actions which aimed at the happiness of a great community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its object the happiness of all intelligent beings. The lead virtuous, on the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend.

In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of mankind, in regarding ones self but as one of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than it was consistent with, or conducive to that of the whole, consisted the perfection of virtue.

Self-love was a principle which could never be virtuous in any degree or in any direction. It was vicious whenever it obstructed the general good. When it had no other effect than to make the individual take care of his own happiness, it was merely innocent, and tho’ it deserved no praise, neither ought it to incur any blame. Those benevolent actions which were performed, notwithstanding some strong motive from self-interest, were the more virtuous upon that account. They demonstrated the strength and vigour of the benevolent principle.

Dr. Hutcheson[19] was so far from allowing self-love to be in any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences, according to him, diminished the merit of a benevolent action. This was a selfish motive, he thought, which, so far as it contributed to any action, demonstrated the weakness of that pure and disinterested benevolence which could alone stamp upon the conduct of man the character of virtue. In the common judgments of mankind, however, this regard to the approbation of our own minds is so far from being considered as what can in any respect diminish the virtue of any action, that it is rather looked upon as the sole motive which deserves the appellation of virtuous.

Footnote 19:

Inquiry concerning virtue, sect 2. art. 4. also illustrations on the moral sense, sect. 5. last paragraph.

Such is the account given of the nature of virtue in this amiable system, a system which has a peculiar tendency to nourish and support in the human heart the noblest and the most agreeable of all affections, and not only to check the injustice of self-love, but in some measure to discourage that principle altogether, by representing it as what could never reflect any honour upon those who were influenced by it.

As some of the other systems which I have already given an account of, do not sufficiently explain from whence arises the peculiar excellency of the supreme virtue of beneficence, so this system seems to have the contrary defect, of not sufficiently explaining from whence arises our approbation of the inferior virtues of prudence, vigilance, circumspection, temperance, constancy, firmness. The view and aim of our affections, the beneficent and hurtful effects which they tend to produce, are the only qualities at all attended to in this system. Their propriety and impropriety, their suitableness and unsuitableness, to the cause which excites them, are disregarded altogether.

Regard to our own private happiness and interest too, appear upon many occasions very laudable principles of action. The habits of œconomy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested motives, and at the same time are apprehended to be very praise-worthy qualities, which deserve the esteem and approbation of every body. The mixture of a selfish motive, it is true, seems often to sully the beauty of those actions which ought to arise from a benevolent affection. The cause of this, however, is not that self-love can never be the motive of a virtuous action, but that the benevolent principle appears in this particular case to want its due degree of strength, and to be altogether unsuitable to its object. The character, therefore, seems evidently imperfect, and upon the whole to deserve blame rather than praise. The mixture of a benevolent motive in an action to which self-love alone ought to be sufficient to prompt us, is not so apt indeed to diminish our sense of its propriety, or of the virtue of the person who performs it. We are not ready to suspect any person of being defective in selfishness. This is by no means the weak side of human nature, or the failing of which we are apt to be suspicious. If we could really believe, however, of any man, that, was it not from a regard to his family and friends, he would not take that proper care of his health, his life, or his fortune, to which self-preservation alone ought to be sufficient to prompt him, it would undoubtedly be a failing, tho’ one of those amiable failings, which render a person rather the object of pity than of contempt or hatred. It would still, however, somewhat diminish the dignity and respectableness of his character. Carelessness and want of œconomy are universally disapproved of, not, however as proceeding from a want of benevolence, but from a want of the proper attention to the objects of self-interest.

Though the standard by which casuists frequently determine what is right or wrong in human conduct, be its tendency to the welfare or disorder of society, it does not follow that a regard to the welfare of society should be the sole virtuous motive of action, but only that, in any competition, it ought to cast the balance against all other motives.

Benevolence may, perhaps, be the sole principle of action in the Deity, and there are several, not improbable, arguments which tend to persuade us that it is so. It is not easy to conceive what other motive an independent and all perfect being, who stands in need of nothing external, and whose happiness is complete in himself, can act from. But whatever may be the case with the Deity, so imperfect a creature as man, the support of whose existence requires so many things external to him, must often act from many other motives. The condition of human nature were peculiarly hard, if those affections, which, by the very nature of our being, ought frequently to influence our conduct, could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and commendation from any body.

Those three systems, that which places virtue in propriety, that which places it in prudence, and that which makes it consist in benevolence, are the principal accounts which have been given of the nature of virtue. To one or other of them, all the other descriptions of virtue, how different soever they may appear, are easily reducible.

That system which places virtue in obedience to the will of the Deity, may be counted either among those which make it consist in prudence, or among those which make it consist in propriety. When it is asked, why we ought to obey the will of the Deity, this question, which would be impious and absurd in the highest degree, if asked from any doubt that we ought to obey him, can admit but of two different answers. It must either be said that we ought to obey the will of the Deity because he is a being of infinite power, who will reward us eternally if we do so, and punish us eternally if we do otherwise: Or it must be said, that independent of any regard to our own happiness, or to rewards and punishments of any kind, there is a congruity and fitness that a creature should obey its creator, that a limited and imperfect being should submit to one of infinite and incomprehensible perfections. Besides one or other of these two it is impossible to conceive that any other answer can be given to this question. If the first answer be the proper one, virtue consists in prudence, or in the proper pursuit of our own final interest and happiness; since it is upon this account that we are obliged to obey the will of the Deity. If the second answer be the proper one, virtue must consist in propriety, since the ground of our obligation to obedience is the suitableness or congruity of the sentiments of humility and submission to the superiority of the object which excites them.

That system which places virtue in utility coincides too with that which makes it consist in propriety. According to this system all those qualities of the mind which are agreeable or advantageous, either to the person himself or to others, are approved of as virtuous, and the contrary disapproved of as vicious. But the agreeableness or utility of any affection depends upon the degree which it is allowed to subsist in. Every affection is useful when it is confined to a certain degree of moderation, and every affection is disadvantageous when it exceeds the proper bounds. According to this system therefore, virtue consists, not in any one affection, but in the proper degree of all the affections, The only difference between it and that which I have been endeavouring to establish, is, that it makes utility, and not sympathy, or the correspondent affection of the spectator, the natural and original measure of this proper degree.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 1

Of licentious systems.

All those systems, which I have hitherto given an account of, suppose that there is a real and essential distinction between vice and virtue, whatever these qualities may consist in. There is a real and essential difference between the propriety and impropriety of any affection, between benevolence and any other principle of action, between real prudence and short-sighted folly or precipitate rashness. In the main too all of them contribute to encourage the praise-worthy, and to discourage the blameable disposition.

It may be true perhaps, of some of them, that they tend, in some measure, to break the balance of the affections, and to give the mind a particular bias to some principles of action, beyond the proportion that is due to them. The ancient systems which place virtue in propriety, seem chiefly to recommend the great, the awful, and the respectable virtues, the virtues of self-government and self-command; fortitude, magnanimity, independency upon fortune, the contempt of all outward accidents, of pain, poverty, exile, and death. It is in these great exertions that the noblest propriety of conduct is displayed. The soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of indulgent humanity are, in comparison, but little insisted upon, and seem, on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have been often regarded as mere weaknesses which it behoved a wise man not to harbour in his breast.

The benevolent system, on the other hand, while it fosters and encourages all those milder virtues in the highest degree, seems entirely to neglect the more awful and respectable qualities of the mind. It even denies them the appellation of virtues. It calls them moral abilities, and treats them as qualities which do not deserve the same sort of esteem and approbation, that is due to what is properly denominated virtue. All those principles of action which aim only at our own interest, it treats, if that be possible, still worse. So far from having any merit of their own, they diminish, it pretends, the merit of benevolence, when they co-operate with it: and prudence, it is asserted, when employed only in promoting private interest, can never even be imagined a virtue.

That system, again, which makes virtue consist in prudence only, while it gives the highest encouragement to the habits of caution, vigilance, sobriety, and judicious moderation, seems to degrade equally both the amiable and respectable virtues, and to strip the former of all their beauty, and the latter of all their grandeur.

But notwithstanding these defects, the general tendency of each of those three systems is to encourage the best and most laudable habits of the human mind: and it were well for society, if, either mankind in general, or even those few who pretend to live according to any philosophical rule, were to regulate their conduct by the precepts of any one of them. We may learn from each of them something that is both valuable and peculiar. If it was possible, by precept and exhortation, to inspire the mind with fortitude and magnanimity, the ancient systems of propriety would seem sufficient to do this. Or if it was possible, by the same means, to soften it into humanity, and to awaken the affections of kindness and general love towards those we live with, some of the pictures with which the benevolent system presents us, might seem capable of producing this effect. We may learn from the system of Epicurus, though undoubtedly the worst of all the three, how much the practice of both the amiable and respectable virtues is conducive to our own interest, to our own ease and safety and quiet even in this life. As Epicurus placed happiness in the attainment of ease and security, he exerted himself in a particular manner to show that virtue was, not merely the best and the surest, but the only means of acquiring those invaluable possessions. The good effects of virtue, upon our inward tranquility and peace of mind, are what other philosophers have chiefly celebrated. Epicurus, without neglecting this topic, has chiefly insisted upon the influence of that amiable quality on our outward prosperity and safety. It was upon this account that his writings were so much studied in the ancient world by men of all different philosophical parties. It is from him that Cicero, the great enemy of the Epicurean system, borrows his most agreeable proofs that virtue alone is sufficient to secure happiness. Seneca, though a Stoic, the sect most opposite to that of Epicurus, yet quotes this philosopher more frequently than any other.

There are, however, some other systems which seem to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and of which the tendency is, upon that account, wholly pernicious: I mean the systems of the duke of Rochefoucault and Dr. Mandeville. Though the notions of both these authors are in almost every respect erroneous, there are, however, some appearances in human nature which, when viewed in a certain manner, seem at first sight to favour them. These, first slightly sketched out with the elegance and delicate precision of the duke of Rochefoucault, and afterwards more fully represented with the lively and humorous, though coarse and rustic eloquence of Dr. Mandeville, have thrown upon their doctrines an air of truth and probability which is very apt to impose upon the unskilful.

Dr. Mandeville, the most methodical of those two authors, considers whatever is done from a sense of propriety, from a regard to what is commendable and praise-worthy, as being done from a love of praise and commendation, or as he calls it from vanity. Man, he observes, is naturally much more interested in his own happiness than in that of others, and it is impossible that in his heart he can ever really prefer their prosperity to his own. Whenever he appears to do so, we may be assured that he imposes upon us, and that he is then acting from the same selfish motives as at all other times. Among his other selfish passions, vanity is one of the strongest, and he is always easily flattered and greatly delighted with the applauses of those about him. When he appears to sacrifice his own interest to that of his companions, he knows that this conduct will be highly agreeable to their self-love, and that they will not fail to express their satisfaction by bellowing upon him the most extravagant praises. The pleasure which he expects from this, over-balances, in his opinion, the interest which he abandons in order to procure it. His conduct, therefore, upon this occasion, is in reality just as selfish, and arises from just as mean a motive as upon any other. He is flattered, however, and he flatters himself with the belief that it is entirely disinterested; since, unless this was supposed, it would not seem to merit any commendation either in his own eyes or in those of others. All public spirit, therefore, all preference of public to private interest, is, according to him a mere cheat and imposition upon mankind; and that human virtue which is so much boasted of, and which is the occasion of so much emulation among men, is the mere offspring of flattery begot upon pride.

Whether the most generous and public-spirited actions may not, in some sense, be regarded as proceeding from self-love, I shall not at present examine. The decision of this question is not, I apprehend, of any importance towards establishing the reality of virtue, since self-love may frequently be a virtuous motive of action. I shall only endeavour to show that the desire of doing what is honourable and noble, of rendering ourselves the proper objects of esteem and approbation, cannot with any propriety be called vanity. Even the love of well-grounded fame and reputation, the desire of acquiring esteem by what is really estimable, does not deserve that name. The first is the love of virtue, the noblest and the best passion of human nature. The second is the love of true glory, a passion inferior no doubt to the former, but which in dignity appears to come immediately after it. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for qualities which are either not praise-worthy in any degree, or not in that degree which he expects to be praised for them; who sets his character upon the frivolous ornaments of dress and equipage, or the equally frivolous accomplishments of ordinary behaviour. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for what indeed very well deserves it, but what he perfectly knows does not belong to him. The empty coxcomb who gives himself airs of importance which he has no title to, the silly liar who assumes the merit of adventures which never happened, the foolish plagiary who gives himself out for the author of what he has no pretensions to, are properly accused of this passion. He too is said to be guilty of vanity who is not contented with the silent sentiments of esteem and approbation, who seems to be fonder of their noisy expressions and acclamations than of the sentiments themselves, who is never satisfied but when his own praises are ringing in his ears, and who solicits with the most anxious importunity all external marks of respect, is fond of titles, of compliments, of being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in public places with the appearance of deference and attention. This frivolous passion is altogether different from either of the two former, and is the passion of the lowest, and the least of mankind, as they are of the noblest and the greatest.

But though these three passions, the desire of rendering ourselves the proper objects of honour and esteem; or of becoming what is honourable and estimable; the desire of acquiring honour and esteem by really deserving those sentiments; and the frivolous desire of praise at any rate, are widely different; though the two former are always approved of, while the latter never fails to be despised; there is, however, a certain remote affinity among them, which, exaggerated by the humorous and diverting eloquence of this lively author, has enabled him to impose upon his readers. There is an affinity between vanity and the love of true glory, as both these passions aim at acquiring esteem and approbation. But they are different in this, that the one is a just, reasonable, and equitable passion, while the other is unjust, absurd, and ridiculous. The man who desires esteem for what is really estimable, desires nothing but what he is justly entitled to, and what cannot be refused him without some sort of injury. He, on the contrary, who desires it upon any other terms, demands what he has no just claim to. The first is easily satisfied, is not apt to be jealous or suspicious that we do not esteem him enough, and is seldom solicitous about receiving many external marks of our regard. The other, on the contrary, is never to be satisfied, is full of jealousy and suspicion that we do not esteem him so much as he desires, because he has some secret consciousness that he desires more than he deserves. The least neglect of ceremony, he considers as a mortal affront, and as an expression of the most determined contempt. He is restless and impatient, and perpetually afraid that we have lost all respect for him, and is upon this account always anxious to obtain new expressions of esteem, and cannot be kept in temper but by continual attendance and adulation.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 2

There is an affinity too between the desire of becoming what is honourable and estimable, and the desire of honour and esteem, between the love of virtue and the love of true glory. They resemble one another not only in this respect, that both aim at really being what is honourable and noble, but even in that respect in which the love of true glory resembles what is properly called vanity, some reference to the sentiments of others. The man of the greatest magnanimity, who desires virtue for its own sake, and is most indifferent about what actually are the opinions of mankind with regard to him, is still, however, delighted with the thoughts of what they should be, with the consciousness that though he may neither be honoured nor applauded, he is still the proper object of honour and applause, and that if mankind were cool and candid and consistent with themselves, and properly informed of the motives and circumstances of his conduct, they would not fail to honour and applaud him. Though he despises the opinions which are actually entertained of him, he has the highest value for those which ought to be entertained of him. That he might think himself worthy of those honourable sentiments, and, whatever was the idea which other men might conceive of his character, that when he should put himself in their situation, and consider, not what was, but what ought to be their opinion, he should always have the highest idea of it himself, was the great and exalted motive of his conduct. As even in the love of virtue, therefore, there is still some reference, though not to what is, yet to what in reason and propriety ought to be, the opinion of others, there is even in this respect some affinity between it, and the love of true glory. There is, however, at the same time, a very great difference between them. The man who acts solely from a regard to what is right and fit to be done, from a regard to what is the proper object of esteem and approbation, though these sentiments should never be bestowed upon him, acts from the most sublime and godlike motive which human nature is even capable of conceiving. The man, on the other hand, who while he desires to merit approbation is at the same time anxious to obtain it, though he too is laudably in the main, yet his motives have a greater mixture of human infirmity. He is in danger of being mortified by the ignorance and injustice of mankind, and his happiness is exposed to the envy of his rivals, and the folly of the public. The happiness of the other, on the contrary, is altogether secure and independent of fortune, and of the caprice of those he lives with. The contempt and hatred which may be thrown upon him by the ignorance of mankind, he considers as not belonging to him, and is not at all mortified by it. Mankind despise and hate him from a false notion of his character and conduct. If they knew him better, they would esteem and love him. It is not him whom, properly speaking, they hate and despise, but another person whom they mistake him to be. Our friend, whom we should meet at a masquerade in the garb of our enemy, would be more diverted than mortified, if under that disguise we should vent our indignation against him. Such are the sentiments of a man of real magnanimity, when exposed to unjust censure. It seldom happens, however, that human nature arrives at this degree of firmness. Though none but the weakest and most worthless of mankind are much delighted with false glory, yet, by a strange inconsistency, false ignominy is often capable of mortifying those who appear the most resolute and determined.

Dr. Mandeville is not satisfied with representing the frivolous motive of vanity, as the source of all those actions which are commonly accounted virtuous. He endeavours to point out the imperfection of human virtue in many other respects. In every case, he pretends, it falls short of that complete self-denial which it pretends to, and, instead of a conquest, is commonly no more than a concealed indulgence of our passions. Wherever our reserve with regard to pleasure falls short of the most ascetic abstinence, he treats it as gross luxury and sensuality. Every thing, according to him, is luxury which exceeds what is absolutely necessary for the support of human nature, so that there is a vice even in the use of a clean shirt, or of a convenient habitation. The indulgence of the inclination to sex, in the most lawful union, he considers as the same sensuality with the most hurtful gratification of that passion, and derides that temperance and that chastity which can be practiced at so cheap a rate. The ingenious sophistry of his reasoning, is here, as upon many other occasions, covered by the ambiguity of language. There are some of our passions which have no other names except those which mark the disagreeable and offensive degree. The spectator is more apt to take notice of them in this degree than in any other. When they shock his own sentiments, when they give him some sort of antipathy and uneasiness, he is necessarily obliged to attend to them, and is from thence naturally led to give them a name. When they fall in with the natural state of his own mind, he is very apt to overlook them altogether, and either gives them no name at all, or, if he gives them any, it is one which marks rather the subjection and restraint of the passion than the degree which it still is allowed to subsist in, after it is so subjected and restrained. Thus the common names of the [20]love of pleasure, and of the love of sex, denote a vicious and offensive degree of those passions. The words temperance and chastity, on the other hand, seem to mark rather the restraint and subjection which they are kept under, than the degree which they are still allowed to subsist in. When he can show, therefore, that they still subsist in some degree, he imagines, he has entirely demolished the reality of the virtues of temperance and chastity, and shown them to be mere impositions upon the inattention and simplicity of mankind. Those virtues, however, do not require an entire insensibility to the objects of the passions which they mean to govern. They only aim at restraining the violence of those passions so far as not to hurt the individual, and neither disturb nor offend the society.

Footnote 20:

Luxury and lust.

It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville’s book[21] to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction. It is thus that he treats every thing as vanity which has any reference, either to what are, or to what ought to be the sentiments of others: and it is by means of this sophistry, that he establishes his favourite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits. If the love of magnificence, a taste for the elegant arts and improvements of human life, for whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or equipage, for architecture, statuary, painting, and music, is to be regarded as luxury, sensuality and ostentation, even in those whose situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence of those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality, and ostentation are public benefits: since, without the qualities upon which he thinks proper to bestow such opprobrious names, the arts of refinement could never find encouragement, and must languish for want of employment. Some popular ascetic doctrines which had been current before his time, and which placed virtue in the entire extirpation and annihilation of all our passions, were the real foundation of this licentious system. It was easy for Dr. Mandeville to prove, first, that this entire conquest never actually took place among men; and secondly, that, if it was to take place universally, it would be pernicious to society, by putting an end to all industry and commerce, and in a manner to the whole business of human life. By the first of these propositions he seemed to prove that there was no real virtue, and that what pretended to be such, was a mere cheat and imposition upon mankind; and by the second, that private vices were public benefits, since without them no society could prosper or flourish.

Footnote 21:

Fable of the Bees.

Such is the system of Dr. Mandeville, which once made so much noise in the world, and which, though perhaps, it never gave occasion to more vice than what would have been without it, at least taught that vice, which arose from other causes, to appear with more effrontery, and to avow the corruption of its motives with a profligate audaciousness which had never been heard of before.

But how destructive soever this system may appear, it could never have imposed upon so great a number of persons, nor have occasioned so general an alarm among those who are the friends of better principles, had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth. A system of natural philosophy may appear very plausible, and be for a long time very generally received in the world, and yet have no foundation in nature, nor any sort of resemblance to the truth. The vortices of Des Cartes were regarded by a very ingenious nation, for near a century together, as a most satisfactory account of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet it has been demonstrated, to the conviction of all mankind, that these pretended causes of those wonderful effects, not only do not actually exist, but are utterly impossible, and if they did exist, could produce no such effects as are ascribed to them. But it is otherwise with systems of moral philosophy, and an author who pretends to account for the origin of our moral sentiments, cannot deceive us so grossly, nor depart so very far from all resemblance to the truth. When a traveller gives an account of some distant country, he may impose upon our credulity the most groundless and absurd fictions as the most certain matters of fact. But when a person pretends to inform us of what passes in our neighbourhood, and of the affairs of the very parish which we live in, though here too, if we are so careless as not to examine things with our own eyes, he may deceive us in many respects, yet the greatest falsehoods which he imposes upon us must bear some resemblance to the truth, and must even have a considerable mixture of truth in them. An author who treats of natural philosophy, and pretends to assign the causes of the great phenomena of the universe, pretends to give an account of the affairs of a very distant country, concerning which he may tell us what he pleases, and as long as his narration keeps within the bounds of seeming possibility, he need not despair of gaining our belief. But when he proposes to explain the origin of our desires and affections, of our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, he pretends to give an account, not only of the affairs of the very parish that we live in, but of our own domestic concerns. Though here too, like indolent masters who put their trust in a steward who deceives them, we are very liable to be imposed upon, yet we are incapable of passing any account which does not preserve some little regard to the truth. Some of the articles, at least, must be just, and even those which are most overcharged must have had some foundation, otherwise the fraud would be detected even by that careless inspection which we are disposed to give. The author who should assign, as the cause of any natural sentiment, some principle which neither had any connexion with it, nor resembled any other principle which had some such connexion, would appear absurd and ridiculous to the most injudicious and unexperienced reader.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter I

Section III: Of the different systems which have been formed concerning the principle of approbation. INTRODUCTION. After the inquiry concerning the nature of virtue, the next question of importance in Moral Philosophy, is concerning the principle of approbation, concerning the power or faculty of the mind which renders certain characters agreeable or disagreeable to us, makes us prefer one tenour of conduct to another, denominate the one right and the other wrong, and consider the one as the object of approbation, honour, and reward; the other as that of blame, censure, and punishment. Three different accounts have been given of this principle of approbation. According to some, we approve and disapprove both of our own actions and of those of others, from self-love only, or from some view of their tendency to our own happiness or disadvantage; according to others, reason, the same faculty by which we distinguish between truth and falsehood, enables us to distinguish between what is fit and unfit both in actions and affections: according to others this distinction is altogether the effect of immediate sentiment and feeling, and arises from the satisfaction or disgust with which the view of certain actions or affections inspires us. Self-love, reason, and sentiment, therefore, are the three different sources which have been assigned for the principle of approbation. Before I proceed to give an account of those different systems, I must observe, that the determination of this second question, though of the greatest importance in speculation, is of none in practice. The question concerning the nature of virtue necessarily has some influence upon our notions of right and wrong in many particular cases. That concerning the principle of approbation can possibly have no such effect. To examine from what contrivance or mechanism within, those different notions or sentiments arise, is a mere matter of philosophical curiosity.

Of those systems which deduce the principle of approbation from self-love.

Those who account for the principle of approbation from self-love, do not all account for it in the same manner, and there is a good deal of confusion and inaccuracy in all their different systems. According to Mr. Hobbes, and many of his followers,[22] man is driven to take refuge in society, not by any natural love which he bears to his own kind, but because without the assistance of others he is incapable of subsisting with ease or safety. Society, upon this account, becomes necessary to him, and whatever tends to its support and welfare, he considers as having a remote tendency to his own interest, and, on the contrary, whatever is likely to disturb or destroy it, he regards as in some measure hurtful or pernicious to himself. Virtue is the great support, and vice the great disturber of human society. The former, therefore, is agreeable, and the latter offensive to every man; as from the one he foresees the prosperity, and from the other the ruin and disorder of what is so necessary for the comfort and security of his existence.

Footnote 22:

Puffendorff. Mandeville.

That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of vice to disturb the order of society, when we consider it coolly and philosophically, reflects a very great beauty upon the one, and a very great deformity upon the other, cannot, as I have observed upon a former occasion, be called in question. Human society, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philosophical light, appears like a great, an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in any other beautiful and noble machine that was the production of human art, whatever tended to render its movements more smooth and easy, would derive a beauty from this effect, and, on the contrary, whatever tended to obstruct them would displease upon that account: so virtue, which is, as it were, the fine polish to the wheels of society, necessarily pleases; while vice, like the vile rust, which makes them jar and grate upon one another, is as necessarily offensive. This account, therefore, of the origin of approbation and disapprobation, so far as it derives them from a regard to the order of society, runs into that principle which gives beauty to utility, and which I have explained upon a former occasion; and it is from thence that this system derives all that appearance of probability which it possesses. When those authors describe the innumerable advantages of a cultivated and social, above a savage and solitary life; when they expatiate upon the necessity of virtue and good order for the maintenance of the one, and demonstrate how infallibly the prevalence of vice and disobedience to the laws tend to bring back the other, the reader is charmed with the novelty and grandeur of those views which they open to him: he sees plainly a new beauty in virtue, and a new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice of before, and is commonly so delighted with the discovery, that he seldom takes time to reflect, that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot possibly be the ground of that approbation and disapprobation with which he has always been accustomed to consider those different qualities.

When those authors, on the other hand, deduce from self-love the interest which we take in the welfare of society, and the esteem which upon that account we bestow upon virtue, they do not mean, that when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and detest the villainy of Catiline, our sentiments are influenced by the notion of any benefit we receive from the one, or of any detriment we suffer from the other. It was not because the prosperity or subversion of society, in those remote ages and nations, was apprehended to have any influence upon our happiness or misery in the present times; that according to those philosophers, we esteemed the virtuous, and blamed the disorderly character. They never imagined that our sentiments were influenced by any benefit or damage which we supposed actually to redound to us, from either; but by that which might have redounded to us, had we lived in those distant ages and countries; or by that which might still redound to us, if in our own times we should meet with characters of the same kind. The idea, in short, which those authors were groping about, but which they were never able to unfold distinctly, was that indirect sympathy which we feel with the gratitude or resentment of those who received the benefit or suffered the damage resulting from such opposite characters: and it was this which they were indistinctly pointing at, when they said, that it was not the thought of what we had gained or suffered which prompted our applause or indignation, but the conception or imagination of what we might gain or suffer if we were to act in society with such associates.

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle. When I sympathize with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in self-love, because it arises from bringing your case home to myself, from putting myself in your situation, and thence conceiving what I should feel in the like circumstances. But though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympathize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only son, in order to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer, if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die: but I consider what I should suffer if I was really you, and I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion, which does not arise even from the imagination of any thing that has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person and character, but which is entirely occupied about what relates to you? A man may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impossible that he should conceive himself as suffering her pains in his own proper person and character. That whole account of human nature, however, which deduces all sentiments and affections from self-love, which has made so much noise in the world, but which, so far as I know, has never yet been fully and distinctly explained, seems to me to have arisen from some confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter II

Of those systems which make reason the principle of approbation.

It is well known to have been the doctrine of Mr. Hobbes, that a state of nature, is a state of war; and that antecedent to the institution of civil government, there could be no safe or peaceable society among men. To preserve society, therefore, according to him, was to support civil government, and to destroy civil government was the same thing as to put an end to society. But the existence of civil government depends upon the obedience that is paid to the supreme magistrate. The moment he loses his authority, all government is at an end. As self-preservation, therefore, teaches men to applaud whatever tends to promote the welfare of society, and to blame whatever is likely to hurt it; so the same principle, if they would think and speak consistently, ought to teach them to applaud upon all occasions obedience to the civil magistrate, and to blame all disobedience and rebellion. The very ideas of laudable and blameable, ought to be the same with those of obedience and disobedience. The laws of the civil magistrate, therefore, ought to be regarded as the sole ultimate standards of what was just and unjust, of what was right and wrong.

It was the avowed intention of Mr. Hobbes, by propagating these notions, to subject the consciences of men immediately to the civil, and not to the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence and ambition, he had been taught, by the example of his own times, to regard as the principal source of the disorders of society. His doctrine, upon this account, was peculiarly offensive to Theologians, who accordingly did not fail to vent their indignation against him with great asperity and bitterness. It was likewise offensive to all sound moralists, as it supposed that there was no natural distinction between right and wrong, that these were mutable and changeable, and depended upon the mere arbitrary will of the civil magistrate. This account of things, therefore, was attacked from all quarters, and by all sorts of weapons, by sober reason as well as by furious declamation.

In order to confute so odious a doctrine, it was necessary to prove, that antecedent to all law or positive institution, the mind was naturally endowed with a faculty, by which it distinguished in certain actions and affections, the qualities of right, laudable, and virtuous, and in others those of wrong, blameable, and vicious.

Law, it was justly observed by Dr. Cudworth,[23] could not be the original source of those distinctions; since upon the supposition of such a law, it must either be right to obey it, and wrong to disobey it, or indifferent whether we obeyed it, or disobeyed it. That law which it was indifferent whether we obeyed or disobeyed, could not, it was evident, be the source of those distinctions; neither could that which it was right to obey and wrong to disobey, since even this still supposed the antecedent notions or ideas of right and wrong, and that obedience to the law was conformable to the idea of right, and disobedience to that of wrong.

Footnote 23:

Immutable Morality, l. 1.

Since the mind, therefore, had a notion of those distinctions antecedent to all law, it seemed necessarily to follow, that it derived this notion from reason, which pointed out the difference between right and wrong, in the same manner in which it did that between truth and falsehood: and this conclusion, which though true in some respects, is rather hasty in others, was more easily received at a time when the abstract science of human nature was but in its infancy, and before the distinct offices and powers of the different faculties of the human mind had been carefully examined and distinguished from one another. When this controversy with Mr. Hobbes was carried on with the greatest warmth and keenness, no other faculty had been thought of from which any such ideas could possibly be supposed to arise. It became at this time, therefore, the popular doctrine, that the essence of virtue and vice did not consist in the conformity or disagreement of human actions with the law of a superior, but in their conformity or disagreement with reason, which was thus considered as the original source and principle of approbation and disapprobation.

That virtue consists in conformity to reason, is true in some respects, and this faculty may very justly be considered, as in some sense, the source and principle of approbation and disapprobation, and of all solid judgments concerning right and wrong. It is by reason that we discover those general rules of justice by which we ought to regulate our actions: and it is by the same faculty that we form those more vague and indeterminate ideas of what is prudent, of what is decent, of what is generous or noble, which we carry constantly about with us, and according to which we endeavour, as well as we can, to model the tenour of our conduct. The general maxims of morality are formed, like all other general maxims, from experience and induction. We observe in a great variety of particular cases what pleases or displeases our moral faculties, what these approve or disapprove of, and, by induction from this experience, we establish those general rules. But induction is always regarded as one of the operations of reason. From reason, therefore, we are very properly said to derive all those general maxims and ideas. It is by these, however, that we regulate the greater part of our moral judgments, which would be extremely uncertain and precarious if they depended altogether upon what is liable to so many variations as immediate sentiment and feeling, which the different states of health and humour are capable of altering so essentially. As our most solid judgments, therefore, with regard to right and wrong, are regulated by maxims and ideas derived from an induction of reason, virtue may very properly be said to consist in a conformity to reason, and so far this faculty may be considered as the source and principle of approbation and disapprobation.

But though reason is undoubtedly the source of the general rules of morality, and of all the moral judgments which we form by means of them; it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the experience of which the general rules are formed. These first perceptions, as well all other experiments upon which any general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling. It is by finding in a vast variety of instances that one tenour of conduct constantly pleases in a certain manner, and that another as constantly displeases the mind, that we form the general rules of morality. But reason cannot render any particular object either agreeable or disagreeable to the mind for its own sake. Reason may show that this object is the means of obtaining some other which is naturally either pleasing or displeasing, and in this manner may render it either agreeable or disagreeable for the sake of something else. But nothing can be agreeable or disagreeable for its own sake, which is not rendered such by immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, in every particular instance, necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice as certainly displeases the mind, it cannot be reason, but immediate sense and feeling, which, in this manner, reconciles us to the one, and alienates us from the other.

Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and aversion: but these are distinguished not by reason, but by immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, is desirable for its own sake, and if vice is, in the same manner, the object of aversion, it cannot be reason which originally distinguishes those different qualities, but immediate sense and feeling.

As reason, however, in a certain sense, may justly be considered as the principle of approbation and disapprobation, these sentiments were, through inattention, long regarded as originally flowing from the operations of this faculty. Dr. Hutcheson had the merit of being the first who distinguished with any degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions may be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are founded upon immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations upon the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and, in my opinion, so unanswerably, that, if any controversy is still kept up about this subject, I can impute it to nothing, but either to inattention to what that gentleman has written, or to a superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression, a weakness not very uncommon among the learned, especially in subjects so deeply interesting as the present, in which a man of virtue is often loth to abandon, even the propriety of a single phrase which he has been accustomed to.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 1

Of those systems which make sentiment the principle of approbation.

Those systems which make sentiment the principle of approbation may be divided into two different classes.

I. According to some the principle of approbation is founded upon a sentiment of a peculiar nature, upon a particular power of perception exerted by the mind at the view of certain actions or affections; some of which affecting this faculty in an agreeable and others in a disagreeable manner, the former are stampt with the characters of right, laudable, and virtuous; the latter with those of wrong, blameable and vicious. This sentiment being of a peculiar nature distinct from every other, and the effect of a particular power of perception, they give it a particular name, and call it a moral sense.

II. According to others, in order to account for the principle of approbation, there is no occasion for supposing any new power of perception which had never been heard of before: Nature, they imagine, acts here, as in all other cases, with the strictest œconomy, and produces a multitude of effects from one and the same cause; and sympathy, a power which has always been taken notice of, and with which the mind is manifestly endowed, is, they think, sufficient to account for all the effects ascribed to this peculiar faculty.

I. Dr. Hutcheson[24] had been at great pains to prove that the principle of approbation was not founded on self-love. He had demonstrated too that it could not arise from any operation of reason. Nothing remained, he thought, but to suppose it a faculty of a peculiar kind, with which Nature had endowed the human mind, in order to produce this one particular and important effect. When self-love and reason were both excluded, it did not occur to him that there was any other known faculty of the mind which could in any respect answer this purpose.

Footnote 24:

Inquiry concerning Virtue.

This new power of perception he called a moral sense, and supposed it to be somewhat analogous to the external senses. As the bodies around us, by affecting these in a certain manner, appear to possess the different qualities of sound, taste, odour, colour; so the various affections of the human mind, by touching this particular faculty in a certain manner, appear to possess the different qualities of amiable and odious, of virtuous and vicious, of right and wrong.

The various senses or powers of perception,[25] from which the human mind derives all its simple ideas, were, according to this system, of two different kinds, of which the one were called the direct or antecedent, the other, the reflex or consequent senses. The direct senses were those faculties from which the mind derived the perception of such species of things as did not presuppose the antecedent perception of any other. Thus sounds and colours were objects of the direct senses. To hear a sound or to see a colour does not presuppose the antecedent perception of any other quality or object. The reflex or consequent senses, on the other hand, were those faculties from which the mind derived the perception of such species of things as presupposed the antecedent perception of some other. Thus harmony and beauty were objects of the reflex senses. In order to perceive the harmony of a sound, or the beauty of a colour, we must first perceive the sound or the colour. The moral sense was considered as a faculty of this kind. That faculty, which Mr. Locke calls reflection, and from which he derived the simple ideas of the different passions and emotions of the human mind, was, according to Dr. Hutcheson, a direct internal sense. That faculty again by which we perceived the beauty or deformity, the virtue or vice of those different passions and emotions, was a reflex, internal sense.

Footnote 25:

Treatise of the passions.

Dr. Hutcheson endeavoured still further to support this doctrine, by shewing that it was agreeable to the analogy of nature, and that the mind was endowed with a variety of other reflex senses exactly similar to the moral sense; such as a sense of beauty and deformity in external objects; a public sense, by which we sympathize with the happiness or misery of our fellow-creatures; a sense of shame and honour, and a sense of ridicule.

But notwithstanding all the pains which this ingenious philosopher has taken to prove that the principle of approbation is founded in a peculiar power of perception, somewhat analogous to the external senses, there are some consequences, which he acknowledges to follow from this doctrine, that will, perhaps, be regarded by many as a sufficient confutation of it. The qualities, he allows,[26] which belong to the objects of any sense, cannot, without the greatest absurdity, be ascribed to the sense itself. Who ever thought of calling the sense of seeing black or white, the sense of hearing loud or low, or the sense of tasting sweet or bitter? And, according to him, it is equally absurd to call our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. These qualities belong to the objects of those faculties, not to the faculties themselves. If any man, therefore, was so absurdly constituted as to approve of cruelty and injustice as the highest virtues, and to disapprove of equity and humanity as the most pitiful vices, such a constitution of mind might indeed be regarded as inconvenient both to the individual and to the society, and likewise as strange, surprising, and unnatural in itself; but it could not, without the greatest absurdity, be denominated vicious or morally evil.

Footnote 26:

Illustrations upon the Moral Sense. Sect. 1. p. 237, et seq. Third Edition.

Yet surely if we saw any man shouting with admiration and applause at a barbarous and unmerited execution, which some insolent tyrant had ordered, we should not think we were guilty of any great absurdity in denominating this behaviour vicious and morally evil in the highest degree, though it expressed nothing but depraved moral faculties, or an absurd approbation of this horrid action, as of what was noble, magnanimous, and great. Our heart, I imagine, at the sight of such a spectator, would forget for a while its sympathy with the sufferer, and feel nothing but horror and detestation, at the thought of so execrable a wretch. We should abominate him even more than the tyrant who might be goaded on by the strong passions of jealousy, fear, and resentment, and upon that account be more excusable. But the sentiments of the spectator would appear altogether without cause or motive, and therefore most perfectly and completely detestable. There is no perversion of sentiment or affection which our heart would be more averse to enter into, or which it would reject with greater hatred and indignation than one of this kind; and so far from regarding such a constitution of mind as being merely something strange or inconvenient, and not in any respect vicious or morally evil, we should rather consider it as the very last and most dreadful stage of moral depravity.

Correct moral sentiments, on the contrary, naturally appear in some degree laudable and morally good. The man, whose censure and applause are upon all occasions suited with the greatest accuracy to the value or unworthiness of the object, seems to deserve a degree even of moral approbation. We admire the delicate precision of his moral sentiments: they lead our own judgments, and, upon account of their uncommon and surprising justness, they even excite our wonder and applause. We cannot indeed be always sure that the conduct of such a person would be in any respect correspondent to the precision and accuracy of his judgments concerning the conduct of others. Virtue requires habit and resolution of mind, as well as delicacy of sentiment; and unfortunately the former qualities are sometimes wanting, where the latter is in the greatest perfection. This disposition of mind, however, though it may sometimes be attended with imperfections, is incompatible with any thing that is grossly criminal, and is the happiest foundation upon which the superstructure of perfect virtue can be built. There are many men who mean very well, and seriously purpose to do what they think their duty, who notwithstanding are disagreeable on account of the coarseness of their moral sentiments.

It may be said, perhaps, that though the principle of approbation is not founded upon any power of perception that is in any respect analogous to the external senses, it may still be founded upon a peculiar sentiment which answers this one particular purpose and no other. Approbation and disapprobation, it may be pretended, are certain feelings or emotions which arise in the mind upon the view of different characters and actions; and as resentment might be called a sense of injuries, or gratitude a sense of benefits, so these may very properly receive the name of a sense of right and wrong, or of a moral sense.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 2

But this account of things, though it may not be liable to the same objections with the foregoing, is exposed to others which are equally unanswerable.

First of all, whatever variations any particular emotion may undergo, it still preserves the general features which distinguish it to be an emotion of such a kind, and these general features are always more striking and remarkable than any variation which it may undergo in particular cases. Thus anger is an emotion of a particular kind: and accordingly its general features are always more distinguishable than all the variations it undergoes in particular cases. Anger against a man, is, no doubt, somewhat different from anger against a woman, and that again from anger against a child. In each of those three cases, the general passion of anger receives a different modification from the particular character of its object, as may easily be observed by the attentive. But still the general features of the passion predominate in all these cases. To distinguish these, requires no nice observation: a very delicate attention, on the contrary, is necessary to discover their variations: every body takes notice of the former: scarce any body observes the latter. If approbation and disapprobation, therefore, were, like gratitude and resentment, emotions of a particular kind, distinct from every other, we should expect that in all the variations which either of them might undergo, it would still retain the general features which mark it to be an emotion of such a particular kind, clear, plain, and easily distinguishable. But in fact it happens quite otherwise. If we attend to what we really feel when upon different occasions we either approve or disapprove, we shall find that our emotion in one case is often totally different from that in another, and that no common features can possibly be discovered between them. Thus the approbation with which we view a tender, delicate, and humane sentiment, is quite different from that with which we are struck by one that appears great, daring, and magnanimous. Our approbation of both may, upon different occasions, be perfect and entire; but we are softened by the one, and we are elevated by the other, and there is no sort of resemblance between the emotions which they excite in us. But, according to that system which I have been endeavouring to establish, this must necessarily be the case. As the emotions of the person whom we approve of, are, in those two cases, quite opposite to one another, and as our approbation arises from sympathy with those opposite emotions, what we feel upon the one occasion, can have no sort of resemblance to what we feel upon the other. But this could not happen if approbation consisted in a peculiar emotion which had nothing in common with the sentiments we approved of, but which arose at the view of those sentiments, like any other passion at the view of its proper object. The same thing holds true with regard to disapprobation. Our horror for cruelty has no sort of resemblance to our contempt for mean-spiritedness. It is quite a different species of discord which we feel at the view of those two different vices, between our minds and those of the person whose sentiments and behaviour we consider.

Secondly, I have already observed, that not only the different passions or affections of the human mind which are approved or disapproved of appear morally good or evil, but that proper and improper approbation appear, to our natural sentiments, to be stampt with the same characters. I would ask, therefore, how it is, that, according to this system, we approve or disapprove of proper or improper approbation. To this question, there is, I imagine, but one reasonable answer, which can possibly be given. It must be said, that when the approbation with which our neighbour regards the conduct of a third person coincides with our own, we approve of his approbation, and consider it as, in some measure, morally good; and that on the contrary, when it does not coincide with our own sentiments, we disapprove of it, and consider it as, in some measure, morally evil. It must be allowed, therefore, that, at least in this one case, the coincidence or opposition of sentiments, between the observer and the person observed, constitutes moral approbation or disapprobation. And if it does so in this one case, I would ask, why not in every other? to what purpose imagine a new power of perception in order to account for those sentiments?

Against every account of the principle of approbation, which makes it depend upon a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every other, I would object; that it is strange that this sentiment, which Providence undoubtedly intended to be the governing principle of human nature, should hitherto have been so little taken notice of, as not to have got a name in any language. The word moral sense is of very late formation, and cannot yet be considered as making part of the English tongue. The word approbation has but within these few years been appropriated to denote peculiarly any thing of this kind. In propriety of language we approve of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, of the form of a building, of the contrivance of a machine, of the flavour of a dish of meat. The word conscience does not immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience supposes, indeed, the existence of some such faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably or contrary to its directions. When love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, with so many other passions which are all supposed to be the subjects of this principle, have made themselves considerable enough to get titles to know them by, is it not surprising that the sovereign of them all should hitherto have been so little heeded, that, a few philosophers excepted, no body has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name upon it?

When we approve of any character or action, the sentiments which we feel, are, according to the foregoing system, derived from four sources, which are in some respects different from one another. First, we sympathize with the motives of the agent; secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions; thirdly, we observe that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which those two sympathies generally act; and, last of all, when we consider such actions as making part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the happiness either of the individual or of the society, they appear to derive a beauty from this utility, not unlike that which we ascribe to any well contrived machine. After deducting, in any one particular case, all that must be acknowledged to proceed from some one or other of these four principles, I should be glad to know what remains, and I shall freely allow this overplus to be ascribed to a moral sense, or to any other peculiar faculty, provided any body will ascertain precisely what this overplus is. It might be expected, perhaps, that if there was any such peculiar principle, such as this moral sense is supposed to be, we should feel it, in some particular cases, separated and detached from every other, as we often feel joy, sorrow, hope, and fear, pure and unmixed with any other emotion. This however, I imagine, cannot even be pretended. I have never heard any instance alleged in which this principle could be said to exert itself alone and unmixed with sympathy or antipathy, with gratitude or resentment, with the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any action to an established rule, or last of all with that general taste for beauty and order which is excited by inanimated as well as by animated objects.

II. There is another system which attempts to account for the origin of our moral sentiments from sympathy distinct from that which I have been endeavouring to establish. It is that which places virtue in utility, and accounts for the pleasure with which the spectator surveys the utility of any quality from sympathy with the happiness of those who are affected by it. This sympathy is different both from that by which we enter into the motives of the agent, and from that by which we go along with the gratitude of the persons who are benefited by his actions. It is the same principle with that by which we approve of a well contrived machine. But no machine can be the object of either of those two last mentioned sympathies. I have already, in the fourth part of this discourse, given some account of this system.

## Translation — Mouseia

> Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete sixth-edition English text of all parts (the appended Dissertation on the Origin of Languages is not included) for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter I

Part I: Of the Propriety of Action. Consisting of three Sections.

Section I: Of the Sense of Propriety.

Of Sympathy.

However selfish we may suppose human beings to be, there are plainly principles in their nature that make them interested in the fortunes of others and make others’ happiness necessary to them, though they gain nothing from it but the pleasure of seeing it. Pity or compassion is such a principle: the emotion we feel for another’s misery when we see it, or when it is vividly brought before our minds. That the sorrow of others often makes us sorrowful is too obvious a fact to need examples. For this feeling, like every other original passion of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they may feel it with the keenest sensitivity. Even the greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of society’s laws, is not entirely without it.

Since we have no direct experience of what other people feel, we can form no idea of how they are affected except by imagining what we ourselves would feel in the same situation. Though our brother is on the rack, while we ourselves are at ease our senses will never tell us what he suffers. They have never carried us beyond our own person, and never can; only through imagination can we form any conception of his sensations. Nor can imagination help us except by representing what our sensations would be if we were in his place. It copies only the impressions of our own senses, not his. In imagination we put ourselves in his situation; we conceive ourselves enduring the same torments; we enter, as it were, his body and become, to some degree, him. In this way we form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something that, though weaker, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, once brought home to us and made our own, begin at last to affect us: we tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. Just as pain or distress of any kind arouses the deepest sorrow, imagining ourselves in it arouses some measure of that same emotion, according to the vividness or faintness of our conception.

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others—that by imaginatively changing places with the sufferer we come to conceive or feel what he feels—can be shown by many familiar observations, if it is not already clear enough. When we see a blow aimed at someone’s arm or leg and about to fall, we naturally recoil and draw back our own arm or leg; when it falls, we feel it in some measure and are hurt along with the sufferer. A crowd watching a dancer on a slack rope naturally twists, writhes, and balances its bodies as it sees him do, and as its members feel they would have to do in his situation. People with delicate nerves and frail constitutions complain that, when they look at the sores and ulcers displayed by beggars in the streets, they tend to feel an itch or discomfort in the corresponding part of their own bodies. Their horror at these unfortunate people’s misery affects that particular part more than any other because it springs from imagining what they themselves would suffer if they were the people before them and that very part of their own bodies were afflicted in the same wretched way. In their frail constitutions, the force of the idea alone is enough to produce the itch or discomfort of which they complain. Even men of the strongest build notice that looking at inflamed eyes often makes their own eyes distinctly sore, for the same reason: in the strongest man, that organ is more delicate than any other bodily part in the weakest.

Nor is our fellow-feeling called forth only by circumstances that cause pain or sorrow. Whatever passion an event arouses in the person directly concerned, a corresponding emotion arises in every attentive spectator at the thought of that person’s situation. Our joy at the rescue of heroes in tragedy or romance who have engaged our interest is as sincere as our grief at their distress; our fellow-feeling for their happiness is no less real than for their misery. We share their gratitude toward faithful friends who did not abandon them in hardship, and wholeheartedly join their resentment of treacherous people who injured, deserted, or deceived them. With every passion the human mind can experience, the bystander’s emotions correspond to those he imagines the sufferer should feel when he brings the case home to himself.

Pity and compassion are names for our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its original meaning may have been the same, can now without much impropriety denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

At times sympathy may appear to arise merely from seeing a particular emotion in someone else. Passions can seem to pass from one person to another instantly, before we know what aroused them in the person directly concerned. Grief and joy, for instance, strongly expressed in a person’s face and gestures, immediately stir a measure of the same painful or pleasant emotion in an observer. A smiling face is a cheerful sight to everyone who sees it, just as a sorrowful face is a melancholy one.

This does not hold in every case, or for every passion. Some passions, when expressed, excite no sympathy at all; before we know what occasioned them, their expression instead disgusts us and provokes us against the person displaying them. An angry man’s furious conduct is more likely to exasperate us against him than against his enemies. Since we do not know what provoked him, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves or conceive anything resembling the passions it arouses. But we can plainly see the position of those at whom he is angry and the violence to which so enraged an adversary may expose them. We readily sympathize, then, with their fear or resentment and are immediately inclined to take their side against the man who appears to pose them so great a danger.

If the mere appearance of grief or joy inspires some degree of the same emotion in us, it is because it suggests, in general terms, some good or bad fortune that has come to the person displaying it; with these passions, this much is enough to move us a little. Grief and joy have their effects within the person who feels them. Their expression does not, like that of resentment, suggest some other person about whom we care whose interests oppose the sufferer’s. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, awakens some concern for the person who encounters it; the general idea of provocation awakens no sympathy with the anger of the person provoked. Nature seems to teach us to be more reluctant to share this passion and, until we learn its cause, to be inclined instead to take a stand against it.

Even our sympathy with another’s grief or joy, before we know its cause, is always exceedingly incomplete. General cries of lamentation, expressing nothing but the sufferer’s anguish, awaken curiosity about his circumstances and some inclination to sympathize, rather than much actual, appreciable sympathy. Our first question is, “What has happened to you?” Until we hear the answer, we are uneasy because of the vague notion of his misfortune, and more so because we torment ourselves guessing what it might be; still, our fellow-feeling is not very great.

Sympathy, then, arises less from seeing a passion than from seeing the situation that gives rise to it. We sometimes feel on another’s behalf a passion of which that person seems utterly incapable, because imagining ourselves in that person’s place gives rise to it in us, though the reality gives rise to none in the person concerned. We blush at another’s insolence and rudeness, though that person seems unaware of the impropriety of the conduct, because we cannot help feeling the embarrassment that would overwhelm us if we had behaved so absurdly.

Of all the calamities to which mortality exposes humankind, the loss of reason appears by far the most dreadful to anyone with the least spark of humanity; people behold that last extremity of human suffering with a deeper compassion than they feel for any other. Yet the unfortunate person in that condition may laugh and sing, altogether unaware of the misery. The anguish that humanity feels at this sight cannot, therefore, reflect any feeling of the sufferer. The spectator’s compassion must arise entirely from considering what the spectator would feel in that unhappy condition if—perhaps impossibly—he could still regard it with his present reason and judgment.

What pangs a mother feels when she hears the moans of her sick infant, unable in its agony to express what it feels! In imagining the child’s suffering, she combines its actual helplessness with her own awareness of that helplessness and her own fear of the unknown consequences of its illness. From all these things she forms, to her own sorrow, the fullest picture of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the discomfort of the present moment, which can never be great. It has no anxiety about the future; in its thoughtlessness and lack of foresight it possesses an antidote to fear and anxiety, those great tormentors of the human heart, against which reason and philosophy will try in vain to defend it when it becomes an adult.

We sympathize even with the dead. Overlooking what truly matters in their condition—the awesome future awaiting them—we are chiefly moved by circumstances that strike our senses but cannot affect their happiness. How miserable, we think, to be deprived of sunlight, cut off from life and conversation, laid in a cold grave as prey to decay and the creatures of the earth; to be thought of no longer in this world, and soon to vanish from the affections and almost the memories of one’s dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too deeply for those who have suffered such a dreadful calamity. Our tribute of fellow-feeling seems doubly owed to them now that everyone may forget them; through the futile honors we pay their memory, we deliberately keep alive, to our own sorrow, our melancholy recollection of their fate. That our sympathy cannot console them seems to add to their calamity. To think that everything we do is useless, that the regret, love, and lamentation of friends, which ease every other distress, can bring them no comfort, only sharpens our sense of their misery. Yet none of these circumstances can possibly affect the happiness of the dead; thoughts of them can never disturb the profound security of their rest. The idea of the bleak, endless melancholy that imagination naturally assigns to their condition comes entirely from joining our own awareness of their change to the change that has overtaken them. We put ourselves in their situation, lodge our own living souls, if I may put it so, in their lifeless bodies, and imagine what our feelings would be there. This very illusion of imagination makes the prospect of our own death so terrifying; circumstances that surely cannot cause us pain when we are dead make us miserable while we live. From it arises one of the most important principles of human nature: the dread of death, the great poison of human happiness but also the great restraint on human injustice. While it afflicts and humbles the individual, it guards and protects society.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter II

Of the Pleasure of Mutual Sympathy.

Whatever the cause of sympathy and however it is awakened, nothing pleases us more than to see others share all the emotions of our own hearts; nothing shocks us more than the appearance that they do not. Those who like to derive all our feelings from elaborate forms of self-love think they can readily explain both this pleasure and this pain by their own principles. A person, they say, aware of his weakness and his need for the assistance of others, rejoices when he sees them adopt his passions, because he can then count on their help; he grieves when they do not, because he can then expect their opposition. But both pleasure and pain are felt so immediately, and often on such trifling occasions, that neither can evidently come from such calculations of self-interest. A man who has tried to entertain a gathering is mortified when he looks around and sees that no one laughs at his jokes but himself. Conversely, the laughter of the gathering pleases him greatly, and he regards this agreement between their feelings and his as the highest applause.

Nor does his pleasure seem to arise entirely because sympathy with their amusement makes his own more lively, or his pain because he misses this pleasure, though both effects doubtless play some part. When we have read a book or poem so often that reading it alone no longer entertains us, we can still enjoy reading it to a companion. To him it has all the charm of novelty. We share the surprise and admiration it naturally inspires in him but can no longer inspire in us. We consider its ideas rather as they appear to him than as they appear to us, and sympathy with his enjoyment entertains us and revives our own. Conversely, we would be vexed if he appeared not to enjoy it, and could no longer take pleasure in reading it to him. So it is with our jokes: the company’s laughter certainly makes our own amusement livelier, while their silence disappoints us. But though this may add to our pleasure in the one case and our pain in the other, it is not the sole cause of either. The agreement of others’ feelings with ours appears to be a source of pleasure, and their disagreement a source of pain, that this explanation cannot account for. My friends’ sympathy with my joy might give me pleasure by making the joy more vivid; but their sympathy with my grief could give me no pleasure if it merely intensified that grief. Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and lightens grief. It enlivens joy by offering another source of satisfaction; it lightens grief by letting into the heart almost the only pleasant sensation it can then receive.

Accordingly, we should notice that we are even more eager to tell our friends about our painful passions than our pleasant ones; we take still greater satisfaction in their sympathy with the former than with the latter, and are even more shocked when that sympathy is absent.

How much relief unfortunate people find when they discover someone to whom they can tell the cause of their sorrow! Through his sympathy they seem to unload part of their distress; it is fitting to say that he shares it with them. He not only feels sorrow of the same kind, but seems to take a part of theirs upon himself, and what he feels seems to lighten the weight of what they feel. Yet in telling him their misfortunes they partly renew their grief. They recall the circumstances that caused their affliction. Their tears flow faster than before, and they may surrender themselves to all the weakness of sorrow. Nevertheless they take pleasure in this, and it plainly gives them perceptible relief, because the sweetness of his sympathy more than makes up for the bitterness of the grief they have revived to awaken it. By contrast, the cruelest insult one can offer the unfortunate is to appear to make light of their calamities. To show no response to our companions’ joy is merely impolite; to fail to look serious when they tell us of their afflictions is truly and grossly inhumane.

Love is a pleasant passion and resentment a painful one. We are therefore not nearly so anxious that our friends should share our friendships as that they should share our resentments. We can forgive them if they seem little moved by favors we have received, but lose all patience if they seem indifferent to injuries done to us. We are not nearly so angry when they fail to join our gratitude as when they fail to sympathize with our resentment. They can easily avoid becoming friends of our friends, but can scarcely avoid becoming enemies of people with whom we are at odds. We seldom resent their hostility toward the first, though we may occasionally make a show of an awkward quarrel over it; but we quarrel with them in earnest if they remain friends with the second. The pleasant passions of love and joy can satisfy and sustain the heart without any added pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment have a stronger need for sympathy’s healing comfort.

Just as the person directly affected by an event is pleased by our sympathy and hurt by its absence, so we too seem pleased when we can sympathize and hurt when we cannot. We go not only to congratulate the fortunate but to console the afflicted. The pleasure of speaking with someone whose every heartfelt passion we can fully share seems more than to compensate for the sorrow that the sight of his situation brings us. Conversely, it is always unpleasant to find ourselves unable to sympathize. Instead of enjoying exemption from the pain of sympathetic feeling, we are distressed to discover that we cannot share his discomfort. If we hear someone loudly bewail misfortunes which, when we imagine them happening to us, we feel could never affect us so violently, his grief shocks us; unable to share it, we call it cowardice and weakness. On the other hand, seeing someone too delighted or, as we say, too elated over some small piece of good fortune irritates us. We take offense even at his joy and, unable to share it, call it frivolity and foolishness. We are put out of humor even if a companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it merits—that is, more than we feel we ourselves could laugh at it.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter III

Of the Manner in Which We Judge the Propriety or Impropriety of Other People’s Feelings, by Their Agreement or Disagreement with Our Own.

When the original passions of the person directly concerned agree perfectly with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they necessarily appear to the spectator just, proper, and suited to their objects. Conversely, when, on imagining himself in that person’s position, he finds that those passions do not coincide with what he feels, they necessarily appear unjust, improper, and unsuited to the causes that aroused them. To approve another’s passions as suited to their objects, then, is simply to observe that we sympathize with them entirely; to withhold such approval is to observe that we do not entirely sympathize with them. A man who resents injuries done to me, and sees that I resent them exactly as he does, necessarily approves of my resentment. The man whose sympathy keeps pace with my grief cannot help acknowledging that my sorrow is reasonable. Someone who admires the same poem or picture as I do, and admires it just as I do, must surely accept that my admiration is justified. Someone who laughs at the same joke with me can hardly deny that my laughter is proper. By contrast, anyone who in these various cases feels either none of my emotion or none in proportion to it cannot help disapproving of my feelings because they clash with his. If my hostility exceeds the indignation my friend can share, if my grief surpasses the reach of his tenderest compassion, if my admiration is too high or too low to match his, if I laugh heartily when he merely smiles or merely smile when he laughs heartily—in each of these cases, as soon as he turns from the object to consider my response to it, I incur his disapproval to the extent that our feelings differ. On every occasion he judges my feelings by the standard and measure of his own.

To approve someone else’s opinions is to adopt them, and to adopt them is to approve them. If the arguments that persuade you persuade me too, I necessarily approve your conviction; if they do not, I necessarily disapprove it. I cannot even conceive of doing one without the other. Everyone acknowledges, then, that to approve or disapprove others’ opinions means nothing more than to observe whether they agree or disagree with our own. The same holds for our approval or disapproval of other people’s feelings and passions.

There are indeed cases in which we seem to approve without sympathy or agreement of feeling; in these cases approval might seem different from perceiving that agreement. A little attention, however, shows that even here our approval is ultimately founded on sympathy or agreement of this kind. I shall take an example from trivial matters, since in these people’s judgments are less likely to be distorted by faulty theories. We may approve a joke and think the company’s laughter entirely just and proper though we do not laugh ourselves, perhaps because we are in a solemn mood or our attention is occupied elsewhere. Experience has taught us, however, what sort of humor can usually make us laugh, and we recognize this joke as belonging to that sort. We approve the company’s laughter and feel that it is natural and suited to its object because, although our present mood prevents us from easily joining in, we know that on most occasions we would join in wholeheartedly.

The same thing often happens with every other passion. A stranger passes us in the street bearing all the signs of profound distress, and we are immediately told that he has just learned of his father’s death. We cannot fail to approve his grief. Yet it may well be that, without any want of humanity on our part, we are far from sharing the force of his sorrow and scarcely feel the first stirrings of concern for him. Perhaps neither he nor his father is known to us, or perhaps we are occupied with other matters and do not take time to imagine the many painful circumstances he must face. Experience has taught us, nevertheless, that such a misfortune naturally arouses such a degree of sorrow, and we know that if we took the time to consider his situation fully, in every detail, we would certainly sympathize with him most sincerely. Our approval of his sorrow, even when we feel no actual sympathy, rests on our awareness of this sympathy we would feel under those conditions. The general rules we have drawn from earlier experience of what our feelings would usually accord with correct, here as on many other occasions, the impropriety of our present emotions.

The feeling or affection of the heart from which any action proceeds, and on which its entire virtue or vice must ultimately depend, may be considered from two different perspectives, in two different relations: first, in relation to the cause that awakens it, or the motive that occasions it; and second, in relation to the end it aims at, or the effect it tends to produce.

The propriety or impropriety, the grace or awkwardness, of the resulting action lies in how well or poorly the affection fits the cause or object that awakens it, and in whether it appears proportionate or disproportionate to that cause.

The merit or demerit of the action—the qualities that entitle it to reward or make it deserving of punishment—lies in the beneficial or harmful nature of the effects the affection aims at or tends to produce.

In recent years philosophers have chiefly considered where affections tend to lead, paying little attention to how they relate to the cause that awakens them. In ordinary life, however, whenever we judge a person’s conduct and the feelings guiding it, we constantly consider both aspects. When we blame another person for excessive love, grief, or resentment, we consider not only the ruinous consequences those passions tend to bring about but also how little occasion there was for them. The person he loves, we say, does not have such great merit; his misfortune is not so dreadful, nor the provocation so extraordinary, as to justify such a violent passion. Had the cause been in any way proportionate to it, we say, we might have allowed, perhaps even approved, the violence of his emotion.

When we judge in this way whether a feeling is proportionate or disproportionate to its cause, we can scarcely use any standard or rule other than the corresponding feeling in ourselves. If, when we bring the case home to our own hearts, we find that the feelings it occasions agree and coincide with our own, we necessarily approve of them as proportionate and suited to their objects; otherwise we necessarily disapprove of them as extravagant and out of proportion.

Each faculty in one person is the measure by which that person judges the same faculty in another. I judge your sight by my sight, your hearing by my hearing, your reason by my reason, your resentment by my resentment, and your love by my love. I have no other way of judging them, nor can I have one.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter IV

The Same Subject Continued.

We may judge whether another person’s feelings are proper or improper by their agreement or disagreement with our own on two different occasions: first, when the objects that awaken them are considered without any special relation either to us or to the person whose feelings we judge; and second, when they are considered as particularly affecting one of us.

1. With objects considered without any special relation either to ourselves or to the person whose feelings we judge, whenever his feelings agree entirely with ours we credit him with taste and sound judgment. The beauty of a plain, the grandeur of a mountain, the decoration of a building, the expression of a picture, the composition of a speech, the conduct of a third person, the proportions among different quantities and numbers, the shifting appearances constantly displayed by the great machine of the universe and the hidden wheels and springs that produce them—all these general subjects of science and taste are regarded by us and our companions as having no particular relation to either of us. We both view them from the same vantage point; there is no need for sympathy, or for the imagined exchange of places that gives rise to it, to bring our feelings and affections about them into perfect harmony. If we nevertheless respond to them differently, the cause lies either in the different degrees of attention our different habits of life allow us readily to give to the several parts of these complex objects, or in differences in the natural sharpness of the mental faculty to which they appeal.

When our companion’s feelings agree with ours about matters of this kind that are plain and easy, on which perhaps we have never met anyone who differed from us, we certainly approve them, but he earns no praise or admiration for them. When, however, his feelings not only agree with ours but guide and direct them—when in forming them he seems to have noticed many things we overlooked and adapted his judgment to every circumstance of the objects—we not only approve but marvel at his unusual and unexpected discernment and breadth of understanding. He seems worthy of a great degree of admiration and applause. Approval heightened by wonder and surprise is what we properly call admiration, and applause is its natural expression. Everyone must surely approve the judgment that exquisite beauty is preferable to the grossest ugliness, or that twice two are equal to four; hardly anyone will much admire it. Rather, it is the keen and delicate perception of the person of taste, who distinguishes the minute, almost imperceptible differences between beauty and ugliness; the comprehensive precision of the experienced mathematician, who easily unravels the most intricate and perplexing proportions; the person who leads in science and taste, who directs and guides our own feelings, whose talents astonish us by their range and superior accuracy—this is the person who excites our admiration and seems to deserve our applause. On this foundation rests most of the praise bestowed on what are called the intellectual virtues.

One might think that the usefulness of these qualities is what first recommends them to us; certainly, reflecting on their usefulness gives them a new value. But originally we approve another person’s judgment not because it is useful but because it is right, accurate, and in accord with truth and reality. Plainly we attribute these qualities to it only because we find it agrees with our own judgment. Likewise, we initially approve taste not because it is useful but because it is sound, discriminating, and precisely suited to its object. The thought of the usefulness of all such qualities plainly comes afterward; it is not what first won our approval.

2. With objects that particularly affect either ourselves or the person whose feelings we judge, preserving this harmony and agreement is at once more difficult and vastly more important. My companion does not naturally view a misfortune that has befallen me, or an injury done to me, as I do. These things touch me much more closely. Unlike a picture, a poem, or a system of philosophy, we do not view them from the same position and are therefore likely to be affected very differently. Yet I can far more easily overlook the lack of agreement about matters that concern neither of us than about something so important to me as my misfortune or the injury I have suffered. Although you despise a picture, a poem, or even a system of philosophy that I admire, we are in little danger of quarreling over it. Neither of us can reasonably care very much about them; all should be matters of considerable indifference to us both. Thus our opinions may be opposed while our affections remain very nearly the same. Things that particularly affect you or me are quite different. Even if your conclusions on speculative matters and your feelings on matters of taste are the very opposite of mine, I can easily overlook the difference. If I have any self-command, I may still enjoy our conversation even on those subjects. But if you have no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have suffered, or none proportionate to the grief that overwhelms me; if you feel no indignation at the injuries I have endured, or none proportionate to the resentment that carries me away, we can no longer speak about them. We become unbearable to each other. I cannot stand your company, nor you mine. You are astonished by my vehemence and passion; I am enraged by your cold indifference and lack of feeling.

In all such cases, if some agreement of feeling is to arise between the spectator and the person directly concerned, the spectator must first try as far as he can to put himself in the other’s situation and to bring home to himself every small detail of distress that the sufferer might encounter. He must take on his companion’s whole case down to its smallest incidents, striving to make as complete as possible the imagined exchange of positions on which his sympathy depends.

Even after all this, the spectator’s emotions are still likely to fall short of the force of the sufferer’s. Though people are naturally sympathetic, they never feel about another person’s fate the degree of passion that naturally animates the person directly concerned. The imagined exchange of positions on which their sympathy rests lasts only a moment. Their awareness of their own safety, the thought that they are not actually suffering themselves, continually intrudes. It does not prevent them from conceiving a passion somewhat like the sufferer’s, but does prevent them from feeling anything close to its intensity. The person directly concerned knows this and at the same time passionately desires a fuller sympathy. He longs for a relief that only complete agreement between the spectators’ feelings and his own can bring. In violent and painful passions, his sole consolation is to see the emotions of their hearts keep perfect time with his. But he can hope for this only by lowering his passion to a level the spectators can share. He must soften, if I may put it this way, the sharpness of its natural note until it is in harmony with the emotions of those around him. Their feeling will indeed always differ in some ways from his; compassion can never be exactly the same as original sorrow. For the hidden awareness that the exchange of places giving rise to sympathy is only imagined not only reduces its intensity but also changes its character to some extent, giving it an altogether different form. Still, these two feelings can plainly agree enough to sustain the harmony of society. They will never be the same note, but they may form a harmony, and that is all that is needed or required.

To produce this harmony, nature teaches the spectators to take on the circumstances of the person directly concerned, and also teaches him to take on theirs to some extent. As they repeatedly put themselves in his position and thereby conceive emotions similar to his, so he repeatedly puts himself in theirs and thereby conceives some of the calm with which he knows they will view his fortunes. As they repeatedly consider what they would feel if they themselves were actually suffering, so he is repeatedly led to imagine how he would feel if he were merely a spectator of his own situation. As their sympathy makes them look at it to some extent through his eyes, his sympathy makes him look at it to some extent through theirs, especially when he is in their presence and under their observation. And because the passion he conceives through this reflection is far weaker than his original passion, it necessarily diminishes the violence of what he felt before coming into their presence, before recalling how they would respond and looking at his situation in this fair and impartial light.

The mind, then, is rarely so disturbed that the company of a friend cannot restore some calm and composure. The heart is soothed and settled to some extent the moment we come into his presence. We immediately remember how he will view our situation and begin to view it in the same light ourselves, for sympathy has an instant effect. We expect less sympathy from an ordinary acquaintance than from a friend; we cannot disclose to the former all the little circumstances we can tell the latter. We therefore compose ourselves more in his presence and try to fix our thoughts on the broad outlines of our situation that he is willing to consider. We expect still less sympathy from a gathering of strangers and therefore become more composed before them, always trying to bring our passion down to the level we can expect our particular company to share. Nor is this merely an outward show. If we possess any self-command, the presence of a mere acquaintance truly calms us more than that of a friend, and the presence of a gathering of strangers calms us still more than that of an acquaintance.

Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring peace of mind when we have unfortunately lost it, as well as the best safeguards of the steady and cheerful disposition so necessary to contentment and enjoyment. Those who live in retirement and contemplation and tend to brood at home over grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a finer sense of honor, seldom possess the evenness of temper so common among people accustomed to society.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter V

On the Amiable and Respectable Virtues.

Two different sets of virtues arise from these two efforts: the spectator's effort to enter into the feelings of the person chiefly concerned, and that person's effort to temper his emotions to a pitch the spectator can share. The first gives rise to the gentle, amiable virtues of openhearted accommodation and compassionate humanity. From the second spring the great, imposing, respectable virtues of self-denial and self-command, that mastery of the passions which subjects every movement of our nature to the demands of our own dignity and honor, and of propriety in our conduct.

How lovable a person appears when his sympathetic heart seems to echo every feeling of those around him—when he mourns their misfortunes, resents the wrongs done to them, and rejoices in their good fortune! Imagining ourselves in his companions' place, we share their gratitude and feel how much comfort the tender sympathy of so affectionate a friend must bring them. By contrast, how disagreeable is the person whose hard, unyielding heart feels only for himself and remains wholly insensible to the happiness or misery of others! Here too we enter into the pain his presence must cause everyone who encounters him, especially those with whom we are readiest to sympathize: the unfortunate and the injured.

On the other hand, what noble propriety and grace we find in those who, when the matter concerns themselves, exercise the composure and self-command that give every passion its dignity and bring it within the reach of others' sympathy! We recoil from clamorous grief that demands our compassion, without restraint, through sighs, tears, and unrelenting lamentation. But we revere the restrained, silent, majestic sorrow disclosed only in swollen eyes, trembling lips and cheeks, and a remote but moving coolness of manner. It imposes the same silence on us. We look on with respectful attention and anxiously guard our own behavior against any impropriety that might disturb the carefully sustained calm which costs its bearer so much effort.

Likewise, anger indulged without check or restraint, in all its insolence and brutality, is among the most hateful sights. Yet we admire the noble and generous resentment that, even in pursuing redress for the gravest injuries, is guided not by the rage they may arouse in the sufferer but by the indignation they naturally stir in the impartial spectator. It permits no word or gesture beyond what this more equitable feeling would allow; it never seeks, even in thought, a greater vengeance or a severer punishment than any disinterested person would be glad to see carried out.

Thus the perfection of human nature lies in feeling deeply for others and little for ourselves, in curbing our selfish affections and giving scope to our benevolent ones. This alone can produce among human beings that harmony of feelings and passions in which all their grace and propriety consist. As loving our neighbor as ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so the great precept of nature is to love ourselves only as we love our neighbor—or, which amounts to the same thing, as our neighbor is able to love us.

When taste and good judgment are held worthy of praise and admiration, they are understood to imply a delicacy of feeling and keenness of understanding not commonly found. Likewise, the virtues of sensibility and self-command are understood to consist not in ordinary but in uncommon degrees of those qualities. The amiable virtue of humanity surely requires a sensibility far beyond that possessed by the coarse and unrefined among us. The great and exalted virtue of magnanimity undoubtedly calls for far more self-command than even the weakest person can muster. An ordinary degree of intellectual qualities shows no special ability; an ordinary degree of moral qualities shows no virtue. Virtue is excellence, something unusually great and beautiful, raised far above the commonplace. The amiable virtues consist in a sensibility that surprises us with its exquisite, unexpected tenderness and delicacy; the imposing and respectable virtues, in a self-command that astonishes us by mastering even the most unruly passions of human nature.

In this respect there is a considerable difference between virtue and mere propriety: between qualities and actions that deserve admiration and celebration, and those that simply deserve approval. Often the most perfectly proper action requires no more than the ordinary sensibility or self-command possessed even by the least worthy people; sometimes it does not require even that. To take a humble example, eating when we are hungry is certainly right and proper under ordinary circumstances, and everyone would approve of it. Yet nothing could be more absurd than to call it virtuous.

Conversely, actions that fall short of perfect propriety may still show considerable virtue, because they may come closer to perfection than one could reasonably expect in circumstances where perfection is exceedingly hard to attain. This is often true where the greatest exertions of self-command are required. Some circumstances press so hard on human nature that even the greatest self-mastery possible for so imperfect a creature as a human being cannot wholly silence the voice of human weakness or moderate the passions enough for the impartial spectator to enter fully into them. Though the sufferer's conduct in such cases falls short of perfect propriety, it may still merit praise and may even, in a certain sense, be called virtuous. It may reveal a generous effort and a magnanimity beyond the reach of most people; though it fails of absolute perfection, it may come far closer to it than can ordinarily be found or expected in such trying circumstances.

When deciding how much blame or praise an action of this kind deserves, we very often employ two different standards. The first is our idea of complete propriety and perfection, which no human conduct in such difficult circumstances ever has reached or even could reach; judged against it, every person's actions must always appear imperfect and blameworthy. The second is our idea of how near to or far from this complete perfection most people's actions ordinarily come. Whatever surpasses this usual degree seems to deserve praise, however far it remains from absolute perfection; whatever falls below it seems to deserve blame.

We judge works of the imaginative arts in the same way. A critic examining the work of one of the great masters of poetry or painting may sometimes compare it with an ideal of perfection in his own mind, one that neither this nor any other human work will ever attain. So long as he uses that standard, he sees nothing but faults and imperfections. But when he considers the place the work should hold among others of its kind, he must compare it with a very different standard: the degree of excellence commonly attained in that particular art. Measured against this, the work may well deserve the highest praise, since it approaches perfection far more closely than most works that might be set beside it.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter I

Section II: On the Degrees of Different Passions Consistent with Propriety. Introduction. The proper pitch of every passion stirred by something especially connected with ourselves—the pitch the spectator can share—must plainly lie somewhere between extremes. If the passion runs too high or too low, the spectator cannot enter into it. Grief and resentment over our own misfortunes and injuries, for instance, may readily be too intense, and in most people they are. They may also, though less often, be too faint. We call the excess weakness and fury, and the deficiency dullness, insensibility, and lack of spirit. We can enter into neither extreme, but are amazed and bewildered at the sight of it. Yet the middle point at which propriety lies differs from passion to passion. It is high for some, low for others. There are passions whose intense expression is indecent even when we recognize that they must be felt with the greatest intensity. Others can be expressed in the strongest terms with extraordinary grace on many occasions, though the passions themselves are perhaps less inevitable. With the first group, for certain reasons, we feel little or no sympathy; with the second, for other reasons, we feel the most. Considering the whole range of human passions, we find that we call their expression decent or indecent in exact proportion to our willingness to sympathize with them.

On the Passions That Arise from the Body.

1. Strong expressions of passions arising from a particular bodily condition are indecent, because those around us, not sharing that condition, cannot be expected to sympathize. Violent hunger, for example, though often not merely natural but unavoidable, is always indecent to display; ravenous eating is universally considered bad manners. Yet we do feel some sympathy even with hunger. We enjoy seeing our companions eat heartily, while expressions of disgust offend us. The ordinary bodily condition of a healthy person allows his stomach, if I may use so coarse a phrase, to fall readily into rhythm with the first response, but not the second. We can sympathize with the distress caused by extreme hunger when we read of it in the account of a siege or sea voyage. Imagining ourselves among the sufferers, we readily understand the grief, fear, and dismay that must overwhelm them. We feel something of those emotions ourselves and therefore sympathize with them; but since reading the account does not make us hungry, we cannot properly be said, even here, to share their hunger.

The same is true of the passion by which nature joins the two sexes. Though it is by nature the fiercest of passions, any strong expression of it is indecent on every occasion, even between people whose full indulgence of it all human and divine laws acknowledge to be perfectly innocent. Yet some degree of sympathy seems possible even with this passion. It is improper to speak to a woman just as we would to a man: her company is expected to inspire greater cheerfulness, playfulness, and attentiveness in us; and a man wholly unresponsive to the fair sex earns some contempt even from other men.

Such is our aversion to all appetites originating in the body: their strong expression is repellent and disagreeable. According to some ancient philosophers, these passions we share with animals and, since they have no connection with the qualities distinctive of human nature, they are beneath its dignity. But we also share many other passions with animals—resentment, natural affection, even gratitude—without finding them equally brutish. The real reason for our peculiar disgust when we see other people's bodily appetites is that we cannot enter into them. Even for the person experiencing them, once they have been satisfied, the object that aroused them ceases to please. Its very presence often offends him; he looks in vain for the charm that transported him just a moment earlier, and can now enter into his own former passion no more than another person can. Once we have eaten, we have the table cleared. We would deal in the same way with the objects of our most ardent desires if they aroused no passions in us except those that originate in the body.

The virtue properly called temperance consists in mastery of these bodily appetites. Restraining them within the bounds prescribed by care for health and fortune is the work of prudence. Keeping them within the bounds demanded by grace, propriety, delicacy, and modesty is the work of temperance.

2. For the same reason, crying out in bodily pain, however unbearable it may be, always seems unmanly and unbecoming. Yet we do feel considerable sympathy even with bodily pain. As already noted, if I see a blow aimed at another person's leg or arm, about to land, I naturally shrink back and withdraw my own leg or arm. When it lands, I feel it in some measure and suffer along with the person struck. My suffering, however, is undoubtedly very slight; so if he cries out violently, I cannot share his response and invariably look down on him. Such is the case with all passions originating in the body: they awaken either no sympathy at all or an amount wholly out of proportion to the intensity of what the sufferer feels.

It is quite different with passions arising from the imagination. Changes in my companion's bodily condition can have little effect on the condition of my own body. But my imagination is more pliable and more readily takes on, so to speak, the shape and contours of the imaginations of those I know. Disappointment in love or ambition therefore arouses more sympathy than the greatest physical injury. These passions spring entirely from the imagination. A person who has lost his entire fortune but remains healthy feels nothing amiss in his body. His suffering arises solely from imagination, which shows him the loss of his standing, neglect by his friends, contempt from his enemies, dependence, want, and misery closing in. We sympathize with him more strongly for this reason: our imaginations can adapt themselves to his more readily than our bodies can adapt themselves to his body.

Losing a leg might generally be considered a more substantial misfortune than losing a lover. Yet a tragedy whose catastrophe turned on the loss of a leg would be ridiculous. The other kind of loss, frivolous as it may seem, has inspired many a fine tragedy.

Nothing is forgotten as quickly as pain. The moment it ends, all its agony ends with it, and remembering it can no longer disturb us. We ourselves can no longer enter into the distress and anguish we once felt. A thoughtless word from a friend causes a more lasting unease. The anguish it produces does not end when the word is spoken. What first disturbs us is not a sensation but an idea in the imagination. Since it is an idea that causes our unease, our imagination continues to chafe and rankle at the thought until time and other circumstances have partly erased it from memory.

Pain arouses no very lively sympathy unless it comes with danger. We sympathize with the sufferer's fear, not with the agony. Fear, however, is a passion springing entirely from the imagination: with an uncertainty and fluctuation that heighten our anxiety, it presents not what we actually feel but what we may possibly suffer later. Gout or toothache, exquisitely painful though they are, awaken little sympathy; more dangerous diseases, even when scarcely painful, awaken the greatest.

Some people faint or feel sick at the sight of a surgical operation. In them the bodily pain caused by cutting flesh seems to arouse the most extreme sympathy. We can picture pain caused from outside far more vividly and distinctly than pain arising from an internal disorder. I can barely imagine my neighbor's agony when he is tormented by gout or a stone; but I have a clear idea of what he must suffer from a cut, a wound, or a fracture. The main reason such sights affect us so strongly, however, is their novelty. Anyone who has witnessed a dozen dissections and as many amputations will thereafter watch such operations with great indifference, often with complete insensibility. We may have read or seen more than five hundred tragedies without ever suffering so thorough a loss of sensitivity to what they portray.

Some Greek tragedies try to awaken compassion by showing the agony of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints under the extremity of his suffering. Hippolytus and Hercules are both shown dying in the severest torment, which even Hercules' fortitude, it seems, could not withstand. In every case, however, something other than the pain engages us. It is not Philoctetes' wounded foot but his solitude that moves us and gives that enchanting tragedy its romantic wildness, so pleasing to the imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus hold our interest only because we foresee that they will die. If these heroes were to recover, we would find the portrayal of their sufferings utterly ridiculous. What sort of tragedy would center on an attack of colic? Yet no pain is more acute. These attempts to elicit compassion by portraying bodily pain may be counted among the Greek theater's greatest violations of decorum.

Our slight sympathy with bodily pain is the foundation of the propriety of constancy and patience in enduring it. The person who, under the severest torture, betrays no weakness, utters no groan, and gives way to no passion we cannot fully share commands our highest admiration. His steadfastness enables him to keep pace with our indifference and insensibility. We admire, and fully enter into, the magnanimous effort by which he does so. We approve of his conduct and, knowing the ordinary weakness of human nature, are astonished that he can act in a way deserving approval. Approval heightened and animated by wonder and surprise makes up the feeling properly called admiration, whose natural expression, as already observed, is applause.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter II

On Passions Arising from a Particular Turn or Habit of the Imagination.

Even among passions arising from the imagination, those born of some peculiar turn or habit it has acquired meet with little sympathy, however natural we acknowledge them to be. Other people's imaginations have not taken the same turn and cannot enter into them. Such passions, though we may recognize them as nearly unavoidable at some stage of life, are always somewhat ridiculous. Consider the strong attachment that naturally grows between two people of different sexes who have long dwelt on each other in thought. Since our imagination has not followed the lover's course, we cannot share the eagerness of his feelings. If our friend is wronged, we readily sympathize with his resentment and become angry at the person who angers him. If someone has done him a kindness, we readily share his gratitude and think highly of his benefactor's merit. But if he is in love, however reasonable we may consider his passion, we never feel obliged to fall in love ourselves with the same person. To everyone except the lover, his passion seems wholly out of proportion to the worth of its object. Love is pardoned at a certain age because we know it is natural, but is always laughed at because we cannot enter into it. Every serious and vehement expression of it seems ridiculous to a third person; and though the lover may be good company for his beloved, he is good company for no one else. He knows this himself and, so long as his judgment remains sound, tries to treat his own passion with humor and mockery. That is the only manner in which we care to hear of it, since it is the only manner in which we are disposed to discuss it ourselves. We tire of the solemn, pedantic, long-winded love of Cowley and Propertius, who never cease exaggerating the strength of their attachments; but Ovid's gaiety and Horace's gallantry never cease to please.

Though we cannot truly sympathize with an attachment of this kind, and cannot even imagine ourselves in love with that particular person, we have felt or may come to feel passions of the same kind. We can therefore readily enter into the exalted hopes of happiness that its fulfillment inspires, and the acute distress threatened by its disappointment. Love interests us not as a passion in itself but as a situation giving rise to other passions that do interest us: hope, fear, and distress of every kind. Likewise, in an account of a sea voyage, it is not hunger itself that interests us but the suffering it causes. Though we do not truly share the lover's attachment, we readily share the visions of romantic happiness it offers him. We feel how naturally a mind exhausted by intense desire and softened by idleness longs for peace and quiet, hopes to find them in the satisfaction of the very passion that disturbs it, and imagines the tranquil, secluded pastoral life that the elegant, tender, passionate Tibullus delights in portraying. It is a life like that described by poets in the Fortunate Islands: a life of friendship, freedom, and repose, free of labor, care, and all the turbulent passions that accompany them. Such scenes move us most when depicted as a hope rather than a present enjoyment. The coarseness of the appetite mingled with love, and perhaps underlying it, vanishes when its satisfaction lies far off; when that satisfaction is portrayed as immediate and present, it makes the whole scene offensive. For this reason happy love interests us much less than anxious or melancholy love. We tremble at whatever might frustrate such natural and pleasing hopes, and so enter into the lover's anxiety, concern, and distress.

This explains why the passion becomes so wonderfully engaging in some modern tragedies and romances. In The Orphan, it is not so much the love of Castalio and Monimia that holds us as the suffering their love brings about. An author who presented two lovers in perfect safety, declaring their affection to each other, would provoke laughter rather than sympathy. If such a scene is included in a tragedy at all, it is always somewhat improper; we bear it not because we sympathize with the passion expressed but because we worry about the dangers and difficulties we foresee in its fulfillment.

The restraint imposed by society's rules upon women in regard to this weakness makes love particularly distressing for them and therefore more deeply engaging to us. We are captivated by Phædra's love as portrayed in the French tragedy bearing her name, despite the extravagance and guilt that accompany it. Indeed, that very extravagance and guilt may in some measure make it more compelling. They make her fear, shame, remorse, horror, and despair more natural and affecting. All the secondary passions, if I may call them that, which arise from love's predicament necessarily grow fiercer and more intense; and only with these secondary passions can we properly be said to sympathize.

Yet of all passions so wildly out of proportion to the worth of their objects, love alone seems to have something graceful or pleasing in it, even to the least discerning minds. For one thing, though it may be ridiculous, it is not inherently hateful; and though its consequences are often disastrous and dreadful, its intentions are seldom harmful. Moreover, while the passion itself has little propriety, some passions that invariably accompany it have much. Love contains a strong admixture of humanity, broad goodwill, kindness, friendship, and esteem: passions with which, for reasons to be explained shortly, we are more disposed to sympathize than with any others, even when we recognize that they are somewhat excessive. Our sympathy with these feelings makes the passion accompanying them less disagreeable and keeps it alive in our imagination despite the vices that commonly attend it. In one sex it necessarily leads to ruin and disgrace; even in the other, where it is thought less ruinous, it almost always brings an inability to work, neglect of duty, contempt for fame, and even disregard for ordinary reputation. Nevertheless, because it is supposed to go with sensibility and generosity, many take pride in it and delight in appearing capable of a feeling that would bring them no honor if they actually felt it.

For a similar reason, we must show some reserve in speaking of our own friends, studies, and professions. We cannot expect these concerns to interest our companions as deeply as they interest us. The absence of such reserve makes half of humankind tiresome company for the other half. A philosopher is good company only for another philosopher, and a club member only for his own little circle.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter III

On the Unsocial Passions.

Another set of passions, though arising from the imagination, must always be lowered far below the intensity to which untutored nature would raise them before we can share them or regard them as graceful and becoming. These are hatred and resentment in all their forms. With these passions our sympathy is divided between the person feeling them and the person against whom they are directed. Their interests are directly opposed. What sympathy with the first would make us wish for, fellow feeling with the second would make us dread. Both are human, and we care about both; our fear of what one might suffer tempers our resentment of what the other has suffered. Our sympathy with the person provoked must therefore fall short of his natural passion, not only because of the general reasons that make all sympathetic passions weaker than the originals, but also because of this special reason: our opposing sympathy with someone else. Resentment, then, must be subdued more deeply than almost any other passion before it can become graceful or pleasing.

At the same time, people are keenly aware of injuries done to others. The villain of a tragedy or romance arouses as much indignation as its hero arouses sympathy and affection. We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello, and delight in the former's punishment as much as we grieve over the latter's suffering. Yet despite our strong fellow feeling for those who are injured, we do not necessarily resent an injury more when its victim appears to resent it more. Usually, the more patience, gentleness, and humanity he shows—provided he does not appear spiritless or restrained by fear—the stronger our resentment against his assailant. His lovable character sharpens our sense of the injury's cruelty.

Nevertheless, these passions are regarded as necessary parts of human character. A person who meekly accepts insults without trying to repel or avenge them becomes contemptible. We cannot enter into his indifference or insensibility: we call his conduct cowardly and feel as provoked by it as by his opponent's insolence. Even a crowd grows angry at the sight of someone patiently enduring insults and abuse. They want the insolence resented, and resented by its victim. They furiously call on him to defend or avenge himself. If his indignation finally rises, they applaud it warmly and share it. It quickens their own anger at his enemy; they rejoice to see him strike back, and take as much satisfaction in his revenge, provided it is not excessive, as if they themselves had been wronged.

