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.

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.