1.2.4. Chap. IV
Of the social Passions
As it is a divided sympathy which renders the whole set of
passions just now mentioned, upon most occasions, so ungraceful
and disagreeable; so there is another set opposite to these,
which a redoubled sympathy renders almost always peculiarly
agreeable and becoming. Generosity, humanity, kindness,
compassion, mutual friendship and esteem, all the social and
benevolent affections, when expressed in the countenance or
behaviour, even towards those who are not 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
evil 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 detestable 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
other's 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, cheerfulness, 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.