We recognize how useful these passions are to the individual, because they make it dangerous to insult or injure him; their usefulness to society as guardians of justice and its equal administration, as will be shown later, is equally great. Yet something disagreeable remains in the passions themselves, making their appearance in others naturally repellent to us. An expression of anger toward someone present, if it goes beyond merely showing that we are aware of his mistreatment, is considered an insult not only to that person but to everyone present. Respect for the others should have held back so turbulent and offensive a display. The distant consequences of these passions please us; their immediate consequence is harm to the person they target. Yet it is an object's immediate, not distant, effects that make it pleasing or displeasing to the imagination. A prison is certainly more useful to society than a palace, and a prison's founder is generally moved by a far more just spirit of public service than a palace's builder. But the prison's immediate effect—the confinement of the unfortunate people shut inside—is unpleasant; imagination either does not pause to follow its more distant effects or sees them too far away to be deeply moved. A prison will therefore always be an unpleasant sight, all the more so the better it fulfills its purpose. A palace, by contrast, will always please, though its distant effects may often harm society. It may foster luxury and set an example of moral decay. But its immediate effects—the comfort, pleasure, and gaiety of those who live there—are all agreeable and suggest a thousand agreeable images; imagination usually rests on these and seldom pursues more remote consequences. Depictions in painting or plaster of trophies made from musical or agricultural instruments are common, pleasing ornaments in halls and dining rooms. A comparable display of surgical instruments—dissecting and amputation knives, bone saws, trepanning instruments, and the like—would be absurd and shocking. Yet surgical instruments are always more finely polished, and generally more precisely suited to their purposes, than farming implements. Their distant effect, the patient's health, is pleasing too; but since their immediate effect is pain and suffering, we dislike seeing them. Weapons are pleasing, though their immediate effect may likewise seem to be pain and suffering. But that is the pain of our enemies, for whom we feel no sympathy. For us, weapons are directly linked to pleasing ideas of courage, victory, and honor. They are therefore considered among the noblest elements of dress, and their images among the finest architectural ornaments. The same holds for qualities of mind. The ancient Stoics believed that, since the world is governed by the all-encompassing providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every event must be regarded as a necessary element of the universe's design, tending toward the order and happiness of the whole. Thus human folly and vice formed as necessary a part of that design as wisdom and virtue; eternal art drew good from evil and made both contribute equally to the prosperity and perfection of nature's vast system. But no such theory, however deeply rooted in the mind, could weaken our natural abhorrence of vice: its immediate effects are so destructive, while its distant effects lie beyond imagination's reach.

The same holds for the passions under discussion. Their immediate effects are so unpleasant that even when they are most fully justified, they retain something repellent. As I noted earlier, these are therefore the only passions whose expression does not prepare us to sympathize before we learn what caused them. The plaintive voice of someone in distress, heard from afar, will not let us remain indifferent to its owner. As soon as we hear it, we become concerned for his fate, and if it continues we are driven almost involuntarily to help. Similarly, a smiling face lifts even a pensive person into a light, cheerful mood that disposes him to share the joy it expresses; his heart, once cramped and weighed down by care and thought, suddenly expands and rises. Expressions of hatred and resentment have the opposite effect. The rough, loud, discordant voice of anger, heard from a distance, inspires fear or aversion. We do not rush toward it as we do toward someone crying out in pain and agony. Women and men with sensitive nerves tremble and are overcome by fear even when they know the anger is not directed at them. By putting themselves in its target's place, they nevertheless feel afraid. Even those with sturdier hearts are disturbed—not enough to fear, but enough to grow angry, for that is what they would feel in the target's position. Hatred works the same way: sheer expressions of spite inspire hatred toward no one but their speaker. Both passions naturally repel us. Their unpleasant, violent appearance never awakens or prepares sympathy, and often disrupts it. Grief draws us powerfully toward the person who shows it; these passions, until we learn their cause, repel us just as powerfully. Nature seems to have intended that the harsher, less lovable emotions that drive people apart should spread less easily and less often.

When music imitates the tones of grief or joy, it either inspires those passions in us or at least puts us in a mood to feel them. But when it imitates anger's tones, it inspires fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, and devotion are naturally musical passions. Their natural tones are soft, clear, and melodious; they find expression in phrases marked by regular pauses, and can thus easily be fitted to a melody's recurring measures. The voice of anger and kindred passions, by contrast, is harsh and discordant. Its phrases are irregular, now very long, now very short, with no regular pauses. Music can therefore imitate these passions only with difficulty, and such music is not especially pleasing. An entire entertainment may consist, quite properly, of imitations of agreeable and sociable passions. An entertainment made up entirely of imitations of hatred and resentment would be strange indeed.

If these passions are unpleasant for spectators, they are no less so for those who feel them. Hatred and anger are the greatest poisons to the happiness of a good mind. Their very experience is harsh, jarring, and convulsive; it tears at and unsettles the heart, destroying the calm and peace of mind indispensable to happiness and best nourished by the opposite passions of gratitude and love. What generous, humane people most regret is not the value of what they lose through the treachery and ingratitude of those around them. Whatever they lose, they can generally live happily without it. What disturbs them most is the thought of treachery and ingratitude directed at themselves; in their own judgment, the discordant and disagreeable passions awakened by this thought are the greatest part of the injury they suffer.

How much must be required before the satisfaction of resentment becomes wholly agreeable, and a spectator can fully sympathize with our revenge! First, the provocation must be such that failing to resent it in some measure would make us contemptible and expose us to repeated insults. Lesser offenses are always better overlooked; nothing is more despicable than a quarrelsome, touchy disposition that catches fire at every slight. We should resent chiefly because we recognize the propriety of resentment and know that others expect and require it of us, not because we feel that disagreeable passion raging within. No passion calls for greater doubt about its justice, more careful consultation of our natural sense of propriety before we indulge it, or closer consideration of the impartial spectator's feelings. Magnanimity, or the wish to maintain our standing and dignity in society, is the only motive that can ennoble the expression of this disagreeable passion. That motive must govern our entire manner and conduct: plain, open, and direct; resolute without obstinacy, elevated without insolence; free not only from petulance and vulgar abuse but marked by generosity, candor, and all due regard even for the person who has offended us. In short, our whole bearing must make clear, without affected effort to declare it, that passion has not extinguished our humanity; and that if we heed the call of revenge, we do so reluctantly, from necessity, after grave and repeated provocation. Resentment so restrained and tempered may even be acknowledged as generous and noble.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter IV

On the Social Passions.

Just as divided sympathy usually makes the passions discussed above so graceless and disagreeable, so a different set of passions, opposed to them, almost always becomes especially pleasing and becoming through a doubled sympathy. Generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem—all the social and benevolent affections—please a disinterested spectator on nearly every occasion when expressed in face or conduct, even toward those particularly close to us. His sympathy with the person who feels these affections coincides exactly with his concern for the person who receives them. The interest he must take, as one human being, in the latter's happiness strengthens his fellow feeling for the former, whose emotions are directed toward the same end. We are therefore always especially disposed to sympathize with benevolent affections. They please us in every respect. We share the satisfaction of both the person who feels them and the person who receives them. To be the object of hatred and indignation causes more pain than all the injuries a brave person might fear from enemies; likewise, the knowledge of being loved gives someone of delicacy and sensibility more happiness than all the benefits that love may bring. What character could be more detestable than that of someone who delights in sowing discord among friends and turning their tenderest love into mortal hatred? Yet what makes this deeply abhorred injury so atrocious? Is it the loss of the small favors the friends might have done each other had their friendship lasted? No: it is the loss of friendship itself, the theft of each other's affection, which gave both so much satisfaction; it is the disruption of harmony between their hearts, and the end of the happy exchange that once passed between them. Not only the tender and refined but even the roughest people feel that these affections, this harmony, and this exchange matter more to happiness than all the minor services they might have yielded.

Love is pleasant in itself to the person who feels it. It soothes and settles the heart, seems to encourage the motions of life, and to promote bodily health; it becomes even more delightful through awareness of the gratitude and pleasure it must awaken in the person loved. Their mutual regard makes them happy with each other, and our sympathy with that regard makes them pleasing to everyone else. How delighted we are to see a family filled throughout with mutual love and esteem: parents and children who are companions, differing only in the children's respectful affection and the parents' kindly indulgence; brothers whose freedom, fondness, shared teasing, and mutual kindness show no conflicting interests; sisters whose affection shows no rivalry for favor; everything suggesting peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and contentment! By contrast, how uncomfortable we feel in a house where discord sets one half of its inhabitants against the other; where, beneath affected smoothness and courtesy, suspicious glances and sudden flashes of passion betray the jealousies burning within, always ready to break through the restraint imposed by visitors' presence!

These lovable passions are never regarded with aversion, even when we acknowledge that they are excessive. There is something pleasing even in the weakness born of friendship and humanity. An overly tender mother, an overly indulgent father, or an overly generous and affectionate friend may sometimes, because of a gentle nature, be regarded with a kind of pity mixed with love. But none can be viewed with hatred or aversion, or even with contempt, except by the most brutal and worthless people. We always blame their excessive attachment with concern, sympathy, and kindness. Extreme humanity has a vulnerability that engages our pity more than anything else. Nothing about it is inherently graceless or disagreeable. We regret only that it is unsuited to the world because the world does not deserve it, and because it leaves its possessor prey to the treachery and ingratitude of persuasive deceivers, and exposed to countless pains and anxieties that he, of all people, least deserves and is generally least able to bear. Hatred and resentment are quite different. An excessive disposition toward these detestable passions makes someone an object of universal fear and abhorrence, a person who, like a wild animal, should, we think, be driven out of civilized society.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter V

Of the self-interested passions.

Besides those two opposed classes of passions, the social and the unsocial, there is a third that occupies a middle ground: it is never as graceful as the one can sometimes be, nor as odious as the other can sometimes be. Grief and joy arising from our own private good or ill fortune make up this third class. Even in excess, they are never as disagreeable as excessive resentment, since no opposing sympathy can enlist us against them; and even when perfectly suited to their objects, they are never as agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence, since no double sympathy can enlist us on their side. Yet grief and joy differ in this: we are generally readiest to sympathize with small joys and great sorrows. A man suddenly lifted by a turn of fortune into a station far above his former one may be certain that not all the congratulations of his closest friends are entirely sincere. The newly risen man, however great his merit, is generally disagreeable to us, and envy commonly keeps us from sharing his joy wholeheartedly. If he has any judgment, he perceives this and, rather than seeming elated by his good fortune, does his utmost to stifle his joy and restrain the uplift his new circumstances naturally give him. He affects the same plain dress and modest manner that suited his former station. He doubles his attentions to his old friends and strives more than ever to be humble, diligent, and obliging. This is the conduct we most approve of in his position, for we seem to expect him to sympathize more with our envy and dislike of his happiness than we sympathize with his happiness. Even with all this, he seldom succeeds. We doubt the sincerity of his humility, and he tires of the constraint. Before long, therefore, he generally leaves behind all his old friends, except perhaps a few of the lowest who consent to become his dependents; nor does he always gain new friends. His new associates are as affronted in their pride to find him their equal as his old friends were to see him become their superior; only the most stubborn and enduring modesty can make amends to either group for this humiliation. He usually tires too soon and, provoked by the sullen, suspicious pride of the first group and the insolent contempt of the second, treats the former with neglect and the latter with irritation, until he becomes habitually arrogant and loses everyone's esteem. If the chief part of human happiness springs from knowing ourselves loved, as I believe it does, sudden changes of fortune seldom add much to happiness. Happiest is the man who rises more gradually to greatness, for whom the public anticipates every step of advancement long before he takes it. His rise then excites no extravagant joy in him, and can reasonably arouse neither jealousy in those he catches up with nor envy in those he leaves behind.

People, however, sympathize more readily with the smaller joys arising from less important causes. Modesty is fitting amid great prosperity; but we can scarcely express too much delight in all the little events of ordinary life—in the company with whom we spent last evening, the meal set before us, what was said and done, all the little incidents of our present conversation, and all those trivial nothings that fill the emptiness of human life. Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which always rests upon a special relish for all the little pleasures offered by everyday events. We readily sympathize with it: it inspires the same joy in us and makes every trifle appear as agreeable to us as it does to the person blessed with this happy disposition. This is why youth, the season of gaiety, so readily wins our affection. That inclination to joy which seems to animate the very bloom and sparkle in the eyes of youth and beauty raises even the elderly to a more joyous mood than usual, even when it appears in someone of their own sex. For a time they forget their infirmities and yield to pleasant thoughts and feelings long unfamiliar to them. Recalled to their hearts by the presence of so much happiness, these feelings take their places like old friends whom they regret ever having lost and embrace all the more warmly for the long separation.

Grief is quite another matter. Small vexations excite no sympathy, but deep affliction calls forth the greatest. Consider a man troubled by every little unpleasant incident: hurt if the cook or butler fails in the least part of a duty; sensitive to every lapse in the finest points of politeness, whether toward himself or someone else; offended that an intimate friend failed to say good morning when they met before noon, or that his brother hummed a tune while he himself told a story; put out of humor by bad weather in the country, bad roads on a journey, and a lack of company and the dullness of every public amusement in town. Such a person, I say, even if he has some cause, will seldom find much sympathy. Joy is a pleasant feeling, and we gladly give ourselves up to it on the slightest occasion. We therefore readily share it with others whenever envy does not stand in our way. But grief is painful, and even when the misfortune is our own, the mind naturally resists and recoils from it. We try either not to feel it at all or to shake it off as soon as we do. Our aversion to grief does not always stop us from feeling it ourselves over trifles, but it constantly stops us from sharing the grief of others when it arises from similarly trivial causes, for the passions we feel by sympathy are always less irresistible than those we feel firsthand. There is also a malicious streak in humanity that not only prevents sympathy with little discomforts but finds them somewhat amusing. Hence the pleasure we all take in teasing and in the slight annoyance of a companion prodded, pressed, and tormented from every side. People of even ordinary good breeding conceal the pain a little incident may cause them; those more thoroughly schooled in society turn such incidents into jokes themselves, knowing their companions would do so for them. A man accustomed to society learns to consider how everything affecting him will look to others, and this habit makes his trivial misfortunes appear to him in the same ridiculous light in which he knows others will view them.

Our sympathy with profound distress, on the contrary, is strong and sincere. No example is needed: we weep even at a tragedy's fictional portrayal. If, then, you suffer a grave calamity—if some extraordinary misfortune plunges you into poverty, illness, disgrace, and disappointment—even if your own fault has partly caused it, you can generally count on your friends' sincerest sympathy and, insofar as interest and honor allow, their kindest help. But if your misfortune is not so dreadful, if you have merely suffered a small setback in your ambition, been rejected by your lover, or fallen under your wife's thumb, expect the mockery of all your acquaintances.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 1

Section III: Of the effects of prosperity and adversity on people's judgment of the propriety of action, and why their approval is easier to obtain in one condition than the other.

That although our sympathy with sorrow is generally more vivid than our sympathy with joy, it usually falls much further short of the intensity naturally felt by the person directly concerned.

Our sympathy with sorrow, though no more real, has attracted more attention than our sympathy with joy. The word sympathy, in its original and most proper sense, means our fellow feeling with the sufferings of others, not with their enjoyments. A recent, ingenious, subtle philosopher thought it necessary to prove by argument that we genuinely sympathize with joy and that congratulation is a principle of human nature. Nobody, I believe, ever thought it necessary to prove the same of compassion.

First, our sympathy with sorrow is, in one sense, more universal than our sympathy with joy. Even when sorrow is excessive, we may still feel something of it. True, what we then feel does not amount to complete sympathy, that perfect harmony and correspondence of sentiments which constitutes approval. We do not weep, cry out, and lament with the sufferer. Rather, we recognize his weakness and the extravagance of his passion, yet often feel considerable concern for him. But if we cannot fully enter into and share another's joy, we have no regard or fellow feeling for it at all. The man who leaps and dances about with an unrestrained, senseless joy we cannot share becomes an object of contempt and indignation.

Pain, moreover, whether mental or bodily, is a sharper sensation than pleasure. Though our sympathy with pain falls far short of what the sufferer naturally feels, it is generally a more vivid and distinct perception than our sympathy with pleasure, even though the latter often comes closer, as I shall shortly show, to the natural intensity of the original passion.

Beyond all this, we often struggle to hold back our sympathy with others' sorrow. When the sufferer is not watching us, we try for our own sake to suppress it as much as we can, and do not always succeed. Our resistance to it and our reluctance to yield necessarily make us more conscious of it. We never need to resist our sympathy with joy in this way. If envy is present, we feel no inclination toward that sympathy at all; if not, we yield to it freely. Indeed, because we are always ashamed of our envy, we often pretend, and sometimes genuinely wish, to share another's joy when that disagreeable feeling prevents us from doing so. We say we are glad of our neighbor's good fortune when perhaps in our hearts we are actually sorry. We often feel sympathy with sorrow when we wish to be free of it, and often fail to feel sympathy with joy when we would welcome it. The observation most naturally suggested by this is therefore that our tendency to sympathize with sorrow must be very strong, and our tendency to sympathize with joy very weak.

Despite this prejudice, I venture to assert that, where there is no envy, our tendency to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our tendency to sympathize with sorrow; and that our fellow feeling with a pleasant emotion comes much closer to the intensity naturally felt by the people directly concerned than does our fellow feeling with a painful one.

We make some allowance for excessive grief that we cannot entirely share. We know what a tremendous effort the sufferer must make to bring his emotions into complete harmony with the spectator's. We readily forgive him, then, if he fails. But we make no such allowance for unrestrained joy, since we do not feel that any such great effort is needed to bring it down to a level we can fully share. A man who commands his sorrow under the greatest calamities seems worthy of the highest admiration; but one who similarly masters his joy in the fullness of prosperity seems scarcely to deserve praise. We sense that the distance between what the person directly concerned naturally feels and what the spectator can fully share is much wider in the first case than in the second.

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is healthy, free of debt, and clear in conscience? For someone in this condition, every increase of fortune may properly be called superfluous; if it raises his spirits very high, that must be the effect of the most frivolous levity. Yet this condition may fairly be called the natural, ordinary state of humanity. Despite the world's present misery and depravity, so rightly lamented, this is actually the condition of most people. Most people, therefore, find little difficulty in raising their spirits to share all the joy that any addition to this condition can arouse in a companion.

But although little can be added to this state, much can be taken away from it. The interval between it and the highest human prosperity is slight; the distance between it and the deepest misery is immense. Adversity must therefore depress the sufferer's mind much further below its natural state than prosperity can raise it above that state. The spectator consequently finds it far harder to sympathize fully and keep perfect time with the sufferer's sorrow than to enter completely into his joy; in the first case he must depart much further from his own natural, ordinary frame of mind than in the second. That is why, though our sympathy with sorrow is often a sharper sensation than our sympathy with joy, it always falls much further short of the intensity naturally felt by the person directly concerned.

It is pleasant to sympathize with joy; wherever envy does not oppose us, our hearts gladly surrender to the fullest transports of that delightful feeling. But sharing grief is painful, and we always enter into it reluctantly[1]. When we attend a tragedy, we resist the sympathetic sorrow it inspires as long as we can and yield to it only when we can resist no longer; even then, we try to hide our concern from the company. If we shed tears, we carefully conceal them, fearing that spectators who do not share such extreme tenderness will regard it as weakness and a lack of fortitude. The unhappy person whose misfortunes call for our compassion senses how reluctantly we are likely to share his sorrow, and therefore offers it to us fearfully and hesitantly. He even suppresses half of it, ashamed by humanity's hard-heartedness to release his grief in full. The man exulting in joy and success behaves differently. Wherever envy does not set us against him, he expects our fullest sympathy. He is not afraid to announce his success with triumphant shouts, confident that we are wholeheartedly disposed to share it.

Footnote 1:

It has been objected that, since I ground the sentiment of approval, which is always pleasant, in sympathy, it is inconsistent with my system to allow that any sympathy can be unpleasant. I reply that the sentiment of approval involves two things to be distinguished: first, the spectator's sympathetic passion; second, the emotion arising when he perceives the perfect coincidence between that sympathetic passion in himself and the original passion in the person directly concerned. This latter emotion, in which approval properly consists, is always pleasant and delightful. The former may be pleasant or unpleasant according to the character of the original passion, whose features it must always retain to some degree. Two sounds, I suppose, may each sound harsh in isolation, yet if they form a perfect concord, the perception of their harmony and coincidence may be pleasant.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 2

Why should we be more ashamed to weep than to laugh in company? We may often have as real a reason for one as for the other. But we always sense that spectators are likelier to join us in the pleasant emotion than in the painful one. It is always wretched to complain, even when we are oppressed by the most dreadful calamities. Yet the triumph of victory is not always ungraceful. Prudence, it is true, would often advise us to bear prosperity more moderately, since it would teach us to avoid the envy that triumph, more than anything else, is apt to arouse.

How heartfelt are the cheers of the crowd, who never envy their superiors, at a triumph or public entrance! And how calm and restrained is their grief, as a rule, at an execution! Our sorrow at a funeral generally amounts to no more than an assumed solemnity, but our merriment at a christening or a wedding is always sincere and unaffected. On these and all such joyful occasions, our pleasure, though less lasting, is often as vivid as that of the people directly concerned. Whenever we wholeheartedly congratulate our friends—as, to the disgrace of human nature, we seldom do—their joy literally becomes ours: for the moment we are as happy as they are. Our hearts swell and overflow with genuine pleasure; joy and satisfaction shine from our eyes and animate every feature of our faces and every movement of our bodies.

By contrast, when we offer condolences to our friends in their afflictions, how little we feel compared with them! We sit beside them, look at them, and listen gravely and attentively as they tell us the circumstances of their misfortune. But their account is constantly interrupted by natural outbursts of feeling that often seem almost to choke them as they speak; how far the faint emotions of our hearts are from matching the surges of theirs! At the same time, we may recognize that their passion is natural and no greater than we might feel in the same circumstances. We may even silently reproach ourselves for our lack of sensitivity and, perhaps for that reason, work ourselves up to an artificial sympathy. Yet even when produced, it is as slight and fleeting as can be imagined; generally, the moment we leave the room, it vanishes forever. Nature, it seems, thought the sorrows she laid upon us were enough, and so did not command us to share the sorrows of others beyond what was needed to prompt us to relieve them.

It is because our sensitivity to others' afflictions is so dull that magnanimity amid great distress always appears so divinely graceful. The man who preserves his cheerfulness amid many trivial misfortunes behaves with ease and charm. But a man who bears the most dreadful calamities in the same way seems more than mortal. We feel what an immense effort is required to silence the violent emotions that naturally agitate and overwhelm people in his position. We are astonished to find him so fully master of himself. At the same time, his firmness exactly matches our own insensibility. He asks none of that more delicate sensitivity which we discover, to our mortification, we do not possess. His sentiments and ours correspond perfectly, and his behavior therefore shows the most perfect propriety. From our experience of the usual weakness of human nature, moreover, we could not reasonably have expected him to maintain such propriety. We marvel in surprise and astonishment at the strength of mind capable of so noble and generous an effort. Complete sympathy and approval, blended with and heightened by wonder and surprise, constitute what is properly called admiration, as has already been noted more than once. Cato, surrounded on every side by enemies whom he could not resist and to whom he scorned to submit, was driven by the proud principles of his age to take his own life. Yet he never flinched from his misfortunes or begged in the pitiful voice of misery for those sympathetic tears we are always so reluctant to shed. Instead, he armed himself with manly fortitude and, just before carrying out his fatal decision, calmly gave every necessary order for the safety of his friends. To Seneca, that great preacher of insensibility, he appeared a spectacle that even the gods themselves might behold with pleasure and admiration.

Whenever we encounter such heroic magnanimity in ordinary life, we are deeply moved. We are more likely to weep for those who seem in this way to feel nothing for themselves than for those who surrender to every weakness of sorrow; in this particular case, the spectator's sympathetic grief seems to exceed the original passion of the person directly concerned. All Socrates' friends wept when he drank the final draught, while he himself displayed the gayest and most cheerful serenity. On such occasions the spectator makes no effort, and has no need to make one, to conquer his sympathetic sorrow. He has no fear it will carry him into anything extravagant or improper; rather, pleased by the sensitivity of his own heart, he gives way to it with satisfaction and self-approval. He therefore willingly indulges the most melancholy thoughts that can naturally occur to him about his friend's calamity, feeling perhaps as never before that tender, tearful passion of love for him. The person directly concerned, however, faces something quite different. He must turn his eyes, as far as possible, from everything naturally terrible or distressing in his condition. He fears that attending too closely to those circumstances might affect him so powerfully that he could no longer stay within the bounds of moderation or make himself worthy of the spectators' complete sympathy and approval. He therefore fixes his thoughts only on what is agreeable: the praise and admiration he is about to earn by his heroic magnanimity. The knowledge that he is capable of so noble and generous an effort, that in this dreadful position he can still act as he would wish to act, animates and transports him with joy. It enables him to sustain the triumphant gaiety that seems to celebrate his victory over his misfortunes.

Conversely, someone sunk in sorrow and dejection over a calamity of his own always appears, to some degree, mean and contemptible. We cannot bring ourselves to feel for him what he feels for himself, and what perhaps we would feel for ourselves in his position. We therefore despise him—unjustly, perhaps, if any sentiment to which nature irresistibly determines us can be called unjust. The weakness of sorrow never appears in any way agreeable except when it springs more from our feelings for others than from our feelings for ourselves. A son may yield to it on the death of a kind and respected father without much blame. His grief rests chiefly on a kind of sympathy with his departed parent, and we readily share this humane emotion. But if he gave way to the same weakness over a misfortune affecting only himself, he would receive no such indulgence. If he were reduced to beggary and ruin, exposed to the most dreadful dangers, or even led to a public execution, and shed a single tear on the scaffold, he would disgrace himself forever in the eyes of all the brave and generous among humanity. Their compassion for him would nevertheless be strong and sincere; but because it would still fall short of this excessive weakness, they would not forgive the man for exposing himself in this way before the world. His behavior would make them feel shame rather than sorrow, and the dishonor he brought upon himself would seem to them the most lamentable part of his misfortune. How the fearless Duke of Biron, who had so often defied death in battle, disgraced his memory when he wept on the scaffold, seeing the condition to which he had fallen and remembering the favor and glory that his own rashness had so disastrously cost him!

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 1

Of the origin of ambition and the distinction of ranks.

It is because people are disposed to sympathize more fully with our joy than our sorrow that we display our wealth and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as having to expose our distress to the public and feeling that, although our situation is visible to all, not one person feels for us half of what we suffer. Indeed, it is chiefly out of regard for the sentiments of others that we pursue wealth and avoid poverty. For what is the purpose of all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the end of greed and ambition, of pursuing wealth, power, and preeminence? Is it to provide for nature's necessities? The wages of the lowest laborer can provide these. We see that they give him food and clothing, the comfort of a home and family. If we examined his household expenses closely, we would find that he spends much of his wages on conveniences that might be called luxuries and that, on special occasions, he can afford something even for vanity and display. What, then, causes our aversion to his condition? Why should people raised in the higher ranks regard it as worse than death to be reduced to living, even without working, on the same simple food, beneath the same humble roof, and in the same modest clothes? Do they imagine their stomachs fare better, or their sleep is sounder, in a palace than in a cottage? The opposite has been observed so often, and is so obvious even without observation, that nobody is unaware of it. What, then, is the source of the rivalry that runs through every rank? What advantages do we hope to gain from the great pursuit of life that we call improving our condition? To be seen, to be attended to, to be noticed with sympathy, pleasure, and approval: these are all the advantages we can hope to derive from it. It is vanity that concerns us, not ease or pleasure. And vanity always rests on the belief that we are objects of attention and approval. The rich man takes pride in his riches because he feels that they naturally draw the world's attention and that people are disposed to share all the pleasant emotions so readily inspired in him by the advantages of his station. At this thought his heart seems to swell within him, and he loves his wealth more for this reason than for all the other advantages it provides. The poor man, by contrast, is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either puts him out of sight or, if others do notice him, that they scarcely share the misery and distress he suffers. He is mortified on both counts. To be overlooked and to be disapproved of are entirely different things; but obscurity hides us from the daylight of honor and approval, and the sense that nobody notices us inevitably chills the sweetest hope and frustrates the most ardent desire of human nature. The poor man comes and goes unnoticed, and in the middle of a crowd remains as obscure as if he were shut in his own hovel. The humble cares and painful concerns that fill the lives of people in his condition provide no entertainment to the frivolous and carefree. They look away from him; or if the extremity of his distress forces them to look, it is only to thrust so unpleasant an object away. The fortunate and proud wonder at the insolence of human misery: how dare it present itself before them and presume, with its repulsive appearance, to disturb the serenity of their happiness? The man of rank and distinction, by contrast, is observed by the whole world. Everyone is eager to look at him and to feel, at least through sympathy, the joy and exultation his circumstances naturally inspire in him. His actions become objects of public concern. Hardly a word or a gesture of his passes entirely unnoticed. In a great gathering he is the one on whom all eyes are fixed; everyone's passions seem to wait upon him, expecting to take their movement and direction from him. Unless his behavior is altogether absurd, every moment gives him an opportunity to engage people and become the object of the attention and fellow feeling of everyone around him. This is what makes greatness enviable despite the restraints it imposes and the loss of liberty it entails. In people's eyes it makes up for all the toil, anxiety, and humiliation that must be endured in pursuit of greatness and, more importantly still, for all the leisure, ease, and carefree security forever forfeited by its acquisition.

When we consider the condition of the great in the deceptive colors imagination tends to give it, it seems almost the very idea of perfect happiness. It is the state we have pictured in our waking dreams and idle reveries as the final object of all our desires. We therefore feel a special sympathy with the satisfaction of those who enjoy it. We favor their every inclination and advance their every wish. How sad, we think, that anything should spoil so agreeable a condition! We could even wish them immortal; it seems harsh that death should at last bring such perfect enjoyment to an end. We think Nature cruel for compelling them to leave their exalted stations for the humble but hospitable home she has prepared for all her children. "Great King, live forever!" is the compliment we would readily offer them in the manner of Eastern flattery, if experience did not teach us its absurdity. Every calamity that befalls them, every injury done to them, arouses ten times more compassion and resentment in the spectator than the same things would if they befell anyone else. Only the misfortunes of kings provide proper subjects for tragedy. In this respect they resemble the misfortunes of lovers. These are the two situations that chiefly interest us in the theater, because, despite everything reason and experience tell us to the contrary, the prejudices of imagination attach to both a happiness surpassing all others. To disturb or end such perfect enjoyment seems the most atrocious injury of all. The traitor who conspires against his monarch's life is thought a greater monster than any other murderer. All the innocent blood shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I. A stranger to human nature, seeing people's indifference to the misery of their inferiors and their grief and indignation over the misfortunes and sufferings of their superiors, might suppose that pain must be more agonizing and the convulsions of death more terrible for those of high rank than for those of lower station.

The distinction of ranks and the order of society rest on this disposition to share the passions of the rich and powerful. Our deference to our superiors arises more often from our admiration of the advantages of their station than from any personal expectation of benefiting from their favor. Their favors can reach only a few, but their fortunes interest almost everybody. We are eager to help them complete a scheme of happiness that seems so close to perfection; we wish to serve them for their own sake, with no reward beyond the vanity or honor of being of service to them. Nor is our deference to their wishes chiefly, or entirely, founded on regard for the usefulness of such submission and for the social order it best sustains. Even when that order seems to require us to oppose them, we can scarcely bring ourselves to do so. That kings are the servants of the people, to be obeyed, resisted, deposed, or punished as the public good may require, is the teaching of reason and philosophy; it is not the teaching of Nature. Nature would teach us to submit to them for their own sake; to tremble and bow before their exalted station; to regard their smile as reward enough for any service; and to dread their displeasure as the harshest humiliation, even if no other harm were to follow. To treat them as men in any respect, to reason and argue with them on ordinary occasions, requires such resolve that few possess the strength of mind for it unless familiarity and acquaintance help them. Even the strongest motives and fiercest passions—fear, hatred, and resentment—are scarcely enough to offset this natural tendency to respect them. Their conduct, whether justly or unjustly, must have aroused these passions to the highest degree before most people can be brought to oppose them violently or wish to see them punished or deposed. Even when the people have gone this far, they are apt to soften at any moment and easily relapse into their habitual deference to those they have been accustomed to regard as their natural superiors. They cannot bear their monarch's humiliation. Compassion soon replaces resentment; they forget every past provocation; their old loyalty revives; and they rush to restore their former master's ruined authority with the same violence with which they opposed it. The death of Charles I brought about the Restoration of the royal family. Compassion for James II, when the crowd seized him as he tried to escape aboard ship, nearly prevented the Revolution and slowed its progress more than before.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 2

Do the great seem unaware how cheaply they can win public admiration? Or do they seem to imagine that they, like others, must purchase it with sweat or blood? What important accomplishments is a young nobleman taught so that he may uphold the dignity of his rank and make himself worthy of the superiority over his fellow citizens to which his ancestors' virtue raised them? Knowledge, industry, patience, self-denial, or any kind of virtue? Because every word and movement of his attracts notice, he develops a habitual concern for every detail of ordinary behavior and studies to perform all its small duties with the utmost propriety. Aware how closely he is watched and how ready people are to favor his inclinations, he acts even on the most insignificant occasions with the freedom and confidence this awareness naturally inspires. His bearing, manners, and deportment all express that elegant, graceful sense of his own superiority which people born to lower stations can scarcely ever attain. These are the arts by which he hopes to make others submit more readily to his authority and bend their inclinations to his pleasure, and he is seldom disappointed. Such arts, supported by rank and preeminence, are usually sufficient to govern the world. Lewis XIV, for most of his reign, was regarded not only in France but throughout Europe as the most perfect model of a great prince. But what talents and virtues gave him this great reputation? Was it the scrupulous and unbending justice of all his undertakings, the immense dangers and difficulties that attended them, or the tireless, unrelenting effort with which he pursued them? Was it his extensive knowledge, his exquisite judgment, or his heroic courage? None of these qualities gave him his reputation. First, however, he was the most powerful prince in Europe and therefore held the highest rank among kings; and then, as his historian says, "he surpassed all his courtiers in the grace of his figure and the majestic beauty of his features. His voice, noble and moving, won the hearts that his presence intimidated. His gait and bearing suited only him and his rank and would have been ridiculous in anyone else. The embarrassment he caused those who spoke to him flattered the secret satisfaction he took in his own superiority. An old officer, confused and faltering as he asked him a favor, could not finish his speech and said: 'Sir, I hope your majesty will believe that I do not tremble like this before your enemies.' He had no difficulty obtaining what he requested." These trivial accomplishments, supported by his rank and, no doubt, by a degree of other talents and virtues—though apparently not much above average—established this prince in the esteem of his age and have drawn considerable respect for his memory even from later generations. In comparison with these qualities, in his own time and in his presence, no other virtue seemed to count for anything. Knowledge, industry, courage, and beneficence trembled, were abashed, and lost all dignity before them.

But a man of lower rank cannot hope to distinguish himself by accomplishments of this kind. Politeness is so especially the virtue of the great that it brings little honor to anyone else. The conceited fop who imitates their manner and affects distinction through the superior propriety of his ordinary behavior earns a double measure of contempt for his folly and presumption. Why should a man whom nobody thinks worth looking at be so anxious about the way he holds his head or positions his arms as he walks across a room? Surely he is giving these things quite unnecessary attention, an attention that also betrays a sense of his own importance no one else can share. Perfect modesty and plainness, together with as much unstudied ease as respect for the company permits, should be the chief marks of a private man's behavior. If he ever hopes to distinguish himself, he must do so through more important virtues. He must acquire dependents to counterbalance those of the great, and he has no resources with which to support them except his bodily labor and his mental activity. These, then, he must cultivate. He must gain superior knowledge of his profession and superior diligence in practicing it. He must be patient in labor, resolute in danger, and steadfast in distress. He must bring these talents before the public through the difficulty, importance, and sound judgment of his undertakings, and through the severe, unrelenting effort with which he pursues them. Integrity and prudence, generosity and frankness, must mark his ordinary conduct. At the same time he must be ready to enter every situation in which acting with propriety requires the greatest talents and virtues, but in which those who acquit themselves honorably can win the greatest applause. How impatiently a man of spirit and ambition, held down by his station, looks about for a great opportunity to distinguish himself! No circumstance offering such an opportunity appears undesirable to him. He even looks forward with satisfaction to foreign war or civil strife, and with secret excitement and delight sees, through all their confusion and bloodshed, the likelihood that the longed-for occasions will arise on which he can draw the attention and admiration of humanity to himself. By contrast, a man of rank and distinction whose whole glory lies in the propriety of his ordinary behavior, who is content with the modest renown it can bring and lacks the talents to gain any other, is reluctant to involve himself in anything attended by difficulty or distress. To shine at a ball is his great triumph, and success in a romantic intrigue his highest feat. He dislikes public disorder not from love of humanity—for the great never regard their inferiors as their fellow creatures—nor from lack of courage, which he seldom lacks, but from awareness that he has none of the virtues such circumstances require and that others will certainly draw public attention away from him. He may be willing to expose himself to a little danger and serve in a military campaign when it happens to be fashionable. But he shudders at the thought of any situation demanding continuous and prolonged patience, industry, fortitude, and application of mind. Such virtues are hardly ever found among those born to high station. Accordingly, in every form of government, even monarchies, the highest offices are generally held and the detailed work of administration carried out by men brought up in the middle and lower ranks. Their own industry and abilities have carried them forward, though they have borne the jealousy and faced the resentment of all those born above them. The great, after looking upon them first with contempt and then with envy, finally consent to bow to them with the same abject servility they expect from the rest of humanity toward themselves.

The loss of this effortless command over people's affections makes a fall from greatness so unbearable. When the family of the King of Macedon was led in triumph by Paulus Æmilius, their misfortunes, it is said, made them divide the Roman people's attention with their conqueror. The sight of the royal children, too young to understand their condition, moved the spectators amid public rejoicing and prosperity to the tenderest sorrow and compassion. The King came next in the procession, seeming bewildered and stunned, stripped of all feeling by the magnitude of his calamities. His friends and ministers followed. As they went, they often looked at their fallen sovereign and always burst into tears at the sight. Their entire behavior showed that they were thinking not of their own misfortunes but solely of the far greater magnitude of his. The generous Romans, by contrast, looked at him with disdain and indignation, considering a man so weak in spirit as to bear living under such calamities unworthy of any compassion. Yet what did those calamities amount to? According to most historians, he was to spend the rest of his days under the protection of a powerful and humane people, in a state that in itself would seem enviable: one of plenty, ease, leisure, and security, from which even his own folly could not make him fall. But the admiring mob of fools, flatterers, and dependents who had formerly attended his every movement would no longer surround him. Crowds would no longer gaze upon him, nor would he be able to make himself the object of their respect, gratitude, love, and admiration. The passions of nations would no longer shape themselves to his inclinations. This was the unbearable calamity that robbed the King of all feeling, made his friends forget their own misfortunes, and left the Romans, with their magnanimity, scarcely able to imagine how a man could be so weak in spirit as to survive it.

"Love," says my Lord Rochefoucault, "is commonly followed by ambition; but ambition is hardly ever followed by love." Once that passion has taken full possession of the heart, it admits neither rival nor successor. To those accustomed to enjoying, or even hoping for, public admiration, every other pleasure grows stale and fades. Of all the discarded statesmen who, for their own peace, have tried to overcome ambition and despise the honors now beyond their reach, how few have succeeded! Most have spent their time in the most listless and tasteless idleness, embittered by thoughts of their own insignificance, unable to take an interest in the pursuits of private life, enjoying nothing except talk of their former greatness and finding no satisfaction except in some futile project to recover it. Are you truly resolved never to exchange your freedom for the lordly servitude of a Court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way, and perhaps only one, to keep that virtuous resolution. Never enter the place from which so few have been able to return; never step into the circle of ambition; do not even compare yourself with those masters of the earth who have already captured the attention of half humanity before you.

So supremely important does it seem in people's imaginations to occupy the position that brings them most fully into public view and wins them general sympathy and attention! Thus precedence, that great object of contention among aldermen's wives, is the goal of half the labors of life and the cause of all the commotion and bustle, all the plunder and injustice, that greed and ambition have brought into the world. Sensible people, it is said, despise precedence: that is, they despise sitting at the head of the table and do not care who is singled out to the company by that trifling circumstance, which the smallest advantage can outweigh. But nobody despises rank, distinction, and preeminence unless raised far above or sunk far below the ordinary standard of human nature. Such a person must either be so firmly grounded in wisdom and real philosophy as to be satisfied that, so long as the propriety of his conduct makes him justly worthy of approval, it matters little whether he is noticed or approved of; or he must be so used to the idea of his own lowliness, so sunk in idle and stupefied indifference, that he has entirely forgotten the desire, and almost the very wish, for superiority.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter III

On Stoic philosophy.

When we examine why people value the various conditions of life so differently, we find that the excessive preference generally given to some over others is largely unfounded. If one condition recommends itself above another chiefly because it enables us to act with propriety and earn the approval of others, as we have tried to show, that end can be attained in every condition. The noblest propriety of conduct can be maintained in adversity as well as prosperity; indeed, because it is harder in adversity, it is more admirable there. Perils and misfortunes are not merely the proper school of heroism: they are the only theater in which its virtue can be displayed to advantage and win the full applause of the world. A man whose entire life has been an even, unbroken course of prosperity, who has never braved danger, met difficulty, or overcome distress, can inspire only a lesser degree of admiration. When poets and writers of romances devise adventures to cast the brightest light on characters they want us to care about, they choose adventures of another kind: sudden, sweeping reversals of fortune, situations likely to drive those caught in them to frenzy or despair, yet in which their heroes act with such propriety, or at least such spirit and fearless resolve, that they still command our esteem. Is the magnanimity of Cato, Brutus, and Leonidas in defeat any less admirable than that of the victorious Caesar or Alexander? Should a generous mind envy it any less? If successful conquerors seem surrounded by a more dazzling splendor, it is because they unite the advantages of both conditions: the luster of prosperity with the profound admiration won by facing danger and overcoming difficulty with courage and valor.

For this reason, according to Stoic philosophy, all the different conditions of life were equal to a wise person. Nature, the Stoics said, commended some objects to our choice and others to our rejection. Our primary appetites directed us toward health, strength, ease, and excellence in every quality of mind and body, and toward whatever might secure or promote them—wealth, power, authority. The same original principle taught us to avoid their opposites. But Nature also taught us that, in choosing or rejecting, preferring or postponing these primary objects of appetite and aversion, we must observe a certain order, propriety, and grace, infinitely more important to happiness and excellence than the possession of those objects themselves. We were to pursue or avoid the objects of our primary appetites and aversions chiefly because this grace and propriety required it. Directing all our actions by these principles constituted the happiness and glory of human nature; departing from their rules constituted its deepest misery and most complete corruption. The outward appearance of order and propriety was indeed easier to preserve in some circumstances than in others. Yet for a fool, whose passions lacked all proper control, genuine grace and propriety were equally impossible in every situation. The fickle crowd might admire him, and their ignorant praise might sometimes lift his vanity into something resembling self-approval. But whenever he looked within, he was secretly conscious of the absurdity and baseness of his motives; inwardly he blushed and trembled at the thought of the contempt he knew he deserved, and which others would certainly feel if they saw his conduct as he himself was obliged to see it in his heart. For a wise person, by contrast, whose passions were wholly governed by the ruling principles of his nature—reason and the love of propriety—it was equally easy on every occasion to act so as to deserve approval. In prosperity, he thanked Jupiter for giving him circumstances that were easy to master and offered little temptation to wrongdoing. In adversity, he likewise thanked the director of this spectacle of human life for setting a vigorous athlete against him: the contest might be fiercer, but victory would be more glorious and no less certain. What shame can there be in distress brought upon us through no fault of our own, when we bear it with perfect propriety? Such distress can therefore be no evil, but instead the greatest good and advantage. A brave person exults in dangers into which fortune, through no rashness of his own, has led him. They give him occasion to exercise heroic courage, and its exercise brings the exalted pleasure of knowing that his conduct is supremely proper and his admiration deserved. Someone who has mastered all his exercises does not shrink from testing his strength and agility against the strongest. In the same way, someone who has mastered all his passions does not dread whatever circumstances the superintendent of the universe may choose for him. The generosity of that Divine Being has equipped him with virtues that raise him above every situation. If he meets pleasure, he has temperance to restrain himself; if pain, constancy to endure it; if danger or death, magnanimity and fortitude to scorn it. He never complains of providence's decree or imagines the universe disordered when he himself is out of sorts. He does not regard himself, as self-love would have him do, as a separate whole, detached from every other part of nature, to be cared for independently and for his own sake. He sees himself as he imagines the great Genius of humanity and the world sees him. He enters, if I may say so, into that Divine Being's sentiments, and regards himself as an atom, a particle of an immense, infinite system, which must and ought to be arranged for the convenience of the whole. Confident in the wisdom that governs every event of human life, he welcomes whatever lot befalls him, certain that, if he knew all the connections and dependencies between the parts of the universe, this is the very lot he would have chosen for himself. If his lot is life, he is content to live; if death, Nature must no longer need him here, and he willingly goes where he is sent. “I accept,” said a Stoic philosopher, “with equal joy and satisfaction whatever fortune may bring me. Wealth or poverty, pleasure or pain, health or sickness—it is all alike. I would not wish the gods to change my destiny in any respect. If I were to ask them for anything beyond what their generosity has already given, I would ask them to tell me beforehand what they wished done with me, so that I might place myself in that situation of my own accord and show how cheerfully I embrace their allotment.” “If I am going to sail,” says Epictetus, “I choose the best ship and the best pilot, and wait for the fairest weather my circumstances and duty permit. Prudence and propriety, the principles the gods have given me to guide my conduct, require this of me, but nothing more. If a storm nevertheless arises which neither the ship's strength nor the pilot's skill can withstand, I do not trouble myself over the outcome. All I had to do is already done. The guides of my conduct never command me to be miserable, anxious, despondent, or afraid. Whether we drown or reach a harbor is Jupiter's business, not mine. I leave the decision entirely to him, never disturb my sleep by wondering what he will decide, and receive whatever comes with equal composure and assurance.”

Such was Stoic philosophy. It offers the noblest lessons in magnanimity and is the finest school of heroes and patriots. Against most of its precepts there is only one objection, and an honorable one: they teach us to aspire to a perfection utterly beyond human reach. I will not pause to examine that philosophy here. I will only note, in confirmation of what I have said earlier, that the most dreadful calamities are not always the hardest to bear. It is often more humiliating to appear in public after a small mishap than after a great misfortune. The former arouses no sympathy; the latter, although it cannot inspire anything approaching the sufferer's anguish, nevertheless summons lively compassion. In the latter case the spectators' feelings are therefore closer to the sufferer's, and their imperfect fellow-feeling lends him some help in bearing his misery. Before a cheerful gathering, a gentleman would be more humiliated to appear covered in dirt and rags than in blood and wounds. Blood and wounds would engage their pity; dirt and rags would invite their laughter. The judge who orders a criminal into the pillory dishonors him more than if he had sentenced him to the scaffold. A great prince who, some years ago, struck a general with a cane before his army disgraced him beyond repair. The punishment would have been far lighter had he shot him through the body. By the laws of honor, a blow with a cane dishonors a man, while a blow with a sword does not, for an obvious reason. When inflicted on a gentleman, for whom dishonor is the greatest of evils, such seemingly lighter punishments come to be regarded by a humane and generous people as the most dreadful of all. Accordingly, they are universally abandoned for people of that rank; the law, though it takes their lives on many occasions, respects their honor on almost every one. To whip a person of rank or put him in the pillory for any crime whatever is a brutality of which no European government except that of Russia is capable.

A brave man does not become contemptible by being taken to the scaffold, but he does by being put in the pillory. His conduct in the first situation may win universal esteem and admiration; nothing he does in the second can make him appealing. The sympathy of the spectators sustains him in the first case and saves him from shame—from the awareness that he alone feels his misery, the most unbearable feeling of all. In the second case there is no sympathy, or, if any exists, it is not with his pain, which is slight, but with his awareness that no one sympathizes with that pain. It is sympathy with his shame, not his sorrow. Those who pity him blush and lower their heads on his behalf. He too hangs his head and feels irretrievably degraded by the punishment, though not by the crime. By contrast, a man who dies resolutely is naturally regarded with the upright gaze of esteem and approval, and he himself maintains the same fearless bearing. If his crime does not cost him the respect of others, the punishment never will. He has no suspicion that anyone finds his situation contemptible or ridiculous, and can properly assume an air not merely of perfect serenity but of triumph and exaltation.

“Great dangers,” says Cardinal de Retz, “have their charms, because there is some glory to be won even when we fail. But moderate dangers offer nothing but horror, because failure always brings a loss of reputation.” His maxim rests on the same principle we have just observed in regard to punishments.

Human virtue rises above pain, poverty, danger, and death; it need not even summon its utmost strength to despise them. But to have one's misery exposed to insults and ridicule, to be paraded in triumph and made a target for the pointing finger of scorn—this is a situation in which virtue's constancy is far more likely to fail. Beside the contempt of humanity, all other evils are easy to bear.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter I

Part II: On MERIT and DEMERIT; or, the Objects of REWARD and PUNISHMENT. IN THREE SECTIONS.

Section I: On the sense of merit and demerit. INTRODUCTION. Besides the propriety or impropriety, the grace or awkwardness, of human actions and conduct, another set of qualities belongs to them, and these are the objects of another kind of approval or disapproval. They are merit and demerit: the qualities of deserving reward and deserving punishment. We have already observed that the feeling or affection of the heart from which an action proceeds, and on which all its virtue or vice depends, can be considered in two ways, or in two relations: first, in relation to the cause or object that arouses it; second, in relation to the end it proposes or the effect it tends to produce. The propriety or impropriety, the grace or awkwardness, of the resulting action depends on how suitable or unsuitable, how proportionate or disproportionate, the affection seems to the cause or object that arouses it. The merit or demerit, the good or ill desert, of the action it occasions depends on the beneficial or harmful effects that the affection proposes or tends to produce. In the preceding part of this work I explained what constitutes our sense of the propriety or impropriety of actions. We now turn to what constitutes our sense of their good or ill desert.

Whatever appears to be a proper object of gratitude appears to deserve reward; likewise, whatever appears to be a proper object of resentment appears to deserve punishment.

To us, then, an action must appear to deserve reward if it appears to be the proper and approved object of the feeling that most immediately and directly moves us to reward someone, or to do good to them. Likewise, an action must appear to deserve punishment if it appears to be the proper and approved object of the feeling that most immediately and directly moves us to punish someone, or inflict harm upon them.

The feeling that most immediately and directly moves us to reward is gratitude; the feeling that most immediately and directly moves us to punish is resentment.

To us, then, an action must appear to deserve reward if it appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude; on the other hand, it must appear to deserve punishment if it appears to be the proper and approved object of resentment.

To reward is to recompense, to repay, to return good for good received. To punish is also to recompense, to repay, though in another way: it is to return harm for harm done.

Besides gratitude and resentment, other passions concern us with the happiness or misery of others, but none so directly stir us to become the instruments of either. The love and esteem that arise from acquaintance and habitual approval necessarily make us glad for the good fortune of someone who inspires those agreeable feelings, and consequently willing to help bring it about. Yet our love is fully satisfied even if his good fortune comes about without our help. That passion wishes only to see him happy; it does not care who made him prosperous. Gratitude cannot be satisfied in this way. If the person to whom we owe much becomes happy without our help, our love is pleased, but our gratitude is not content. Until we have repaid him, until we ourselves have helped advance his happiness, we still feel burdened by the debt his past services laid upon us.

Likewise, the hatred and dislike that grow out of habitual disapproval would often make us take malicious pleasure in the misfortune of a man whose conduct and character stir such painful feelings. But though dislike and hatred harden us against all sympathy, and sometimes even incline us to rejoice at another's distress, these passions would not naturally make us wish to cause it, unless resentment were involved—unless we or our friends had suffered some serious personal provocation. Even if we could fear no punishment for having a hand in his misfortune, we would rather it came about by other means. A man ruled by violent hatred might perhaps be pleased to hear that the person he abhorred had died in an accident. But if he retained the least spark of justice, as he might despite this passion's hostility to virtue, it would deeply distress him to have caused that death himself, even unintentionally. The thought of deliberately contributing to it would shock him far more. He would recoil in horror even from imagining so detestable a plan; if he thought himself capable of such an outrage, he would begin to see himself in the same hateful light in which he saw the object of his dislike. Resentment is quite different. Suppose the man who gravely injured us—who murdered our father or brother, for example—soon afterward died of fever, or was even brought to the scaffold for another crime. His fate might soothe our hatred, but it would not fully satisfy our resentment. Resentment would move us to wish not only for his punishment, but for punishment brought about through us and imposed for the particular injury he did us. Resentment cannot be fully satisfied unless the offender is made to suffer in his turn, and to suffer specifically for the wrong we endured at his hands. He must be made to repent and regret that very deed, so that others, fearing a like punishment, will be deterred from committing a like offense. The natural satisfaction of this passion thus tends of itself to accomplish every public purpose of punishment: the correction of the criminal and a warning to the public.

Gratitude and resentment, then, are the feelings that most immediately and directly prompt reward and punishment. To us, accordingly, the person who is the proper and approved object of gratitude must appear to deserve reward; the person who is the proper and approved object of resentment must appear to deserve punishment.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter II

On the proper objects of gratitude and resentment.

To be a proper and approved object of gratitude or resentment can mean only to be the object of gratitude or resentment that naturally seems proper and wins approval.

These passions, like all other human passions, seem proper and win approval when every impartial spectator's heart entirely sympathizes with them—when every disinterested observer fully enters into and shares them.

A person therefore appears to deserve reward when he is, to someone, the natural object of gratitude with which every human heart is inclined to keep time and which it consequently applauds. Conversely, a person appears to deserve punishment when he is, to someone, the natural object of resentment that every reasonable heart is ready to adopt and share. Surely an action must seem to us deserving of reward when everyone who knows of it wishes to reward it and delights to see it rewarded. Equally surely, an action must seem deserving of punishment when everyone who hears of it is angered by it and therefore rejoices to see it punished.

1. Just as we share in our companions' joy when they prosper, we join them in the satisfaction and pleasure with which they naturally regard whatever caused their good fortune. We enter into the love and affection they feel for it, and come to love it ourselves. For their sake we would regret its destruction, or even its removal so far away that they could no longer care for and protect it, though the only thing they lost by its absence were the pleasure of seeing it. This is especially so if the fortunate instrument of their happiness is a person. When we see one person helped, protected, or relieved by another, our sympathy with the recipient's joy only deepens our fellow-feeling with his gratitude toward his benefactor. When we look at the person who made him happy through the eyes with which we imagine he sees him, that benefactor appears before us in the most engaging and lovable light. We readily share the grateful affection he feels for the person to whom he owes so much, and consequently applaud the returns he is inclined to make for the kindness he has received. Because we enter fully into the affection that inspires those returns, they necessarily seem in every way proper and suited to their object.

2. Likewise, just as we sympathize with the sorrow of a fellow human being whenever we see his distress, we also enter into his abhorrence and aversion toward its cause. Our heart adopts his grief and keeps time with it; it is also stirred by the spirit with which he tries to drive away or destroy what caused it. The passive, inactive fellow-feeling by which we accompany his suffering readily yields to the more vigorous, active sentiment by which we join his effort to repel that suffering or satisfy his aversion to its cause. This is especially true when another person caused it. When we see one person oppressed or injured by another, our sympathy with the sufferer's distress seems only to deepen our fellow-feeling with his resentment toward the offender. We are glad to see him strike back at his adversary, and eager to help when he acts in self-defense or even takes vengeance within certain bounds. If the injured man dies in the conflict, we sympathize not only with the real resentment of his friends and family but also with the imaginary resentment we lend the dead man in our minds, though he can no longer feel that or any other human emotion. We put ourselves in his place, enter, as it were, his body, and in imagination partly bring his disfigured and mangled corpse back to life. When we thus make his case our own, we feel, here as on many other occasions, an emotion the person chiefly concerned cannot feel, yet which an illusory sympathy makes us feel on his behalf. The sympathetic tears we shed for the immense, irreparable loss we imagine him to have suffered seem only a small part of what we owe him. His injury, we think, deserves the greater share of our attention. We feel the resentment we imagine he ought to feel, and would feel if his cold, lifeless body retained any awareness of events on earth. His blood, we think, cries out for vengeance. Even his ashes seem restless at the prospect that his injuries will go unavenged. The horrors said to haunt a murderer's bed, the ghosts that superstition imagines rising from their graves to demand vengeance on those who ended their lives too soon—all spring from this natural sympathy with the imagined resentment of the slain. With regard at least to murder, the most dreadful of crimes, Nature has thus, before any reflection on the usefulness of punishment, engraved on the human heart in the strongest, most indelible characters an immediate, instinctive approval of the sacred and necessary law of retaliation.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter III

When we do not approve of the benefactor's conduct, we have little sympathy with the recipient's gratitude; conversely, when we do not disapprove of the wrongdoer's motives, we have no sympathy with the sufferer's resentment.

We must observe, however, that however beneficial or harmful an agent's actions or intentions may have been to the person acted upon, if in the first case the agent's motives appear to lack propriety, if we cannot enter into the feelings that governed his conduct, we feel little sympathy with the gratitude of the person who benefits. Or if, in the second case, there appears to be nothing improper in the agent's motives—if instead we cannot help sharing the feelings that governed his conduct—we cannot sympathize at all with the sufferer's resentment. Little gratitude seems owed in the first case, and any resentment seems unjust in the second. The first action seems to merit little reward; the second deserves no punishment.

1. First, wherever we cannot sympathize with an agent's feelings, wherever the motives behind his conduct appear to lack propriety, we are less inclined to share in the gratitude of the person benefited by his actions. Very little return seems owed for the foolish, extravagant generosity that confers the greatest benefits for the most trivial reasons—for example, giving a man an estate merely because he happens to have the same given name and surname as the giver. Such services do not seem to demand any corresponding repayment. Our contempt for the benefactor's folly prevents us from fully entering into the gratitude of the person he has helped. The benefactor seems unworthy of it. When we place ourselves in the recipient's position, we find we could feel little reverence for such a benefactor. We therefore readily release him from much of the deferential respect and esteem we would consider due to someone more respectable. Provided that he always treats his foolish friend with kindness and humanity, we are willing to excuse him from many attentions and marks of regard we would require toward a worthier patron. Princes who have showered wealth, power, and honors on their favorites with the greatest extravagance have seldom inspired the devotion that more sparing and discriminating princes have inspired. The kindly but ill-judged extravagance of James the First of Great Britain seems to have attached nobody to him; despite his sociable, harmless disposition, that Prince appears to have lived and died without a friend. The entire gentry and nobility of England risked their lives and fortunes for his more frugal and discerning son, despite the coldness and distant severity of his usual manner.

2. Second, wherever an agent's conduct appears to be wholly guided by motives and feelings we fully share and approve, we cannot sympathize at all with the sufferer's resentment, however great the harm he has suffered. When two people quarrel, if we side with one and wholly adopt his resentment, we cannot enter into the other's. Our sympathy with the person whose motives we share, whom we consequently believe to be in the right, must harden us against all fellow-feeling with the other, whom we necessarily consider in the wrong. Whatever the latter suffers, so long as it is no more than we ourselves would have wished him to suffer, no more than our sympathetic indignation would have moved us to inflict, it can neither displease nor provoke us. When an inhuman murderer is brought to the scaffold, though we feel some compassion for his misery, we cannot share his resentment if he is absurd enough to express any against his prosecutor or judge. The natural tendency of their just indignation against so vile a criminal is indeed utterly ruinous to him. Yet we cannot disapprove of the tendency of a feeling that, when we imagine the case as our own, we find we cannot help adopting.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter IV

A recapitulation of the preceding chapters.

We do not, then, fully and wholeheartedly sympathize with one person's gratitude toward another merely because the latter has caused his good fortune, unless his motives are ones we entirely share. Our heart must adopt the agent's principles and share all the feelings that guided his conduct before it can fully sympathize with and keep time to the gratitude of the person benefited by his actions. If the benefactor's conduct appears to lack propriety, however beneficial its effects, it does not seem to demand or necessarily require a corresponding return.

But when an action's beneficial tendency is joined to propriety in the feeling from which it springs, when we fully sympathize with and share the agent's motives, the love we feel for him in his own right strengthens and enlivens our fellow-feeling with the gratitude of those whose prosperity they owe to his good conduct. His actions then seem to demand, and, if I may say so, cry out for an adequate return. We fully enter into the gratitude that prompts such a return. The benefactor then appears to be the proper object of reward because we fully sympathize with, and approve of, the feeling that prompts us to reward him. When we approve of and share the feeling from which the action springs, we must also approve of the action and regard the person toward whom it is directed as its proper and fitting object.

2. Likewise, we cannot sympathize at all with one person's resentment against another merely because the latter has caused his misfortune, unless the latter acted from motives we cannot share. Before we can adopt the sufferer's resentment, we must disapprove of the agent's motives and feel our heart reject all sympathy with the feelings that guided his conduct. If those feelings appear to involve no impropriety, then however fatal the resulting action may be for those against whom it is directed, it does not seem to deserve any punishment or to be a proper object of resentment.

But when an action's harmfulness is joined to impropriety in the feeling from which it springs, when our heart recoils in abhorrence from all fellow-feeling with the agent's motives, we then fully and wholeheartedly sympathize with the sufferer's resentment. Such actions seem to deserve, and, if I may say so, cry out for, an adequate punishment; we fully enter into and thereby approve of the resentment that prompts its infliction. The offender then necessarily appears to be the proper object of punishment, because we fully sympathize with and thereby approve of the feeling that prompts us to punish him. Here too, when we approve of and share the feeling from which an action springs, we must approve of that action and regard the person against whom it is directed as its proper and fitting object.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter V

An analysis of the sense of merit and demerit.

1. Just as our sense of the propriety of conduct arises from what I shall call direct sympathy with the feelings and motives of the agent, our sense of its merit arises from what I shall call indirect sympathy with the gratitude of the person who is, if I may say so, acted upon.

Since we cannot fully enter into the beneficiary's gratitude unless we first approve of the benefactor's motives, our sense of merit seems to be a compound feeling made up of two distinct emotions: direct sympathy with the agent's feelings and indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those who benefit from his actions.

On many occasions we can clearly distinguish these two emotions joining together in our sense that a particular character or action deserves praise. When we read in history of deeds displaying a greatness of spirit that is both proper and beneficial, how eagerly we enter into such plans! How much the high-minded generosity guiding them inspires us! How keenly we desire their success, and how deeply their failure grieves us! In imagination we become the very person whose actions are recounted: we carry ourselves in fancy to the scenes of those distant, forgotten adventures, and imagine playing the part of a Scipio or a Camillus, a Timoleon or an Aristides. So far our feelings rest on direct sympathy with the agent. But our indirect sympathy with the beneficiaries of such deeds is felt no less vividly. When we put ourselves in their place, with what warm and affectionate fellow-feeling we enter into their gratitude toward those who served them so profoundly! We embrace their benefactor, as it were, along with them. Our heart readily shares the most passionate transports of their gratitude. No honors or rewards, we think, can be too great for them to bestow on him. When they make this proper return for his services, we applaud them wholeheartedly and share their feelings; when their behavior betrays little awareness of what they owe him, we are shocked beyond measure. In short, our entire sense of the merit and good desert of such deeds, of the propriety and fitness of repaying them and making their author rejoice in his turn, springs from the sympathetic gratitude and love we naturally feel toward a man capable of such proper and noble beneficence when we make the beneficiaries' situation our own.

2. Just as our sense of the impropriety of conduct arises from a lack of sympathy with, or direct antipathy to, the agent's feelings and motives, our sense of its demerit arises from what I shall again call indirect sympathy with the sufferer's resentment.

Since we cannot enter into the sufferer's resentment unless our heart first disapproves of the agent's motives and rejects all fellow-feeling with them, our sense of demerit, like our sense of merit, seems to be a compound feeling made up of two distinct emotions: direct antipathy to the agent's feelings and indirect sympathy with the sufferer's resentment.

Here too, on many occasions, we can clearly distinguish these two emotions joining together in our sense that a particular character or action deserves blame. When we read in history of the treachery and cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, our heart rebels against the detestable feelings that guided their conduct and recoils in horror and loathing from all fellow-feeling with such hateful motives. So far our feelings rest on direct antipathy to the agent's passions; our indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferers is felt even more vividly. When we imagine ourselves in the place of those whom these scourges of humanity insulted, murdered, or betrayed, how indignant we feel toward such arrogant and inhuman oppressors of the earth! Our sympathy with the innocent sufferers' inevitable distress is no more real or lively than our fellow-feeling with their just, natural resentment. The first feeling only intensifies the second: the thought of their distress only feeds and inflames our anger against its authors. When we consider the sufferers' anguish, we side with them more earnestly against their oppressors, enter more eagerly into every plan they form for vengeance, and find ourselves, at every moment, inflicting in imagination on these violators of society's laws the punishment our sympathetic indignation tells us their crimes deserve. Our horror at the dreadful atrocity of such conduct, our pleasure in hearing that it was duly punished, our indignation when it escapes its deserved retaliation—in short, our entire sense and feeling of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of inflicting harm on its author and making him suffer in his turn—spring from the sympathetic indignation that naturally surges in a spectator's heart whenever he thoroughly makes the sufferer's case his own.

To derive our natural sense that human actions deserve punishment in this way from sympathy with the sufferer's resentment may seem to most people to diminish that sense. Resentment is commonly regarded as such a hateful passion that people may think it impossible for so praiseworthy a principle as our sense of the ill desert of vice to rest upon it in any way. Perhaps they will more readily admit that our sense of the merit of good actions rests on sympathy with the gratitude of their beneficiaries, because gratitude, like all benevolent passions, is regarded as an admirable principle that cannot diminish the worth of anything founded upon it. Yet gratitude and resentment are evidently counterparts in every respect; if our sense of merit arises from sympathy with one, our sense of demerit can hardly fail to arise from fellow-feeling with the other.

Consider too that resentment, though perhaps the most hateful of passions at the intensity at which we too often see it, is not disapproved of when properly restrained and brought entirely down to the level of a spectator's sympathetic indignation. When we bystanders feel that our own anger corresponds exactly to the sufferer's, when his resentment goes no further than ours in any respect, when no word or gesture betrays an emotion stronger than we can share, and when he never seeks to inflict a punishment beyond what we would rejoice to see imposed, or would even wish to help impose ourselves, we cannot help approving of his feelings entirely. In our eyes our own emotion must undoubtedly justify his. Experience also teaches us how few people are capable of this moderation and how great an effort is required to bring the raw, undisciplined impulse of resentment down to a suitable temper. We therefore cannot help feeling considerable esteem and admiration for someone who can exercise such self-command over one of his nature's least governable passions. When the sufferer's anger exceeds what we can share, as it almost always does, we necessarily disapprove because we cannot enter into it. Indeed, we disapprove more strongly than we would of an equal excess in almost any other passion that springs from the imagination. Instead of carrying us along, this excessive resentment itself becomes the object of our resentment and indignation. We enter into the opposing resentment of the person who is the target of this unjust emotion and stands in danger of suffering from it. Revenge, then, as resentment carried to excess, appears the most detestable of all passions and inspires everyone's horror and indignation. And because this passion, as people commonly display it, is excessive a hundred times for every time it is moderate, we are very inclined to regard it as altogether hateful and detestable, since that is what it is in its most familiar forms. Yet Nature, even in humanity's present corrupted condition, does not seem to have treated us so unkindly as to give us any principle wholly evil in every respect, incapable in any degree or direction of properly earning praise and approval. On some occasions we recognize that this passion, usually too strong, can also be too weak. Sometimes we complain that someone shows too little spirit and has too little sense of the injuries done to him; we are as ready to despise him for too little resentment as to hate him for too much.

The inspired writers surely would not have spoken so often and so forcefully of God's wrath and anger if they had considered every degree of those passions vicious and evil, even in a creature as weak and imperfect as a human being.

Consider too that our present inquiry concerns not a question of right, if I may put it so, but a question of fact. We are not asking on what principles a perfect being would approve of punishing bad actions, but on what principles a creature as weak and imperfect as a human being actually does approve of it. The principles I have just described evidently have a powerful effect on human feelings, and it seems a wise arrangement that they should. The very existence of society requires that unmerited, unprovoked malice be checked by suitable punishments; consequently, inflicting those punishments must be regarded as a proper and praiseworthy act. Though human beings naturally desire society's welfare and survival, the Author of nature has not left it to their reason to discover that certain punishments are the proper means to that end. Instead he has given them immediate, instinctive approval of precisely the application of punishment best suited to achieve it. In this respect Nature's design is wholly consistent with its design on many other occasions. For every end that, by reason of its special importance, might be called—if the expression is permissible—one of Nature's favorite ends, she has consistently endowed humanity not only with an appetite for the proposed end but also with an appetite for the means that alone can bring it about, valued in themselves and independently of their tendency to produce that end. Thus self-preservation and the propagation of the species appear to be the great ends Nature pursued in forming all animals. Human beings are endowed with a desire for those ends and an aversion to their opposites: a love of life and dread of death, a desire for the species to continue and endure, and an aversion to the thought of its total extinction. Yet although we have a strong desire for these ends, Nature has not entrusted the discovery of the proper means to the slow and uncertain judgments of reason. She has guided us toward most of them through original, immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion uniting the sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain prompt us to pursue those means for their own sake, without considering their tendency to achieve the beneficial ends intended by the great Director of nature.

Before concluding this note, I must point out a difference between approving of propriety and approving of merit or beneficence. Before we can approve of someone's feelings as proper and suited to their objects, we must not only feel as he does but also perceive the harmony and correspondence between his feelings and ours. Thus, if I hear that my friend has suffered a misfortune, I may feel precisely the degree of concern he expresses; yet until I learn how he behaves, until I perceive the harmony between his emotions and mine, I cannot be said to approve of the feelings guiding his behavior. Approval of propriety therefore requires not only that we fully sympathize with the agent but also that we perceive this perfect accord between his feelings and our own. By contrast, when I hear that someone has received a benefit, however he may feel about it, if I put myself in his place and feel gratitude arise in my own heart, I necessarily approve of his benefactor's conduct and regard it as meritorious and properly deserving of reward. Whether the beneficiary himself feels gratitude plainly cannot affect our judgment of the benefactor's merit in any degree. No actual correspondence of feelings is required here. It is enough that their feelings would correspond if he were grateful. Our sense of merit often rests on one of those illusory forms of sympathy by which, when we make another's case our own, we feel something the person chiefly concerned is incapable of feeling. There is a similar difference between our disapproval of demerit and our disapproval of impropriety.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter I

Section II: On justice and beneficence.

A comparison of these two virtues.

Actions that benefit others, when they spring from proper motives, alone seem to call for reward; for they alone are fitting objects of gratitude, and awaken sympathetic gratitude in the spectator.

Actions that harm others, when they spring from improper motives, alone seem to deserve punishment; for they alone are fitting objects of resentment, and awaken sympathetic resentment in the spectator.

Beneficence is always voluntary: it cannot be forced, and its mere absence incurs no punishment, because that absence does no actual, positive harm. It may deprive someone of a benefit he could reasonably have expected, and for that reason may rightly arouse dislike and disapproval; but it cannot arouse resentment with which mankind will sympathize. The man who fails to repay his benefactor when he can do so and when his benefactor needs his help is certainly guilty of the deepest ingratitude. Every impartial spectator recoils from sympathy with his selfish motives and regards him as deserving the strongest disapproval. Yet he has done no positive injury to anyone. He has merely failed to do the good that propriety required of him. He is an object of hatred, a passion naturally stirred by improper feeling and behavior, but not of resentment, a passion properly stirred only by actions tending to inflict actual, positive harm on particular people. His ingratitude, then, cannot be punished. To force him to do what gratitude requires, and what every impartial spectator would approve his doing, would, if it could be done, be even more improper than his failure to do it. His benefactor would disgrace himself by trying to compel gratitude through violence, and it would be presumptuous for any third person who was superior to neither of them to interfere. Yet among all the duties of beneficence, those commended by gratitude come closest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation. What friendship, generosity, or charity would lead us to do, with everyone's approval, is even more voluntary and still less subject to compulsion than the duties of gratitude. We speak of a debt of gratitude, not a debt of charity or generosity, or even of friendship when friendship is mere esteem and has not been strengthened and intertwined with gratitude for services rendered.

Nature seems to have given us resentment for defense, and for defense alone. It safeguards justice and secures innocence. It urges us to repel harm that is threatened and to retaliate for harm already done, so that the offender may repent of his injustice and others may be deterred by fear of a similar punishment from committing a similar offense. It must therefore be reserved for these purposes, and the spectator cannot sympathize with its use for any other. But the mere absence of beneficent virtues, though it may deprive us of a benefit we could reasonably expect, neither inflicts nor threatens any harm against which we need defend ourselves.

There is, however, another virtue whose observance is not left to our free choice, which may be enforced, and whose violation provokes resentment and therefore punishment. This virtue is justice. To violate justice is to inflict injury: real, positive harm on particular people, from motives that naturally meet with disapproval. Such a violation is therefore the proper object of resentment and of punishment, the natural consequence of resentment. People sympathize with and approve the force used to avenge injuries caused by injustice; still more do they sympathize with and approve force used to prevent or repel an injury and restrain an offender from harming his neighbors. The person contemplating an injustice knows this himself. He feels that the person he is about to injure, or anyone else, may quite properly use force either to prevent the crime or to punish him once he has committed it. On this rests the remarkable distinction between justice and all the other social virtues, recently emphasized by a writer of extraordinary and original genius: we feel a stricter obligation to act justly than to act with friendship, charity, or generosity. The practice of those latter virtues seems to be left in some degree to our choice, whereas we feel ourselves peculiarly tied, bound, and obliged to observe justice. That is, we feel that force may, with perfect propriety and the approval of all mankind, be used to compel us to obey the rules of justice, but not to compel us to follow the precepts of the other virtues.

We must, however, always take care to distinguish what deserves blame or disapproval from what force may properly punish or prevent. Conduct that falls below the ordinary degree of proper beneficence experience teaches us to expect from everyone seems blameworthy; conduct that exceeds it seems praiseworthy. The ordinary degree itself seems to deserve neither blame nor praise. A father, son, or brother who treats the corresponding family member no better and no worse than most people generally do deserves neither praise nor blame. Someone who surprises us with extraordinary and unexpected kindness, though it remains proper and fitting, seems praiseworthy; someone who surprises us with extraordinary and unexpected unkindness, which is also unfitting, seems blameworthy.

Even the most ordinary degree of kindness or beneficence cannot, among equals, be compelled by force. Among equals, each person is naturally regarded, even before civil government is established, as entitled both to defend himself against injury and to exact some punishment for injury already done to him. Every generous spectator not only approves when he acts this way but enters so deeply into his feelings as often to be ready to help him. When one man attacks, robs, or attempts to murder another, all the neighbors are alarmed and think it right to rush either to avenge the victim or to defend the person in danger. But when a father lacks the ordinary affection for his son, when a son lacks the reverence one might expect toward his father, when brothers lack the usual brotherly affection, or when a man closes his heart to compassion and refuses, though he could easily do so, to relieve another's distress, everyone blames the conduct, but nobody thinks that those who might reasonably have expected greater kindness have a right to demand it by force. The sufferer can only complain, and the spectator can intervene only through counsel and persuasion. For equals to use force against each other on any such occasion would be considered the height of insolence and presumption.

A superior can indeed sometimes, with universal approval, require those under his authority to treat one another with a certain degree of propriety in these matters. The laws of all civilized nations require parents to support their children and children to support their parents, and impose many other duties of beneficence. The civil magistrate is entrusted not only with maintaining public peace by restraining injustice, but also with advancing the commonwealth's prosperity by establishing good discipline and discouraging every kind of vice and impropriety. He may therefore make rules that not only prohibit fellow citizens from harming one another but also require them to render one another some assistance. When a sovereign commands something otherwise indifferent, which could have been omitted without blame before his order, disobedience becomes not only blameworthy but punishable. When he commands something whose omission was gravely blameworthy even before his order, failure to obey must surely be more punishable still. Yet perhaps no duty of a lawgiver requires more delicacy and restraint if it is to be carried out with propriety and judgment. To neglect it entirely leaves the commonwealth exposed to gross disorder and shocking abuses; to press it too far destroys all liberty, security, and justice.

Though a mere lack of beneficence seems to deserve no punishment from equals, its greater exertions seem worthy of the highest reward. Because they produce the greatest good, they are naturally and properly met with the keenest gratitude. By contrast, though violating justice incurs punishment, merely observing its rules seems scarcely deserving of reward. There is certainly propriety in acting justly, and on that account it deserves all the approval owed to propriety. But because it does no actual, positive good, it is entitled to very little gratitude. On most occasions, simple justice is a negative virtue: it merely keeps us from harming our neighbor. A man who simply refrains from violating the person, property, or reputation of his neighbors has very little positive merit. Nevertheless, he fulfills every rule of what is specifically called justice and does everything his equals may properly force him to do, or punish him for failing to do. We can often fulfill every rule of justice simply by sitting still and doing nothing.

As each person acts, so it should be done to him: retaliation seems to be the great law Nature prescribes to us. We think beneficence and generosity are owed to the beneficent and generous. Those whose hearts never open to humane feeling should, we think, be similarly excluded from the affections of their fellow creatures and left to live amid society as though in a vast desert, with nobody to care for them or inquire after them. Whoever violates the laws of justice should himself be made to feel the harm he has done to another; since concern for his fellow humans' suffering cannot restrain him, fear for his own suffering should. The merely innocent man, who simply observes the law of justice toward others and refrains from harming his neighbors, can merit only that his neighbors likewise respect his innocence and scrupulously observe those same laws toward him.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter II

On the sense of justice, remorse, and the consciousness of merit.

There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbor, no inducement to wrong another with which mankind can sympathize, except just indignation at a wrong that person has done to us. No impartial spectator can sympathize with disturbing another's happiness merely because it obstructs our own, taking from him something genuinely useful merely because it might be equally or more useful to us, or thus indulging, at others' expense, the natural preference each of us has for his own happiness. Each person is undoubtedly entrusted by nature first and foremost to his own care; since he is better suited to care for himself than anyone else is, this is right and fitting. Accordingly, each person is much more deeply concerned with what directly affects him than with what affects anyone else. Hearing of the death of a person to whom we have no particular connection will perhaps trouble us, spoil our appetite, or disturb our sleep far less than a very minor misfortune of our own. Yet although the ruin of our neighbor may move us far less than a small misfortune of our own, we must not ruin him to prevent that misfortune, or even to prevent our own ruin. Here, as everywhere, we must see ourselves not chiefly as we naturally appear to ourselves but as we naturally appear to others. Though each person may, as the proverb has it, be the whole world to himself, to the rest of humanity he is a most insignificant part of it. Though his happiness may matter more to him than the happiness of the rest of the world, to every other person it matters no more than anyone else's. Even if each person naturally prefers himself to all humanity in his own heart, he does not dare face humanity and openly admit to acting on that principle. He feels that no one else can share this preference and that, however natural it is to him, it must appear excessive and extravagant to them. Seeing himself as he knows others will see him, he recognizes that in their eyes he is only one among the multitude, no better in any respect than anyone else. If he wants the impartial spectator to sympathize with the principles of his conduct—and he wants nothing more—he must, here as elsewhere, humble the arrogance of his self-love until others can sympathize with it. They will indulge it enough to let him care more anxiously and strive more earnestly for his own happiness than for another's. Putting themselves in his position, they will readily sympathize to that extent. In the race for wealth, honors, and advancement, he may run as hard as he can, straining every nerve and muscle to outstrip his competitors. But if he jostles or knocks any one of them down, the spectators' indulgence ends at once. This breaks the rules of fair play, and they cannot accept it. To them, the other man is every bit as good as he is: they do not share the self-love that makes him prefer himself so greatly to that man, and they cannot sympathize with the motive that led him to harm him. They therefore readily sympathize with the injured man's natural resentment, and the offender becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. He knows he has become so and feels those sentiments ready to break out against him on every side.

The greater and less reparable the harm done, the more intense the sufferer's resentment; so too the spectator's sympathetic indignation and the offender's sense of guilt. Death is the greatest harm one person can inflict on another and arouses the strongest resentment among those closely connected to the victim. Murder is therefore the most atrocious crime affecting individuals alone, in the eyes both of mankind and of the murderer himself. To lose what we already possess is worse than to be disappointed of something we merely expected. Violations of property, therefore—theft and robbery, which deprive us of what we possess—are graver crimes than breaches of contract, which merely deprive us of what we expected. The most sacred laws of justice, whose violation most urgently calls for vengeance and punishment, are thus those protecting our neighbor's life and person; next come those protecting his property and possessions; last come those protecting his so-called personal rights, or what others owe him under their promises.

A violator of the more sacred laws of justice cannot reflect on what mankind must feel toward him without suffering every agony of shame, horror, and dismay. Once his passion is satisfied and he begins to reflect calmly on what he has done, he can no longer sympathize with any motive that moved him. Those motives now look as detestable to him as they always looked to others. Sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence others must feel for him, he becomes to some extent an object of his own hatred and abhorrence. The plight of the person hurt by his injustice now stirs his pity. The thought grieves him; he regrets the unhappy consequences of his conduct, while feeling that those consequences have made him a proper object of mankind's resentment and indignation, and of their natural result, vengeance and punishment. This thought haunts him continually and fills him with terror and astonishment. He no longer dares face society, but imagines himself cast out of the affections of all humanity. In this, his greatest and most dreadful distress, he cannot hope for the comfort of sympathy. The memory of his crimes has closed his fellow creatures' hearts to fellow feeling with him. Their feelings toward him are precisely what he fears most. Everything seems hostile; he longs to flee to some desolate wilderness where he need never again see another human face or read the condemnation of his crimes in anyone's expression. Yet solitude is even more dreadful than society. His own thoughts offer only dark, unhappy, and disastrous visions, gloomy forebodings of unfathomable misery and ruin. The horror of solitude drives him back among people. He comes again before them, astonished that he can even appear there, weighed down with shame and distracted by fear, begging some small measure of protection from the very judges who, as he knows, have already unanimously condemned him. Such is the feeling properly called remorse, the most dreadful feeling the human heart can know. It consists of shame at the impropriety of past conduct, grief for its effects, pity for those made to suffer by it, and dread and terror of punishment in the knowledge that one has justly provoked the resentment of all rational beings.

The opposite conduct naturally gives rise to the opposite feeling. A man who has performed a generous act from proper motives, rather than from some frivolous whim, looks toward those he has served and feels himself the natural object of their love and gratitude and, through sympathy with them, of the esteem and approval of all mankind. Looking back at the motive for his action, and considering it as a disinterested spectator would, he still sympathizes with it and applauds himself by sympathizing with the approval of this imagined impartial judge. From both perspectives his conduct appears wholly pleasing to him. Thinking of it fills his mind with cheerfulness, serenity, and composure. He is at peace and in harmony with all humanity and looks on his fellow creatures with confidence and benevolent satisfaction, assured that he has made himself worthy of their warmest regard. The consciousness of merit, or of deserved reward, consists in the combination of all these feelings.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 1

On the usefulness of this arrangement of nature.

In this way nature fitted mankind, who can survive only in society, for the condition in which they were meant to live. Every member of human society needs the help of others and is also vulnerable to injury from them. When people give one another the help they need out of love, gratitude, friendship, and esteem, society flourishes and is happy. Its many members are joined by the welcome bonds of love and affection and drawn, as it were, toward a common center of mutual service.

Yet even if the necessary help does not come from such generous and disinterested motives, even if society's members feel no mutual love or affection, society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily fall apart. Society may persist among people as it does among merchants: they recognize its usefulness without loving or caring for one another. Even if no one owes anyone else an obligation or a debt of gratitude, society can still be sustained through the commercial exchange of services at agreed values.

Society cannot, however, survive among people who are always ready to harm one another. The moment injury begins and mutual resentment and hostility take hold, all its bonds are torn apart. Its members are, as it were, scattered by the violence and conflict of their clashing passions. If robbers and murderers form any society at all, then, as the familiar observation goes, even they must refrain from robbing and murdering each other. Beneficence is thus less essential to society's existence than justice. Society can survive, though in a less comfortable condition, without beneficence; widespread injustice must destroy it altogether.

Nature therefore encourages beneficent acts through the pleasing consciousness of deserving reward, but has not found it necessary to enforce them through the terror of deserved punishment when they are neglected. Beneficence is the ornament that adorns the building, not the foundation that supports it; it was enough to recommend it, not necessary to impose it. Justice, by contrast, is the principal pillar holding the whole structure up. Remove it, and the vast, immense fabric of human society—a fabric whose creation and support seem to have been, if I may put it this way, nature's particular and cherished concern in this world—must instantly crumble to dust. To enforce justice, therefore, nature has planted in the human heart a consciousness of deserving condemnation, and the fear of deserved punishment that follows its violation. These are great safeguards of human society, protecting the weak, restraining the violent, and chastising the guilty. Though people naturally feel sympathy, they feel so little for a stranger compared with what they feel for themselves; the misery of someone who is merely a fellow human being matters so little to them beside even a minor convenience of their own; and they have so much power to hurt that person, and so many possible temptations to do so, that if this principle did not rise up within them to defend him and overawe them into respecting his innocence, they would always be ready to attack him like wild beasts. A man would enter a gathering of people as he enters a den of lions.

Throughout the universe we see means fitted with exquisite skill to the ends they are designed to achieve. In the structure of a plant or an animal body we admire how everything serves nature's two great purposes: sustaining the individual and propagating the species. Yet in these and all similar cases we distinguish the efficient cause of the various movements and structures from their final cause. Digestion, blood circulation, and the secretion of the various fluids drawn from food are all necessary to the great purposes of animal life. But we never explain them by treating those purposes as their efficient causes; we do not imagine that blood circulates or food digests of its own accord, intending thereby to achieve the purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of a watch are wonderfully fitted to its purpose of showing the hour. Their various movements work together with exquisite precision to produce that result. Even if they wanted and intended to produce it, they could do no better. Yet we attribute no such desire or intention to the wheels, but to the watchmaker; we know that a spring moves them, and the spring intends the result no more than the wheels do. When explaining how bodies work, then, we consistently distinguish efficient causes from final causes. But when explaining the workings of the mind, we are very liable to confuse the two. When natural principles lead us to further ends that refined and enlightened reason would recommend, we are likely to credit that reason, as though it were the efficient cause, with the feelings and actions that further those ends. We imagine that what is actually the wisdom of God is the wisdom of man. At first glance, this cause seems adequate to explain the effects attributed to it; and the account of human nature seems simpler and more satisfying when all its diverse workings are traced to a single principle.

Because society cannot survive unless the laws of justice are observed in full, and people cannot deal with one another unless they generally refrain from mutual injury, some have held that our approval of enforcing justice through punishment rests on our awareness of its necessity. Man, they say, naturally loves society and wants the union of mankind preserved for its own sake, even if he himself gains nothing by it. An orderly, flourishing society pleases him, and he delights in contemplating it. Disorder and confusion, on the other hand, repel him, and he is distressed by anything tending to bring them about. He knows, too, that his own interest is bound up with society's prosperity and that his happiness, perhaps even his survival, depends upon its survival. For all these reasons he abhors whatever might destroy society and is willing to use any means to prevent so hateful and dreadful a prospect. Injustice necessarily tends toward its destruction. Every sign of injustice therefore alarms him, and he rushes, so to speak, to halt the advance of what, if allowed to proceed, would soon destroy everything dear to him. If he cannot restrain it by mild and equitable means, he must crush it by force and violence; one way or another he must prevent its spread. That, they say, is why he often approves of enforcing the laws of justice even by executing those who break them. The disturber of the public peace is thereby removed from the world, and his fate frightens others away from following his example.

This is the usual explanation of our approval of the punishment of injustice. It is certainly true to this extent: we often reinforce our natural sense that punishment is proper and fitting by reflecting on how necessary it is to preserve social order. When the guilty person is about to suffer the just retaliation that humanity's natural indignation tells us his crimes deserve; when the arrogance of his injustice has been broken and humbled by fear of his approaching punishment; when he ceases to inspire fear, he begins to inspire pity in the generous and humane. The thought of what he is about to suffer extinguishes their resentment over the suffering he has caused others. They become inclined to pardon and forgive him, sparing him the punishment they had judged, in calmer moments, to be the due return for his crimes. At this point they need to summon the consideration of society's general interest. Against the impulse of this weak and partial humanity they set the demands of a more generous and far-reaching humanity. They reflect that mercy toward the guilty is cruelty toward the innocent, and oppose their compassion for a particular person with a wider compassion for mankind.

Sometimes, too, we need to defend the propriety of observing the general rules of justice by considering how necessary those rules are to sustain society. We often hear young and dissolute people mock the most sacred rules of morality and profess the most abhorrent principles of conduct, sometimes from corruption of heart but more often from vanity. Our indignation rises, and we are eager to refute and expose such detestable principles. Yet although their inherent hatefulness first arouses our anger, we hesitate to give this as our sole reason for condemning them, or to say that we condemn them simply because we hate and detest them. Such a reason, we think, would not be conclusive. Yet why should it not be, if we hate and detest them because they are naturally and properly objects of hatred and detestation? When someone asks why we should not behave in a particular way, however, the question itself seems to imply that such behavior does not strike the questioner as inherently a proper object of those feelings. We must therefore show that it should be condemned for the sake of something else. So we search for other arguments, and the first that occurs to us is the social disorder and confusion that would follow if such practices became universal. We rarely fail to press that point.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 2

But although it generally takes little discernment to recognize how destructive unrestrained wrongdoing is to society's welfare, that recognition is rarely what first stirs our opposition. Everyone, even the dullest and most thoughtless, abhors fraud, betrayal, and injustice, and is pleased to see them punished. Yet few have reflected on how necessary justice is to society's existence, however obvious that necessity may seem.

Many familiar considerations show that concern for preserving society is not what first interests us in punishing crimes against individuals. In ordinary circumstances, our concern for the fortunes and happiness of individuals does not arise from our concern for the fortunes and happiness of society. We do not care about the loss of one person because he is a part of society and we would care about society's destruction any more than we care about losing a single guinea because it forms part of a thousand guineas and we would care about losing the entire sum. Neither our concern for individual people nor our concern for individual coins derives from our concern for the whole; in each case, our concern for the whole is composed of our separate concerns for its individual parts. When a small amount of money is unjustly taken from us, we pursue the wrong not so much out of concern to preserve our whole fortune as out of concern for that particular sum. Likewise, when one person is injured or killed, we demand punishment not so much from concern for society's general interest as from concern for the very person who was harmed. It should be noted, however, that this concern need not involve any of the tender feelings called love, esteem, and affection, which we reserve for our particular friends and acquaintances. All that is required is the general fellow feeling we have for any person simply because he is a fellow human being. We sympathize even with the resentment of someone we dislike when he has been injured by people he never provoked. Our disapproval of his usual character and conduct does not altogether prevent us from sharing his natural indignation in this case, though it often weakens that sympathy in those who are neither exceptionally fair-minded nor practiced in correcting and regulating their natural feelings by general rules.

