3.1.4. Chap. IV
Of the Nature of Self-deceit, and of the Origin and Use of
general Rules
In order to pervert the rectitude of our own judgments
concerning the propriety of our own conduct, it is not always
necessary that the real and impartial spectator should be at a
great distance. When he is at hand, when he is present, the
violence and injustice of our own selfish passions are sometimes
sufficient to induce the man within the breast to make a report
very different from what the real circumstances of the case are
capable of authorising.
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 apt to be
very partial in both cases; but they are apt to be most partial
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 the
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. The man of to-day is no longer agitated by the same
passions which distracted the man of yesterday: and when the
paroxysm of emotion, in the same manner as when the paroxysm of
distress, is fairly over, we can identify ourselves, as it were,
with the ideal man within the breast, and, in our own character,
view, as in the one case, our own situation, so in the other, our
own conduct, with the severe eVes of the most impartial
spectator. But our judgments now are often of little importance
in comparison of what they were before; and can frequently
produce nothing but vain regret and unavailing repentance;
without always securing us from the like errors in time to come.
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 judgments 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 for the person who
performs them, the love, the respect, or the horror of the
spectator. 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
the 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.