On some occasions, admittedly, we both punish and approve of punishment solely for the sake of society's general interest, which we believe cannot otherwise be secured. Such are all punishments for breaches of what is called civil policing or military discipline. These offenses do not immediately or directly injure any particular person; but their more distant consequences, it is thought, do cause or might cause serious inconvenience or great disorder in society. A sentry who falls asleep on watch, for example, is put to death under military law because such carelessness might endanger an entire army. This severity may often seem necessary and, for that reason, just and proper. When saving one person conflicts with the safety of many, nothing is more just than preferring the many to the one. Yet this punishment, however necessary, always seems excessively severe. The offense seems naturally so slight, and the penalty so great, that our hearts can scarcely reconcile themselves to it. Though such carelessness seems highly blameworthy, thinking of it does not naturally stir the kind of resentment that would urge us to take so dreadful a revenge. A humane person must collect himself, make an effort, and summon all his firmness and resolution before he can either impose such a penalty or approve its imposition by others. He does not regard the just punishment of an ungrateful murderer or someone who murders a parent in this way. In that case, his heart warmly, even passionately, applauds the just retaliation due to such detestable crimes; if the offenders happened to escape, he would feel intense anger and disappointment. The spectator's sharply different feelings toward the two punishments show that he approves them on very different grounds. He regards the sentry as an unfortunate victim who must indeed be sacrificed for the safety of many, but whom in his heart he would gladly save; he is sorry only that the interest of the many stands in the way. If the murderer escaped punishment, however, he would feel the strongest indignation and call upon God to avenge in another world the crime that human injustice had failed to punish on earth.

Indeed, it is worth noticing that we are so far from thinking injustice deserves punishment in this life merely because social order cannot otherwise be maintained that nature teaches us to hope, and religion, we believe, entitles us to expect, its punishment even in a life to come. Our sense that it deserves punishment follows it, so to speak, beyond the grave, though punishment there cannot deter other people from similar acts here: they cannot see or know of it. We nevertheless think God's justice demands that he ultimately avenge the injuries done to widows and the fatherless, who are so often wronged with impunity in this world.

It is not untaught nature but an elaborate refinement of reason and philosophy that teaches that God loves virtue and hates vice only for their effects, as a pleasure-seeking man loves wealth and hates poverty; that God loves virtue only because it promotes society's happiness, which his benevolence desires, and hates vice only because it brings humanity misery, which that same divine quality abhors. Our natural, untaught feelings all lead us to believe that, just as perfect virtue must appear to God, as it appears to us, intrinsically and without regard to any further end, a natural and proper object of love and reward, so vice must appear an object of hatred and punishment. That the gods neither resent nor harm was a general principle of every school of ancient philosophy. If by resentment they meant the violent and disorderly disturbance that so often distracts and confounds the human heart, or by harm they meant wanton injury inflicted without regard for propriety or justice, such weakness is certainly unworthy of divine perfection. But if they meant that God does not find vice inherently abhorrent, intrinsically deserving of punishment, the truth of their principle seems to conflict with very natural feelings. When we consult those feelings, we are even inclined to fear that before the holiness of God vice may seem more deserving of punishment than the frailty and imperfection of human virtue can ever seem deserving of reward. A person about to appear before a Being of infinite perfection can have little confidence in his own merit or the imperfect propriety of his conduct. Before other people he may rightly hold his head high and often have good reason to think well of his character and conduct compared with their still greater shortcomings. But matters are altogether different when he is about to appear before his infinite Creator. He fears that to such a Being his smallness and weakness can scarcely ever seem fitting objects of either esteem or reward. He can readily imagine, however, how his countless failures in duty might make him a fitting object of aversion and punishment; he sees no reason why divine indignation should not be unleashed without restraint upon so vile an insect as he imagines himself to appear. If he still hopes for happiness, he suspects he cannot claim it from God's justice but must beg it from God's mercy. Repentance, sorrow, humility, and contrition over his past conduct therefore seem the feelings appropriate to him, and the only means left him of appeasing the wrath he knows he has justly provoked. He even doubts that these will be enough and naturally fears that God's wisdom will not, like human weakness, be persuaded to spare a crime by the culprit's most insistent lamentations. He imagines that some further intercession, some further sacrifice, some further atonement, beyond anything he himself can make, must be offered for him before the purity of divine justice can be reconciled with his many offenses. The teachings of revelation agree in every respect with these first intuitions of nature: they teach us how little we may rely on our own imperfect virtue, while also showing us that the most powerful intercession has been made, and the most dreadful atonement paid, for our many transgressions and offenses.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter I

Section III: On the influence of fortune upon human judgments of the merit or demerit of actions. Introduction. Any praise or blame due to an action must belong either, first, to the intention or feeling of the heart from which it springs; second, to the outward act or bodily movement prompted by that feeling; or, finally, to all the good or bad consequences that actually follow from it. These three things make up the entire nature and circumstances of an action, and must ground whatever quality we attribute to it. It is abundantly clear that the last two cannot ground praise or blame; indeed, nobody has ever maintained the contrary. The outward act or bodily movement is often identical in the most innocent and the most blameworthy actions. The person who shoots a bird and the person who shoots a man perform the same outward movement: each pulls the trigger of a gun. The consequences that actually follow an action are, if anything, still less relevant to praise or blame than the body's outward movement. They depend not on the agent but on fortune, and therefore cannot properly ground a judgment concerning his character and conduct. The only consequences for which he can be answerable, or through which he can deserve approval or disapproval of any kind, are those he intended in some way, or those that at least reveal something agreeable or disagreeable about the intention of the heart from which he acted. Thus all praise or blame, all approval or disapproval that can justly be given to an action, must ultimately belong to the heart's intention or feeling: to the propriety or impropriety, the beneficence or harmfulness, of the design. Stated in these abstract and general terms, this principle wins everyone's agreement. Its evident justice is universally acknowledged, without a dissenting voice. Everyone grants that however different the accidental, unintended, and unforeseen consequences of two actions may be, if the intentions or feelings behind them were equally proper and beneficent, or equally improper and malevolent, the actions retain the same merit or demerit; their agents remain equally fit objects of gratitude or resentment. Yet however convinced we seem of this fair principle in the abstract, in particular cases the actual consequences of an action powerfully influence our judgment of its merit or demerit, almost always increasing or diminishing our sense of both. Perhaps hardly a single judgment, on examination, will prove entirely governed by the rule we all admit ought to govern it entirely. I shall now explain this irregularity of feeling, which everyone experiences, hardly anyone sufficiently notices, and no one is willing to acknowledge. I shall consider first its cause, or the mechanism by which nature produces it; second, the extent of its influence; and last, the end it serves, or the purpose the Author of nature seems to have intended for it.

On the causes of fortune's influence.

Whatever causes pain or pleasure, and however it acts, seems in all animals to be what immediately arouses gratitude and resentment. Inanimate things excite these passions as well as living ones. For a moment we are angry even at the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barks at it, and a hot-tempered man is apt to curse it. The slightest reflection corrects this feeling, and we soon recognize that a thing without feeling is a very unsuitable object of revenge. But when the injury is very great, its cause remains hateful to us afterward, and we take pleasure in burning or destroying it. We would treat in this way the instrument that accidentally caused a friend's death, and often feel guilty of a kind of inhumanity if we failed to vent this absurd vengeance upon it.

In the same way we feel a sort of gratitude toward inanimate things that have given us great or repeated pleasure. A sailor who, immediately on reaching shore, fed his fire with the plank that had just saved him from a shipwreck would seem to act unnaturally. We would expect him instead to preserve it with care and affection, as a memorial dear to him in some measure. A person becomes attached to a snuffbox, a pocketknife, or a staff used over many years, and develops something like genuine love for it. If it is broken or lost, the distress is out of all proportion to its value. We regard a house in which we have lived long, or a tree whose greenery and shade we have long enjoyed, with something of the respect due to benefactors. The decay of one or destruction of the other fills us with melancholy, even when we suffer no loss. The Dryads and Lares of the ancients, spirits of trees and houses, probably arose from the affection their inventors felt for such things: an affection that seemed unreasonable unless something living inhabited them.

But before anything can properly receive gratitude or resentment, it must not only cause pleasure or pain; it must also be capable of feeling these things. Without that further quality, we cannot find satisfaction in directing either passion toward it. For just as these passions are aroused by causes of pleasure and pain, their fulfillment lies in returning those sensations to whatever occasioned them; and it is useless to try this upon a thing without feeling. Animals, therefore, are less unsuitable objects of gratitude and resentment than inanimate things. The dog that bites and the ox that gores are both punished. If either causes a death, neither the public nor the dead person's relatives are satisfied unless the animal is killed in turn; this is done not merely to protect the living but, in some measure, to avenge the dead. Animals that have been exceptionally useful to their masters, by contrast, inspire a very lively gratitude. We are shocked by the brutality of the officer mentioned in the Turkish Spy who stabbed the horse that had carried him across an arm of the sea, for fear that it might later distinguish someone else by the same exploit.

Yet though animals both cause and feel pleasure and pain, they are far from being complete objects of either gratitude or resentment; we still sense that something is missing from the full satisfaction of these passions. Gratitude wishes not merely to give a benefactor pleasure in return, but to make him aware that this reward is for what he has done, to make him pleased with his own conduct, and to assure him that the recipient of his kindness was worthy of it. What delights us most in a benefactor is the harmony between his judgment and ours on a matter so close to us as our own worth and the esteem we deserve. We delight in finding someone who values us as we value ourselves and singles us out from the rest of humankind with an attention resembling our own. One chief aim of the return we wish to make is to sustain in him these pleasing, flattering feelings. A generous person often scorns the self-interested thought of extracting new favors from a benefactor through what might be called the demands of gratitude. But even the greatest mind does not consider it beneath him to preserve and increase his benefactor's esteem. This explains my earlier observation that our gratitude is distinctly weakened whenever we cannot sympathize with our benefactor's motives, whenever his conduct and character seem undeserving of our approval, however great his services. His preference flatters us less, and preserving the esteem of so weak or worthless a patron seems scarcely worth pursuing for its own sake.

Resentment, on the other hand, aims less to cause an enemy pain in return than to make him aware that he suffers because of his past conduct, to make him repent of it, and to make him see that the person he injured did not deserve such treatment. What most enrages us against someone who injures or insults us is how little he seems to value us: the unreasonable preference he gives himself, and the absurd self-love by which he seems to think other people can be sacrificed at any moment to his convenience or whim. The glaring impropriety of this conduct, its gross insolence and injustice, often shocks and exasperates us more than all the harm we have suffered. The principal aim of revenge is often to restore his just sense of what is due to others, to make him aware of what he owes us and of the wrong he has done us; revenge remains incomplete when it fails in this aim. If our enemy proves to have done us no wrong, if we recognize that he acted entirely properly, that we would have done the same in his position, and that we deserved all the harm we received from him, then, if we have even a spark of fairness or justice, we can feel no resentment.

Thus, before anything can be a complete and proper object of gratitude or resentment, it must have three qualifications. First, it must cause pleasure in one case or pain in the other. Second, it must be capable of feeling those sensations. Third, it must produce them deliberately, from a design we approve in the one case or disapprove in the other. The first qualification enables a thing to arouse these passions; the second enables it, in some degree, to satisfy them. The third is necessary for their full satisfaction and, by providing an intense and distinctive pleasure or pain, gives these passions a further cause of excitement.

Since what gives pleasure or pain, in one way or another, is the sole cause that arouses gratitude and resentment, the failure of even the most proper and beneficent intentions to do good, or the most improper and malevolent intentions to do harm, removes one cause of these passions in either case: less gratitude seems due in the first, and less resentment in the second. Conversely, even if someone's intentions show no praiseworthy benevolence or blameworthy malice, actions that produce great good or great harm supply one cause for these passions in either case: some gratitude arises toward the agent in the first, and some resentment in the second. A shadow of merit falls upon him in one case, a shadow of demerit in the other. And because the consequences of actions lie entirely within fortune's power, this is the source of her influence over human judgments of merit and demerit.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 1

On the extent of fortune's influence.

Fortune's influence has two effects. First, when actions arising from the most praiseworthy or blameworthy intentions fail to achieve their intended results, it diminishes our sense of their merit or demerit. Second, when actions accidentally occasion extraordinary pleasure or pain, it increases our sense of their merit or demerit beyond what their underlying motives or feelings deserve.

1. First, even when someone's intentions are entirely proper and beneficent, or entirely improper and malevolent, failure to achieve their purpose makes his merit seem imperfect in the one case and his demerit incomplete in the other. This irregularity is felt not only by those directly affected by the outcome. To some extent even the impartial spectator feels it. The person who seeks a position for another but fails to obtain it is regarded as a friend deserving love and affection. But the person who not only seeks the position but secures it is regarded, more particularly, as a patron and benefactor entitled to respect and gratitude. We tend to think that the recipient of the favor may, with some justice, consider himself the equal of the first; but we cannot share his feelings if he does not consider himself indebted to the second. We often say that we owe as much to someone who tried to help us as to someone who actually succeeded. We say this after every failed attempt of the kind; but like other fine speeches, it needs to be taken with some allowance. A generous person's feelings toward an unsuccessful friend may indeed come very close to his feelings toward a successful one; the more generous he is, the closer they will be. For the truly generous, to be loved and esteemed by those whom they themselves esteem gives more pleasure, and thus arouses more gratitude, than any advantage they might hope to gain from that regard. When they lose the advantage, then, they seem to lose only a trifle hardly worth noticing. Yet they still lose something. Their pleasure, and therefore their gratitude, is not quite complete; and if all else is equal between the friend who fails and the friend who succeeds, even the noblest and best person will feel a slight preference for the one who succeeds. Indeed, humankind is so unfair in this matter that even if the intended benefit comes about, but not through the efforts of a particular benefactor, people tend to think less gratitude is due to the person who, with the best intentions in the world, could do no more than help it along. Since their gratitude is divided among those who contributed to their happiness, each seems to deserve a smaller share. Such a person, we commonly hear, certainly meant to help us, and we sincerely believe he did all he could. Yet we do not owe him this benefit: without the cooperation of others, everything he did would have failed to bring it about. People imagine that this consideration should reduce their debt to him even in the eyes of the impartial spectator. The person who tried unsuccessfully to confer a benefit is himself far less confident of the intended recipient's gratitude, and far less conscious of merit toward him, than he would have been if he had succeeded.

Even the merit of talents and abilities that an accident prevents from bearing fruit seems in some measure incomplete, even to those entirely convinced of their power. A general kept by the envy of ministers from gaining a great advantage over his country's enemies regrets the lost opportunity for the rest of his life. He regrets it not only for the public's sake. He mourns the action he was prevented from performing, an action that would have given his character new brilliance in his own eyes and everyone else's. Neither he nor others are satisfied by reflecting that only the plan depended on him; that executing it required no greater ability than devising it; that he was acknowledged to be entirely capable of carrying it out; and that if allowed to proceed he would certainly have succeeded. He still did not carry it out. He may deserve all the approval owed to a great and magnanimous design, but he lacks the actual merit of having accomplished a great deed. Removing a person from the management of a public affair he has nearly completed is regarded as a particularly odious injustice. Since he has done so much, we think, he should have been allowed the full merit of bringing it to an end. Pompey was reproached for arriving after Lucullus's victories and gathering laurels owed to another's fortune and valor. Even Lucullus's friends, it seems, thought his glory less complete because he was not allowed to finish a conquest that his skill and courage had made almost anyone capable of finishing. An architect is mortified when his plans are never carried out, or are altered so much that the building's effect is spoiled. Yet the plans are all that depends on the architect, and to good judges they reveal his whole genius as fully as the finished building would. Still, even to the most discerning eye, a plan does not give the same pleasure as a noble, magnificent building. Judges may see as much taste and genius in one as in the other; their effects nevertheless differ immensely, and the pleasure derived from the plan never approaches the wonder and admiration sometimes aroused by the building. We may believe many people's talents superior to those of Caesar and Alexander, and believe that, in their circumstances, they would accomplish still greater things. Yet we do not look upon them with the astonishment and admiration these two heroes have inspired across all ages and nations. Our calm judgment may approve of them more, but they lack the splendor of great deeds that dazzles and transports the mind. Even for those who acknowledge superior virtue and talent, its effect is not the same as the effect of superior achievements.

Just as failure diminishes, in the eyes of ungrateful humankind, the merit of an unsuccessful effort to do good, so too it diminishes the demerit of an unsuccessful effort to do evil. A design to commit a crime, however clearly proved, is hardly ever punished as severely as the crime itself. Treason is perhaps the sole exception. Because it directly threatens the existence of government itself, government is naturally more jealous of it than of any other crime. In punishing treason, a sovereign resents injuries done directly to himself; in punishing other crimes, he resents injuries done to others. In one case he indulges his own resentment; in the other, through sympathy, he enters into the resentment of his subjects. Since he judges his own cause in the first case, he is apt to be more violent and bloodthirsty in punishment than the impartial spectator can approve. His resentment also flares up on slighter grounds and does not always wait, as with other crimes, for the crime to be committed or even attempted. In many countries, a treasonous conspiracy that leads to no act or attempt, or even a treasonous conversation, is punished just like an accomplished act of treason. With every other crime, a mere design followed by no attempt is seldom punished at all, and never severely. It may be said, of course, that a criminal design need not imply the same depravity as a criminal act, and so should not receive the same punishment. We may resolve to do something, and even take steps toward doing it, that we find ourselves quite incapable of carrying out when the time comes. But this argument has no force once the design has reached the point of a final attempt. Yet the person who fires a pistol at an enemy and misses is subject to death under the laws of hardly any country. Under the old law of Scotland, even if the victim was wounded, the assailant did not face the ultimate punishment unless death followed within a certain time. Human resentment against this crime, however, runs so high, and our fear of someone who shows himself capable of it is so great, that the bare attempt ought to be a capital offense everywhere. Attempts at lesser crimes are nearly always punished very lightly and sometimes not at all. The thief caught with his hand in his neighbor's pocket before taking anything is punished only with public disgrace. Had he succeeded in taking a handkerchief, he would have been put to death. The burglar caught placing a ladder against his neighbor's window but not yet inside it does not face capital punishment. An attempted rape is not punished as a rape. An attempt to seduce a married woman is not punished at all, though the accomplished seduction is severely punished. Our resentment toward someone who merely attempts harm is seldom strong enough to justify, in our eyes, the punishment we would have thought due if he had actually done the harm. In the one case, the joy of escape softens our sense of the atrocity of his conduct; in the other, our grief over the harm heightens it. His true demerit is surely the same in either case, since his intentions are equally criminal. In this respect there is an irregularity in everyone's feelings, and a corresponding relaxation of legal discipline, I believe, among all nations, civilized and barbarous alike. The humanity of a civilized people inclines them to waive or reduce penalties wherever the results of a crime do not spur their natural indignation. Barbarians, on the other hand, are not apt to inquire closely or delicately into motives when an action has had no actual consequence.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 2

A person who, through passion or the influence of bad company, resolves and perhaps takes steps to commit a crime, but is fortunately prevented by an accident beyond his control, will surely regard the event, if he retains any conscience, as a great and remarkable deliverance for the rest of his life. He can never think of it without thanking Heaven for graciously saving him from the guilt into which he was about to plunge, and preventing the rest of his life from becoming a scene of horror, remorse, and repentance. Though his hands are innocent, however, he knows his heart is as guilty as it would have been had he carried out his firm resolve. Still, it greatly eases his conscience to know that the crime was not committed, although he knows he owes this failure to no virtue of his own. He continues to see himself as less deserving of punishment and resentment; his good fortune weakens or even removes his entire sense of guilt. The memory of how firmly resolved he was only makes his escape seem greater and more miraculous. For he still imagines that he has escaped, and looks back on the danger to his peace of mind with the terror of someone who, now safe, remembers nearly falling over a precipice and shudders at the thought.

2. Fortune's second effect is to increase our sense of the merit or demerit of actions beyond what their underlying motives or feelings warrant when they happen to bring extraordinary pleasure or pain. An action's welcome or unwelcome effects often cast a shadow of merit or demerit upon its agent, even if his intention deserved neither praise nor blame, or at least not to the degree we tend to give them. Thus a bearer of bad news is disagreeable to us, whereas we feel a sort of gratitude toward someone who brings good news. For a moment we regard each as the author of our good or bad fortune, treating them in some measure as though they had brought about the events they merely report. The first occasion of our joy naturally receives a passing gratitude. We embrace the messenger warmly and affectionately, and, in our moment of prosperity, would gladly reward him for some distinguished service. By the custom of every court, an officer bringing news of victory is entitled to considerable advancement; a general always chooses a leading favorite for such a pleasant errand. The first occasion of our sorrow, by contrast, just as naturally receives a passing resentment. We can hardly keep from looking at the messenger with vexation and unease; the rude and brutal are apt to vent upon him the anger provoked by his news. Tigranes, King of Armenia, beheaded the man who first told him of a formidable enemy's approach. To punish a bearer of bad news this way seems barbarous and inhuman, yet we do not object to rewarding the bearer of good news; we think it fitting to royal generosity. Why do we distinguish them, when one is no more at fault than the other has merit? Because almost any reason seems enough to justify an expression of social and benevolent feelings, whereas only the most substantial grounds make us share in the expression of antisocial and malevolent ones.

Though we are generally reluctant to share antisocial and malevolent feelings, and hold that their satisfaction ought never to win approval unless a person's malicious and unjust intentions make him their proper object, we sometimes relax this strict rule. When one person's negligence unintentionally harms another, we usually share the victim's resentment far enough to approve a punishment of the offender much greater than the offense would have seemed to deserve if no unfortunate consequence had followed.

A certain degree of negligence deserves some chastisement even when it harms nobody. A person who threw a large stone over a wall into a public street, without warning passersby or paying attention to where it might land, would certainly deserve some chastisement. A very vigilant police force would punish so senseless an act even if it caused no harm. The person responsible shows an insolent contempt for other people's happiness and safety. His conduct is genuinely unjust. He recklessly exposes his neighbor to a danger no sensible person would choose for himself, and plainly lacks the regard due to his fellow creatures that forms the foundation of justice and society. Gross negligence, therefore, is said in law to be almost equivalent to malicious intent[3]. When such carelessness does have unhappy consequences, its author is often punished as if he had actually intended them: conduct that was merely thoughtless and insolent, deserving some chastisement, is treated as atrocious and liable to the severest penalty. If, for example, the reckless stone-thrower accidentally killed someone, he would face the ultimate punishment under the laws of many countries, notably the old law of Scotland. Though this is undoubtedly excessively severe, it is not entirely at odds with our natural feelings. Our just indignation at the folly and inhumanity of his conduct is sharpened by sympathy with its unfortunate victim. Yet nothing would offend our natural sense of fairness more than taking a person to the scaffold merely for carelessly throwing a stone into the street without hurting anyone. The folly and inhumanity would be the same, but our feelings would be very different. This difference shows how powerfully an action's actual consequences can stir even a spectator's indignation. Cases of this sort will, unless I am mistaken, reveal considerable severity in the laws of nearly all nations, just as I have already observed a widespread relaxation of discipline in cases of the opposite kind.

Footnote 3:

Gross negligence is nearly equivalent to fraud.

There is another degree of negligence that involves no injustice. A person guilty of it treats his neighbor as he treats himself, intends nobody harm, and is far from showing any insolent contempt for others' safety and happiness. Yet he does not behave as carefully or cautiously as he ought; for that he deserves some blame and censure, but no punishment. Still, if negligence[4] of this kind harms another person, the laws of, I believe, every country require him to compensate the loss. This is certainly a real punishment, one nobody would dream of imposing but for the unfortunate accident occasioned by his conduct; nevertheless, this legal judgment has the approval of natural human feeling. Nothing seems more just to us than that no one should suffer from another's carelessness, and that anyone whose blameworthy negligence causes damage should make it good.

Footnote 4:

Slight negligence.

There is a further kind of negligence[5], consisting merely of a failure to show the utmost fearful caution about every possible consequence of one's actions. When nothing bad follows, far from being blameworthy, a lack of this painful vigilance is preferable to its opposite. A timid caution afraid of everything is never considered a virtue; rather, it is a quality that, more than almost any other, makes a person unfit for action and practical affairs. Yet when a failure to exercise such excessive care happens to cause another person harm, the law often requires compensation. Under the Aquilian law, for example, a man unable to control a horse that has unexpectedly taken fright must compensate his neighbor if he happens to ride down the neighbor's slave. When such an accident happens, we tend to think he should never have ridden that horse and regard the attempt as inexcusable recklessness. Without the accident, we would not only have had no such thought, but would have viewed his refusal to ride as timid weakness and a pointless anxiety about merely possible events. Even a person who accidentally harms another in this way seems to feel that he has done the victim some wrong. He naturally runs to the sufferer to express his concern and acknowledge the accident in every way he can. If he has any sensitivity, he cannot help wishing to compensate the damage and do everything possible to appease the instinctive resentment he knows is likely to arise in the sufferer's heart. To make no apology or offer no amends is seen as the height of brutality. Yet why should he apologize any more than anyone else? Since he was as innocent as any bystander, why should he alone among all humankind be made to repair another's misfortune? Surely this burden would never be placed on him if even the impartial spectator did not show some indulgence toward what might be called the sufferer's unjust resentment.

Footnote 5:

The slightest negligence.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter III

On the final cause of this irregularity of feeling.

Such is the effect that good or bad consequences have on the feelings of both those who act and those who observe them. Fortune, which rules the world, thus wields some influence where we would be least willing to concede it: to some extent she directs our judgments of our own character and conduct, and those of others. That the world judges actions by their outcomes rather than their designs has been the complaint of every age and a great discouragement to virtue. Everyone agrees with the general principle that, because the outcome does not depend on the agent, it ought not to affect our judgment of the merit or propriety of his conduct. Yet when we consider particular cases, our feelings hardly ever conform exactly to the dictates of this fair principle. A fortunate or unfortunate outcome not only inclines us to judge the prudence of an action favorably or unfavorably; it nearly always intensifies our gratitude or resentment as well, and our sense of the design's merit or demerit.

Yet when nature planted the seeds of this irregularity in the human heart, she seems, as on every other occasion, to have intended the happiness and improvement of the species. If a harmful design or malevolent feeling alone could arouse resentment, we would feel the full fury of that passion toward anyone we suspected or believed to harbor such thoughts, even if they had never appeared in any act. Feelings, thoughts, and intentions would become punishable. If human indignation against them rose as high as it does against actions, if a base thought that had produced no action seemed as deserving of vengeance as a base deed, every court of law would become a true inquisition. Even the most innocent and cautious conduct would offer no safety. Bad wishes, bad aims, and bad designs might still be suspected; if they inspired the same indignation as bad conduct, if bad intentions met with as much resentment as bad actions, they would equally expose a person to punishment and hostility. The Author of nature has therefore made acts that cause real harm, or attempt to cause it and thereby make us immediately fear it, the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment. Feelings, designs, and affections—from which, according to cool reason, human actions derive all their merit or demerit—are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond every human jurisdiction and reserved for his own unerring tribunal. Thus the necessary rule of justice that people in this life may be punished only for their actions, not for their designs and intentions, rests on this wholesome and useful irregularity in our judgments of merit and demerit, however absurd and inexplicable it may seem at first. But every part of nature, closely examined, displays the providential care of its Author; even in human weakness and folly we may admire the wisdom and goodness of God.

Nor is it altogether useless that, through this irregularity, an unsuccessful attempt to help, and still more a mere inclination to kindness or a good wish, seems to possess incomplete merit. Human beings are made for action: by exercising their powers they are to improve the outward circumstances of themselves and others in ways that best promote the happiness of all. A person must not content himself with idle benevolence or imagine himself a friend of humanity merely because he wishes the world well in his heart. To call forth all the vigor of his soul and strain every nerve toward the ends his existence is meant to advance, nature has taught him that neither he nor humanity can be fully satisfied with his conduct, or give it their full applause, unless he actually achieves those ends. He knows that praise for good intentions, without the merit of helpful deeds, will do little to win either the world's loudest acclaim or the highest praise from himself. Someone who has never performed a single significant deed, however just, noble, and generous the feelings expressed in all his speech and conduct, has no claim to a very high reward, even if his lack of usefulness comes only from having had no opportunity to help. We may still refuse him such a reward without blame. We may ask him, “What have you done? What actual service can you show to entitle you to so great a reward? We esteem you and love you, but we owe you nothing.” To reward hidden virtue that has lacked only an opportunity to be useful, to give it honors and advancement that it may in some measure deserve but could not properly demand, is an act of the most godlike benevolence. To punish someone, by contrast, for feelings of the heart alone when no crime has been committed is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny. Benevolent feelings seem most praiseworthy when they do not wait until failing to act on them is almost a crime. Malevolent feelings, by contrast, can hardly be too late, too slow, or too deliberate in turning into action.

It is useful, too, that harm done without design should be regarded as a misfortune for its author as well as its victim. A person thereby learns to respect the happiness of his fellow human beings, to tremble lest he unknowingly do anything to hurt them, and to fear the instinctive resentment that he knows is ready to burst out against him if he should unwittingly become the unhappy instrument of their suffering.

Despite all these apparent irregularities of feeling, when a person unfortunately causes harm he never intended, or fails to bring about the good he intended, nature does not leave his innocence wholly without comfort or his virtue wholly without reward. He then calls to his aid the just and fair principle that events beyond our control ought not to lessen the esteem due to us. He musters all his magnanimity and firmness of spirit, and tries to see himself not as he now appears, but as he ought to appear: as he would have appeared had his generous plans succeeded, and as he would still appear in spite of their failure if human judgments were entirely candid and fair, or even perfectly consistent. The more candid and humane people fully sympathize with his effort to sustain his own opinion of himself. They summon all their generosity and strength of mind to correct this irregularity in their own nature, and strive to regard his unfortunate magnanimity as they would naturally have regarded it, without any such effort, if it had succeeded.

### Part III, Chapter I

Part III: On the foundation of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and conduct, and on the sense of duty. CONSISTING OF ONE SECTION.

On the consciousness of deserved praise or blame.

In the two preceding parts of this discourse, I have chiefly considered the origin and foundation of our judgments concerning the sentiments and conduct of others. I now turn to the origin of our judgments concerning our own.

The desire for the approval and esteem of those with whom we live, so important to our happiness, can be fully satisfied only if we make ourselves the just and proper objects of those sentiments, shaping our character and conduct according to the standards and rules by which esteem and approval are naturally given. It is not enough for esteem and approval to be given us somehow through ignorance or mistake. If we know that we do not deserve to be thought so well of, and that knowledge of the truth would bring very different sentiments, our satisfaction is far from complete. A man who applauds us for actions we did not perform, or for motives that played no part in our conduct, applauds someone else, not us. His praise can give us no satisfaction. It should mortify us more than any censure, continually reminding us of the most humbling thought of all: what we ought to be, but are not. A woman who uses makeup to conceal her ugliness could, one would imagine, take little vanity in compliments on her beauty. We would expect those compliments rather to remind her what feelings her real complexion would excite, and to mortify her all the more by contrast. To delight in such groundless applause is proof of the shallowest frivolity and weakness. It is what is properly called vanity, the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices: affectation and ordinary lying. If experience did not teach us how common these follies are, we might suppose that the faintest spark of common sense would protect us from them. The foolish liar who tries to win the admiration of company by recounting adventures that never happened, and the self-important fop who puts on airs of rank and distinction to which he knows he has no rightful claim, both undoubtedly enjoy the applause they imagine they receive. Yet their vanity springs from so gross an illusion of the imagination that it is hard to conceive how any rational creature could fall for it. When they put themselves in the place of those they think they have deceived, they are filled with the highest admiration for their own persons. They see themselves not as they know they ought to appear to their companions, but as they believe their companions actually see them. Their shallow weakness and petty folly keep them from ever looking inward, or seeing themselves from the contemptible point of view in which their own consciences should tell them they would appear to everyone if the truth became known.

Just as uninformed and groundless praise can yield no solid joy, no satisfaction that survives serious examination, so, conversely, it often brings real comfort to reflect that, even if no one actually praises us, our conduct has deserved praise, conforming in every respect to the standards and rules by which praise and approval are naturally and commonly given. We take pleasure not only in praise, but in having done what is praiseworthy. We take pleasure in thinking that we have made ourselves the natural objects of approval, even if no approval is ever actually expressed; and we are mortified to reflect that we have rightly incurred the blame of those with whom we live, even if they never actually express it against us. A man who knows that he has carefully followed those standards of conduct which experience tells him generally win favor reflects with satisfaction on the propriety of his own behavior. When he views it as the impartial spectator would view it, he fully sympathizes with every motive that influenced it. He looks back on every part with pleasure and approval; and even if mankind never learns what he has done, he regards himself less as they actually regard him than as they would regard him if they were better informed. He anticipates the applause and admiration they would then bestow on him, and applauds and admires himself through sympathy with sentiments that do not in fact arise, but are prevented from arising only by the public's ignorance. He knows that these are the natural and usual effects of such conduct; his imagination strongly associates them with it, and he has grown accustomed to conceiving them as something that naturally and properly ought to flow from it. Men have often willingly given up their lives to win a posthumous renown they could never enjoy. Meanwhile, their imagination anticipated the fame that would later be theirs. Applause they would never hear rang in their ears; thoughts of admiration whose effects they would never feel stirred in their hearts, banished the strongest of natural fears from their breasts, and carried them into deeds seemingly beyond the reach of human nature. But in reality, there is surely no great difference between approval bestowed only when we can no longer enjoy it and approval never bestowed at all, but certain to be bestowed if the world ever properly understood the true circumstances of our behavior. If the former often has such powerful effects, it is no wonder that the latter should always be held in high regard.

Conversely, for the man who has violated every standard of conduct that alone can make him agreeable to mankind, the fullest assurance that his deeds will forever be hidden from every human eye is of no use. When he looks back on what he has done, viewing it as the impartial spectator would, he finds he cannot sympathize with any of the motives that moved him. The thought of it leaves him abashed and confounded, and he necessarily feels a great measure of the shame to which he would be exposed if his actions became generally known. Here, too, his imagination anticipates the contempt and derision from which only the ignorance of those around him protects him. He still feels himself the natural object of these sentiments, and still trembles at the thought of what he would suffer if they were actually directed at him. But if his offense was not merely an impropriety that invites simple disapproval, but one of those enormous crimes that excite detestation and resentment, he could never think of it, so long as any feeling remained to him, without all the agony of horror and remorse. Even if he were sure that no one would ever learn of it, and could persuade himself that there was no God to avenge it, he would feel enough of both sentiments to embitter his whole life. He would still regard himself as the natural object of the hatred and indignation of all his fellow creatures; and unless repeated crimes had hardened his heart, he could not think without terror and astonishment even of how mankind would look at him, of the expressions on their faces and in their eyes, if the dreadful truth were ever known. These natural pangs of a terrified conscience are the demons, the avenging furies that haunt the guilty in this life, allowing them neither peace nor rest and often driving them to despair and distraction. No assurance of secrecy can protect them; no principles of irreligion can entirely free them. Nothing can release them but the vilest and most abject state of all: complete insensibility to honor and disgrace, to vice and virtue. Men of the most detestable character, who committed the most dreadful crimes with such cool calculation that they avoided even suspicion, have sometimes been driven by the horror of their condition to reveal of their own accord what no human ingenuity could ever have discovered. By confessing their guilt, submitting to the resentment of their offended fellow citizens, and thereby satisfying the vengeance of which they knew themselves to be the proper objects, they hoped through their deaths to reconcile themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural sentiments of mankind: to consider themselves less worthy of hatred and resentment, to atone in some measure for their crimes, and, if possible, to die at peace and with the forgiveness of all their fellow creatures. Compared with what they felt before their confession, even the thought of this, it seems, was happiness.

### Part III, Chapter II, 1

How our own judgments refer to what the judgments of others ought to be: and on the origin of general rules.

A great part, perhaps the greatest part, of human happiness and misery arises from looking back on our past conduct and from the degree of approval or disapproval we feel in considering it. But however such feelings affect us, they always have some hidden reference to what others feel, or would feel under certain conditions, or to what we imagine they ought to feel. We examine our conduct as we imagine an impartial spectator would examine it. If, putting ourselves in his place, we fully sympathize with every passion and motive that influenced it, we approve of it through sympathy with the approval of this imagined fair-minded judge. If not, we share his disapproval and condemn it.

If a human being could reach adulthood alone in some solitary place, without any contact with his own kind, he could no more think about his own character, the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, or the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than about the beauty or deformity of his own face. These are things he cannot easily see, does not naturally look at, and has no mirror to show him. Bring him into society and at once he has the mirror he lacked. It lies in the faces and behavior of those with whom he lives, which always show when they sympathize with his sentiments and when they disapprove of them. Here, for the first time, he sees the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and deformity of his own mind. For a man who had lived apart from society since birth, the objects of his passions, the things outside him that pleased or hurt him, would occupy all his attention. The passions themselves—the desires and aversions, joys and sorrows awakened by those objects—though more immediately present to him than anything else, would scarcely ever become objects of his thought. The idea of them would never interest him enough to command his careful attention. Thinking about his joy would stir no new joy in him, nor thinking about his sorrow any new sorrow, though thinking about the causes of these passions might often stir both. Bring him into society and all his own passions will immediately become causes of new passions. He will observe that people approve of some and are repelled by others. In one case he will be lifted up; in the other, cast down. His desires and aversions, his joys and sorrows, will often become causes of new desires and aversions, new joys and sorrows; hence they will now interest him deeply and often command his closest attention.

Our first ideas of personal beauty and deformity come from the shape and appearance of others, not ourselves. Yet we soon realize that others judge us by the same standard. We are pleased when they approve of our appearance and offended when they seem repelled. We become anxious to know how far our appearance deserves their blame or approval. We examine our bodies limb by limb and, standing before a mirror or using some such device, try as far as possible to see ourselves from a distance and through other people's eyes. If this examination leaves us satisfied with our appearance, we can more easily bear the least favorable judgments of others; if, on the contrary, we realize that we are natural objects of distaste, every sign of their disapproval mortifies us beyond measure. A reasonably handsome man will let you laugh at some slight irregularity in his appearance; for a man who is truly deformed, such jokes are usually unbearable. It is clear, however, that we care about our own beauty or deformity only because of its effect on others. Without any connection to society, we would be entirely indifferent to both.

In the same way, we first exercise moral judgment on the character and conduct of other people, and are quick to notice how each affects us. But we soon learn that others are just as forthright about our own character and conduct. We grow anxious to know how far we deserve their censure or applause, and whether to them we must indeed appear the agreeable or disagreeable creatures they say we are. Accordingly, we begin to examine our own passions and conduct and to consider how these must appear to them, by considering how they would appear to us in their place. We imagine ourselves as spectators of our own behavior and try to conceive what impression it would then make on us. This is the only mirror in which we can, to some extent, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct through the eyes of others. If this view pleases us, we are reasonably content. We can care less about their applause and, to some extent, disregard their censure, secure in the knowledge that, however misunderstood or misrepresented, we are the natural and proper objects of approval. If, on the other hand, our conduct displeases us, we are often all the more anxious to gain their approval for that very reason; and, unless we have already, as they say, made our peace with disgrace, the thought of their censure utterly distresses us, striking us with double force.

When I try to examine my own conduct, to pass judgment on it and approve or condemn it, I plainly divide myself, as it were, into two persons. I, the examiner and judge, play a different part from that other I whose conduct is examined and judged. The first is the spectator, whose feelings about my conduct I try to share by placing myself in his position and considering how that conduct would look to me from his particular point of view. The second is the agent, the person I properly call myself, whose conduct I was trying to judge in the character of a spectator. The first is the judge; the second, the accused. But it is as impossible for the judge to be in every respect identical with the accused as for the cause to be in every respect identical with the effect.

To be lovable and to have merit—that is, to deserve love and to deserve reward—are the great marks of virtue; to be hateful and deserving of punishment are those of vice. But all these qualities refer directly to the sentiments of others. Virtue is not called lovable or meritorious because it is the object of its own love or gratitude, but because it excites these sentiments in other people. Knowing that it is regarded with such favor is the source of the inward peace and satisfaction that naturally attend it, just as the suspicion of the opposite occasions the torments of vice. What happiness could be greater than being loved and knowing we deserve to be loved? What misery greater than being hated and knowing we deserve to be hated?

A man is considered a moral being because he is regarded as accountable. But an accountable being, as the word suggests, is one who must give an account of his actions to another and must therefore regulate them in a way that other approves. Man is accountable to God and to his fellow creatures. But though he is undoubtedly accountable chiefly to God, in the order of time he must necessarily think himself accountable to his fellow creatures before he can conceive of the Deity or of the rules by which that divine being will judge his conduct. Surely a child considers itself accountable to its parents, and is lifted up or cast down by thoughts of their deserved approval or disapproval, long before it conceives of its accountability to the Deity or of the rules by which that divine being will judge its conduct.

For the wisest reasons, the great judge of the world has seen fit to place a degree of obscurity and darkness between the feeble eye of human reason and the throne of his eternal justice. This does not wholly hide that great tribunal from mankind, but makes our impression of it faint and weak compared with what we might expect from an object of such grandeur and importance. If the infinite rewards and punishments the Almighty has prepared for those who obey or disobey his will were as plainly perceived as the trivial and fleeting responses we expect from one another, weak human nature, overwhelmed by the immensity of things so far beyond its comprehension, could no longer attend to the small affairs of this world. The business of society could never have been carried on had Providence revealed its intentions on this point more fully than it has. Yet so that men might never lack either a rule to guide their conduct or a judge with authority to enforce it, the Author of nature has made man the immediate judge of mankind. In this, as in many other respects, he has created man in his own image and appointed him his representative on earth to oversee the behavior of his brothers. Nature teaches them to acknowledge the power and jurisdiction thus conferred on him, and to tremble or rejoice as they imagine they have deserved his censure or his applause.

But whatever authority this lesser tribunal, ever before their eyes, may possess, if it should ever decide against the principles and rules Nature has established to govern its judgments, men feel that they may appeal its unjust decision to a higher tribunal, the tribunal established in their own breasts, to correct the injustice of this weak or partial judgment.

Nature has established certain principles to govern our judgments about the conduct of those with whom we live. So long as we decide by those principles, neither praising nor condemning anything that Nature has not made the proper object of praise or condemnation, nor praising or condemning it beyond the measure Nature warrants, our verdict is, so to speak, perfectly lawful and admits of neither reversal nor correction of any kind. The person we judge must necessarily approve of it himself. When he puts himself in our place, he cannot help seeing his conduct in the very same light in which we appear to see it. He knows that to us, and to every impartial spectator, he must necessarily appear the natural and proper object of the sentiments we express toward him. Those sentiments must therefore have their full effect on him: deserved applause, as it appears to him, must bring all the triumph of self-approval, and deserved condemnation, as he knows it to be, all the horrors of shame.

But things are otherwise if we have praised or condemned him contrary to the principles and rules Nature has established to guide our judgments in all such matters. If we praise or condemn him for something that, when he puts himself in our place, does not seem to him an object of praise or condemnation, he cannot share our sentiments. If he has any firmness or constancy, they affect him little: favorable judgment cannot greatly lift him up, nor unfavorable judgment greatly mortify him. The applause of the whole world avails little if our own conscience condemns us; and the disapproval of all mankind cannot crush us when the tribunal within our breast acquits us and our own mind tells us that mankind is mistaken.

Yet though this tribunal within the breast is thus the supreme arbiter of all our actions, though it can reverse the decisions of all mankind about our character and conduct and mortify us amid the world's applause or sustain us under its censure, if we investigate how it came to be established, we will find that its jurisdiction derives in great measure from the authority of that very tribunal whose decisions it so often and so rightly reverses.

When we first enter the world, our natural desire to please makes us accustomed to considering what behavior is likely to please each person with whom we deal: our parents, our teachers, our companions. We address ourselves to individuals, and for a while eagerly pursue the impossible and absurd aim of winning everyone's goodwill and approval. Experience soon teaches us, however, that such universal approval is altogether unattainable. As soon as we have more important interests to manage, we find that pleasing one person almost certainly offends another, and indulging an individual may often provoke a whole people. Even the fairest and most equitable conduct must often hinder the interests or frustrate the inclinations of particular people, who will seldom have the generosity to recognize the propriety of our motives or to see that our conduct, however disagreeable to them, is perfectly suited to our situation. To defend ourselves from such partial judgments, we soon learn to establish in our own minds a judge between ourselves and those with whom we live. We imagine acting before a person entirely fair-minded and equitable, with no special relationship to us or to those whose interests our conduct affects: neither a father, brother, nor friend to either side, but simply a human being in general, an impartial spectator who considers our conduct with the same detachment with which we consider that of others. If, when we put ourselves in the position of such a person, our actions appear pleasing to us, if we feel that such a spectator must sympathize with all the motives that influenced us, then whatever the world's judgments may be, we must still be pleased with our behavior and, despite our companions' censure, regard ourselves as the just and proper objects of approval.

### Part III, Chapter II, 2

Conversely, if the man within condemns us, the loudest cheers of mankind sound like nothing but the noise of ignorance and folly; and whenever we assume the role of that impartial judge, we cannot help seeing our own actions with distaste and dissatisfaction. The weak, the vain, and the frivolous may indeed be mortified by the most groundless censure or elated by the most absurd applause. Such people are not accustomed to consulting the judge within about the opinion they ought to form of their own conduct. This inhabitant of the breast, this abstract man, representative of mankind and deputy of the Deity, whom Nature has made supreme judge of all their actions, is seldom called upon by them. They content themselves with the decision of the lesser tribunal. The approval of their companions, of the particular people among whom they have lived and with whom they have talked, has generally been the final object of all their wishes. If they obtain it, their joy is complete; if not, they are utterly disappointed. They never think to appeal to the higher court. They have seldom asked for its decisions, and know nothing of the rules and forms of its procedure. When the world wrongs them, therefore, they cannot do justice to themselves and must consequently be slaves to the world. But it is otherwise with the man who has made a habit on every occasion of consulting the judge within and considering not what the world approves or disapproves, but what appears to this impartial spectator the natural and proper object of approval or disapproval. The judgment of this supreme arbiter of his conduct is the applause he has chiefly sought and the censure he has chiefly feared. Beside this final decision, the sentiments of all mankind, though not wholly irrelevant, seem of little moment; their favorable judgment cannot greatly exalt him, nor their most unfavorable judgment greatly depress him.

Only by consulting this judge within can we see anything concerning ourselves in its proper shape and proportions, or make any proper comparison between our own interests and those of other people.

To the bodily eye, objects appear large or small not so much in keeping with their actual size as with their nearness or distance. So it is with what might be called the natural eye of the mind; and we correct the defects of both organs in much the same way. Where I sit now, an immense landscape of lawns, woods, and distant mountains seems to fill no more than the little window beside which I write, and seems smaller out of all proportion than the room where I sit. I can compare those great objects fairly with the little things around me only by moving myself, at least in imagination, to another vantage point from which I can survey both from almost equal distances and so judge their true proportions. Habit and experience have taught me to do this so easily and readily that I scarcely notice myself doing it; and a man must know something of the science of vision to be fully convinced how small those distant objects would appear to the eye if imagination, knowing their real size, did not enlarge and expand them.

In the same way, to the selfish and original passions of human nature, the loss or gain of some very small interest of our own seems vastly more important, stirring far greater joy or sorrow and far more ardent desire or aversion, than the greatest concern of another person with whom we have no special connection. As long as we survey his interests from this position, they can never balance our own, can never restrain us from doing anything that advances our own, however ruinous to him. Before we can compare these opposed interests fairly, we must change our position. We must view them neither from our own place nor from his, neither through our eyes nor through his, but from the place and through the eyes of a third person with no special connection to either, who judges impartially between us. Here, too, habit and experience have taught us to do this so easily and readily that we scarcely notice ourselves doing it; and here, too, it takes some reflection, even philosophy, to convince us how little interest we would take in our neighbor's greatest concerns, how little anything affecting him would move us, if the sense of propriety and justice did not correct the otherwise natural inequality of our sentiments.

Suppose that the great empire of China, with its countless inhabitants, were suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake. Consider how a humane man in Europe, with no connection of any kind to that part of the world, would react on hearing news of this dreadful calamity. First, I imagine, he would express deep sorrow for that unhappy people's misfortune; he would reflect sadly on the fragility of human life and the futility of all human labor, which can thus be destroyed in an instant. If he were given to speculation, he might also reason at length about the effects of this disaster on the commerce of Europe and on the trade and business of the world generally. Then, once all this fine philosophy was finished, once these humane feelings had been duly expressed, he would go about his business or pleasure, his rest or amusement, with the same ease and tranquility as if nothing had happened. The most trifling disaster to himself would disturb him more profoundly. If he were to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep tonight; but as long as he had never seen them, he would sleep soundly through the ruin of a hundred millions of his brothers. The destruction of that immense multitude plainly seems to interest him less than this paltry misfortune of his own. Would a humane man, then, be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brothers, if he had never seen them, to prevent this paltry misfortune to himself? Human nature recoils in horror at the thought, and the world in all its depravity and corruption has never produced a villain capable of entertaining it. But what makes the difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and selfish, how can the principles on which we act so often be generous and noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by what concerns ourselves than by what concerns others, what prompts generous people on every occasion, and even mean people on many, to sacrifice their own interests for the greater interests of others? It is not the gentle power of humanity, not that feeble spark of benevolence that Nature has kindled in the human heart, that can resist the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forceful motive, that asserts itself on such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. Whenever we are about to act in a way that affects the happiness of others, he calls to us with a voice that can startle our most presumptuous passions: we are only one among multitudes, no better in any respect than anyone else; if we so shamefully and blindly put ourselves first, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and condemnation. From him alone we learn how little we and the things concerning us truly are; only the eye of this impartial spectator can correct the natural distortions of self-love. He shows us the propriety of generosity and the ugliness of injustice; the propriety of surrendering even our greatest interests for still greater interests of others, and the ugliness of doing even the slightest injury to another for the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not love of our neighbor, not love of mankind, that on many occasions prompts us to practice those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, that generally prevails on such occasions: love of what is honorable and noble, of the grandeur, dignity, and excellence of our own characters.

When the happiness or misery of others depends in any way on our conduct, we dare not, as self-love would have us do, prefer some small interest of our own to our neighbor's greater interest. We feel that we would become the proper objects of our brothers' resentment and indignation; and the sense that such a preference is improper is strengthened and enlivened by the still stronger sense of the demerit of the action to which it would then lead. But when the happiness or misery of others does not depend on our conduct at all, when our interests are wholly separate and detached from theirs, with neither connection nor competition between them, the sense of demerit does not intervene. Then the mere sense of impropriety can seldom restrain us from giving ourselves over to our natural anxiety about our own affairs and our natural indifference to those of others. The most ordinary education teaches us to act, on all important occasions, with some measure of impartiality between ourselves and others; even ordinary dealings in the world can bring the principles on which we act into some degree of propriety. But only the most elaborate and refined education claims to correct the inequalities of our passive feelings; for that purpose we must turn to the sternest as well as the deepest philosophy.

Two different groups of philosophers have tried to teach us this hardest of all moral lessons. One has worked to increase our sensitivity to the interests of others; the other to decrease our sensitivity 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 continually reproach us for our happiness while so many of our brothers are in misery,[6] who consider the natural joy of prosperity impious if it does not think of the many unfortunate people who at every moment labor under every sort of calamity: the exhaustion of poverty, the agony of disease, the horrors of death, the insults and oppression of their enemies. Sympathy for miseries we have never seen or heard of, but which we may be sure afflict so many of our fellow creatures at all times, ought, they think, to damp the pleasures of the fortunate and make a certain melancholy dejection habitual to everyone. But first, such extreme sympathy with misfortunes of which we know nothing seems altogether absurd and unreasonable. Take the whole earth on average: for one person suffering pain or misery, you will find twenty in prosperity and joy, or at least in tolerable circumstances. Surely there is no reason why we should weep with the one rather than rejoice with the twenty. Besides, this artificial compassion is not only absurd but seems wholly unattainable; those who pretend to it commonly display nothing but a certain hypocritical sadness, which, without touching the heart, merely gives the face and conversation an offensively dismal and disagreeable air. Last, even if this disposition could be attained, it would be utterly useless and would serve no purpose but to make its possessor miserable. Whatever interest we take in the fortunes of people we do not know, who have no connection to us and lie entirely beyond the reach of our actions, can cause us only anxiety without benefiting them in any way. Why should we trouble ourselves about the world on the moon? All people, even those farthest away, undoubtedly deserve our good wishes, and we naturally give them those wishes. But if they are unfortunate nonetheless, it does not seem part of our duty to distress ourselves over it. That we should therefore take little interest in the fortunes of those whom we can neither help nor harm, and who are in every respect so far removed from us, seems a wise provision of nature; and even if we could alter our original constitution in this respect, we would gain nothing by doing so.

Footnote 6:

See Thomson’s Seasons, Winter:

“Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,” etc.

See also Pascal.

Among the moralists who try to correct the natural inequality of our passive feelings by lessening our sensitivity to what concerns us personally, we may count all the ancient schools of philosophy, but especially the ancient Stoics. According to the Stoics, a man should regard himself not as something separate and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature. He ought always to be willing to sacrifice his own small interest for the interest of this great community. What concerns him personally should affect him no more than what concerns any other equally important part of this immense system. We should view ourselves not as our selfish passions tend to portray us, but as any other citizen of the world would view us. We should regard what happens to ourselves as we regard what happens to our neighbor or, what amounts to the same thing, as our neighbor regards what happens to us. “When our neighbor,” says Epictetus, “loses his wife or his son, everyone recognizes that this is a human calamity, a natural event in the ordinary course of things; but when the same thing happens to ourselves, we cry out as though we had suffered the most dreadful misfortune. We ought, however, to recall how we felt when it happened to someone else, and we ought to be in our own case what we were in his.” However hard it may be to attain this supreme degree of courage and steadiness, it is by no means absurd or useless to attempt it. Though few people hold the Stoic conception of what this perfect propriety requires, everyone tries in some measure to command themselves and bring their selfish passions down to a level with which their neighbor can sympathize. Nothing can do this so effectively as viewing whatever happens to us in the light in which our neighbors tend to view it. In this respect Stoic philosophy does little more than articulate our natural ideas of perfection. There is therefore nothing absurd or improper in striving for this perfect self-command. Nor would attaining it be useless; on the contrary, it would be the most advantageous of all things, resting our happiness on the firmest and surest foundation: steadfast trust in the wisdom and justice that govern the world, and complete surrender of ourselves and all that concerns us to the all-wise direction of this governing principle in nature.

### Part III, Chapter II, 3

It seldom happens, however, that we can bring our passive feelings into such perfect propriety. We allow ourselves, and even the world allows us, some irregularity in this respect. Though we may feel too much about our own concerns and too little about other people's, we are readily forgiven if we always act impartially between ourselves and others, never sacrificing a great interest of theirs to a small interest of our own. It would be well if those who wish to do their duty could always maintain even this degree of impartiality. But they are very far from doing so. Even in good people, the judge within is often in danger of corruption by the violence and injustice of selfish passions; it is often induced to give an account quite different from the one the actual circumstances warrant.

There are two occasions on which we examine our conduct and try to see it as the impartial spectator would: first, when we are about to act, and second, after we have acted. Our view is partial in both cases, but most partial when it matters most that it should not be.

When we are about to act, the urgency of passion seldom lets us consider what we are doing with the candor of a disinterested person. The violent emotions then stirring us color our view, even when we try to put ourselves in another's place and see the objects that concern us as they would naturally appear to him. The fury of our passions continually draws us back to our own position, where self-love magnifies and distorts everything. We catch, if I may put it this way, only fleeting glimpses of how those objects would appear to someone else and how he would judge them; they vanish at once, and even while they last are not entirely accurate. We cannot, even for that instant, wholly set aside the heat and intensity our particular situation inspires, or consider what we are about to do with a fair judge's complete impartiality. For this reason, as Father Malebranche says, the passions all justify themselves: as long as we feel them, they appear reasonable and proportionate to their objects.

Once the action is over, however, and the passions that prompted it have subsided, we can more calmly enter into the feelings of a disinterested spectator. What formerly absorbed us has become almost as indifferent to us as it always was to him; we can now examine our conduct with his candor and impartiality. But our judgments now count for little compared with what they would have counted before. Even at their most severely impartial they commonly bring nothing but futile regret and ineffectual repentance, without protecting us from similar errors in the future. Yet they are seldom entirely candid even now. Our opinion of our own character depends wholly on our judgment of our past conduct. Thinking badly of ourselves is so unpleasant that we often deliberately turn our eyes from circumstances that might make that judgment unfavorable. They say a surgeon is bold if his hand does not tremble while operating on himself. Someone who does not hesitate to lift the mysterious veil of self-deception that hides the deformities of his conduct from him is often just as bold. Rather than see our behavior in so disagreeable a light, we too often foolishly and weakly try to inflame again the unjust passions that misled us before. By contrivance we seek to revive old hatreds and rekindle resentments almost forgotten. We exert ourselves toward this miserable end and persist in injustice merely because we were once unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see it.

So partial are people's views of the propriety of their own conduct, both during the act and afterward, and so difficult is it for them to see it as a disinterested spectator would. But suppose they judged their conduct by a special faculty such as the supposed moral sense: a distinct power of perception that discerns the beauty or deformity of passions and affections. Their own passions would then lie more immediately before that faculty, and it would judge them more accurately than the passions of others, which it could only see from a distance.

This self-deception, this fatal human weakness, is the source of half the troubles in human life. If we saw ourselves as others see us, or as they would see us if they knew everything, reform would usually be unavoidable. We could not otherwise bear the sight.

Nature, however, has not left this consequential weakness wholly without a remedy or abandoned us entirely to the illusions of self-love. Our constant observation of other people's conduct leads us, without our noticing it, to form general rules about what is proper to do or avoid. Some actions shock all our natural feelings. We hear everyone around us express the same abhorrence of them. This confirms and even intensifies our natural sense of their ugliness. Seeing others regard them as we do assures us that we see them rightly. We resolve never to commit anything similar or, on any account, make ourselves the objects of universal disapproval. We thus naturally establish a general rule for ourselves: avoid actions that tend to make us hated, despised, or liable to punishment, objects of precisely the feelings we most dread. Other actions, by contrast, draw our approval, and we hear everyone around us speak of them with the same favor. Everyone is eager to honor and reward them. They stir the feelings we most naturally desire: the love, gratitude, and admiration of humankind. We become eager to do likewise, and naturally establish another kind of rule for ourselves: seek out every opportunity to act in this way.

That is how general rules of morality are formed. Their ultimate foundation is our experience of what our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve or disapprove in particular cases. We do not first approve or condemn particular actions because, on examination, they agree or conflict with some general rule. Rather, the general rule is formed when experience shows us that actions of a certain kind, or actions occurring under certain circumstances, meet with approval or disapproval. Consider someone seeing for the first time an inhuman murder committed out of greed, envy, or unjust resentment, against a person who loved and trusted the murderer. He sees the dying person's final agonies and hears him, with his last breath, lament his false friend's treachery and ingratitude even more than the violence done to him. To recognize the horror of this action, he need not first reflect that a most sacred rule of conduct forbids taking an innocent person's life, and that the act therefore violates the rule and deserves great blame. Plainly, his abhorrence of the crime would arise immediately, before he had formed any such general rule. Any general rule he might subsequently form would instead rest on the abhorrence that necessarily arose in him at the thought of this action and every other particular action of its kind.

When we read an account of generous or base actions in a history or a romance, neither our admiration for the former nor our contempt for the latter comes from reflecting on general rules declaring all actions of one kind admirable and all of the other kind contemptible. Those general rules are instead formed from our experience of the effects that different kinds of action naturally have upon us.

A lovable action, a respectable action, and a horrific action are each actions that naturally inspire love, respect, or horror in a spectator toward the person who performs them. General rules determining which actions are and are not objects of these feelings can only be formed by observing which actions actually inspire them.

Once these general rules have been formed and established by the agreement of human feeling, we often appeal to them as standards of judgment when debating how much praise or blame complicated and doubtful actions deserve. On such occasions they are commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of justice and injustice in human conduct. This fact seems to have misled several very eminent authors into arranging their systems as though they believed that people's original judgments of right and wrong were formed like the decisions of a court: first by considering the general rule, and then by deciding whether the particular action at issue properly falls within it.

Once habitual reflection has fixed those general rules of conduct in our minds, they are of great use in correcting self-love's distorted account of what is proper in our own situation. A man in a rage, if he followed the dictates of his resentment, might regard his enemy's death as scant compensation for a wrong he imagines he has suffered, though it may amount to no more than a slight provocation. But observing other people's conduct has taught him how horrible such bloody revenge appears. Unless his education has been very unusual, he has established an inviolable rule for himself to refrain from it in every circumstance. The rule retains its authority over him and prevents him from committing such violence. Yet his temper may be so furious that, if this were his first encounter with such an action, he would certainly pronounce it entirely just and proper, something every impartial spectator would approve. But respect for the rule, impressed upon him by past experience, checks the rush of passion and helps correct the excessively partial view that self-love would otherwise suggest of what is proper in his situation. Even if passion carries him so far that he violates the rule, he cannot wholly cast off his accustomed awe and respect for it. At the very moment of action, when passion rises highest, he hesitates and trembles at the thought of what he is about to do. Secretly he knows he is breaking the standards of conduct that in his calmer hours he had resolved never to breach, whose breach in others he had never witnessed without the deepest disapproval, and whose breach by himself, he foresees, must soon make him the object of the same painful feelings. Before he can make the final, fatal decision, he suffers every agony of doubt and uncertainty: terrified of violating so sacred a rule, yet driven and goaded by the fury of his desires to violate it. His purpose changes every moment. At times he resolves to stand by his principle and not indulge a passion that might poison the rest of his life with shame and repentance. The prospect of the security and tranquility he will enjoy by choosing not to risk the opposite course brings a moment's calm to his heart. But passion immediately reawakens and drives him, with renewed fury, toward the deed he had just resolved to avoid. Worn out and distracted by this ceaseless wavering, he finally takes the fatal and irreversible step in a kind of despair, with the terror and bewilderment of someone who, fleeing an enemy, leaps over a precipice where destruction is more certain than anything pursuing him. Such are his feelings even as he acts, though he is undoubtedly less aware then of his conduct's impropriety than he will be afterward. Once his passion has been satisfied and spent, he begins to see what he has done as others are likely to see it, and actually feels what he could previously foresee only imperfectly: the stings of remorse and repentance beginning to disturb and torment him.

### Part III, Chapter III, 1

On the influence and authority of the general rules of morality, and why they are rightly regarded as the laws of the Deity.

Respect for these general rules of conduct is properly called a sense of duty: a principle of the greatest consequence in human life, and the only one by which most people are capable of directing their actions. Many people behave quite decently and avoid any considerable blame throughout their lives without perhaps ever feeling the sentiment whose propriety grounds our approval of their conduct. They act simply out of regard for what they know to be the established rules of behavior. Someone who has received great benefits from another may, owing to a naturally cold disposition, feel very little gratitude. If he has been brought up to be virtuous, however, he will often have been shown how hateful actions that betray a lack of gratitude appear, and how lovable their opposites are. Though his heart feels no warmth of gratitude, he will strive to act as though it did, offering his benefactor all the consideration and attention the liveliest gratitude could inspire. He will visit regularly, behave respectfully, and speak of him only with the highest esteem and with acknowledgment of all he owes him. More than that, he will carefully seize every opportunity to make a proper return for past services. He may do all this without hypocrisy or blameworthy pretense, without a selfish intention to obtain further favors, and without any design to deceive either his benefactor or the public. His only motive may be reverence for the established rule of duty, a serious and earnest desire to act in every respect according to the law of gratitude. Likewise, a wife may sometimes lack the tender regard for her husband appropriate to their relationship. If she has been brought up to be virtuous, however, she will try to act as though she felt it: caring, attentive, faithful, and sincere, neglecting none of the attentions that marital affection would have led her to show. Such a friend and such a wife are certainly not the very best of their kinds. Even if they earnestly desire to fulfill every part of their duty, they will overlook many delicate considerations and miss many chances to oblige that they could not have overlooked had they felt the affection proper to their situation. Though not the finest of their kinds, they may be the next best; and if regard for general rules of conduct is deeply impressed upon them, neither will neglect any essential duty. Only those of the happiest nature can adapt their feelings and behavior with exact precision to the smallest difference in circumstances, and act on every occasion with the most delicate and accurate propriety. The coarse clay of which most people are made cannot be fashioned to such perfection. Yet almost anyone can, by discipline, education, and example, be taught such respect for general rules that they act with reasonable decency on nearly every occasion and avoid any considerable blame throughout life.

Without this sacred regard for general rules, nobody's conduct can be much relied upon. It makes the most essential difference between a person of principle and honor and a worthless one. The former holds steadily and resolutely to his maxims on every occasion and maintains a consistent course throughout his life. The latter behaves inconsistently and haphazardly, as mood, inclination, or interest happens to prevail. Indeed, everyone is subject to such changes of mood that, without this principle, even a person who in his calmer hours has the keenest sense of proper conduct might often act absurdly on the most trivial occasions, when scarcely any serious motive for such behavior could be found. Your friend comes to visit when you happen to be in a mood that makes his arrival unwelcome. In that mood, his courtesy is apt to look like an intrusive impertinence; and if you yielded to your present impression, you would treat him coldly and contemptuously, courteous though you normally are. Nothing prevents you from being so rude but your respect for the general rules of courtesy and hospitality, which forbid it. The habitual reverence that past experience has taught you for these rules enables you to act with nearly the same propriety on every such occasion and keeps the fluctuations of temper to which we are all subject from markedly affecting your conduct. But if, without respect for general rules, we would so frequently violate even the duties of politeness—duties so easy to observe and so seldom opposed by serious motives—what would become of the duties of justice, truth, chastity, and fidelity, which are often so hard to observe and which so many powerful motives may tempt us to violate? The very existence of human society depends on reasonable observance of these duties. Society would crumble away if people were not generally imbued with reverence for these important rules of conduct.

This reverence is further strengthened by a belief first impressed upon us by nature and later confirmed by reasoning and philosophy: these important moral rules are the commands and laws of the Deity, who will ultimately reward those who obey their duty and punish those who transgress it.

This belief or apprehension, I say, appears first to be impressed upon us by nature. People naturally attribute all their own feelings and passions to the mysterious beings, whatever they may be, that happen to be objects of religious fear in their country. They have no others, and can imagine no others, to attribute to them. The unseen intelligences they imagine must necessarily bear some resemblance to the intelligences they know from experience. In the ignorance and darkness of pagan superstition, people seem to have conceived their divinities with so little refinement that they indiscriminately attributed to them every human passion, including those least creditable to our species: lust, hunger, greed, envy, and revenge. They could hardly fail, then, to attribute to these beings—whose superior nature they nevertheless admired so deeply—the feelings and qualities that most adorn humanity and seem to raise it toward divine perfection: love of virtue and beneficence, and abhorrence of vice and injustice. The injured man called upon Jupiter to witness the wrong done to him, and could not doubt that the god would view it with the same indignation felt by the humblest person witnessing an injustice. The wrongdoer felt himself the rightful object of human abhorrence and resentment, and his natural fears led him to ascribe those same feelings to the awe-inspiring beings whose presence he could not escape and whose power he could not resist. These natural hopes, fears, and suspicions spread through sympathy and were confirmed by education; the gods were everywhere represented and believed to reward humanity and mercy and avenge treachery and injustice. Thus religion, even in its crudest form, gave authority to the rules of morality long before the age of elaborate reasoning and philosophy. The happiness of humanity depended too much on religion's terrors thus reinforcing the natural sense of duty for nature to leave that reinforcement to the slow and uncertain progress of philosophical inquiry.

When philosophical inquiries did arise, however, they confirmed these original intimations of nature. Whatever the foundation of our moral faculties may be—some form of reason, an original instinct called a moral sense, or another principle of our nature—there can be no doubt that they were given to guide our conduct in this life. They bear unmistakable signs of this authority: they were established within us as supreme arbiters of all our actions, to oversee all our senses, passions, and appetites, and judge how far each should be indulged or restrained. Contrary to what some have claimed, our moral faculties are by no means on the same level in this respect as our other faculties and appetites, with no greater right to restrain the latter than the latter have to restrain them. No other faculty or motive judges another. Love does not judge resentment, nor resentment love. Though opposed, these passions cannot properly be said to approve or disapprove of one another. The particular office of the faculties we are now considering, by contrast, is to judge all the other principles of our nature and to censure or applaud them. We may regard these faculties as senses whose objects are those principles. Each sense has supreme authority over its own objects. There is no appeal from the eye about the beauty of colors, the ear about the harmony of sounds, or the palate about the pleasantness of flavors. Each sense gives the final judgment on its objects. Whatever pleases the palate is sweet; whatever pleases the eye is beautiful; whatever soothes the ear is harmonious. The very essence of each quality lies in its fitness to please the sense to which it speaks. In the same way, it belongs to our moral faculties to determine when the ear should be soothed, when the eye should be indulged, when the palate should be gratified, and when and how far every other principle of our nature should be indulged or restrained. What pleases our moral faculties is fit, right, and proper to do; its opposite is wrong, unfit, and improper. The feelings they approve are graceful, and those they reject unbecoming. Indeed, the words right, wrong, fit, improper, graceful, and unbecoming mean only what pleases or displeases these faculties.

Since these faculties were plainly intended to govern human nature, the rules they prescribe must be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, proclaimed by the deputies he has set within us. General rules of every kind are commonly called laws: thus the general rules governing how bodies transmit motion are called the laws of motion. But the general rules our moral faculties follow in approving or condemning feelings and actions they examine can with much greater justice be called laws. They bear a far closer likeness to laws in the proper sense: the general rules a sovereign lays down to direct the conduct of his subjects. Like those laws, they direct the free actions of human beings; they are certainly prescribed by a lawful superior and backed by rewards and punishments. These deputies of God within us never fail to punish disobedience with the torments of inward shame and self-condemnation, or to reward obedience with tranquility of mind, contentment, and self-satisfaction.

Countless other considerations support the same conclusion. The happiness of humankind and all other rational creatures seems to have been the original purpose of the Author of nature in bringing them into existence. No other end seems worthy of the supreme wisdom and divine goodness we necessarily ascribe to him. This conviction, reached by considering his infinite perfections in the abstract, is further confirmed by examining the works of nature, which all seem designed to promote happiness and guard against misery. By acting as our moral faculties direct, we necessarily pursue the most effective means of advancing human happiness. In this sense we may be said to cooperate with the Deity and, as far as we can, advance the plan of Providence. By acting otherwise, we seem to obstruct to some extent the design the Author of nature established for the world's happiness and perfection, declaring ourselves, if I may put it this way, in some measure God's enemies. Thus we are naturally encouraged to hope for his special favor and reward in the one case and to fear his vengeance and punishment in the other.

### Part III, Chapter III, 2

There are many other reasons, too, and many other natural principles, all tending to confirm and impress upon us the same beneficial doctrine. Consider the general rules by which outward prosperity and adversity are ordinarily distributed in this life. Despite the disorder in which everything in the world seems to stand, even here every virtue naturally meets its fitting reward—the recompense best suited to encourage and promote it—with such certainty that only an extraordinary combination of circumstances can wholly prevent it. What reward best encourages industry, prudence, and care? Success in every kind of enterprise. Is it possible for these virtues to fail to achieve success over a whole lifetime? Wealth and outward honors are their proper reward, which they can seldom fail to acquire. What reward best encourages truth, justice, and humanity? The trust, esteem, and love of those among whom we live. Humanity seeks not greatness but love. Truth and justice delight not in riches but in being trusted and believed, rewards those virtues must almost always obtain. Through some exceptionally unfortunate circumstance, a good man may be suspected of a crime he was wholly incapable of committing, and unjustly exposed for the rest of his life to the horror and aversion of humankind. Such a misfortune may cost him everything, despite his integrity and justice, just as an earthquake or flood may ruin a cautious man despite his utmost care. Accidents of the former kind, however, are perhaps rarer still and still more contrary to the usual course of events than those of the latter. It remains true that practicing truth, justice, and humanity is a sure and almost infallible means of gaining what those virtues chiefly seek: the trust and love of those we live with. One particular action of a person can very easily be misrepresented; the general course of his conduct scarcely can. An innocent man may be believed guilty of wrongdoing, but this will rarely happen. Indeed, an established belief in his blameless character will often lead us to acquit him when he really is at fault, despite strong evidence against him. In the same way, a scoundrel may escape censure or even be applauded for some particular act of dishonesty whose true nature is misunderstood. But no one has ever been habitually dishonest without becoming almost universally known as such, and without even being frequently suspected of guilt when he is in fact wholly innocent. So far as vice and virtue can be punished or rewarded by human feelings and opinions, then, in the ordinary course of things they receive, even in this life, something more than exact and impartial justice.

Yet although the general rules by which prosperity and adversity are ordinarily allotted seem, when viewed coolly and philosophically, perfectly suited to our situation in this life, they by no means satisfy some of our natural feelings. Our natural love and admiration for certain virtues is so strong that we wish to lavish every kind of honor and reward on them, including rewards we must acknowledge to be proper to other qualities that do not always accompany those virtues. Our abhorrence of certain vices, conversely, makes us wish to heap every kind of disgrace and misfortune upon them, including consequences that naturally attend entirely different qualities. Greatness of soul, generosity, and justice command such admiration that we wish to see them crowned with wealth, power, and every kind of honor—the natural fruits of prudence, industry, and diligence, qualities not inseparably bound to those virtues. Fraud, falsehood, brutality, and violence, on the other hand, stir such contempt and abhorrence in every human heart that we are indignant when they enjoy advantages they may in a sense have earned through the diligence and industry sometimes accompanying them. The industrious scoundrel cultivates the soil; the idle good man leaves it untilled. Who should reap the harvest? Who should starve and who should live in plenty? The natural course of things decides for the scoundrel; the natural feelings of humankind decide for the virtuous man. We judge that the former's good qualities are rewarded far beyond their worth by the advantages they tend to bring him, and that the latter's failings are punished far too harshly by the distress they naturally produce. Human laws, born of human feeling, accordingly confiscate the life and estate of the industrious and cautious traitor, while giving exceptional rewards to the fidelity and public spirit of the careless good citizen who failed to provide for himself. Thus nature directs humanity to correct, to a degree, the distribution she would otherwise make herself. The rules she prompts us to follow for this purpose differ from those she follows. To every virtue and vice she assigns precisely the reward or punishment best designed to encourage the one or check the other. Guided by this consideration alone, she pays little regard to the different degrees of merit and demerit they may seem to have in human feeling and passion. We, by contrast, attend to these degrees alone and would try to make the condition of each virtue exactly match the love and esteem, and that of each vice exactly match the contempt and abhorrence, we feel for it. Her rules are fit for her and ours for us; yet both serve the same great end: the order of the world and the perfection and happiness of human nature.

Yet even as people work to alter the distribution that natural events would bring about if left alone—even as, like the gods of the poets, they constantly intervene by extraordinary means for virtue and against vice, seeking to turn aside the arrow aimed at the righteous person's head and speed the sword of destruction raised against the wicked—they are far from able to make the fortunes of either fully accord with their feelings and wishes. The natural course of things cannot be entirely controlled by our feeble efforts. Its current runs too fast and strong for us to stop, and although the rules directing it appear established for the wisest and best purposes, they sometimes have results that shock all our natural feelings. That a large alliance should prevail over a small one; that those who embark on an enterprise with foresight and every necessary preparation should prevail over opponents who have made none; and that every end should be achieved only by the means nature has established for achieving it: all this seems not merely necessary and inevitable, but useful and fitting for stirring human industry and attentiveness. Yet when this rule allows violence and cunning to prevail over sincerity and justice, what indignation rises in every humane spectator's heart! What sorrow and compassion for the innocent who suffer, and what furious resentment at the oppressor's success! We grieve and rage at the wrong alike, yet often find ourselves utterly powerless to set it right. When we despair of finding any power on earth to halt the triumph of injustice, we naturally appeal to Heaven. We hope that the great Author of our nature will himself accomplish hereafter what all the principles he gave us to direct our conduct urge us to attempt here; that he will complete the plan he has taught us to begin; and that in a life to come he will repay everyone according to the deeds done in this world. Thus belief in a future state springs not only from human weakness, hope, and fear, but from the noblest and best principles of our nature: love of virtue and abhorrence of vice and injustice.

“Is it worthy of God's greatness,” asks the eloquent and philosophical bishop of Clermont, with an impassioned and extravagant force of imagination that sometimes seems to exceed the bounds of good taste, “to leave the world he created in such universal disorder? To see the wicked almost always prevail over the just; the innocent dethroned by usurpers; a father made the victim of an unnatural son's ambition; a husband dying under the blow of a barbarous and faithless wife? Should God, from the height of his greatness, watch these mournful events as a fantastic amusement, taking no part in them? Because he is great, should he be weak, unjust, or barbarous? Because human beings are small, should they be allowed either to lead dissolute lives without punishment or to be virtuous without reward? O God! If this is the character of your Supreme Being, if it is you we worship under such dreadful ideas, I can no longer acknowledge you as my father, my protector, the comforter of my grief, the support of my weakness, the rewarder of my fidelity. You would be nothing but an idle and capricious tyrant, sacrificing humankind to his insolent vanity, bringing people out of nothing only to make them the playthings of his leisure and whim.”

When the general rules determining the merit and demerit of actions are thus regarded as the laws of an all-powerful Being who watches over our conduct and who will reward obedience and punish transgression in a life to come, they necessarily take on a new sacredness. No one who believes in the Deity's existence can doubt that regard for his will ought to be the supreme rule of our conduct. The very thought of disobeying him seems to involve the most shocking impropriety. How vain and absurd for us to resist or neglect commands laid upon us by infinite wisdom and infinite power! How unnatural and impiously ungrateful not to revere the precepts of our Creator's infinite goodness, even if violating them brought no punishment! Here the sense of propriety is also reinforced by the strongest motives of self-interest. We may escape human notice or stand beyond the reach of human punishment, but the thought that we always act under God's eye and remain exposed to the punishment of that great avenger of injustice can restrain even the most unruly passions, at least in those who have made that thought familiar through constant reflection.

This is how religion reinforces the natural sense of duty, and why people are generally disposed to place great trust in the integrity of those who appear deeply impressed by religious feeling. They suppose such people are bound by an additional tie besides those governing everyone else. They assume that concern for the propriety of one's actions and for one's reputation, for the approval of one's own heart and for that of others, influence a religious person just as they influence a worldly one. But the religious person faces another restraint and never acts deliberately except as though in the presence of the great Superior who will finally reward him according to his deeds. People therefore place greater trust in the regularity and exactness of his conduct. And wherever the natural principles of religion have not been corrupted by the factional zeal of some worthless clique; wherever religion demands first that we fulfill all our moral obligations; wherever people are not taught to treat trivial observances as more urgent religious duties than acts of justice and beneficence, or to imagine that sacrifices, ceremonies, and empty prayers can buy the Deity's consent to fraud, treachery, and violence—the world is undoubtedly right to judge in this way, and rightly places twice the trust in the upright conduct of a religious person.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 1

When the sense of duty should be the sole principle of our conduct, and when it should act alongside other motives.

Religion offers such strong motives for practicing virtue, and such powerful safeguards against the temptations of vice, that many have come to suppose religious principles are the only praiseworthy motives for action. We should neither reward from gratitude nor punish from resentment, they have said; neither protect our helpless children nor support our frail parents from natural affection. Every affection for a particular person should be extinguished in our hearts, replaced by one great affection: love of God, the desire to please him and to direct every aspect of our conduct according to his will. We should not be grateful out of gratitude, charitable out of humanity, public-spirited out of love for our country, or generous and just out of love for humankind. The sole principle and motive in fulfilling all these different duties should be the knowledge that God has commanded us to fulfill them. I will not stop here to examine this view in detail; I will only observe that we would hardly expect to find it embraced by any sect professing a religion whose first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength, and whose second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Surely we love ourselves for our own sake, not merely because we are commanded to. Christianity nowhere prescribes that duty must be the sole principle of our conduct; it does prescribe that duty must govern and rule it, as philosophy and indeed common sense also advise. It remains a question, however, in which cases our actions should spring chiefly or wholly from duty or regard for general rules, and in which cases another feeling or affection should participate and exercise the leading influence.

The answer to this question, which perhaps cannot be given with great precision, depends on two circumstances: first, the natural attractiveness or ugliness of the feeling or affection that would prompt an action apart from any regard for general rules; and second, the precision and exactness, or looseness and uncertainty, of the general rules themselves.

I. First, how far our actions should spring from the affection itself, and how far entirely from regard for the general rule, depends on the affection's natural attractiveness or ugliness.

All the graceful and admirable actions that benevolent affections would prompt should spring as much from the affections themselves as from regard for general rules of conduct. A benefactor considers himself poorly repaid if the recipient of his kindness repays him merely from a cold sense of duty, with no affection for him. A husband is dissatisfied even with the most obedient wife if he believes her conduct is animated by nothing beyond regard for what her position requires. A son may fulfill every filial duty, but if he lacks the affectionate reverence so fitting for him to feel, his parent may rightly complain of his indifference. Nor could a son be fully satisfied with a parent who performed every duty of a parent but showed none of the paternal tenderness one might expect. With all such benevolent and social affections, we are pleased to see duty employed to restrain rather than enliven them, to keep us from doing too much rather than spur us to do what we ought. We take pleasure in seeing a father obliged to check his tenderness, a friend to limit his natural generosity, and someone who has received a kindness to restrain the overardent gratitude of his own disposition.

The opposite maxim applies to hostile and antisocial passions. We should reward freely from the gratitude and generosity of our hearts, without reluctance or the need to reflect on how proper it is to reward; but we should always punish reluctantly, moved more by the propriety of punishment than by any savage urge for revenge. Nothing is more graceful than the conduct of a person who appears to resent even the gravest injuries more because they deserve resentment and are its proper objects than because he feels the fury of that unpleasant passion; who, like a judge, considers only the general rule determining what retribution each particular offense deserves; who, in carrying out that rule, feels less for what he himself has suffered than for what the offender is about to suffer; who remembers mercy even in anger, and is disposed to interpret the rule as gently and favorably as possible, allowing every mitigating circumstance that the most candid humanity can admit without sacrificing good sense.

As observed earlier, selfish passions occupy a kind of middle ground between social and antisocial affections; so they do here as well. In ordinary, minor matters, the pursuit of private interest should proceed more from regard for the general rules prescribing such conduct than from passion for the objects themselves. On more important and extraordinary occasions, however, we would seem awkward, insipid, and ungraceful if those objects did not stir considerable passion in us. To fret or scheme over gaining or saving a single shilling would lower even the most humble tradesman in his neighbors' opinion. However modest his circumstances, he must not appear to concern himself with such trifles for their own sake. His circumstances may demand the strictest economy and most scrupulous diligence, but each particular effort should arise less from concern for that particular saving or gain than from the general rule that prescribes such a rigorous course of life for him. His thrift today must not arise from a desire for the particular three-pence it saves, nor his attendance at his shop from eagerness for the particular ten-pence it earns: both should arise solely from regard for the general rule that imposes this plan of conduct, with relentless severity, on everyone in his way of life. Here lies the distinction between a miser and a person of scrupulous economy and diligence. One is anxious about small matters for their own sake; the other attends to them only as part of the way of life he has chosen for himself.

Extraordinary and important objects of self-interest are another matter. A person seems mean-spirited if he does not pursue them with some eagerness for their own sake. We would despise a prince who cared nothing for conquering or defending a province. We would have little respect for a private gentleman who made no effort to gain an estate, or even a considerable office, when he could acquire it without baseness or injustice. A member of parliament who shows no zeal for his own election is abandoned by his friends as wholly unworthy of their loyalty. Even a tradesman who makes no effort to secure what his neighbors call an extraordinary job or some uncommon advantage is thought to lack spirit. This energy and eagerness distinguish the enterprising man from the man of dull regularity. Those great objects of self-interest whose loss or acquisition entirely changes a person's rank are the objects of the passion properly called ambition. When kept within the bounds of prudence and justice, this passion is always admired in the world; even when it oversteps both virtues, becoming not merely unjust but extravagant, it sometimes possesses an irregular grandeur that dazzles the imagination. Hence the general admiration for heroes and conquerors, and even for statesmen whose projects were daring and far-reaching though utterly unjust, such as those of the Cardinals of Richlieu and of Retz. The objects of greed and ambition differ only in scale. A miser is as fierce over a halfpenny as an ambitious man over the conquest of a kingdom.

II. Second, how far our conduct should proceed entirely from regard for general rules depends in part on whether those rules are precise and exact, or loose and uncertain.

The general rules of almost all virtues—the rules determining the duties of prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, and friendship—are loose and uncertain in many respects. They admit so many exceptions and require so many qualifications that it is scarcely possible to govern our conduct entirely by them. Common proverbial maxims of prudence, grounded in universal experience, may be the best general rules we can offer for it. Yet affecting a very strict and literal adherence to them would clearly be the most absurd and ridiculous pedantry. Of all the virtues just mentioned, gratitude perhaps has the most precise rules and the fewest exceptions. The principle that we should repay services received as soon as we can, with a return of equal or, if possible, greater value, seems fairly clear and admits scarcely any exceptions. Yet even the most superficial examination shows that this rule is extremely loose and uncertain, admitting ten thousand exceptions. If your benefactor cared for you while you were sick, must you care for him while he is sick, or can you discharge the debt of gratitude with a different kind of return? If you must care for him, for how long? For as long as he cared for you, or longer—and how much longer? If a friend lent you money in your distress, must you lend him money in his? How much must you lend, and when—now, tomorrow, or next month? For how long? Evidently no general rule can supply a precise answer to any of these questions in every case. Your characters and circumstances may differ so much that you could be perfectly grateful and rightly refuse to lend him a halfpenny; conversely, you could be willing to lend or even give him ten times what he lent you and still rightly be charged with the blackest ingratitude, having failed to fulfill even a hundredth part of what you owe. Yet the duties of gratitude are perhaps the most sacred imposed by the benevolent virtues; accordingly, as I said, their general rules are the most exact. The rules defining what friendship, humanity, hospitality, and generosity require are vaguer and less definite still.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 2

There is, however, one virtue whose general rules determine with the greatest exactness every outward act it requires. That virtue is justice. Its rules are precise in the highest degree and admit no exceptions or qualifications except those that can be defined as precisely as the rules themselves and that generally arise from the same principles. If I owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that I pay him exactly ten pounds, at the agreed time or when he demands it. What I must do, how much, when and where—the entire nature and circumstances of the required action—are precisely fixed and determined. Though an affected strictness about the ordinary rules of prudence or generosity may seem awkward and pedantic, there is no pedantry in holding fast to the rules of justice. On the contrary, they deserve the most sacred regard, and the acts justice requires are never performed more properly than when their principal motive is reverent, almost religious regard for the general rules that require them. In practicing the other virtues, our conduct should be guided less by a precise maxim or rule than by an idea of propriety, a taste for a particular manner of conduct; we should consider the rule's purpose and foundation more than the rule itself. With justice, it is otherwise: the person who indulges in the least clever qualification and adheres most steadfastly to the general rules themselves is the most commendable and dependable. Although the purpose of the rules of justice is to keep us from harming our neighbors, it may often be a crime to break them even when we can make a plausible case that this particular breach would do no harm. A man often becomes a villain the moment he begins to quibble this way, even in his own heart. The moment he thinks of departing from unwavering adherence to these inviolable precepts, he can no longer be trusted, and no one can say how far his guilt may go. The thief imagines he does no wrong when he steals from the rich something he thinks they can easily spare and may never even notice is gone. The adulterer imagines he does no wrong in seducing his friend's wife, provided he conceals the affair from her husband's suspicions and does not disturb the peace of the family. Once we yield to such subtleties, there is no enormity so gross that we might not commit it.

The rules of justice can be compared with the rules of grammar; the rules of the other virtues with those critics prescribe for achieving sublimity and elegance in writing. The former are precise, exact, and indispensable. The latter are loose, vague, and indefinite: they give us a general idea of the excellence we should seek rather than certain and infallible directions for attaining it. A person can learn by rule to write grammatically with complete certainty, and perhaps can similarly be taught to act justly. But no rules, however faithfully observed, can unfailingly lead us to elegance or sublimity in writing, though some can help correct and clarify the vague ideas of those qualities we might otherwise entertain. Nor can knowledge of any rules unfailingly teach us to act on every occasion with prudence, appropriate magnanimity, or proper beneficence, though some rules may help correct and clarify, in several respects, the imperfect ideas we might otherwise have of those virtues.

Sometimes, even while earnestly and sincerely wishing to act so as to deserve approval, we may mistake the proper rules of conduct and thus be led astray by the very principle meant to guide us. We cannot expect humankind to approve our behavior entirely in such a case. People cannot share the absurd notion of duty that influenced us, or sympathize with the actions following from it. Still, there is something respectable in the character and conduct of someone thus led into vice by a mistaken sense of duty, or what is called an erroneous conscience. However disastrously it misleads him, the generous and humane see him more as an object of compassion than of hatred or resentment. They lament the weakness of human nature, which leaves us open to such wretched delusions even when we sincerely strive for perfection and try to act by the best principle that could guide us. False religious beliefs are almost the only causes capable of so grossly distorting our natural sentiments in this way; the very principle that lends the greatest authority to the rules of duty is alone capable of distorting our ideas of them to any considerable degree. In all other cases common sense suffices to guide us, if not to the most exquisite propriety of conduct, at least to something not very far from it. Provided we sincerely wish to do well, our conduct will, on the whole, always be praiseworthy. Everyone agrees that obedience to God's will is the first rule of duty. But people differ greatly over the particular commandments that will may impose on us. The greatest mutual forbearance and tolerance are therefore called for here. Although the defense of society requires that crimes be punished, whatever their motives, a good person will always punish reluctantly when they clearly spring from false ideas of religious duty. He will never feel toward their perpetrators the indignation he feels toward other criminals; rather, even as he punishes their crime, he will regret, and sometimes even admire, their unfortunate firmness and courage. The tragedy Mahomet, one of Mr. Voltaire's finest, admirably portrays how we should feel about crimes arising from such motives. In it, two young people of different sexes, innocent and virtuous in disposition, with no weakness but the mutual affection that makes them still dearer to us, are driven by the strongest motives of a false religion to commit a horrible murder that shocks every principle of human nature. A venerable old man who has shown them both the tenderest affection, for whom they both feel the highest reverence and esteem despite his being an avowed enemy of their religion, and who is in fact their father, though they do not know it, is presented to them as a sacrifice expressly demanded by God, and they are commanded to kill him. As they prepare to commit the crime, they suffer every agony of the struggle between, on one side, their belief in the absolute necessity of religious duty, and, on the other, compassion, gratitude, reverence for age, and love of the humanity and virtue of the person they are about to destroy. This portrayal offers one of the most gripping, perhaps the most instructive, spectacles ever brought to a theater. Yet duty finally prevails over all the lovable weaknesses of human nature. They carry out the crime imposed on them, only to discover at once their error and the deception that misled them, and are overwhelmed with horror, remorse, and resentment. What we feel for the unhappy Seid and Palmira is what we should feel for anyone misled by religion in this way, when we are certain it is truly religion that misleads him and not a pretense of religion concealing some of the worst human passions.

Just as a person can act wrongly by following a mistaken sense of duty, so nature may sometimes prevail and lead him to act rightly in defiance of it. In this case we cannot be displeased to see the motive prevail that we believe ought to prevail, though the person himself is weak enough to believe otherwise. Yet because his conduct arises from weakness rather than principle, we are far from granting it anything like full approval. A bigoted Roman Catholic who, during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was moved by compassion to save some unfortunate protestants whom he thought it his duty to kill would not seem entitled to the high praise we would have given him had he acted with the same generosity and complete self-approval. We might appreciate his humane disposition, yet still look on him with a kind of pity wholly inconsistent with the admiration due to perfect virtue. The same holds for all other passions. We do not dislike seeing them properly exercised even when a false idea of duty would tell a person to restrain them. A very devout Quaker who, on being struck on one cheek, forgot his literal reading of our Savior's precept instead of offering the other cheek, and gave the brute who insulted him a good lesson, would not displease us. We would laugh and enjoy his spirit, and like him rather better for it. But we would by no means regard him with the respect and esteem due to someone who, in the same situation, acted properly from a sound understanding of what was right. No action can properly be called virtuous unless accompanied by the feeling of self-approval.

### Part IV, Chapter I, 1

Part IV: The effect of utility on the sentiment of approval. Consisting of one section.

On the beauty that the appearance of utility lends to every product of art, and the far-reaching influence of this kind of beauty.

Everyone who has given any thought to the nature of beauty has observed that utility is one of its principal sources. The convenience of a house pleases the observer as much as its symmetry, and he is as offended by the lack of convenience as by windows meant to correspond but made in different shapes, or a door set off-center. That the fitness of a system or machine for its intended purpose lends propriety and beauty to the whole, making even the thought and contemplation of it agreeable, is so obvious that nobody has overlooked it.

An ingenious and engaging philosopher has also recently explained why utility pleases. He combines great depth of thought with great elegance of expression, and has the rare and happy gift of treating the most abstruse subjects not only with perfect clarity but with vivid eloquence. According to him, an object's utility pleases its owner by continually suggesting the pleasure or convenience it is designed to provide. Whenever he looks at it, he is reminded of that pleasure; thus the object becomes a constant source of satisfaction and enjoyment. By sympathy the observer enters into its owner's feelings and necessarily sees the object in the same pleasing light. When we visit the palaces of the great, we cannot help imagining how satisfied we ourselves would be to own such cleverly and ingeniously designed comforts. A similar explanation accounts for why an appearance of inconvenience makes an object disagreeable to both owner and observer.

But, as far as I know, nobody has yet remarked that the fitness and clever design of a work of art are often prized above its very purpose; that the precise arrangement of means to obtain some convenience or pleasure is frequently valued more than the convenience or pleasure in which all the merit of those means would seem to lie. Yet this happens very frequently, as a thousand examples show, in both the most trivial and the most important affairs of human life.

When a man enters his room and finds all the chairs standing in the middle, he grows angry with his servant and, rather than leave them in such disorder, may take the trouble to put them himself against the wall. The superior convenience of leaving the floor clear is the sole source of propriety in this new arrangement. To secure that convenience, he willingly takes more trouble than he could ever have suffered from its absence: nothing would have been easier than sitting on one of the chairs, as he probably does once his work is done. Evidently what he wanted was less the convenience itself than the arrangement that promotes it. Yet that convenience is what ultimately recommends the arrangement and gives it all its propriety and beauty.

Similarly, a connoisseur of watches scorns one that loses more than two minutes a day. He may sell it for a couple of guineas and buy another for fifty, one that loses no more than a minute in a fortnight. Yet the sole use of watches is to tell us the time, so that ignorance of it does not make us miss an appointment or suffer any other inconvenience. The person so particular about this machine is not necessarily more punctual than others, or for any other reason more anxious to know the exact time of day. What concerns him is less possessing that knowledge than perfecting the machine that gives it to him.

How many people ruin themselves by spending money on trinkets of trivial utility! What delights these lovers of gadgets is less their usefulness than the ingenious fitness of the devices meant to serve it. They stuff their pockets with little conveniences. They devise new pockets, unlike those in anyone else's clothes, to carry still more. They walk around laden with a host of baubles, sometimes equal in weight and value to an ordinary Jew's-box. Some may occasionally be a little useful, but all could always be dispensed with; their combined utility certainly is not worth the effort of carrying them.

Nor is it only in trivial matters that this principle influences our conduct. It is often the hidden motive of the most serious and important pursuits, private as well as public.

The poor man's son whom Heaven in its anger has afflicted with ambition looks about him and begins to admire the condition of the rich. His father's cottage seems too small for him, and he imagines he would be more comfortable in a palace. He resents having to walk or endure the fatigue of horseback riding. Seeing his superiors carried in vehicles, he imagines he could travel in one with less discomfort. Naturally inclined to idleness, and wishing to do as little for himself with his own hands as possible, he judges that a large household of servants would spare him much trouble. He imagines that once he had all this, he would sit contentedly at rest and enjoy the happiness and tranquility of his situation. The distant prospect of this felicity enchants him. In his imagination it resembles the life of some higher order of beings; to reach it, he devotes himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the conveniences they afford, in the first year—indeed, the first month—of his effort he submits to more bodily fatigue and mental distress than their absence could have caused him over his entire life. He studies to distinguish himself in an arduous profession. With unrelenting industry he works night and day to acquire talents exceeding those of all his rivals. He next tries to bring those talents to public attention and pursues every opportunity for employment with equal diligence. To this end he courts everyone, serves those he hates, and flatters those he despises. All his life he pursues the dream of an artificial and elegant repose he may never attain, sacrificing for it a genuine peace always within his reach. If at last he does attain it in extreme old age, he will find it no better in any respect than the modest security and contentment he abandoned for its sake. Only then, in the final dregs of life, his body wasted by labor and disease, his mind chafed and troubled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments he believes he has suffered from his enemies' injustice or his friends' treachery and ingratitude, does he begin to see that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of trivial utility. They are no better suited to provide bodily ease or peace of mind than the gadget lover's cases of grooming tools; like those cases, they cause their bearer more trouble than all their benefits bring comfort. The only real difference is that the conveniences afforded by wealth and greatness are somewhat more conspicuous. The obvious convenience of the great man's palaces, gardens, carriages, and attendants strikes everyone. Their owners need not explain to us what use these things have. We readily perceive it ourselves, and through sympathy enjoy and applaud the satisfaction they are meant to bring their owner. But the ingenuity of a toothpick, an ear-cleaner, a nail clipper, or any such trinket is less obvious. Its convenience might be just as great, but it is less striking, and we do not so readily share its owner's satisfaction. Such things are therefore less plausible objects of vanity than the splendor of wealth and greatness; this is the sole advantage of the latter. They satisfy more effectively the love of distinction so natural to human beings. For someone living alone on a desolate island, it might even be doubtful whether a palace or the collection of small conveniences usually contained in a grooming case would do more for his happiness and enjoyment. If he lives in society, however, there is no comparison. In this, as in other cases, we continually pay more attention to the observer's feelings than to the feelings of the person most directly concerned, and consider how his circumstances look to others rather than how they feel to him. If we ask why the observer admires the position of the rich and great so much, we find that it is not chiefly for the greater ease or pleasure they are supposed to enjoy, but for the countless elegant, artificial devices arranged to secure that ease or pleasure. He does not even imagine that they are truly happier than anyone else; he imagines that they possess more means of happiness. The clever and ingenious adaptation of those means to their intended purpose is the principal source of his admiration. But amid the exhaustion of sickness and the weariness of age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness vanish. For someone in that condition, they can no longer justify the arduous pursuits in which they once engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition and vainly longs for the ease and idleness of youth—pleasures gone forever, which he foolishly sacrificed for something that brings him no true satisfaction once he has it. Greatness appears in this miserable light to anyone whom melancholy or illness brings to examine his own condition carefully and ask what his happiness really lacks. Power and riches then appear for what they are: enormous, laborious machines devised to furnish the body with a few petty conveniences, composed of the most fine and delicate springs, which require the most anxious care to keep in order and which, despite all our care, are liable at any moment to shatter and crush their unfortunate owner beneath the wreckage. They are immense structures that take a lifetime of labor to build, that threaten at every moment to overwhelm their inhabitant and that, while they stand, may spare him a few minor inconveniences but cannot shield him from any of the harsher inclemencies of the season. They ward off a summer shower, not a winter storm, leaving him as exposed as ever, and sometimes more exposed, to anxiety, fear, and sorrow; to disease, danger, and death.

### Part IV, Chapter I, 2

Although this gloomy philosophy, familiar to everyone in sickness or low spirits, utterly devalues the great objects of human desire, in better health and better humor we never fail to see them more favorably. Our imagination, seemingly shut up within ourselves when we suffer pain and sorrow, expands in times of ease and prosperity to take in everything around us. We are then captivated by the beauty of the arrangements that prevail in the palaces and households of the great. We admire how everything is designed to promote their comfort, anticipate their needs, gratify their wishes, and amuse and entertain even their most frivolous desires. If we consider by itself the actual satisfaction all these things can give, apart from the beauty of the arrangements designed to produce it, that satisfaction always appears contemptibly small and trivial. But we seldom view it in this abstract, philosophical light. In our imagination we naturally confuse it with the order and the regular, harmonious motion of the system, machine, or establishment that produces it. Seen in this combined light, the pleasures of wealth and greatness strike the imagination as grand, beautiful, and noble—well worth all the effort and anxiety we are so ready to spend on acquiring them.

And it is well that nature deceives us in this way. This deception awakens human industry and keeps it in constant motion. It first prompted people to cultivate the land, build houses, found cities and commonwealths, and invent and improve all the sciences and arts that dignify and adorn human life. These endeavors have utterly changed the face of the globe, turning nature's rough forests into pleasant, fertile plains and making the trackless, barren ocean a new source of sustenance and a great highway of communication among the nations of the earth. Through these human labors, the earth has been made to redouble its natural fertility and sustain a greater multitude of inhabitants. It does the proud and unfeeling landowner no good to look over his vast fields and imagine consuming their entire harvest himself without a thought for his fellows' needs. The homely proverb that the eye is larger than the belly has never been truer than it is of him. The capacity of his stomach bears no relation to the immensity of his desires: it can hold no more than the stomach of the poorest peasant. He must distribute the rest among the people who prepare with the greatest care the little he uses himself, among those who furnish the palace in which that little is consumed, and among those who supply and care for all the various baubles and trinkets employed in the household of greatness. Thus all receive from his luxury and whims a share of life's necessities that they could have hoped for in vain from his humanity or justice. The produce of the land always sustains nearly as many inhabitants as it is capable of sustaining. The rich merely pick from the common heap what is most prized and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor; and despite their natural selfishness and greed, though they seek only their own convenience, though the sole purpose they have in employing thousands of laborers is to gratify their own vain and insatiable desires, they share with the poor the produce of all their improvements. An invisible hand leads them to make nearly the same distribution of life's necessities that would have occurred if the earth had been divided equally among all its inhabitants. Thus, without intending or knowing it, they advance the interests of society and provide for the multiplication of humankind. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those apparently excluded from the division. They too enjoy their share of all it produces. In what makes up the true happiness of human life, they are in no way inferior to those who appear to stand so far above them. As regards bodily ease and peace of mind, all ranks of life are nearly equal, and the beggar warming himself in the sun beside the highway possesses the security for which kings fight.

The same principle, the same love of systems and of the beauty of order, art, and ingenuity, often recommends institutions that advance the public welfare. When a patriot works to improve some part of public administration, he is not always moved by pure sympathy for the happiness of its beneficiaries. It is not usually fellow feeling for carriers and wagon drivers that makes a public-spirited person encourage road repairs. When a legislature offers premiums and other incentives to promote linen or wool manufacturing, it seldom acts from pure sympathy for the wearer of cheap or fine cloth, and even less for the manufacturer or merchant. Excellent public administration and flourishing trade and manufacturing are noble and magnificent objects. Thinking about them pleases us, and we take an interest in everything that can advance them. They form part of the great system of government, whose wheels seem to turn more smoothly and harmoniously because of them. We delight in seeing such a beautiful and grand system perfected, and remain uneasy until we remove anything that might obstruct or even slightly disrupt the regularity of its motion. Yet every form of government is valued only insofar as it promotes the happiness of the people living under it. That is its sole use and purpose. From a certain spirit of system, however, a love of art and ingenuity, we sometimes seem to prize the means above the end. We appear eager to promote our fellow creatures' happiness less from any immediate feeling for their sufferings or pleasures than from a wish to perfect and improve an orderly, beautiful system. Some people with the greatest public spirit have otherwise shown little sensitivity to humane feeling. Conversely, some people of the greatest humanity seem entirely lacking in public spirit. Everyone can find examples of both among acquaintances. Who ever had less humanity, or more public spirit, than the celebrated legislator of Muscovy? By contrast, the sociable and good-natured James the First of Great Britain seems to have felt scarcely any passion for either his country's glory or its interests. If you wish to rouse an industrious spirit in a man who seems nearly dead to ambition, you will often gain nothing by describing the happiness of the rich and great, telling him that they are generally sheltered from sun and rain, seldom hungry or cold, and rarely subject to weariness or deprivation of any kind. Even the most eloquent appeal of this kind will have little effect. To have any hope of success, describe instead the convenience and arrangement of the rooms in their palaces; explain the fitness of their carriages, and set out the number, order, and various duties of their attendants. If anything can impress him, this can. Yet all these things serve only to keep out sun and rain and spare their owners hunger, cold, deprivation, and fatigue. Likewise, if you wish to plant public virtue in someone who seems indifferent to his country's interests, it will often do no good to tell him of the greater advantages enjoyed by the subjects of a well-governed state: better housing, better clothes, better food. Such considerations will usually leave little impression. You will be likelier to persuade him if you describe the great system of public administration that secures these benefits; if you explain the connections and dependencies between its parts, their mutual subordination, and their shared service to society's happiness; if you show how such a system could be established in his own country, what currently prevents it, how those obstacles might be removed, and how every wheel in the machinery of government might turn more smoothly and harmoniously, without grating against or hindering any other. A person can scarcely hear such an account without feeling some degree of public spirit come alive in him. For the moment, at least, he will wish to remove those obstacles and set so beautiful and orderly a machine in motion. Nothing does more to foster public spirit than the study of politics: the various systems of civil government and their advantages and disadvantages; our own country's constitution, its position and interests in relation to other nations, its commerce and defense, the disadvantages it labors under, the dangers it faces, and ways to remove the former and guard against the latter. For this reason political inquiries, when sound, reasonable, and practicable, are the most useful of all works of speculation. Even the weakest and worst of them are not wholly useless. At least they stir people's public passions and rouse them to seek ways of advancing society's happiness.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 1

On the beauty that the appearance of utility lends to human character and action, and how far the perception of this beauty may be considered an original principle of approbation.

Human characters, like works of art or institutions of government, may be suited either to advance or to disturb the happiness of individuals and society alike. A prudent, fair-minded, active, resolute, and temperate character promises prosperity and satisfaction both to its possessor and to everyone connected with him. A rash, arrogant, idle, weak, and pleasure-loving character, by contrast, foretells ruin for the individual and misfortune for all who deal with him. The first disposition has at least all the beauty that could belong to the most perfect machine ever devised for the most agreeable purpose; the second has all the ugliness of a clumsy and ill-designed contrivance. What form of government could do more for human happiness than the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? All government is merely an imperfect remedy for their absence. Whatever beauty civil government possesses by virtue of its usefulness must belong to wisdom and virtue in a far higher degree. Conversely, what policy of government could prove as ruinous and destructive as human vice? The disastrous effects of bad government arise solely from its failure to guard adequately against the harms that human wickedness occasions.

The beauty or ugliness that character seems to acquire from its usefulness or harmfulness is especially striking to those who consider human action and conduct in the abstract light of philosophy. When a philosopher asks why humanity wins approval or cruelty condemnation, he does not always form a clear and distinct conception of any particular humane or cruel act. He is commonly content with the vague, indefinite idea suggested by the general names of those qualities. Yet it is only in particular cases that the propriety or impropriety, the merit or demerit, of actions becomes clearly visible. Only when we are given concrete examples do we distinctly perceive the agreement or disagreement between our own feelings and those of the agent, or feel sympathetic gratitude toward him in one case and sympathetic resentment in the other. When we consider virtue and vice in general and abstract terms, the qualities by which they awaken these several sentiments seem largely to disappear, and the sentiments themselves become less apparent. Their consequences, on the other hand—the happy effects of virtue and the fatal effects of vice—then come into view, standing out, as it were, from every other quality of either.

The same ingenious and engaging author who first explained why utility pleases was so impressed by this perspective that he traced our entire approbation of virtue to the perception of the beauty arising from apparent utility. No mental qualities, he observes, win approval as virtues unless they are useful or agreeable to their possessor or to others; and none are condemned as vices unless they tend toward the opposite. Indeed, nature seems to have fitted our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation so well to the welfare of individuals and society that, upon the closest examination, this will, I believe, prove universally true. Nevertheless, I maintain that the perception of usefulness or harm is neither the first nor the principal source of our approval and disapproval. The beauty or ugliness that arises from usefulness or harm doubtless strengthens and enlivens these sentiments. But the sentiments themselves, I insist, are originally and essentially distinct from that perception.

First, it seems impossible that approving virtue should be the same sort of feeling as approving a convenient, well-designed building, or that we should praise a human being for no other reason than we commend a chest of drawers.

Second, examination will show that the usefulness of a disposition is seldom the first ground of our approval, and that approbation always involves a sense of propriety wholly distinct from the perception of utility. We can see this in every quality approved as virtuous: those prized, according to this theory, for their usefulness to ourselves as well as those esteemed for their usefulness to others.

The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first, superior reason and understanding, which enable us to discern the distant consequences of our actions and foresee the benefit or harm likely to result; and second, self-command, which enables us to forgo present pleasure or bear present pain for a greater pleasure or the avoidance of greater pain in the future. The union of these two qualities constitutes prudence, the virtue most useful to the individual.

Concerning the first quality, I have observed before that superior reason and understanding originally win approval as sound, right, and accurate, not merely as useful or advantageous. The greatest and most admired exercises of human reason have appeared in the more difficult sciences, particularly the higher reaches of mathematics. But the usefulness of those sciences, whether to the individual or the public, is hardly obvious; proving it requires an argument not always easy to follow. Their utility, then, was not what first won them public admiration. Little stress was placed upon it until some answer was needed to critics who, having no taste for such sublime discoveries themselves, sought to disparage them as useless.

Likewise, the self-command by which we restrain our present appetites so that we may satisfy them more fully on another occasion wins approval for its propriety no less than for its usefulness. When we act in this way, the feelings guiding our conduct seem to coincide exactly with those of the spectator. The spectator does not feel the urgent entreaties of our present appetites. To him, the pleasure we may enjoy a week or a year from now matters just as much as the pleasure we may enjoy at this instant. When we sacrifice the future for the present, our conduct therefore strikes him as supremely absurd and extravagant, and he cannot share the motives behind it. When, on the contrary, we forgo present pleasure to secure a greater pleasure to come, acting as though the distant object interests us as much as the one immediately pressing on our senses, our feelings correspond exactly to his own and he cannot fail to approve our conduct. Knowing from experience how few people possess such self-command, he also regards it with considerable wonder and admiration. Hence the high esteem in which everyone naturally holds steadfast frugality, industry, and diligence, even when their only aim is to acquire a fortune. A person who, for a great but distant advantage, resolutely gives up every present pleasure and endures the hardest labor of mind and body necessarily commands our approval. His understanding of his own interest and happiness agrees exactly with the understanding we naturally form of them. His sentiments and ours correspond perfectly; yet, knowing the ordinary weakness of human nature, we could hardly have expected such correspondence. We therefore not only approve his conduct but admire it to some degree, and think it worthy of considerable praise. Only consciousness of deserving this approval and esteem can sustain him in such a course of conduct. The pleasure available ten years from now interests us so little beside what we might enjoy today, and the passion aroused by the first is naturally so weak beside the violent emotion stirred by the second, that the one could never counterbalance the other unless reinforced by a sense of propriety: by the awareness that acting in one way earns everyone's esteem and approval, while acting in the other makes us proper objects of their contempt and ridicule.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 2

Humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit are the qualities most useful to others. I have explained before what constitutes the propriety of humanity and justice, showing how much our esteem and approval of those qualities depend upon the agreement between the feelings of the agent and those of the spectators.

The propriety of generosity and public spirit rests on the same principle as that of justice. Generosity differs from humanity. These two qualities, so closely related at first sight, do not always belong to the same person. Humanity is the virtue of a woman; generosity, of a man. Women, who commonly have far more tenderness than men, seldom have as much generosity. That women rarely make substantial gifts is an observation of civil law[7]. Humanity consists simply in the spectator's keen fellow-feeling with the sentiments of those principally concerned: he grieves at their suffering, resents injuries done to them, and rejoices in their good fortune. The most humane acts demand no self-denial, no self-command, no great exercise of the sense of propriety. They consist merely in doing what such keen sympathy would prompt us to do of itself. With generosity it is otherwise. We are generous only when, in some respect, we put another person before ourselves and sacrifice an important interest of our own for an equal interest of a friend or superior. Consider the man who gives up his claim to an office that has been the great object of his ambition because he believes another person's services merit it more; or the man who risks his life to defend a friend whose life he judges more important. Neither acts from humanity, or because he feels the other's concerns more keenly than his own. Both consider the opposing interests not as they naturally appear to themselves, but as they appear to others. To any bystander, the other's success or survival may rightly matter more than their own; to themselves, it cannot. When they sacrifice their interests for his, they bring their feelings into accord with those of the spectator and, through an effort of magnanimity, act according to the view they know any third person would naturally take. A soldier who gives his life to defend his officer might be little troubled by that officer's death if it happened through no fault of his own; a very small misfortune of his own might grieve him far more. But when he strives to act in a way deserving of praise, and to make the impartial spectator sympathize with his motives, he feels that to everyone but himself his own life is a trifle beside his officer's. In sacrificing one for the other, he acts with complete propriety, in keeping with the natural judgment of every impartial bystander.

Women rarely make gifts.

The same holds true of the greater acts of public spirit. When a young officer risks his life to gain a small addition to his sovereign's dominions, it is not because the new territory is more desirable to him than the preservation of his life. His own life is worth infinitely more to him than the conquest of an entire kingdom for the state he serves. Yet in comparing the two, he sees them not as they naturally appear to him, but as they appear to the nation for which he fights. To that nation, success in war is of supreme importance, while a private individual's life is of scarcely any consequence. Putting himself in their place, he immediately feels he cannot be too lavish with his blood if shedding it will further so valuable an end. The heroism of his conduct lies in thwarting, from a sense of duty and propriety, the strongest of all natural impulses. Many an honest Englishman, in private life, would be more deeply upset at losing a guinea than at the nation's loss of Minorca; yet, had he been able to defend that fortress, he would have sacrificed his life a thousand times rather than let it fall through his fault into enemy hands. When the first Brutus brought his own sons out to face capital punishment for conspiring against Rome's emerging liberty, he sacrificed what would have seemed the stronger affection, had he consulted only his own heart, to the weaker. Brutus should naturally have felt far more at the death of his sons than at anything Rome would probably have suffered for want of so great an example. But he looked on them not as a father, but as a Roman citizen. He entered so fully into the feelings of the citizen that he disregarded his own bond with them; to a Roman citizen, even Brutus's sons seemed of little account when weighed against the smallest interest of Rome. In these and all such cases, our admiration rests less on utility than on the unexpected—and therefore great, noble, and exalted—propriety of the actions. Once we notice their utility, it undoubtedly gives them a new beauty, making them still more deserving of our approval. Yet this beauty is perceived chiefly by reflective and speculative minds; it is by no means what first commends such actions to the natural feelings of most people.

We should observe that, insofar as approval springs from the perception of this beauty of utility, it has no reference whatever to the feelings of others. If a person could therefore grow to adulthood without any contact with society, his own actions might nevertheless please or displease him by their tendency to help or harm his happiness. He might perceive a beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance, and good conduct, and an ugliness in their opposites. He might contemplate his own disposition and character with the satisfaction we feel at a well-designed machine, or with the distaste and dissatisfaction a clumsy contrivance inspires. Yet these perceptions are matters of taste, possessing all the weakness and delicacy characteristic of the perceptions on whose accuracy taste, properly so called, is founded. In his lonely and miserable condition he would probably pay them little heed. Even if they occurred to him, they would not affect him before his connection with society as they would afterward. The thought of this ugliness would not cast him down in inward shame, nor would awareness of the opposite beauty lift him to a secret triumph of the mind. He would not exult in the belief that he deserved reward in one case, nor tremble at the thought that he merited punishment in the other. All such feelings presuppose another being, the natural judge of the person who feels them. Only by sympathizing with this judge's verdict on his conduct can a person conceive either the triumph of self-approval or the shame of self-condemnation.

### Part V, Chapter I, 1

Part V: On the influence of custom and fashion on sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation. Consisting of one section.

On the influence of custom and fashion on our ideas of beauty and ugliness.

Besides the principles already discussed, others exert considerable influence on human moral sentiments and are chiefly responsible for the many conflicting and inconsistent opinions held in different ages and nations about what deserves blame or praise. These principles are custom and fashion, which govern our judgments of every kind of beauty.

When we have frequently seen two things together, the imagination acquires the habit of passing easily from one to the other. When the first appears, we expect the second to follow. Each brings the other to mind of its own accord, and our attention glides easily between them. Even if there is no intrinsic beauty in their union, once custom has joined them we feel something wrong in their separation. Either seems awkward without its familiar companion. We miss what we expected, and our habitual ordering of ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems incomplete without even the most trivial ornament that usually accompanies it; we perceive a shabbiness or awkwardness in the absence of so much as a button at the hip. Where a union has some natural propriety, custom heightens our sense of it and makes a different arrangement seem even more disagreeable than it otherwise would. Those accustomed to seeing things done with taste are more repelled by anything clumsy or awkward. Where the combination is improper, custom weakens or entirely removes our sense of its impropriety. Those accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. Styles of furniture or dress that seem ridiculous to strangers give no offense to those used to them.

Fashion differs from custom—or rather, it is a particular kind of custom. What everybody wears is not fashionable; what people of high rank or standing wear is. The graceful, easy, commanding manners of the great, joined with the usual richness and splendor of their dress, lend grace to the very shape they happen to give it. So long as they keep wearing that shape, our imaginations associate it with refinement and magnificence; even if it is indifferent in itself, it appears, through that association, to possess something refined and magnificent as well. Once they abandon it, it loses all its apparent grace and, now worn only by people of lower rank, seems to share their supposed shabbiness and awkwardness.

Everyone admits that dress and furniture are entirely subject to custom and fashion. Yet their influence extends far beyond this narrow domain: it reaches everything that can be a matter of taste, including music, poetry, and architecture. Styles of dress and furniture change continually; when a fashion admired five years ago looks ridiculous today, experience convinces us that its popularity owed chiefly or entirely to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture are not made of particularly durable materials. An elegantly designed coat wears out in twelve months and can no longer keep its design in fashion. Furniture styles change less rapidly because furniture usually lasts longer. Within five or six years, however, they generally undergo a complete revolution, and every person sees them change many times in a lifetime. The works of other arts last much longer and, if well conceived, can perpetuate their designs as fashions for far longer. A well-designed building may stand for centuries; a beautiful melody can pass by a kind of tradition through successive generations; a well-written poem may endure as long as the world. Each can continue for ages to give currency to the particular style, taste, or manner in which it was made. Few people live to see a major change of fashion in any of these arts. Few have enough experience of, and familiarity with, the different fashions of distant ages and nations to become thoroughly comfortable with them or to judge them impartially against those of their own age and country. Few, therefore, are willing to admit that custom or fashion has much influence on their judgments of beauty and its opposite in these arts. Instead they imagine that every rule they think each art should follow is founded on reason and nature, not on habit or prejudice. Yet a little attention may convince them otherwise: custom and fashion govern architecture, poetry, and music no less completely than dress and furniture.

For example, can anyone give a reason why a Doric capital belongs on a column eight diameters high, an Ionic volute on one of nine, and Corinthian foliage on one of ten? Nothing but habit and custom establishes the propriety of these pairings. An eye used to seeing a particular proportion joined with a particular ornament is offended when they are separated. Each of the five orders has ornaments peculiar to it; substituting others offends anyone acquainted with the rules of architecture. Some architects, indeed, claim that the ancients assigned ornaments to each order with such exquisite judgment that none equally suitable could be found. Yet it is rather hard to believe that these forms, however pleasing, are the only ones that suit those proportions, or that five hundred others would not have suited them just as well before custom became established. Still, once custom has established rules for building, provided they are not utterly unreasonable, it would be absurd to exchange them for rules merely as good, or even for rules with a slight natural advantage in elegance and beauty. A person appearing in public in clothes quite unlike those commonly worn would look ridiculous, however graceful or convenient the new outfit might be in itself. There is a similar absurdity in decorating a house in a manner wholly different from what custom and fashion prescribe, even if the new ornaments are somewhat superior in themselves to the familiar ones.

According to the ancient rhetoricians, a particular meter or verse form was naturally suited to each kind of writing, because it naturally expressed the character, sentiment, or passion that ought to prevail there. One verse form, they said, suited serious works and another cheerful ones; to exchange them would, they thought, be deeply improper. Modern experience, however, seems to contradict this principle, plausible though it may appear in itself. The English meter of burlesque is the French meter of heroic poetry. The tragedies of Racine and Voltaire's Henriad are written in the same meter as,

Thus said to my lady the knight full of care.

The French meter of burlesque, conversely, is much the same as the ten-syllable heroic meter in English. Custom has led one nation to associate solemnity, sublimity, and seriousness with the very measure that another associates with all that is light, flippant, and ridiculous. Nothing could seem more absurd than an English tragedy in French Alexandrines, or a French tragedy in English ten-syllable verse.

### Part V, Chapter I, 2

An outstanding artist can bring about a considerable change in the established practices of any of these arts, introducing a new fashion in writing, music, or architecture. Just as the dress of a likable man of high rank, however peculiar and fanciful, soon wins admiration and imitation, so the excellence of an outstanding master recommends his peculiarities, and his manner becomes fashionable in the art he practices. Over these fifty years, Italian tastes in music and architecture have changed considerably through imitation of the peculiarities of certain eminent masters of each art. Quintilian accuses Seneca of corrupting Roman taste by introducing frivolous prettiness in place of majestic reason and vigorous eloquence. Others have made the same charge against Sallust and Tacitus, though on different grounds. They supposedly brought into favor a style that, for all its exceptional brevity, elegance, expressive power, and even poetry, lacked ease, simplicity, and naturalness, and was plainly the product of painstaking, studied affectation. How many great qualities must a writer possess to make even his faults agreeable? After the distinction of refining a nation's taste, perhaps the highest praise an author can receive is to be told that he corrupted it. In our own language, Mr. Pope and Dr. Swift have each introduced a new manner into rhyming verse: the former in long lines, the latter in short. Butler's quaintness has given way to Swift's plainness. Dryden's rambling freedom and Addison's polished but often tedious and prosaic languor are no longer imitated. All long lines are now written in the manner of Mr. Pope's forceful precision.

Nor do custom and fashion rule only over works of art. They likewise influence our judgments of the beauty of natural objects. How many different and even opposite shapes are deemed beautiful among different kinds of things! The proportions admired in one animal differ altogether from those prized in another. Every class of things has its own distinctive form, which wins approval and possesses a beauty distinct from that of any other kind. This led the learned Jesuit Father Buffier to conclude that an object's beauty consists in the form and color most usual among things of its own kind. Thus the beauty of each human feature lies in a certain middle point, equally distant from various ugly forms. A beautiful nose, for instance, is neither very long nor very short, neither very straight nor very crooked, but falls somewhere between all these extremes, differing less from any one of them than they differ from one another. It is the shape nature seems to aim at in every instance. She departs from it in countless ways and very seldom achieves it exactly; yet all her departures still bear a strong resemblance to it. When several drawings are made from one model, they may all depart from it in some respect, yet each will resemble the model more than the drawings resemble one another. The model's general character runs through them all. Those furthest from it will be the oddest and most unusual; though very few copy it exactly, the most faithful drawings will resemble the most careless ones more than the careless ones resemble each other. Similarly, in each species of creature, the most beautiful specimen bears the strongest marks of the species' general structure and most closely resembles the greater part of the individuals classed with it. Monsters, or the completely deformed, by contrast, are always the oddest and least resemble others of their kind. Thus the beauty of each species is in one sense the rarest thing of all, because few individuals attain the middle form exactly; in another sense, it is the commonest, because all deviations from it resemble that form more than they resemble one another. According to Buffier, then, the most usual form is the most beautiful in every kind of thing. That is why we must have some experience in looking at objects of a particular kind before we can judge their beauty or know what their usual, intermediate form is. The finest judgment of human beauty cannot help us judge the beauty of flowers, horses, or any other kind. For the same reason, when climates, customs, and ways of life differ, and those circumstances give the members of a species different general forms, ideas of its beauty also differ. The beauty of a Moorish horse is not exactly that of an English horse. How different are different nations' ideas of a beautiful human form and face! A fair complexion is considered a shocking defect on the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are considered beautiful. In some nations long ears hanging down to the shoulders are universally admired. In China a woman's foot large enough to walk on makes her appear monstrously ugly. Some of the Indigenous nations of North America bind four boards around their children's heads, compressing the tender, pliable bones into a nearly square shape. Europeans are astonished by what they consider the absurd cruelty of this practice, which some missionaries have blamed for the supposed exceptional stupidity of the nations that observe it. Yet those who condemn these people fail to reflect that, until these very last few years, European women had spent nearly a century trying to compress the natural beauty of their rounded figures into just such a square shape. Despite the many distortions and illnesses this practice was known to cause, custom had made it attractive among some of the most civilized nations the world has perhaps ever seen.

Such is this learned and ingenious Father's theory of beauty: its whole charm, on his account, seems to arise from its agreement with the habits custom has impressed on the imagination concerning each particular kind of thing. Yet I cannot believe that even our sense of outward beauty rests entirely on custom. A shape's utility—its fitness for the useful purposes it is meant to serve—plainly recommends it and makes it agreeable to us independently of custom. Some colors please more than others and delight the eye even at first sight. A smooth surface pleases more than a rough one. Variety pleases more than tedious, unvarying uniformity. Connected variety, in which each new feature seems to follow from the one before it and neighboring parts seem naturally related, pleases more than a scattered and disorderly collection of unrelated things. Though I cannot accept that custom is the sole source of beauty, I can grant this much of the ingenious theory: scarcely any outward form is so beautiful that it will please when entirely contrary to custom and unlike everything we are used to seeing among things of its kind; and scarcely any form is so misshapen that it will fail to please when custom consistently endorses it and accustoms us to seeing it in every individual of that kind.

### Part V, Chapter II, 1

On the influence of custom and fashion on moral sentiments.

Since custom and fashion have so much influence on our sentiments about every kind of beauty, we cannot expect our sentiments about the beauty of conduct to be wholly free of their power. Here, however, their influence seems much weaker than elsewhere. There is perhaps no form of external object, however absurd and fanciful, that custom will not accustom us to, or fashion will not even make agreeable. But no custom can accustom us to the characters and conduct of a Nero or a Claudius, and no fashion can make them agreeable. One will always inspire dread and hatred, the other scorn and ridicule. The principles of imagination on which our sense of beauty depends are fine and delicate and can readily be altered by habit and education. But sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation rest on the strongest and most vigorous passions of human nature; though they may be somewhat distorted, they cannot be entirely corrupted.

Yet while the influence of custom and fashion on moral sentiments is not quite as powerful, it works in precisely the same way as elsewhere. When custom and fashion agree with the natural principles of right and wrong, they sharpen our feelings and increase our abhorrence of everything approaching evil. People raised in genuinely good company—not what is commonly called by that name—who have seen nothing but justice, modesty, humanity, and good order in the people they esteem and live among, are more shocked by anything inconsistent with the rules of those virtues. Those unfortunate enough to be raised amid violence, licentiousness, falsehood, and injustice do not lose all sense that such conduct is improper; but they lose all sense of its dreadful enormity, or of the vengeance and punishment it deserves. Familiar with it from infancy, they have grown used to it, and readily regard it as what is called the way of the world: something we may, or must, practice to avoid becoming dupes of our own integrity.

Fashion, too, will sometimes give a certain degree of disorder a good name and, conversely, put deserving qualities out of favor. During the reign of Charles II., a measure of licentiousness was considered the mark of an enlightened education. People of the time associated it with generosity, sincerity, magnanimity, and loyalty, and took it as proof that a person was a gentleman, not a puritan. Strict manners and orderly conduct, on the other hand, were utterly unfashionable and associated with sanctimony, cunning, hypocrisy, and vulgarity. To superficial minds, the vices of the great always seem attractive. Such minds associate them not merely with the splendor of wealth, but with many superior virtues they attribute to their social superiors: a spirit of liberty and independence, frankness, generosity, humanity, and courtesy. The virtues of people of lower rank, by contrast—their careful thrift, laborious industry, and strict obedience to rules—seem shabby and disagreeable. Superficial minds associate these qualities both with the lowly station in which they commonly appear and with serious vices they suppose to accompany them: servility, cowardice, ill temper, deceit, and petty theft.

The different occupations and stations of life bring people into contact with very different things and accustom them to very different passions, naturally giving rise to very different characters and manners. In each rank and profession we expect some degree of the manners experience has taught us to associate with it. Just as in each kind of thing we take particular pleasure in an intermediate form, whose every part and feature most closely agrees with the general pattern nature seems to have established for that kind, so in each rank—or, if I may put it so, each kind of person—we are particularly pleased when people possess neither too much nor too little of the character that usually attends their position and circumstances. A person should look, we say, like someone of his trade and profession; yet the professional's pedantry is disagreeable. The different stages of life similarly have different manners assigned to them. We expect in old age the gravity and calmness made natural and respectable by its infirmities, long experience, and diminished sensitivity. In youth we expect the responsiveness, cheerfulness, and lively spirit that the vivid impressions made by every interesting object naturally awaken in young and inexperienced senses. Either age, however, can display too much of its distinctive traits. Youthful giddiness and the unshakable insensibility of old age are equally disagreeable. As the familiar saying has it, young people are most agreeable when their conduct has something of the manners of the old, and old people when they retain some youthful cheerfulness. Yet either can also take on too much of the other's manner. The extreme coldness and dreary formality excused in old age make youth ridiculous. The flightiness, carelessness, and vanity tolerated in youth make old age contemptible.

The distinctive character and manners that custom leads us to associate with each rank and profession may sometimes possess a propriety independent of custom. We would approve them for their own sake if we considered all the different circumstances naturally affecting people in each station. The propriety of someone's conduct depends on its fitness not for a single circumstance of his situation but for all the circumstances that, when we put ourselves in his place, we feel should naturally command his attention. If he appears so absorbed by one as to neglect all the rest, we disapprove of conduct we cannot fully sympathize with because it is not properly adjusted to every aspect of his situation. Yet the feeling he expresses about the matter chiefly concerning him might be no more than we would fully sympathize with and approve in someone whose attention was required by nothing else. In private life, a parent who loses his only son might express a degree of grief and tenderness without blame that would be inexcusable in a general commanding an army, when glory and public safety demand so much of his attention. Since different concerns ought ordinarily to occupy people in different professions, different passions ought naturally to become habitual to them. When we put ourselves in their place in this respect, we must recognize that each event should naturally affect them more or less according as the emotion it arouses agrees or conflicts with their settled habits and temperaments. We cannot expect a clergyman to be as responsive to life's cheerful pleasures and amusements as we expect an officer to be. A man whose special calling is to remind the world of the solemn future awaiting them, to announce the potentially fatal consequences of every departure from duty, and to set an example of the strictest obedience himself, seems to bear news that cannot properly be delivered with levity or indifference. His mind is presumed to be continually occupied by matters too grand and solemn to make room for the impressions of trifles that fill the minds of the pleasure-seeking and the gay. We readily feel, therefore, that independently of custom there is propriety in the manners custom assigns to this profession: nothing could better suit a clergyman than the grave, austere, and detached severity we are accustomed to expect of him. These reflections are so obvious that scarcely anyone is too thoughtless to have made them at some point and thus explained to himself why he approves the customary character of this calling.

The basis of the customary character of some other professions is less obvious, and our approval rests wholly on habit, neither confirmed nor strengthened by such reflections. Custom, for example, leads us to associate the military profession with cheerfulness, levity, spirited freedom, and some degree of dissipation. Yet if we considered the temper best suited to that occupation, we might decide that the most serious and thoughtful disposition best becomes people whose lives are continually exposed to extraordinary danger, and who should therefore think more constantly than others about death and its consequences. This very circumstance, however, may well explain why the opposite disposition is so prevalent among them. Facing death steadily and attentively, one must make such a great effort to master the fear of it that those constantly exposed to death find it easier to turn their minds away from it altogether, wrap themselves in a careless sense of safety and indifference, and immerse themselves in every kind of amusement and distraction. A camp is no place for a thoughtful or melancholy person. People of that disposition are indeed often resolute enough to press on, through a mighty effort, to certain death. But continual exposure to danger, even when death is less imminent, requires a prolonged effort that exhausts and depresses the mind, leaving it incapable of happiness or enjoyment. Cheerful, carefree people need make no such effort. Having firmly resolved never to look ahead, but to drown all anxiety about their position in endless pleasures and amusements, they bear such circumstances more easily. Whenever an officer's particular situation gives him no reason to expect extraordinary danger, he is quite likely to lose the cheerfulness and dissipated thoughtlessness associated with his profession. A captain of the city guard is ordinarily as sober, cautious, and thrifty a creature as the rest of his fellow citizens. A long peace likewise tends to reduce the difference between civilian and military character. The ordinary circumstances of the profession nevertheless make cheerfulness and some dissipation so characteristic of its members, and custom has linked those traits to their way of life so firmly in our imaginations, that we are inclined to despise a man whose particular temperament or circumstances prevent him from acquiring them. We laugh at the grave, cautious faces of the city guard, so unlike what we expect of their profession. They themselves often seem ashamed of their regular habits and, unwilling to be out of fashion in their trade, like to pretend to a levity that is not natural to them. Whatever bearing we have grown accustomed to seeing among a respected group becomes so closely associated with it in our minds that, whenever we encounter the one, we expect the other. Disappointed, we miss something we expected to find. We are embarrassed and brought up short, not knowing how to address someone who plainly appears to belong to a different kind from the one in which we would have placed him.

In the same way, the different circumstances of different ages and countries tend to give different characters to most of the people living in them. People's judgments about exactly how much of each quality deserves blame or praise vary with the amount customary in their own country and time. A degree of politeness regarded as effeminate flattery in Russia would be considered rudeness and barbarism at the court of France. A degree of orderliness and thrift regarded as excessive stinginess in a Polish nobleman would be seen as extravagance in a citizen of Amsterdam. Every age and country treats the degree of each quality commonly found in its respected people as the golden mean of that particular talent or virtue. As differing circumstances make different qualities more or less habitual, their judgments of the precise propriety of character and conduct change accordingly.

Among civilized nations, the virtues rooted in humanity are cultivated more than those rooted in self-denial and command of the passions. Among nations deemed rough and barbarous, the reverse is true: the virtues of self-denial are more cultivated than those of humanity. The general security and happiness prevailing in civilized and courteous ages give little occasion to practice contempt for danger or patience in enduring toil, hunger, and pain. Poverty can readily be avoided, so contempt for it almost ceases to be a virtue. Abstaining from pleasure becomes less necessary, and the mind is freer to relax and indulge its natural inclinations in all these respects.

### Part V, Chapter II, 2

Among peoples he calls savages and barbarians, things are quite different. Every such person undergoes a kind of Spartan discipline, hardened by the necessities of life to every hardship. He lives in constant danger, often suffers the extremes of hunger, and frequently dies from sheer want. His circumstances not only accustom him to every distress but teach him never to yield to the passions that distress arouses. He expects no sympathy or indulgence from his countrymen for such weakness. Before we can feel much for others, we must ourselves have some measure of ease. If our own misery presses us too hard, we have no leisure to attend to our neighbor’s; and these people are too occupied by their own needs to give much thought to anyone else’s. Consequently, whatever his distress, a man expects no sympathy from those around him and scorns to expose himself by betraying the slightest weakness. However fierce his passions, he never lets them disturb the serenity of his face or the composure of his conduct. The Indigenous peoples of North America, we are told, assume the utmost indifference on every occasion and would feel degraded if they appeared overcome in any way by love, grief, or resentment. Their magnanimity and self-command in this respect are almost inconceivable to Europeans. In a country where all people are equal in rank and fortune, one might expect mutual inclination to be the only consideration in marriage, freely indulged. Yet there all marriages, without exception, are arranged by parents; a young man would consider himself disgraced forever if he showed the slightest preference for one woman over another, or failed to profess complete indifference both to when he would marry and to whom. The weakness of love, so freely indulged in humane and polished ages, is regarded among these peoples as an utterly unpardonable softness. Even after marriage, husband and wife seem ashamed of a connection founded on so base a necessity. They do not live together, but see one another only in secret. Both continue living in their respective fathers’ houses, while openly living together as spouses, permitted without censure everywhere else, is considered here the most indecent and unmanly sensuality. Nor is this agreeable passion the only one over which they exercise such absolute self-command. Often, before all their countrymen, they bear injuries, reproaches, and the grossest insults with an appearance of utter insensibility, without showing the slightest resentment. A prisoner of war hears the customary sentence of death from his captors without showing emotion; afterward he submits to the most terrible tortures without lamenting his fate or revealing any passion but contempt for his enemies. Suspended by his shoulders over a slow fire, he mocks his tormentors and tells them how much more ingeniously he himself tortured their countrymen who fell into his hands. After hours of scorching, burning, and laceration of the most tender and sensitive parts of his body, he is often taken down from the stake for a short respite intended to prolong his suffering. He spends it discussing ordinary subjects, asking after news from home, and appearing indifferent to nothing but his own predicament. The spectators display the same insensibility: the horrible sight seems to leave them unmoved. They scarcely look at the prisoner except when they help torture him; at other times they smoke tobacco and amuse themselves with commonplace things, as though nothing were happening. Every person, it is said, prepares for this dreadful end from earliest youth. For this purpose he composes what they call a death song, to sing when captured by his enemies and dying under their tortures. It insults his tormentors and expresses utter contempt for death and pain. He sings it on every extraordinary occasion—going to war, meeting his enemies in battle, or wishing to show that he has accustomed his imagination to the most dreadful misfortunes, and that no human event can daunt his resolve or change his purpose. The same contempt for death and torture prevails among other peoples described as savage. Not a single Black person from the coast of Africa lacks, in this respect, a degree of magnanimity that the soul of his sordid master is too often scarcely capable of imagining. Fortune has never exercised a crueler dominion over humanity than when she subjected these nations of heroes to the refuse of Europe’s jails: wretches possessing the virtues neither of the countries they leave nor of those they enter, whose frivolity, brutality, and baseness rightly earn them the contempt of those they have conquered.

This heroic and unconquerable firmness, demanded of everyone by the customs and upbringing of such a country, is not required of people raised in civilized societies. If they complain when in pain, grieve when distressed, or allow love to overwhelm them or anger to unsettle them, they are readily forgiven. Such weaknesses are not thought to touch the essential elements of their character. Provided they do not let themselves be carried into actions contrary to justice or humanity, they lose little standing even if their faces lose some serenity or their speech and conduct some composure. A humane and polished people, more sensitive to others’ passions, can more readily enter into passionate, animated behavior and more easily pardon a slight excess. Knowing this, and assured that he will be judged fairly, the person involved permits himself stronger expressions of passion, less afraid that violent emotion will expose him to contempt. We can show more emotion before a friend than a stranger, since we expect greater indulgence from the former. Likewise, the rules of decorum in civilized nations permit livelier behavior than barbarians approve. The former converse with the openness of friends, the latter with the reserve of strangers. The feeling and liveliness with which the French and Italians, the two most polished nations on the continent, speak on any engaging occasion at first surprise visitors raised among people of less lively sensibility, who cannot enter into behavior they have never witnessed at home. A young French nobleman will weep before the whole court when refused a regiment. An Italian, says the abbé Dû Bos, shows more feeling on being fined twenty shillings than an Englishman upon being sentenced to death. At the height of Roman refinement, Cicero could weep with all the bitterness of grief before the entire senate and people without lowering himself in their eyes, as he evidently did at the end of almost every oration. Orators in the earlier, rougher ages of Rome probably could not have displayed so much emotion without violating the manners of their time. It would, I imagine, have been regarded as contrary to nature and propriety for the Scipios, the Leliuses, or the elder Cato to expose so much tenderness to the public. Those ancient warriors could speak with order, gravity, and sound judgment, but are said to have lacked the sublime and passionate eloquence first brought to Rome not many years before Cicero’s birth by the two Gracchi, Crassus, and Sulpitius. Such animated eloquence, long practiced in France and Italy with varying success, is only now beginning to enter England. So widely do civilized and barbarous nations differ in the self-command they demand, and by such different standards do they judge the propriety of conduct.

This difference gives rise to others no less important. Polished people, accustomed to yielding somewhat to natural impulses, become frank, open, and sincere. Barbarians, compelled to suppress and conceal every outward sign of passion, necessarily acquire habits of falsehood and dissimulation. Everyone familiar with peoples termed savage in Asia, Africa, or America observes that all are equally impenetrable: when they wish to conceal the truth, no examination can draw it from them. Even the cleverest questions cannot trap them, nor can torture force them to confess anything they choose not to tell. Their passions, meanwhile, though never outwardly expressed and hidden in the sufferer’s breast, reach the highest pitch of fury. He seldom shows anger, but when he yields to vengeance it is always bloody and terrible. The slightest insult drives him to despair. His face and speech remain sober and composed, expressing perfect tranquility, while his actions are often furiously violent. Among North Americans, it is not uncommon for people of the tenderest age and of the sex deemed more fearful to drown themselves after no more than a mild rebuke from their mothers, without showing emotion or saying anything but, “You shall no longer have a daughter.” In civilized nations, people’s passions are not generally so fierce or desperate. They are often loud and clamorous but seldom very harmful; frequently they seem to seek nothing beyond convincing a spectator that they are justified in feeling so strongly and obtaining his sympathy and approval.

Yet all these effects of custom and fashion on humanity’s moral sentiments are slight compared with the effects they produce in other cases. These forces distort judgment most not about the general style of character and behavior, but about the propriety or impropriety of particular practices.

The manners custom teaches us to approve in different professions and walks of life do not concern matters of the greatest importance. We expect truth and justice from old and young alike, from clergy and officers alike; it is only in minor matters that we look for their distinctive traits. Even there, some unnoticed circumstance often explains why the character assigned by custom to each profession would be proper independently of custom. We cannot therefore complain of any great distortion of natural sentiment here. Although nations expect different degrees of the same quality in people they esteem, at worst the duties of one virtue sometimes extend slightly into another’s province. The rustic hospitality customary among Poles may encroach a little on economy and good order; the frugality esteemed in Holland may encroach on generosity and conviviality. The toughness demanded of peoples called savage diminishes their humanity, while the delicate sensibility expected in civilized nations may sometimes destroy firmness of character. In general, the prevailing manners of a nation may fairly be said to suit its circumstances best: toughness suits the life of a person in such harsh conditions, sensibility the life of one in a highly civilized society. Even here, then, we cannot say that people’s moral sentiments are grossly distorted.

It is not, therefore, in the general style of conduct that custom permits the greatest departure from the natural propriety of action. Its influence over particular practices often does much more harm to morals, establishing as lawful and blameless actions that violate the plainest principles of right and wrong.

What greater barbarity could there be, for example, than harming an infant? Its helplessness, innocence, and lovableness awaken compassion even in an enemy; failing to spare so tender an age is seen as the fiercest act of an enraged and cruel conqueror. What, then, must we think of a parent’s heart if that parent could injure the helplessness that even a furious enemy hesitates to violate? Yet exposing newborn infants—that is, killing them—was permitted in nearly every Greek state, even among the refined and civilized Athenians. Whenever a parent’s circumstances made raising a child inconvenient, abandoning it to hunger or wild animals brought no blame or censure. The practice probably began in times of utmost barbarity. People first grew familiar with it in society’s earliest age, and its unbroken continuation afterward kept them from recognizing its enormity. We find it prevalent today among all peoples described as savage, and in that roughest and poorest condition of society it is surely more pardonable than anywhere else. A person’s poverty there is often so extreme that he himself faces terrible hunger, sometimes dies of sheer want, and frequently cannot support both himself and his child. We need not wonder, then, that he abandons the child in such a case. Someone fleeing an enemy he could not resist would surely be excusable for putting down an infant who slowed his escape, since trying to save the infant could bring only the consolation of dying together. It should not greatly surprise us, therefore, if parents in such a society were allowed to judge whether they could raise a child. In the later ages of Greece, however, the same act was permitted for reasons of distant advantage or convenience that could never excuse it. By then, uninterrupted custom had so completely sanctioned the practice that not only the world’s lax maxims tolerated this barbarous privilege, but even philosophers’ teachings, which should have been more just and exact, yielded to established custom. On this occasion, as on many others, they supported the horrible abuse rather than condemning it, appealing to far-fetched arguments about public utility. Aristotle speaks of it as something magistrates should encourage on many occasions. Humane Plato agrees, and despite the love of humanity apparent throughout his writings, nowhere condemns the practice. If custom can sanction so dreadful a violation of humanity, we may readily imagine that there is scarcely any particular practice, however gross, that it cannot authorize. “That is commonly done,” people say every day, as though this sufficiently excused conduct that is inherently unjust and unreasonable.

There is an obvious reason custom can never distort our sentiments about the general character and style of conduct as thoroughly as it can distort them about the propriety or unlawfulness of particular practices: there could never be such a general custom. No society could survive for a moment if people’s usual conduct matched the horrible practice I have just described.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 1

Part VI: On Systems of Moral Philosophy. Consisting of Four Sections.

Section I: On the questions to be examined in a theory of moral sentiments. If we examine the most celebrated and remarkable theories of the nature and origin of our moral sentiments, we shall find that nearly all of them agree with some part of the account I have been attempting to give. If everything already said is fully considered, we can explain which aspect of nature led each author to construct his particular system. Perhaps every system of morality that has ever gained any reputation ultimately derives from one or another of the principles I have attempted to unfold. Since they all rest in this respect on natural principles, all are right to some degree. But since many arise from a partial and imperfect view of nature, many are also wrong in some respects. Two questions must be considered in treating the principles of morals. First, what constitutes virtue? What disposition and course of conduct make up the excellent and praiseworthy character naturally deserving esteem, honor, and approval? Second, what power or faculty of the mind recommends that character to us, whatever it may be? In other words, how does the mind come to prefer one course of conduct to another, call one right and the other wrong, regard one as deserving approval, honor, and reward, and the other as deserving blame, censure, and punishment? We examine the first question when we ask whether virtue consists in benevolence, as Dr. Hutcheson imagines; in conduct appropriate to our different relationships, as Dr. Clarke holds; or in the wise and prudent pursuit of our own genuine, lasting happiness, as others believe. We examine the second when we ask whether the virtuous character, whatever constitutes it, is recommended to us by self-love, which shows us how this character in ourselves and others promotes our private interest; by reason, which distinguishes characters as it distinguishes truth from falsehood; by a special perceptive power called moral sense, pleased and gratified by virtue and disgusted by its opposite; or, finally, by some other human principle, such as a form of sympathy. I shall begin with systems addressing the first question and then turn to those addressing the second.

Section II: On the different accounts of the nature of virtue. Introduction. The various accounts of virtue, or of the disposition constituting an excellent and praiseworthy character, fall into three classes. Some hold that a virtuous disposition consists not in any single kind of affection, but in properly governing and directing all our affections, which may be virtuous or vicious according to what they seek and how vehemently they seek it. For these authors, then, virtue consists in propriety. Others locate virtue in the judicious pursuit of our own private interest and happiness, or the proper government of the self-interested affections directed solely toward that end. For them virtue consists in prudence. A third group locates virtue only in the affections that seek others’ happiness, not in those that seek our own. For them disinterested benevolence is the only motive that can make an action virtuous. Clearly, virtue must belong either to all our affections when properly governed and directed, or to some single class of them. The principal division is between self-interested and benevolent affections. If virtue does not belong to all affections under proper direction, it must belong either to those directed at our own private happiness or to those directed at the happiness of others. Thus, if virtue does not consist in propriety, it must consist in prudence or benevolence. One can scarcely imagine another account beyond these three. I shall show later how accounts apparently different from all three are fundamentally in agreement with one of them.

On systems that locate virtue in propriety.

According to Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, virtue consists in the propriety of conduct, or in the fitness of the affection motivating us to its object.

I. In Plato’s system[8], the soul resembles a small state or republic made up of three distinct faculties or orders.

8. See Plato, Republic, book iv.

The first is the faculty of judgment: it determines both the proper means of achieving an end and which ends are worth pursuing, as well as the relative value we should place on each. Plato called this faculty reason, quite aptly, and held that it was entitled to govern the whole. By this name he evidently included not only our faculty for judging truth and falsehood, but also our faculty for judging the propriety of desires and affections.

The various passions and appetites naturally subject to this ruling principle, though inclined to rebel against it, he divided into two classes. The first comprised passions grounded in pride and resentment, or what the scholastics called the irascible part of the soul: ambition, animosity, love of honor and dread of shame, the desire for victory, superiority, and revenge; in short, all the passions thought to arise from, or reveal, what we figuratively call spirit or natural fire. The second comprised passions grounded in love of pleasure, or what the scholastics called the concupiscible part of the soul: every bodily appetite, love of ease and security, and all sensual gratification.

We rarely depart from the plan of conduct prescribed by our ruling principle, the plan we set for ourselves in calmer hours as the most proper course, unless one of these two groups of passions prompts us: uncontrollable ambition and resentment, or the insistent call of immediate ease and pleasure. Though both can mislead us, each remains a necessary part of human nature. The first was given us to defend against injury, assert our standing and dignity in the world, aspire to what is noble and honorable, and recognize those who act likewise; the second, to provide for the body’s needs and sustenance.

The essential virtue of prudence lay in the strength, keenness, and perfection of the governing faculty. For Plato it consisted in a sound and clear discernment, grounded in general and systematic understanding, of the ends worth pursuing and the means proper for attaining them.

When the passions of the first group, those of the irascible part of the soul, possess enough strength and firmness to face every danger in pursuit of the honorable and noble under reason’s guidance, they constitute fortitude and magnanimity. In this system these passions are more generous and noble than those of the other group. They are often treated as reason’s allies in checking and restraining the lower, brutal appetites. We often grow angry with ourselves, it was observed, and feel resentment and indignation toward ourselves when love of pleasure tempts us to do what we disapprove. Thus the irascible part of our nature is enlisted to help reason against the concupiscible part.

When all three parts of our nature are in perfect accord; when neither the irascible nor the concupiscible passions seek any satisfaction reason does not approve, and reason commands nothing that they would not willingly do on their own, this happy composure and perfect harmony of the soul constitute the virtue commonly translated as temperance. It might be better translated as good temper, or sobriety and moderation of mind.

Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues, arises in this system when each of the three faculties keeps to its proper task without encroaching on another’s: when reason directs and passion obeys, and each passion performs its own duty and pursues its proper object readily and without reluctance, with a degree of force appropriate to that object’s value. This complete virtue, this perfect propriety of conduct, Plato, following some ancient Pythagoreans, called Justice.

It should be noted that the Greek word for justice has several meanings. Since, so far as I know, its equivalent in every other language does too, these various meanings must have some natural connection. In one sense, we do justice to our neighbor when we refrain from doing him positive harm, directly injuring neither his person, property, nor reputation. This is the justice I discussed earlier: it can be enforced, and its violation punished. In another sense, we fail to do our neighbor justice unless we feel and act on all the love, respect, and esteem appropriate to his character, circumstances, and relationship with us. In this sense we do injustice to a deserving person connected with us if, though we do not harm him in any respect, we make no effort to serve him or put him in the position the impartial spectator would wish him to occupy. The first sense corresponds to what Aristotle and the scholastics call commutative justice and Grotius calls justitia expletrix: refraining from taking what belongs to another and voluntarily doing everything that we could properly be compelled to do. The second corresponds to what some call distributive justice[9] and Grotius’s justitia attributrix: proper beneficence, the fitting use of what belongs to us for the charitable or generous purposes most appropriate to our circumstances. In this sense justice includes all the social virtues. There is also a third sense, broader still than the first two though closely related to the second; as far as I know, it too occurs in all languages. In this sense we are unjust when we seem not to value a particular object as highly, or pursue it as ardently, as the impartial spectator thinks it deserves or is naturally suited to inspire. We do injustice to a poem or picture when we admire it too little, and more than justice when we admire it too much. Likewise we do injustice to ourselves when we pay too little attention to a particular concern of our own. Here justice means exact and perfect propriety of conduct and includes not only commutative and distributive justice but every other virtue: prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Plato evidently means justice in this last sense, which therefore embraces the perfection of every virtue.

9. Aristotle’s distributive justice is somewhat different. It consists in the proper distribution of rewards from a community’s public resources. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 5, chapter 2.

Such is Plato’s account of virtue, the disposition properly deserving praise and approval. On his view it consists in a state of mind where each faculty remains within its own sphere without encroaching upon another’s, performing its office with precisely the strength and vigor appropriate to it. His account plainly agrees in every respect with what I said earlier about propriety of conduct.

II. According to Aristotle[10], virtue consists in the habit of observing a mean in accordance with sound reason. Each virtue occupies a middle position between two opposite vices: one arises from feeling too much about a given kind of object, the other from feeling too little. Courage, for example, lies between cowardice and reckless presumption, the former excessively affected by fearful things and the latter insufficiently affected. Frugality likewise lies between avarice and extravagance, one giving excessive attention and the other too little to matters of self-interest. Magnanimity stands between arrogance and faintheartedness, one an extravagant and the other an inadequate sense of our own worth and dignity. This account of virtue, it hardly needs saying, also corresponds closely to what I said earlier about proper and improper conduct.

10. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 2, chapter 5 and following, and book 3, chapter 5 and following.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 2

According to Aristotle[11], indeed, virtue consists less in moderate and proper affections themselves than in the habit of moderation. To understand this, we must distinguish virtue as a quality of an action from virtue as a quality of a person. As a quality of an action, it consists, even for Aristotle, in the reasonable moderation of the affection from which the action springs, whether or not the person habitually has that disposition. As a quality of a person, it consists in the habit of reasonable moderation, which has become the mind’s usual disposition. Thus an action prompted by an occasional burst of generosity is undoubtedly generous, but its author is not necessarily a generous person: it may be the only such action he has ever performed. The motive and disposition behind it may have been entirely proper; but if this happy frame of mind seems due to a passing mood rather than anything steady or lasting in his character, it brings him little honor. When we call someone generous, charitable, or virtuous in any respect, we mean that the disposition named is habitual. An isolated action, however proper, provides little evidence of that. If one action sufficed to mark its author with the character of any virtue, the most worthless people could claim them all: everyone has at times acted with prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Yet while individual actions, however praiseworthy, earn their authors very little praise, a single vicious action by someone whose conduct is usually upright greatly diminishes, and sometimes entirely destroys, our opinion of his virtue. Such an action sufficiently shows that his habits are imperfect and that he can be relied on less than his usual conduct had led us to believe.

11. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book ii, chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Aristotle[12] probably also intended, in making virtue consist in practical habits, to oppose Plato’s doctrine that sound sentiments and reasonable judgments about what should be done or avoided suffice for perfect virtue. For Plato, virtue could be considered a kind of knowledge: he thought no one could see clearly and conclusively what was right and wrong without acting accordingly. Passion might make us act against doubtful, uncertain opinions, but not against plain, evident judgments. Aristotle, by contrast, thought no intellectual conviction could overcome deep-rooted habits, and that good morals arise from action, not knowledge.

12. See Aristotle, Magna Moralia, book i, chapter 1.

III. According to Zeno[13], founder of Stoicism, nature entrusted every animal to its own care and endowed it with self-love so that it would strive to preserve not merely its existence but every part of its nature in the best and most perfect condition possible.

13. See Cicero, On Ends, book iii; also Diogenes Laertius, on Zeno, book vii, section 84.

Human self-love embraces, so to speak, the body and all its members, the mind and all its faculties and powers, desiring to preserve and maintain them all in the best and most perfect condition. Nature therefore points out whatever supports this condition as worth choosing and whatever destroys it as worth rejecting. Health, strength, agility, and bodily ease, together with the external advantages that foster them—wealth, power, honors, and the respect and esteem of those around us—are naturally presented as desirable and preferable to their opposites. Conversely, sickness, weakness, physical awkwardness, and bodily pain, as well as external disadvantages that produce them—poverty, lack of authority, and the contempt or hatred of those around us—are presented as things to avoid. Within each class some things seem more worthy of choice or rejection than others. In the first, health is plainly preferable to strength, strength to agility, reputation to power, and power to wealth. In the second, sickness is more to be avoided than bodily awkwardness, disgrace than poverty, and poverty than lack of authority. Virtue and proper conduct consist in choosing or rejecting every object and circumstance according to how far nature has made it worthy of choice or rejection: choosing the most desirable among several desirable things when we cannot have them all, and the least objectionable among several undesirable things when we cannot avoid them all. In choosing and rejecting with such exact discernment, giving everything precisely the attention it deserves according to its position on this natural scale, we maintain, according to the Stoics, that perfect rightness of conduct which is the essence of virtue. This is what they meant by living consistently, living according to nature, and obeying the laws and directions nature, or its Author, has prescribed for our conduct.

So far the Stoic conception of propriety and virtue differs little from that of Aristotle and the ancient Peripatetics. What chiefly separates these systems is the degree of self-command they require. The Peripatetics allowed some disturbance of feeling as suited to human weakness and useful to so imperfect a creature as man. Without passionate grief over his misfortunes or lively resentment of injuries, they thought, reason or respect for general rules of proper conduct would usually be too weak to move him to avoid misfortunes or repel injuries. The Stoics instead demanded perfect freedom from disturbing passions, regarding every emotion that could unsettle the mind’s tranquility even slightly as a product of frivolity and folly. For the Peripatetics, it seems, a passion remained within the bounds of propriety so long as a spectator could sympathize with it by making the utmost humane effort. For the Stoics, by contrast, any passion was improper if it demanded a spectator’s sympathy or required him to change the natural, ordinary state of his mind to keep pace with its intensity. They seem to have thought a virtuous person ought not to rely on the generosity of others for pardon or approval.

According to the Stoics, every event should seem indifferent to a wise person, and in itself be the object neither of desire nor aversion, joy nor sorrow. If he preferred some events to others, choosing certain situations and rejecting others,[14] it was not because he thought one inherently better than another, or believed he would be happier in what people call fortunate circumstances than in circumstances generally considered distressing. He did so because propriety of action—the rule the gods had given him to direct his conduct—required that choice. Among the primary objects of natural inclination, the things nature originally recommended as desirable, was the prosperity of our family, relatives, friends, country, humanity, and the universe as a whole. Nature also taught us that if the prosperity of two is preferable to that of one, the prosperity of many or all must be infinitely more so; and that since each of us is only one person, wherever our prosperity conflicts with that of the whole or any considerable part of it, we should choose to yield to what is so vastly preferable. Because every event is governed by the providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, we may be sure that whatever happens contributes to the prosperity and perfection of the whole. If we ourselves are poor, sick, or otherwise afflicted, we must first do everything we can, consistent with justice and our duty to others, to escape our plight. But if all our efforts fail, we should be satisfied that the order and perfection of the universe require us to remain in that condition for the time being. Since the prosperity of the whole should appear preferable even to us over that of so insignificant a part as ourselves, our condition, whatever it is, should from that moment become something we choose and even desire, if we are to preserve that complete propriety of sentiment and conduct in which our nature’s perfection consists. Should a chance to escape arise, however, our duty would be to take it. The order of the universe plainly no longer requires us to remain, and the world’s great director calls us away by clearly showing us the path. The same holds for misfortunes suffered by our relatives, friends, or country. If we can prevent or end their calamity without violating some more sacred obligation, we undoubtedly must. Propriety of action, the rule Jupiter has given us to direct our conduct, clearly demands it. But if preventing or ending it is wholly beyond our power, we should then consider that event the most fortunate that could have occurred. For we may be sure it contributes most to the prosperity and order of the whole, which, if wise and fair, we ourselves should desire above all. “In what sense,” asks Epictetus, “are some things called natural to us and others contrary to nature? Only in the sense in which we consider ourselves separate from everything else. Thus it might be said to be natural for a foot always to remain clean. But if you consider it as a foot, not something detached from the rest of the body, it will sometimes have to tread in mud, sometimes on thorns, and sometimes even be cut off for the sake of the whole body; if it refuses, it is no longer a foot. We should think the same about ourselves. What are you? A human being. If you consider yourself separate and detached, it suits your nature to live to old age, to be rich, and to be healthy. But if you consider yourself a human being and a part of a whole, for the sake of that whole you must sometimes be sick, sometimes face the hardships of a sea voyage, sometimes be in want, and perhaps at last die before your time. Why complain, then? Do you not know that by complaining you cease to be a human being, just as the foot ceases to be a foot?”[15]

14. Some of these expressions sound a little awkward in English: they are literal renderings of technical Stoic terms.

15. Arrian, book II, chapter 5.

This submission to the universe’s order, this utter indifference to our own concerns when weighed against the interests of the whole, can derive its propriety, evidently, only from the principle on which I have tried to show that justice rests. As long as we look at our interests through our own eyes, we can scarcely consent willingly to sacrifice them for the whole. Only when we view these conflicting interests through others’ eyes can our own seem so insignificant by comparison that we relinquish them without reluctance. To everyone but the person directly concerned, nothing seems more reasonable and proper than for the part to yield to the whole. What agrees with everyone else’s reason should not seem contrary to his own: he too ought to approve the sacrifice and recognize its reasonableness. Yet all the affections of a wise person, according to the Stoics, agree perfectly with reason and propriety, and naturally accord with what these governing principles prescribe. A wise person, therefore, can never be reluctant to accept this arrangement of things.

IV. Besides these ancient systems, there are modern ones that locate virtue in propriety, or in the fitness of the affection prompting an action to the cause or object exciting it. Dr. Clarke’s system locates virtue in acting according to the relations between things, fitting our conduct to the appropriateness or inappropriateness of applying certain actions to certain things or relations. Mr. Woolaston’s locates it in acting according to the truth of things, their actual nature and essence, treating them as what they are rather than what they are not. Lord Shaftesbury’s locates it in maintaining a proper balance among affections and keeping each passion within its proper sphere. All three are more or less inexact descriptions of the same fundamental idea.

The description of virtue given—or at least intended—in each of these systems, for some modern authors do not express themselves very successfully, is doubtless sound as far as it goes. There is no virtue without propriety, and wherever there is propriety some approval is deserved. Still, the description is incomplete. Though propriety is an essential element of every virtuous action, it is not always the only one. Beneficent actions have another quality that makes them seem to deserve not just approval but reward. None of these systems adequately or easily accounts for the higher esteem such actions deserve or for the distinct response they naturally awaken. Nor is their description of vice complete. Impropriety is likewise an essential element of every vicious action, but is not always its only element: utterly harmless and insignificant actions can display extreme absurdity and impropriety. Deliberate actions harmful to those around us have, besides their impropriety, a distinctive quality that makes them seem to deserve not only disapproval but punishment, and to provoke not merely dislike but resentment and revenge. None of these systems adequately or easily explains the greater abhorrence such actions inspire.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter II

Of the systems that make virtue consist in prudence.

The oldest surviving system that makes virtue consist in prudence is that of Epicurus. He is said, however, to have borrowed all the leading principles of his philosophy from his predecessors, especially Aristippus. Yet despite this charge by his enemies, it is very likely that the way he applied those principles was entirely his own.

According to Epicurus, bodily pleasure and pain were the only ultimate objects of natural desire and aversion. That they were always natural objects of those passions, he thought, needed no proof. Pleasure might sometimes seem to be avoided, but not because it was pleasure: enjoying it might cost us a greater pleasure or expose us to a pain more worth avoiding than the pleasure was worth seeking. Pain might likewise sometimes seem worth choosing, not because it was pain, but because enduring it might spare us a greater pain or bring us a far more important pleasure. That bodily pleasure and pain were always natural objects of desire and aversion was, he thought, abundantly clear. No less clear to him was that they were the only ultimate objects of those passions. Anything else we desired or avoided was desired or avoided, in his view, because it tended to produce one or the other sensation. Power and riches were desirable because they tended to bring pleasure; poverty and insignificance were shunned because they tended to cause pain. Honor and reputation were valued because the esteem and love of those around us mattered greatly, both in securing pleasure and in protecting us from pain. Disgrace and a bad reputation, by contrast, were to be avoided because the hatred, contempt, and resentment of those around us destroyed all security and inevitably exposed us to the gravest bodily harms. See Cicero, De finibus, book i, and Diogenes Laertius, book x.

All pleasures and pains of the mind, according to Epicurus, ultimately came from those of the body. The mind was happy when it recalled the body's past pleasures and hoped for more to come; it was miserable when it recalled pains the body had endured and dreaded their return or worse pains in the future.

Yet the mind's pleasures and pains, though ultimately derived from the body's, were far greater than their sources. The body felt only the present instant; the mind also felt the past through memory and the future through anticipation, and so both suffered and enjoyed far more. In the greatest bodily pain, he observed, we will find, if we pay attention, that what torments us most is not the suffering of this instant, but either the agonizing memory of what has passed or the still more terrible dread of what is to come. The pain of each instant, taken by itself and severed from what precedes and follows, is a trifle hardly worth considering. Yet that is all the body itself can ever be said to suffer. Likewise, amid the greatest pleasure, we will find that bodily sensation—the sensation of the present instant—accounts for only a small part of our happiness. Our enjoyment comes chiefly from a cheerful memory of the past or a still more joyous anticipation of the future; the mind always supplies by far the greater share of the delight.

Since our happiness and misery thus depended chiefly on the mind, if this part of our nature was rightly disposed, if our thoughts and opinions were as they ought to be, the state of our body mattered little. Even under severe bodily pain, we might retain a considerable share of happiness if reason and judgment held their ground. We might console ourselves with the memory of past pleasure and the hope of future pleasure. We might temper the severity of pain by remembering what, even then, we actually had to suffer: merely the bodily sensation, the pain of the present instant, which could never be very great in itself. Whatever agony arose from fearing its continuance came from an opinion of the mind, an opinion that sounder judgment could correct. We could consider that violent pains would probably be brief, and lasting pains probably moderate, with many intervals of ease. At any rate, death was always near and ready to release us; since, according to him, it ended every sensation, of pleasure as well as pain, it could not count as an evil. “When we exist,” he said, “death is absent; and when death is present, we do not exist. Death, therefore, is nothing to us.”

If the immediate sensation of pain was in itself so little to be feared, the sensation of pleasure was even less to be desired. Pleasure is naturally much less intense than pain. If pain could detract so little from the happiness of a rightly disposed mind, pleasure could add hardly anything to it. Once the body was free of pain and the mind of fear and anxiety, an added bodily pleasure could matter very little. It might vary the happiness of that condition, but could not properly be said to increase it.

Ease of body and security or tranquility of mind thus constituted, according to Epicurus, the most perfect condition of human nature, the fullest happiness a person could enjoy. Attaining this great end of natural desire was the sole purpose of every virtue. For him the virtues were desirable not for themselves, but because they tended to bring about that condition.

Prudence, for instance, though in this philosophy the source and principle of every virtue, was not desirable for itself. A careful, laborious, circumspect state of mind, always watchful and attentive even to the remotest consequences of each action, could hardly be pleasant in itself. Its value lay in its power to secure the greatest goods and ward off the greatest evils.

Nor could abstaining from pleasure and restraining our natural appetite for enjoyment—the work of temperance—be desirable for its own sake. The entire value of this virtue came from its usefulness: it enabled us to defer present enjoyment for a greater enjoyment to come, or to avoid a greater pain that present enjoyment might cause. Temperance, in short, was nothing but prudence in matters of pleasure.

Hard work, pain, danger, even death—the conditions into which fortitude often leads us—were surely still less natural objects of desire. We chose them only to escape greater evils. We submitted to hard work to avoid the greater shame and suffering of poverty; we faced danger and death to defend our liberty and property, the means of pleasure and happiness, or to defend our country, whose safety necessarily included our own. Fortitude enabled us to do all this cheerfully, as the best that could be done in our circumstances. In reality it was simply prudence, sound judgment, and presence of mind in weighing pain, work, and danger accurately, always choosing the lesser to escape the greater.

The same applied to justice. Refraining from what belongs to another was not desirable in itself; surely it could not be better for you that I should possess what belongs to me than that you should possess it. Yet you ought to leave my possessions alone, because otherwise you will provoke the resentment and indignation of humanity. The security and tranquility of your mind will be utterly destroyed. You will be filled with fear and dismay at the thought of a punishment you imagine others are always ready to inflict, and against which, in your own imagination, no power, skill, or concealment could ever protect you. The other kind of justice consists in doing appropriate good turns to people according to the various relationships in which they stand to us—as neighbors, relatives, friends, benefactors, superiors, or equals. The same reasons recommend it. Acting properly in these relationships wins the esteem and love of those around us; acting otherwise stirs their contempt and hatred. The one naturally secures, and the other necessarily endangers, our own ease and tranquility, the great ultimate objects of all our desires. Thus the whole virtue of justice, the most important virtue of all, amounts to discreet and prudent conduct toward our neighbors.

Such is Epicurus's doctrine of the nature of virtue. It may seem strange that this philosopher, described as a man of the most engaging manners, never noticed that, whatever these virtues or their opposing vices may do for our bodily ease and security, the feelings they naturally arouse in others are desired or dreaded far more passionately than all their other consequences. A well-disposed mind prizes being lovable and respectable, being a proper object of esteem, more highly than all the ease and security that love, respect, and esteem could bring. Conversely, being hateful or contemptible, being a proper object of indignation, is more dreadful than anything hatred, contempt, or indignation could make our bodies suffer. Our desire for the one character, and aversion to the other, therefore cannot arise from concern for their likely effects on the body.

This system is undoubtedly quite inconsistent with the one I have sought to establish. It is not difficult, however, to see which particular aspect of nature lends this account its plausibility. Through the wise design of the Author of nature, virtue is on ordinary occasions, even in this life, genuine wisdom and the surest and readiest means of securing safety and advantage. Success or failure in our undertakings depends greatly on what others generally think of us, and on their general willingness to help or hinder us. But the best, surest, easiest, and readiest way to gain favorable judgments and avoid unfavorable ones is surely to make ourselves proper objects of the former, not of the latter. “Do you want,” said Socrates, “a reputation as a good musician? The only sure way to gain it is to become a good musician. Do you likewise want to be thought capable of serving your country as a general or a statesman? Here too the best way is actually to acquire skill and experience in war and government, and to become fit to be a general or statesman. Likewise, if you want to be regarded as sober, temperate, just, and fair, the best way to earn that reputation is to become sober, temperate, just, and fair. If you can truly make yourself lovable, respectable, and a proper object of esteem, you need not fear that you will fail to gain the love, respect, and esteem of those around you.” Since practicing virtue is generally so advantageous and practicing vice so opposed to our interests, their contrary tendencies undoubtedly give virtue an added beauty and propriety and vice a new ugliness and impropriety. Temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence thus win approval not only for their own qualities, but also as the highest wisdom and truest prudence. Likewise, the opposite vices—intemperance, cowardice, injustice, and either malice or mean selfishness—meet disapproval not only for their own qualities, but also as the most shortsighted folly and weakness. Epicurus seems to have attended only to this kind of propriety in every virtue. It is the kind most readily invoked by those trying to persuade others to live properly. When people's conduct, and perhaps their maxims too, clearly show that virtue's natural beauty is unlikely to move them, how else can we stir them but by showing them the folly of their conduct and how much they themselves are likely to suffer for it in the end?

In reducing all the different virtues to this one kind of propriety, Epicurus also indulged a propensity natural to everyone, but cherished especially by philosophers as a means of displaying their ingenuity: the wish to explain as much as possible by as few principles as possible. He indulged it still further when he traced all the primary objects of natural desire and aversion back to bodily pleasure and pain. This great champion of atomistic philosophy delighted in deriving all the powers and qualities of bodies from such obvious, familiar properties as the shape, motion, and arrangement of matter's tiny parts. He doubtless found a similar satisfaction in deriving all the mind's feelings and passions from its most obvious and familiar sensations.

Epicurus's system agreed with those of Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno in making virtue consist in acting in the most suitable way to obtain the primary objects of natural desire—the prima naturæ. It differed from all three, however, in two respects: first, in its account of those primary objects; second, in its account of virtue's excellence, or why virtue should be esteemed.

For Epicurus, the primary objects of natural desire consisted in bodily pleasure and pain, and nothing else. For the other three philosophers, many other things—including knowledge and the happiness of our relatives, friends, and country—were ultimately desirable for their own sake.

For Epicurus, moreover, virtue did not deserve pursuit for its own sake and was not itself an ultimate object of natural appetite. It was worth choosing only because it tended to prevent pain and secure ease and pleasure. The other three, by contrast, held that virtue was desirable not merely as a means to other primary objects of natural desire, but as something more valuable in itself than all of them. Human beings, they thought, were born to act; their happiness must therefore consist not only in the pleasure of what they passively feel, but also in the propriety of what they actively do.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter III

Of the systems that make virtue consist in benevolence.

The system that makes virtue consist in benevolence, though not, I think, as old as every system I have already described, is nevertheless very ancient. It seems to have been the doctrine of most philosophers who, around and after the age of Augustus, called themselves Eclectics. They claimed chiefly to follow Plato and Pythagoras, and for this reason are commonly known as the later Platonists.

According to these thinkers, benevolence or love was the sole principle of action in the divine nature, guiding the exercise of every other divine attribute. The Deity's wisdom found the means to attain the ends proposed by his goodness, and his infinite power carried them out. Yet benevolence remained the supreme, governing attribute, which the others served and from which all the excellence—or, if I may use the term, all the morality—of divine action ultimately sprang. All the perfection and virtue of the human mind consisted in some likeness to, or share in, the divine perfections. It therefore consisted in being filled with the same benevolence and love that governed every action of the Deity. Only human actions arising from this motive were truly worthy of praise, or could claim merit in the Deity's sight. Only through acts of charity and love could we imitate God's conduct as we should, express our humble and devout admiration of his infinite perfections, and, by cultivating the same divine principle within ourselves, bring our feelings nearer to his holy attributes and become fitter objects of his love and esteem—until at last we attained the direct communion with the Deity to which this philosophy sought above all to raise us.

Many ancient fathers of the Christian church held this system in high regard. After the Reformation, it was adopted by several divines of outstanding piety and learning and most amiable manners, notably Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Henry More, and Mr. John Smith of Cambridge. But among all its advocates, ancient or modern, the late Dr. Hutcheson was beyond comparison the sharpest, clearest, most philosophical, and, most importantly, the most sober and judicious.

Many features of human nature support the notion that virtue consists in benevolence. We have already seen that proper benevolence is the most graceful and pleasing of all the affections; that it wins our sympathy twice over; that its necessarily beneficent tendency makes it a proper object of gratitude and reward; and that for all these reasons our natural sentiments assign it a merit greater than any other. We have also seen that even benevolence's weaknesses do not much displease us, whereas weaknesses in every other passion are intensely distasteful. Who does not recoil from excessive malice, selfishness, or resentment? Yet even the most excessive indulgence of a partial friendship is less offensive. Benevolent passions alone can act without any regard to propriety and still retain something engaging. Even unreflecting goodwill that does favors without once considering whether its conduct merits blame or approval has something pleasing about it. Other passions are different. The moment the sense of propriety leaves them, the moment it ceases to accompany them, they cease to please.

As benevolence lends the actions arising from it a beauty surpassing all others, so its absence—and still more its opposite—imparts a distinctive ugliness to anything that displays such a disposition. Harmful actions are often punishable for no reason beyond their showing too little concern for our neighbor's happiness.

Besides all this, Dr. Hutcheson observed that whenever an action thought to arise from benevolent feelings proved to have another motive, our sense of its merit declined in proportion to the influence we attributed to that motive. If an action believed to spring from gratitude proved to have sprung from the expectation of a further favor, or one believed to arise from public spirit turned out to have arisen from the hope of a monetary reward, the discovery would destroy all sense of merit or praiseworthiness in either action. Since any admixture of selfish motive, like base metal mixed into precious metal, reduced or wholly removed the merit an action would otherwise have had, it was evident to him that virtue must consist solely in pure, disinterested benevolence. See Inquiry concerning virtue, sections 1 and 2.

Conversely, when actions ordinarily attributed to selfish motives prove to have sprung from benevolence, our sense of their merit increases greatly. If we believed someone sought to improve his fortune only so that he could do favors for friends and repay his benefactors as he ought, we would love and esteem him all the more. This observation seemed to confirm still further that benevolence alone could mark an action as virtuous.

Finally, he thought an obvious proof of this account of virtue lay in the standard to which casuists constantly appealed in their disputes over right conduct: the public good. In doing so, they universally acknowledged that whatever advanced humanity's happiness was right, laudable, and virtuous, and whatever did the opposite was wrong, blameworthy, and vicious. In the recent debates over passive obedience and the right of resistance, the sole question disputed among sensible people was whether universal submission would probably cause greater evils than temporary uprisings when privileges were infringed. Whether what best served the happiness of humanity as a whole was also morally good, he said, was never once in question.

If benevolence was thus the only motive capable of making an action virtuous, the more benevolence an action displayed, the more praise it deserved.

Actions aimed at the happiness of a large community displayed a wider benevolence than those aimed only at a smaller group and were accordingly more virtuous. The most virtuous affection of all, therefore, embraced the happiness of every intelligent being. The least virtuous affection still deserving the name of virtue aimed no further than the happiness of a single person, such as a son, brother, or friend.

Perfect virtue consisted in directing all our actions toward the greatest possible good, subordinating every lesser affection to the desire for humanity's general happiness, and regarding ourselves as only one among many, whose welfare should be pursued only insofar as it was consistent with, or helped advance, the welfare of all.

Self-love was a principle that could never be virtuous, in any degree or direction. It was vicious whenever it impeded the general good. When it merely led a person to look after his own happiness, it was innocent, meriting neither praise nor blame. Benevolent actions done in the face of strong self-interested motives were more virtuous for that reason: they showed the benevolent principle's strength and vigor.

Dr. Hutcheson was so far from accepting self-love as a possible motive for virtuous actions that, for him, even concern for the pleasure of approving our own conduct—the comforting applause of our conscience—lessened the merit of a benevolent act. In his view this was a selfish motive: insofar as it contributed to an action, it showed the weakness of the pure, disinterested benevolence that alone could mark human conduct as virtuous. In ordinary human judgment, however, concern for our own mind's approval is so far from diminishing the virtue of an action that it is regarded rather as the only motive worthy of being called virtuous. See Inquiry concerning virtue, section 2, article 4, and Illustrations on the moral sense, section 5, last paragraph.

Such is the account of virtue given by this amiable system. It has a special tendency to nourish the noblest and most pleasing affection in the human heart, and not only to restrain the injustice of self-love but, in some measure, to discourage self-love altogether, portraying it as a principle that can never bring honor to those moved by it.

Some systems I have already described fail to explain adequately the distinctive excellence of beneficence, the supreme virtue. This system seems to have the opposite failing: it does not adequately explain why we approve the lesser virtues of prudence, vigilance, circumspection, temperance, constancy, and firmness. It considers only the aims of our affections and the helpful or harmful effects they tend to produce. It takes no account at all of their propriety or impropriety, or how well or poorly they suit the cause that arouses them.

Concern for our own private happiness and interests, moreover, often seems a highly commendable principle of action. Habits of thrift, industry, discretion, attentiveness, and sustained thought are generally believed to arise from self-interested motives, and yet are regarded as praiseworthy qualities deserving everyone's esteem and approval. A selfish motive can indeed seem to mar the beauty of actions that ought to arise from benevolent feeling. The reason, however, is not that self-love can never motivate a virtuous action; it is that benevolence in this particular case seems too weak, quite unequal to its object. The person's character therefore seems clearly imperfect and, on balance, deserving blame rather than praise. By contrast, adding a benevolent motive to an action that self-love alone should prompt does not so readily diminish our sense of its propriety or of the actor's virtue. We are not inclined to suspect anyone of a deficiency of self-interest. That is hardly human nature's weak point, or a failing we ordinarily watch for. But if we could truly believe that a man would not take proper care of his health, life, or fortune unless he cared for his family and friends—though self-preservation alone ought to move him—it would undoubtedly be a failing. It would be one of those amiable failings that invite pity rather than contempt or hatred, but it would still somewhat diminish the dignity and respectability of his character. Carelessness and failure to manage one's affairs are universally disapproved, not for showing too little benevolence, but for showing too little proper attention to self-interest.

Although casuists often judge the rightness or wrongness of human conduct by whether it tends to help or harm society, it does not follow that concern for society's welfare must be the sole virtuous motive for action. It follows only that, whenever motives conflict, that concern ought to outweigh the rest.

Benevolence may perhaps be the sole principle of action in the Deity; several arguments, not without force, suggest that it is. It is hard to imagine what other motive could move an independent, all-perfect being who needs nothing beyond himself and is completely happy in himself. But whatever is true of the Deity, human beings are imperfect creatures who need so many things outside themselves merely to survive, and must often act from many other motives. Our condition would be peculiarly harsh if feelings that ought, by our very nature, often to guide our conduct could never appear virtuous or deserve anyone's esteem and praise.

These three systems—one placing virtue in propriety, another in prudence, and the third in benevolence—are the principal accounts of the nature of virtue. Every other description of virtue, however different it may seem, can readily be reduced to one or another of them.

The system that places virtue in obedience to the Deity's will can be counted either among systems of prudence or among those of propriety. Why ought we to obey the Deity's will? The question would be impious and absurd in the highest degree if it expressed doubt about whether we ought to obey him, but it permits only two answers. Either we ought to obey because he is infinitely powerful and will reward us eternally if we do and punish us eternally if we do not; or, independently of any concern for our happiness or for rewards and punishments of any kind, it is fitting that a creature obey its creator, that a limited and imperfect being submit to one of infinite and incomprehensible perfections. No third answer to this question is conceivable. If the first is right, virtue consists in prudence, the proper pursuit of our ultimate interest and happiness, since this is why we are bound to obey the Deity's will. If the second is right, virtue consists in propriety, since our obligation to obey rests on the fitness of humility and submission toward the superior being who inspires them.

The system that places virtue in utility likewise coincides with the system that places it in propriety. It approves as virtuous every quality of mind that is pleasing or advantageous to its possessor or to others, and disapproves the opposite qualities as vicious. But whether any affection is pleasing or useful depends on the degree to which it is allowed to operate. Every affection is useful within certain moderate bounds, and every affection becomes harmful when it exceeds its proper limits. Virtue according to this system therefore consists not in any single affection, but in the proper degree of every affection. Its only difference from the system I have sought to establish is that it treats utility, rather than sympathy or the spectator's corresponding feeling, as the natural and original measure of this proper degree.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 1

Of licentious systems.

All the systems I have described so far suppose a real and essential distinction between vice and virtue, whatever these qualities consist in. There is a real and essential difference between an affection's propriety and impropriety, between benevolence and any other principle of action, and between genuine prudence and shortsighted folly or headlong rashness. On the whole, too, they all tend to encourage praiseworthy dispositions and discourage blameworthy ones.

It may be true that some of them tend to upset the balance of our affections and give the mind a greater bias toward certain principles of action than those principles deserve. The ancient systems that place virtue in propriety seem chiefly to recommend the grand, imposing, respectable virtues: self-government and self-command, fortitude, magnanimity, independence from fortune, and contempt for outward events—for pain, poverty, exile, and death. Such great exertions display the noblest propriety of conduct. By comparison, the tender, amiable, gentle virtues, all the virtues of humane indulgence, receive little attention. The Stoics in particular even seem often to have regarded them as mere weaknesses that a wise person should not harbor in his heart.

The benevolent system, on the other hand, cultivates and encourages those gentler virtues to the utmost, while seeming entirely to neglect the mind's more imposing and respectable qualities. It even refuses to call them virtues. It calls them moral abilities, treating them as qualities unworthy of the same kind of esteem and approval owed to virtue properly so called. It treats every principle of action aimed solely at our own interests even worse, if possible. Far from having merit of their own, these principles supposedly diminish the merit of benevolence when they cooperate with it; and prudence employed solely for private interest, it asserts, cannot even be imagined a virtue.

The system that makes virtue consist in prudence alone gives the strongest encouragement to caution, vigilance, sobriety, and judicious moderation. Yet it seems equally to diminish the worth of both the amiable and the respectable virtues, stripping the former of all their beauty and the latter of all their grandeur.

Despite these defects, each of the three systems tends in general to encourage the best and most commendable habits of the human mind. Society would be fortunate if humanity at large—or even the few who profess to live by a philosophical rule—guided their conduct by any one of them. Each has something distinctive and valuable to teach. If instruction and encouragement could inspire a mind with fortitude and magnanimity, the ancient systems of propriety would seem sufficient for the task. If the same means could soften a mind into humanity and awaken kindness and a general love for those around us, some of the visions offered by the benevolent system might achieve this. From Epicurus's system, undoubtedly the worst of the three, we can learn how much practicing both the amiable and the respectable virtues advances our own interests, our ease, safety, and peace even in this life. Since Epicurus located happiness in ease and security, he made a special effort to show that virtue was not merely the best and surest means of obtaining those invaluable goods, but the only means. Other philosophers have chiefly celebrated virtue's beneficial effects on our inward tranquility and peace of mind. Epicurus did not neglect this theme, but dwelt chiefly on virtue's influence on our outward prosperity and safety. This is why his writings were so widely studied in the ancient world by people of every philosophical school. Cicero, the great opponent of Epicureanism, borrowed from him his most compelling proofs that virtue alone suffices for happiness. Seneca, though a Stoic and thus a member of the school most opposed to Epicurus's, quoted him more frequently than any other philosopher.

Some other systems, however, seem to abolish altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and their tendency is therefore wholly pernicious. I mean the systems of the duke of Rochefoucault and Dr. Mandeville. Though the ideas of both writers are mistaken in almost every respect, certain features of human nature, seen from a particular angle, seem at first to favor them. Sketched first with the duke of Rochefoucault's elegance and delicate precision, then depicted more fully with Dr. Mandeville's lively and humorous, if coarse and rustic, eloquence, these features have lent their doctrines an air of truth and plausibility that readily deceives the unwary.

Dr. Mandeville, the more systematic of the two, considers anything done from a sense of propriety or a regard for what deserves praise to be done from a love of praise and commendation—or, as he calls it, vanity. A person, he observes, is by nature much more concerned with his own happiness than with anyone else's; he can never truly prefer another's prosperity to his own. Whenever he appears to do so, we may be sure he is deceiving us and acting from the same selfish motives as ever. Of his selfish passions, vanity is among the strongest; he is easily flattered and takes great pleasure in the applause of those around him. When he seems to sacrifice his own interests for his companions', he knows his conduct will gratify their self-love and that they will express their satisfaction by showering him with the most extravagant praise. In his reckoning, the pleasure he expects from their praise outweighs the interest he gives up to obtain it. On that occasion, then, his conduct is really just as selfish and springs from just as low a motive as on any other. Yet others flatter him, and he flatters himself, with the belief that it is wholly disinterested: without that belief, it would seem worthy of no praise in his eyes or anyone else's. Thus, according to Mandeville, all public spirit and every preference for the public interest over private interest is mere fraud and deception practiced upon humanity; the human virtue so highly celebrated and so eagerly emulated is nothing but the offspring of flattery begotten on pride.

I will not now examine whether even the most generous and public-spirited actions might, in some sense, be said to spring from self-love. The answer, I think, matters little to establishing the reality of virtue, since self-love may often be a virtuous motive. I will seek only to show that the desire to do what is honorable and noble, to make ourselves proper objects of esteem and approval, cannot rightly be called vanity. Even the love of well-founded fame and reputation, the desire to earn esteem by what truly deserves it, does not merit that name. The former desire is the love of virtue, humanity's noblest and best passion. The latter is the love of true glory, inferior to the former, certainly, but apparently next to it in dignity. Vanity belongs to the person who seeks praise for qualities not praiseworthy at all, or not praiseworthy to the degree he expects; who stakes his standing on trivial ornaments of dress and carriage, or on equally trivial accomplishments of ordinary manners. It belongs to the person who seeks praise for something genuinely praiseworthy but knows perfectly well he has no claim to it. The empty fool who puts on airs of importance without warrant, the foolish liar who claims credit for adventures that never happened, and the witless plagiarist who passes off another's work as his own are rightly charged with this passion. It is also called vanity when a person is not content with others' quiet feelings of esteem and approval, but seems fonder of loud declarations and applause than of the feelings themselves; when he is satisfied only if his praises ring in his ears, and anxiously begs for every outward sign of respect—titles, compliments, visits, an entourage, and conspicuous displays of deference and attention in public. This frivolous passion is entirely different from either of the first two. As those belong to the noblest and greatest of humanity, so it belongs to the lowest and least.

These three passions are widely different: the desire to make ourselves proper objects of honor and esteem, or to become honorable and estimable; the desire to gain honor and esteem by genuinely deserving them; and the frivolous desire to be praised at any cost. The first two are always approved, while the last never fails to attract contempt. Nevertheless, a distant kinship among them, exaggerated by this lively writer's amusing and engaging eloquence, has enabled him to deceive his readers. Vanity and the love of true glory are related because both seek esteem and approval. Yet the latter is a just, reasonable, and fair passion, while vanity is unjust, absurd, and ridiculous. Whoever desires esteem for what truly deserves it seeks only what is rightfully his and cannot be withheld without some injustice. Whoever desires esteem on other terms demands something to which he has no rightful claim. The first is easily satisfied, is unlikely to grow jealous or suspect that we esteem him too little, and rarely insists on many outward signs of our regard. The other is never satisfied, always jealous and suspicious that we esteem him less than he wishes, because he secretly knows that he wants more than he deserves. The slightest neglect of ceremony seems to him a mortal insult and a sign of resolute contempt. Restless and impatient, he constantly fears that we have lost all respect for him; thus he is forever seeking new expressions of esteem, and only constant attention and flattery can keep him in good humor.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 2

There is also a kinship between the desire to become honorable and worthy of esteem and the desire for honor and esteem—between love of virtue and love of true glory. They resemble each other not only because both aim at actually being honorable and noble, but even in the respect in which the love of true glory resembles what is properly called vanity: some regard for the sentiments of others. The most magnanimous person, who desires virtue for its own sake and cares least what people actually think of him, nevertheless delights in considering what they ought to think. He knows that, though he may receive neither honor nor applause, he deserves both, and that if people were calm, candid, consistent, and properly informed about the motives and circumstances of his conduct, they would honor and applaud him. Though he despises the opinions actually held about him, he prizes those that ought to be held. The great and exalted motive of his conduct is to think himself worthy of those honorable sentiments: whatever others may think of his character, when he puts himself in their place and considers not their actual opinion but what it ought to be, he can always hold the highest opinion of it himself. Thus even the love of virtue has some reference—not to what others think, but to what reason and propriety say they ought to think—and in this respect, too, it has some kinship with the love of true glory. Yet there remains a very great difference. The person who acts solely from regard for what is right and fitting, for what deserves esteem and approval even if he never receives either, acts from the most sublime and godlike motive human nature can conceive. The person who wishes both to deserve approval and to obtain it has motives that, though laudable on the whole, contain more human frailty. Ignorance and injustice may wound him; the envy of rivals and the folly of the public may threaten his happiness. The other's happiness, by contrast, is wholly secure, independent of fortune and of the whims of those around him. He does not take the contempt and hatred cast on him through ignorance as belonging to him, and so they do not wound him. People despise and hate him because they have a false notion of his character and conduct. Were they to know him better, they would esteem and love him. Strictly speaking, the person they hate and despise is not him but someone else for whom they have mistaken him. A friend who encountered us at a masquerade dressed as our enemy would be more amused than hurt if we vented our indignation against him beneath that disguise. Such are the sentiments of genuine magnanimity under unjust censure. Human nature, however, seldom attains this firmness. Though only the weakest and least worthy delight greatly in false glory, a strange inconsistency allows false disgrace to wound even those who seem most resolute and determined.

Dr. Mandeville is not content to portray the trivial motive of vanity as the source of every action commonly counted virtuous. He tries to show other defects in human virtue. In every instance, he claims, it falls short of the complete self-denial it professes and is ordinarily not a conquest of our passions but a concealed indulgence of them. If our restraint in pleasure falls short of the sternest abstinence, he calls it gross luxury and sensuality. Everything beyond what is absolutely necessary to sustain human nature is luxury to him: even a clean shirt or a comfortable home becomes a vice. Indulging sexual desire in the most lawful union he regards as just as sensual as its most harmful gratification; he mocks temperance and chastity practiced at so little cost. Here, as often, ambiguity of language conceals the ingenious sophistry of his argument. Some passions have no common names except names for their offensive and disagreeable degree. It is at this degree that the spectator is most likely to notice them. When they offend his own sentiments and cause aversion and unease, he must attend to them and naturally gives them names. When they accord with his own state of mind, he tends to overlook them altogether and either gives them no names or chooses names that signify their restraint rather than the degree to which they persist under restraint. Thus the common names for the love of pleasure and the love of sex—luxury and lust—denote the vicious, offensive degree of those passions. Temperance and chastity, by contrast, seem to signify the restraint imposed on them rather than the degree to which they still exist. When Mandeville can show that they persist in some degree, he imagines he has demolished the reality of temperance and chastity and exposed them as mere deceptions practiced on the inattentive and unsuspecting. Yet those virtues do not demand utter insensibility to the objects of the passions they govern. They aim only to curb their violence enough that it neither harms the individual nor disturbs or offends society.

The great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville's book, Fable of the Bees, is to represent as wholly vicious any passion that can be vicious in some degree or direction. Thus he calls everything vanity that has any reference either to what others do think or to what they ought to think; through this sophistry he arrives at his favorite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits. If the love of splendor, the taste for the elegant arts and improvements of human life, for agreeable dress, furnishings, or conveyances, for architecture, sculpture, painting, and music must be called luxury, sensuality, and ostentation even in people whose circumstances allow them to indulge these tastes without inconvenience, then luxury, sensuality, and ostentation certainly are public benefits. Without the qualities on which he chooses to lay these reproachful names, the arts of refinement would receive no encouragement and would languish for lack of work. Certain popular ascetic doctrines current before his time, which located virtue in the complete extirpation of every passion, were the true foundation of this permissive system. It was easy for Dr. Mandeville to prove, first, that no such complete conquest ever actually occurred among human beings and, second, that if it occurred universally, it would harm society by ending all industry and commerce and virtually all human business. The first claim seemed to prove that genuine virtue did not exist, and that what claimed the name was a mere fraud upon mankind; the second seemed to prove that private vices were public benefits, since no society could prosper without them.

Such is Dr. Mandeville's system. It once caused a great stir and, though perhaps it never produced more vice than would otherwise have existed, it at least taught vice arising from other causes to appear more brazenly and to avow its corrupt motives with an unprecedented shameless audacity.

Yet however destructive this system may seem, it could never have persuaded so many people or so alarmed the friends of better principles if it had not approached the truth in some respects. A system of natural philosophy may seem plausible and be widely accepted for a long time without any basis in nature or likeness to truth. For nearly a century an ingenious nation considered the vortices of Des Cartes a thoroughly satisfactory account of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet it has been demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that these supposed causes not only do not exist but cannot exist, and that even if they did, they could not produce the effects attributed to them. Moral philosophy is different. An author who claims to explain the origin of our moral sentiments cannot deceive us so grossly or stray so far from the truth. A traveler describing a distant country can pass off the most groundless and absurd inventions as certain facts. But someone describing events in our neighborhood and the affairs of our own parish, though he may still deceive us in many respects if we fail to look for ourselves, must give even his greatest falsehoods some resemblance to truth and a considerable share of it. The natural philosopher who assigns causes to the great phenomena of the universe is reporting on a distant country: provided his account seems possible, he can say almost anything and hope to be believed. But the person explaining the origin of our desires and affections and our sentiments of approval and disapproval reports not only on our own parish but on our own household. Like indolent masters who trust a deceitful steward, we may be easily fooled here too; yet we cannot accept an account that has no regard at all for truth. At least some of its entries must be correct, and even the most inflated ones must have some foundation, or our most careless inspection would detect the fraud. Anyone who assigned a natural sentiment to a principle neither connected with it nor resembling any principle connected with it would seem absurd even to the least discerning and least experienced reader.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter I

Section III: Of the Different Systems Concerning the Principle of Approbation. Introduction.

After inquiring into the nature of virtue, the next important question in moral philosophy concerns the principle of approbation: the mental power or faculty that makes certain characters agreeable or disagreeable to us, leads us to prefer one course of conduct to another, calls one right and the other wrong, and regards one as deserving approval, honor, and reward, the other blame, censure, and punishment. Three different accounts of this principle have been offered. According to some, we approve or disapprove of our own and others' actions solely from self-love, with an eye to their likely effect on our own happiness or harm. According to others, reason—the same faculty by which we distinguish truth from falsehood—enables us to distinguish what is fitting from what is unfitting in actions and affections. According to still others, this distinction is entirely the work of immediate sentiment and feeling, arising from the satisfaction or disgust inspired by the sight of certain actions or affections. Self-love, reason, and sentiment, then, are the three proposed sources of approbation. Before describing these systems, I must observe that resolving this second question, though of the greatest speculative importance, has no practical importance. The question of virtue's nature necessarily affects our notions of right and wrong in many particular cases. The question of the principle of approbation cannot do so. To investigate the inner mechanism by which those notions or sentiments arise is purely a matter of philosophical curiosity.

Of Those Systems Which Derive the Principle of Approbation from Self-Love.

Those who derive approbation from self-love do not all explain it in the same way, and all their systems contain considerable confusion and imprecision. According to Mr. Hobbes and many of his followers, including Puffendorff and Mandeville, people seek refuge in society not from any natural love of their own kind, but because without others' help they cannot live safely or comfortably. Society is thus necessary to them. Whatever sustains and benefits it seems indirectly to advance their own interests; whatever threatens to disturb or destroy it seems in some measure harmful to themselves. Virtue chiefly sustains human society, while vice chiefly disturbs it. Virtue is therefore agreeable to each person, and vice offensive: in one he foresees the prosperity, and in the other the ruin and disorder, of what he needs for his comfort and safety.

There is no denying, as I have observed before, that when we consider the matter calmly and philosophically, virtue's tendency to promote social order gives it great beauty, while vice's tendency to disrupt that order gives it great ugliness. In an abstract, philosophical view, human society resembles an immense machine whose regular, harmonious motions produce a thousand pleasing effects. In any fine machine made by human skill, whatever makes its motion smoother and easier derives beauty from that effect, while whatever obstructs it is displeasing. So virtue, like a fine polish on the wheels of society, necessarily pleases us, while vice, like the vile rust that makes them jar and grate against one another, necessarily offends us. To the extent that this account derives approval and disapproval from regard for social order, it falls under the principle that gives utility its beauty, a principle I have already explained. From this it derives all the plausibility it possesses. When these authors describe the countless advantages of civilized social life over a savage solitary life, elaborate on the need for virtue and good order to sustain the former, and demonstrate how surely vice and lawlessness bring back the latter, readers are charmed by the novelty and grandeur of the view. They plainly see in virtue a new beauty and in vice a new ugliness they had not noticed before, and are often so delighted by the discovery that they fail to reflect that this political view, which had never occurred to them in their lives, cannot possibly have been the basis of the approval and disapproval they have always felt toward those qualities.

Yet when these authors derive our concern for society's welfare, and our consequent esteem for virtue, from self-love, they do not mean that when we now praise Cato's virtue and detest Catiline's villainy, we imagine ourselves benefiting from one or suffering from the other. Nor, according to these philosophers, do we esteem the virtuous character and blame the disorderly one because we expect society's prosperity or collapse in those distant ages and countries to affect our present happiness or misery. They never supposed that we think any benefit or harm actually accrues to us from either person. Rather, we think of what might have accrued to us if we had lived in those times and places, or what might still accrue if we encountered similar characters in our own time. In short, what these authors were groping toward without clearly explaining was the indirect sympathy we feel with the gratitude or resentment of those who benefited or suffered from such opposite characters. They dimly pointed to this when they said that our praise and indignation arise not from what we ourselves gained or lost, but from imagining what we might gain or lose by living among such people.

Sympathy, however, cannot in any sense be called selfish. When I sympathize with your sorrow or indignation, someone may argue that my feeling arises from self-love because it comes from imagining myself in your place and conceiving what I would feel in those circumstances. But though sympathy does arise from an imagined exchange of places with the person chiefly concerned, I do not imagine this exchange as happening to me in my own person and character. I imagine myself as that person. To share your grief at the death of your only son, I do not consider what I, with my particular character and profession, would suffer if I had a son who died. I consider what I would suffer if I really were you: I exchange not only circumstances but persons and characters. My grief is therefore entirely for you, not in the least for myself. It is not selfish at all. How could a passion be selfish when it arises not even from imagining something that has happened to me, or concerns me in my own person and character, but is wholly occupied with what concerns you? A man can sympathize with a woman in childbirth, though he cannot imagine himself suffering her pains in his own person and character. The whole account of human nature that derives every sentiment and affection from self-love—an account that has caused so much stir but, as far as I know, has never been fully and clearly explained—seems to me to have arisen from a confused misunderstanding of sympathy.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter II

Of Those Systems Which Make Reason the Principle of Approbation.

Mr. Hobbes famously taught that the state of nature is a state of war, and that before civil government was established, people could have no safe and peaceful society. On his account, preserving society therefore meant upholding civil government, and destroying civil government meant ending society. But civil government's existence depends on obedience to the supreme magistrate: the moment he loses his authority, government ends. Thus if self-preservation teaches people to applaud whatever benefits society and blame whatever harms it, consistency in thought and speech should also teach them to applaud obedience to the civil magistrate on every occasion, and to blame all disobedience and rebellion. Praiseworthy and blameworthy should mean precisely obedient and disobedient. The magistrate's laws should thus be treated as the sole ultimate standards of justice and injustice, right and wrong.

Mr. Hobbes openly intended, by spreading these views, to subject people's consciences directly to civil rather than ecclesiastical authority. The example of his own times had taught him to see the turbulence and ambition of ecclesiastical powers as the chief source of social disorder. His doctrine was consequently particularly offensive to theologians, who vented their indignation against him with great harshness and bitterness. It also offended every sound moralist by implying that there is no natural distinction between right and wrong, that these change with the mere arbitrary will of the civil magistrate. His account was thus attacked from every quarter and with every kind of weapon, from sober argument to furious denunciation.

To refute so odious a doctrine, one had to prove that prior to every law or enacted institution, the mind was naturally equipped with a faculty by which it recognized certain actions and affections as right, praiseworthy, and virtuous, and others as wrong, blameworthy, and vicious.

As Dr. Cudworth rightly observed in Immutable Morality, l. 1, law cannot be the original source of these distinctions. If there is a law, either it is right to obey it and wrong to disobey, or obedience and disobedience are indifferent. A law one may indifferently obey or disobey obviously cannot give rise to the distinctions; neither can a law it is right to obey and wrong to disobey, since this already presupposes prior notions of right and wrong, to which obedience and disobedience respectively conform.

Since the mind thus possessed these notions before any law, it seemed necessary to conclude that it derived them from reason, which distinguishes right from wrong as it distinguishes truth from falsehood. This conclusion, true in some respects but hasty in others, was more readily received when the abstract study of human nature was still in its infancy, before the different powers and offices of the mind had been carefully examined and distinguished. At the height of the controversy with Mr. Hobbes, no other faculty had occurred to anyone as a possible source of such ideas. The popular doctrine therefore became that virtue and vice consist not in agreement or disagreement with a superior's law, but in agreement or disagreement with reason. Reason was accordingly treated as the original source and principle of approval and disapproval.

In some respects it is true that virtue consists in conformity to reason; in a certain sense reason can rightly be called the source of approval and disapproval, and of all sound judgments of right and wrong. By reason we discover the general rules of justice that should govern our actions. By it we also form the less precise ideas of prudence, decency, generosity, and nobility that we always carry with us and use, as best we can, to shape our conduct. General moral maxims, like other general maxims, are formed from experience and induction. We observe in many particular cases what pleases or displeases our moral faculties and what they approve or disapprove, and from this experience we infer general rules. Induction is always counted an operation of reason, so we can properly say that all these general maxims and ideas come from reason. We use them to regulate most of our moral judgments, which would be extremely uncertain and precarious if they depended entirely on immediate sentiment and feeling, so readily altered by changes in health and mood. Since maxims and ideas derived by reason's induction govern our soundest judgments of right and wrong, we may properly say that virtue conforms to reason, and to that extent call reason the source of approval and disapproval.

But although reason undoubtedly gives rise to general moral rules and the judgments we form through them, it is absurd and unintelligible to suppose that even in the particular cases from which those rules are drawn, the first perceptions of right and wrong come from reason. Like all initial observations on which general rules are founded, these perceptions belong not to reason but to immediate sense and feeling. Finding in a great variety of instances that one course of conduct consistently pleases the mind in a certain way and another consistently displeases it, we form general moral rules. But reason cannot make any particular object agreeable or disagreeable to the mind for its own sake. It can show that an object is a means to something else that naturally pleases or displeases us and thus make it agreeable or disagreeable for the sake of that other thing. Yet nothing can be pleasing or displeasing for its own sake unless immediate sense and feeling make it so. If virtue necessarily pleases for its own sake in every particular instance, and vice as certainly displeases us, it is immediate sense and feeling, not reason, that reconcile us to one and estrange us from the other.

Pleasure and pain are the chief objects of desire and aversion, but immediate sense and feeling, not reason, distinguish them. If virtue is desirable for its own sake and vice is likewise an object of aversion, reason cannot be what originally distinguishes these qualities; immediate sense and feeling must do so.

Yet because reason can in a certain sense rightly be called the principle of approval and disapproval, people long supposed, through inattention, that these sentiments originally arose from its operations. Dr. Hutcheson deserves credit for first distinguishing with some precision the respect in which moral distinctions arise from reason from the respect in which they rest on immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations upon the moral sense, he has explained this so fully and, to my mind, so conclusively that if the dispute continues, I can attribute it only to neglect of what he wrote or to a superstitious attachment to certain turns of phrase. Such weakness is not uncommon among the learned, particularly on matters as deeply engaging as this, where a virtuous person is often reluctant to give up even the supposed correctness of a single phrase he has grown used to.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 1

Of Those Systems Which Make Sentiment the Principle of Approbation.

Systems that make sentiment the principle of approbation fall into two classes.

I. According to some, approbation rests on a sentiment of a special kind, a distinct power of perception exercised when the mind observes certain actions or affections. Some affect this faculty agreeably and are therefore marked as right, praiseworthy, and virtuous; others affect it disagreeably and are marked as wrong, blameworthy, and vicious. Because this sentiment has a nature distinct from every other and results from a special perceptive power, they give it a special name: the moral sense.

II. According to others, there is no need to invent a new power of perception, previously unheard of, to account for approbation. Nature, they believe, works here as economically as elsewhere, producing many effects from one cause. Sympathy, a familiar power with which the mind is plainly endowed, suffices, in their view, to account for all the effects attributed to that special faculty.

I. Dr. Hutcheson took great pains to show that approbation does not rest on self-love. He also demonstrated that it cannot arise from any operation of reason. It seemed to him that nothing remained except to suppose that Nature had equipped the human mind with a faculty of a special kind to bring about this one important effect. Once he had excluded self-love and reason, no other known mental faculty occurred to him as capable of serving this purpose. His discussion appears in Inquiry concerning Virtue.

He called this new perceptive power a moral sense and held it somewhat analogous to the outward senses. Bodies around us affect those senses in certain ways and seem accordingly to possess qualities of sound, taste, smell, and color. In like manner, the various affections of the human mind touch this special faculty in certain ways and seem to possess the qualities of lovableness or hatefulness, virtue or vice, right or wrong.

According to this system, the various senses or perceptive powers from which the human mind derives all its simple ideas fall into two kinds: direct or antecedent senses and reflex or consequent senses. The direct senses give the mind perceptions of kinds of things that presuppose no earlier perception of another thing. Sounds and colors, for example, are objects of direct sense: hearing a sound or seeing a color requires no prior perception of some other quality or object. Reflex or consequent senses, on the other hand, give the mind perceptions of kinds of things that presuppose such an earlier perception. Harmony and beauty are objects of reflex sense: we must first hear a sound to perceive its harmony, or see a color to perceive its beauty. The moral sense was counted among these reflex faculties. The faculty Mr. Locke calls reflection, from which he derived the simple ideas of the mind's various passions and emotions, was, in Dr. Hutcheson's account, a direct internal sense. The further faculty by which we perceive the beauty or ugliness, virtue or vice, of those passions and emotions was a reflex internal sense. This distinction is discussed in Treatise of the passions.

Dr. Hutcheson sought further support for his doctrine by arguing that it accorded with nature's pattern: the mind has several other reflex senses closely resembling the moral sense. These include a sense of beauty and ugliness in external objects; a public sense through which we sympathize with our fellow creatures' happiness or misery; a sense of shame and honor; and a sense of the ridiculous.

Despite all the efforts of this ingenious philosopher to prove that approbation rests on a special perceptive power somewhat analogous to the outward senses, he acknowledges certain consequences of his doctrine that many may regard as enough to refute it. As he concedes in Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, Sect. 1. p. 237, et seq. Third Edition, qualities belonging to the objects of a sense cannot, without gross absurdity, be attributed to the sense itself. Who would call sight black or white, hearing loud or quiet, or taste sweet or bitter? By the same reasoning, he says, it is equally absurd to call our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. Those qualities belong to what the faculties perceive, not to the faculties themselves. Suppose, then, someone were so absurdly constituted that he approved of cruelty and injustice as the highest virtues and condemned fairness and humanity as the most contemptible vices. Such a mind might be inconvenient for the person and for society, and strange, surprising, and unnatural in itself; but it could not without gross absurdity be called vicious or morally evil.

And yet, if we saw a person cheering with admiration and applause at a barbarous, undeserved execution ordered by an arrogant tyrant, surely we would see no great absurdity in calling his behavior vicious and morally evil in the highest degree. All it might express is depraved moral faculties, an absurd approval of that horrible act as noble, magnanimous, and great. I imagine that on seeing such a spectator we would forget for a moment our sympathy with the sufferer and feel only horror and loathing for this execrable wretch. We would abominate him even more than the tyrant, who might have been driven on by powerful jealousy, fear, and resentment, and be more excusable on that account. The spectator's sentiments would seem wholly without cause or motive, and therefore utterly detestable. No distortion of sentiment or affection would be harder for our hearts to share or more fiercely rejected with hatred and indignation. Far from seeing such a mind as merely strange or inconvenient but in no way vicious or morally evil, we would count it the final and most dreadful stage of moral depravity.

Correct moral sentiments, by contrast, naturally seem to some degree praiseworthy and morally good. A person whose censure and applause always match the merit or unworthiness of their objects with the greatest precision seems to deserve moral approval himself. We admire the fine accuracy of his moral sentiments. They guide our own judgments, and their uncommon, surprising justice arouses our wonder and applause. We cannot always be sure, of course, that such a person's conduct would match the accuracy of his judgments about others. Virtue demands habit and firmness of mind as well as sensitivity of sentiment; sadly, the former are sometimes absent where the latter is most developed. Nevertheless, even if this disposition has its imperfections, it cannot coexist with anything grossly criminal, and it offers the soundest foundation on which perfect virtue can be built. Many people mean well and sincerely intend to do what they take to be their duty, yet remain disagreeable because their moral sentiments are coarse.

It may perhaps be argued that even if approbation rests on no perceptive power analogous to the outward senses, it could still rest on a distinctive sentiment devoted to this purpose alone. Approval and disapproval, it might be said, are feelings or emotions that arise in the mind on seeing different characters and actions. Just as resentment might be called a sense of injuries, and gratitude a sense of benefits, so these feelings might properly be called a sense of right and wrong, or a moral sense.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 2

But although this account may escape the objections to the previous one, it faces others equally impossible to answer.

First, however much a particular emotion varies, it retains the general characteristics that identify its kind. Those characteristics are always more striking and noticeable than its variations in particular cases. Anger, for instance, is a distinct kind of emotion, and its general features are more recognizable than any of its particular variations. Anger at a man is doubtless somewhat different from anger at a woman, and that again from anger at a child. The character of its object modifies the general passion differently in each case, as an attentive observer can readily see. Still, its common characteristics predominate in all three. Recognizing them takes no keen observation; detecting the differences requires delicate attention. Everyone notices the former, hardly anyone the latter. If approval and disapproval were, like gratitude and resentment, distinct kinds of emotion unlike all others, we would expect that through all their variations they would retain clear and easily recognized general features identifying each as an emotion of its particular kind. But the facts are quite otherwise. If we examine what we really feel when we approve or disapprove in different circumstances, we find that our emotion in one case is often altogether different from that in another, with no discoverable feature in common. Our approval of a tender, sensitive, humane sentiment differs entirely from our approval of one that is grand, daring, and magnanimous. We may approve both perfectly and without reservation, yet the first softens us while the second elevates us; the emotions they arouse bear no resemblance to each other. On the account I have been trying to establish, this is precisely what must happen. The emotions of those we approve are opposite in the two cases, and since our approval arises from sympathy with those emotions, what we feel in one case cannot resemble what we feel in the other. This would be impossible if approval were a special emotion unrelated to the sentiments approved of, arising at the sight of those sentiments as any other passion arises at the sight of its proper object. The same is true of disapproval. Our horror of cruelty is nothing like our contempt for meanness of spirit. These two vices produce quite different kinds of discord between our minds and the mind of the person whose sentiments and conduct we consider.

Second, I have already observed that our natural sentiments regard not only the passions and affections we approve or disapprove as morally good or evil, but also approval itself as good when proper and evil when improper. How, then, does this system explain our approval or disapproval of proper or improper approval? Only one reasonable answer, I think, is possible. When our neighbor's approval of a third person's conduct agrees with our own, we approve of his approval and count it, in some degree, morally good. When it disagrees, we disapprove and count it, in some degree, morally evil. Thus at least in this instance, agreement or opposition of sentiment between observer and observed constitutes moral approval or disapproval. If it does so here, why not everywhere else? Why invent a new perceptive power to account for these sentiments?

Against every account that makes approbation depend on a special sentiment unlike all others, I would object that it is strange for this sentiment, which Providence surely intended to govern human nature, to have attracted so little notice that no language has given it a name. The expression moral sense was coined only recently and cannot yet be considered part of English. Only in recent years has approbation come to denote anything specifically moral. In ordinary speech we approve of whatever completely satisfies us: the shape of a building, the design of a machine, the flavor of a meat dish. Conscience does not directly name a moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. It does presuppose such a faculty, but properly means our awareness that we have acted in accordance with or against its directions. Love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, and so many other passions supposedly subject to this governing principle have all proved important enough to acquire names. Is it not remarkable that the sovereign of them all should have been so little noticed that, apart from a few philosophers, nobody has thought it worth naming?

When we approve of a character or action, the sentiments we feel arise, according to the system I have set out, from four sources, different from one another in some respects. First, we sympathize with the agent's motives. Second, we share the gratitude of those benefited by his actions. Third, we observe that his conduct accords with the general rules by which these two kinds of sympathy usually operate. Finally, when we regard such actions as part of a pattern of conduct tending to promote the happiness of the individual or of society, their utility gives them a beauty like that of a well-designed machine. In any particular case, subtract everything that must be attributed to one or another of these four principles, and I would like to know what remains. I will freely grant that any remainder belongs to a moral sense or some other special faculty, provided someone can identify it precisely. If such a special principle as the supposed moral sense existed, we might expect at times to feel it alone, apart from everything else, just as we often feel joy, sorrow, hope, or fear pure and unmixed with another emotion. But I think no one can even claim this. I have never heard of an example in which this principle acts alone, unmixed with sympathy or antipathy, gratitude or resentment, a perception that an action agrees or disagrees with an established rule, or finally that general taste for beauty and order awakened by inanimate as well as living things.

II. Another system attempts to derive our moral sentiments from sympathy, but differs from the one I have been trying to establish. It locates virtue in utility and explains the spectator's pleasure in the usefulness of any quality by sympathy with the happiness of those affected by it. This sympathy differs both from the sympathy by which we enter into the agent's motives and from that by which we share the gratitude of those who benefit from his actions. It is the same principle by which we approve of a well-designed machine; yet no machine can be the object of either of the other two sympathies. I have already described this system to some extent in the fourth part of this discourse.

## Translation — Mouseia

> Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the complete sixth-edition English text of all parts (the appended Dissertation on the Origin of Languages is not included).

### Part I, Section I, Chapter I

Part I: On the Propriety of Action. In three sections.

Section I: On the Sense of Propriety.

On Sympathy.

No matter how selfish we think people are, human nature clearly includes some concern for what happens to others. Their happiness matters to us even when we gain nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Pity or compassion is one example: we feel it when we see someone suffering, or when we vividly imagine that suffering. It is obvious that other people's sadness often makes us sad, so there is no need to give examples to prove it. Like the other basic human passions, this feeling is not limited to good and kind people, though they may feel it most keenly. Even the worst criminal, however hardened and lawless, has some of it.

We cannot directly experience what someone else feels. The only way to imagine how a person is affected is to think about what we would feel in the same situation. If our brother is being tortured on the rack while we are comfortable, our senses cannot tell us what he suffers. Our senses have never taken us, and never can take us, beyond ourselves. Only imagination gives us an idea of his sensations. And imagination can do this only by showing us what our own sensations would be in his place. It copies the impressions of our senses, not his. In imagination we put ourselves in his situation. We picture ourselves enduring his torments, as though we entered his body and became him to some extent. This gives us an idea of his sensations, and even lets us feel something similar, though much weaker. When we make his suffering our own in this way, it begins to affect us. We tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. Any pain or distress causes deep sorrow when we experience it ourselves. Imagining ourselves in pain also causes some sorrow, depending on how vivid the image is.

Many familiar observations show that we feel for others in this way: we imagine changing places with the person who suffers. When we see a blow about to strike someone else's arm or leg, we instinctively pull back our own arm or leg. When the blow lands, we feel a little of its impact and are hurt by it too. People watching a tightrope dancer twist, turn, and balance their own bodies as they watch him do it. They feel they would have to move that way in his place. People with sensitive nerves and frail bodies say that seeing the exposed sores and ulcers of street beggars can make the corresponding parts of their own bodies itch or feel uncomfortable. The sight of those people's suffering horrifies them, and they imagine what they would suffer if they were in that condition and that part of their body had the same affliction. In a frail body, the strength of that thought alone can cause the itching or discomfort. Even strong people notice that looking at sore eyes can make their own eyes hurt noticeably. The reason is the same: even in the strongest person, the eyes are more delicate than any other part of the weakest person's body.

It is not just pain or sadness that prompts us to feel with others. Whatever feeling a situation causes in the person directly affected, an attentive observer feels something similar when thinking about that person's situation. We are genuinely happy when a hero in a tragedy or story escapes danger, just as we are genuinely sad when that hero suffers. We share the hero's happiness as truly as we share the suffering. We share the hero's gratitude to loyal friends who stayed through hard times, and we join in resentment toward treacherous people who injured, abandoned, or deceived the hero. Whatever the human passion, the observer's feeling corresponds to what the observer imagines the affected person should feel, after imagining the situation as their own.

Pity and compassion name the way we share another person's sadness. Sympathy may originally have meant the same thing, but we can now use it to mean sharing any kind of feeling.

Sometimes sympathy seems to arise simply from seeing someone else's emotion. A feeling can appear to pass from one person to another instantly, before the observer even knows its cause. For instance, someone's face and gestures can show strong grief or joy, and the observer immediately feels some of the same sadness or happiness. Anyone who sees a smiling face finds it cheerful; a sorrowful face, by contrast, looks sad.

But this does not happen with every feeling. The signs of some passions arouse no sympathy at all. Until we learn what caused them, they are more likely to repel us and turn us against the person showing them. An angry man's furious behavior is more likely to make us angry with him than with his enemies. We do not know what provoked him, so we cannot imagine ourselves in his position or feel anything like his anger. But we can see the position of the people he is angry with, and the danger they face from such a furious opponent. We easily share their fear or resentment, and at once tend to take their side against the man who threatens them.

The visible signs of grief and joy make us feel something similar because they suggest that something good or bad has happened to the person. For these feelings, that general idea is enough to move us a little. The effects of a person's grief or joy fall on that person. Unlike signs of resentment, they do not suggest another person whose interests conflict with theirs and whose welfare also concerns us. The mere idea of someone's good or bad fortune therefore gives us some concern for that person. But the mere idea of a provocation does not make us share the provoked person's anger. Nature seems to make us reluctant to share anger. Until we know its cause, we are more inclined to take a stand against it.

Even when we share someone else's grief or joy without knowing its cause, our sympathy is very incomplete. If a person cries out in general terms about their pain, we are mostly curious about what has happened. We may be ready to sympathize, but do not yet feel much actual sympathy. Our first question is, “What happened to you?” Until we get an answer, we feel uneasy because we vaguely sense a misfortune and, even more, because we torment ourselves guessing what it might be. But we still do not feel much with the person.

So sympathy comes less from seeing a feeling than from seeing the situation that causes it. Sometimes we feel something for another person that the person seems unable to feel. When we put ourselves in their place, imagination gives rise to a feeling in us that the actual situation does not produce in them. We blush at someone's shameless rudeness even though they seem unaware of anything wrong with their behavior. We cannot help imagining the embarrassment we would feel if we acted so absurdly.

To anyone with even a little humanity, losing the power of reason seems by far the worst of all the troubles to which mortal life exposes us. Such people view this final stage of human misery with deeper compassion than any other. Yet a person in that condition may laugh and sing, entirely unaware of their own misery. Our pain at seeing the person cannot be a reflection of what they feel. The observer's compassion must come entirely from imagining how it would feel to be in the same unhappy state while somehow still able to judge it with the reason and judgment the observer now possesses—even though that may be impossible.

How much a mother suffers when she hears her sick infant moan in pain but cannot learn what it feels! In imagining the baby's suffering, she adds her own awareness of its helplessness to the helplessness it actually has. She adds her fear of the unknown consequences of the illness. Together these produce the fullest possible picture of misery and distress in her own mind. The baby, however, feels only its discomfort in the present moment, which can never be very great. It has no worries about the future. Its lack of thought and foresight protects it from fear and anxiety, those great torments of the human mind. When the child grows up, reason and philosophy will try in vain to provide that protection.

We even sympathize with the dead. We overlook what really matters about their condition—the fearful future awaiting them—and are chiefly affected by things we can picture but that cannot affect their happiness. We think it miserable to lose the sunlight, be cut off from life and conversation, lie in a cold grave as the body decays and becomes food for creatures in the earth, and soon vanish from the thoughts, feelings, and almost even the memories of those who loved them most. We imagine that we can never feel too much for people who have suffered such a terrible loss. We feel that they deserve our sympathy especially now, when everyone may forget them. We give them empty honors to preserve our sad memory of their fate, making ourselves miserable in the process. It seems to make their loss worse that our sympathy cannot comfort them. We think that everything we do is useless, and that even the regret, love, and tears of friends—which ease every other kind of distress—cannot help them. That thought only makes us feel their misery more strongly. But none of these things can affect the happiness of the dead. Nor can thoughts of them disturb the deep security of their rest. We imagine their state as an endless, bleak sadness only because we add our own awareness of the change to the change that has happened to them. We put ourselves in their position. We imagine, so to speak, placing our living souls in their lifeless bodies, and think of what we would feel there. This illusion is exactly why the thought of our own death frightens us so much. We are miserable while alive at the thought of conditions that certainly cannot hurt us once we are dead. It also gives rise to one of the most important parts of human nature: our fear of death. That fear is a great poison to human happiness, but also a great check on human injustice. It troubles and humbles each person, while guarding and protecting society.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter II

On the Pleasure of Mutual Sympathy.

Whatever causes sympathy, and however it starts, nothing pleases us more than seeing other people share our feelings. Nothing shocks us more than seeing that they do not. Some people try to explain all our feelings as subtle forms of self-love. They think their theory easily explains this pleasure and pain. They say people know they are weak and need help from others. They are glad when others share their feelings because that promises help, and sad when others do not because that promises opposition. But we feel both pleasure and pain immediately, often over trivial things. Neither can come from such a calculation of self-interest. A man who tries to amuse a group is embarrassed if he looks around and finds that nobody laughs at his jokes except himself. If the group laughs, he enjoys it greatly. He considers their agreement with his feelings the highest praise.

His pleasure does not seem to come entirely from having his own amusement made livelier by sharing theirs. Nor does his pain come entirely from missing out on that added pleasure, though both effects certainly play some part. After reading a book or poem so many times that we no longer enjoy it on our own, we may still enjoy reading it to someone else. To that person, it is new and full of appeal. We share the surprise and admiration it naturally causes in them, even though it no longer causes those feelings in us. We view its ideas less as we see them ourselves than as they appear to that person. By sharing their enjoyment, we revive our own. If they did not seem to enjoy it, we would feel disappointed and would no longer enjoy reading it aloud. The same applies to our jokes. Others' laughter certainly makes our amusement livelier, and their silence disappoints us. But these effects are not the only reasons for our pleasure and pain. Agreement between their feelings and ours brings pleasure, and disagreement brings pain, for a reason that this explanation does not cover. My friends' sympathy with my joy might please me by increasing my joy. But if their sympathy with my grief did nothing but increase that grief, it could give me no pleasure. Yet sympathy increases joy and eases grief. It adds another source of satisfaction to joy. Into grief, it brings almost the only pleasant feeling the grieving heart can then receive.

Notice that we are even more eager to tell friends about painful feelings than pleasant ones. Their sympathy with our pain gives us even more comfort than their sympathy with our pleasure, and its absence shocks us even more.

How relieved unhappy people are when they find someone they can tell why they are sad! They seem to unload part of their distress through that person's sympathy. It is fair to say the listener shares it. The listener feels a similar sadness, as though taking some of their burden and making the burden left to them lighter. Yet telling their story also revives their grief to some extent. They recall the details that caused it. They cry harder than before and may give in completely to their sorrow. Still, they find comfort in doing so and clearly feel some relief. The sweetness of another person's sympathy more than makes up for the painful sorrow that they have revived in order to gain it. By contrast, the cruelest insult we can offer unhappy people is to appear to take their troubles lightly. Failing to share our companions' joy is merely impolite. Failing to look serious when they tell us about their suffering is deeply inhumane.

Love is pleasant and resentment is painful. So we care much less whether friends share our friendships than whether they share our resentments. We can forgive friends who take little interest in the kindness we have received. But we lose patience if they seem indifferent to wrongs done to us. We are far angrier when they fail to share our resentment than when they fail to share our gratitude. They can easily avoid befriending our friends, but can hardly avoid becoming enemies of the people we oppose. We seldom take offense if they dislike our friends, though we may sometimes make an awkward show of quarreling with them about it. But we quarrel with them in earnest if they stay friends with our enemies. The pleasant feelings of love and joy can satisfy and sustain us without any extra pleasure. The painful feelings of grief and resentment need the comfort of sympathy much more.

The person directly affected by an event enjoys our sympathy and feels hurt when we offer none. In the same way, we enjoy being able to share that person's feelings and feel hurt when we cannot. We go to congratulate people on their success, but also to console them in trouble. When we can fully share everything someone feels, the pleasure of talking with that person seems more than enough to offset the pain we feel at seeing their suffering. On the other hand, it is always unpleasant to find that we cannot sympathize. Far from enjoying an escape from the pain of sharing another's troubles, we are troubled by our inability to feel with them. Suppose someone loudly laments a misfortune that would not affect us nearly so strongly if it happened to us. Their grief shocks us. Because we cannot share it, we call it cowardice and weakness. Likewise, we are irritated to see someone too happy or too excited, as we put it, by a small piece of good luck. Their joy annoys us, and because we cannot share it, we call it frivolous and foolish. We even get annoyed when a companion laughs at a joke louder or longer than we think it deserves—that is, longer than we ourselves could laugh at it.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter III

How We Judge Whether Other People's Feelings Are Proper or Improper by Comparing Them with Our Own.

When the feelings of the person directly affected agree perfectly with the observer's sympathetic feelings, the observer must see them as proper and fitting for their causes. If, on imagining themselves in that person's place, the observer finds that those feelings do not match their own, they must see them as improper and out of place. So approving another person's feelings as appropriate means finding that we share them completely. Disapproving means finding that we do not fully share them. If a man is angry about the injuries done to me and sees that I am just as angry, he must approve of my anger. If he feels grief in step with mine, he must see my sorrow as reasonable. If he admires the same poem or picture exactly as I do, he must think my admiration is justified. If he laughs at the same joke along with me, he can hardly say my laughter is improper. But suppose someone feels nothing like what I feel in these situations, or feels it much less or much more strongly. That person cannot avoid disapproving of my feelings because they differ from their own. My hostility may exceed the anger my friend can feel. My grief may be more than even his tender compassion can share. My admiration may be too strong or too weak to match his. I may laugh loudly and heartily while he only smiles, or I may only smile when he laughs loudly and heartily. In each case, once he turns from the thing itself to the way it affects me, his disapproval will be greater or smaller according to the size of the difference between our feelings. On every occasion, he uses his own feelings as the standard for judging mine.

Approving of another person's opinions means accepting them; accepting them means approving of them. If the arguments that convince you also convince me, I must approve of your belief. If they do not convince me, I must disapprove. I cannot imagine doing one without the other. Everyone agrees that approving or disapproving of someone else's opinions simply means finding that they agree or disagree with our own. The same is true when we approve or disapprove of another person's feelings or passions.

There are cases in which we seem to approve without sharing another's feelings. In these cases, approval may look different from recognizing that our feelings agree. But a closer look shows that even here our approval ultimately rests on such agreement or sympathy. I will use a trivial example, since mistaken theories are less likely to distort our judgments about trivial things. We may approve of a joke and think the group's laughter is entirely appropriate, although we do not laugh ourselves. Perhaps we are in a serious mood or our attention is elsewhere. But experience has taught us what sort of joke usually makes us laugh, and we recognize this one as that sort. We therefore approve of the group's laughter as a natural response to the joke. Though we cannot readily join in given our present mood, we know that on most occasions we would laugh heartily with them.

This often happens with other feelings too. A stranger passes us in the street, looking deeply distressed. Someone tells us that he has just learned his father died. We cannot help approving of his grief. Yet we may not feel anything close to the force of his sorrow, or even much initial concern for him. This need not show any lack of humanity in us. Perhaps we know neither him nor his father, or we are busy and do not take time to imagine all the painful details of his situation. But experience has taught us that such a loss naturally brings such sorrow. We know that, if we took time to consider his situation fully, we would certainly sympathize with him sincerely. Our approval of his sorrow rests on our awareness that we would sympathize under those conditions, even when we do not actually do so. General rules drawn from our past experience of what we would usually feel correct our present feelings when they are out of place, in this case as in many others.

The feeling in a person's heart that leads to an action, and on which the action's goodness or badness ultimately depends, can be considered in two ways. We can look, first, at the cause that brings it about or the motive behind it. Second, we can look at the goal it seeks or the effect it tends to produce.

The propriety or impropriety of an action, how decent or unattractive it is, depends on whether the feeling behind it seems suited and proportionate to the cause or object that aroused it.

The action's merit or demerit—whether it deserves reward or punishment—depends on whether the effects the feeling aims at or tends to produce are helpful or harmful.

In recent years, philosophers have mainly considered the effects feelings tend to produce. They have paid little attention to how feelings relate to their causes. In everyday life, though, we always consider both when we judge someone's conduct and the feelings behind it. If we blame a person for excessive love, grief, or resentment, we think not only about the damaging effects these feelings may have but also about how little cause there was for them. We say that the person they love is not so admirable, their misfortune not so terrible, or the offense against them not so extraordinary as to justify such intense feeling. We might have allowed, or perhaps even approved of, that intensity if its cause had been strong enough.

When we judge whether a feeling is proportionate to its cause, we can hardly use any standard other than the feeling that cause would arouse in us. If, when we imagine ourselves in the same position, we find that the person's feelings match our own, we must approve of them as fitting and proportionate to their cause. If they do not match, we must disapprove of them as excessive and out of proportion.

Each person uses their own abilities as the measure for judging the same abilities in someone else. I judge your eyesight by mine, your hearing by mine, your reason by mine, your resentment by mine, and your love by mine. I have no other way to judge them, nor could I have one.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter IV

The Same Subject Continued.

We can judge whether someone else's feelings are proper by comparing them with our own in two kinds of situation. First, we may be considering things that have no special connection to either us or the person whose feelings we judge. Second, we may be considering things that affect one of us in particular.

1. When something has no special connection to either of us, we credit a person with taste and good judgment if their feelings about it agree completely with ours. Examples include the beauty of a plain, the size of a mountain, the decorations of a building, what a painting expresses, how a speech is put together, another person's conduct, the proportions of quantities and numbers, and the changing appearance of the great machine of the universe and the hidden wheels and springs that make it work. These are all general subjects of knowledge and taste. Neither we nor our companions see them as having a special connection to either of us. We both look at them from the same position. We do not need sympathy or an imaginary exchange of places to agree perfectly about them. If we nevertheless feel differently, it is because our ways of life have trained us to pay attention to different parts of these complicated things, or because our minds naturally differ in how sharply they perceive them.

Suppose a companion agrees with us about something obvious and easy, something on which perhaps nobody we have met has ever disagreed with us. We approve of their judgment, of course, but we do not think they deserve praise or admiration for it. It is different when their judgments not only agree with ours but guide them. We see that the person has noticed many details we missed and has taken account of all the different features of the subject. We approve, but also marvel at this person's unexpectedly sharp and wide-ranging understanding. They seem to deserve great admiration and praise. Approval made stronger by wonder and surprise is what we properly call admiration, and praise is its natural expression. Everyone must approve of someone who judges exquisite beauty better than extreme ugliness, or judges twice two to equal four. But nobody will admire such a judgment much. We admire the person with refined taste who notices tiny differences between beauty and ugliness that most of us barely perceive. We admire the experienced mathematician whose broad and exact understanding easily works out the most complicated and confusing proportions. We admire a leader in knowledge and taste who guides our own judgments and astonishes us with the range and greater accuracy of their abilities. Such a person seems to deserve our praise. This is the basis for most of the praise given to what we call intellectual virtues.

One might think we value these qualities first because they are useful. Their usefulness certainly gives us an additional reason to value them once we notice it. But at first we approve of someone's judgment because it is right, accurate, and in keeping with the truth, not because it is useful. Clearly, we call it right and accurate because we find it agrees with our own judgment. In the same way, we first approve of someone's taste because it is sound, sensitive, and exactly suited to its subject, not because it is useful. We think about the usefulness of these qualities only afterward. It is not what first wins our approval.

2. When something affects either us or the person whose feelings we judge in a special way, agreeing with each other is much harder and much more important. My companion does not naturally see a misfortune that happens to me or an injury done to me as I see it. These events affect me much more closely. Unlike a painting, a poem, or a philosophical system, we cannot view them from the same position. So we are likely to feel very differently about them. But it is much easier for me to overlook a difference in feeling about things that affect neither of us than about my own misfortune or the injury I have suffered. If you dislike a painting, poem, or even philosophical system that I admire, we are unlikely to quarrel about it. Neither of us has much reason to care deeply about it. We should both be fairly indifferent to these things. Our opinions may be opposed while our feelings remain much the same. Matters that particularly affect you or me are quite different. Your views on theoretical questions and your taste may be the opposite of mine. I can easily overlook that. If I have any self-control, I can still enjoy talking with you, even about those subjects. But if you have no sympathy for the misfortunes I have met with, or too little sympathy to match the grief that overwhelms me, we cannot keep talking about them. Nor can we keep talking if you feel no anger over injuries done to me, or too little to match my own resentment. We become unbearable to each other. I cannot stand your company, and you cannot stand mine. You are shocked by the strength of my feelings, and I am furious at what looks to me like your cold lack of feeling.

In such cases, to bring the feelings of an observer and the person directly affected into some agreement, the observer must first try as hard as possible to put themselves in the other's place. They must imagine every small detail of the distress that person might face. They must take in the whole situation, down to its smallest incidents, and try to make the imagined exchange of places on which sympathy depends as complete as possible.

Even after doing this, the observer's feelings will usually be much less intense than those of the person who suffers. People are sympathetic by nature, but they never feel as strongly about what happens to someone else as the affected person does. The imagined exchange of places that gives rise to sympathy lasts only a moment. The thought of their own safety keeps returning: they know they are not actually suffering. They can still imagine something similar to what the other person feels, but not nearly as intense. The person directly affected senses this and strongly wishes for more complete sympathy. They long for the relief that only full agreement between their feelings and those of the observers can bring. In the midst of intense and painful emotions, their only comfort is to see the observers' hearts respond in every respect like their own. But they can hope for this only if they lower their feelings to a level the observers can share. They must soften the harshness of those feelings, so to speak, to bring them into harmony with the feelings of the people around them. What observers feel will always be different in some ways. Compassion can never be exactly the same as the grief originally felt. The observers know, deep down, that their exchange of places is imaginary. This knowledge not only makes their feeling weaker but changes its character to some extent. Still, the two feelings can agree well enough for people to live together harmoniously. They will never be identical, but they can be in harmony. That is all we need.

To create this harmony, nature teaches observers to imagine the circumstances of the person directly affected. It also teaches that person to imagine the observers' position to some degree. The observers keep putting themselves in the sufferer's position, and thus feel something similar. In turn, the sufferer keeps imagining their position and gains some of the calmness with which they view the sufferer's situation. They consider what they would feel if they really suffered. The sufferer considers what they would feel if they were merely an observer of their own situation. Sympathy makes the observers look at the situation partly through the sufferer's eyes. It likewise makes the sufferer look at it partly through theirs, especially in their presence and under their observation. The feeling the sufferer develops by looking at the situation this way is much weaker than their original feeling. It therefore reduces the force of what they felt before coming into the observers' presence, thinking about how they would react, and viewing their own situation from this fair and impartial standpoint.

Our minds are rarely so upset that a friend's company cannot restore some calm. As soon as we are with a friend, we feel somewhat calmer and more settled. We immediately think of how the friend will view our situation and begin to see it that way ourselves. Sympathy has an immediate effect. We expect less sympathy from an acquaintance than from a friend. We cannot tell an acquaintance all the small details we could share with a friend. So we are calmer with the acquaintance and try to focus on the broad features of our situation that they are willing to consider. We expect still less sympathy from a gathering of strangers, so we become calmer still. We always try to bring our feelings down to a level the people we are with can share. Nor are we merely pretending to be calm. If we have any control over ourselves, being with an acquaintance really will settle us more than being with a friend. Being with a group of strangers will settle us more still.

Society and conversation are therefore the most powerful ways to restore peace of mind after we have lost it. They are also the best way to keep an even, cheerful temperament, which is essential to being satisfied and enjoying life. People who live withdrawn, reflective lives may sit at home dwelling on grief or resentment. They may often be kinder, more generous, and more sensitive to honor than people active in society. But they seldom have the steady temper that people accustomed to the world commonly possess.

### Part I, Section I, Chapter V

On virtues we love and virtues we respect.

Two different efforts give rise to two sets of virtues. One is the effort a spectator makes to share the feelings of the person directly involved. The other is the effort that person makes to bring their feelings down to a level the spectator can share. The first gives rise to the gentle, lovable virtues of sympathetic understanding and kindness toward others. The second gives rise to the great and respected virtues of self-denial and self-control. It means governing our passions so that everything we do meets the demands of our dignity, honor, and proper conduct.

How likable is someone whose sympathetic heart seems to echo the feelings of everyone they meet! They grieve over others’ misfortunes, feel anger over their injuries, and rejoice in their good luck. When we imagine being one of their companions, we share their gratitude. We feel how much comfort such an affectionate friend’s tender sympathy must bring them. By contrast, how unpleasant is someone whose hard heart feels only for themselves and is entirely unmoved by other people’s happiness or suffering! Here too, we can imagine the pain their presence brings to everyone they meet, especially the people we most readily sympathize with: those who are unfortunate or have been wronged.

On the other hand, we find dignity and grace in people who, when something happens to them, gather themselves and exercise self-control. That control lends dignity to any passion and brings it to a level others can share. We dislike loud grief that demands our compassion with sighs, tears, and relentless complaints, without any restraint. But we respect quiet, reserved, dignified sorrow. It shows itself only in swollen eyes, trembling lips and cheeks, and a distant but moving coolness of manner. It makes us quiet too. We watch respectfully and take anxious care with our own behavior. We do not want some improper act to disturb a composure that takes such effort to maintain.

Likewise, anger let loose without restraint is arrogant and brutal, and nothing is more hateful. But we admire noble, generous resentment over even the gravest injuries when it follows not the sufferer’s fury but the indignation those injuries naturally stir in an impartial spectator. It allows no word or gesture beyond what that fairer feeling would allow. Even in thought, it seeks no greater revenge or punishment than an uninvolved person would gladly see carried out.

This is why the perfection of human nature means feeling much for others and little for ourselves, holding back selfish feelings and giving room to benevolent ones. Only this can create among people the harmony of feelings and passions that makes their conduct graceful and proper. Christianity’s great law tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Nature’s great rule tells us to love ourselves only as we love our neighbor—or, equivalently, as much as our neighbor is able to love us.

When we praise taste and good judgment, we mean sensitivity and sharp understanding beyond what we ordinarily find. Likewise, sensitivity and self-control count as virtues not at ordinary levels but at exceptional ones. The lovable virtue of humanity surely calls for far greater sensitivity than most coarse people have. The great virtue of magnanimity surely demands much more self-control than even the weakest person can manage. Ordinary intellectual qualities do not amount to ability; ordinary moral qualities do not amount to virtue. Virtue is excellence, something unusually great and beautiful, far above the commonplace. The lovable virtues involve sensitivity so delicate and tender that it surprises us. The respected virtues involve self-control so strong that its mastery over our most unruly passions astonishes us.

There is therefore an important difference between virtue and mere propriety. Some qualities and actions deserve admiration and celebration; others deserve only approval. On many occasions, perfectly proper conduct takes no more than the ordinary sensitivity or self-control even the least worthy people have. Sometimes it takes less. Take a very simple example: eating when hungry is perfectly right and proper in ordinary circumstances, and everyone approves of it. But calling it virtuous would be absurd.

Conversely, an action may show considerable virtue even when it falls short of perfect propriety. It may come closer to perfection than we could reasonably expect under exceptionally difficult conditions. This often happens when exceptional self-control is needed. Some situations strain human nature so badly that even the greatest self-control possible for imperfect human beings cannot entirely silence human weakness. It cannot reduce violent passions to the moderate level an impartial spectator could fully share. The sufferer’s behavior may therefore fall short of perfect propriety but still deserve praise. In a sense we may even call it virtuous. It may show an effort, generosity, and magnanimity beyond the capacity of most people. Though not absolutely perfect, it may come much closer to perfection than is normally found or expected in such trying circumstances.

In cases like these, we often use two standards to decide how much blame or praise an action deserves. The first is complete propriety and perfection. In such difficult situations, no one’s conduct ever meets that standard or even could. Measured against it, everyone’s actions always look flawed and blameworthy. The second standard is how close most people’s actions ordinarily come to that perfection. Any action that exceeds that usual level seems worthy of praise, however far it remains from absolute perfection. Any action that falls below it seems worthy of blame.

We judge imaginative art in the same way. A critic examining a great poet’s or painter’s work may compare it with an ideal of perfection in their own mind, an ideal no human work can ever attain. Judged by that measure, the work has nothing but faults. But when the critic considers where it ranks among works of the same kind, another standard comes into play: the level of excellence usually reached in that art. Measured this way, the work may deserve the highest praise because it comes much closer to perfection than most works that could be compared with it.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter I

Section II: How strongly different passions can be expressed while remaining proper. INTRODUCTION. For a passion caused by something that particularly concerns us to be proper, its strength must fall within a certain middle range that a spectator can share. If it is too strong or too weak, the spectator cannot enter into it. Grief and resentment over our own misfortunes and injuries, for example, can easily be too strong. For most people they are. They can also be too weak, though that happens less often. We call the excess weakness or fury. We call the deficiency stupidity, lack of feeling, or lack of spirit. Neither makes sense to us; both astonish and confuse us. But the proper middle level differs from one passion to another. It is high for some and low for others. Some passions are indecent to express strongly, even when everyone recognizes that we cannot help feeling them intensely. Other passions can be expressed very strongly and still look graceful on many occasions, even though they may not be as inevitable. We sympathize little or not at all with the first group, for reasons of their own. We sympathize very strongly with the second group, for different reasons. Consider every passion in human nature, and you will find that how decent we think its expression is depends on how willing people are to sympathize with it.

On passions that originate in the body.

1. It is indecent to express strong passions caused by a particular state of the body. Other people are not in that state, so we cannot expect their sympathy. Intense hunger, for example, is often natural and unavoidable, but showing it strongly is always indecent. Eating greedily is universally regarded as bad manners. Still, we do sympathize with hunger to a degree. We enjoy seeing companions eat with a good appetite, while signs of disgust at food offend us. A healthy person’s usual physical condition lets their stomach respond easily, if I may put it so bluntly, to appetite but not to disgust. We can sympathize with the distress of extreme hunger when we read about it in an account of a siege or a sea voyage. We imagine being among those who suffer and readily understand their grief, fear, and alarm. We feel some of those emotions ourselves, so we sympathize with them. But reading does not make us hungry. Even in this case, we cannot properly say we share their hunger.

The same is true of the passion through which nature brings the sexes together. Though it is naturally the strongest passion of all, any strong expression of it is indecent on every occasion. That holds even for people whose full enjoyment of it is accepted as innocent under every human and divine law. Still, some sympathy with this passion seems possible. Speaking to a woman exactly as we would to a man is considered improper. Her company is expected to bring out more cheerfulness, playful talk, and attentiveness in us. A man entirely indifferent to women becomes somewhat contemptible even to other men.

This is how we react to all appetites that originate in the body: strong displays of them are repellent and unpleasant. Some ancient philosophers said these passions are shared with animals. They claimed that because such passions have nothing to do with distinctly human qualities, they are beneath human dignity. Yet we share many other passions with animals, including resentment, natural affection, and even gratitude, without finding them equally animal-like. The real reason other people’s bodily appetites particularly disgust us is that we cannot share them. Once someone’s own appetite is satisfied, even they stop finding its object appealing; its presence may become offensive. They search in vain for the charm that delighted them a moment ago. Now they can no more share their former passion than anyone else can. After dinner, we have the dishes cleared away. We would treat the objects of our strongest desires the same way if they aroused nothing in us beyond bodily appetite.

The virtue properly called temperance consists in controlling bodily appetites. Prudence keeps them within limits set by health and financial circumstances. Temperance keeps them within the limits required by grace, propriety, sensitivity, and modesty.

2. For the same reason, crying out in physical pain always looks unmanly and improper, however unbearable the pain may be. We do have considerable sympathy even with physical pain. As I have observed, if I see a blow about to land on someone else’s arm or leg, I instinctively flinch and pull back my own arm or leg. When the blow lands, I feel it to some degree and am hurt along with the sufferer. But my pain is extremely slight. If that person cries out violently, I cannot share that reaction, and I cannot help looking down on them. This applies to all passions originating in the body. They stir no sympathy, or else our sympathy is far weaker than the sufferer’s actual feeling.

Passions originating in the imagination are quite different. Changes in another person’s body can have little effect on mine. But my imagination is more flexible. It more easily takes on, so to speak, the shape of the imagination of people I know. A disappointment in love or ambition therefore draws more sympathy than the worst physical harm. These passions come entirely from the imagination. Someone who loses their entire fortune but remains healthy feels no physical pain from the loss. Their suffering comes solely from imagining the rapid approach of lost standing, neglect by friends, contempt from enemies, dependence, poverty, and misery. We sympathize more strongly because our imaginations can adapt to theirs much more readily than our bodies can adapt to their body.

Losing a leg is generally a more serious misfortune than losing a lover. Yet a tragedy whose final disaster was the loss of a leg would be ridiculous. The other loss, however trivial it may seem, has supplied the subject of many fine tragedies.

Nothing is forgotten faster than pain. Once it stops, its entire agony is over, and remembering it can no longer disturb us. We ourselves can no longer share the anxiety and anguish we felt before. But one thoughtless remark from a friend can cause a longer-lasting uneasiness. The hurt it causes does not end when the remark ends. What first upsets us is not a physical object but an idea in the imagination. Since an idea is causing the distress, it keeps troubling us as we remember it, until time and other events partly erase it from memory.

Pain does not draw strong sympathy unless danger accompanies it. We sympathize with the sufferer’s fear, though not with their agony. Fear comes wholly from the imagination. It pictures, with a shifting uncertainty that heightens our anxiety, not what we feel now but what we might suffer later. Gout or toothache, though terribly painful, draws very little sympathy. Far more dangerous diseases draw the greatest sympathy even when they cause very little pain.

Some people faint or feel sick when they see a surgical operation. In them, the pain of cutting into flesh seems to arouse extraordinarily strong sympathy. We picture pain caused by an external injury far more vividly and clearly than pain caused by an internal condition. I can hardly imagine my neighbor’s agony from gout or a kidney stone. But I have a clear idea of what an incision, a wound, or a broken bone must feel like. The main reason these sights affect us so strongly, however, is that they are unfamiliar. Someone who has watched a dozen dissections and as many amputations afterward watches such operations with great indifference, sometimes without any feeling at all. We can read or watch more than five hundred tragedies without usually losing our sensitivity to what they portray nearly so completely.

Some Greek tragedies try to arouse compassion by showing the agony of physical pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from extreme suffering. Hippolytus and Hercules appear dying in severe torment, which even Hercules, it seems, is not strong enough to endure. Yet in all these cases it is another circumstance, not pain, that interests us. What moves us about Philoctetes is not his injured foot but his solitude. It gives that delightful tragedy an imaginative sense of wild isolation. We care about the agony of Hercules and Hippolytus only because we expect them to die. If they recovered, we would find the portrayal of their suffering completely ridiculous. What kind of tragedy would be built around a stomach cramp, though few pains are worse? Such efforts to stir compassion through physical pain rank among the Greek theater’s worst breaches of good taste.

Because we sympathize so little with physical pain, we find it proper to endure it steadily and patiently. A person who undergoes the worst torture without showing weakness, groaning, or giving way to any feeling we cannot share earns our highest admiration. Their firmness keeps their response in step with our relative indifference. We admire and fully understand the great effort this takes. We approve of their conduct. Knowing how weak people usually are, we are surprised that someone can behave in a way that earns our approval under such conditions. Approval strengthened by surprise and wonder becomes the feeling properly called admiration, which naturally finds expression in applause, as I have already observed.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter II

On passions that arise from a particular habit of the imagination.

Even among passions that come from imagination, we sympathize very little with those produced by a particular way a person’s imagination has developed. We may recognize that they are perfectly natural. But other people’s imaginations have not developed in the same way, so they cannot share those feelings. Such passions may be almost unavoidable at certain times in life, yet they always seem somewhat ridiculous. Consider the strong attachment that naturally develops between two people of different sexes who have thought about each other for a long time. Since our imagination has not followed the lover’s path, we cannot share the intensity of their feelings. If a friend is injured, we readily sympathize with their resentment. We become angry at the person they are angry with. If our friend receives a favor, we readily share their gratitude and greatly appreciate the benefactor’s merit. But if our friend is in love, we may consider their feeling as reasonable as any love. Still, we do not think we must love the same person ourselves. To everyone except the lover, the strength of the feeling seems completely out of proportion to the beloved’s value. We excuse love at a certain age because it is natural, but we laugh at it because we cannot share it. Any serious, intense expression of it looks ridiculous to an outsider. A lover may be good company for the beloved, but not for anyone else. The lover knows this and, as long as they think clearly, tries to joke about their own passion. That is the only way we want to hear about it, because it is the only way we would talk about it ourselves. We tire of Cowley’s and Propertius’s solemn, pedantic, long-winded declarations of love. They never stop exaggerating the intensity of their attachments. But Ovid’s cheerfulness and Horace’s flirtatious charm are always pleasant.

Although we cannot actually share such an attachment, or even imagine loving that particular person, we may have loved someone or may someday do so. We can therefore easily share the lover’s high hopes for happiness if love is fulfilled and their terrible distress at the thought of disappointment. The love itself does not engage us. Rather, the lover’s situation brings out feelings that do: hope, fear, and distress of every kind. In an account of a sea voyage, likewise, what engages us is not the hunger but the distress it causes. Though we do not share a lover’s attachment, we readily share their expectations of a wonderfully happy life. We understand why someone worn down by strong desire and idleness longs for peace and quiet, and hopes to find it by fulfilling that desire. They picture a calm, secluded country life, such as the refined, tender, passionate Tibullus so enjoys describing. It is like the life poets describe in the Fortunate Islands: friendship, freedom, and rest, without labor, worry, or the restless passions these bring. Such scenes interest us most when portrayed as hopes rather than as a life already being lived. When fulfillment is far away, the physical appetite mixed into love, and perhaps underlying it, fades from view. When its fulfillment is described as present, that appetite makes the whole scene distasteful. This is why happy love interests us far less than anxious or melancholy love. We worry about anything that might frustrate such natural and pleasant hopes. In this way we share the lover’s anxiety, concern, and distress.

This explains why love is so engaging in some modern tragedies and romances. In The Orphan, it is not so much the love between Castalio and Monimia that holds our attention as the distress it causes. A writer who showed two lovers safely exchanging expressions of affection would make us laugh, not sympathize. Even when such a scene appears in a tragedy, it is somewhat out of place. We tolerate it not because we share their passion but because we worry about the dangers and difficulties we foresee in their attempt to fulfill it.

Society’s rules require women to conceal this weakness. That makes love especially distressing for them and, for that very reason, especially moving to us. We are captivated by Phædra’s love in the French tragedy named for her, despite all its excess and guilt. Indeed, those very qualities make it more compelling in a way. Her fear, shame, remorse, horror, and despair become more natural and more engaging. All these secondary passions, as I might call the feelings arising from her situation in love, necessarily become more intense. We can properly sympathize only with these secondary passions.

Of all passions whose strength is wildly out of proportion to the value of their objects, love alone seems to have something graceful or pleasant about it, even to people with the weakest judgment. For one thing, though love itself may be ridiculous, it is not naturally hateful. Its consequences are often disastrous and frightening, but its intentions are rarely harmful. Also, though the passion itself shows little propriety, some of the feelings that always accompany it show a great deal. Love contains a strong mixture of humanity, generosity, kindness, friendship, and esteem. As I will explain shortly, these are the feelings we are most inclined to sympathize with, even when we know they go too far. Our sympathy with them makes the passion they accompany less unpleasant and keeps it appealing to our imagination despite the faults usually found alongside it. In one sex it necessarily leads to ruin and disgrace. In the other, where it is thought to be less disastrous, it is almost always accompanied by an inability to work, neglect of duty, disregard for fame, and even disregard for ordinary reputation. Despite all that, many people are proud of the sensitivity and generosity they believe accompany love. They like to appear capable of a feeling that would bring them no honor if they really experienced it.

For a similar reason, we need some restraint when talking about our friends, our studies, and our jobs. We cannot expect other people to care about these things as much as we do. Because people lack this restraint, half of humanity makes poor company for the other half. A philosopher can keep company only with another philosopher; a club member, only with their own small circle.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter III

On the unsocial passions.

Another group of passions also comes from the imagination. Before we can share them or see them as graceful and proper, they must be brought much lower than uncontrolled human nature would raise them. These are hatred and resentment in all their forms. We divide our sympathy between the person who feels them and the person at whom they are directed. The two people have opposing interests. Sympathy with the angry person makes us wish for something that sympathy with the other makes us fear. Both are human beings, so we care about both. Fear of what one may suffer reduces our resentment over what the other has suffered. We therefore feel less resentment for the provoked person than that person naturally feels. This is partly because sympathetic feelings are generally weaker than the original feelings. But it is also because we sympathize with the other person too. For resentment to become graceful and agreeable, it must be restrained much more than nearly any other passion.

At the same time, people feel strongly about injuries done to someone else. We are as indignant toward the villain in a tragedy or romance as we are sympathetic and affectionate toward its hero. We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello. We take as much pleasure in the villain’s punishment as we feel grief at the hero’s suffering. Yet even though people sympathize strongly with injuries done to others, they do not necessarily grow more resentful when the injured person shows more resentment. Usually their anger toward the offender grows when the victim is patient, gentle, and humane—provided this restraint does not seem to come from fear or lack of spirit. The victim’s likable character makes the injury seem even worse.

Still, we consider these passions necessary parts of human character. Someone who quietly accepts insults without trying to resist or avenge them becomes contemptible. We cannot share such indifference and lack of feeling. We call it weakness of spirit and find it as provoking as the offender’s arrogance. Even a crowd grows angry at seeing someone patiently accept insults and mistreatment. They want that person to resent the offense personally. They shout angrily for the victim to defend themselves or seek revenge. When the victim finally shows indignation, the crowd heartily applauds and shares it. It strengthens their own indignation at the offender. They rejoice when the victim strikes back, and take as much satisfaction in moderate revenge as if they themselves had been injured.

These passions are useful to individuals because they make insulting or hurting them dangerous. They are also useful to society because they protect justice and its equal application, as I will show later. Yet the passions themselves are unpleasant, and seeing them in others naturally repels us. Expressing anger at someone present is more than an insult to that person if it goes beyond simply making clear that we know they have treated us badly. It is also rude to everyone there. Respect for the others should stop us from giving in to such a noisy, offensive feeling. What makes these passions appealing is their distant effect, not their immediate one. Their immediate effect is harm to the person they target. But our imagination finds things pleasant or unpleasant because of their immediate effects, not their distant ones. A prison is certainly more useful to the public than a palace. The founder of a prison is usually guided by a better sense of public duty than the builder of a palace. But a prison’s immediate effect is the unpleasant confinement of the unfortunate people held there. Our imagination either does not trace the distant benefits or finds them too remote to affect us much. A prison will therefore always be unpleasant to look at, and the better it serves its purpose, the more unpleasant it will be. A palace, by contrast, is always pleasing to us, though its long-term effects may harm the public. It may encourage luxury and set an example of declining morals. But its immediate effects—the comfort, pleasure, and cheerfulness of the residents—are appealing and suggest countless pleasant ideas. Our imagination normally settles on these and seldom follows the more distant consequences. In our halls and dining rooms, pictures or plaster imitations of grouped musical or farming tools make common and pleasing decorations. A similar display made up of surgical tools—dissecting and amputation knives, bone saws, instruments for drilling into the skull, and so on—would be absurd and shocking. Yet surgical instruments are always more highly polished and generally better suited to their purposes than farming tools. Their distant effect, the patient’s health, is appealing too. But their immediate effect is pain and suffering, so seeing them displeases us. Weapons are appealing, although their immediate effect might also seem to be pain and suffering. In their case, however, it is the suffering of enemies we do not sympathize with. For us, weapons immediately suggest the pleasant ideas of courage, victory, and honor. We therefore consider actual weapons among the finest articles of dress and their images among the finest architectural decorations. The same principle applies to mental qualities. The ancient Stoics believed that a wise, powerful, good God rules the world through an all-governing providence. They believed every single event is a necessary part of the universe’s plan and serves its general order and happiness. Consequently, human vices and follies are as necessary to the plan as wisdom and virtue. Through an eternal skill that draws good from evil, they too serve the prosperity and perfection of nature’s great system. However firmly someone believes this theory, it cannot reduce our natural hatred of vice. Its immediate effects are destructive, while its distant benefits lie too far away for the imagination to follow.

The same holds for the passions under discussion. Their immediate effects are so unpleasant that even when fully justified, the passions still repel us in some way. As I observed earlier, these alone are passions whose expression does not prepare us to sympathize before we know their cause. Hearing a miserable person cry out in the distance prevents us from feeling indifferent. The sound immediately makes us care about their fate. If it continues, we almost cannot help running to assist them. Likewise, seeing a smiling face lifts even a thoughtful person into a lighter, happier mood and makes them ready to share the joy it expresses. A heart weighed down by thought and worry suddenly opens and lifts. But expressions of hatred and resentment have the opposite effect. Hearing the rough, loud, jarring voice of anger from far away makes us afraid or repels us. We do not run toward it as we would toward a person crying out in pain. Women and men with sensitive nerves tremble and become frightened even when they know the anger is not aimed at them. They feel fear by imagining themselves in the target’s place. Even people with stronger nerves are disturbed. They are not frightened, but they become angry, because that is what they would feel in the target’s situation. Hatred works the same way. Mere spite makes us hate only the person expressing it. By nature we are repelled by both passions. Their unpleasant, noisy displays never produce or prepare sympathy and often interfere with it. Grief draws us toward the grieving person as strongly as these passions, when we do not know their cause, drive us away. Nature seems to have designed these rougher, less lovable feelings, which push people apart, to spread less readily and less often.

When music imitates the sound of grief or joy, it either gives us those feelings or puts us in a mood to feel them. But when it imitates anger, it makes us afraid. Joy, grief, love, admiration, and religious devotion all lend themselves naturally to music. Their natural tones are soft, clear, and tuneful. They are naturally expressed in phrases with regular pauses, which makes them easy to fit to the recurring patterns of a tune. Anger and related passions, by contrast, sound harsh and discordant. Their phrases are irregular, sometimes very long and sometimes very short, with no regular pauses. Music can therefore imitate these passions only with difficulty, and music that does so is not very pleasant. An entire performance can properly consist of imitations of friendly and pleasing passions. One made up entirely of imitations of hatred and resentment would be strange indeed.

These passions are as unpleasant for those who feel them as for those who watch. Hatred and anger are the greatest poisons to a good person’s happiness. Feeling them is harsh and jarring. They shake, tear at, and disturb the heart, destroying the calm and peace of mind needed for happiness. Gratitude and love, their opposites, do the most to foster that peace. Generous, humane people usually do not most regret the value of things lost through the betrayal and ingratitude of people close to them. Whatever they have lost, they can generally be very happy without it. What disturbs them most is that someone betrayed them and showed them ingratitude. In their view, the unpleasant, conflicting feelings this creates are the worst part of the harm they suffer.

How many conditions must be met for satisfying our resentment to be fully agreeable, and for a spectator to sympathize completely with our revenge! First, the offense must be serious enough that failing to respond at all would make us contemptible and expose us to endless insults. Minor offenses are always best ignored. Nothing is more contemptible than a touchy, quarrelsome disposition that flares up over every slight. We should respond mainly because we understand that a response is proper and that people expect and require one from us, not because we feel a fury of this unpleasant passion. No other human passion calls for such doubt about whether it is justified. With none should we be more careful to ask whether giving way to it feels proper, or to consider so closely what the impartial spectator will think. Only magnanimity—a concern to maintain our standing and dignity in society—can make expressions of this unpleasant passion noble. That motive must shape everything we say and do. We must be plain, open, and direct; firm without being stubborn, dignified without being arrogant. We must avoid irritability and vulgar insults, and be generous, fair, and properly considerate even toward the offender. Our whole manner, without any showy effort to say so, must make clear that passion has not destroyed our humanity. If we follow an urge for revenge, we do it reluctantly and only because serious, repeated offenses make it necessary. Resentment restrained and shaped in this way may even be considered generous and noble.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter IV

On the social passions.

Our divided sympathy usually makes the passions just discussed unpleasant and unattractive. But another group of passions has the opposite effect: we sympathize with both sides, which makes these passions especially pleasant and proper in nearly every case. Generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, shared friendship, and esteem are all friendly and benevolent feelings. When someone shows them through their face or behavior, even toward a person close to them, a neutral spectator is almost always pleased. Sympathy with the person expressing these feelings matches the spectator’s concern for the person receiving them. The spectator naturally cares, as one human being for another, about the recipient’s happiness. That concern strengthens sympathy with the giver, whose feelings focus on that same person. So we are always strongly inclined to share benevolent feelings. We find them pleasant in every respect. We share the happiness both of the person who feels them and of the person who receives them. Being hated or resented hurts more than anything a brave person might fear an enemy could do. Likewise, for a sensitive person, knowing they are loved matters more to their happiness than any practical benefit they expect from that love. What kind of person is more hateful than one who enjoys setting friends against each other and turning deep affection into deadly hatred? Yet what makes that injury so terrible? Is it the loss of the small favors those friends might have done each other? No. It is the loss of the friendship itself. Each loses the other’s affection, which brought them both so much pleasure. The harmony between them is broken, and their happy relationship comes to an end. Even the least refined people feel that this affection, harmony, and relationship matter more to happiness than all the little favors that might result from them.

Love feels pleasant to the person who experiences it. It soothes and settles the heart, seems to support the body’s vital functions, and promotes health. It becomes even more delightful when we know that it must bring gratitude and happiness to the person we love. The two people make each other happy through their mutual affection. Our sympathy with that affection makes both of them pleasant to us. How gladly we look at a family in which everyone loves and respects each other! Parents and children enjoy each other’s company, distinguished only by the children’s respectful affection and the parents’ kind indulgence. Their openness, affection, mutual teasing, and kindness show that the brothers are not divided by conflicting interests and the sisters are not competing for favor. Everything suggests peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and contentment. By contrast, how uncomfortable we feel entering a home divided by constant conflict! Half its residents are at odds with the other half. Behind a show of polite friendliness, suspicious looks and sudden bursts of feeling reveal the jealousy burning inside them. It is ready at any moment to break through the restraint imposed by visitors’ presence.

Even when these lovable feelings are admittedly excessive, we never find them hateful. There is something pleasing even in being too generous in friendship and humanity. We may sometimes pity an overly tender mother, an overly indulgent father, or a friend who is too generous and affectionate, because of their gentle nature. But our pity includes affection. We cannot hate or recoil from them, or even look down on them, unless we are among the most brutal and worthless people. When we criticize their excessive attachment, we do so with concern, sympathy, and kindness. Extreme humanity has a vulnerability that particularly moves us to pity. It is not unattractive or unpleasant in itself. We regret only that it is unsuited to the world, because the world does not deserve it. Such humanity leaves its possessor open to the betrayal and ingratitude of persuasive liars, and to countless pains and troubles. No one deserves these less, and often no one is less able to bear them. Hatred and resentment are entirely different. Someone too inclined toward these hateful passions becomes feared and detested by everyone. We think such a person should be driven out of civilized society like a wild animal.

### Part I, Section II, Chapter V

On self-interested passions.

Besides those two opposite groups of passions, the social and the antisocial, there is a third group between them. It is never as appealing as the social passions sometimes are, or as hateful as the antisocial passions sometimes are. This group consists of grief and joy over our own good or bad luck. Even when these feelings are excessive, they are never as unpleasant as excessive resentment. No sympathy for an opposing person can turn us against them. But even when they fit their causes perfectly, they are never as pleasing as impartial humanity and fair-minded beneficence. No sympathy for both parties can draw us toward them. There is a difference between grief and joy, though: we are usually most ready to sympathize with small joys and great sorrows. A man who suddenly rises to a position far above his old one can be sure that not all his closest friends' congratulations are wholly sincere. People generally dislike a newly successful man, however great his merit. Envy keeps them from fully sharing his joy. If he has good judgment, he knows this. Instead of displaying excitement over his good fortune, he does his best to hide his joy and restrain the high spirits his new circumstances naturally give him. He keeps the simple clothes and modest behavior that suited his former position. He pays even more attention to his old friends and tries harder than ever to be humble, diligent, and accommodating. This is the behavior we most approve of in his position. Apparently we expect him to sympathize more with our envy and dislike of his happiness than we sympathize with his happiness. Yet he rarely succeeds, despite all this. We doubt that his humility is sincere, and he grows tired of holding himself back. So before long he usually leaves his old friends behind, except perhaps a few of the poorest who are willing to become his dependents. Nor does he always gain new friends. His new associates resent finding him their equal just as much as his old ones resented his becoming their superior. Only persistent, stubborn modesty can make up for this offense to either group. Usually he grows tired of trying too soon. The sullen, suspicious pride of his old friends and the rude contempt of his new associates provoke him into neglecting the former and snapping at the latter. In time he becomes habitually arrogant and loses everyone's esteem. If most human happiness comes from knowing we are loved, as I believe it does, sudden rises in fortune rarely make people much happier. The happiest man rises more gradually. The public expects each promotion long before he gets it. So it brings him no wild joy, and it gives neither those he catches up with cause for jealousy nor those he leaves behind cause for envy.

People are much quicker to share the smaller joys that come from less important things. Modesty is appropriate in great prosperity, but we can hardly show too much pleasure in the little events of daily life: the company we spent last evening with, the food served to us, what people said and did, the small events of our present conversation, and all the trivial things that fill life's empty spaces. Nothing is more attractive than a habitually cheerful spirit, rooted in a special enjoyment of the small pleasures of ordinary events. We readily share that cheerfulness. It makes us happy too and lets us see every trifle in the same pleasant light as the cheerful person does. This is why youth, a time of high spirits, wins our affection so easily. Joy seems to enliven youthful beauty and shine from its eyes. Even when we see it in someone of our own sex, it puts older people in a happier mood than usual. For a while they forget their ailments. They let themselves feel pleasant thoughts and emotions they have not known for a long time. When the sight of so much happiness brings those feelings back, they return like old friends. The older people regret having parted from them and embrace them all the more warmly after such a long separation.

Grief is different. Small annoyances draw no sympathy, while deep suffering draws a great deal. Consider someone who is upset by every minor inconvenience: a cook or butler's tiniest failure, any lapse in elaborate manners toward him or anyone else, an intimate friend's failure to say good morning when they meet before noon, or his brother's humming throughout a story he is telling. Bad weather in the countryside, bad roads on a trip, and a lack of company or the dullness of public amusements in town all put him in a bad mood. Such a person, I say, will get little sympathy, even if he has some reason to complain. Joy is pleasant, and we happily give ourselves over to it on the slightest occasion. So we readily share another person's joy unless envy gets in the way. Grief, however, hurts. Even when the trouble is our own, the mind naturally resists and pulls back from it. We try either not to feel it at all or to shake it off as soon as it appears. This dislike of grief does not always stop us from feeling it over tiny troubles of our own. But it consistently stops us from sharing someone else's grief over equally trivial matters. The feelings we get from sympathy are always easier to resist than our own original feelings. People also have a mean streak that not only blocks sympathy for small annoyances but makes them somewhat funny. That is why we enjoy teasing and seeing a companion become slightly annoyed as people prod and tease him from every side. Anyone with ordinary manners conceals the pain of a minor annoyance. People more practiced in social life turn such events into jokes themselves, knowing their companions would do it for them. A man used to living among others learns to think about how everything involving him will look to them. That habit makes his little troubles look as ridiculous to him as he knows they will look to others.

By contrast, our sympathy for deep distress is powerful and sincere. No example should be needed: we even cry at an acted tragedy. So if you face some major calamity—if an extraordinary misfortune leaves you poor, ill, disgraced, or disappointed—you can usually count on the sincerest sympathy of all your friends. You can also count on their kindest help, as far as their interests and honor allow, even if you were partly at fault. But if your misfortune is not so terrible, if you have only had a small setback in your ambition, been rejected by your lover, or been bossed around by your wife, expect all your acquaintances to tease you.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 1

Section III: How prosperity and adversity affect people's judgments about the propriety of actions, and why it is easier to win their approval in one condition than in the other.

Although our sympathy with sorrow usually feels stronger than our sympathy with joy, it generally falls much further short of what the person directly involved actually feels.

Our sympathy with sorrow has received more attention than our sympathy with joy, though it is no more real. In its original and strictest sense, the word sympathy means sharing other people's suffering, not their pleasures. A clever and subtle philosopher recently thought it necessary to argue that we really do share others' joy, and that offering congratulations is part of human nature. I think no one has ever thought it necessary to prove the same thing about compassion.

First, our sympathy with sorrow is in one sense more universal than our sympathy with joy. Even if someone grieves too much, we may still feel something of his sorrow. In that case, what we feel does not amount to full sympathy: the complete agreement of feelings that makes us approve of his response. We do not cry out, weep, and mourn along with him. In fact, we see that he is weak and that his emotion is excessive, yet we often feel considerable concern for him. But if we cannot fully share another person's joy, we feel no concern or fellow-feeling for it at all. We feel contempt and indignation toward a man who skips and dances in a wild, foolish happiness we cannot share.

Pain, whether mental or physical, also strikes more sharply than pleasure. Our sympathy with pain is generally more vivid and distinct than our sympathy with pleasure, though it falls far short of what the sufferer feels. Our sympathy with pleasure, as I will show shortly, often comes much closer to the strength of the original feeling.

There is more. We often struggle to hold back our sympathy with other people's sorrow. When the sufferer cannot see us, we try to suppress it for our own comfort, though we do not always succeed. Fighting the feeling and giving in reluctantly make us especially aware of it. We never have to fight our sympathy with joy in this way. If we feel envy, we have no inclination to share the joy at all. If there is no envy, we share it freely. Indeed, because we are ashamed of our envy, we often pretend to share someone's joy, and sometimes genuinely wish we could, though envy prevents it. We say we are glad about a neighbor's good fortune when we may secretly be sorry. We often feel sympathy with sorrow when we wish it would go away. We often fail to feel sympathy with joy when we would welcome it. It is therefore natural to conclude, from what we notice most easily, that our tendency to share sorrow must be very strong and our tendency to share joy very weak.

Despite this bias, I would argue that, when envy is absent, we are much more inclined to share joy than sorrow. The joy we feel for others comes much closer to the strength of their own pleasant feeling than our sympathy with pain comes to the strength of theirs.

We allow some room for excessive grief that we cannot fully share. We know how enormous an effort the sufferer must make to bring his emotions into complete agreement with an observer's. We therefore readily forgive him when he fails. We show no such tolerance for excessive joy, because we do not think it takes a comparable effort to bring that joy down to a level we can fully share. A man who controls his sorrow in the worst misfortune seems worthy of the highest admiration. But a man who controls his joy in the height of prosperity seems barely worthy of praise. We sense that the gap between the person's own feeling and what an observer can fully share is much wider for grief than for joy.

What more could make a healthy man happy if he has no debts and a clear conscience? For someone in this position, any increase in wealth can rightly be called unnecessary. Great excitement about it must come from a rather silly lack of seriousness. Yet this position may fairly be called humanity's normal, ordinary condition. Despite the world's present misery and corruption, which people rightly lament, this is actually the condition of most people. Most of us, then, have little difficulty becoming as happy as a companion is likely to be about any improvement on it.

Although little can be added to this condition, much can be taken away. The gap between it and the height of human prosperity is small; the gap between it and the deepest misery is enormous. Hardship therefore pushes a sufferer's mind much farther below its normal state than prosperity can lift it above that state. An observer consequently has much more trouble sharing his sorrow completely and matching its pace than joining fully in his joy. To share sorrow, the observer must move much farther from his own ordinary state of mind. This explains why sympathy with sorrow, though it often feels sharper than sympathy with joy, always falls much further short of the strength of the person's original feeling.

Sharing joy feels good. Wherever envy does not stand in the way, we gladly let ourselves feel its greatest excitement. Sharing grief hurts, however, and we always approach it reluctantly[1]. When we watch a tragedy, we resist the sympathetic sorrow it arouses as long as we can. We give in only when we cannot avoid it, and even then we try to hide our distress from others. If we cry, we carefully conceal our tears. We worry that other spectators will not share such tenderness and will see it as weakness and a lack of manliness. A suffering person whose troubles call for our compassion senses our reluctance to share his grief. So he tells us about it fearfully and hesitantly. He even hides half of it. Knowing how hard-hearted people can be, he is ashamed to express the full depth of his pain. A man enjoying success is different. If we do not envy him, he expects us to share his joy completely. He does not hesitate to announce it with delighted shouts, confident that we will gladly join him.

[1] Someone has objected that my account is inconsistent: I base approval, which is always pleasant, on sympathy, yet allow sympathy to be unpleasant. My answer is that approval involves two things. First is the feeling the observer experiences through sympathy. Second is the feeling that comes from noticing how perfectly this sympathetic feeling matches the original feeling of the person directly involved. Approval properly consists in that second feeling, which is always pleasant and delightful. The first can be pleasant or unpleasant, depending on the original passion, some of whose character it must always retain. I suppose two sounds could each be harsh on its own, yet form a perfect harmony together. Hearing how they agree could then be pleasant.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter I, 2

Why are we more ashamed to cry than to laugh in front of other people? We may have just as good a reason for one as for the other. But we always sense that observers are more likely to share a pleasant feeling than a painful one. Complaining is always miserable, even under the most terrible misfortunes. Yet celebrating a victory is not always unappealing. Good judgment would often tell us to handle prosperity with more restraint, because a public triumph is especially likely to provoke envy, and we should avoid that.

How loudly ordinary crowds, who do not envy those above them, cheer at a triumph or ceremonial entrance! And how calm and restrained their grief usually is at an execution! At a funeral our sorrow generally amounts to little more than an appearance of seriousness. At a christening or wedding our happiness is heartfelt and genuine. At these and similar happy events, our pleasure may be as vivid as the pleasure of those directly involved, though it does not last as long. When we sincerely congratulate our friends—which, to humanity's shame, we rarely do—their joy actually becomes ours. For a moment we are as happy as they are. Our hearts swell and overflow with real pleasure; joy and contentment shine from our eyes and brighten our faces and every movement we make.

But how little we feel compared with our friends when we offer them comfort in their suffering! We sit beside them and watch them. We listen seriously and carefully as they describe their misfortune. Yet their story is constantly interrupted by natural surges of emotion that almost choke them as they speak. Our hearts respond so faintly by comparison! We may recognize that their emotion is natural, and no stronger than ours would be in their position. We may even privately blame ourselves for not feeling more. That may lead us to work up an artificial sympathy, but it is always extremely faint and brief. It generally disappears forever as soon as we leave the room. Nature, it seems, decided that our own sorrows already burden us enough. She did not require us to share other people's sorrows beyond what would move us to help them.

Because we feel others' suffering so weakly, great courage in terrible distress looks wonderfully noble to us. Someone who stays cheerful through many small mishaps behaves pleasantly and appropriately. Someone who can do the same through the worst disasters seems more than human. We sense the enormous effort it takes to quiet the powerful emotions that naturally shake and confuse someone in that position. We are amazed that he controls himself so fully. At the same time, his steadiness fits perfectly with our relative lack of feeling. He does not ask us for a depth of feeling we do not have, and are embarrassed to discover we do not have. His feelings match ours perfectly, so his conduct shows perfect propriety. From what we know of ordinary human weakness, we could not reasonably have expected him to maintain it. We are astonished at the mental strength needed for such a noble, generous effort. As noted more than once already, admiration is the name for complete sympathy and approval mixed with wonder and surprise. Consider Cato. Enemies surrounded him; he could not resist them and refused to submit. The proud values of his age left him no choice, as he saw it, but to kill himself. Yet he did not shrink from his troubles or plead in a pitiful voice for the sympathetic tears we are so reluctant to give. Instead he armed himself with courage. Just before carrying out his fatal decision, he calmly gave all necessary orders for his friends' safety. To Seneca, that great advocate of suppressing feeling, Cato looked like a sight that even the gods might watch with pleasure and admiration.

When we see such extraordinary courage in everyday life, it affects us deeply. We are more likely to cry for those who seem not to feel anything for themselves than for those who give way to every weakness of grief. In this case an observer's sympathetic grief seems stronger than the feeling of the person directly involved. Socrates' friends all cried when he drank the final potion, while Socrates himself was entirely calm and cheerful. In such cases an observer makes no effort to control his sympathetic sorrow, nor does he need to. He is not afraid it will lead him to anything excessive or improper. He is pleased with his own sensitivity and freely gives in to it, satisfied with himself. So he willingly thinks about the saddest aspects of his friend's misfortune. Perhaps he has never before felt such tender, tearful love for that friend. But it is different for the person directly affected. He has to look away as much as possible from everything naturally frightening or unpleasant about his position. He fears that thinking too closely about it will affect him so strongly that he will lose his restraint and no longer win the observers' complete sympathy and approval. Instead he concentrates only on what is pleasant: the applause and admiration his courageous conduct will earn. Knowing he can make so noble and generous an effort, and still behave as he wishes in this terrible position, fills him with joy. That feeling helps him maintain a triumphant cheerfulness, as if celebrating victory over his misfortunes.

On the other hand, a man sunk in sorrow and despair over a misfortune of his own always seems somewhat low and contemptible. We cannot make ourselves feel what he feels, though we might feel the same way in his place. So we despise him—perhaps unfairly, if a feeling that nature makes us feel irresistibly can be called unfair. Giving way to grief never seems at all attractive unless it comes more from concern for others than concern for oneself. A son may grieve openly when a kind and respected father dies without drawing much blame. His grief rests mainly on sympathy with his dead father, and we readily share that humane feeling. But we would not make the same allowance if he gave way to grief over a misfortune affecting only himself. Suppose he lost everything and had to beg, faced the gravest danger, or was even taken to a public execution. If he shed a single tear on the scaffold, brave and generous people everywhere would think less of him forever. Their compassion for him would be very strong and sincere. But because their feeling would still fall short of his display of weakness, they would not forgive him for showing it to the world. His behavior would make them feel ashamed for him rather than sad. The loss of his honor would seem to them the saddest part of his misfortune. Think how the fearless Duke of Biron, who had faced death so often in battle, damaged his reputation by crying on the scaffold. He saw how far he had fallen and remembered the favor and glory his own recklessness had cost him!

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 1

Where ambition comes from, and why people are divided by rank.

We show off our wealth and hide our poverty because people share our joy more fully than our sorrow. Nothing is more humiliating than having to let everyone see our hardship while knowing that no one feels even half of what we suffer. Indeed, we seek wealth and avoid poverty mainly because we care about what others think. Why else all the work and activity in the world? What are greed and ambition for? Why pursue wealth, power, and status? Is it to meet our basic needs? The wages of the poorest worker can do that. They provide him with food, clothing, a home, and a family. If we looked closely at his spending, we would find that he spends much of his wages on comforts that might count as extras. On special occasions he can even spend a little to satisfy vanity and set himself apart. So why do we dread his situation? Why would people raised in higher ranks think it worse than death to eat his simple food, live under his modest roof, and wear his plain clothes, even without having to work? Do they imagine they would eat better or sleep more soundly in a palace than in a cottage? The opposite has been observed so often, and is so obvious even without observation, that everyone knows it. What, then, drives the competition among people of every rank? What do we hope to gain by what we call improving our condition, that great goal of human life? We want others to see us, pay attention to us, notice us with sympathy, pleasure, and approval. Those are the benefits we seek. It is vanity, not comfort or pleasure, that attracts us. Vanity depends on believing that others pay attention to and approve of us. A rich man takes pride in his riches because he feels they naturally attract the world's attention. He thinks people are ready to share the happy feelings his advantages give him. The thought makes his heart swell. He loves his wealth more for this reason than for all the other benefits it brings. A poor man, by contrast, is ashamed of being poor. He feels either that people do not see him at all, or that if they notice him they barely share his suffering. Both possibilities hurt him. Being ignored is not the same as being disapproved of. But being unknown shuts us out of the honor and approval we might otherwise enjoy. Feeling unnoticed therefore defeats one of our strongest desires and dampens one of our most welcome hopes. A poor man comes and goes without attracting notice. Even in a crowd he is as invisible as he would be shut inside his own small home. The humble worries and painful efforts that occupy people in his position do not entertain those busy with pleasures. They look away. If his suffering is too extreme for them to ignore, they merely push the unpleasant sight away from themselves. Lucky and proud people wonder how a suffering person dares show himself to them. They think the ugly sight of his misery has no right to disturb their happiness. A man of high rank, by contrast, is noticed by everyone. Everyone wants to look at him and share, at least through sympathy, the delight his position naturally gives him. The public pays attention to his actions. Hardly a word or gesture of his goes unnoticed. At a large gathering, everyone watches him. They seem to wait to see what he feels so they can take their cue from him. Unless his behavior is completely absurd, each moment gives him a chance to interest people and become the focus of everyone's attention and sympathy. This is why high rank inspires envy, despite the restrictions it brings and the freedom it takes away. In people's minds, that attention makes up for all the labor, anxiety, and humiliation involved in seeking rank. More importantly, they think it makes up for all the free time, comfort, and freedom from worry that a person gives up forever upon gaining it.

When we imagine the lives of the powerful in the misleading colors our minds give them, their position looks almost like perfect happiness itself. It is just the life we picture as the final goal of all our wishes in our idle daydreams. So we feel a special sympathy for the satisfaction of those who have it. We support every desire of theirs and help them get whatever they want. What a shame, we think, if anything spoiled so pleasant a life! We could even wish them eternal life. It seems harsh that death must eventually take them from their high positions to the modest but welcoming home nature provides for all her children. We would gladly flatter them in the eastern style by saying, “Great King, live forever!” if experience had not taught us how absurd that wish is. Any disaster or injury that befalls them stirs ten times as much compassion and anger in an observer as the same event would if it happened to others. Only kings' misfortunes, it seems, make proper subjects for tragedy. In this they resemble lovers' misfortunes. These two kinds of people interest us most in the theater because, despite everything reason and experience tell us, our imagination wrongly assigns them greater happiness than anyone else. Taking away or disturbing such perfect enjoyment therefore seems the worst possible injury. A traitor plotting to kill a monarch is considered a worse monster than any other murderer. All the innocent blood shed in the civil wars caused less outrage than the death of Charles I. Someone unfamiliar with human nature might observe how little people care about those below them and how much they grieve and rage over the suffering of those above them. Such an outsider would probably conclude that pain must hurt the high-ranking more, and that their deaths must be more terrible than the deaths of people with lower status.

The division of ranks and the structure of society rest on this human tendency to share the feelings of the rich and powerful. We comply with those above us more often because we admire the advantages they enjoy than because we personally expect benefits from their favor. Only a few can receive those benefits, but almost everyone takes an interest in their fortunes. We want to help complete what seems an almost perfect picture of happiness. We want to serve them for their own sake, with no reward beyond the pride or honor of doing them a favor. Nor do we defer to their wishes mainly, or entirely, because obedience is useful and helps maintain social order. Even when social order seems to call for opposing them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do so. Reason and philosophy teach that kings are public servants, to be obeyed, resisted, removed, or punished according to the public's needs. Nature teaches something else. It tells us to submit to kings for their own sake, to tremble and bow before their high station, to see their smile as payment enough for any service, and to dread their displeasure as a terrible humiliation even if it brings no other harm. Treating them as ordinary people, arguing or disagreeing with them in everyday situations, takes a courage few people have unless familiarity with them also helps. Even the strongest motives and fiercest feelings—fear, hatred, and anger—barely overcome our natural respect for them. Their behavior, fairly or unfairly, must arouse these feelings to the greatest degree before most people can be moved to fight them or wish to see them punished or removed. Even then the people often soften at any moment and readily fall back into their accustomed deference toward those they have long regarded as natural superiors. They cannot bear to see their monarch humiliated. Compassion soon replaces anger; they forget what provoked them. Their old loyalty returns, and they rush to restore their former master's broken authority as fiercely as they once fought it. The death of Charles I. led to the restoration of the royal family. Sympathy for James II., seized by a crowd as he was escaping aboard a ship, nearly prevented the Revolution and slowed it down considerably.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter II, 2

Do powerful people seem unaware of how cheaply they can win public admiration? Or do they imagine that, like everyone else, they must work or shed blood for it? What important skills is a young nobleman taught so he can uphold the dignity of his rank and deserve the position his ancestors' virtue gave him above his fellow citizens? Is he taught knowledge, hard work, patience, self-denial, or any kind of virtue? People watch everything he says and does, so he learns to pay constant attention to every detail of ordinary behavior. He studies how to carry out all the small duties of social life with exact propriety. He knows how closely people watch him and how eager they are to support his wishes. So even in the most unimportant situations he acts with the confidence and pride this knowledge naturally gives him. His expression, manners, and bearing all show a graceful awareness of his own higher status, something people born into lower positions can hardly ever achieve. These are the ways he hopes to make others accept his authority more readily and guide their wishes as he pleases. He rarely fails. Combined with high status, such manners are usually enough to govern the world. For most of his reign, Lewis XIV. was considered the perfect model of a great ruler, not only in France but throughout Europe. What skills and virtues earned him that reputation? Was it the strict, unwavering justice of everything he undertook, the huge dangers and difficulties he faced, or his tireless determination in pursuing his goals? Was it his extensive knowledge, excellent judgment, or heroic courage? None of these explains it. To begin with, he was Europe's most powerful ruler and therefore held the highest place among kings. Then, as his historian says, “His graceful figure and majestic, handsome face surpassed those of all his courtiers. His impressive, stirring voice won over the hearts of those intimidated by his presence. His walk and manner suited only him and his rank; they would have looked ridiculous in anyone else. He took private pleasure in his own superiority when people became flustered speaking to him. An old officer, confused and stumbling over his words as he asked a favor, could not finish his request. He said, ‘Sir, I hope your majesty believes that I do not tremble like this before your enemies.’ The officer had no trouble getting what he wanted.” These trivial qualities, backed by his rank and doubtless by some other abilities and virtues—though those do not seem to have been much above average—won him the esteem of his own time and a good deal of respect from later generations. Compared with his qualities, when he was present, no other virtue seemed worth much. Knowledge, hard work, courage, and beneficence seemed to tremble in embarrassment and lose all dignity before them.

But a lower-ranking man cannot hope to stand out through such qualities. Polished manners are so closely associated with the powerful that they bring little honor to anyone else. A vain fool who imitates their manners and tries to look exceptional by behaving especially properly in ordinary situations earns twice the contempt for his foolish presumption. Why should a man whom no one bothers to look at worry so much about how he holds his head or arranges his arms while walking across a room? He is giving needless attention to these things and displaying a sense of self-importance no one else can share. A private man's behavior should mainly be completely modest and simple, with as much lack of fuss as respect for his company allows. If he hopes to distinguish himself, he must do so through more important virtues. He needs supporters to rival the supporters of the powerful, but he can pay them only with the work of his body and the effort of his mind. He must develop both. He must gain greater knowledge of his profession and work harder at it than others do. He must be patient at work, determined in danger, and steadfast in trouble. He must bring these strengths to public attention by taking on difficult and important projects, choosing them wisely, and pursuing them with strict, relentless effort. Honesty, good judgment, generosity, and openness must mark his everyday behavior. He must also readily take on situations that demand the greatest abilities and virtues to handle properly and offer the greatest praise to those who handle them honorably. How impatiently a spirited and ambitious man, held down by his position, searches for a great chance to stand out! He welcomes any circumstances that might give him one. He even looks forward to foreign war or conflict within his country. Amid all the disorder and bloodshed, he secretly takes delighted hope in the chances he may get to draw public attention and admiration to himself. By contrast, a high-ranking man whose whole glory lies in behaving properly in ordinary situations is satisfied with the modest fame that brings, and lacks the abilities to earn any other kind. He does not want to involve himself in anything difficult or distressing. His greatest triumph is standing out at a ball; his greatest achievement is succeeding in a romantic affair. He dislikes public upheaval, not out of love for humanity—the powerful never see those below them as fellow human beings—and not from a lack of courage, which he rarely lacks. He knows he does not have the virtues these situations demand and that others will certainly take the public's attention away from him. He may be willing to face a little danger and spend a season on a military campaign when that is fashionable. But he shudders at any situation requiring sustained patience, hard work, courage, and careful thought. Such virtues are hardly ever found among people born to high rank. Accordingly, in every government, even a monarchy, the highest offices are generally held and the detailed work of governing done by men raised in the middle and lower ranks. They have advanced through their own hard work and ability despite the jealousy and resentment of those born above them. At first the powerful looked down on these men, then envied them, and finally accepted a position beneath them with the same humiliating submission they expect from everyone else.

Losing this effortless power over people's feelings is what makes a fall from greatness so unbearable. When the family of the King of Macedon was paraded in Paulus Æmilius's victory procession, their troubles reportedly made the Roman crowd split its attention between them and their conqueror. The royal children were too young to understand what had happened. Seeing them moved spectators, amid the public celebration and success, to profound sorrow and compassion. The King came next in the procession. He seemed stunned and bewildered, as if the scale of his misfortune had left him unable to feel anything. His friends and ministers followed. As they passed, they often looked back at their fallen ruler and burst into tears every time. Their behavior showed that they were not thinking of their own misfortunes, only of the greater magnitude of his. The proud Romans, however, watched him with contempt and indignation. They thought a man willing to go on living after such a downfall deserved no pity. But what exactly did his misfortunes involve? According to most historians, he was to live out his days under the protection of a powerful, humane people, with plenty, comfort, free time, and safety. That condition would seem enviable in itself. Not even his own foolishness could make him lose it. But he would no longer have a crowd of admiring fools, flatterers, and dependents around him, watching his every move as they had before. Multitudes would no longer stare at him, and he could no longer make himself the object of their respect, gratitude, love, and admiration. Whole nations would no longer adjust their feelings to fit his wishes. This was the unbearable misfortune that left the King numb, made his friends forget their own troubles, and left the Romans barely able to understand how anyone could be so lacking in spirit as to survive it.

“Love,” says my Lord Rochefoucault, “is usually followed by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever followed by love.” Once ambition has completely taken hold of the heart, it allows neither a rival nor a successor. For those used to receiving public admiration, or even hoping to receive it, every other pleasure grows dull and loses its appeal. Think of all the former statesmen who, for their own peace of mind, tried to overcome ambition and stop caring about honors they could no longer reach. How few succeeded! Most spent their time in bored and lifeless idleness, upset by thoughts of their own lack of importance. They could not take an interest in private life. They enjoyed themselves only when talking about their past greatness, and found satisfaction only in useless plans to regain it. Are you truly determined never to trade your freedom for the prestigious servitude of a Court? Do you mean to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way, perhaps the only way, to keep that admirable resolution. Never enter the place so few have managed to leave. Stay outside the circle of ambition. Do not even compare yourself with those rulers of the earth who already command half the world's attention.

How important people imagine it is to occupy a position that brings them the most widespread attention and sympathy! Social precedence, the great prize that divides the wives of aldermen, is the goal of half the work people do. It also causes all the commotion, theft, and injustice that greed and ambition have brought into the world. Sensible people are said to look down on precedence. By that, people mean that they do not care about sitting at the head of the table or being pointed out to everyone for that trivial distinction, which even the smallest real advantage outweighs. But no one looks down on rank, distinction, and high standing unless he is far above or far below ordinary human nature. He must either have enough wisdom and genuine philosophy to know that, if his conduct properly deserves approval, it hardly matters whether anyone notices or approves of him; or be so used to thinking himself insignificant, so sunk in lazy, foolish indifference, that he has completely forgotten his desire, and almost even his wish, to rise above others.

### Part I, Section III, Chapter III

On Stoic philosophy.

When we look at why people value some conditions of life more than others, we find that their strong preference for certain conditions has little basis. If what makes one condition attractive is the chance to act with propriety and earn other people's approval, every condition offers that chance. People can act with great propriety in hard times as well as good times. It is harder in adversity, and therefore more admirable. Dangers and misfortunes are not just a training ground for heroism. They are the only setting where it can be fully displayed and win the world's applause. A man whose whole life has gone smoothly, who has never faced danger, difficulty, or distress, can win only limited admiration. Poets and writers of romances give their appealing characters a very different series of adventures. Their heroes face sudden reversals that might drive a person mad or reduce him to despair. Yet they act with enough propriety, or at least enough courage and determination, to keep our respect. Are Cato, Brutus, and Leonidas any less admirable in defeat than Cæsar and Alexander are in victory? Shouldn't a generous person envy them just as much? Successful conquerors may seem more dazzling because they have the advantages of both kinds of life: the glory of success and the admiration earned by bravely facing dangers and overcoming difficulties.

This is why, according to Stoic philosophy, all conditions of life were equal for a wise person. Nature, the Stoics said, led us to choose some things and reject others. Our basic desires direct us toward health, strength, comfort, and excellence of mind and body. They also direct us toward wealth, power, and authority as ways to gain or protect those things. The same principle makes us avoid their opposites. But Nature also teaches us to follow an order, propriety, and grace when choosing or rejecting what we naturally desire or dislike. Following that order matters infinitely more to our happiness and excellence than getting the things themselves. We should pursue or avoid those things mainly because doing so is proper. Directing all our actions by these rules is the source of human happiness and glory. Breaking them brings our greatest misery and deepest corruption. It is easier to keep up the appearance of order and propriety in some circumstances than others. But a fool who cannot control his passions cannot act with real grace and propriety in any circumstances. The fickle crowd may admire him. Their uninformed praise may even feed his vanity until it feels like self-approval. Yet when he looks inside himself, he knows how foolish and petty his motives are. He secretly blushes and trembles at the contempt he knows he deserves. He knows others would feel that contempt if they saw his conduct as he must see it himself. A wise person, by contrast, has brought every passion under the control of reason and the love of propriety. He can deserve approval in any situation. In prosperity, he thanks Jupiter for giving him easy circumstances with little temptation to do wrong. In adversity, he also thanks the director of human life's spectacle. He has been given a strong opponent: the contest will be harder, but victory will be more glorious and just as certain. Can there be shame in suffering that is not our fault if we behave perfectly well through it? Such suffering is no evil. It brings great good and advantage. A brave man rejoices in dangers that come through no recklessness of his own. They give him a chance to show heroic courage. Showing it brings the great pleasure of knowing that his conduct is outstanding and his admirers are right to admire him. An athlete who has mastered every exercise does not mind testing his strength and skill against the strongest opponents. Likewise, a person who has mastered his passions does not fear any circumstances in which the ruler of the universe may put him. That divine being has given him virtues that let him rise above any situation. If offered pleasure, he can resist it through self-control. If given pain, he can endure it through steadfastness. If faced with danger or death, he can scorn it through courage and strength of mind. He never complains about providence's plan or declares the universe disordered because his own life is in disorder. Self-love might lead him to think of himself as a complete being, separate from all nature, who should be cared for solely for his own sake. He does not do that. Instead, he tries to see himself as he imagines the great mind governing human nature and the world sees him. He shares, so to speak, that divine being's outlook. He sees himself as one tiny particle of a vast, limitless system that must, and should, be arranged for the good of the whole. He trusts the wisdom guiding every event in human life. Whatever happens to him, he accepts it gladly. He believes that if he knew how every part of the universe was connected to every other, he would have chosen exactly that fate for himself. If his fate is life, he is content to live. If it is death, he willingly goes where he is sent, since Nature no longer needs him here. A Stoic philosopher said, “I accept whatever happens to me with equal joy and satisfaction. Wealth or poverty, pleasure or pain, health or sickness: it is all the same. I would not ask the gods to change my fate in any way. If I were to ask them for anything beyond what they have already given me, I would ask them to tell me in advance what they want done with me. Then I could willingly put myself in that position and show how gladly I accept their decision.” Epictetus says, “If I am going to sail, I choose the best ship and pilot, and wait for the best weather my circumstances and duties allow. Prudence and propriety, the principles the gods have given me to guide my behavior, demand this, but nothing more. If a storm still comes and neither the ship's strength nor the pilot's skill can withstand it, I do not worry about the outcome. I have already done all I can. The principles guiding my conduct never order me to be miserable, anxious, discouraged, or afraid. Whether we drown or reach harbor is Jupiter's business, not mine. I leave the decision entirely to him. I do not lose sleep guessing what he will decide, but accept whatever happens with equal calm and confidence.”

That was Stoic philosophy. It offers the finest lessons in courage and is the best school for heroes and patriots. The only objection to most of its teachings is an honorable one: it asks us to aim at a perfection beyond human reach. I will not examine the philosophy here. I will only point out, in support of what I said earlier, that the worst disasters are not always the hardest to bear. It is often more embarrassing to appear in public after a small mishap than after a great misfortune. Small mishaps draw no sympathy. Great misfortunes bring lively compassion, even if it falls far short of the sufferer's anguish. In the second case, the spectators' feelings are less different from the sufferer's. Their imperfect fellow-feeling helps him endure his misery. A gentleman would be more embarrassed to appear at a cheerful gathering covered in dirt and rags than covered in blood and wounds. Blood and wounds would draw pity; dirt and rags would draw laughter. A judge dishonors a criminal more by putting him in the pillory than by sentencing him to execution. Some years ago, a great prince struck an army general with a cane in front of his troops and ruined his reputation for good. Shooting him would have been a much smaller punishment. Under the code of honor, a blow with a cane is dishonorable, but a blow with a sword is not. The reason is obvious. For a gentleman, dishonor is the worst possible evil. Humane and generous people therefore come to regard these lesser physical punishments as the most terrible of all. They abandon them altogether for people of his rank. The law may take their lives in many circumstances, but it respects their honor in almost all of them. No European government except Russia's would be brutal enough to whip a person of high rank or put him in the pillory, whatever his crime.

Execution does not make a brave man contemptible, but the pillory does. His conduct at an execution may win widespread esteem and admiration. Nothing he does in the pillory can make people like him. The spectators' sympathy supports him in the first case. It spares him the unbearable shame of knowing that he alone feels his misery. There is no sympathy in the second case. If there is any, it is not for his slight pain but for his awareness that no one shares it. People feel his shame, not his sorrow. Those who pity him blush and lower their heads for him. He lowers his head too, and feels permanently degraded by the punishment, though not by the crime. By contrast, people look with esteem and approval at a man who dies bravely, and he holds his own head high. If his crime has not cost him their respect, his punishment will not cost him that respect either. He does not suspect that anyone looks at his position with contempt or ridicule. He can rightly appear not only calm but triumphant and elated.

“Great dangers,” says Cardinal de Retz, “have their attractions, because even failure can bring some glory. But moderate dangers offer only horror, because failure always brings a loss of reputation.” His rule rests on the same point we have just made about punishments.

Human virtue can rise above pain, poverty, danger, and death. It need not even make its greatest effort to despise them. But when a person's misery is held up for insults and ridicule, when he is paraded before others as an object of scorn, his resolve is far more likely to break. Compared with public contempt, every other evil is easy to bear.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter I

Part II: On merit and demerit, or what deserves reward and punishment. In three sections.

Section I: On our sense of merit and demerit. Introduction. We judge human actions and conduct by another set of qualities besides propriety and impropriety, or decency and awkwardness. They call for a different kind of approval or disapproval. These qualities are merit and demerit: deserving reward and deserving punishment. As we have already seen, the feeling that leads a person to act, and determines whether the act is good or bad, can be viewed in two ways. First, we can consider its relation to the cause or object that stirs it. Second, we can consider the goal it aims at or the effect it tends to produce. If the feeling fits the cause that stirs it and is in proportion to that cause, the resulting action has propriety and decency. If it does not, the action is improper or awkward. If the feeling aims at or tends toward a helpful effect, the resulting action has merit and deserves good in return. If it aims at or tends toward harm, the action has demerit and deserves ill in return. I explained in the previous part what gives us our sense that actions are proper or improper. Now I will consider what gives us our sense that they deserve good or ill.

What seems to be a proper object of gratitude seems to deserve reward; likewise, what seems to be a proper object of resentment seems to deserve punishment.

In our eyes, an action deserves reward when it rightly calls forth a feeling we approve of, one that leads us most directly to reward someone or do that person good. Likewise, an action deserves punishment when it rightly calls forth a feeling we approve of, one that leads us most directly to punish someone or do that person harm.

Gratitude is the feeling that leads us most directly to reward. Resentment is the feeling that leads us most directly to punish.

So we see an action as deserving reward if it rightly calls forth gratitude that we approve of. Likewise, we see it as deserving punishment if it rightly calls forth resentment that we approve of.

Rewarding means repaying someone, giving good in return for good received. Punishing is also a kind of repayment, though of a different sort: it gives harm in return for harm done.

Other feelings besides gratitude and resentment make us care about other people's happiness or misery. But none makes us as directly want to bring about either one ourselves. Love and esteem grow through knowing a person and regularly approving of him. They make us happy when he prospers and willing to help him prosper. Yet we can be fully satisfied in our love even if he prospers without our help. Love wants to see him happy; it does not care who brings about his success. Gratitude is different. If someone to whom we owe a great deal becomes happy without our help, love may be pleased, but gratitude is not satisfied. Until we repay him and personally help make him happy, we still feel the weight of the debt we owe for his past services.

In the same way, repeated disapproval can grow into hatred and dislike. These feelings may make us take malicious pleasure in the misfortunes of someone whose character and conduct distress us. They make us less sympathetic and can even make us rejoice when he suffers. But if we have no resentment—if neither we nor our friends have been seriously wronged by him—we do not naturally want to cause his suffering ourselves. Even if taking part would bring us no punishment, we would rather the misfortune came by other means. Someone who fiercely hates a man might be pleased to hear that the man died in an accident. But if he had even a little sense of justice, as he still might despite his hatred, he would be deeply upset to have caused the death himself, even by accident. The thought of causing it deliberately would horrify him even more. He would reject such a terrible plan with horror. If he believed himself capable of it, he would start to see himself as just as hateful as the man he disliked. Resentment works differently. Suppose a man who seriously injured us—by murdering our father or brother, for example—soon died of a fever. Or suppose he was executed for a different crime. Either event might soothe our hatred, but it would not fully satisfy our resentment. Resentment makes us want him punished through our efforts and for the particular injury he did to us. We are not satisfied simply because he suffers in return. We want him to suffer for that very wrong. He must regret and repent of it, so that others will fear the same punishment and avoid the same offense. Satisfying this feeling naturally serves every public purpose of punishment: correcting the criminal and setting an example for everyone else.

Gratitude and resentment, then, are the feelings that most directly lead us to reward and punish. We see a person as deserving reward when he rightly calls forth gratitude we approve of. We see another as deserving punishment when he rightly calls forth resentment we approve of.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter II

Who rightly calls forth gratitude and resentment.

To say that someone rightly calls forth gratitude or resentment means simply that the gratitude or resentment felt toward that person seems fitting and wins our approval.

We approve of those feelings, like all human passions, when every impartial spectator fully shares them. Every uninvolved bystander must be able to understand and feel them too.

So a person seems to deserve reward when one or more people naturally feel gratitude toward him that everyone else can share and applaud. Likewise, a person seems to deserve punishment when one or more people naturally resent him in a way any reasonable person can share. Surely an action deserves reward in our eyes if everyone who knows about it would want to reward it and is glad to see it rewarded. And an action deserves punishment in our eyes if everyone who hears about it feels angry and is glad to see it punished.

1. We share our companions' joy when they prosper. We also share their pleasure in whatever caused their good fortune. We feel some of the love and affection they have for it and come to love it ourselves. For their sake, we would be sorry if it were destroyed or even moved too far away for them to see and protect. This is true even if its absence cost them nothing but the pleasure of seeing it. The feeling is especially strong when a person has brought happiness to others. When we see one person helped, protected, or rescued by another, sharing the recipient's joy strengthens our fellow-feeling with his gratitude toward his helper. We see the helper through the recipient's eyes, as we imagine them. The benefactor then appears to us in a particularly lovable light. We readily share the recipient's gratitude to someone who has done so much for him. We therefore approve of his desire to repay the good deeds he received. Because we fully share the feeling that moves him to do so, his attempts to repay seem entirely proper and appropriate to their object.

2. Likewise, when we see another person in distress, we share both his sorrow and his dislike of whatever caused it. As we feel his grief, we also feel his urge to drive away or destroy its cause. Our quiet, passive fellow-feeling with his pain quickly gives way to a stronger, more active feeling. We join him in trying either to put an end to the pain or to act on his dislike of its cause. This is especially true when another person caused the distress. When we see someone oppressed or injured by another, sharing the victim's distress strengthens our fellow-feeling with his resentment toward the offender. We are glad to see the injured person stand up to his opponent. We are eager to help him defend himself or even take revenge, within limits. If the injured person dies in the conflict, we share not only the real resentment of his friends and relatives but also a resentment we imagine the dead person feels. He can no longer feel that or any other human emotion. Still, we put ourselves in his place. In imagination we enter his body and, in a sense, give life again to his disfigured, broken remains. When we take his situation to heart in this way, we feel something he cannot feel. As on many other occasions, we feel it through an imagined sympathy with him. The sympathetic tears we shed for the vast, irreversible loss we imagine he has suffered seem like only a small part of what we owe him. We think his injury calls for much more of our attention. We feel the resentment we imagine he ought to feel and would feel if his cold, lifeless body still knew what happened on earth. We think his blood cries out for revenge. Even the dead man's ashes seem disturbed by the possibility that his injuries might go unavenged. People imagine horrors haunting a murderer's bed. Superstition imagines ghosts rising from their graves to demand vengeance on those who ended their lives too soon. These ideas all grow out of our natural sympathy with the resentment we imagine the dead feel. At least for murder, the most terrible crime, Nature has made us approve of the necessary law of retaliation at once, by instinct. She has marked this approval deeply and permanently on our hearts, before we ever think about whether punishment is useful.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter III

If we do not approve of a benefactor's conduct, we have little sympathy with the recipient's gratitude. But if we do not disapprove of a person's reasons for causing harm, we have no sympathy with the victim's resentment.

However much a person's actions or intentions help or hurt someone else, we must also consider why that person acted. If his reasons for helping seem improper, and we cannot share the feelings that guided him, we feel little sympathy with the recipient's gratitude. If his reasons for causing harm do not seem improper, and we can fully share the feelings that guided him, we cannot share the victim's resentment at all. In the first case, little gratitude seems owed. In the second, any resentment seems unjust. The first action seems to deserve little reward, and the second none of the punishment.

1. First, when we cannot share the actor's feelings and see no propriety in his reasons for acting, we are less inclined to share the recipient's gratitude. Think of a foolish, extravagant man who gives another man an estate simply because they happen to have the same first and last names. Even such an enormous gift seems to call for only a small return when made for such a trivial reason. Our contempt for the giver's foolishness keeps us from fully sharing the recipient's gratitude. The benefactor seems unworthy of it. If we imagine ourselves in the recipient's place, we find that we could not feel great respect for a benefactor like this. We therefore do not require the recipient to show the deep respect and esteem we would expect him to show a more worthy benefactor. As long as he treats his foolish friend with kindness and humanity, we will excuse him from many signs of regard that we would demand toward a more deserving patron. Princes who have showered their favorites with wealth, power, and honors have seldom inspired as much personal loyalty as princes who handed out their favors more sparingly. James the First of Great Britain was kindhearted but foolishly lavish. His generosity seems to have won him no personal loyalty. Despite his friendly and harmless nature, he appears to have lived and died without a friend. His son gave favors more sparingly and chose their recipients more carefully. Though he was usually cold, distant, and stern, the whole English gentry and nobility risked their lives and fortunes for his cause.

2. Second, when we fully understand and approve of the feelings and reasons that guided someone, we cannot share the resentment of anyone harmed by his conduct, however great the harm. If two people quarrel and we take one person's side, fully sharing his resentment, we cannot also share the other's resentment. We share the feelings of the person whose reasons we approve of and therefore see him as right. This makes us unable to feel for the other person, whom we see as wrong. If he suffers no more than we would have wanted him to suffer, no more than our own shared indignation would have moved us to inflict, his suffering cannot displease or anger us. When a cruel murderer is led to execution, we may feel some pity for his misery. But if he is foolish enough to resent the person who prosecuted him or the judge, we cannot share that resentment. Their justified anger at such a vile criminal will have fatal consequences for him. Yet we cannot object to the effects of a feeling that, when we put ourselves in their position, we cannot help sharing.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter IV

Review of the preceding chapters.

We do not fully share one person's gratitude toward another simply because that other person brought him good fortune. We must also agree with the reasons why the benefactor helped him. We must approve of the benefactor's principles and share all the feelings that guided his conduct before we can fully share the recipient's gratitude. If the benefactor acted without propriety, the benefits of his action, however great, do not seem to demand a matching reward.

But when a helpful action also comes from an appropriate feeling, we fully share the benefactor's reasons. Our affection for him as a person then strengthens and deepens our fellow-feeling with the gratitude of those who owe their good fortune to what he did. His actions seem to demand an appropriate reward, almost as if they were crying out for one. We fully share the gratitude that moves the recipients to reward him. We see a benefactor as a proper object of reward when we fully share and approve of the feeling that leads people to reward him. When we approve of and share the feeling that leads someone to act, we must approve of the action too. We must also see the person to whom the action is directed as a proper and fitting object of it.

2. Likewise, we cannot share one person's resentment against another just because that other person caused his misfortune. We must also be unable to share the reasons why the other person caused it. Before we can join in the victim's resentment, we must disapprove of the actor's motives and find ourselves unable to share the feelings that guided him. If those feelings contain nothing improper, the action does not seem to deserve punishment or resentment, however harmful it may be to those it affects.

But when a harmful act also comes from an improper feeling, we reject the actor's motives with horror and cannot share them. We then fully share the victim's resentment. Such actions seem to deserve an appropriate punishment, almost as if they were crying out for one. We share and therefore approve of the resentment that leads to punishment. We see the offender as a proper object of punishment when we fully share and approve of the feeling that leads people to punish him. Here too, when we approve of and share the feeling that leads someone to act, we must approve of the action. We must also see the person against whom it is directed as a proper and fitting object of it.

### Part II, Section I, Chapter V

How we come to sense merit and demerit.

1. Our sense that conduct has propriety arises from what I will call direct sympathy with the feelings and motives of the person acting. In the same way, our sense that conduct has merit arises from what I will call indirect sympathy with the gratitude of the person affected by the action.

We cannot fully share a recipient's gratitude unless we first approve of the benefactor's motives. Our sense of merit therefore seems to combine two different feelings: direct sympathy with the actor's feelings and indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those helped by his actions.

On many occasions we can clearly tell these two feelings apart, even though they combine when we judge a person's character or action worthy of reward. When we read history and find great acts of kindness performed for good reasons, we eagerly share the people's plans. Their bold generosity excites us. We keenly want them to succeed and grieve when they fail. In imagination we become the people whose actions we read about. We picture ourselves in the scenes of those long-past adventures, playing the part of a Scipio or a Camillus, a Timoleon or an Aristides. That is direct sympathy with the person acting. We also clearly feel indirect sympathy with those helped by these actions. When we put ourselves in their place, we warmly share their gratitude toward people who did so much for them. We embrace their benefactor along with them, so to speak. We readily share their most intense feelings of gratitude. We think no honor or reward they give him could be too great. When they repay him as they should, we wholeheartedly approve. But we are deeply shocked if their conduct suggests they hardly appreciate what he has done for them. In short, our whole sense that such actions have merit and deserve reward comes from sympathetic feelings of gratitude and love. We feel them toward someone capable of such proper and noble beneficence when we imagine ourselves in the place of the people he helped. These feelings make us think it right and fitting to repay his actions and give him happiness in return.

2. Likewise, our sense that conduct is improper arises when we cannot sympathize with the actor's feelings and motives, or directly oppose them. Our sense that conduct has demerit arises from what I will again call indirect sympathy, this time with the victim's resentment.

We cannot share a victim's resentment unless we first disapprove of the actor's motives and cannot share his feelings. So our sense of demerit, like our sense of merit, seems to combine two different feelings: direct opposition to the actor's feelings and indirect sympathy with the victim's resentment.

Again, we can often tell these two feelings apart, though they combine when we judge a character or action worthy of punishment. When we read in history of the treachery and cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, we recoil from the hateful feelings behind their conduct. We utterly reject any fellow-feeling with such terrible motives. That is direct opposition to the actor's feelings. We feel indirect sympathy with the victims' resentment even more strongly. When we imagine ourselves in the place of the people these enemies of humanity insulted, murdered, or betrayed, we feel fierce anger at their arrogant and cruel oppressors. Our fellow-feeling with the victims' justified resentment is as real and strong as our sympathy with their unavoidable distress. Sympathy with their distress only increases our resentment. The thought of their suffering fuels our anger against those responsible. As we think about the victims' anguish, we side still more firmly with them against their oppressors. We enter more eagerly into every plan they have for revenge. In imagination, we repeatedly inflict on these violators of society's laws the punishment our shared indignation tells us they deserve. We feel horror at the terrible cruelty of their conduct, pleasure when we hear they were properly punished, and anger when they escape the punishment they deserve. In short, our whole sense that their conduct deserves punishment, that it is right and fitting to make the offender suffer in return, comes from the sympathetic indignation that rises in us when we truly put ourselves in the victim's place.

Explaining our natural sense that actions deserve punishment as sympathy with a victim's resentment may seem to many people to lower the value of that sense. Resentment is usually seen as such an ugly passion that people may find it impossible to believe that our praiseworthy sense of wrongdoing could rest on it in any way. They may be more willing to agree that our sense of the merit of good actions rests on sympathy with the gratitude of the people helped. Gratitude, like other kindly feelings, is seen as admirable, and anything based on it seems no less valuable. But gratitude and resentment clearly correspond to each other in every respect. If our sense of merit comes from sympathy with one, our sense of demerit can hardly fail to come from fellow-feeling with the other.

Consider also that resentment is not condemned when it is restrained to exactly the level of anger that a sympathetic spectator can share. At the excessive levels we often see, it may be the ugliest of all passions. But suppose we bystanders feel exactly the same anger as the victim. His resentment goes no further than ours. Nothing he says or does shows an emotion stronger than we can share. He never seeks a punishment beyond what we would gladly see inflicted or even wish to help inflict ourselves. In that case, we cannot help fully approving of his feelings. Surely our own emotion justifies his in our eyes. Experience teaches us that most people cannot show such restraint. It takes a great effort to bring an undisciplined impulse of resentment down to that fitting level. So we naturally feel considerable esteem and admiration for a person who can exercise so much self-control over one of our most difficult passions. When the victim's anger exceeds what we can share, as it almost always does, we necessarily disapprove of it. We disapprove of it even more than we would disapprove of a comparable excess in almost any other passion that arises from imagination. Instead of drawing us along, this excessive resentment itself arouses our resentment and anger. We share the answering resentment of the person targeted by that unjust emotion, who is now in danger of suffering from it. Revenge, then—the excess of resentment—seems the most hateful of all passions. Everyone regards it with horror and anger. People show too much resentment a hundred times for every time they show restraint. We are therefore apt to think resentment is always hateful and ugly, because it so often appears that way. Yet Nature, even in humanity's present flawed state, does not seem to have treated us so unkindly as to give us any impulse that is bad in every respect, one that could never deserve praise or approval in any degree or direction. Sometimes we realize that this passion, usually too strong, can also be too weak. We sometimes complain that a person shows too little spirit and too little awareness of wrongs done to him. We are as ready to look down on him for too little resentment as we are to hate him for too much.

The inspired writers surely would not have spoken so often or so strongly of God's wrath and anger if they thought every degree of these passions was wrong and bad, even in a creature as weak and imperfect as a human being.

Consider, too, that my question here concerns what happens, not what ought to happen. I am not asking on what principles a perfect being would approve of punishing bad actions. I am asking on what principles a weak and imperfect human being actually approves of it. The principles I have just described clearly have a great effect on our feelings, and it seems wise that they do. Society could not exist unless unearned, unprovoked malice were held in check by suitable punishments. People must therefore see imposing those punishments as right and praiseworthy. Humans naturally want society to be safe and to continue. Yet the Author of nature did not leave us to work out by reason that certain punishments are the way to achieve that goal. Instead, he gave us an immediate, instinctive approval of the very punishments best suited to it. Nature follows the same pattern in many other cases. When an end is especially important, one of Nature's favorite ends, if I may call it that, she gives us a desire not only for the end but also for the means that can achieve it. We want those means for their own sake, quite apart from their usefulness in achieving the end. Self-preservation and the continuation of the species are the great ends Nature seems to have set in forming every animal. Humans desire these things and dislike their opposites. We love life and fear death; we want the species to continue and dread the thought of its complete extinction. Yet although we strongly desire these ends, Nature did not leave our slow, uncertain reason to discover how to achieve them. She directs us to most of the means through immediate, inborn instincts. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, the love of pleasure, and the fear of pain move us to use those means for their own sake. We need not consider how they serve the good ends that Nature's great Director intended them to achieve.

Before ending this discussion, I must note a difference between approving of propriety and approving of merit or beneficence. To approve of someone's feelings as proper and suited to their objects, we must not only feel the same way but also recognize that our feelings match. For example, I might hear that something terrible has happened to my friend and feel exactly the same degree of concern he expresses. Yet until I learn how he behaves and see that his feelings match mine, I cannot say I approve of the feelings guiding his behavior. To approve of propriety, then, we must fully sympathize with the person acting and recognize the complete agreement between his feelings and ours. By contrast, if I hear that someone has helped another person, the recipient may feel anything he likes. If putting myself in his place makes me feel grateful, I necessarily approve of the benefactor's conduct. I see it as having merit and deserving reward. Whether the actual recipient feels gratitude plainly cannot change my judgment of the benefactor's merit in any way. Here the feelings do not actually have to match. It is enough that they would match if the recipient felt grateful. Our sense of merit often rests on one of those imagined sympathies that make us feel something when we put ourselves in another person's place, even though that person cannot feel it. A similar difference exists between our disapproval of demerit and our disapproval of impropriety.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter I

Section II: On justice and beneficence.

A comparison of the two virtues.

Helpful actions done for proper reasons seem to be the only actions that call for a reward. Only these actions are fitting objects of gratitude and make a spectator share that gratitude.

Harmful actions done for improper reasons seem to be the only actions that deserve punishment. Only these actions are fitting objects of resentment and make a spectator share that resentment.

Beneficence must always be voluntary. It cannot be forced, and a person cannot be punished simply for failing to practice it. Simply withholding help does not directly harm anyone. It can deprive someone of a benefit they could reasonably expect, and for that reason it can rightly draw dislike and disapproval. But it cannot stir resentment that other people would share. A man who fails to repay his benefactor when he can do so and the benefactor needs his help is certainly guilty of terrible ingratitude. Every impartial spectator refuses to share his selfish motives and strongly disapproves of him. Yet he has not directly harmed anyone. He has merely failed to do the good that propriety required of him. He may be hated because his feelings and conduct are improper. But he is not a fitting object of resentment. Resentment is justified only by actions that cause, or threaten to cause, real harm to particular people. His lack of gratitude therefore cannot be punished. Forcing him to do what gratitude requires, and what every impartial spectator would approve of, would be even more improper than his failure to do it, if such force were possible. His benefactor would disgrace himself by trying to force gratitude from him through violence. A third party who had authority over neither of them would be out of place if they interfered. Still, of all duties of beneficence, those that gratitude calls for come closest to being strict obligations. Acts prompted by friendship, generosity, or charity may win everyone's approval, but they are even more voluntary and even less subject to force than acts of gratitude. We speak of a debt of gratitude, not a debt of charity or generosity. We do not even speak of a debt of friendship when friendship rests on esteem alone, rather than also on gratitude for favors received.

Nature seems to have given us resentment for self-defense and nothing else. It protects justice and keeps the innocent safe. It moves us to fend off a threatened injury and to respond to one already done. The offender may then regret the injustice, and fear of similar punishment may keep others from committing similar offenses. Resentment must be kept for those purposes. A spectator cannot share it when it serves any other purpose. A mere lack of beneficence may cost us a benefit we could reasonably expect. But it neither inflicts nor threatens any harm against which we need to defend ourselves.

There is, however, another virtue that we are not free to practice or neglect. It may be enforced, and violating it invites resentment and therefore punishment. That virtue is justice. Violating justice is an injury: it causes real harm to particular people for reasons we naturally disapprove of. It is therefore a fitting object of resentment and of the punishment that follows resentment. People approve of using force to avenge an injury done through injustice. They approve still more strongly of using force to prevent the injury, defend against it, and stop the offender from hurting his neighbors. A person planning an injustice knows this himself. He recognizes that the intended victim or other people may rightly use force to stop his crime or to punish him after he commits it. This is the basis of the important distinction between justice and all the other social virtues. An author of remarkable and original genius has recently stressed this point: we feel a stricter duty to act justly than to act from friendship, charity, or generosity. Practicing those other virtues seems, to some extent, a matter of choice. But we feel especially bound to obey the rules of justice. In other words, we feel that everyone may rightly approve of using force to make us follow the rules of justice, but not to make us follow the guidance of the other virtues.

We must always distinguish carefully between conduct that deserves blame and conduct that may be punished or prevented by force. We blame a person who shows less kindness than experience teaches us to expect from everyone. We praise a person who shows more. The usual degree of kindness deserves neither blame nor praise. A father, son, or brother who treats his relative no better and no worse than most people do deserves neither. A person who surprises us with exceptional, unexpected kindness that is still appropriate deserves praise. A person who surprises us with exceptional, unexpected unkindness that is also inappropriate deserves blame.

Yet even an ordinary degree of kindness or beneficence cannot be forced from one equal by another. Before civil government existed, each person was naturally understood to have a right to defend himself against injury and to demand some punishment for injuries he had suffered. Every generous spectator approves when he does so. Spectators share his feelings so much that they are often willing to help him. If someone attacks, robs, or tries to murder another person, all the neighbors are alarmed. They think they are right to rush either to avenge the injured person or to defend the one in danger. Now consider a father who does not show his son the usual parental love, a son who fails to show his father the respect expected of a son, or brothers who lack ordinary brotherly affection. Consider also someone who shuts out compassion and refuses to relieve another person's suffering when he could easily do so. Everyone blames such conduct. But nobody thinks that those who might reasonably have expected more kindness have the right to force it out of him. The person who suffers may complain, and a spectator may offer advice or try to persuade him, but no more. If equals used force against one another in such cases, people would consider it extreme arrogance and presumption.

Someone in authority may, however, sometimes require those under that authority to treat one another with a certain degree of propriety, and everyone may approve. The laws of all civilized nations require parents to support their children and children to support their parents. They also require many other acts of beneficence. Civil authorities have the power not only to preserve public peace by restraining injustice but also to promote the community's prosperity. They can establish good discipline and discourage vice and improper conduct of every kind. They may therefore make rules that forbid citizens to hurt one another and require them, to some extent, to help one another. When the ruler commands an action that would otherwise make no moral difference and could have been omitted without blame, disobedience becomes both blameworthy and punishable. If the ruler commands an action whose omission was already deeply blameworthy, disobedience is surely even more punishable. But perhaps no duty of a lawgiver calls for more care and restraint in exercising sound judgment. Neglecting it entirely leaves the community open to serious disorder and shocking abuses. Taking it too far destroys liberty, security, and justice.

A mere failure to practice beneficence seems to deserve no punishment from one's equals. But the greatest acts of beneficence seem to deserve the highest reward. They produce the greatest good and naturally and rightly inspire the strongest gratitude. Violating justice, on the other hand, brings punishment, but following its rules hardly seems to deserve a reward. Acting justly is certainly proper and deserves the approval due to proper conduct. But it produces no direct benefit and earns very little gratitude. Ordinary justice is usually a negative virtue: it only stops us from harming our neighbors. Someone who simply refrains from attacking his neighbors, taking their property, or damaging their reputations has very little positive merit. Still, he follows all the rules of justice in the strict sense. He does everything his equals can rightly force him to do or punish him for failing to do. We can often follow every rule of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

We think that people should be treated as they treat others. Retaliation seems to be a great law that nature teaches us. We think generous, helpful people deserve generosity and help. We also think that people whose hearts never open to compassion should be shut out from the affection of their fellow human beings. They should have to live in society as though it were a vast desert, with nobody to care about them or ask after them. Someone who breaks the laws of justice should be made to feel the harm he did to another. Since concern for others' suffering cannot restrain him, fear of his own suffering should. A person who is simply innocent, follows the laws of justice toward others, and refrains from hurting his neighbors can only claim that his neighbors should respect his innocence in turn and faithfully observe those same laws toward him.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter II

On the sense of justice, remorse, and the awareness of merit.

There is no proper reason to hurt our neighbor, and no motive for doing wrong to another person that people can share, except justified anger over a wrong that person has done to us. No impartial spectator can approve of disturbing another person's happiness simply because it gets in the way of our own. Nor can they approve of taking something useful to that person simply because it would be just as useful, or more useful, to us. We cannot indulge our natural preference for our own happiness at another person's expense. Each of us is naturally entrusted, first and foremost, with looking after ourselves. Since we are better able to do that than to look after anyone else, this is right and proper. So we care much more deeply about what directly affects us than about what affects another person. Hearing of the death of a stranger may upset us, spoil our appetite, or disturb our sleep far less than a very minor misfortune of our own. But although the ruin of our neighbor may affect us less than a small misfortune of our own, we must not ruin him to avoid that misfortune. We must not ruin him even to avoid our own ruin. Here, as in every other case, we must see ourselves not only as we naturally appear to ourselves but as we naturally appear to others. As the saying goes, each person may be the whole world to himself. To everyone else, he is one tiny part of the world. His own happiness may matter more to him than everyone else's happiness put together. But to anyone else, it matters no more than the happiness of any other individual. Each of us may naturally put ourselves before all humanity in our own hearts. Yet we dare not look humanity in the face and admit that we act on that principle. We know others can never share that preference. However natural it feels to us, it will always look excessive and unreasonable to them. When a man sees himself as he knows others see him, he recognizes that he is one person among many and no better than anyone else. Above all, he wants the impartial spectator to understand and approve of the reasons for his conduct. To achieve this, he must restrain his arrogant self-love, as he must on every other occasion, and reduce it to a level others can accept. They will allow him to care more about his own happiness and to pursue it more eagerly and persistently than anyone else's. If they imagine themselves in his position, they readily understand that much. In the race for wealth, honors, and advancement, he may run as hard as he likes and use every ounce of effort to get ahead of his competitors. But if he jostles or knocks one of them down, the spectators' tolerance ends at once. That breaks the rules of fair play, and they cannot accept it. To them his competitor is every bit as good as he is. They do not share the self-love that makes him favor himself so strongly over that other person. They cannot share his reason for hurting him. Instead, they readily share the injured person's natural resentment, and the offender earns their hatred and anger. He knows it and feels those emotions ready to break out against him on every side.

The greater and less repairable the harm, the stronger the injured person's resentment becomes. The spectator's shared anger and the offender's sense of guilt grow in the same way. Death is the worst harm one person can inflict on another. It provokes the deepest resentment in those close to the person killed. Murder is therefore the most terrible crime against an individual, both to the public and to the murderer himself. Losing something we already possess is worse than failing to receive something we merely expected. So theft and robbery, which take away our possessions, are worse crimes than breaking a contract, which deprives us of something expected. The most sacred rules of justice, whose violation calls most urgently for punishment and vengeance, protect our neighbor's life and person. Next come rules protecting property and possessions. Last come rules protecting what are called personal rights: what others owe a person under their promises.

A person who breaks the most sacred rules of justice cannot think about how others must feel toward him without suffering terrible shame, horror, and fear. Once his passion has been satisfied and he considers his conduct calmly, he can no longer understand or approve of any of the motives that drove him. They now seem as hateful to him as they always seemed to others. He shares the hatred and disgust others must feel toward him and, to some extent, comes to hate and loathe himself. Now he pities the person who suffered from his injustice. He grieves over that person's situation and regrets the miserable results of his own actions. At the same time, he feels he deserves everyone's resentment and anger, along with the vengeance and punishment that naturally follow resentment. This thought haunts him constantly and fills him with terror and dismay. He can no longer face society. He imagines himself cast out of everyone's affection. In this worst and most frightening distress, he cannot hope for the comfort of anyone's sympathy. The memory of his crimes has closed other people's hearts to fellow-feeling for him. What they think of him is the very thing he most fears. Everything seems hostile. He longs to escape to an empty desert where he will never again see another human face or read condemnation of his crimes in anyone's expression. But solitude is more frightening still. His own thoughts show him nothing but darkness, misfortune, and disaster, along with dreadful fears of suffering and ruin beyond his understanding. The horror of being alone drives him back into society. He returns to other people, astonished at his own nerve in appearing before them. Burdened with shame and frantic with fear, he begs for some small sign of protection from the very judges he knows have already condemned him unanimously. This is the feeling properly called remorse, the most terrible feeling a person can have. It combines shame at the impropriety of past conduct, grief over its effects, pity for those who suffered from it, and fear and terror of punishment. That last fear comes from knowing that all reasonable beings have good reason to resent what he did.

The opposite kind of conduct naturally gives rise to the opposite feeling. Consider a man who has acted generously from proper motives, not on a passing whim. When he thinks about the people he has helped, he knows that they naturally love him and feel grateful to him. By sharing their feelings, he also senses the esteem and approval of everyone else. When he looks back at the reason for his action and considers it as a detached spectator would, he still approves of that reason. Sharing the approval of this imagined impartial judge, he praises himself. From both points of view, everything about his action pleases him. Thinking of it fills him with cheerfulness, peace, and calm. He feels friendship and harmony with all people. He looks on others with confidence and warm satisfaction, sure that he deserves their highest regard. This combination of feelings is the awareness of merit, or of deserving a reward.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 1

On the usefulness of this arrangement of human nature.

In this way nature fitted human beings, who can survive only in society, for the life they were meant to lead. All members of a society need one another's help. They can also hurt one another. When they give one another the help they need out of love, gratitude, friendship, and esteem, society thrives and its members are happy. Bonds of love and affection unite them, drawing them all toward a shared center of mutual help.

But society does not necessarily fall apart when people fail to help one another for such generous, unselfish reasons. It may continue even if its members have no love or affection for one another, though it will be less happy and pleasant. People can maintain a society, much as merchants can do business together, because they find it useful, without any mutual love or affection. Even if no one owes anyone else a favor or feels bound by gratitude, people can keep society going by trading services for an agreed price.

Society cannot, however, survive among people who are always ready to hurt one another. As soon as injury begins and mutual resentment and hostility take hold, all its bonds break. Its members are driven apart and scattered by their conflicting feelings. Even robbers and murderers, as the familiar saying goes, must at least refrain from robbing and murdering one another if they are to form a society. Beneficence is therefore less essential to society's existence than justice. Society can exist without beneficence, though it will not be a very comfortable place. Widespread injustice, however, must destroy it completely.

Nature encourages people to act with beneficence through the pleasant awareness of deserving a reward. But nature has not found it necessary to ensure that they do so by threatening deserved punishment when they fail. Beneficence is an ornament that makes the building beautiful, not the foundation that keeps it standing. It was enough to recommend it; there was no need to require it. Justice, by contrast, is the main pillar supporting the whole building. Remove it and the vast structure of human society must instantly fall into pieces. Raising and sustaining that structure seems to have been one of nature's special and dearest concerns in this world, if I may put it that way. To ensure that people act justly, nature has therefore planted in us an awareness of deserving blame and a fear of the deserved punishment that follows injustice. These feelings protect human society, defend the weak, restrain the violent, and punish the guilty. People naturally feel sympathy. Yet they feel so much less for someone they have no special connection with than for themselves. The suffering of a person who is merely another human being matters so little to them compared with even a small convenience of their own. They can hurt him so easily and may be tempted to do so in so many ways. Without this inner principle defending him and making them respect his innocence, they would always be ready to attack him like wild animals. A man would enter a gathering of people as he enters a den of lions.

Everywhere in the universe we see means carefully suited to the ends they achieve. In a plant or an animal body, we admire the way every part works toward nature's two great purposes: keeping the individual alive and reproducing the species. Yet in these cases and others like them, we distinguish the cause that actually produces an operation from the purpose it ultimately serves. Digestion, the circulation of blood, and the production of the various bodily fluids from food are all necessary for animal life. But we do not say that the need to sustain life is what directly causes those operations. We do not imagine that blood circulates or food digests by itself with an intention to achieve the purposes served by circulation or digestion. The wheels of a watch are perfectly arranged to serve the purpose for which it was made: showing the hour. All their movements work together precisely to produce that result. They could do no better if they wanted and intended to produce it. Yet we do not attribute any such desire or intention to the wheels. We attribute it to the watchmaker. We know the wheels are moved by a spring that has no more intention of producing the result than they do. When we explain how bodies work, we always distinguish in this way between the immediate cause and the ultimate purpose. But when we explain how the mind works, we often confuse the two. Natural principles sometimes lead us to promote goals that careful, informed reasoning would recommend. We then tend to credit reason with producing the feelings and actions that advance those goals. We imagine we are seeing human wisdom when we are actually seeing the wisdom of God. At first glance, reason seems sufficient to explain those effects. And the workings of human nature seem simpler and more satisfying when we derive all of them from a single principle.

Society cannot survive unless the rules of justice are generally followed. People cannot have social dealings if they do not usually refrain from hurting one another. Some have therefore thought that awareness of this necessity is the reason we approve of punishing those who break the rules of justice. They say that people naturally love society and want human beings to remain united for its own sake, even if they personally gain nothing. They enjoy seeing an orderly, thriving society. Its disorder and confusion upset them, and they dislike anything that contributes to it. They also realize that their own interests are tied to society's prosperity. Their happiness, and perhaps their survival, depend on society's survival. For all these reasons, they hate anything that threatens to destroy society and will use any available means to prevent such a dreadful outcome. Injustice necessarily threatens it. So even the first sign of injustice alarms a person. He rushes, so to speak, to stop something that would soon destroy everything dear to him if allowed to spread. If he cannot stop it by gentle and fair means, he must put it down by force and violence. He must halt its spread at any cost. This, they say, is why he often approves of enforcing justice even by putting those who break its laws to death. The person disturbing the public peace is removed, and his fate frightens others away from following his example.

That is the usual explanation for why we approve of punishing injustice. It is certainly true to this extent: we often strengthen our natural sense that punishment is proper and fitting by thinking about how necessary it is to preserve social order. Consider a guilty person about to suffer the just retaliation that everyone naturally feels his crimes deserve. The fear of approaching punishment has broken his arrogance and brought him low. Once he is no longer frightening, generous and humane people begin to pity him. Thinking about what he is about to suffer puts out their resentment over the suffering he caused others. They feel inclined to pardon and forgive him and spare him the punishment that, in calmer moments, they considered fitting for such crimes. At this point they need to bring the general interest of society into the picture. They must set the guidance of a broader and more generous humanity against the impulse of their limited, one-sided compassion. They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. They oppose the compassion they feel for this particular person with a wider compassion for humanity.

At other times, we need to defend obedience to the general rules of justice by pointing out how necessary those rules are for society's survival. We often hear young people and people who give in to their impulses mocking the most sacred rules of morality. They declare that they follow the most dreadful principles of conduct, sometimes because they are corrupt but more often because they want to show off. We become indignant and eager to refute and expose those hateful principles. We are first stirred against them because they are hateful in themselves. Yet we are reluctant to offer that as our only reason for condemning them. We do not want to say simply that we hate and detest them. That reason seems unlikely to convince anyone. But why shouldn't it, if they naturally and properly deserve hatred and disgust? When someone asks why they should not act in a certain way, however, their very question suggests that they do not see the action as naturally and properly deserving those feelings in its own right. So we must show them that it deserves condemnation for some other reason. We look for another argument, and the first one that comes to mind is the disorder and confusion that would result if everyone acted that way. We therefore almost always stress that point.

### Part II, Section II, Chapter III, 2

It usually takes little insight to see that unrestrained wrongdoing harms society. But that is rarely what first turns us against it. Everyone, even the least thoughtful people, hates fraud, betrayal, and injustice, and is pleased to see them punished. Yet few people have considered how necessary justice is for society to exist, however obvious that necessity may seem.

Several simple observations show that our first reason for caring about the punishment of crimes against individuals is not concern for society's survival. Our concern for an individual's fate and happiness does not ordinarily come from our concern for society's fate and happiness. We do not care about a single person's death or loss because that person is part of society and we would care if society were destroyed. That is no more the reason than our concern over losing a single guinea is due to its being part of a thousand guineas and our concern over losing the entire sum. In neither case does our concern for each individual come from concern for the whole. Instead, our concern for the whole grows out of our separate concerns for the individuals who make it up. When someone wrongfully takes a small sum from us, we seek redress less because our entire fortune needs protection than because we care about the particular sum we lost. Likewise, when one person is injured or killed, we demand punishment for the wrong less out of concern for society's general interest than out of concern for that particular injured person. This concern, however, does not have to include the especially strong feelings called love, esteem, and affection that we have for our friends and acquaintances. All that is needed is the general fellow-feeling we have for every person simply because they are human like us. We share even an unpleasant person's resentment when someone they have not provoked injures them. Our disapproval of that person's usual character and behavior does not entirely prevent us from sharing their natural anger. Still, it often weakens that sympathy in people who are not especially fair-minded or have not learned to guide and correct their natural feelings by general rules.

On some occasions we do punish people, and approve of punishment, solely because we think society's general interest cannot otherwise be protected. Penalties for violations of what is called civil policing or military discipline fall into this category. Such offenses do not immediately or directly hurt any particular person. But they are thought to have consequences that cause, or could cause, serious inconvenience or major disorder in society. For example, the laws of war put a sentry to death for falling asleep on watch, because that carelessness could endanger the whole army. Such severity may often be necessary and therefore just and proper. When saving one person is incompatible with the safety of many, it is only right to put the many first. Yet this punishment always seems extremely harsh, however necessary it may be. The offense itself seems so slight and the penalty so great that we have great difficulty accepting it emotionally. We blame the sentry's carelessness, but thinking about it does not naturally provoke the kind of resentment that would move us to such terrible revenge. A humane person must stop and gather his strength. He must make a real effort and summon all his resolve before he can either impose the penalty or approve when others impose it. This is not how he regards the deserved punishment of an ungrateful murderer or someone who kills a parent. In that case, his heart passionately, even joyfully, approves of the just retaliation these dreadful crimes seem to deserve. If by chance the criminals escaped, he would be deeply angry and disappointed. The spectator's very different responses to the two punishments show that his approval of one does not rest on the same grounds as his approval of the other. He sees the sentry as an unfortunate victim who must indeed be sacrificed for the safety of many and ought to be, but whom he would nevertheless like to save. He is sorry only that the interests of the many stand in the way. If the murderer escapes punishment, however, the spectator feels the deepest outrage. He appeals to God to avenge in another world a crime that human injustice has failed to punish in this one.

Indeed, there is an important point to notice. We do not think injustice deserves punishment in this life only to preserve the social order, even though that order could not otherwise be maintained. Nature leads us to hope, and religion, we suppose, gives us reason to expect, that injustice will be punished even in a future life. Our sense that it deserves punishment follows it, so to speak, beyond the grave. Yet punishment there cannot discourage other people from committing similar wrongs here, because they neither see nor know about it. Even so, we believe that God's justice requires him eventually to avenge the injuries done to widows and children without fathers, who are so often wronged here without consequences for their oppressors.

The following idea is not a teaching of our untutored nature. It is a product of elaborate philosophical reasoning: that God loves virtue and hates vice the way a pleasure-loving man loves wealth and hates poverty, not for what they are in themselves but only for their effects. On this view, God loves virtue only because it promotes the happiness of society, which his benevolence makes him want. He hates vice only because it makes people miserable, which the same divine benevolence makes him dislike. Our natural, untutored feelings all lead us to believe something else. We think that perfect virtue must appear to God, as it does to us, worthy of love and reward in itself, without regard to any further result. Vice must likewise appear worthy of hatred and punishment in itself. All the different schools of ancient philosophy generally held that the gods neither feel resentment nor do harm. If resentment means the violent, uncontrolled disturbance that often overwhelms the human heart, or if doing harm means causing injury on a whim without regard for propriety or justice, such weaknesses certainly have no place in divine perfection. But suppose the claim means that God does not see vice as hateful in itself, or as something that ought in itself to be punished. That claim seems to conflict with some very natural feelings. When we consult those feelings, we may even fear that, before the holiness of God, vice appears far more deserving of punishment than weak and imperfect human virtue could ever appear deserving of reward. When a person is about to appear before a Being of infinite perfection, he can have little confidence in his own merit or the imperfect propriety of his conduct. Among other people, he may rightly hold his head high and have good reason to think well of his character and actions compared with their still greater imperfections. Facing his infinite Creator is quite another matter. He fears that such a Being could hardly regard his smallness and weakness as deserving either esteem or reward. Yet he can easily understand how his countless failures to do his duty could make him deserving of disgust and punishment. He sees no reason why divine anger should not be unleashed without restraint on someone who, in his own imagination, must look like such a vile insect to God. If he still hopes for happiness, he suspects that he cannot claim it as a matter of God's justice. He must beg for God's mercy instead. Repentance, sorrow, humility, and deep regret for his past conduct seem to be the feelings that suit his situation. They seem to be his only remaining means of calming the anger he knows he has rightly aroused. He even doubts that these feelings will work. He naturally fears that God's wisdom, unlike human weakness, will not let the criminal's most desperate pleas persuade him to overlook the crime. He imagines that some other intercession, sacrifice, or atonement, beyond anything he can offer himself, must be made on his behalf before divine justice in its purity can be reconciled to his many offenses. The teachings of revelation agree in every respect with these first expectations of our nature. They teach us how little we can rely on our own imperfect virtue. At the same time, they show us that the most powerful intercession has been made and the most dreadful atonement has been paid for our many offenses and wrongs.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter I

Section III: How fortune affects what people think about the merit or demerit of actions. Introduction.

Any praise or blame an action deserves must rest on one or more of three things. First, there is the intention or feeling behind it. Second, there is the outward act or bodily movement that follows from that feeling. Finally, there are the good or bad results that actually follow. Together these three things make up the whole action and its circumstances. Any quality we assign to an action must rest on them. It is clear that neither the outward movement nor the actual results can, on its own, be the basis for praise or blame. No one has ever claimed otherwise. The bodily movement is often identical in a harmless action and a very blameworthy one. Someone shooting a bird and someone shooting a person both pull the trigger of a gun. The results of an action are, if anything, even less suitable for praise or blame than the bodily movement. They depend on fortune, not on the person acting, so they cannot properly be the basis for judging that person's character and conduct. The only results for which a person can be held responsible, or for which that person deserves approval or disapproval, are results intended in some way, or results that at least reveal something good or bad about the intention behind the act. So all justified praise and blame must ultimately concern the intention or feeling behind an action: whether it was proper or improper, and whether its purpose was beneficent or harmful. Stated as a general rule, everyone agrees with this. Everyone recognizes its obvious fairness; no one disagrees. Everyone accepts that different acts may have very different accidental, unintended, and unforeseen results. Yet if the feelings and intentions behind them were equally proper and beneficent, or equally improper and malicious, their merit or demerit would be the same. Their authors would be equally fitting objects of gratitude or resentment. But although we agree with this fair rule in the abstract, particular cases affect us differently. Actual results strongly influence what we think of an action's merit or demerit, and almost always increase or decrease our sense of both. On examination, we may find hardly a single case in which our feelings are guided entirely by the rule we all say should guide them. I will now explain this inconsistency in feeling. Everyone experiences it, hardly anyone fully notices it, and no one wants to admit it. I will consider first what causes it, or how nature produces it; second, how far its influence extends; and finally, what purpose it serves, or what the Author of nature seems to have intended by it.

The causes of fortune's influence.

Whatever causes pain or pleasure, and however it does so, seems immediately to arouse gratitude or resentment in animals. Even things without life can arouse these feelings. We are briefly angry at a stone that hurts us. A child hits it, a dog barks at it, and an irritable person may curse it. A moment's thought corrects the feeling. We soon realize that something unable to feel is an unsuitable target for revenge. But when the harm is very serious, we continue to dislike the thing that caused it and take pleasure in burning or destroying it. We would treat an object that accidentally killed a friend this way. We might even feel a little inhuman if we failed to take this absurd sort of revenge on it.

We also feel a sort of gratitude toward lifeless things that have given us great or repeated pleasure. Imagine a sailor who reaches shore after a shipwreck and immediately burns for fuel the plank that saved him. His action would seem unnatural. We would expect him to keep the plank carefully and fondly, as something precious that recalls his escape. A person grows attached to a snuffbox, a pocketknife, or a walking stick used for years, and feels something like real affection for it. If it breaks or gets lost, the distress is far greater than the value of the loss. We also feel a kind of respect for a house we have lived in for a long time or a tree whose greenery and shade we have enjoyed. They seem almost like benefactors. The decline of one or the destruction of the other makes us sad, even if it costs us nothing. This affection may have first suggested to the ancients the Dryads and Lares, spirits of trees and houses. Those who invented these beliefs perhaps found their attachment to such things hard to explain unless something living inhabited them.

But to be a proper object of gratitude or resentment, a thing must not only cause pleasure or pain. It must also be able to feel pleasure or pain itself. Otherwise we cannot satisfy these feelings by directing them at it. Gratitude and resentment arise from what gives us pleasure or pain. We satisfy them by giving the same experience back to its source, which is pointless if that source cannot feel. Animals, then, are less unsuitable objects of gratitude and resentment than lifeless things. We punish a dog that bites or an ox that gores. If it kills someone, neither the public nor the dead person's family is satisfied unless the animal is killed in turn. They want this partly for the safety of the living, but also partly to avenge the dead. Conversely, animals that have served their owners remarkably well inspire strong gratitude. We are shocked by the brutality of an officer mentioned in the Turkish Spy. He stabbed the horse that had carried him across an arm of the sea so that it could not later do the same remarkable service for anyone else.

Animals cause pleasure and pain and can feel both, yet they are still far from being fully suitable objects of gratitude or resentment. Something is still missing before those feelings can be completely satisfied. Gratitude chiefly wants more than to give a benefactor pleasure in return. We want the benefactor to know that the pleasure is a reward for what he did, to feel pleased with his conduct, and to know that the person he helped was worth helping. What delights us most about a benefactor is that he and we agree on something deeply important to us: the worth of our character and the esteem we deserve. We love to find someone who values us as much as we value ourselves and gives us special attention like the attention we give ourselves. One main reason we repay him is to preserve his pleasing, flattering opinion of us. A generous person often rejects the self-interested idea of using gratitude to press a benefactor for more favors. But even the noblest person cares about keeping and increasing that benefactor's esteem. This explains something I noted earlier. If we cannot sympathize with a benefactor's motives, and cannot approve of his character or conduct, even the greatest services produce much less gratitude in us. His special regard flatters us less. Keeping the esteem of a weak or worthless patron does not seem worth pursuing for its own sake.

Resentment, by contrast, is chiefly concerned with more than causing our enemy pain in return. We want him to know he suffers because of what he did, to regret it, and to understand that the person he hurt did not deserve such treatment. What angers us most about an insult or injury is how little the offender seems to value us. He unfairly puts himself above us, as though his convenience or passing mood justified sacrificing other people. The obvious impropriety of this conduct, its blatant arrogance and injustice, often upset and anger us more than the harm itself. Revenge often chiefly aims to bring him to a fairer view of what others deserve, to make him see what he owes us and how he wronged us. If revenge fails to do this, it never feels complete. But suppose an apparent enemy has not actually wronged us. We recognize that he acted properly, that we would have done the same in his place, and that we deserved the harm he caused. If we have any fairness or honesty, we cannot resent him.

To be a fully proper object of gratitude or resentment, then, something must meet three conditions. First, it must cause pleasure or pain, respectively. Second, it must be able to feel pleasure or pain. Third, it must cause the experience intentionally, with an intention we approve of in the case of gratitude and disapprove of in the case of resentment. The first condition arouses the feeling. The second makes it possible to satisfy the feeling to some degree. The third is needed to satisfy it completely. It also creates a special and intense pleasure or pain, giving us an additional reason to feel gratitude or resentment.

Since gratitude and resentment can be aroused only by something that causes pleasure or pain in some way, intentions alone do not produce their full force. A person's intention might be entirely proper and beneficent, or entirely improper and malicious. But if the intended good or evil never happens, one source of our feeling is absent. We feel less gratitude in the first case and less resentment in the second. Conversely, a person might act without any praiseworthy kindness or blameworthy malice. If the action nevertheless does great good or great harm, its effects provide one source of the feeling. We tend to feel some gratitude for the good and some resentment for the harm. The person seems to have a trace of merit in one case and a trace of demerit in the other. Since the results of actions are entirely subject to Fortune, this is how she affects people's judgments of merit and demerit.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 1

How far fortune's influence extends.

Fortune's influence has two effects. First, when actions driven by the most praiseworthy or blameworthy intentions fail to achieve their aims, we see less merit or demerit in them. Second, when actions happen to cause extraordinary pleasure or pain, we see more merit or demerit in them than their motives or feelings deserve.

1. First, however proper and beneficent someone's intentions are, if they fail, that person's merit seems incomplete. Likewise, however improper and malicious the intentions are, failure makes the demerit seem incomplete. This inconsistency is not confined to the people directly affected. Even the impartial spectator feels it to some degree. A person who tries but fails to secure an appointment for someone else is seen as a friend who deserves affection. A person who succeeds is regarded more especially as a patron and benefactor, deserving respect and gratitude. We may think the recipient can reasonably regard himself as an equal of the friend who merely tried. But we cannot share his feelings if he does not feel indebted to the friend who succeeded. People often say they are just as indebted to someone who tried to help them as to someone who actually helped them. We routinely say this when such efforts fail. But like other fine phrases, it must be taken with some qualification. A generous person's feelings for the friend who fails may be nearly the same as for the friend who succeeds. The more generous the person, the closer those feelings will be. For a truly generous person, being loved and esteemed by someone whose judgment he respects gives more pleasure, and therefore causes more gratitude, than any practical benefit that esteem could bring. Losing the benefit seems to him a small matter, hardly worth noticing. But he still loses something. His pleasure and gratitude are therefore not quite complete. All else being equal, even the noblest person will feel a little more affection for the friend who succeeds. Indeed, people are so unfair about this that even if they do receive the intended benefit, they may give less gratitude to a benefactor who did his best but contributed only a little to obtaining it. They divide their gratitude among everyone whose efforts gave them pleasure, and think each deserves a smaller share. We commonly hear someone say, “He certainly meant to help us, and we truly believe he did everything he could. But we do not owe him this benefit. Without the help of others, his efforts would never have brought it about.” They imagine that even an impartial spectator would think their debt to him smaller. The person whose attempt to help has failed likewise cannot count on the intended recipient's gratitude as he could have if he had succeeded. Nor does he feel the same merit in himself toward that person.

Even the merit of talents and abilities seems somehow incomplete when an accident prevents them from achieving anything. This is true even for people who are certain those talents could have succeeded. A general kept by jealous ministers from winning a major advantage over his country's enemies regrets the lost chance for the rest of his life. He is not only thinking of the public good. He also regrets losing the chance to do something that would have added to his reputation both in his own eyes and in everyone else's. It is no comfort to him or others to say that only the plan depended on him, or that carrying it out would have required no more ability than devising it. Nor does it console him that everyone recognizes his ability to carry it out and that success would have been certain if he had been allowed to proceed. He did not carry it out. He might deserve all the approval owed to a great and courageous plan, but he lacks the actual merit of having done a great deed. Taking charge of a public project away from someone who has nearly finished it strikes us as a particularly spiteful injustice. Having done so much, we think he should have been allowed the full merit of completing it. Pompey was accused of taking over Lucullus's victories and claiming the honors earned by another man's luck and courage. Even Lucullus's own friends apparently saw his glory as less complete because he was not allowed to finish a conquest that his skill and bravery had made easy for almost anyone to finish. An architect feels disappointed if his plans are never built or if they are altered enough to ruin the building's effect. Yet designing the plans is all that depends on him. Good judges can see his talent as completely in the plan as in the finished building. But even the best-informed judges do not enjoy a plan as much as a grand and beautiful building. They may see just as much taste and talent in each. Still, the effects differ greatly. The interest a plan gives us never comes close to the wonder and admiration a completed building can inspire. We may believe that many people have greater talents than Cæsar and Alexander and would do still greater things in their place. Yet we do not feel the amazement and admiration for them that people of every age and nation have felt for those two heroes. Our calm judgment may rate them more highly, but they lack the brilliance of great deeds that can dazzle and move us. Even people who recognize a person's superior virtue and talent do not respond to that superiority as they do to superior achievements.

Just as failure to do good lowers the merit of an attempt in the eyes of ungrateful people, failure to do evil lowers an attempt's demerit. Even a clearly proven plan to commit a crime is hardly ever punished as severely as the completed crime. Treason may be the only exception. Since it directly threatens the government's existence, the government is especially sensitive to it. In punishing treason, a ruler responds to an injury to himself. In punishing other crimes, he sympathizes with injuries done to others. In the first case, he gives way to his own resentment. In the second, he shares the resentment of his subjects through sympathy. Judging his own case, he is likely to punish more violently and cruelly than an impartial spectator would approve. His resentment in such cases is also aroused by smaller things. Unlike in other cases, he does not always wait for the crime to be completed or even attempted. In many countries, a plan to commit treason is punished like actual treason even if nothing has been done or attempted to carry it out. Even a treasonous conversation may receive the same punishment. With other crimes, a mere plan that was never attempted is seldom punished at all and never punished severely. One might say that planning a crime and committing it need not show the same degree of wickedness, and should not carry the same penalty. A person might decide to do something and even take steps toward it, then find himself quite unable to go through with it when the moment comes. But this explanation does not apply when a person has gone as far as making the final attempt. Yet hardly any country's laws impose the death penalty on someone who fires a pistol at an enemy and misses. Under the old law of Scotland, even if he wounds the victim, the attacker is not liable to the ultimate penalty unless the victim dies within a certain time. People's resentment at this crime is so strong, however, and their fear of a person capable of it so great, that the mere attempt ought to be a capital offense in every country. Attempts at lesser crimes are almost always punished lightly, sometimes not at all. A thief caught with his hand in a neighbor's pocket before taking anything suffers only disgrace. If he had managed to take a handkerchief, he would have been put to death. A burglar found setting a ladder against a neighbor's window, but not yet inside, is not subject to the death penalty. Attempted rape is not punished as rape. Attempting to seduce a married woman goes unpunished, although successfully seducing her is punished severely. Our resentment against someone who has only tried to do harm is rarely strong enough for us to impose the penalty we would consider right if he had succeeded. When the attempt fails, relief at our escape softens our view of his dreadful conduct. When it succeeds, grief at our loss makes it worse. Yet his real demerit is surely identical in both cases, since his intentions were equally criminal. Here, then, everyone has an inconsistency in feeling. As a result, I believe the laws of every nation, civilized and uncivilized alike, are less strict about attempted crimes. A civilized people's humanity leads them to waive or reduce penalties when the crime's results have not sharpened their natural anger. People called barbarians, on the other hand, are not likely to examine motives very closely when an action has had no actual result.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter II, 2

A person who has decided to commit a crime, perhaps under the influence of passion or bad company, may even have taken steps toward it. If an accident fortunately makes the crime impossible, he will see that event for the rest of his life as a great escape, provided he has any conscience left. He cannot remember it without thanking Heaven for kindly saving him from the guilt he was about to incur, and from a life of horror, remorse, and regret. His hands are innocent, but he knows his heart is as guilty as if he had done what he fully intended. Nevertheless, it greatly eases his conscience to know the crime never happened, although he knows his own virtue had nothing to do with its failure. He still considers himself less deserving of punishment and resentment. His good fortune reduces or even removes his whole sense of guilt. Remembering how determined he was only makes his escape seem greater and more miraculous. He continues to think he escaped. He remembers the danger to his peace of mind with the same fear that someone safe on solid ground may feel on remembering how close he came to falling over a cliff. The thought makes him shudder.

2. Fortune's second effect is to increase our sense of an action's merit or demerit beyond what its motives or feelings deserve, when it happens to cause extraordinary pleasure or pain. The action's welcome or unwelcome results often make its author seem deserving of praise or blame, even when the intention deserves neither, or at least not as much as we tend to give. This is why we dislike even the messenger of bad news and feel a kind of gratitude toward the bearer of good news. For a moment, we treat them almost as the causes of our good and bad fortune, although they only report what has happened. The first person to make us joyful briefly receives our gratitude. We embrace him warmly and, in our moment of happiness, would gladly reward him as if he had performed a remarkable service. At every court it is customary to reward an officer who brings news of a victory with substantial advancement. A general always picks one of his chief favorites for this pleasant task. Conversely, the first person to make us sad briefly draws our resentment. We can hardly help looking at him with annoyance and discomfort. Rude, brutal people may even take out on him the bitterness aroused by his news. Tigranes, King of Armenia, had the man who first told him a formidable enemy was approaching beheaded. Punishing a bearer of bad news like that seems barbaric and inhuman. But we do not object to rewarding a bearer of good news; we think kings are right to be generous that way. Why the difference? If the first messenger did nothing wrong, the second did nothing meritorious. The reason is that almost any excuse seems enough for us to act on friendly and kindly feelings. To share in an expression of hostile and malicious feelings, we need a very sound and substantial reason.

Yet although we are generally reluctant to share hostile and malicious feelings, and although we adopt a rule against approving their expression unless the target's malicious and unjust intention makes him a proper target, we sometimes relax that rule. If one person's negligence causes unintended harm to another, we often sympathize enough with the injured person's resentment to approve a punishment far more severe than we would think the negligent act deserved if no harm had followed.

Some negligence deserves a penalty even when nobody is hurt. Consider someone who throws a large stone over a wall into a public street. He gives no warning to passersby and pays no attention to where it may land. He certainly deserves some penalty. A very careful police force would punish such an absurd act even if it harmed no one. He shows arrogant disregard for other people's happiness and safety. His conduct is genuinely unjust. He needlessly exposes a neighbor to a danger that no sensible person would willingly face. He plainly lacks the regard for other people on which justice and society depend. Thus the law treats gross negligence as nearly equal to intentional harm[3]. If his carelessness does have tragic results, he is often punished as though he had meant to cause them. Conduct that was thoughtless and arrogant, and deserved some penalty, is treated as terrible enough for the severest punishment. If the stone in this example accidentally kills someone, many countries' laws, especially the old law of Scotland, make the thrower liable to the death penalty. This is certainly far too severe, yet it is not wholly contrary to our natural feelings. Our justified anger at his foolish and inhuman conduct grows when we sympathize with the victim. But nothing would offend our natural sense of fairness more than executing him simply for throwing a stone carelessly into the street without hurting anyone. His folly and lack of humanity would be the same in both cases, but our feelings would differ greatly. That difference shows how strongly the actual outcome can increase even a spectator's anger. If I am right, the laws of almost every nation are very severe in such cases, just as I noted that they are generally less strict in the opposite kind of case.

Footnote 3:

Gross negligence is nearly deliberate wrongdoing.

Another degree of negligence involves no injustice. The negligent person treats his neighbor as he treats himself. He means no harm and does not arrogantly disregard anyone else's safety or happiness. He is still less careful and watchful than he ought to be. He deserves some blame for that, but no punishment. Yet if this kind of negligence[4] harms someone, the laws of every country, I believe, require him to pay for the damage. This is certainly a real penalty, one nobody would think of imposing if his behavior had not led to an unfortunate accident. Still, everyone's natural sense of fairness approves the legal decision. We think it entirely right that one person should not suffer for another's carelessness, and that the person responsible for blameworthy negligence should make up the damage it caused.

Footnote 4:

Slight negligence.

A third kind of negligence[5] is simply the failure to take the most fearful and painstaking care against every possible result of our actions. If nothing bad comes of that failure, we do not blame it. Indeed, we are more likely to blame the opposite quality. Fearful caution about everything is never considered a virtue. More than almost anything else, it makes a person unable to act or conduct business. Still, if someone's failure to take this excessive care happens to harm another person, the law often makes him pay for the damage. For example, under the Aquilian law, a rider who could not control a horse that had unexpectedly become frightened had to pay if he rode over a neighbor's slave. When this happens, we are likely to say he should never have ridden that horse and to treat his decision to ride as inexcusable carelessness. Without the accident, we would not say that. We would even see a refusal to ride as fearful weakness and pointless worry about things that might possibly happen. The person who accidentally hurts someone in this way also seems to feel that he has done wrong to that person. He naturally hurries over to express concern and acknowledge what has happened as fully as he can. If he has any sensitivity, he wants to pay for the damage and do everything possible to calm the instinctive resentment he knows the victim may feel. To offer no apology or compensation seems utterly brutal. But why should he apologize rather than anyone else? Since he was as innocent as any bystander, why should he of all people be made to bear the cost of someone else's bad luck? Surely this burden would never be placed on him unless even the impartial spectator felt some sympathy for what could be called the victim's unjust resentment.

Footnote 5:

Very slight negligence.

### Part II, Section III, Chapter III

The ultimate purpose of this inconsistency in our feelings.

We have seen how the good or bad results of actions affect both the people who perform them and those who watch them. Fortune rules the world and influences even what we would least want to leave to her: how people judge their own character and conduct and that of others. People have complained in every age that the world judges actions by their results, not their intentions. This is a great discouragement to virtue. Everyone accepts the general rule that an outcome beyond the agent's control should not affect how we judge the merit or propriety of that person's conduct. But in particular cases our feelings hardly ever follow this fair rule exactly. Whether an action turns out well or badly affects not only our judgment of the prudence behind it, but almost always also our gratitude or resentment and our sense of the merit or demerit of the intention.

Yet when nature planted this inconsistency in us, she seems to have meant, as in other cases, to promote human happiness and improvement. Suppose a harmful intention or a malicious feeling alone were enough to arouse resentment. Then we would feel the full fury of resentment against anyone we suspected of harboring such thoughts, even if they never acted on them. Feelings, thoughts, and intentions would become punishable. If people were as outraged by a base thought that never led to action as by a base action, and demanded revenge for both, every court would become a real inquisition. Even the most innocent and careful person would be unsafe. People might still suspect him of bad wishes, purposes, or plans. If these drew as much anger as bad conduct, and bad intentions as much resentment as bad actions, they would equally expose him to punishment. So the Author of nature has made actions that actually cause harm, or attempts that put us in immediate fear of harm, the only proper and acceptable objects of human punishment and resentment. Feelings, plans, and affections are, according to calm reason, the entire source of the merit or demerit of human actions. Yet the great Judge of hearts has put them beyond all human courts and reserved them for his own infallible judgment. The necessary rule of justice that people in this life may be punished only for their actions, not for their plans and intentions, thus rests on our useful inconsistency about merit and demerit. At first it seems absurd and impossible to explain. But every part of nature, studied closely, shows its Author's care. Even human weakness and folly can make us admire God's wisdom and goodness.

Another inconsistency in our feelings is useful too. We see less than full merit in an unsuccessful attempt to help someone, and even less in kind wishes and good intentions that never become actions. Human beings were made to act. They were made to use their powers to change their own circumstances and those of others in ways that seem best for everyone's happiness. A person must not be content with idle goodwill or think he is a friend to humanity merely because he privately wishes the world well. Nature has taught him to put all his strength and effort into the purposes of his life. She has taught him that neither he nor anyone else will be fully satisfied with his conduct or give it full praise unless he actually achieves those purposes. He knows that praise for good intentions without the merit of helpful actions will do little to win the world's loudest applause or even his own highest approval. Suppose a person has done nothing of importance, but everything he says and the way he behaves show the most fair-minded, noble, and generous feelings. He cannot demand a very great reward, even if his lack of useful action is due solely to having had no chance to help. We may refuse him without doing anything wrong. We may still ask him, “What have you done? What service have you actually provided that entitles you to so great a reward? We esteem and love you, but we owe you nothing.” Of course, rewarding virtue that remains unused only for lack of opportunity—giving it honors and advancement that it may in some sense deserve but cannot properly demand—is an act of the most godlike kindness. Punishing someone solely for feelings in the heart when no crime has been committed is, by contrast, the most arrogant and brutal tyranny. Kind feelings seem most praiseworthy when they lead to action before inaction becomes almost a crime. Malicious feelings, by contrast, can hardly be too slow or too hesitant to become actions.

It is also useful for unintentional harm to be seen as a misfortune for the person who caused it, not just for the person harmed. This teaches us to respect other people's happiness, to fear hurting them even without knowing it, and to dread the instinctive resentment we know may burst out against us if we accidentally become the cause of their misfortune.

Despite all these apparent inconsistencies, nature has not left a person entirely without comfort for innocent harm or without reward for unsuccessful virtue. If he accidentally causes harm he never intended, or fails to do the good he intended, he can call on a fair rule: events outside our control should not reduce the esteem we deserve. He gathers all his courage and strength of character and tries to see himself not as he currently appears, but as he ought to appear. That is how he would have appeared if his generous plans had succeeded. It is how he would still appear despite their failure if people judged with complete honesty and fairness, or even judged in a way fully consistent with their own principles. The more fair-minded and humane people support his effort to maintain his self-respect. With all their generosity and strength of mind, they try to correct this inconsistency in themselves. They work to see his unfortunate courage as they would naturally have seen it if he had succeeded, without needing to make any such special effort.

### Part III, Chapter I

Part III: The basis of our judgments about our own feelings and conduct, and our sense of duty. ONE SECTION.

Knowing whether we deserve praise or blame.

In the previous two parts of this discussion, I mainly considered where our judgments about other people's feelings and conduct come from, and what they rest on. Now I will consider the judgments we make about our own.

We want the approval and respect of the people we live with. This matters greatly to our happiness. But we cannot fully satisfy that desire unless we really deserve those feelings and shape our character and conduct by the standards people naturally use in granting approval and respect. It is not enough for people to approve of us through ignorance or mistake. If we know we do not deserve their good opinion, and that they would feel the opposite if they knew the truth, we cannot be fully satisfied. Someone who praises us for things we never did, or for motives that never influenced us, is praising someone else, not us. His praise cannot satisfy us. It should be more painful than criticism. It should keep reminding us of the humbling difference between what we ought to be and what we are. Imagine a woman who uses makeup to hide what she considers an ugly appearance. She could hardly take much pride in compliments on her beauty. They should instead remind her of how people would respond to her real complexion, making the contrast painful. Taking pleasure in praise with no basis shows extreme shallowness and weakness. That is what vanity really is. It lies behind the ridiculous and contemptible habits of putting on airs and telling ordinary lies. If experience did not show how common these habits are, we might think even a little common sense would prevent them. A foolish liar tries to win a group's admiration by describing adventures that never happened. A self-important show-off pretends to a rank and distinction he knows he has no right to claim. Both probably enjoy the applause they imagine they receive. Yet their vanity depends on such a crude trick of the imagination that it is hard to see how a rational person could fall for it. They imagine themselves in the position of those they believe they have fooled and then feel immense admiration for themselves. They see themselves not as they know they should appear to their companions, but as they believe their companions see them. Their shallow weakness and trivial foolishness keep them from looking inward. They cannot see themselves in the contemptible way their own consciences should tell them everyone would see them if the truth came out.

Praise given in ignorance and without grounds brings no lasting joy or satisfaction that stands up to serious thought. By contrast, it often comforts us to know that we deserve praise even if nobody gives it. We know our conduct has met every standard by which people naturally and commonly give praise and approval. We enjoy not only receiving praise but also doing something worthy of it. We are glad to know we deserve approval even if nobody actually expresses it. And it pains us to know that we deserve the blame of people around us even if they never blame us. Someone who knows he has faithfully followed standards of conduct that experience shows people generally approve of can look back with satisfaction on the propriety of his behavior. When he sees it as an impartial spectator would, he can fully share the motives that guided it. He looks back on every part with pleasure and approval. Even if nobody learns what he has done, he sees himself less as people actually see him than as they would see him if they knew more. He imagines in advance the praise and admiration they would give him then. By sympathy with those imagined feelings, he praises and admires himself. Those feelings do not actually arise only because the public lacks the facts. He knows they would naturally and ordinarily follow such conduct. In his mind, the conduct and the response are strongly linked; he has come to expect that response as its proper result. People have often willingly given up their lives for fame after death, when they could no longer enjoy it. Their imagination let them experience that future fame in advance. They heard in their minds applause they would never hear in life. The thought of admiration they would never feel drove out even the strongest natural fear and carried them into deeds that seem beyond human ability. But surely there is little real difference between approval given only after we can no longer enjoy it and approval never given at all, though it would be given if the world understood the true circumstances of our conduct. If the first can have such powerful effects, we should not be surprised that people value the second so highly.

On the other hand, someone who has broken every rule of conduct that could make him acceptable to others gains nothing from being absolutely sure that no one will ever find out. Looking back and seeing his action as an impartial spectator would, he cannot sympathize with any of the motives behind it. The thought embarrasses and confuses him. He inevitably feels much of the shame he would feel if everyone learned what he did. Here, too, his imagination brings forward the contempt and ridicule from which only other people's ignorance protects him. He still knows he deserves those reactions and trembles at the thought of actually facing them. If he has committed not just an improper act that deserves disapproval but a terrible crime that provokes hatred and resentment, he cannot think of it without horror and remorse, so long as he can still feel anything. He may be certain no person will ever know. He may even convince himself there is no God to punish it. Still, those feelings can make his whole life bitter. He still sees himself as someone his fellow human beings would naturally hate and condemn. Unless repeated crimes have hardened his heart, he cannot imagine without terror how people would look at him, or what would appear on their faces and in their eyes, if the awful truth emerged. These natural pains of a frightened conscience are the demons, the avenging furies, that haunt guilty people in this life. They give them no peace or rest and often drive them to despair or madness. Being sure of secrecy cannot protect them; disbelief in religion cannot fully release them. Only the lowest and most wretched state can free them: complete indifference to honor and disgrace, to vice and virtue. Even people of the most hateful character, who committed terrible crimes so carefully and calmly that nobody suspected them, have sometimes been driven by the horror of their condition to confess what no human investigator could have uncovered. By admitting guilt, accepting the anger of the citizens they had wronged, and satisfying the desire for vengeance that they knew they deserved, they hoped their deaths would bring them back into agreement, at least in their own minds, with humanity's natural feelings. They hoped to see themselves as less deserving of hatred and resentment, to make some amends for their crimes, and, if possible, to die at peace and forgiven by their fellow human beings. Compared with what they felt before confessing, even the prospect of this seems to have been happiness.

### Part III, Chapter II, 1

How our judgments of ourselves relate to the judgments others ought to make, and where general rules come from.

Much, perhaps most, of human happiness and misery comes from looking back on our conduct and feeling approval or disapproval of it. Whatever effect these feelings have on us, they always refer, in some hidden way, to other people's feelings: what others actually feel, what they would feel under certain conditions, or what we think they ought to feel. We examine our conduct as we imagine an impartial spectator would. If we put ourselves in that spectator's place and can fully share the feelings and motives behind our conduct, we approve of it. We sympathize with the approval of this imagined fair judge. If we cannot share them, we join in the judge's disapproval and condemn our conduct.

Suppose a human being grew to adulthood alone, with no contact with anyone else. He would be no more able to think about his own character, whether his own feelings and conduct were proper or deserved blame, or whether his own mind was beautiful or ugly, than to think about the beauty or ugliness of his own face. These qualities are hard for him to see; he would not naturally look at them, and he would have no mirror in which to see them. Bring him among other people and at once he gets the mirror he lacked. He finds it in their faces and behavior. These show when they share his feelings and when they disapprove. This is how he first sees whether his own passions are proper or improper and whether his own mind is beautiful or ugly. Someone who had been alone since birth would focus entirely on the things outside him that pleased or hurt him, the things his passions were about. His passions themselves—his wants and dislikes, joys and sorrows—would be immediately present to him, yet would hardly ever become objects of thought. Thinking about them would not interest him enough to hold his attention. Reflecting on his joy would not produce fresh joy, nor would reflecting on his sorrow produce fresh sorrow, though thinking about their causes might produce either. Bring him among other people, and all his passions immediately give rise to new passions. He sees that people approve of some and are repelled by others. Approval lifts him up; disapproval brings him down. His wants and dislikes, joys and sorrows now often produce further wants and dislikes, joys and sorrows. They matter deeply to him now and often demand his close attention.

We first learn what makes a person beautiful or ugly by looking at other people, not ourselves. But we soon realize that others judge our looks in the same way. We like their approval of our appearance and dislike signs of disgust. We want to know whether our appearance really deserves their praise or blame. We examine ourselves part by part. With a mirror or some other means, we try as far as possible to see ourselves from a distance and through other people's eyes. If we are pleased with our appearance after this examination, we can bear even their harshest judgments more easily. If we know our appearance naturally repels people, the slightest sign of their disapproval hurts us terribly. Someone reasonably good-looking will let you laugh at a small flaw in his appearance. A person who is seriously disfigured generally cannot bear such jokes. Clearly, we care about whether we look beautiful or ugly only because our looks affect others. Without ties to society, we would care about neither.

In the same way, we first make moral judgments about other people's characters and conduct. We are quick to notice how they affect us. But we soon learn that others are just as frank about ours. We want to know whether we deserve their blame or praise and whether we must really seem as agreeable or disagreeable to them as they say. So we begin to examine our own feelings and behavior. We ask how they must look to others by imagining how we would see them in their position. We picture ourselves watching our own conduct and ask how it would strike us from that viewpoint. This is the only mirror in which we can, to some degree, inspect the propriety of our conduct through other people's eyes. If we like what we see, we feel reasonably satisfied. We can care less about their praise and even, to a degree, disregard their criticism. We feel sure that, even if people misunderstand or misrepresent us, we really deserve approval. But if we dislike what we see, that very feeling often makes us more eager to win their approval. Unless we have already made peace with disgrace, as the saying goes, the thought of their criticism deeply distresses us. It hurts twice as much then.

When I examine my own conduct and judge whether to approve or condemn it, I seem to divide myself into two people. I, the examiner and judge, take a role different from that of the other I, whose conduct is being examined and judged. The first is the spectator. I try to share his feelings about my conduct by putting myself in his place and considering how my conduct looks from there. The second is the agent, the person I normally call myself, whose conduct I am trying to assess while playing the spectator. The first is the judge; the second is the defendant. The judge cannot be exactly the same as the defendant, just as a cause cannot be exactly the same as its effect.

To be lovable and to have merit—that is, to deserve love and reward—are the great marks of virtue. To be hateful and deserving of punishment are the marks of vice. But each of these descriptions refers directly to other people's feelings. Virtue is not called lovable or deserving of reward because it loves or thanks itself. It is called these things because it stirs love and gratitude in other people. Knowing that others rightly feel this way about us gives us the inner peace and satisfaction that naturally come with virtue. Suspecting the opposite brings the torments of vice. What could be happier than being loved and knowing we deserve it? What could be more miserable than being hated and knowing we deserve it?

We think of a person as a moral being because we hold that person accountable. To be accountable means having to answer to someone else for one's actions and, as a result, having to guide them by what that person approves. Human beings answer to God and to one another. No doubt they answer chiefly to God. But in the order in which people learn these ideas, they must think of themselves as answerable to other people before they can form an idea of God or of the rules by which God judges their conduct. A child surely knows that it must answer to its parents, and feels lifted up or brought down by the thought of their deserved approval or disapproval, long before it understands that it must answer to God or knows the rules by which God judges it.

The great judge of the world has wisely placed some darkness between our limited reason and the seat of his eternal justice. We can still see that great court, but its effect on us is faint compared with what we might expect from its grandeur and importance. Suppose we could see as clearly the endless rewards and punishments the Almighty has prepared for obedience and disobedience as we can foresee the small, temporary ways people repay one another. Human nature, overwhelmed by things too vast to grasp, could no longer attend to everyday matters. Society could not possibly carry on its business if Providence had revealed its intentions more fully in this respect than it already has. But the Author of nature did not leave people without a rule for their conduct or a judge with authority to uphold it. He made each person an immediate judge of other people. In this and many other ways, he made people in his own image and appointed them his representatives on earth to oversee one another's behavior. Nature teaches us to recognize the power and authority given to others in this way. We tremble when we think we deserve their criticism and rejoice when we think we deserve their praise.

Yet however much authority this lower court has, always standing before our eyes, we can appeal if it decides against the principles and rules that nature established to guide it. We can turn to a higher court, the court within our own hearts, to correct its weak or biased judgment.

Nature has established principles for judging the conduct of people around us. If we follow them, we neither praise nor condemn anything that does not deserve it by nature, nor do we praise or condemn it more than it deserves. Our judgment then follows the law, so to speak, and needs no reversal or correction. The person we judge must approve of that judgment too. When he puts himself in our position, he cannot help seeing his conduct as we appear to see it. He knows that to us, and to every impartial spectator, he must naturally deserve the feelings we express about him. Those feelings must therefore have their full effect on him. Deserved praise brings him the full triumph of self-approval; deserved condemnation brings him all the horrors of shame.

Things are different if we praise or condemn someone against nature's principles and rules for making such judgments. He may put himself in our position yet see no grounds for our praise or condemnation. Since he cannot share our feelings, our judgment will hardly affect him if he has any steadiness or resolve. Our favorable decision will not raise his spirits much, and an unfavorable one will not hurt him greatly. The whole world's applause is worth little if our conscience condemns us. And all humanity's disapproval cannot crush us when the court in our own hearts clears us and our own mind tells us that others are wrong.

This inner court is the highest judge of all our actions. It can overturn everyone's judgment of our character and conduct. It can bring us down amid the world's applause or support us under its criticism. Yet if we ask where this court comes from, we will find that much of its authority comes from the very lower court whose decisions it so often, and rightly, reverses.

When we first enter the world, we naturally want to please others. We get used to thinking about what behavior will please everyone we deal with: parents, teachers, and companions. We approach one person at a time and for a while eagerly pursue the impossible and foolish aim of winning everyone's approval and goodwill. Experience soon teaches us that we cannot get universal approval. When our interests become more important, we find that pleasing one person almost certainly upsets another. Going along with one individual may often anger an entire people. Even the fairest conduct often gets in the way of particular people's interests or wishes. They rarely have enough fairness to understand our motives or see that our actions fit our situation perfectly, however unwelcome those actions may be to them. To protect ourselves from such biased judgments, we soon learn to set up a judge in our minds between ourselves and the people around us. We imagine acting before a completely fair and open-minded person. This person has no special tie to us or to anyone our actions affect. He is neither parent, sibling, nor friend to either side, but simply a person in general: an impartial spectator who views our conduct with the same detachment with which we view other people's conduct. If our actions look good to us when we take his position, and we feel sure he can understand all the motives that guided us, we can be satisfied with our conduct whatever the world thinks. Despite our companions' criticism, we can see that we truly deserve approval.

### Part III, Chapter II, 2

On the other hand, if the person within condemns us, even the loudest praise from everyone else sounds like ignorant, foolish noise. Whenever we take the role of this impartial judge, we cannot help looking at our actions with dislike and dissatisfaction. Weak, vain, and shallow people, of course, may be hurt by criticism with no basis or delighted by absurd praise. They are not used to consulting the judge within about how they should view their conduct. They rarely turn to this inner inhabitant, this imagined person who represents humanity and stands in for God, whom nature has made the highest judge of their actions. They accept the decision of the lower court. Their deepest wish has generally been for the approval of their companions, the particular people they live and talk with. If they get it, their joy is complete; if not, they are entirely disappointed. They never think to appeal to the higher court. They have seldom asked for its decisions and know nothing of its rules or procedures. So when the world treats them unfairly, they cannot give themselves justice. They inevitably become slaves to the world's opinions. The person who regularly turns to the inner judge is different. He asks not what the world praises or blames, but what this impartial spectator sees as naturally deserving praise or blame. The decision of this highest judge of his conduct is the praise he has mainly sought and the criticism he has mainly feared. Beside that final decision, the feelings of all other people still matter, but not much. Their most favorable judgment cannot lift him very high, and their harshest judgment cannot bring him very low.

Only by consulting this inner judge can we see things that concern us in their true size and shape, or make a fair comparison between our own interests and other people's.

To our eyes, things look large or small less because of their actual size than because of how near or far away they are. The mind's natural vision works much the same way. We correct the shortcomings of both kinds of vision in much the same way too. From where I sit, a vast landscape of lawns, woods, and distant mountains seems to cover no more than the small window beside which I write. It seems far smaller than the room I am sitting in. To compare those great things fairly with the little things around me, I must move, at least in my imagination, to another viewpoint. From there I can look at both from roughly equal distances and judge their true proportions. Habit and experience have made this so easy that I hardly notice doing it. A person needs some knowledge of how vision works to fully understand how tiny the distant things would look if the imagination did not enlarge them using our knowledge of their real size.

In the same way, our original, selfish passions make a tiny gain or loss of our own seem much more important than the greatest concern of a person with whom we have no special connection. Our own small interest gives us far greater joy or sorrow, desire or aversion. As long as we look from this position, we cannot weigh his interests against ours. They cannot stop us from doing whatever serves our interests, even if it ruins him. To compare these conflicting interests fairly, we must move to another position. We must look neither from our place nor from his, neither through our own eyes nor through his. We must look through the eyes of a third person, who has no special connection with either of us and judges us impartially. Habit and experience have also made this shift so easy that we hardly notice it. It takes some thought, even some philosophy, to understand how little we would care about our neighbor's greatest concerns, or feel for what happens to him, if our sense of propriety and justice did not correct this natural imbalance in our feelings.

Imagine that an earthquake suddenly swallowed the great empire of China and its countless inhabitants. How would a humane man in Europe, with no connection to that part of the world, respond to the news? I think he would first express deep sorrow for those unfortunate people. He would reflect sadly on how uncertain human life is and how all human labor can be wiped out in a moment. If he liked to reason about such matters, he might also consider how the disaster would affect European commerce and trade and business across the world. Once he had finished these thoughtful reflections and expressed his humane feelings, he would return to work or pleasure, rest or recreation, as calmly as though nothing had happened. The smallest trouble of his own would upset him more deeply. If he were going to lose his little finger tomorrow, he would not sleep tonight. But so long as he had never seen them, he would sleep soundly through the deaths of a hundred millions of his fellow human beings. The destruction of that vast number seems plainly less important to him than his own small loss. Would a humane man, then, agree to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of people he had never seen to save his little finger? Human nature recoils in horror at the thought. Even at its most corrupt, the world has never produced someone wicked enough to consider it. What accounts for the difference? If our feelings about what happens are almost always so selfish and narrow, why are the principles that guide our actions often so noble and generous? We are so much more deeply affected by our own concerns than by other people's. What makes generous people, always, and even selfish people, often, give up their own interests for the greater interests of others? It is not the gentle force of humanity or the weak spark of kindness that nature put in our hearts. Those cannot overcome the strongest impulses of self-love. A stronger force and motive acts here: reason, principle, conscience, the inner inhabitant, the person within, the great judge of our conduct. Whenever we are about to act in a way that affects another person's happiness, this judge speaks with enough force to startle even our boldest passions. He tells us that we are just one person among many, no better than anyone else. If we put ourselves above others so blindly and shamefully, we deserve resentment, horror, and condemnation. Only this judge teaches us how small we and our personal concerns really are. Only the impartial spectator's viewpoint can correct the distortions of self-love. This judge shows us that generosity is proper and injustice is ugly. He shows us that it is right to give up even a great interest of our own for a still greater interest of others, and wrong to do even the smallest harm to another for the greatest benefit to ourselves. Often it is not love for our neighbor or for humanity that moves us to act with such extraordinary virtue. Usually a stronger love moves us in such cases: love of what is honorable and noble, of the greatness, dignity, and excellence of our own character.

When another person's happiness or misery depends in any way on what we do, we dare not put a small interest of our own above that person's greater interest, though self-love urges us to. We know our fellow human beings would rightly resent and condemn us. Our sense that our selfish feeling is improper is reinforced by an even stronger sense that the resulting action deserves blame. But things differ when what we do has no effect on other people's happiness or misery, and our interests are completely separate from theirs, with no connection or competition between them. Then no sense of deserved blame for an action intervenes. A mere sense that our feelings are improper is rarely enough to keep us from giving in to our natural anxiety about our own affairs and our natural indifference to other people's. Even the most ordinary upbringing teaches us to act with some impartiality toward ourselves and others when important matters arise. Ordinary dealings with people can give the principles guiding our actions some degree of propriety. But only the most elaborate and advanced education claims to correct the imbalance in what we passively feel. For that, we must turn to the strictest and most profound philosophy.

Two groups of philosophers have tried to teach us this hardest moral lesson. One group has tried to make us more sensitive to other people's interests. The other has tried to make us less sensitive to our own. The first wants us to feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves. The second wants us to feel for ourselves as we naturally feel for others.

The first group consists of gloomy moral teachers who constantly blame us for being happy while so many of our fellow human beings suffer.[6] They treat the natural joy of good fortune as irreverent if it fails to think of the many people who are, at every moment, enduring every kind of hardship: the weakness brought by poverty, the agony of illness, the terror of death, and their enemies' insults and oppression. They think compassion for suffering we have never seen or heard about, but can be sure is always affecting so many others, should lessen fortunate people's pleasure. They want everyone to live with a habitual sadness. First, though, such intense sympathy for hardships we know nothing about seems utterly unreasonable. On average across the whole earth, for every person in pain or misery, you will find twenty who are happy and doing well, or at least getting by. Surely there is no reason to weep with the one rather than rejoice with the twenty. Besides, this manufactured compassion is not just unreasonable; it seems impossible to achieve. Those who pretend to have it usually display only a false sadness. It never reaches the heart and only makes their faces and conversation pointlessly gloomy and unpleasant. Finally, even if this attitude were possible, it would be entirely useless. It would do nothing but make its possessor miserable. Feeling concern for strangers who are completely beyond our ability to help or hurt can only bring us anxiety without benefiting them at all. Why worry about a world on the moon? Everyone, including those farthest away, certainly deserves our good wishes, which we naturally give them. But if they suffer despite those wishes, worrying about it does not seem to be our duty. Nature seems wise, then, in making us care little about the fortunes of those we can neither help nor hurt and who are so remote from us. Even if we could change this basic part of our nature, we would gain nothing.

Footnote 6:

See Thomson’s Seasons, Winter:

“Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,” etc.

See also Pascal.

Among the moral teachers who try to correct the natural imbalance in our passive feelings by reducing our sensitivity to our own concerns, we can count all the ancient schools of philosophy, especially the ancient Stoics. According to the Stoics, a person should see himself not as separate and detached, but as a citizen of the world and a member of nature's vast community. He should always be willing to sacrifice his small personal interest for the good of that great community. What happens to him should affect him no more than what happens to any other equally important part of this immense whole. We should see ourselves as another citizen of the world would, not as our selfish passions lead us to see ourselves. We should see what happens to us as we see what happens to our neighbor—or, equivalently, as our neighbor sees what happens to us. “When our neighbor loses his wife or son,” says Epictetus, “everyone knows this is a human misfortune, a natural event in the normal course of things. But when the same thing happens to us, we cry out as though we had suffered the worst possible disaster. We should remember how we felt when it happened to someone else and feel the same way about our own loss.” Achieving such complete strength and steadiness of mind may be very hard, but trying is neither unreasonable nor useless. Few people have the Stoic idea of what perfect propriety demands. Yet everyone tries to control themselves to some degree and moderate their selfish passions enough for their neighbor to understand them. The best way to do that is to see what happens to them as their neighbors tend to see it. In this respect, Stoic philosophy does little more than spell out our natural idea of perfection. There is nothing foolish or improper about aiming for perfect self-control. Achieving it would be far from useless. It would be the most beneficial thing possible: it would put our happiness on the firmest, safest basis, a steady trust in the wisdom and justice that govern the world and a complete willingness to leave ourselves and everything that concerns us to the all-wise direction of nature's ruling principle.

### Part III, Chapter II, 3

Yet we can hardly ever bring our feelings about what happens to us into perfect propriety. We allow ourselves some imbalance in these feelings, and other people allow us some too. We may care too much about our own concerns and too little about other people's. But we are readily forgiven if we still act impartially toward ourselves and others, and never sacrifice an important interest of theirs for a minor interest of ours. It would be good if everyone who wants to do their duty could always manage even that much impartiality. But they often cannot. Even in good people, the inner judge risks being corrupted by strong and unjust selfish passions. It may then give a verdict that the actual facts cannot support.

We examine our own conduct on two occasions, trying to see it as the impartial spectator would. The first is before we act, and the second is after. Our views are biased in both cases, but most of all when an unbiased view matters most.

Before we act, strong feelings rarely let us look at what we are doing as frankly as an uninvolved person would. These emotions distort how things look to us. They do so even when we try to put ourselves in someone else's place and see what matters to us as that person would see it. Our passions keep pulling us back to our own position, where self-love enlarges and distorts everything. We get only fleeting glimpses, so to speak, of how these things would look to someone else and what that person would think. Those glimpses disappear at once, and they are not quite accurate even while they last. Not even for a moment can we entirely shed the heat and intensity produced by our own situation. We cannot judge what we are about to do with the complete impartiality of a fair judge. For this reason, as Father Malebranche says, our passions all justify themselves. As long as we feel them, they seem reasonable and proportionate to their causes.

After the act is over and the feelings that drove it have faded, we can take the uninvolved spectator's view more calmly. What interested us before now matters almost as little to us as it always did to that spectator. We can examine our conduct with the same honesty and impartiality. But these judgments matter much less than they did before we acted. Even when they are strictly impartial, they usually bring only useless regret and repentance that changes nothing. They do not protect us against similar mistakes in the future. And even afterward, our judgments are rarely completely honest. Our opinion of our own character depends entirely on how we judge our past conduct. Thinking badly of ourselves is so unpleasant that we often deliberately look away from facts that might lead to an unfavorable judgment. They say it takes a bold surgeon to operate on himself without a trembling hand. It takes just as much courage to pull away the veil of self-deception that hides the ugliness of our conduct from us. Rather than see our behavior in such an unpleasant light, we too often foolishly try to stir up again the unjust passions that misled us. We work to revive old hatreds and inflame grudges we had almost forgotten. We make an effort for this miserable purpose. In this way we persist in injustice simply because we were once unjust, and are ashamed and afraid to admit it.

People's views of the propriety of their own conduct are biased both before and after they act. It is hard for them to see it as any uninvolved spectator would. Suppose, however, that they judged their conduct by a special faculty, such as the proposed moral sense. Suppose this power detected the beauty or ugliness of passions and feelings. Their own passions would be more directly visible to this faculty than other people's, which it could see only from a distance. It would therefore judge their own passions more accurately than those of others.

This self-deception, a dangerous human weakness, causes half the troubles of human life. If we could see ourselves as others see us, or as they would see us if they knew everything, we would usually have no choice but to change. We could not bear what we saw otherwise.

Nature, however, has not left such an important weakness entirely without a remedy. It has not left us completely at the mercy of self-love's illusions. By constantly observing other people's conduct, we gradually form general rules about what should be done and what should be avoided. Some actions shock our natural feelings. We hear everyone around us express the same disgust. This confirms and even strengthens our sense that those actions are ugly. Seeing others view them as we do reassures us that we see them correctly. We resolve never to act that way or make ourselves the objects of universal disapproval. So we naturally form a general rule against actions that would make us hated, despised, or liable to punishment. Those reactions are the ones we most fear and dislike. Other actions, by contrast, win our approval, and we hear everyone around us approve of them too. Everyone wants to honor and reward them. They inspire the feelings we most want to receive: people's love, gratitude, and admiration. We want to do similar things, and naturally form a different rule: we should carefully seek every chance to act that way.

This is how the general rules of morality arise. Their ultimate basis is our experience of what our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve or disapprove in particular cases. We do not first approve or condemn an action because we check it against a general rule. Instead, experience shows us that actions of a certain kind, or done in certain circumstances, meet with approval or disapproval. From that experience we form the rule. Imagine the first person to witness a cruel murder. The murderer acts from greed, envy, or unjust resentment, and the victim loved and trusted him. The witness sees the victim's final agony and hears him, with his dying breath, complain more about his false friend's betrayal and ingratitude than about the violence itself. The witness does not need to recall a sacred rule forbidding the killing of an innocent person, then note that the murder breaks it, in order to see how horrible it is. Clearly, he would hate the crime immediately, before forming such a general rule. A rule he formed later would instead be based on the disgust he necessarily felt at the thought of this act and every other act of the same kind.

When we read about generous or base actions in history or fiction, our admiration for one kind and contempt for the other do not come from thinking of general rules. We do not first recall rules declaring one kind admirable and the other contemptible. Instead, we form those rules from experience of the effects different kinds of actions naturally have on us.

A lovable action, a respectable action, and a horrible action naturally make spectators feel love, respect, or horror toward the person who performs them. We can form general rules identifying which actions call for each feeling only by observing which actions actually cause it.

Once general rules are established and widely accepted because people agree in their feelings, we often appeal to them as standards. We do so when debating how much praise or blame a complicated, doubtful action deserves. On such occasions we often cite them as the ultimate basis for deciding what is just or unjust in human conduct. This seems to have misled several distinguished writers. They present their systems as though people first decided right and wrong like a court: they considered a general rule, then asked whether the action in question fell under it.

When repeated reflection has firmly established general rules of conduct in our minds, they are very useful. They correct the distorted picture that self-love gives us of what is proper in our own situation. If a man in a rage listened only to his resentment, he might think his enemy's death scarcely made up for a supposed wrong. Yet the offense may have been very slight. Watching others, however, has taught him how horrible such bloody revenge looks. Unless he has had a very unusual upbringing, he has made it an unbreakable rule never to take such revenge. The rule retains its authority and keeps him from committing that violence. His temper may still be so fierce that, if he were considering the act for the first time, he would certainly call it entirely just and proper, and think every impartial spectator would approve. But respect for a rule impressed on him by past experience checks the rush of passion. It helps correct the overly favorable view of his own case that self-love would otherwise suggest. Even if passion carries him far enough to break the rule, he cannot wholly shake off his accustomed awe and respect for it. At the very moment when passion is strongest, he hesitates and trembles at what he is about to do. Secretly he knows that he is breaking standards he had always resolved to follow when calm. He had never seen anyone else break them without strongly disapproving, and he foresees that breaking them will soon bring the same unpleasant judgments on himself. Before he makes the final, fatal decision, doubt and uncertainty torment him. The thought of breaking such a sacred rule frightens him, while furious desire drives him to break it. His mind changes at every moment. Sometimes he resolves to stick to his principle and refuse a passion that could poison the rest of his life with shame and regret. For a moment he feels calm at the prospect of the security and peace he will enjoy by deciding not to risk the opposite course. But then passion rises again and drives him with renewed fury to do what he had just resolved not to do. Worn down and distracted by constant indecision, he finally takes the fatal step he cannot undo, almost in despair. He does it with the terror and bewilderment of someone who, fleeing an enemy, throws himself off a cliff where destruction is more certain than anything pursuing him. These are his feelings even as he acts. He is certainly less aware then that his conduct is improper than he will be later. Once his passion has been satisfied and has lost its force, he begins to see his deed as others see it. Then he actually feels the pangs of remorse and repentance torment him—pangs he had only dimly foreseen before.

### Part III, Chapter III, 1

How the general rules of morality influence us and command our respect, and why they are rightly seen as God's laws.

Respect for these general rules of conduct is what we properly call a sense of duty. It is extremely important in human life, and it is the only principle by which most people can guide their actions. Many people behave quite well throughout their lives and avoid any serious blame. Yet they may never feel the sentiment that makes their behavior worthy of approval. They simply follow what they know to be the established rules of behavior. A man who has received great benefits from someone else may naturally feel very little gratitude because of his cool temperament. But if he has been raised to be virtuous, he will often have seen how hateful a lack of gratitude looks and how appealing its opposite looks. Even though he does not feel warm gratitude, he will try to act as if he does. He will give his benefactor all the consideration that the strongest gratitude could suggest. He will visit regularly, treat him with respect, and speak of him only with the highest esteem and with acknowledgment of all he owes him. More than that, he will carefully take every opportunity to repay the services he has received. He can do all this without hypocrisy or blameworthy pretense. He need not be seeking new favors for himself or trying to deceive his benefactor or the public. He may act simply out of respect for the established rule of duty and a serious desire to follow the rule of gratitude in every way. Likewise, a wife may sometimes not feel the affection for her husband that their relationship calls for. If she was raised to be virtuous, she will still try to act as if she feels it. She will be attentive, helpful, faithful, and sincere, and will not neglect any of the care that married affection would have prompted. This friend and this wife are certainly not the best possible friend and wife. Though they may sincerely want to do their whole duty, they will miss many subtle ways of showing care and many chances to be helpful. They would not miss those chances if they felt the affection suited to their positions. Still, though not the best of their kind, they may be the next best. If respect for general rules has been strongly impressed on them, they will not fail in any essential duty. Only people with the happiest natural disposition can adjust their feelings and behavior exactly to even the smallest changes of circumstance. Only they can always act with such fine, precise propriety. Most people cannot reach that perfection. Yet hardly anyone is incapable of learning respect for general rules through discipline, education, and example. That respect can enable them to behave reasonably well in nearly every situation and avoid serious blame throughout life.

Without this deep respect for general rules, no one's conduct is very dependable. It makes the most important difference between a principled, honorable person and a worthless one. The first sticks firmly and consistently to his principles and behaves steadily throughout life. The second behaves differently from one occasion to the next, depending on which mood, desire, or interest happens to prevail. Everyone's moods shift. Without this guiding principle, even a person who, when calm, is very sensitive to what is proper may act absurdly over a trivial matter, with scarcely any serious reason for it. A friend visits you when you happen to be in a mood that makes his visit unwelcome. At that moment his courtesy may seem like an intrusive annoyance. If you followed your present view of the situation, you might treat him coldly and with contempt, even though you are usually polite. What stops you from being rude is simply respect for the general rules of courtesy and hospitality that forbid it. Experience has taught you to respect these rules. They help you behave with nearly the same propriety on every such occasion and prevent ordinary changes of mood from noticeably affecting your conduct. Without respect for general rules, people would often neglect even the easy duties of politeness, although there is hardly ever a strong reason to neglect them. What, then, would happen to the duties of justice, truth, chastity, and fidelity? These are often difficult to keep, and there may be powerful reasons to break them. Human society itself depends on people observing these duties reasonably well. It would fall apart if people did not generally respect these important rules of conduct.

This respect becomes even stronger when we believe that the important rules of morality are the commands and laws of God, who will finally reward those who obey and punish those who neglect their duty. Nature first leads us to this belief; reason and philosophy later confirm it.

I say that nature seems to lead us to this belief first. People naturally attribute their own feelings and passions to the mysterious beings they fear in their religion, whatever those beings may be in a particular country. They have no other feelings to attribute to them and cannot imagine any others. They picture unseen minds on the model of the minds they know. In the ignorance of ancient pagan superstition, people seem to have pictured their gods without much discrimination. They attributed every human passion to them, including passions that do our species least credit: lust, hunger, greed, envy, and revenge. So they could hardly avoid giving these beings, whom they nonetheless admired as supremely excellent, the qualities that most honor humanity and make it resemble divine perfection: love of virtue and beneficence, and hatred of vice and injustice. A man who had been wronged called on Jupiter to witness the wrong. He had no doubt that Jupiter would be as indignant as even the humblest human witness to an injustice. The wrongdoer felt that people would rightly hate and resent him. His natural fears led him to attribute those same feelings to awe-inspiring beings whose presence he could not escape and whose power he could not resist. Sympathy spread these natural hopes, fears, and suspicions, and education confirmed them. People everywhere portrayed and believed the gods to reward kindness and mercy and avenge betrayal and injustice. So even the simplest forms of religion gave authority to moral rules long before sophisticated reasoning and philosophy arose. It mattered too much to human happiness for nature to leave religion's support for our natural sense of duty waiting on the slow and uncertain progress of philosophical investigation.

When that investigation did begin, however, it confirmed these first expectations inspired by nature. Whatever we think our moral faculties are based on—some form of reason, an inborn instinct called moral sense, or another part of our nature—they were clearly given to us to guide our conduct in this life. They have clear marks of authority. These marks show that they were placed inside us to be the highest judges of all our actions, overseeing our senses, passions, and appetites and deciding how far we should satisfy or restrain each one. Contrary to what some have claimed, our moral faculties are not on the same level as our other faculties and appetites. The others do not have as much authority to restrain our moral faculties as our moral faculties have to restrain them. No other faculty or motive judges another in this way. Love does not judge resentment, and resentment does not judge love. They may oppose each other, but we cannot properly say they approve or disapprove of each other. Judging all the other parts of our nature, praising or blaming them, is the special role of our moral faculties. We can think of them as senses that take those other parts as their objects. Each sense has final authority over its own objects. There is no appeal from sight about the beauty of colors, from hearing about the harmony of sounds, or from taste about the pleasantness of flavors. Each sense makes the final judgment about what it perceives. What tastes good is sweet; what pleases the eye is beautiful; what pleases the ear is harmonious. Each quality consists in being suited to please its corresponding sense. In the same way, our moral faculties decide when the ear should be pleased, the eye indulged, and the taste satisfied. They decide when, and how far, every other part of our nature should be indulged or restrained. What our moral faculties approve is fit, right, and proper to do; what they reject is wrong, unfit, and improper. Feelings they approve are becoming, and feelings they reject are unbecoming. The words right, wrong, fit, improper, becoming, and unbecoming mean only what pleases or displeases these faculties.

Because these faculties were clearly meant to govern human nature, we should see their rules as God's commands and laws, issued through the representatives he has set within us. People commonly call any general rules laws. For example, they call the rules governing how bodies transmit motion the laws of motion. But the general rules by which our moral faculties approve or condemn feelings and actions can be called laws with even better reason. They resemble real laws more closely: the rules a ruler sets for the conduct of subjects. Like those laws, they guide people's free actions, are surely laid down by a rightful superior, and carry rewards and punishments. These representatives of God within us never fail to punish breaches of the rules with inward shame and self-condemnation. They always reward obedience with peace of mind, contentment, and satisfaction with ourselves.

Countless other considerations support the same conclusion. When the Author of nature brought humans and all other rational creatures into existence, happiness seems to have been his original purpose for them. No other aim seems worthy of the supreme wisdom and divine kindness that we necessarily attribute to him. We reach this view by considering his infinite perfection in the abstract, and the works of nature confirm it even more strongly. They all seem designed to promote happiness and prevent misery. By following our moral faculties, we necessarily use the most effective means of promoting human happiness. In that sense we can be said to work with God and do what we can to advance the plan of Providence. If we act otherwise, we seem to hinder to some degree the Author of nature's plan for the world's happiness and perfection. We even make ourselves, so to speak, God's enemies to some degree. We are therefore naturally led to hope for his special favor and reward if we do what is right, and to fear his vengeance and punishment if we do wrong.

### Part III, Chapter III, 2

Many other reasons and natural principles support and reinforce this helpful belief. Consider the general rules that usually determine who prospers and who suffers in this life. Despite all the apparent disorder in the world, even here each virtue naturally receives the reward best suited to encourage it. This happens so reliably that only a very unusual combination of circumstances can prevent it altogether. What reward best encourages hard work, prudence, and care? Success in every kind of business. Can these qualities fail to bring success over the course of a whole life? Wealth and outward honors are their natural rewards, rewards they rarely fail to gain. What reward best encourages truthfulness, justice, and humanity? The trust, esteem, and love of the people around us. Humanity wants not greatness but love. Truthfulness and justice seek not riches but to be trusted and believed. These qualities almost always earn those rewards. In exceptionally unlucky circumstances, a good man might be suspected of a crime he would never commit. He might then unjustly face people's horror and dislike for the rest of his life. Such an accident could make him lose everything despite his integrity and justice, just as an earthquake or flood could ruin a cautious man despite his utmost care. But accidents of the first kind are perhaps even rarer and further from the ordinary course of events than those of the second. It remains true that being truthful, just, and humane is an almost certain way to win what these virtues chiefly seek: the trust and love of the people around us. It is easy to misrepresent a person's particular action, but almost impossible to misrepresent the general pattern of his conduct. People may believe an innocent man did something wrong, though this will rarely happen. In fact, his established reputation for innocence will often lead us to acquit him when he really is at fault, even when there is strong evidence against him. Similarly, a dishonest man may escape blame or even receive praise for a particular dishonest act if people do not understand what he did. But no one has ever been habitually dishonest without becoming known as such to almost everyone. He is even often suspected when he is completely innocent. So, to the extent that people's feelings and opinions can reward virtue and punish vice, each ordinarily gets even more than strict, impartial justice would give it in this life.

These general rules governing prosperity and hardship may look perfectly suited to human life when we think about them calmly and philosophically. Yet they do not fit some of our natural feelings. We love and admire certain virtues so much that we want to give them every kind of honor and reward, including rewards properly belonging to other qualities they do not always have. Likewise, we hate certain vices so much that we want to bring every kind of disgrace and disaster on them, even those that naturally follow from quite different failings. We admire greatness of spirit, generosity, and justice so much that we want them crowned with wealth, power, and every honor. Yet these are the natural results of prudence, hard work, and steady application, qualities that do not always accompany those virtues. On the other hand, fraud, lies, cruelty, and violence provoke such contempt and disgust that we are outraged to see people guilty of them enjoy benefits they have in one sense earned through the hard work that sometimes accompanies their vices. A hardworking dishonest man cultivates the land; an idle good man leaves it uncultivated. Who should get the harvest? Who should starve, and who should have plenty? The natural course of events favors the dishonest man, while people's natural feelings favor the good man. People think that the first man's good qualities are rewarded far too much by the advantages they bring, and the second man's neglect is punished far too severely by the hardship it causes. Human laws, which grow out of human feelings, therefore take the life and property of a hardworking, cautious traitor. They also give exceptional rewards to an imprudent, careless citizen for loyalty and public spirit. Nature thus directs human beings to correct, to some degree, the way she would otherwise distribute rewards. The rules she prompts them to follow for this purpose differ from the ones she follows herself. Nature gives each virtue and vice exactly the reward or punishment best suited to encourage the virtue or restrain the vice. That is her sole consideration. She takes little account of the degrees of merit and demerit that people attribute to them through their feelings and passions. People, by contrast, consider only those degrees. They want the fortunes of every virtue to match exactly the love and esteem they feel for it, and the fortunes of every vice to match their contempt and disgust. Nature's rules suit nature, and people's rules suit people. Both promote the same great goal: an orderly world and the perfection and happiness of human nature.

People therefore try to change the distribution of fortune that natural events would produce on their own. Like the gods in poetry, they keep intervening by unusual means on behalf of virtue and against vice. They try to turn aside an arrow aimed at a good person's head and speed up the sword of destruction raised against a wicked person. Yet they cannot make either person's fortunes entirely match their feelings and wishes. Weak human efforts cannot fully control the natural course of events. Its current is too fast and strong to stop. Though the rules directing it seem established for the wisest and best purposes, they sometimes produce results that shock all our natural feelings. A large group prevailing over a small one, prepared people prevailing over unprepared opponents, and each goal being attained only through the means nature has provided for attaining it: this rule seems necessary and unavoidable. It even seems useful and proper because it encourages people to work hard and pay attention. Yet when it lets violence and cunning defeat honesty and justice, every humane spectator feels indignation. We feel sorrow and compassion for innocent sufferers and furious resentment at the oppressor's success. We are both grieved and enraged by the wrong, but often have no power at all to put it right. When we despair of finding any earthly force that can stop injustice from triumphing, we naturally turn to Heaven. We hope that the great Author of our nature will later carry out what the principles he gave us already urge us to attempt here. We hope he will complete the plan he taught us to begin and, in a life to come, repay everyone according to their actions in this world. This is how we come to believe in a future life. The belief comes not only from human weakness, hope, and fear. It also comes from the noblest and best parts of our nature: love of virtue and hatred of vice and injustice.

“Is it worthy of God's greatness,” asks the eloquent and philosophical bishop of Clermont, with a passionate and exaggerated imagination that sometimes seems to go beyond what is proper, “to leave the world he created in such widespread disorder? Should he watch the wicked almost always defeat the just; an innocent ruler overthrown by a usurper; a father made the victim of an unnatural son's ambition; a husband dying at the hands of a cruel and faithless wife? Should God, from his exalted position, treat these sad events as imaginary entertainment and take no part in them? Because he is great, should he be weak, unjust, or cruel? Because human beings are small, should they be allowed to live wickedly without punishment or virtuously without reward? O God! If this is what your Supreme Being is like, if it is you we worship under such terrifying ideas, I can no longer call you my father, my protector, the comforter of my grief, the support of my weakness, or the rewarder of my loyalty. You would be nothing but a lazy, capricious tyrant who sacrifices humanity to his arrogant vanity. You would have brought people into existence from nothing only to amuse yourself in your idle hours and indulge your whims.”

When the general rules defining the merit and demerit of actions come to be seen as the laws of an all-powerful being, they take on a new sacredness. This being watches our conduct and will reward obedience and punish disobedience in a future life. No one who believes God exists can doubt that respect for his will should be our supreme rule of conduct. Even the thought of disobeying seems shockingly improper. How pointless and absurd it would be for a human being to resist or ignore commands from infinite wisdom and infinite power! How unnatural and ungrateful toward God not to respect the rules given by the Creator's infinite goodness, even if breaking them brought no punishment. Our sense of propriety also receives strong support here from self-interest. Even if we escape other people's notice or are beyond human punishment, God always sees us, and we are still liable to punishment from this great avenger of injustice. For people who make that thought familiar through constant reflection, it can restrain even their strongest passions.

This is how religion strengthens our natural sense of duty. It is why people generally put great trust in the honesty of those who seem to hold deep religious beliefs. They think such people feel another obligation in addition to those that guide everyone else. They assume that religious people, like people of the world, care about acting properly and protecting their reputation. They also care about their own conscience's approval and other people's approval. But religious people feel another restraint as well. Whenever they act deliberately, they act as though in the presence of a great superior who will ultimately repay them according to their deeds. People therefore trust them more to behave consistently and carefully. And people are surely right to place this double trust in the conduct of religious people wherever religion's natural principles have not been corrupted by the partisan zeal of some worthless faction. They are right wherever religion's first duty is to fulfill every moral obligation; wherever people are not taught to place trivial observances above acts of justice and beneficence as religious duties; and wherever people are not led to believe they can bargain with God, through sacrifices, ceremonies, and empty prayers, for permission to commit fraud, betrayal, and violence.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 1

When should a sense of duty be our only reason for acting, and when should it work alongside other motives?

Religion gives us strong reasons to practice virtue and powerful restraints against vice. This has led many people to believe that religious principles are the only worthy motives for action. According to them, we should not reward someone out of gratitude or punish someone out of resentment. Natural affection should not lead us to protect our helpless children or support our aging parents. We should put aside every feeling for particular people. One great feeling should replace them all: love of God, the desire to please him, and the wish to follow his will in everything we do. We should not be grateful because we feel gratitude, charitable because we care about others, devoted to the public because we love our country, or generous and just because we love humanity. Our only motive for carrying out these duties should be the knowledge that God has commanded them. I will not examine this opinion in detail here. I will only note how surprising it is to find it among followers of a religion whose first commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and whose second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Surely we love ourselves for our own sake, not merely because we are commanded to. Christianity nowhere commands us to make duty our only motive. It does, however, require duty to govern our conduct, as philosophy and ordinary good sense also require. The question remains: When should our actions come mainly or entirely from duty or from following general rules? And when should another feeling also play a leading part?

The answer may not be very exact. It depends on two things. The first is whether the feeling that would move us to act, apart from any rule, is naturally attractive or repellent. The second is whether the general rules themselves are precise or vague.

I. First, whether we should act from a feeling or entirely from a general rule depends on whether that feeling is itself naturally attractive or repellent.

Kind feelings should play as much of a part in the gracious actions they inspire as any concern for rules of conduct. A benefactor feels poorly repaid if someone returns his kindness only from a cold sense of duty, without affection for him. A husband is dissatisfied even with a perfectly obedient wife if he thinks she acts only because marriage requires it. A son might perform every duty to his parents. But if he lacks the loving respect that is fitting for him, they may rightly complain that he is indifferent. Nor could a son be entirely satisfied with a parent who carried out every parental duty but showed none of the fatherly affection he could expect. With these kind and social feelings, we like to see duty hold them back rather than stir them up. We want duty to keep us from doing too much, not to prod us into doing what we should. We are pleased when a father has to check his affection, a friend has to limit his natural generosity, or someone who has received help has to restrain his own overenthusiastic gratitude.

The opposite rule applies to hostile and antisocial feelings. We should reward others freely, from gratitude and generosity, without having to remind ourselves that rewarding them is proper. But we should always be reluctant to punish. Our reason should be that punishment is proper, not a fierce desire for revenge. There is nothing more admirable than a person who responds to even the worst injuries mainly because they deserve resentment and are its proper objects, rather than because he is caught up in that unpleasant passion. Like a judge, he looks to the general rule that sets the appropriate penalty for each offense. In applying it, he feels less concern for his own suffering than for what the offender is about to suffer. Even in anger he remembers mercy. He is ready to interpret the rule as gently and favorably as possible, and to accept every mitigating circumstance that fair-minded humanity can recognize without abandoning good sense.

Self-interested feelings occupy a middle position here, just as I observed earlier that they do between social and antisocial feelings in other respects. In small, ordinary matters, we should pursue our private interests mainly because general rules tell us to, not because we are eager for the particular gains. On important and unusual occasions, however, we look clumsy, dull, and unappealing unless those goals themselves stir us to some degree of passion. A person who anxiously plotted to gain or save a single shilling would lose the respect of even the most ordinary tradespeople nearby. However poor he is, he should not seem preoccupied with such small amounts for their own sake. His circumstances may demand the strictest economy and most diligent attention. But each small effort should spring less from concern for that particular gain or saving than from the general rule that strictly requires him to live this way. He should not save money today simply because he wants the particular three-pence he will keep. Nor should he tend his shop because he longs for the particular ten-pence he will earn. He should do both solely because a general rule sternly demands this way of life from people in his position. That is the difference between a miser and someone who is careful and diligent. The miser worries about small things for their own sake. The careful person attends to them as part of the plan he has set for his life.

The situation is quite different when a person's own interests involve unusually important goals. We think someone lacks spirit if he does not pursue these goals with some eagerness for their own sake. We would despise a prince who was not concerned about conquering or defending a province. We would have little respect for a private gentleman who made no effort to acquire an estate or even an important office, when he could do so without acting shamefully or unjustly. Friends abandon a member of parliament who shows no eagerness to win his own election; they consider him unworthy of their support. Even neighbors think a tradesman lacks spirit if he does not put himself out to win what they call an extraordinary job or some unusual advantage. This energy and eagerness distinguish an enterprising person from one who is merely dull and methodical. Major personal goals, whose gain or loss completely changes someone's rank, are the objects of the passion properly called ambition. When ambition stays within the bounds of prudence and justice, the world always admires it. Even when it oversteps both bounds and becomes unjust and extravagant, its wild grandeur can sometimes dazzle us. This explains the general admiration for heroes and conquerors, and even for statesmen with daring, far-reaching plans that have no justice in them, such as the Cardinals of Richlieu and of Retz. Greed and ambition differ only in the size of their goals. A miser is as fierce about a halfpenny as an ambitious person is about conquering a kingdom.

II. Second, whether our conduct should come entirely from following general rules depends partly on how precise or vague those rules are.

The general rules for nearly all virtues are imprecise in many ways. Rules about prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, and friendship allow many exceptions and require so many adjustments that we can hardly guide our conduct entirely by them. Common sayings about prudence may offer the best general rules for it, because they are based on widespread experience. Still, following them strictly and literally would be absurdly fussy. Of the virtues just mentioned, gratitude may have the clearest rules and the fewest exceptions. Repaying a kindness as soon as we can with something of equal or, if possible, greater value seems like a plain rule with hardly any exceptions. Yet even a quick look shows how vague it is and how many thousands of exceptions it permits. If someone cared for you while you were sick, must you care for him when he is sick? Or could you meet your obligation of gratitude by helping him in another way? If you must care for him, for how long? As long as he cared for you, or longer? How much longer? If a friend lent you money when you were in need, must you lend him money when he is in need? How much, when—now, tomorrow, or next month—and for how long? Clearly no general rule can give an exact answer to every one of these questions in every case. Your different characters and circumstances may mean that you can be perfectly grateful while rightly refusing to lend him even a halfpenny. Conversely, you might offer to lend or even give him ten times what he lent you and still deserve to be accused of the worst ingratitude, having met not even a hundredth part of what you owe him. The duties of gratitude may be the most binding of all the duties that kindly virtues lay upon us. That is why their general rules are, as I said, the most precise. The rules governing friendship, humanity, hospitality, and generosity are still more vague and uncertain.

### Part III, Chapter IV, 2

There is, however, one virtue whose general rules specify exactly every outward action it requires: justice. Its rules are exceptionally precise. They admit no exceptions or adjustments except ones that can be specified just as precisely, and that generally follow the same principles as the rules themselves. If I owe a man ten pounds, justice requires me to pay him exactly ten pounds, either at the agreed time or when he asks for it. What I must do, how much I must do, and when and where I must do it are all precisely settled, along with every feature and circumstance of the required action. It can look fussy to follow ordinary rules of prudence or generosity too rigidly. But it is not fussy to stick firmly to the rules of justice. On the contrary, we owe them the deepest respect. We perform the actions justice requires most properly when our main motive is a deep, almost religious respect for the general rules requiring them. In practicing other virtues, we should be guided more by a sense of propriety and a feel for the right way to behave than by a precise rule. We should think more about the purpose and basis of a rule than its wording. Justice is different. The person who devises the fewest subtle qualifications and clings most firmly to its general rules is the most praiseworthy and reliable. The rules of justice aim to prevent us from hurting our neighbors. But breaking them can often be a crime even when we can offer a seemingly reasonable argument that this particular violation will hurt no one. A person often becomes a villain as soon as he starts making such evasive arguments to himself. Once he considers departing from strict obedience to these rules that must not be broken, he can no longer be trusted. No one can say how far his guilt might go. A thief imagines he does no harm when he steals from rich people something he thinks they can easily do without and may never even notice is missing. An adulterer imagines he does no harm when he seduces his friend's wife, provided he hides the affair from the husband and leaves the family's peace undisturbed. Once we allow ourselves such clever excuses, we may become capable of any outrage, however terrible.

The rules of justice are like the rules of grammar. The rules for the other virtues are like critics' rules for achieving elegance and greatness in writing. The first set is precise, exact, and necessary. The second is loose and uncertain. It gives us a general picture of the ideal to aim for, rather than reliable instructions for reaching it. A person can learn to write grammatically by following rules without making mistakes. Perhaps a person can also be taught to act justly in that way. But no set of rules will certainly produce elegant or great writing, although some rules can help us clarify and correct our vague ideas of those qualities. Likewise, knowing rules cannot guarantee that we will always act prudently, with proper greatness of spirit, or with fitting beneficence. Some rules can, however, help us clarify and correct our incomplete ideas of these virtues in several respects.

Sometimes we sincerely and earnestly want to act in a way that deserves approval, but misunderstand the proper rules of conduct. The very sense of duty that should guide us then leads us astray. We cannot expect others to approve of our behavior completely. They cannot share the absurd idea of duty that moved us or approve the actions it produces. Even so, there is something worthy of respect in the character and behavior of someone led into wrongdoing by a mistaken sense of duty—what is called a mistaken conscience. However disastrous its guidance, generous and humane people feel more pity than hatred or resentment toward him. They grieve that human beings are vulnerable to such sad errors even when they are sincerely working to become better and trying to act by the best possible principle. False religious beliefs are nearly the only things that can seriously distort our natural feelings in this way. The very principle that gives rules of duty their greatest authority can also greatly twist our understanding of those rules. In other cases, common sense is enough to guide us toward behavior that may not be perfect but is not very far from it. If we sincerely want to do right, our behavior will generally deserve praise. Everyone agrees that obeying God's will is the first rule of duty. But people disagree widely about the particular things God commands. We therefore owe one another great patience and tolerance on this question. Society must protect itself by punishing crimes, whatever the motives for them. Yet a good person will be reluctant to punish a crime clearly committed from a false belief about religious duty. He will not feel the same indignation toward its perpetrator as toward other criminals. Instead, even as he punishes the crime, he will regret and sometimes admire the person's tragic resolve and courage. One of Mr. Voltaire's finest tragedies, Mahomet, shows very well how we should feel about crimes committed for such reasons. In the play, two young people, a man and a woman, are innocent and virtuous in every way. Their only weakness is their affection for each other, which makes us like them more. Powerful motives from a false religion drive them to commit a dreadful murder that offends every human feeling. They are ordered to kill a venerable old man as a sacrifice expressly required by God. He has shown them both the tenderest affection. Although he is openly an enemy of their religion, they greatly respect and admire him. Unknown to them, he is actually their father. As they prepare to kill him, they suffer intensely. On one side is their belief that religious duty must be obeyed. On the other are compassion, gratitude, respect for his age, and love for his humanity and virtue. The scene is among the most compelling and perhaps the most instructive ever staged. In the end, duty wins out over all their lovable human weaknesses. They commit the crime. Immediately afterward, they discover their mistake and the fraud that deceived them. Horror, remorse, and anger overwhelm them. We should feel toward anyone truly led astray by religion what we feel toward the unfortunate Seid and Palmira. That is, of course, only when we are sure religion itself is misleading the person, rather than being used as a cover for some of the worst human passions.

Someone can act wrongly by following a mistaken sense of duty. Equally, natural feeling can sometimes prevail and lead him to act rightly against what he thinks duty requires. We cannot object when the motive that we believe should win does win, even if the person wrongly thinks it should not. But because his action comes from weakness rather than principle, we cannot give it anything close to full approval. Suppose a fiercely committed Roman Catholic had been moved by compassion during the massacre of St. Bartholomew to save some unfortunate protestants whom he believed it was his duty to kill. He would not seem to deserve the high praise we would give him if he had acted with the same generosity while fully approving of his own choice. We might welcome his humane feelings. But we would also pity him in a way that rules out the admiration due to complete virtue. The same applies to other feelings. We are glad to see them properly expressed even when a mistaken view of duty tells someone to suppress them. Suppose a deeply devout Quaker is struck on one cheek. Instead of offering the other, he forgets his literal reading of our Savior's instruction enough to give the brute who hit him a good beating. We would not dislike him for it. His spirit would amuse us, and we might like him more. But we would not respect or admire him as much as someone who acted properly in the same situation because he correctly understood what was right. No action can properly be called virtuous unless the person who performs it feels that he can approve of it himself.

### Part IV, Chapter I, 1

Part IV: How usefulness affects our approval. One section.

How the appearance of usefulness makes all works of art beautiful, and how far this kind of beauty reaches.

Everyone who has looked closely at what makes something beautiful has noticed that usefulness is one of its main sources. A house's convenience pleases a viewer, just as its regular design does. An inconvenient house is just as unpleasant to see as a house whose matching windows have different shapes or whose door is not centered. We can easily see that a machine or system gains a certain fitness and beauty from being well suited to its purpose. Even thinking about it becomes pleasant. No one has failed to notice this.

A recent philosopher, both thoughtful and engaging, has also explained why usefulness pleases us. He combines deep thought with elegant expression and has the rare gift of making very difficult subjects not only perfectly clear but lively and persuasive. According to him, an object's usefulness pleases its owner because it continually reminds him of the pleasure or convenience it is designed to provide. Every time he sees it, he remembers that benefit, so the object becomes a constant source of satisfaction. By sympathy, an observer shares the owner's feelings and sees the object in the same appealing light. When we visit the palaces of powerful people, we cannot help imagining the pleasure we would feel if we owned all those cleverly designed conveniences ourselves. He gives a similar explanation for why an inconvenient object looks unpleasant both to its owner and to an observer.

As far as I know, however, no one has pointed out something else. We often value how cleverly an object is made more than the very purpose it was made for. We pay more attention to the careful arrangement of the means for getting some convenience or pleasure than to the convenience or pleasure that supposedly gives those means their entire value. Yet this happens very often. We can see it in countless examples, both trivial and important.

Someone walks into his room and finds that all the chairs are in the middle of the floor. He gets angry with his servant. Rather than leave them that way, he may go to the trouble of moving each one against a wall himself. This arrangement is better only because it leaves the floor clear and makes the room easier to use. Yet to gain that convenience, he willingly goes to more trouble than leaving the chairs alone would ever have caused him. He could simply have sat down on one of them, which is probably what he does after moving them. Evidently, what he wanted was not so much the convenience itself as the arrangement that provides it. Still, the arrangement gets all its attractiveness and beauty from that convenience.

Similarly, someone interested in watches looks down on a watch that loses more than two minutes a day. He may sell it for a couple of guineas and buy another for fifty that loses no more than a minute in a fortnight. Yet watches are useful only because they tell us the time, keeping us from missing appointments or facing some other inconvenience because we do not know it. The person who is so particular about his watch is not necessarily more punctual than anyone else. Nor does he necessarily have any other special need to know the exact time. He cares less about knowing the time than about having a machine that does its job perfectly.

How many people ruin themselves buying little gadgets with trivial uses? They like not so much what the gadgets do as how neatly they do it. Their pockets are crammed with small conveniences. They even invent new pockets, unlike anything on other people's clothes, to carry more of them. They walk around weighed down by trinkets, as heavy and sometimes as valuable as an ordinary traveling salesman's case. Some of these items may occasionally be a little useful, but they could easily do without any of them. Their total usefulness certainly does not justify the effort of carrying them.

This principle affects more than our dealings with trivial things. It is often the hidden motive behind the most serious aims in both private and public life.

Consider a poor man's son whom Heaven has burdened with ambition. As he begins to look around, he admires how the rich live. His father's cottage seems too small, and he imagines that a palace would be more comfortable. He dislikes having to walk or wear himself out riding a horse. He sees people of higher rank carried about in vehicles and imagines he could travel more comfortably in one. He feels naturally lazy and wants to do as little as possible for himself. He thinks a large group of servants would spare him a great deal of trouble. If he had all these things, he believes he could sit contentedly and quietly enjoy how happy and peaceful he was. This distant picture of happiness captivates him. He imagines it as the life of a higher kind of being. To reach it, he dedicates himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and high rank. Within the first year—even the first month—of working toward these conveniences, he takes on more physical effort and mental distress than he could have suffered in a lifetime without them. He works to excel in a demanding profession. He labors tirelessly, day and night, to gain skills superior to those of all his rivals. Then he works just as hard to display those skills publicly and seeks every chance of employment. He courts everyone to do this. He serves people he hates and flatters people he despises. All his life he pursues an image of elegant, carefully arranged rest that he may never reach. For its sake, he gives up real peace, which was always available to him. Even if he gets what he wants in extreme old age, he will find it no better than the modest security and contentment he left behind. Only near the end of his life, his body worn down by labor and disease and his mind sore from remembering a thousand injuries and disappointments that he blames on enemies' injustice or friends' betrayal and ingratitude, does he finally see what wealth and rank are. They are trinkets with trivial uses, no better suited to providing physical ease or peace of mind than the little cases of grooming tools carried by a collector of gadgets. Like those cases, they cause more trouble to carry than the benefits inside are worth. The only real difference is that the conveniences of wealth and rank are more noticeable. Anyone can see the usefulness of the palaces, gardens, carriages, and servants of powerful people. Their owners need not explain it. We easily imagine it for ourselves. By sympathy we enjoy and approve of the pleasure these things seem designed to give them. A fancy toothpick, ear cleaner, nail clipper, or similar gadget has a less obvious purpose. It may be just as convenient, but that convenience does not catch our eye. We do not as readily share the owner's pleasure in having it. Such gadgets therefore give their owners less reason for vanity than the splendor of wealth and rank. That is the sole advantage wealth and rank have over them: they satisfy our natural wish to stand out more effectively. For someone living alone on a deserted island, it might be hard to decide whether a palace or a case of little conveniences would bring him more enjoyment. In society, though, there is no contest. Here, as elsewhere, we pay more attention to what onlookers think than to what the person concerned feels. We consider how his life appears to others rather than how it feels to him. Why, then, does an observer so admire the rich and powerful? Not chiefly because they are thought to have more ease or pleasure, but because they have so many clever and elegant devices for providing them. The observer does not even think they are actually happier than others. He thinks they have more ways of becoming happy. What chiefly wins his admiration is the clever design that makes all these means seem suited to their purpose. But in the exhaustion of old age or illness, the pleasures of empty social distinction fade. They can no longer justify the hard pursuit of status that once occupied him. Inwardly he curses his ambition and regrets, to no purpose, the ease and freedom of his youth. He foolishly gave up pleasures that are gone forever in exchange for something that brings him no real satisfaction even when he has it. That is how a life of high rank looks to anyone whom illness or low spirits force to examine his own circumstances closely and ask what his happiness really needs. Power and riches then show themselves for what they are: huge, complicated machines made to provide a few minor physical conveniences. Their springs are so fine and delicate that keeping them working demands constant anxious care. Despite that care, they could break apart at any moment and crush their unfortunate owner in the wreckage. They are enormous buildings that take a lifetime to construct and always threaten to collapse on the person inside. Even while standing, they may shelter him from small discomforts but not from the harshest weather. They stop a summer shower, not a winter storm. They leave him just as exposed as before, and sometimes more exposed, to anxiety, fear, sorrow, disease, danger, and death.

### Part IV, Chapter I, 2

When we are sick or low in spirits, it is common to look at the things people most desire in this bleak way and see no value in them. Yet when our health and mood improve, we always see them in a more attractive light. In pain and sorrow, our imagination seems shut up inside us. In comfort and success, it spreads out to everything around us. We then admire the beautiful conveniences of great houses and the way wealthy households are run. We marvel at how everything is arranged to make life easy for their owners, meet their needs, satisfy their wishes, and entertain even their most trivial desires. Consider just the real pleasure these things provide, apart from the beauty of the arrangements made to provide it, and it looks utterly insignificant. But we rarely look at it in this detached, philosophical way. In our minds, we naturally blend the pleasure with the orderly, smooth-working system—the machine or household organization—that produces it. Seen together, the pleasures of wealth and high rank seem splendid, beautiful, and noble. We think they are well worth all the work and anxiety we so readily spend on gaining them.

It is a good thing that nature misleads us in this way. This illusion starts and sustains human industry. It first moved people to cultivate land, build houses, establish cities and states, and invent and improve all the sciences and arts that make human life richer and more beautiful. These efforts have changed the entire face of the earth. They have turned wild forests into pleasant, fertile plains, and made the barren ocean, once without paths, a new source of food and a major highway connecting the world's nations. Human labor has forced the earth to produce much more food and support many more people. A proud, unfeeling landowner may look over his vast fields and imagine eating their entire harvest himself, without a thought for what others need. But the homely saying that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs applies especially well to him. However large his desires, his stomach holds no more than that of the poorest peasant. He must distribute the rest to the people who carefully prepare the little he eats, who furnish the palace where he eats it, and who supply and maintain all the different ornaments and gadgets used in his grand household. His luxury and whims thus provide them with necessities that they could never expect from his kindness or justice. At any time, the land's produce supports approximately as many people as it is capable of supporting. The rich merely pick the most desirable items from the pile. They consume little more than the poor. Although they are naturally selfish and greedy, care only about their own comfort, and employ thousands of people solely to satisfy their empty, insatiable wishes, they share with the poor everything produced by improvements to the land. An invisible hand leads them to distribute life's necessities almost as they would be distributed if the earth had been divided equally among all its inhabitants. Without intending or realizing it, they promote society's interests and help the human population grow. When Providence divided the earth among a few powerful owners, it did not forget or abandon the people who seemed to get no land. They too enjoy a share of everything it produces. In what makes life truly happy, they are no worse off than those who appear to stand so far above them. Physical comfort and peace of mind are nearly equal across every rank of life. A beggar basking in the sun by the roadside possesses the security that kings fight to gain.

The same love of systems, of orderly and clever design, often makes institutions that help the public look attractive to us. A patriot working to improve some part of public administration is not always motivated by a direct concern for the happiness of those who will benefit. A civic-minded person does not usually support road repairs out of fellow feeling for the drivers and haulers who use the roads. When lawmakers offer prizes and other incentives to improve linen or wool production, they are seldom moved by direct concern for people who wear cheap or fine cloth, and still less by concern for the producers and sellers. Well-run public services and expanding trade and industry are impressive, ambitious goals. We enjoy thinking about them and take an interest in anything that helps them grow. They are parts of the great system of government. With these improvements, the wheels of the political machine seem to turn more smoothly together. We like seeing such a large, beautiful system work well, and we are uncomfortable until we remove anything that might disrupt or slow its orderly movement. Yet every form of government is valuable only insofar as it makes the people living under it happy. That is its only purpose. But love of a well-designed system sometimes makes us value the means more than the goal. We may want to improve the lives of others more because we want to perfect a beautiful, orderly system than because we directly feel what they suffer or enjoy. Some exceptionally civic-minded people have shown little sensitivity to human feelings in other ways. Conversely, some very humane people have shown no public spirit at all. Everyone can find examples of both among the people they know. Who had less humanity, or more public spirit, than the famous lawmaker of Muscovy? By contrast, the sociable and good-natured James the First of Great Britain seems to have cared very little about either his country's glory or its interests. Suppose you want to stir an unambitious man into working harder. It may do no good to describe how happy the rich and powerful are. You might say that they are usually protected from sun and rain, seldom hungry or cold, and rarely exhausted or in need of anything. Even an eloquent appeal along these lines will have little effect. To have any hope of success, you must describe how conveniently the rooms in their palaces are arranged. Explain how well suited their carriages are to their purpose. Point out the number of their attendants, their orderly arrangement, and the different tasks they perform. If anything can impress the man, that will. Yet all these arrangements only protect their owners from sun, rain, hunger, cold, need, and exhaustion. In the same way, suppose you want to give a person who cares little for his country a concern for the public good. It may be useless to tell him that people in a well-governed country enjoy better housing, clothing, and food. Such facts generally make little impression. You are more likely to persuade him by describing the great system of public administration that provides these benefits. Explain how its parts are connected and depend on each other, how each serves the others, and how all work toward society's happiness. Show how his country might adopt such a system, what currently prevents it, and how to remove those obstacles. Describe how the various wheels of government could then turn together more smoothly, without grinding against or slowing each other down. A person can hardly listen to an account like this without feeling at least somewhat inspired to work for the public good. For the moment, at least, he will want to remove the obstacles and set such a beautiful, orderly machine in motion. Nothing encourages public spirit more than studying politics: different systems of government and their strengths and weaknesses, our own country's constitution, its position and interests in relation to other nations, its trade and defense, its disadvantages and dangers, and how to remove the disadvantages and guard against the dangers. That is why sound, reasonable, workable discussions of politics are the most useful works of theoretical inquiry. Even the weakest and worst have some use. They can at least stir people's concern for public affairs and prompt them to seek ways of making society happier.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 1

How the appearance of usefulness makes people's characters and actions seem beautiful, and how far seeing this beauty is one of the original reasons we approve of them.

People's characters, like works of art and institutions of government, can either help or harm the happiness of individuals and society. A prudent, fair, energetic, determined, and sober person promises well-being and satisfaction both for themselves and for everyone connected with them. A rash, arrogant, lazy, weak, and pleasure-seeking person, by contrast, promises ruin for themselves and trouble for everyone who deals with them. The first kind of character is at least as beautiful as the best machine ever designed for a pleasant purpose. The second is as ugly as the most awkward, clumsy device. What system of government could help humanity more than widespread wisdom and virtue? Government is only an imperfect remedy for the lack of these qualities. So any beauty that government gains from its usefulness must belong to wisdom and virtue to a much greater degree. Conversely, what political arrangement could be as destructive as people's vices? Bad government has disastrous effects only because it fails to protect us sufficiently against the harm human wickedness causes.

The beauty or ugliness that characters seem to gain from being useful or harmful is especially striking to people who think about human conduct in general, philosophical terms. When a philosopher asks why we approve of humanity or condemn cruelty, they do not always picture a specific humane or cruel act clearly. They are often satisfied with the vague idea suggested by the general names of these qualities. Yet the propriety or impropriety, the merit or demerit, of actions is clearly visible only in particular cases. Only with concrete examples can we clearly see whether our feelings agree with the agent's feelings. Only then do we feel grateful toward the agent in one case or share another person's resentment toward the agent in the other. When we consider virtue and vice in the abstract, the qualities that produce these feelings largely fade from view. The feelings themselves become less clear. Instead, virtue's happy results and vice's disastrous consequences stand out from their other qualities.

The same perceptive and engaging writer who first explained why usefulness pleases us was so impressed by this idea that he traced all our approval of virtue to the beauty we see in apparent usefulness. He observes that we call mental qualities virtues only when they are useful or agreeable to the person who has them or to others. We call qualities vices only when they tend to do the opposite. Indeed, nature seems to have fitted our approval and disapproval to the interests of individuals and society so well that, I believe, careful examination will find this true in every case. But seeing whether a quality is useful or harmful is neither the first nor the main source of our approval and disapproval. Certainly, seeing the beauty or ugliness that follows from its usefulness or harmfulness strengthens and sharpens these feelings. Even so, these feelings begin as something essentially different from that perception.

First, surely approving of virtue cannot be the same sort of feeling as approving of a convenient, well-designed building. Surely we do not praise a person for exactly the same reason we praise a chest of drawers.

Second, examination shows that the usefulness of a disposition is rarely our first reason for approving of it. Approval always involves a sense of propriety distinct from seeing its usefulness. We can see this in every quality approved as a virtue: those that this theory says we value for being useful to ourselves and those valued for being useful to others.

The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first, excellent reasoning and understanding. They let us recognize the long-term consequences of our actions and foresee their likely benefits or harms. Second comes self-command. It lets us give up pleasure now or endure pain now to gain more pleasure or avoid more pain later. Together, these two qualities make up prudence, the virtue most useful to the individual.

As noted earlier, we initially approve of excellent reasoning and understanding because they are correct, sound, and accurate, not just useful or advantageous. The most remarkable and admired uses of human reason have appeared in the more difficult sciences, especially advanced mathematics. But it is not obvious how these sciences benefit individuals or the public. Proving their usefulness requires an argument that is not always easy to understand. So their usefulness was not what first won them public admiration. People hardly stressed that quality until they needed to answer critics who had no taste for such great discoveries and tried to dismiss them as useless.

Likewise, we approve of the self-command with which we hold back our present desires so that we can satisfy them more fully later. We approve of it for its propriety as well as its usefulness. When we act this way, the feelings guiding us seem to agree exactly with the spectator's. A spectator does not feel our present desires pressing on us. To the spectator, a pleasure we will enjoy in a week or a year is just as interesting as one we will enjoy right now. If we sacrifice the future for the present, then, our conduct looks extremely foolish and excessive to the spectator. They cannot share the feelings behind it. But suppose we give up present pleasure to secure greater pleasure later. We act as though the distant goal matters as much to us as what immediately appeals to our senses. Our feelings then agree exactly with the spectator's, and they cannot help approving of our behavior. Experience has shown them how few people can exercise such self-command, so they also regard us with considerable wonder and admiration. This is why people naturally hold steady thrift, hard work, and diligence in such high esteem, even when their only purpose is to make a fortune. Someone determined to gain a great but distant benefit may give up every immediate pleasure and endure the hardest mental and physical work. That determination necessarily wins our approval. Their view of their own interests and happiness matches our natural view of them exactly. Their feelings agree perfectly with ours, although common human weakness made such agreement more than we could reasonably expect. We therefore not only approve of the conduct but admire it to some extent and consider it worthy of real praise. Only an awareness that they deserve this approval and esteem can keep someone acting this way. A pleasure ten years from now matters so little to us beside a pleasure available today that the desire for the first is naturally much weaker than the intense feeling stirred by the second. The first could never outweigh the second without support from a sense of propriety: the awareness that acting one way earns everyone's esteem and approval, while acting the other way makes us deserving objects of their contempt and ridicule.

### Part IV, Chapter II, 2

Humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit are the qualities that help other people most. I have explained earlier what makes humanity and justice proper. I showed how much our esteem and approval of them depend on agreement between the agent's feelings and the spectators' feelings.

Generosity and public spirit are proper for the same basic reason as justice. Generosity differs from humanity. Although the two seem closely related at first, they do not always occur in the same person. Humanity is a woman's virtue, generosity a man's. Women generally have much more tenderness than men, but seldom as much generosity. The civil law observes that women rarely make substantial gifts. In its own words: “Women rarely give gifts.” Humanity consists simply of the spectator's deep sympathy with the feelings of the people directly involved. It leads the spectator to grieve at their suffering, resent injuries done to them, and rejoice in their good fortune. The most humane acts demand no self-denial, no self-command, and no great effort to do what is proper. They simply follow what this deep sympathy naturally prompts us to do. Generosity is different. We are generous only when we put someone else ahead of ourselves in some respect. We sacrifice an important interest of our own for an equally important interest of a friend or a superior. Think of a man who gives up his claim to an office he deeply wants because he believes another candidate's service gives that person a stronger claim. Or think of someone who risks his life to protect a friend whose life he judges more important. Neither acts from humanity or because he feels the other person's concerns more keenly than his own. Instead, both judge the competing interests not as they naturally appear to themselves, but as they appear to other people. An onlooker may rightly care more about the other person's success or survival than about theirs. But they themselves cannot naturally feel that way. When they sacrifice their own interests for the other's, they bring their feelings into line with the spectator's. Through an act of great-mindedness, they follow the view they know would naturally occur to any third person. A soldier who dies protecting his officer might feel little sorrow if the officer died through no fault of his. Some minor setback to the soldier himself might grieve him far more. But when he tries to act so as to deserve praise and to make the impartial spectator understand his reasons, he realizes something. For everyone but himself, his own life matters little beside his officer's. By sacrificing it for his officer, he acts properly and in accord with the natural judgment of any impartial onlooker.

The same is true of greater acts of public spirit. A young officer may risk his life to add a small piece of territory to his sovereign's lands. He does not do so because this gain matters more to him than staying alive. To him, his life is worth infinitely more than winning an entire kingdom for his country. But when he compares these things, he views them not as they naturally appear to him but as they appear to the nation he serves. Victory matters enormously to the nation; one private person's life counts for very little. Putting himself in his fellow citizens' place, he feels he cannot shed too much of his blood if doing so advances so important a goal. His heroism consists in opposing the strongest natural impulse out of duty and a sense of propriety. Many an honest Englishman would feel the loss of a guinea in private life more sharply than his country's loss of Minorca. Yet if he could have defended that fortress, he would have died a thousand times rather than let it fall to the enemy through his fault. When the first Brutus sent his own sons to be executed for plotting against Rome's newly won freedom, he sacrificed what would have seemed to him the stronger feeling for the weaker one, had he consulted his own heart alone. Naturally he should have felt much more for his sons' deaths than for whatever Rome might have suffered if he had failed to set so powerful an example. But he saw them with a Roman citizen's eyes, not a father's. He identified so fully with a citizen's feelings that he disregarded his personal bond with his sons. To a Roman citizen, even Brutus's sons counted for little against Rome's smallest interest. In these cases and others like them, we admire the actions less for their usefulness than for their surprising, and therefore great, noble, and elevated propriety. When we notice their usefulness, it certainly adds a new beauty and strengthens our approval. But mainly reflective, speculative people notice this beauty. It is not what first makes most people naturally approve of such actions.

Notice that approval based on seeing the beauty of usefulness has no reference at all to anyone else's feelings. Suppose someone could grow to adulthood without contact with society. That person could still like or dislike their own actions because those actions tend to help or hurt them. They might find a beauty of this sort in prudence, moderation, and good conduct, and an ugliness in the opposite behavior. In the first case, they might regard their own character with the satisfaction we feel at a well-designed machine. In the second, they might feel the distaste we feel at an awkward, clumsy device. But these perceptions are matters of taste. They are as faint and delicate as the perceptions whose accuracy forms what we call good taste. A person alone in such miserable circumstances would probably pay them little attention. Even if they did occur, they would not affect that person as they would after they entered society. They would not feel inward shame at their character's ugliness or a private sense of triumph at its opposite beauty. They would not rejoice at the thought of deserving a reward in the first case or fear that they deserved punishment in the second. All such feelings require the idea of someone else who could judge the person who feels them. Only by sharing the imagined judgment of this judge of their conduct could they feel either the triumph of self-approval or the shame of self-condemnation.

### Part V, Chapter I, 1

Part V: How custom and fashion influence our feelings of moral approval and disapproval. This part has one section.

How custom and fashion affect our ideas of beauty and ugliness.

Other forces besides those already described strongly influence our moral feelings. They are the main reasons why people in different times and countries disagree so much about what deserves blame or praise. Those forces are custom and fashion, which also govern our judgments of every kind of beauty.

When we often see two things together, our imagination gets used to moving easily from one to the other. When we see the first, we expect the second to follow. Each brings the other to mind without effort, and our attention moves easily between them. Their combination might have no beauty apart from habit. Yet once custom joins them in our minds, separating them feels improper. One thing looks awkward without its usual companion. We miss what we expected, and that disappointment disturbs our habitual pattern of thought. A suit, for example, looks incomplete without even the smallest ornament normally worn with it. Even the absence of a button at the hip can make it look plain or awkward. If two things naturally belong together, custom strengthens that impression. A different arrangement then looks even more unpleasant than it otherwise would. People used to seeing things arranged with good taste are more disturbed by anything clumsy or awkward. But if two things are joined improperly, habit reduces or even removes our sense of the problem. People used to messy disorder lose their sense of neatness and elegance. Forms of furniture or dress that seem ridiculous to strangers do not offend those who are used to them.

Fashion differs from custom, or rather is a particular kind of custom. Fashion is not what everyone wears; it is what people of high rank or standing wear. Powerful people's graceful, relaxed, commanding manners, together with their usual rich and splendid clothes, make even the particular shape they give their clothes look graceful. As long as they keep wearing it, we associate that shape with refinement and splendor. Even if there is nothing special about it on its own, this association makes it seem refined and splendid too. As soon as they abandon it, it loses its apparent grace. Because only people of lower rank now wear it, it seems to take on their supposed plainness and awkwardness.

Everyone agrees that custom and fashion completely govern dress and furniture. But their power extends well beyond these things. It reaches anything we judge by taste, including music, poetry, and architecture. Styles of dress and furniture keep changing. What we admired five years ago seems ridiculous today. Experience thus shows us that those styles owed their popularity mostly or entirely to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture do not last very long. A stylish coat wears out in a twelve-month and cannot keep its design fashionable much longer. Furniture changes more slowly because it usually lasts longer. But it generally changes entirely in five or six years, and every person sees many furniture fashions in a lifetime. Works in the other arts last much longer. When well designed, they can keep their style fashionable for a much longer time. A good building can stand for many centuries. A beautiful tune can be passed on by tradition through many generations. A well-written poem may last as long as the world. For ages, each keeps its particular style, taste, or manner fashionable. Few people see the fashion in any of these arts change greatly during their lifetimes. Few have enough experience with styles from distant times and nations to feel fully at ease with them or judge them impartially against the styles of their own time and country. So few people are willing to admit that custom or fashion much affects their judgment of beauty in these arts. They think every rule they want artists to follow is based on reason and nature, not habit or prejudice. But a little thought can show them otherwise. Custom and fashion have as much power over architecture, poetry, and music as they have over clothes and furniture.

For example, why should a Doric capital belong on a column eight diameters high, an Ionic spiral on one of nine, and Corinthian leaves on one of ten? Nothing but custom and habit makes these pairings seem right. Our eyes are used to seeing each proportion with a particular ornament, so a different pairing would offend us. Each of the five architectural orders has its own ornaments. Anyone who knows the rules of architecture would object if they were swapped for others. Some architects even say the ancients chose each order's ornaments with such excellent judgment that no others could fit as well. But it is hard to believe that these forms, however pleasing they are, are the only ones that fit these proportions. Before custom established the rules, five hundred other forms might have fitted equally well. Still, once custom has established building rules, so long as they are not completely unreasonable, it is foolish to replace them with rules that are merely as good. It may even be foolish to replace them with rules that have a slight natural advantage in elegance and beauty. A person who went out wearing clothes completely unlike what anyone else wears would look ridiculous, however graceful or practical the new outfit might be. It seems just as absurd to decorate a house in a way completely unlike what custom and fashion prescribe, even if the new decorations are somewhat better on their own.

Ancient teachers of rhetoric thought that each kind of writing naturally called for its own meter or verse form. They believed that form naturally expressed the character, feeling, or passion that should dominate the work. One meter suited serious works and another lighthearted ones, they said. Swapping them would be highly improper. Yet modern experience seems to contradict this otherwise plausible idea. A verse form used for comic parody in English is used for heroic poetry in French. The tragedies of Racine and Voltaire's Henriad use the same meter as this line: “Thus said to my lady the knight full of care.” Conversely, the French comic verse form is much like the ten-syllable meter of English heroic verse. Custom makes one nation associate seriousness, grandeur, and dignity with the meter that the other associates with lightheartedness, flippancy, and comedy. Nothing would seem more absurd than an English tragedy in French-style Alexandrine verse, or a French tragedy in English-style ten-syllable verse.

### Part V, Chapter I, 2

An outstanding artist can make a major change in the established practices of any of these arts. Such a person can create a new fashion in writing, music, or architecture. The unusual, even fanciful clothes of a pleasant person of high rank soon win admiration and imitators. In much the same way, an outstanding master's strengths make the master's peculiar habits appealing, and that personal manner becomes fashionable in the art. In these fifty years, Italian taste in music and architecture has changed considerably through imitation of some outstanding masters' individual styles. Quintilian accused Seneca of spoiling Roman taste, replacing majestic reasoning and vigorous eloquence with trivial prettiness. Others have made a similar accusation against Sallust and Tacitus, though for a different kind of writing. They supposedly made a style fashionable that was very concise, elegant, expressive, and even poetic. Yet, the critics said, it lacked ease, simplicity, and naturalness, and clearly arose from deliberate and highly worked affectation. How many great strengths must a writer have to make even their faults attractive? After being praised for improving a nation's taste, perhaps the highest compliment an author can receive is to be told they spoiled it. In our language, Mr. Pope and Dr. Swift each introduced a new style to rhymed works: Pope in long verse and Swift in short. Butler's quaintness has given way to Swift's plainness. People no longer imitate Dryden's wandering freedom or Addison's careful but often slow and prosaic dullness. Instead, all long verse now follows Mr. Pope's forceful precision.

Custom and fashion rule more than works of art. They also shape our judgments of the beauty of natural things. How many different and even opposite forms are considered beautiful in different kinds of things! Proportions admired in one animal are entirely different from those valued in another. Each kind has its own distinctive shape, approved of for a beauty different from that of any other kind. This led a learned Jesuit, Father Buffier, to conclude that every object's beauty lies in the form and color most usual for things of its kind. In a human face, for instance, he places each feature's beauty at a midpoint among the many other forms we find ugly. A beautiful nose is neither very long nor very short, neither very straight nor very crooked. It falls somewhere between these extremes and differs less from any one of them than they differ from one another. Nature seems to aim at this form in every individual, though she departs from it in many ways and very rarely achieves it exactly. Still, all her variations strongly resemble it. Suppose many people draw from the same model. Each drawing may get something wrong, but all the drawings will resemble the model more closely than they resemble one another. The model's general character will appear in all of them. The strangest drawings will depart the farthest from it. Though few will copy it exactly, the most accurate drawings will resemble the careless ones more than the careless ones resemble one another. Likewise, in every species, the most beautiful individual most strongly displays its general form and resembles most of the other members of its kind. Individuals with extreme deformities, by contrast, look the most unusual and least like the rest of their kind. Beauty within a species is therefore the rarest thing in one sense, since few individuals exactly match the middle form. In another sense, it is the most common, since all the variations resemble it more than they resemble one another. So, according to Buffier, the most usual form is the most beautiful within any kind of thing. That is why we need practice and experience looking at a kind of object before judging its beauty or knowing its usual middle form. Even the finest judgment of human beauty will not teach us to judge the beauty of flowers, horses, or any other kind. Similarly, different climates, customs, and ways of life produce different typical forms within a species, and people therefore develop different ideas of its beauty. A beautiful Moorish horse does not look exactly like a beautiful English horse. How differently people in different countries judge beautiful human shapes and faces! Along the coast of Guinea, a fair complexion is regarded as shockingly ugly; thick lips and a flat nose are seen as beautiful. In some nations, everyone admires long ears hanging to the shoulders. In China, a lady whose feet are large enough to walk on is regarded as monstrously ugly. Some of the Indigenous nations of North America tie four boards around children's heads and, while the bones are still soft and flexible, squeeze their heads into an almost perfectly square shape. Europeans are amazed by what they consider the absurd cruelty of this practice. Some missionaries have even blamed it for what they called the extraordinary stupidity of nations that follow it. But those Europeans fail to reflect that, until these very few years, European women had spent nearly a century trying to squeeze the natural beauty of their round bodies into a similarly square shape. Even though this practice was known to cause many distortions and diseases, custom had made it seem attractive among some of the most civilized nations the world has ever seen.

That is this learned and inventive Father's account of beauty. In his view, its entire appeal seems to come from matching the habits that custom has formed in our imagination for each kind of thing. But I cannot believe that even our sense of outward beauty depends entirely on custom. A shape's usefulness and fitness for its purpose clearly make it appealing independently of habit. Some colors please the eye more than others even when someone sees them for the first time. A smooth surface is more pleasing than a rough one. Variety is more enjoyable than tiresome, unbroken sameness. Variety whose parts connect makes an even better impression. In it, each new thing seems to follow from what came before, and neighboring parts seem naturally related. It is more pleasing than a disorderly collection of unrelated things. So I cannot accept custom as the only source of beauty. Still, I can accept this much of Buffier's clever theory: almost no outward form is so beautiful that it can please us if it is completely unlike the forms we are used to seeing in its kind. And almost no form is so ugly that it cannot please us if custom consistently supports it and we become used to seeing it in every individual of that kind.

### Part V, Chapter II, 1

How custom and fashion affect moral feelings.

Since custom and fashion affect our feelings about every kind of beauty so much, they must also affect what we find beautiful in human conduct. Still, their influence on conduct seems much smaller than elsewhere. There may be no shape of a physical object so absurd or fanciful that custom cannot make us accept it or fashion cannot make us even like it. But neither custom nor fashion could ever make us like the characters and conduct of Nero or Claudius. One will always provoke fear and hatred, and the other scorn and ridicule. Our sense of beauty rests on workings of the imagination that are subtle and easily changed by habit and education. But moral approval and disapproval rest on the strongest, most forceful human passions. Habit can bend those feelings somewhat, but it cannot completely reverse them.

Although custom and fashion have less power over moral feelings, they work in just the same way as they do elsewhere. When they support our natural sense of right and wrong, they sharpen our feelings and strengthen our horror of anything approaching evil. People raised in genuinely good company, rather than what merely passes for it, see justice, modesty, humanity, and orderly conduct in the people they admire and live among. They are more shocked by anything that seems to break the rules of these virtues. By contrast, people unfortunate enough to grow up amid violence, reckless behavior, lies, and injustice do not lose all sense that such behavior is improper. But they do lose their sense of how dreadful it is and of the punishment and retribution it deserves. They have known it since childhood, and custom has made it familiar. They are very likely to regard it as the way of the world: something we can or must do to avoid being fooled by our own honesty.

Fashion can also make a degree of misconduct seem respectable and make worthy qualities unpopular. During the reign of Charles II., a certain looseness of behavior was seen as a mark of a well-educated person. People at the time associated it with generosity, honesty, greatness of spirit, and loyalty. They took it as proof that a person was a gentleman, not a puritan. Strict manners and disciplined behavior, by contrast, were completely unfashionable. People associated them with self-righteous talk, trickery, hypocrisy, and vulgarity. Superficial people always find the vices of the powerful attractive. They associate these vices not just with wealth's splendor but with virtues they attribute to the powerful: a free and independent spirit, openness, generosity, humanity, and politeness. They find the virtues of lower-ranking people unattractive: their careful thrift, exhausting work, and strict obedience to rules. They associate those qualities with low social standing and with the great vices they imagine often go with it: servility, cowardice, unkindness, lying, and petty theft.

People in different trades and positions deal with very different things. These experiences accustom them to different feelings and naturally give them different characters and manners. We expect each rank and profession to show some degree of the manners experience has taught us to associate with it. With every kind of thing, we particularly like the middle form: the shape whose every part and feature best matches what seems to be nature's general standard for that kind. In the same way, we like people in each rank, or each kind of person, to show neither too much nor too little of the character commonly associated with their situation. A person should look the part of their trade, we say. Yet the professional who makes a show of professional habits is disagreeable. Different stages of life have their own expected manners for the same reason. In old age, we expect the seriousness and calm made natural and respectable by its frailty, long experience, and diminished sensitivity. In youth, we expect responsiveness, cheerfulness, and lively energy, because interesting things make strong impressions on young, inexperienced senses. Both ages, however, can display these traits too strongly. Youthful flirtatious frivolity and the unshakable insensitivity of old age are equally unpleasant. As people commonly say, young people are most agreeable when they have something of older people's manners, and older people when they keep some of the young people's cheerfulness. But either group can take on too much of the other's manners. Extreme coldness and dull formality may be forgiven in the old, but make young people ridiculous. Frivolity, carelessness, and vanity may be tolerated in the young, but make old people contemptible.

The manners that custom associates with each rank and profession may sometimes be proper in their own right. We might approve of them even without custom if we considered every circumstance that naturally affects people in each situation. Whether someone's behavior is proper depends on whether it fits all the circumstances they face, not just one. When we imagine ourselves in that person's position, we can feel the demands that all those circumstances should place on their attention. If they seem so caught up in one concern that they ignore the rest, we disapprove. We cannot fully share a response that fails to fit their whole situation. Yet the feeling they show for their main concern might be one we would entirely share and approve of in a person who had no other claims on their attention. In private life, a parent who loses an only son might express a depth of grief and tenderness without blame. The same display would be unforgivable in a general commanding an army, when glory and public safety demand so much of his attention. Different professions normally require attention to different things, so different feelings should naturally become habitual to their members. When we imagine ourselves in their situations, we can see that each event should affect them more or less depending on how the feeling it arouses fits their settled habits and temperament. We do not expect a clergyman to respond to cheerful pleasures and entertainment with the sensitivity we expect from an officer. The clergyman's special task is to remind people of the grave future that awaits them, announce the possibly disastrous results of every failure to do one's duty, and set an example of exact obedience to duty. His message cannot properly be delivered carelessly or lightly. We assume that his thoughts are always occupied with matters too great and solemn to leave room for the trivial things that occupy pleasure-loving people. It is easy to see, then, why the manners custom assigns to this profession are proper even without custom. Nothing suits a clergyman better than the serious, austere, and detached manner we have come to expect. These thoughts are so obvious that hardly anyone has failed at some time to use them to explain why they approve of this profession's customary character.

The basis of the usual character of some other professions is less clear. We approve of it simply out of habit, without support or reinforcement from such reasoning. For instance, habit makes us associate soldiers with cheerfulness, a carefree and lively spirit, and a measure of pleasure-seeking. Yet if we asked what disposition would best suit people whose lives are constantly at unusual risk, we might choose the most serious and thoughtful one. They have more reason than others to think continually about death and what follows it. But that very danger may well explain why the opposite disposition is so common among them. Facing death steadily and directly requires an enormous effort to master our fear. People constantly exposed to it find it easier to avoid thinking about it altogether. They surround themselves with carefree confidence and indifference, plunging into all kinds of amusement and distraction. A military camp is no place for a thoughtful or melancholy person. Such people are often very determined and can make a great effort to face even certain death with unbending resolve. But constant exposure to less immediate danger demands a prolonged effort of that sort. It exhausts and depresses them, leaving them unable to feel happiness or enjoyment. Cheerful, carefree people need make no such effort. They simply decide not to look ahead and lose all anxiety about their situation in continual pleasures and entertainment. They bear those circumstances more easily. If an officer has no reason, because of special circumstances, to expect unusual danger, he is likely to lose his cheerful, carefree habits. The captain of a city guard is usually as sober, careful, and tight with money as the other citizens. For the same reason, a long period of peace tends to reduce the difference between civilian and military character. But the ordinary situation of soldiers makes cheerfulness and a measure of pleasure-seeking so common among them that custom firmly links those traits with their profession in our minds. We tend to look down on anyone whose individual temperament or circumstances prevent him from developing them. We laugh at the serious, careful faces of a city guard, so unlike what we expect of soldiers. The guards themselves often seem ashamed of their orderly manners. To fit the fashion of their profession, they like to put on a carefree attitude that does not come naturally to them. Whatever conduct we are used to seeing in a respected group becomes so closely associated with it in our minds that seeing one makes us expect the other. When our expectation fails, we feel something is missing. We are confused and at a loss about how to deal with someone who clearly wants to be treated as a different sort of person from the one we expected.

In the same way, conditions in different times and countries tend to shape the character of most people living in them. Their judgments about exactly how much of each quality deserves blame or praise change with the amount usual in their own country and time. The degree of politeness prized at the court of France might be regarded in Russia as weak, fawning flattery. What Russia calls polite might seem rude and uncivilized in France. The level of order and thrift considered excessive stinginess in a Polish nobleman would seem extravagance in a citizen of Amsterdam. People in every time and country treat the degree of a quality usually found in those they respect as the ideal middle point of that talent or virtue. Their different circumstances make different qualities more or less habitual, so their views of exactly what character and conduct are proper vary too.

In civilized nations, people cultivate virtues based on humanity more than those based on self-denial and mastery of the passions. Among nations called rude and barbarous, it is the other way around. They cultivate self-denial more than humanity. The general safety and happiness of polite, civilized times offer few chances to practice facing danger without fear or enduring work, hunger, and pain patiently. Poverty is relatively easy to avoid, so looking down on it almost stops being a virtue. Giving up pleasures becomes less necessary, and people are freer to relax and follow their natural inclinations in all these matters.

### Part V, Chapter II, 2

Among peoples he calls savage and barbarous, things are quite different. Every such person goes through something like Spartan training. The demands of life accustom him to every kind of hardship. He is always in danger. He often faces extreme hunger and frequently dies simply for lack of food. His circumstances not only get him used to suffering. They also teach him not to show the feelings that suffering tends to produce. He can expect no sympathy or patience from his own people if he shows such weakness. Before we can feel deeply for others, we need some measure of comfort ourselves. When our own misery hurts us badly, we have no time to attend to a neighbor's. These people are too busy meeting their own needs to pay much attention to anyone else's. So, whatever distress one of them experiences, he expects no sympathy from those around him. For that reason, he refuses to expose himself by letting the slightest sign of weakness escape. However fierce his feelings may be, he never allows them to disturb his calm expression or controlled behavior. We are told that the Indigenous people of North America show complete indifference on every occasion. They would think it beneath them to appear overcome in any way by love, grief, or resentment. Their courage and self-command in this respect are almost beyond what Europeans can imagine. In a country where everyone has equal rank and wealth, we might expect the wishes of the two people involved to be all that matters in marriage. We might expect them to be free to follow those wishes. Yet this is the country where parents arrange every marriage without exception. A young man would think himself disgraced forever if he showed even the slightest preference for one woman over another. He must appear completely indifferent both to when he marries and to whom he marries. The weakness associated with love, so freely indulged in humane and courteous societies, is considered among these peoples the most unforgivable lack of manliness. Even after marriage, the two partners seem ashamed of a connection founded on such a basic physical need. They do not live together. They meet only in secret. Each continues living in their father's house. In other countries a man and woman may openly live together without blame. Here that is considered the most indecent and unmanly surrender to physical desire. And this strict self-command applies to more than this pleasant feeling. They often endure injuries, accusations, and the worst insults in full view of their people. They appear entirely unmoved and show not the slightest resentment. When a warrior is taken prisoner and, as usual, sentenced to death by his captors, he hears the sentence without showing any feeling. He then submits to the most terrible torture without ever complaining or showing any emotion except contempt for his enemies. While he hangs by his shoulders above a slow fire, he mocks his torturers. He tells them how much more skillfully he tortured their people when he captured them. After hours of being scorched, burned, and cut in the most sensitive parts of his body, he is often taken down from the stake for a short break, to prolong his suffering. He uses that time to talk about ordinary matters and ask for news from home. He seems to care about everything except his own condition. The onlookers seem just as unmoved. This horrifying sight appears to make no impression on them. They hardly look at the prisoner except when they help torture him. At other times they smoke tobacco and amuse themselves with ordinary things, as though nothing were happening. Every person among them is said to prepare from early youth for this dreadful end. For this purpose he composes what they call a death song. He will sing it if he falls into enemy hands and dies under their torture. The song insults his torturers and expresses complete contempt for death and pain. He sings it on any exceptional occasion: when he goes to war, when he meets his enemies in battle, or whenever he wants to show that he has grown familiar in his imagination with the worst possible disasters. No human event can frighten him out of his resolve or change his purpose. The same contempt for death and torture is found among all other peoples Smith calls savage. Every Black person from the African coast has, in this respect, a degree of courage that his mean-spirited master can often barely imagine. Fortune has never exercised crueler power over humanity than when she placed these nations of heroes under the control of men from Europe's jails. These wretches have the virtues neither of the countries they come from nor of those they go to. Their frivolity, brutality, and meanness rightly earn them the contempt of the people they have conquered.

Civilized societies do not require their members to show the heroic, unconquerable firmness that custom and upbringing demand of every person in the societies just described. If civilized people complain when they are in pain, grieve when they are distressed, let love overwhelm them, or get upset by anger, others readily forgive them. These weaknesses are not thought to affect the essential parts of their character. As long as they are not carried away into doing anything contrary to justice or humanity, they lose little standing. That remains true even if their faces lose some calm or their speech and behavior become somewhat unsettled. A humane and refined people are more sensitive to the feelings of others. They can more easily relate to lively, passionate behavior and forgive some small excess. The person directly affected knows this. Trusting his judges to be fair, he allows himself to express stronger feelings. He is less afraid that their force will expose him to contempt. We dare show more emotion before a friend than a stranger because we expect a friend to be more forgiving. Likewise, the standards of decorum in civilized nations allow livelier behavior than those of peoples called barbarous. The former talk to each other openly, as friends do; the latter hold back, as strangers do. The French and Italians are the two most refined peoples on the continent. When they speak about anything that interests them, their feeling and liveliness initially surprise visitors. People raised among a less emotionally responsive nation have never seen behavior like this at home and cannot share in it. A young French nobleman will weep before the whole court if refused command of a regiment. According to the abbot Dû Bos, an Italian shows more emotion at being fined twenty shillings than an Englishman does at being sentenced to death. At the height of Roman refinement, Cicero could weep bitterly before the entire senate and people without lowering himself in their eyes. He clearly must have done so at the end of almost every speech. Earlier Roman speakers probably could not have expressed such feeling without violating the manners of their less refined age. I suppose that for the Scipios, the Leliuses, and the elder Cato to display so much tenderness in public would have been considered unnatural and improper. Those ancient warriors could speak with order, seriousness, and good judgment. But they are said to have lacked the lofty, passionate eloquence brought to Rome not many years before Cicero's birth by the two Gracchi, Crassus, and Sulpitius. That lively style of speaking has long been practiced, successfully or not, in France and Italy. It is only just beginning to appear in England. This is how far civilized and barbarous nations differ in the self-command they require, and how different their standards are for judging proper behavior.

This difference gives rise to many others that matter just as much. Refined people are used to giving some room to their natural feelings, so they become direct, open, and sincere. Those whom Smith calls barbarians must suppress and hide every visible sign of feeling, so they necessarily develop habits of dishonesty and concealment. Everyone familiar with peoples called savage in Asia, Africa, or America observes that they are equally hard to read. If they want to hide the truth, no questioning can get it out of them. Even the cleverest questions cannot trick them. Not even torture can make them confess what they do not want to tell. Moreover, the feelings of a person raised this way may be hidden without any outward sign, yet still reach the highest pitch of fury. He rarely shows anger, but when he finally takes revenge, it is always bloody and terrible. Even the smallest insult drives him to despair. His face and speech stay restrained and calm, showing only complete peace of mind. But his actions are often extremely fierce and violent. Among North Americans, it is not uncommon, Smith says, for very young people of the sex he considers more timid to drown themselves after a slight scolding from their mothers. They show no feeling and say nothing except, “You shall no longer have a daughter.” In civilized nations, people's feelings are not usually so fierce or desperate. They often express them loudly, but rarely do much harm. Often their only apparent aim is to convince observers that they are right to be so upset and to win their sympathy and approval.

Still, all these effects of custom and fashion on people's moral sentiments are small compared with their effects in other cases. Custom and fashion do not distort judgment most deeply about a person's general character and conduct. They do so when people judge whether particular practices are proper.

The different kinds of behavior that custom teaches us to approve in different professions and walks of life do not involve the most important matters. We expect truth and justice from old and young alike, and from clergy and officers alike. We look for the distinctive traits of their roles only in less important matters. Even there, some overlooked fact would often show us that a role's expected character is fitting for reasons other than custom. So we cannot complain that natural moral feeling is greatly distorted in this case. Different nations do demand different degrees of the same quality in someone they esteem. But at worst, the duties of one virtue sometimes stretch a little into the territory of another. The warm rural hospitality customary among the Poles may interfere a little with thrift and good order. The frugality admired in Holland may interfere with generosity and sociability. The toughness demanded of peoples called savage reduces their humanity. Perhaps the delicate sensitivity expected in civilized nations sometimes destroys firm courage. In general, the prevailing manners of a nation can usually be said to fit its circumstances best, taken as a whole. Toughness best suits the circumstances of a person facing a harsh way of life; sensitivity suits a person living in a highly civilized society. Even here, then, we cannot say that people's moral sentiments are grossly distorted.

Custom does not allow the greatest departure from naturally proper conduct in its rules for behavior in general. Its influence on particular practices is often much more damaging to morals. It can establish particular actions as lawful and blameless even though they shock our clearest sense of right and wrong.

For example, what could be more cruel than hurting an infant? Its helplessness, innocence, and endearing nature move even an enemy to compassion. Refusing to spare someone so young is seen as an act of extreme violence by an enraged and cruel conqueror. What, then, should we think of a parent who could hurt a defenseless child whom even a furious enemy is reluctant to harm? Yet exposing newborn infants to die was permitted in almost every Greek state, even among the refined and civilized Athenians. When a parent's circumstances made it inconvenient to raise a child, abandoning it to hunger or wild animals drew no blame or condemnation. This practice probably began in a time of extreme brutality. People first became familiar with it in the earliest period of society. Its unbroken continuation then kept them from seeing how terrible it was. We find the practice today among all peoples called savage. In the harshest and least developed social conditions, it is certainly more forgivable than anywhere else. A person in such a society may be so desperately poor that he himself often faces extreme hunger or dies for lack of food. He may be unable to support both himself and his child. We cannot be surprised, then, if he abandons the child. A person fleeing an enemy he could not resist would surely be excused for putting down his infant if carrying the child slowed his escape. Trying to save it would offer him nothing but the prospect of dying with it. It should not greatly surprise us, then, that in such a society parents are allowed to judge whether they can raise their children. In later Greek times, however, the same act was permitted for reasons of future advantage or convenience that could not possibly excuse it. By then, long-standing custom had so thoroughly accepted the practice that ordinary, lax moral standards tolerated this cruel parental power. Even philosophers' teachings, which should have been fairer and more exact, followed established custom. Here, as in many other cases, philosophers did not condemn the horrible abuse. Instead, they supported it with far-fetched arguments about its usefulness to the public. Aristotle discusses it as something officials ought to encourage on many occasions. The humane Plato shares that opinion. Despite the love of humanity apparent throughout his writings, he never disapproves of the practice. If custom can sanction such a terrible violation of humanity, we can imagine scarcely any particular practice so awful that custom could not sanction it. Every day we hear people say, “That is commonly done.” They seem to think this is enough to excuse conduct that is, in itself, utterly unjust and unreasonable.

There is an obvious reason why custom never distorts our views of someone's general way of acting and behaving as much as it distorts our judgments about whether particular practices are proper or lawful. There could never be a custom of that general kind. A society could not survive for a moment if people's usual conduct matched the horrible practice I have just described.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 1

Part VI: Systems of Moral Philosophy. In Four Sections.

Section I: Questions a Theory of Moral Sentiments Must Examine. Consider the best-known and most notable theories about the nature and origin of our moral sentiments. We will find that nearly all of them agree with some part of the account I have been giving. If we think fully about everything already said, we can explain which aspect of nature led each writer to develop his own system. Perhaps every moral system that has gained any standing in the world ultimately comes from one or another of the principles I have tried to explain. They are all based on natural principles in this respect, and so each is partly right. But many arise from a limited, incomplete view of nature, and so each of these is partly wrong as well. There are two questions to consider when discussing the principles of morality. First, what is virtue? What state of mind and pattern of behavior make a person excellent and worthy of praise, and naturally deserving of esteem, honor, and approval? Second, what mental power or faculty leads us to approve of that character, whatever it may be? In other words, how and why does the mind prefer one pattern of behavior to another? Why does it call one right and the other wrong, and treat one as worthy of approval, honor, and reward and the other as worthy of blame, criticism, and punishment? We address the first question when we ask whether virtue consists in benevolence, as Dr. Hutcheson thinks; in acting in ways suited to our different relationships, as Dr. Clarke holds; or in wisely and carefully pursuing our own genuine and lasting happiness, as others believe. We address the second when we ask what makes a virtuous character attractive to us, whatever virtue consists in. Is it self-love, which shows us that such a character in ourselves or others best serves our own private interests? Is it reason, which shows the difference between characters as it shows the difference between truth and falsehood? Is it a special faculty of perception called a moral sense, pleased by virtue and repelled by its opposite? Or is it another principle of human nature, such as a form of sympathy? I will begin with the systems developed to answer the first question and then examine those concerning the second.

Section II: Different Accounts of the Nature of Virtue. Introduction. Accounts of the nature of virtue, or of the state of mind that makes a person excellent and worthy of praise, fall into three classes. Some writers say a virtuous state of mind does not consist in any single kind of feeling. It consists instead in properly governing and directing all our feelings. Any feeling can be virtuous or vicious, depending on what it seeks and how strongly it seeks it. For these writers, virtue consists in propriety. Others say virtue consists in carefully pursuing our own private interest and happiness, or in properly directing the self-interested feelings that seek only those ends. For them, virtue consists in prudence. A third group locates virtue only in feelings aimed at the happiness of others, not in those aimed at our own. For them, only benevolence free from self-interest can make an action virtuous. Clearly, virtue must apply either to all our feelings when properly governed and directed or only to one category of them. Our feelings divide mainly into self-interested and benevolent ones. If virtue does not apply equally to all properly directed feelings, it must belong either to those directly aimed at our own private happiness or to those directly aimed at others' happiness. So if virtue does not consist in propriety, it must consist in either prudence or benevolence. It is hard to imagine another account of virtue besides these three. I will show later that all accounts that seem different from them really agree with one of them.

Systems That Make Virtue Consist in Propriety.

For Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, virtue consists in proper conduct. It means that the feeling behind an action fits the thing that arouses it.

I. In Plato's system[8], the soul is like a small state or republic made up of three different faculties or groups.

See Plato, Republic, book iv.

First comes the faculty that judges. It decides both which means suit an end and which ends are worth pursuing. It also decides how much value to give each end relative to the others. Plato called this faculty reason, as we rightly do, and held that it should govern the whole person. Clearly, he included under this name not only our ability to judge truth and falsehood but also our ability to judge whether desires and feelings are proper.

Plato divided the various passions and appetites that reason should rule, but that so often rebel against it, into two groups. The first includes feelings rooted in pride and resentment, or what medieval scholars called the spirited part of the soul. They include ambition, hostility, love of honor, fear of shame, and desires for victory, superiority, and revenge. In short, they are all the feelings thought to arise from, or to indicate, what we figuratively call spirit or natural fire. The second group includes feelings rooted in love of pleasure, or what medieval scholars called the desiring part of the soul. These include all bodily appetites and love of comfort, safety, and every physical pleasure.

We rarely depart from a plan of conduct set by our governing faculty, which we decided in calmer moments was best for us, unless one of those two groups of feelings pushes us. We may be driven by uncontrollable ambition and resentment or by insistent demands for immediate comfort and pleasure. Although both groups can mislead us, they remain necessary parts of human nature. The first was given to us to defend against injury, assert our standing and dignity, pursue noble and honorable things, and recognize people who act likewise. The second provides for the body's needs and survival.

According to Plato, the essential virtue of prudence lay in a strong, sharp, and fully developed governing faculty. Prudence meant a fair and clear understanding, based on general and systematic ideas, of which goals were worth pursuing and which means would achieve them.

When the first group of passions, the spirited ones, were strong and steady enough to face every danger in pursuit of noble and honorable goals under reason's guidance, they produced courage and greatness of spirit. This group was considered more generous and noble than the other. Often these feelings were thought to help reason keep the lower, animal appetites in check. People observed that we often get angry at ourselves. We resent and condemn ourselves when the love of pleasure prompts us to do something we disapprove of. In this way the spirited part of our nature helps the rational part stand against our desire for pleasure.

When all three parts of our nature agreed perfectly, neither the spirited nor the pleasure-seeking feelings pursued anything reason rejected. Reason, in turn, asked for nothing they would not willingly do. This happy state of mind, this complete harmony of the soul, made up the virtue usually translated as temperance. It might be better described as good temper, or as a sober and moderate mind.

In this system, justice, the last and greatest of the four main virtues, arose when each of the mind's three faculties stayed within its own role and did not take over another's. Reason directed and the passions obeyed. Each passion carried out its own task and moved easily, without resistance, toward the right object, with energy suited to the object's value. This was complete virtue and perfectly proper conduct. Following some early Pythagoreans, Plato called it justice.

We should note that the Greek word for justice has several meanings. As far as I know, the matching word in every other language does too, so these meanings must have some natural connection. In one sense, we act justly toward our neighbor when we do not deliberately harm him or directly injure his person, property, or reputation. I discussed this kind of justice earlier. It can be enforced, and violating it can be punished. In another sense, we do not act justly toward our neighbor unless we feel all the love, respect, and esteem appropriate to his character, situation, and relationship with us, and act accordingly. In this sense, we wrong a deserving person close to us when we fail to help him or advance him to the position where the impartial spectator would be pleased to see him, even if we never harm him. The first meaning matches what Aristotle and the medieval scholars call commutative justice and what Grotius calls justitia expletrix. It means leaving other people's things alone and willingly doing whatever we can properly be compelled to do. The second meaning matches what some call distributive justice[9] and what Grotius calls justitia attributrix. It means practicing beneficence appropriately and using what is ours in a fitting way. We put it to the charitable or generous uses most suited to our situation. In this sense, justice covers all the social virtues. There is a third meaning, broader than the first two but close to the second. As far as I know, it occurs in all languages too. Here we are unjust if we fail to value something as highly as the impartial spectator thinks it deserves, or fail to pursue it with appropriate enthusiasm. We say we do injustice to a poem or picture if we admire it too little, or do it more than justice if we admire it too much. Similarly, we say we do ourselves an injustice if we neglect something important to our own interests. In this third sense, justice means completely proper conduct and behavior. It includes both kinds of justice already described and every other virtue: prudence, courage, and temperance. Plato clearly uses justice in this last sense, so for him it includes the perfection of every virtue.

Aristotle's distributive justice is somewhat different. It concerns the proper distribution of rewards from a community's shared resources. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 5, chapter 2.

This is Plato's account of virtue, the state of mind rightly praised and approved. For him it means that each mental faculty stays in its proper sphere without intruding on another's and carries out its own task with precisely the right strength and energy. Clearly, his account matches in every respect what I said earlier about proper conduct.

II. According to Aristotle[10], virtue is the habit of finding the middle ground as correct reasoning directs. Each virtue lies between two opposing vices. In one vice a person feels too much about a particular kind of thing; in the other, too little. Courage, for example, lies between cowardice and reckless boldness. One responds too much to things that cause fear and the other too little. Similarly, frugality lies between greed and extravagance. One pays too much attention to one's interests and the other too little. Greatness of spirit lies between arrogance and lack of confidence: one involves too high an opinion of our own worth and dignity, the other too low an opinion. This account of virtue also corresponds closely to what I said earlier about proper and improper conduct.

See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 2, chapter 5 and following, and book 3, chapter 5 and following.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter I, 2

According to Aristotle[11], virtue does not so much consist in moderate, appropriate feelings themselves as in being habitually moderate. To understand this, remember that we can call either an action or a person virtuous. When we are talking about an action, even Aristotle says its virtue consists in the reasonable moderation of the feeling behind it. It does not matter whether this is the person's usual disposition. When we are talking about a person, virtue means that reasonable moderation has become the person's regular, settled state of mind. An action arising from a passing moment of generosity is certainly generous. But the person who does it is not necessarily generous, because it may be the only such action he has ever performed. The motive and state of mind behind it may have been entirely proper. Yet if this welcome impulse seems to come from a passing mood rather than a steady, lasting character, the action brings the person little honor. When we call someone generous, charitable, or virtuous in some other respect, we mean the quality we name is part of that person's usual disposition. One action, however fitting, does little to establish this. If a single action were enough to make a person possess a virtue, even the worst people could claim every virtue. Everyone has, at times, acted with prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. Yet while even very praiseworthy individual actions bring their doers little praise, one vicious action by a person whose conduct is usually good greatly reduces our opinion of his virtue. Sometimes it destroys that opinion altogether. One such action shows that his habits are imperfect and that we can rely on him less than his usual behavior suggested.

See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book ii, chapters 1., 2., 3. and 4.

Aristotle[12] probably also meant his account of virtue as a practical habit to oppose Plato's teaching. Plato seems to have thought that sound feelings and reasonable judgments about what to do and avoid were enough for perfect virtue. For him, virtue could be considered a kind of knowledge. He believed no one could clearly and conclusively see right and wrong yet fail to act accordingly. Passion could lead us to act against doubtful, uncertain beliefs, but not against clear and certain judgments. Aristotle, by contrast, believed that intellectual conviction could not overcome deeply rooted habits. In his view, good morals came from action, not knowledge.

See Aristotle, Magna Moralia, book i, chapter 1.

III. According to Zeno[13], the founder of Stoicism, nature entrusted every animal to its own care. It gave each one self-love so it would try to preserve both its life and every part of its nature in the best possible condition.

See Cicero, On Ends, book iii; also Diogenes Laertius on Zeno, book vii, section 84.

Human self-love includes, so to speak, the body and all its parts, as well as the mind and all its powers. It wants to keep all of them in their best possible condition. Nature therefore points us toward whatever helps sustain that condition as worth choosing, and away from whatever destroys it. Health, strength, physical agility and comfort, and the external advantages that support them—wealth, power, honors, and the respect and esteem of those around us—naturally seem worth choosing over their opposites. Illness, weakness, clumsiness, pain, and the external disadvantages that can bring these on—poverty, lack of authority, and the contempt or hatred of those around us—likewise seem worth avoiding. Some things within each group appear more worth choosing or avoiding than others. In the first group, health is clearly preferable to strength, and strength to agility; reputation is preferable to power, and power to wealth. In the second, illness is more worth avoiding than clumsiness, disgrace more than poverty, and poverty more than lack of authority. Virtue and proper conduct mean choosing or rejecting things and circumstances according to how far nature makes them worth choosing or rejecting. When we cannot have everything worth choosing, we choose what is most worth having. When we cannot avoid every unwanted thing, we choose what is least worth avoiding. If we make these choices with accurate judgment and give everything exactly the attention its place in this natural ranking deserves, then, according to the Stoics, we maintain the perfectly right conduct that is the essence of virtue. This is what they meant by living consistently, living according to nature, and obeying the laws and directions set for our conduct by nature or its Author.

Up to this point, the Stoic account of propriety and virtue is not very different from Aristotle's and that of the early Peripatetics. The main difference is how much self-command they demand. The Peripatetics allowed some emotional disturbance as appropriate to human weakness and useful for such imperfect beings as ourselves. They thought reason and general rules of right conduct would usually be too weak to make a person avoid misfortune or resist injury if these did not arouse deep grief or strong resentment. The Stoics, by contrast, demanded complete freedom from emotional disturbance. They considered even the slightest feeling that could unsettle peace of mind a sign of foolishness and lack of seriousness. The Peripatetics seem to have held that a feeling was not excessive as long as an observer making the greatest effort to understand could sympathize with it. The Stoics seem to have held that any feeling was improper if it demanded the observer's sympathy or required him to change his ordinary state of mind to match its force. They seem to have thought a virtuous person should not have to depend on others' generosity to be forgiven or approved.

For the Stoics, a wise person should regard every event as indifferent: no event in itself should be an object of desire or aversion, joy or sorrow. If he preferred some events to others and chose some circumstances while rejecting others,[14] that was not because he thought one inherently better than another. Nor was it because he expected to be happier in what people call a fortunate position than in a position they call distressing. Rather, proper action and the rule the gods had given him required these choices. One of the basic things nature teaches us to care for is the welfare of our family, relatives, friends, country, humanity, and the universe as a whole. Nature also teaches us that the welfare of two is preferable to the welfare of one, and that the welfare of many or all is vastly more important. We ourselves are only one person. So when our welfare conflicts with the welfare of the whole or a substantial part of it, we should choose to give way to what matters far more. A wise, powerful, and good God guides every event in this world. We can therefore be sure that everything that happens serves the welfare and perfection of the whole. If we are poor, sick, or otherwise afflicted, we should first try as hard as we can to escape that condition, provided we do not violate justice or our duties to others. If we cannot escape despite all our efforts, we should accept that the order and perfection of the universe require us to remain in that condition for the time being. The welfare of the whole should matter even to us more than such a small part of it as ourselves. From that moment, therefore, we should choose and even desire our present condition, whatever it is, if we want to preserve the complete propriety of feeling and conduct in which human perfection consists. If an opportunity to escape appears, however, we have a duty to take it. Clearly, the order of the universe no longer requires us to stay. By showing us a way out, the world's great director calls on us to leave. The same applies to hardships affecting our relatives, friends, and country. If we can prevent or end their suffering without violating a more sacred duty, we certainly should. Proper conduct, the rule Jupiter gave us, clearly demands it. But if we can do neither, we should regard the event as the best that could possibly have occurred. We can be sure it does the most good for the welfare and order of the whole, which is what we should want above all if we are wise and fair. Epictetus says: “In what sense are some things called natural for us and others unnatural? Only when we think of ourselves as separate from everything else. Looked at alone, a foot could be said to be naturally clean all the time. But think of it as a foot, attached to the rest of the body. Sometimes it must step in dirt or on thorns. It may even have to be cut off to save the whole body. If it refuses, it is no longer a foot. We should think about ourselves in the same way. What are you? A human being. If you think of yourself alone, living to old age, being rich, and being healthy suit your nature. But if you think of yourself as human and as part of a whole, then for the sake of that whole you may sometimes need to be sick, endure the discomfort of a sea voyage, suffer want, and perhaps die before your time. Why complain? Don't you realize that if you do, you cease to be human, just as the foot ceases to be a foot?”[15]

Some of these phrases sound a little awkward in English because they are literal translations of Stoic technical terms.

Arrian, book II, chapter 5.

This submission to the universe's order, and this complete lack of concern for our own interests when they are weighed against the whole's, can only be proper because of the same principle I have argued underlies justice. If we look at our interests only from our own point of view, we can hardly consent willingly to their sacrifice for the whole. Only when we see these competing interests through other people's eyes can our own interests seem so small by comparison that we give them up without resistance. To everyone except the person directly concerned, nothing seems more reasonable or proper than a part giving way to the whole. What seems reasonable to everyone else should not seem unreasonable to that person. He should therefore approve the sacrifice himself and recognize its reasonableness. According to the Stoics, all a wise person's feelings fit reason and propriety perfectly. They willingly agree with whatever those governing principles require. A wise person, therefore, can never resist accepting this arrangement.

IV. Alongside these ancient views, some modern systems also hold that virtue consists in propriety: the feeling behind an action must fit its cause or object. Dr. Clarke's system locates virtue in acting according to the relations between things, or making one's conduct fit the kind of action appropriate or inappropriate to particular things or relationships. Mr. Woolaston's system locates virtue in acting according to the truth about things and their real nature and essence: treating them as they really are, not as something else. My lord Shaftesbury's system locates it in keeping our feelings properly balanced and not letting any passion go beyond its proper limits. Each is a more or less inaccurate description of the same basic idea.

The account of virtue given, or at least intended, by each of these systems is certainly right as far as it goes. Some of the modern writers simply do not express themselves very well. There can be no virtue without propriety, and propriety always deserves some approval. But the account remains incomplete. Propriety is essential to every virtuous action, but it is not always all that matters. Beneficent actions have another quality. They seem worthy not just of approval but of reward. None of these systems adequately or easily explains why such actions deserve greater esteem, or why they naturally arouse different feelings. Their account of vice is likewise incomplete. Impropriety is necessary to every vicious action, but is not always all that matters. Some harmless and trivial actions are highly absurd and improper. Deliberate actions harmful to those around us have a further quality besides being improper. They seem to deserve not just disapproval but punishment, and they arouse resentment and a desire for revenge, not merely dislike. None of these systems adequately or easily explains why we detest such actions so much more.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter II

Systems that make virtue a matter of prudence.

The oldest surviving system that makes virtue a matter of prudence is the one associated with Epicurus. He is said to have borrowed all its main principles from earlier thinkers, especially Aristippus. Yet despite what his enemies claimed, he probably developed his own way of applying those principles.

According to Epicurus, bodily pleasure and pain were the only things we ultimately desire or avoid by nature. He thought it needed no proof that we naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. Sometimes we seem to avoid pleasure, but not because it is pleasure. We avoid it because enjoying it would cost us a greater pleasure or bring pain that is worse than the pleasure is worth. Likewise, we sometimes choose pain, but not because it is pain. Enduring it can spare us a greater pain or bring us a much greater pleasure. So he thought it was clear that bodily pleasure and pain were always objects of desire and aversion. He also thought it just as clear that they were the only ultimate objects. According to him, anything else we seek or avoid matters because it tends to produce one of these sensations. We want power and wealth because they can bring pleasure, and we avoid poverty and insignificance because they can bring pain. We value honor and reputation because other people's love and esteem help us obtain pleasure and protect us from pain. We avoid disgrace and a bad reputation because other people's hatred, contempt, and resentment destroy our security and expose us to serious bodily harm.

See Cicero, On Ends, book i, and Diogenes Laertius, book x.

For Epicurus, every mental pleasure and pain ultimately came from the body. The mind is happy when it remembers past bodily pleasures and hopes for more. It is miserable when it remembers bodily pain and fears more of it in the future.

Yet mental pleasures and pains are much greater than the bodily sensations they come from. The body feels only the present moment. The mind also feels the past through memory and the future through expectation. It therefore suffers and enjoys much more. Epicurus observed that even during the worst bodily pain, what torments us most is not the suffering of this moment. It is our painful memory of earlier suffering or our even more frightening expectation of what is coming. Taken alone, apart from what came before and what comes after, each moment's pain is too slight to matter much. Yet that moment's pain is all the body itself can suffer. In the same way, even when we enjoy the greatest pleasure, the bodily feeling of the present moment is only a small part of our happiness. We enjoy it mostly through happy memories of the past or even happier expectations of the future. The mind supplies by far the greatest share of the pleasure.

Because happiness and misery depended mainly on the mind, the body's condition mattered little if our thoughts and opinions were in good order. Even in great bodily pain, we could still have considerable happiness if reason and judgment remained in control. We could enjoy memories of past pleasure and hopes for future pleasure. We could lessen the severity of our pain by remembering what we actually had to suffer, even then. That was only the present bodily sensation, which could never be very great by itself. Any further agony caused by fear that it would continue came from an opinion in the mind. Better judgment could correct that opinion. We could consider that severe pain would probably be brief, while lasting pain would probably be moderate and allow many periods of relief. In any case, death was always available to free us. Epicurus held that death ends all feeling, whether of pain or pleasure, and therefore cannot be an evil. As he said, "When we exist, death does not; when death exists, we do not. So death is nothing to us."

If the actual feeling of pain was so little to fear, the feeling of pleasure was even less worth seeking. Pleasure is naturally much less intense than pain. If pain can take so little from the happiness of a well-ordered mind, pleasure can add almost nothing to it. When the body is free of pain and the mind free of fear and anxiety, an added bodily pleasure matters very little. It may make that happiness more varied, but it cannot properly be said to increase it.

So for Epicurus, the best human condition and the fullest happiness people could enjoy consisted of physical ease and a mind at peace and free from fear. Achieving this ultimate object of natural desire was the only purpose of every virtue. Virtues were not worth pursuing for their own sake, in his view, but because they helped bring about that condition.

Consider prudence. In this philosophy it was the source and basis of all the virtues, but it was not desirable for its own sake. Being so careful, hardworking, and watchful that we always consider even the distant results of every action is not pleasant in itself. Its value lies in helping us secure the greatest benefits and avoid the greatest harms.

Temperance means passing up pleasure and restraining our natural appetite for it. That restraint cannot be desirable in itself either. This virtue gets all its value from its usefulness. It lets us put off a pleasure now for a greater one later, or avoid the greater pain that might follow it. In short, temperance is prudence applied to pleasure.

Hard work, pain, danger, and even death are situations fortitude often brings us to. They are surely still less desirable in themselves. We choose them only to avoid worse things. We work to escape the greater shame and suffering of poverty. We face danger and death to defend our liberty and property, which help us enjoy life and be happy. Or we defend our country, whose safety includes our own. Fortitude lets us do all this willingly as the best option available in our circumstances. It is really just prudence, sound judgment, and presence of mind when assessing pain, labor, and danger. It chooses the lesser harm to avoid the greater.

The same goes for justice. There is no intrinsic advantage to leaving another person's property alone. It would certainly not be better for you if I kept what belongs to me rather than letting you have it. Still, you should leave my property alone, because taking it would arouse other people's resentment and anger. It would destroy your peace and security of mind. You would fear the punishment you would imagine people were always ready to impose. In your own mind, no power, skill, or secrecy could protect you from it. Another kind of justice involves giving people the help appropriate to our different relationships with them as neighbors, relatives, friends, benefactors, superiors, or equals. The same reasons recommend it. Acting properly in these relationships wins the love and esteem of those around us; doing otherwise provokes their contempt and hatred. One course protects our ease and peace of mind, while the other puts them at risk. These are the great, ultimate objects of all our desires. Thus all of justice, the most important virtue, amounts to sensible and prudent conduct toward the people around us.

That is Epicurus's account of virtue. It may seem strange that a philosopher described as so likable never noticed something else. Whatever effect virtue and vice have on our physical ease and safety, the feelings they inspire in others are much more powerful objects of desire or aversion than their other consequences. Anyone with a good disposition values being lovable, respectable, and worthy of esteem more than the comfort and safety that other people's love and respect can bring. Conversely, being hateful, contemptible, and deserving of anger is more frightening than any physical suffering that other people's hatred, contempt, or anger can cause. Our desire for the first sort of character and our aversion to the second therefore cannot come from concern about their effects on the body.

This system clearly conflicts with the one I have tried to establish. Still, it is easy to see what particular aspect of nature gives it an appearance of truth. The Author of nature wisely arranged things so that, in ordinary circumstances and even in this life, virtue really is wisdom. It is the surest and most direct way to gain safety and advantage. Whether we succeed in what we do depends greatly on what others think of us and on whether the people around us are generally willing to help or oppose us. The best, surest, easiest, and quickest way to earn favorable judgments and avoid unfavorable ones is to be worthy of the former and not of the latter. Socrates said, "Do you want a reputation as a good musician? The only sure way to get it is to become a good musician. Do you want people to think you can serve your country as a general or statesman? Again, the best way is to gain real skill and experience in war and government and become fit for the role. And if you want to be considered sober, temperate, just, and fair, the best way to gain that reputation is to become those things. If you truly make yourself lovable, respectable, and worthy of esteem, you need not fear that the people around you will fail to love, respect, and esteem you soon enough." Since practicing virtue is generally so beneficial and practicing vice so harmful to our interests, these results add beauty and propriety to virtue and add ugliness and impropriety to vice. We approve of temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence not only for what they are but also as examples of the greatest wisdom and genuine prudence. Likewise, we disapprove of intemperance, cowardice, injustice, malice, and mean selfishness both for what they are and as examples of shortsighted folly and weakness. Epicurus seems to have noticed only this kind of propriety in every virtue. It is the kind that most readily comes to mind when people try to persuade others to behave properly. If people show by their behavior, and perhaps by their stated principles, that virtue's natural beauty will not move them, how else can we persuade them except by showing how foolishly they act and how much they themselves will suffer for it in the end?

Epicurus reduced all the different virtues to this one kind of propriety. In doing so, he indulged a tendency everyone has, and philosophers especially love to cultivate as a way of displaying their ingenuity: explaining as many things as possible with as few principles as possible. He carried that tendency further when he traced every primary object of natural desire or aversion back to bodily pleasure and pain. He was a major advocate of atomic philosophy and enjoyed deriving every power and quality of bodies from the familiar shapes, motions, and arrangements of matter's smallest parts. No doubt he took similar pleasure in explaining every feeling and passion of the mind through the most familiar ones.

Epicurus agreed with Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno that virtue means acting in the most suitable way to obtain the primary objects of natural desire, the first things of nature. His system differed from theirs in two other respects. First, it gave a different account of those primary objects. Second, it gave a different account of what makes virtue excellent and why it deserves esteem.

For Epicurus, the primary objects of natural desire were bodily pleasure and pain and nothing else. For the other three philosophers, many other things were worth wanting for their own sake, including knowledge and the happiness of our relatives, our friends, and our country.

Epicurus also held that virtue was not worth pursuing for its own sake and was not itself an ultimate object of natural desire. We should choose it only because it prevents pain and brings ease and pleasure. The other three held instead that virtue was worth pursuing not only as a way to obtain other primary objects of natural desire but also because it was worth more than all of them. They believed human beings were born to act. Our happiness must therefore lie not only in how pleasant our experiences feel but also in the propriety of what we actively do.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter III

Systems that make virtue a matter of benevolence.

The idea that virtue consists of benevolence is very old, though I do not think it is as old as all the systems I have already described. It seems to have been held by most of the philosophers who called themselves Eclectics around and after the time of Augustus. They claimed to follow mainly Plato and Pythagoras, and for that reason they are commonly known as the later Platonists.

According to these thinkers, benevolence or love was God's only motive for action. It guided the use of all his other attributes. God's wisdom found the means to achieve the ends proposed by his goodness, and his infinite power carried them out. Benevolence remained the supreme, governing attribute. The others served it. All the excellence, or, if I may say so, the morality of God's actions ultimately came from it. The entire perfection and virtue of the human mind lay in resembling or sharing in God's perfections. It therefore meant being filled with the same benevolence and love that guided all God's actions. Only human actions arising from this motive were truly praiseworthy or had any merit in God's sight. Only through acts of kindness and love could we imitate God as we should and express our humble, devout admiration for his infinite perfections. By developing that same divine principle in ourselves, we could bring our feelings closer to his holy attributes and become more deserving of his love and esteem. Finally, we could reach the direct conversation and communion with God that this philosophy sought above all to make possible.

Many early fathers of the Christian church valued this system. After the Reformation, several exceptionally devout, learned, and likable theologians adopted it, especially Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Henry More, and Mr. John Smith of Cambridge. Yet among all its ancient and modern defenders, the late Dr. Hutcheson was by far the most perceptive, clearest, and most philosophical. Most importantly, he was also the most sober and sound in his judgment.

Many features of human nature support the idea that virtue consists of benevolence. I have already noted that appropriate benevolence is the most graceful and pleasant of all feelings. A double sympathy recommends it to us. Because it naturally does good, it rightly earns gratitude and reward. For all these reasons, we naturally feel it has greater merit than any other feeling. I have also noted that even the weaknesses of benevolence do not greatly offend us, while the weaknesses of every other passion disgust us. Who does not detest excessive malice, selfishness, or resentment? Yet even too much loyalty to a particular friend is less offensive. Only benevolent feelings can be expressed without any attention to propriety and still retain something appealing. There is something pleasant even in instinctive goodwill that helps people without once asking whether it deserves blame or approval. Other passions are different. As soon as they lose a sense of propriety, they cease to be pleasant.

Benevolence gives actions arising from it a beauty greater than any other. Lacking it, and still more having the opposite inclination, makes any action that shows such a disposition especially ugly. Harmful actions are often punishable for no reason except that they reveal insufficient concern for our neighbor's happiness.

Dr. Hutcheson also observed that if we discover another motive behind an action we thought benevolent, our sense of its merit falls in proportion to that motive's influence. Suppose we thought someone acted from gratitude but found that they hoped for another favor. Or suppose we thought someone acted from concern for the public but found that they hoped for a cash reward. Either discovery would completely destroy our sense that the action had merit or deserved praise. A selfish motive mixed into an action is like inferior metal mixed into a precious one: it reduces or destroys the merit the action would otherwise have. Hutcheson therefore thought it clear that virtue must consist solely of pure, unselfish benevolence.

See Inquiry concerning Virtue, sections 1 and 2.

Conversely, when actions usually thought selfish turn out to have benevolent motives, we think much more highly of them. Suppose someone sought to make a fortune only so that he could do favors for friends and properly repay those who had helped him. We would love and esteem him more for that. This observation seemed to strengthen the conclusion that only benevolence could make an action virtuous.

Finally, Hutcheson saw another clear proof of his account of virtue. He observed that when moral thinkers disagreed over whether conduct was right, they consistently appealed to the public good. They thereby generally acknowledged that whatever advanced human happiness was right, praiseworthy, and virtuous, while the opposite was wrong, blameworthy, and vicious. In recent debates about passive obedience and the right to resist, sensible people disputed only whether always submitting to authority would probably cause more harm than occasional uprisings when rights were violated. According to him, no one even questioned whether the course that best served human happiness overall was morally good.

If benevolence was the only motive that could make an action virtuous, the more benevolence an action showed, the more praise it deserved.

Actions aimed at the happiness of a large community showed a broader benevolence than actions aimed only at a smaller group. They were virtuous in proportion to that greater scope. The most virtuous feeling was therefore one directed at the happiness of every intelligent being. The least virtuous feeling that could still count as virtue was directed no further than the happiness of one person, such as a son, brother, or friend.

Perfect virtue meant directing all our actions toward the greatest possible good. We would subordinate every narrower affection to a desire for the general happiness of humanity. We would see ourselves as just one among many and pursue our own well-being only as far as it was compatible with, or helped, the well-being of all.

Self-love, in this account, could never be virtuous to any degree or in any form. It was vicious when it interfered with the general good. When it simply led a person to take care of their own happiness, it was innocent but deserved neither praise nor blame. Benevolent acts performed in the face of a strong motive of self-interest were more virtuous for that reason. They showed the benevolent principle's strength.

Dr. Hutcheson went so far in refusing to treat self-love as a virtuous motive that he thought even wanting the pleasure of approving of ourselves, or the comfort of a clear conscience, reduced the merit of a benevolent action. To him this was selfish. To the extent that it influenced an action, it showed a weakness in the pure and unselfish benevolence that alone could make human conduct virtuous. Ordinary people, however, do not think that wanting our own approval reduces the virtue of an action at all. Rather, they see it as the only motive that truly deserves to be called virtuous.

Inquiry concerning Virtue, section 2, article 4; also Illustrations on the Moral Sense, section 5, last paragraph.

This is how that appealing system explains the nature of virtue. It is especially suited to nurturing the noblest and most pleasant feelings in the human heart. It not only checks the injustice that self-love can cause but also somewhat discourages self-love altogether by denying that it could ever bring honor to those it moves.

Some of the other systems I have described fail to explain adequately why beneficence, the highest virtue, is especially excellent. This system has the opposite flaw. It fails to explain adequately why we approve of the lesser virtues of prudence, vigilance, carefulness, temperance, constancy, and firmness. It considers only what our feelings aim at and whether they tend to help or harm others. It entirely ignores whether those feelings are proper or improper, and whether they fit the cause that arouses them.

Concern for our own happiness and interests also often seems like a very praiseworthy motive. People generally think thrift, hard work, discretion, attentiveness, and careful thought are developed for self-interested reasons. At the same time, they consider these admirable qualities that deserve everyone's esteem and approval. True, adding a selfish motive often tarnishes the beauty of an action that should spring from benevolence. But this is not because self-love can never motivate virtue. It is because the benevolent motive in that particular case is too weak for its object. The person's character then clearly seems imperfect and, on the whole, deserving of blame rather than praise. By contrast, adding a benevolent motive to an action that self-love alone should be enough to prompt does not usually make the action seem less proper or its doer less virtuous. We are not inclined to suspect anyone of having too little self-interest. That is hardly the weak side of human nature or a failing we look for. Suppose, however, that we truly believed a man would neglect his health, life, or fortune unless he cared for his family and friends. His instinct for self-preservation alone should have been enough to prompt him to care for these things. This would certainly be a failing, though a lovable one that would inspire pity rather than contempt or hatred. It would still somewhat reduce the dignity and respectability of his character. Carelessness and a lack of thrift are universally disapproved of, not because they reveal too little benevolence, but because they reveal too little attention to one's own interests.

Moral thinkers often judge whether conduct is right or wrong by whether it helps or harms society. But it does not follow that concern for society must be the only virtuous motive. It follows only that when motives conflict, society's welfare should outweigh all the others.

Benevolence may be God's only motive for action. Several plausible arguments suggest that it is. It is hard to imagine any other motive for an independent, completely perfect being who needs nothing outside himself and has complete happiness in himself. But whatever is true of God, an imperfect creature like a human being needs many things outside itself simply to stay alive. Such a creature must often act from other motives. Human life would be especially harsh if the feelings that our nature requires us to act on frequently could never be virtuous or worthy of anyone's esteem and praise.

The three systems that locate virtue in propriety, in prudence, and in benevolence are the main accounts of virtue. All other accounts, however different they seem, can easily be placed under one or another of these.

A system that locates virtue in obeying God's will can be placed either with those that make virtue a matter of prudence or with those that make it a matter of propriety. Asking why we should obey God would be deeply irreverent and absurd if the question implied any doubt that we should. But the question allows only two answers. We can say we should obey God because his power is infinite and he will reward obedience forever and punish disobedience forever. Or we can say that, quite apart from our own happiness or any reward or punishment, it is fitting for a creature to obey its creator and for a limited, imperfect being to submit to a being whose perfections are infinite and beyond our understanding. No other answer seems possible. If the first is right, virtue is prudence: the proper pursuit of our ultimate interests and happiness. That is why we must obey God. If the second is right, virtue is propriety. Our duty to obey then rests on the fact that humility and submission are fitting responses to the greatness of the being who inspires them.

The system that places virtue in usefulness also agrees with the system that places it in propriety. It approves as virtuous every quality of mind that is pleasant or helpful to the person who has it or to others. It condemns opposite qualities as vicious. But whether any feeling is pleasant or useful depends on how strongly we let it operate. Every feeling is useful within reasonable limits, and every feeling becomes harmful when it exceeds them. So in this system, virtue lies not in any single feeling but in the proper degree of every feeling. The only difference from the system I have tried to establish is that it treats usefulness, rather than sympathy or the corresponding feeling of a spectator, as the natural and original measure of that proper degree.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 1

Systems that deny the distinction between virtue and vice.

All the systems I have described so far assume there is a real and essential difference between virtue and vice, whatever those qualities consist of. There is a real difference between proper and improper feelings, between benevolence and other motives, and between real prudence and shortsighted folly or reckless haste. In general, each system encourages praiseworthy dispositions and discourages blameworthy ones.

Some of them may upset the balance among our feelings. They can favor certain motives more than those motives deserve. The ancient systems that place virtue in propriety chiefly recommend the grand, commanding, respectable virtues of self-control: fortitude, magnanimity, independence from fortune, and indifference to external events such as pain, poverty, exile, and death. The noblest propriety of conduct appears in these great acts. By comparison, they say little about the gentle, lovable virtues of kindness and forbearance. The Stoics in particular often seem to have regarded these softer virtues as mere weaknesses that a wise person should not allow to take root.

The benevolent system, on the other hand, encourages all the gentler virtues as much as possible but seems to neglect completely the more commanding and respectable qualities of mind. It even refuses to call them virtues. It calls them moral abilities, treating them as qualities that do not deserve the same esteem and approval as virtue properly understood. It treats motives aimed only at our own interests even worse, if that is possible. It claims that, far from having merit of their own, such motives reduce the merit of benevolence when they work alongside it. And it claims that prudence can never count as a virtue when it promotes only private interests.

A system that places virtue only in prudence strongly encourages caution, vigilance, sobriety, and sensible moderation. Yet it seems to lower both the lovable and the respectable virtues. It strips the former of all their beauty and the latter of all their greatness.

Despite these faults, all three systems generally encourage the best and most admirable habits of mind. Society would benefit if people in general, or even the few who claim to follow a philosophy, lived by the rules of any one of them. Each has something distinctive and valuable to teach. If teaching and encouragement could give people fortitude and magnanimity, the ancient systems of propriety would seem able to do it. If the same means could make people kinder and awaken their care and general love for those around them, some of the benevolent system's descriptions might do it. From Epicurus's system, though it is certainly the worst of the three, we can learn how practicing both the lovable and the respectable virtues serves our own interests, comfort, safety, and peace even in this life. Epicurus located happiness in ease and security. He therefore made a special effort to show that virtue was not merely the best and surest way to gain these invaluable things, but the only way. Other philosophers have chiefly praised virtue for its effects on our inner peace of mind. Epicurus did not ignore this point, but he mainly stressed how that appealing quality promotes our outward prosperity and safety. For this reason, people from every philosophical school in the ancient world studied his writings so much. Cicero, a great opponent of Epicureanism, borrowed from him his most appealing arguments that virtue alone can secure happiness. Seneca was a Stoic, and Stoicism was the school most opposed to Epicurus. Yet Seneca quotes Epicurus more often than any other philosopher.

Other systems, however, seem to erase the distinction between virtue and vice entirely. That makes their tendency altogether harmful. I mean the systems of the duke of Rochefoucault and Dr. Mandeville. Almost all the views of both writers are mistaken. Still, certain features of human nature appear to favor them at first glance if seen from a particular angle. The duke of Rochefoucault first outlined these features with elegant and delicate precision. Dr. Mandeville then described them more fully in a lively, funny, but rough and unsophisticated style. This has given their doctrines an appearance of truth and plausibility that can easily mislead readers who do not know better.

Dr. Mandeville presented his views more systematically than the other writer. He regards anything done from a sense of propriety, or concern for what is commendable and praiseworthy, as really done out of love for praise and approval. He calls that love vanity. He says people naturally care much more about their own happiness than about anyone else's. In their hearts, they can never truly prefer another person's prosperity to their own. If someone seems to do so, we can be sure that person is deceiving us and acting from selfish motives as always. Vanity is among the strongest selfish passions. People are easily flattered and take great pleasure in the applause of those around them. When someone seems to sacrifice his interests for his companions, he knows that this will please their own self-love. They will respond by showering him with extravagant praise. He expects that pleasure to outweigh the interest he gives up to obtain it. So his conduct is just as selfish, and comes from just as low a motive, as any other conduct. But he is flattered, and he flatters himself into believing his action is completely unselfish. Otherwise, he knows, it would deserve no praise in his own eyes or those of other people. According to Mandeville, then, concern for the public and preference for its interests over one's own are mere tricks played on humanity. The human virtue that people praise so highly and strive so hard to match is simply the child born when flattery meets pride.

I will not now examine whether the most generous acts for the public good might, in some sense, arise from self-love. Settling that question is not necessary, I think, to show that virtue is real. Self-love can often be a virtuous motive. I will only try to show that wanting to do what is honorable and noble, and to make ourselves worthy of esteem and approval, cannot properly be called vanity. Even wanting a well-earned good name and reputation, or seeking esteem through truly admirable conduct, does not deserve that name. The first desire is love of virtue, the noblest and best human passion. The second is love of genuine glory. It is less noble than the first, but seems next in dignity. A vain person wants praise for qualities that do not deserve any, or do not deserve as much as the person expects. Such a person builds a reputation on trivial things: fine clothes and carriages or equally trivial social graces. Someone is also vain when seeking praise for an achievement that deserves praise but that they know perfectly well is not theirs. This applies to the empty show-off who pretends to importance without having earned it, the foolish liar who takes credit for adventures that never happened, and the foolish plagiarist who claims to have written someone else's work. We also call someone vain who is not content that others quietly esteem and approve of them. Such a person seems to love the loud applause more than the esteem itself. They are only satisfied when they hear their own praises repeated. They eagerly demand every outward sign of respect: titles, compliments, visits, attention from attendants, and public notice that appears to show deference and concern. This petty passion differs completely from the first two. It belongs to the lowest and smallest people, while those two belong to the noblest and greatest.

These three desires differ widely: wanting to become a person worthy of honor and esteem; wanting to gain honor and esteem by truly deserving them; and wanting praise at any cost. We always approve of the first two and despise the last. Still, they are distantly related. Mandeville's amusing and lively exaggeration of that relationship has allowed him to mislead his readers. Vanity and love of true glory are related because both aim to gain esteem and approval. But one is fair, reasonable, and just, while the other is unfair, absurd, and ridiculous. Someone who wants esteem for truly admirable qualities wants only what they deserve. Denying it to them would be a kind of injustice. Someone who wants esteem on other terms demands what they have no right to. The first person is easily satisfied, does not tend to suspect that we fail to esteem them enough, and seldom seeks many outward signs of our regard. The second is never satisfied. Secretly aware of wanting more esteem than they deserve, they are always jealous and suspicious that we do not esteem them as much as they want. They treat the slightest failure to observe a courtesy as a terrible insult and a sign of deliberate contempt. Restless and impatient, they constantly fear that we have lost all respect for them. They therefore keep seeking fresh signs of esteem, and only continual attention and flattery can keep them calm.

### Part VI, Section II, Chapter IV, 2

The desire to be honorable and worthy of respect is closely related to the desire for honor and respect. The love of virtue is closely related to the love of genuine glory. Both aim at actually being honorable and noble. And even the love of virtue has something in common with the love of genuine glory where that love resembles vanity: it takes account of what others think. The most generous and high-minded person may want virtue for its own sake and care very little about what people actually think of him. Still, he enjoys thinking about what they ought to think. He knows that even if they neither honor nor praise him, he deserves their honor and praise. If people were calm, fair, consistent, and properly informed about his motives and circumstances, they would honor and praise him. He may dismiss their actual opinions of him, but he cares deeply about the opinions they ought to hold. His great and noble motive is to be worthy of that favorable judgment. Whatever others might think of his character, he wants to put himself in their place, consider what their opinion should be rather than what it is, and retain the highest opinion of his own character on that basis. So even the love of virtue refers, not to what others do think, but to what reason and propriety say they ought to think. In this respect, it resembles the love of genuine glory. Yet there is a great difference. Someone who acts solely because an action is right and fitting, and worthy of esteem and approval even if he never receives either, acts from the noblest, most godlike motive we can imagine. Someone who wants to deserve approval but is also eager to receive it generally deserves praise too. But his motives include more human weakness. Other people's ignorance and injustice may upset him. His happiness is vulnerable to his rivals' envy and the public's foolishness. The first person's happiness, by contrast, is secure. It does not depend on luck or on the whims of those around him. If people ignorantly despise and hate him, he thinks their hostility does not really apply to him, and it does not upset him. They despise a false picture of his character and conduct. If they knew him better, they would esteem and love him. Strictly speaking, they hate not him but someone they mistake him for. If we met a friend at a masquerade dressed as our enemy, our friend would be amused rather than hurt if we angrily spoke to him as though he were that enemy. This is how a truly high-minded person feels when unfairly criticized. Few people, however, reach this level of firmness. Only the weakest and most worthless people take much pleasure in undeserved glory. Yet, strangely, an undeserved bad name can hurt even those who seem most resolute and determined.

Dr. Mandeville does not stop at portraying the shallow motive of vanity as the source of everything usually called virtuous. He tries to show other supposed flaws in human virtue. He claims that in every case it falls short of the complete self-denial it professes. What looks like a victory over our passions, he says, is usually a hidden way of indulging them. Unless restraint in pleasure amounts to the strictest abstinence, he calls it gross luxury and sensuality. In his view, everything beyond what is absolutely necessary to keep people alive is a luxury. Even a clean shirt or a comfortable home is a vice. He treats sexual desire within the most lawful union as no different in sensuality from its most harmful gratification. He mocks temperance and chastity when they can be practiced at such a low cost. His clever but misleading argument, here as elsewhere, depends on ambiguous words. Some passions have no common names except names for their unpleasant and offensive extremes. An observer is more likely to notice them at those extremes. When they clash with his own feelings and repel or disturb him, he cannot help noticing them and naturally gives them names. When they fit his ordinary state of mind, he is likely to overlook them entirely. He may give them no names, or use names that point to the restraint placed on the passions rather than to the strength they still have after being restrained. Thus the common names for an excessive love of pleasure and of sex—luxury and lust—refer to a vicious, offensive degree of those passions. By contrast, temperance and chastity name the restraint placed on them, not the degree to which they remain. Mandeville thinks that proving the passions still exist in some degree completely disproves the reality of temperance and chastity. He thinks he has shown that these virtues merely exploit people's inattention and simplicity. But they do not demand that we become completely unresponsive to the things that arouse the passions they govern. They aim only to restrain the passions enough that they do not harm the individual or disturb or offend society.

The central mistake in Dr. Mandeville's book, Fable of the Bees, is to call every passion wholly vicious if it is vicious to any degree or in any form. That is why he calls anything vanity if it has any connection with what others think or what they ought to think. This misleading argument lets him reach his favorite conclusion: private vices benefit the public. Suppose that a love of splendor and a taste for refined arts and improvements in human life are called luxury, sensuality, and showiness. These tastes include pleasing clothes, furniture, and vehicles, along with architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. Suppose they receive those labels even when people's circumstances allow them to enjoy such things without inconvenience. In that case, luxury, sensuality, and showiness certainly benefit the public. Without the qualities he gives those insulting names, refined arts would receive no support and would wither for lack of work. His permissive theory actually rests on some earlier, popular doctrines of severe self-denial. They located virtue in the total destruction of all our passions. It was easy for Dr. Mandeville to show, first, that no one ever achieved such a total victory and, second, that universal success at it would harm society. It would end all industry and commerce, and nearly all the business of human life. The first point seemed to prove that there was no real virtue, and that anything claiming to be virtue was a fraud on humanity. The second seemed to prove that private vices benefit the public, since society could not prosper without them.

That is Dr. Mandeville's system. It once caused a great stir. Perhaps it never produced more vice than would have existed anyway. But at least it taught vice from other causes to show itself more shamelessly and to admit its corrupt motives with a reckless boldness previously unheard of.

However destructive this system looks, it could not have fooled so many people or so alarmed defenders of better principles if it did not come close to the truth in some ways. A theory of nature may look very convincing and win wide acceptance for a long time, even when it has no basis in nature and bears no resemblance to the truth. For nearly a century, a very ingenious nation accepted Des Cartes's vortices as an excellent explanation of the motions of heavenly bodies. Yet it has been demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that those supposed causes do not exist, are impossible, and could not produce the claimed effects even if they did exist. Moral philosophy is different. Someone who tries to explain the origin of our moral sentiments cannot mislead us so thoroughly or stray so far from the truth. A traveler describing a distant country might persuade us that the most groundless and absurd stories are certain facts. But a person reporting what happens in our neighborhood and our own parish has less room to lie. We may fail to look for ourselves and be deceived in many ways. Even so, the biggest lies he tells us must resemble the truth and contain a good deal of it. Someone who proposes the causes of the great phenomena of the universe is like the traveler describing a distant country. He can say almost anything and expect belief so long as his story seems possible. But someone explaining where our desires, affections, approval, and disapproval come from is describing not only our own parish but our own household affairs. We may be like lazy householders who trust a dishonest steward and are easily deceived. Still, we cannot accept an account that takes no notice of the truth. At least some of its details must be correct. Even the most exaggerated must have some basis, or we would detect the fraud during even a careless inspection. If an author said a natural feeling came from a principle entirely unconnected to it, and unlike any principle connected to it, even the least discerning and least experienced reader would find the claim absurd.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter I

Section III: Different theories about the basis of approval. Introduction.

After asking what virtue is, moral philosophy must ask another important question: what makes us approve of something? What ability of the mind makes certain characters appealing or unappealing to us? What makes us prefer one way of acting to another, call one right and another wrong, and think one deserves approval, honor, and reward while the other deserves blame, criticism, and punishment? There have been three answers. Some say we approve or disapprove of our own actions and other people's only out of self-love, because we think about how the actions might help or harm us. Others say reason, which distinguishes truth from falsehood, also lets us tell what is fitting or unfitting in actions and feelings. Still others say the distinction comes entirely from immediate sentiment and feeling: seeing certain actions or feelings gives us satisfaction or disgust. Thus the three proposed sources of approval are self-love, reason, and sentiment. Before examining these theories, I should note that the answer to this second question matters greatly in theory but not in practice. What we think virtue is necessarily affects our ideas of right and wrong in many particular cases. What we think produces approval cannot have that effect. Studying the inner workings that produce these various ideas and feelings is purely a matter of philosophical curiosity.

Theories that derive approval from self-love.

Those who explain approval through self-love do not all explain it in the same way. Every version of their theory contains much confusion and imprecision. According to Mr. Hobbes and many of his followers, including Puffendorff and Mandeville, people turn to society not out of a natural love for other people, but because they cannot live safely or comfortably without help. On this account, society becomes necessary to them. Anything that supports its welfare seems to serve their interests in the long run. Anything that threatens or destroys society seems to harm them. Virtue gives society its strongest support, while vice causes its greatest disruption. Virtue is therefore pleasing to everyone, and vice offensive. Virtue promises a flourishing society; vice promises ruin and disorder in something essential to our comfort and security.

As I noted earlier, we cannot doubt that virtue's tendency to support social order makes it look very beautiful when we consider it calmly and philosophically. Vice's tendency to disrupt order makes it look very ugly. Considered in the abstract, human society looks like a huge machine. Its smooth, coordinated movements produce a thousand pleasing effects. In a fine machine made by human hands, anything that made its movements smoother would look better for that reason; anything that blocked them would displease us. Likewise, virtue pleases us as though it polished society's wheels, while vice offends us like rust that makes those wheels scrape and grind together. So an explanation that bases approval and disapproval on concern for social order draws on the principle that makes usefulness beautiful, which I explained earlier. This gives the theory whatever plausibility it has. These writers describe the countless advantages of a developed social life over a solitary life in the wild. They stress that virtue and good order are needed to maintain the first kind of life, while widespread vice and lawbreaking would inevitably bring back the second. The reader is delighted by the new and impressive picture they offer. He notices a beauty in virtue and an ugliness in vice that he had never seen before. He is often so pleased with the discovery that he fails to reflect on something important: this political view had never occurred to him before, so it cannot explain the approval and disapproval he has always felt for virtue and vice.

On the other hand, when these writers say our concern for society's welfare, and therefore our esteem for virtue, comes from self-love, they do not mean that we praise Cato's virtue and hate Catiline's villainy today because either man actually benefits or harms us. They do not think that society's success or collapse in those distant times and places could affect our happiness or misery now. They do not imagine that an actual gain or loss to us shapes our judgment. Rather, they mean what we might have gained or lost if we had lived then and there, or what we might still gain or lose if we met similar people today. What they were struggling to express was our indirect sympathy with the gratitude of people helped, or the resentment of people harmed, by those very different characters. They were vaguely pointing to this when they said we do not praise or condemn because of what we ourselves have gained or suffered. Instead, we imagine what we might gain or suffer if we had to live in society with such companions.

Sympathy, however, is not selfish in any sense. Someone might claim that my sympathy with your sorrow or anger comes from self-love, because I put myself in your place and imagine how I would feel in the same circumstances. Sympathy does involve imagining a change of places with the person concerned. But I do not imagine myself, with my own character, in that position. I imagine being the person with whom I sympathize. When I express sympathy for the death of your only son, I do not ask what I, with my own character and occupation, would suffer if I had a son who died. I ask what I would suffer if I actually were you. I exchange not just circumstances but people and characters. So my grief is entirely for you, not for myself. It is not selfish at all. How could a feeling be selfish when it does not even come from imagining anything happening to me as the person I am, but concerns you entirely? A man can sympathize with a woman in childbirth, though he cannot imagine suffering her pains as himself. The whole theory that traces every human feeling and affection to self-love has attracted great attention. Yet, as far as I know, no one has ever explained it fully and clearly. It seems to me to arise from a confused misunderstanding of sympathy.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter II

Theories that make reason the basis of approval.

Mr. Hobbes famously taught that the natural condition of humanity is war. Before people established civil government, he said, they could not form a safe, peaceful society. For him, preserving society meant supporting civil government, and destroying government meant ending society. But civil government exists only while people obey the highest authority. The moment that official loses authority, government ends. Self-preservation teaches people to praise whatever promotes society's welfare and blame whatever harms it. So, Hobbes argued, if people thought and spoke consistently, self-preservation would teach them always to praise obedience to civil authorities and blame disobedience and rebellion. To deserve praise would mean to obey, and to deserve blame would mean to disobey. The government's laws would then be the only final standards of justice and injustice, right and wrong.

Mr. Hobbes openly intended these ideas to put people's consciences under the direct authority of the civil government, rather than religious authorities. The unrest and ambition of religious authorities in his own time had taught him to see them as the main cause of social disorder. Theologians therefore found his doctrine especially offensive and attacked it with sharp bitterness. It also offended every sound moral thinker, because it implied that right and wrong have no natural distinction. On his account, they can change at the arbitrary will of the government. People attacked this theory from every side, both with sober arguments and with furious speeches.

To refute such a hateful doctrine, they needed to prove that even before any law or human institution existed, the mind naturally had a faculty that recognized some actions and feelings as right, praiseworthy, and virtuous, and others as wrong, blameworthy, and vicious.

Dr. Cudworth rightly observed, in Immutable Morality, book 1, that law could not be the original source of these distinctions. If a law exists, it must either be right to obey it and wrong to disobey it, or it must not matter whether we obey it. A law we are free to ignore plainly cannot be the source of right and wrong. But neither can a law we ought to obey be their source. Calling obedience right and disobedience wrong already assumes that we know what right and wrong mean. It assumes that obeying fits the idea of right and disobeying fits the idea of wrong.

If the mind knew these distinctions before any law, it seemed to follow that it learned them from reason. Reason would distinguish right from wrong as it distinguishes truth from falsehood. This conclusion is correct in some ways but hasty in others. It was easier to accept when the study of human nature was still young, before people had carefully distinguished the mind's different faculties and their jobs. During the fierce debate with Mr. Hobbes, no one had thought of another faculty that might produce such ideas. So it became popular to say that virtue and vice do not consist in whether actions agree with a superior's law. Instead, they consist in whether actions agree with reason. Reason was thus treated as the original source of approval and disapproval.

In some respects it is true that virtue agrees with reason. In a certain sense, reason can rightly be called the source of approval and disapproval, and of all sound judgments about right and wrong. Through reason we discover the general rules of justice that should guide our actions. Reason also gives us less precise ideas of what is prudent, decent, generous, or noble. We keep those ideas in mind and try to shape our conduct by them. Like other general principles, moral principles come from experience and drawing general conclusions from particular cases. We observe many different cases, noting what pleases or displeases our moral faculties and what they approve or disapprove. From these observations we establish general rules. Drawing such conclusions is an operation of reason. So it is quite right to say that our general principles and ideas come from reason. They govern most of our moral judgments. Those judgments would be very uncertain if they depended entirely on immediate feelings, which can change greatly with our health and mood. Our soundest judgments about right and wrong are thus guided by principles drawn from experience through reason. In that sense virtue agrees with reason, and reason can be called the source of approval and disapproval.

But reason cannot possibly be the source of our first perceptions of right and wrong in the particular cases from which those rules are formed. That idea makes no sense. Like the first observations behind any general rule, those first perceptions arise from immediate sense and feeling, not reason. We form moral rules by finding in many cases that one way of acting regularly pleases us in a certain way, while another regularly displeases us. Reason cannot make a particular thing pleasing or displeasing to the mind for its own sake. Reason may show that it helps us get something else that naturally pleases or displeases us. Then it can make the first thing attractive or unattractive for the sake of that other thing. But only immediate sense and feeling can make something pleasing or displeasing in itself. If virtue in each particular case necessarily pleases us for its own sake, and vice displeases us, immediate sense and feeling, not reason, draw us toward one and turn us away from the other.

Pleasure and pain are what we chiefly seek and avoid. We tell them apart not by reasoning but by immediate sense and feeling. So if we want virtue for its own sake and avoid vice for its own sake, reason cannot originally tell them apart. Immediate sense and feeling must do so.

Because reason can properly be called the basis of approval and disapproval in one sense, people long assumed, without looking closely, that these feelings originally came from reason. Dr. Hutcheson was the first to explain with some precision how moral distinctions can be said to come from reason and how they rest on immediate sense and feeling. His Illustrations upon the Moral Sense explains this so thoroughly and, in my opinion, so convincingly that any continuing dispute must come from either failure to read him carefully or superstitious attachment to familiar phrases. Such attachment is not unusual among scholars. It is especially common in a subject as important as this, where a virtuous person may be reluctant to give up even a single familiar expression that he has always considered correct.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 1

Theories that make sentiment the basis of approval.

Theories that explain approval through sentiment fall into two groups.

I. Some say approval rests on a special kind of feeling, a particular power of perception the mind uses when it sees certain actions or feelings. Some actions or feelings please this faculty and are judged right, praiseworthy, and virtuous. Others displease it and are judged wrong, blameworthy, and vicious. Because they regard this feeling as unlike any other and as the product of a special power of perception, they give it a special name: the moral sense.

II. Others say that explaining approval requires no new power of perception that no one had heard of before. In their view, nature works as economically here as elsewhere. It produces many effects from the same cause. Sympathy is a familiar ability that the mind clearly has, and they think it explains everything attributed to this supposed special faculty.

I. In Inquiry concerning Virtue, Dr. Hutcheson worked hard to prove that approval does not rest on self-love. He also showed that it cannot come from reasoning. He concluded that nature must have given the mind a special faculty to produce this one important effect. Having ruled out self-love and reason, he did not think of any other known mental ability that could serve the purpose.

He called this new power of perception a moral sense and thought it resembled our outward senses. Things around us affect those senses and seem to have qualities such as sound, taste, smell, and color. Likewise, when human feelings affect this special faculty, they seem to have qualities such as lovable or hateful, virtuous or vicious, and right or wrong.

According to this theory, presented in the Treatise of the passions, the senses or powers through which the mind gets all its simple ideas fall into two groups: direct or prior senses, and reflective or subsequent senses. Direct senses let us perceive things without first perceiving anything else. Sound and color, for example, are objects of direct senses. Hearing a sound or seeing a color does not require perceiving another quality or thing first. Reflective senses, in contrast, let us perceive qualities that depend on a prior perception. Harmony and beauty are examples. To hear a sound's harmony or see a color's beauty, we must hear the sound or see the color first. The moral sense was considered this kind of faculty. What Mr. Locke called reflection, the faculty from which he derived our simple ideas of different passions and emotions, was, for Dr. Hutcheson, a direct internal sense. The faculty that then perceived those passions and emotions as beautiful or ugly, virtuous or vicious, was a reflective internal sense.

Dr. Hutcheson further defended this view by arguing that it fits the way nature works. He said the mind has several other reflective senses like the moral sense. These include a sense of beauty and ugliness in things around us; a public sense through which we sympathize with other people's happiness and misery; a sense of shame and honor; and a sense of ridicule.

This clever philosopher tried hard to show that approval rests on a special power of perception resembling the outward senses. Yet he admits that his theory has consequences many people may see as enough to disprove it. As he says in Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, section 1, page 237 and following, Third Edition, we cannot sensibly attribute a quality belonging to the object of a sense to the sense itself. Who calls sight black or white, hearing loud or soft, or taste sweet or bitter? In his view, it would be just as absurd to call our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. Those qualities belong to the objects the faculties perceive, not to the faculties themselves. Suppose someone were so strangely constituted that he approved of cruelty and injustice as the highest virtues and condemned fairness and kindness as the lowest vices. That state of mind might be inconvenient for him and society, and strange, surprising, and unnatural in itself. But on this theory, calling it vicious or morally evil would be absurd.

But suppose we saw someone cheer and applaud a cruel execution ordered without justification by an arrogant tyrant. Surely we could call his conduct vicious and profoundly evil without saying anything absurd. His response might show nothing beyond a corrupted moral faculty: he approves of this horrible act as noble, high-minded, and great. Yet I think that at the sight of this observer, our hearts would briefly forget our sympathy with the victim and feel only horror and hatred for such a dreadful person. We would detest him even more than the tyrant. Strong jealousy, fear, and resentment might have driven the tyrant, giving him at least some excuse. The observer's feelings would seem to have no cause or motive at all, making them wholly hateful. There is no twisted feeling we would resist sharing more strongly, or reject with more hatred and anger. Far from seeing his state of mind as merely strange or inconvenient, rather than vicious or morally evil, we would see it as the final and worst stage of moral corruption.

Right moral feelings, by contrast, naturally look somewhat praiseworthy and morally good. Someone whose praise and criticism always match exactly what people deserve seems to merit moral approval himself. We admire the precision of his moral feelings. They guide our judgments. Their unusual accuracy even makes us marvel and applaud. Of course, we cannot always be sure that his own conduct will match his accurate judgments about others. Virtue requires practiced habits and determination as well as fine judgment, and unfortunately these do not always go together. Yet this way of thinking, even if it has other faults, cannot go together with serious wrongdoing. It is the best foundation on which complete virtue can be built. Many people sincerely mean well and intend to do their duty, yet are unpleasant because their moral feelings are crude.

Perhaps someone will say that approval does not rest on a perceptive power resembling the outward senses, but may still rest on a special feeling that serves this purpose alone. Approval and disapproval, they might say, are feelings or emotions that arise when we see different people and actions. Just as resentment might be called a sense of injury, and gratitude a sense of benefit, these feelings could properly be called a sense of right and wrong, or a moral sense.

### Part VI, Section III, Chapter III, 2

This explanation may avoid the objections to the previous one, but it faces other objections that are just as hard to answer.

First, a particular emotion can vary, but it keeps the general features that identify it. Those shared features are more noticeable than the differences between its particular forms. Anger is one kind of emotion, and we can always recognize its general features more easily than its variations. Anger at a man is somewhat different from anger at a woman, and both differ from anger at a child. The character of each person affects the way anger appears, as a careful observer can see. But the common features of anger stand out in all three cases. We need no especially careful observation to recognize them. Noticing the differences, by contrast, takes close attention. Almost everyone notices the common features; hardly anyone notices the variations. So if approval and disapproval were distinct kinds of emotion, like gratitude and resentment, they should remain recognizable through all their variations. Their shared features should be clear and easy to identify. In fact, the opposite is true. Pay attention to what we feel when we approve or disapprove on different occasions. Often our feelings in one case are entirely different from our feelings in another, with no recognizable feature in common. Our approval of a gentle, sensitive, humane feeling, for example, differs completely from our approval of a grand, daring, and high-minded one. We may fully approve of both. But the first softens our hearts, while the second lifts our spirits. The two feelings these qualities inspire in us do not resemble each other. The theory I have been developing predicts exactly this. The feelings of the people we approve of are opposites in these two cases. Our approval comes from sympathy with those opposite feelings, so what we feel on one occasion cannot resemble what we feel on the other. This could not happen if approval were a unique emotion separate from the feelings we approve of, arising at the sight of those feelings as any other passion arises at the sight of its object. The same applies to disapproval. The horror we feel at cruelty does not resemble our contempt for a lack of spirit. Seeing these two different vices produces two entirely different kinds of disagreement between our feelings and those of the person whose feelings and behavior we consider.

Second, I have already noted that we judge not only other feelings morally good or evil but also approval itself, according to whether it is appropriate. So how, on this theory, do we approve or disapprove of someone else's appropriate or inappropriate approval? I think there is only one reasonable answer. When our neighbor's approval of a third person's conduct matches our own, we approve of our neighbor's approval and consider it morally good to some extent. When it conflicts with our feelings, we disapprove of it and consider it morally bad to some extent. At least in this case, then, moral approval or disapproval consists in the agreement or disagreement between the observer's feelings and those of the person observed. If it does in this case, why not in every case? Why invent a new power of perception to explain these judgments?

I have another objection to every explanation that makes approval depend on a special feeling unlike any other. Providence surely intended this feeling to govern human nature. Why, then, has it attracted so little attention that no language has a name for it? The phrase moral sense was coined only recently and is not yet really part of English. Only in recent years has approval acquired this particular moral meaning. In ordinary language we approve of anything that fully satisfies us: the shape of a building, the design of a machine, or the taste of a meat dish. Conscience does not directly name a moral faculty that approves and disapproves. It assumes such a faculty exists and means our awareness of whether our actions followed or violated its directions. Love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, and many other feelings supposedly governed by this principle have all become important enough to acquire names. Wouldn't it be surprising if their ruler remained so unnoticed that, except for a few philosophers, no one had thought to name it?

According to the theory I have been developing, the feelings we have when we approve of a person or action have four somewhat different sources. First, we sympathize with the person's motives. Second, we share the gratitude of the people helped by the action. Third, we see that the person's behavior fits the general rules that usually guide these two kinds of sympathy. Finally, when we see such actions as part of a pattern of behavior that promotes the happiness of the individual or society, their usefulness gives them beauty, much as it does a well-designed machine. Take any particular case and subtract everything that comes from one of these four sources. I would like to know what remains. I will gladly attribute whatever is left to a moral sense or another special faculty, provided someone can identify precisely what that remainder is. If there were such a special principle as the supposed moral sense, we might expect to feel it separately in some cases. We sometimes feel joy, sorrow, hope, or fear without mixing them with another emotion. But I do not think anyone can even claim a case in which this proposed principle works on its own, without sympathy or dislike, gratitude or resentment, an awareness that an action fits or violates an accepted rule, or our general appreciation of beauty and order in living and nonliving things. I have never heard anyone offer such a case.

II. Another theory, different from the one I have been developing, tries to explain the origin of our moral feelings through sympathy. It locates virtue in usefulness. It says an observer enjoys seeing a quality's usefulness because he sympathizes with the happiness of those affected by it. This sympathy differs both from sharing the actor's motives and from sharing the gratitude of those helped by the actor's actions. It is the same principle by which we approve of a well-designed machine. But a machine cannot be the object of either of those other two kinds of sympathy. I have already discussed this theory in the fourth part of this work.