1.3.3. Chap. III
Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by
this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise
or neglect persons of poor and mean condition
This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich
and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect
persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to
establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order
of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal
cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and
greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration
which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt,
of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often
most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the
complaint of moralists in all ages.
We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We
dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon
coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by
no means the sole objects of respect; nor vice and folly, of
contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the
world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than
towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices
and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty
and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to
enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great
objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are
presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so
much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the
practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and
greatness. Two different characters are presented to our
emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity.
the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice. Two different
models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to
which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one
more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more
correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one
forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other,
attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious
and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly,
a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the
real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of
mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more
extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and
worshippers, of wealth and greatness.
The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt,
different from that which we conceive for wealth and greatness;
and it requires no very nice discernment to distinguish the
difference. But, notwithstanding this difference, those
sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another.
In some particular features they are, no doubt, different, but,
in the general air of the countenance, they seem to be so very
nearly the same, that inattentive observers are very apt to
mistake the one for the other.
In equal degrees of merit there is scarce any man who does
not respect more the rich and the great, than the poor and the
humble. With most men the presumption and vanity of the former
are much more admired, than the real and solid merit of the
latter. It is scarce agreeable to good morals, or even to good
language, perhaps, to say, that mere wealth and greatness,
abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect. We must
acknowledge, however, that they almost constantly obtain it; and
that they may, therefore, be considered as, in some respects, the
natural objects of it. Those exalted stations may, no doubt, be
completely degraded by vice and folly. But the vice and folly
must be very great, before they can operate this complete
degradation. The profligacy of a man of fashion is looked upon
with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of
meaner condition. In the latter, a single transgression of the
rules of temperance and propriety, is commonly more resented,
than the constant and avowed contempt of them ever is in the
former.
In the middling and inferior stations of life, the road to
virtue and that to fortune, to such fortune, at least, as men in
such stations can reasonably expect to acquire, are, happily in
most cases, very nearly the same. In all the middling and
inferior professions, real and solid professional abilities,
joined to prudent, just, firm, and temperate conduct, can very
seldom fail of success. Abilities will even sometimes prevail
where the conduct is by no means correct. Either habitual
imprudence, however, or injustice, or weakness, or profligacy,
will always clouD, and sometimes Depress altogether, the most
splendid professional abilities. Men in the inferior and middling
stations of life, besides, can never be great enough to be above
the law, which must generally overawe them into some sort of
respect for, at least, the more important rules of justice. The
success of such people, too, almost always depends upon the
favour and good opinion of their neighbours and equals; and
without a tolerably regular conduct these can very seldom be
obtained. The good old proverb, therefore, That honesty is the
best policy, holds, in such situations, almost always perfectly
true. In such situations, therefore, we may generally expect a
considerable degree of virtue; and, fortunately for the good
morals of society, these are the situations of by far the greater
part of mankind.
In the superior stations of life the case is unhappily not
always the same. In the courts of princes, in the drawing-rooms
of the great, where success and preferment depend, not upon the
esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the
fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud
superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit
and abilities. In such societies the abilities to please, are
more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable
times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince, or great man,
wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has
scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those
who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The external
graces, the frivolous accomplishments of that impertinent and
foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired
than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a
philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awful virtues,
all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the
senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant
flatterers, who commonly figure the most in such corrupted
societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision. When the
duke of Sully was called upon by Lewis the Thirteenth, to give
his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favourites
and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his
unfashionable appearance. 'Whenever your majesty's father,' said
the old warrior and statesman, 'did me the honour to consult me,
he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the
antechamber.'
It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to
imitate, the rich and the great, that they are enabled to set, or
to lead what is called the fashion. Their dress is the
fashionable dress; the language of their conversation, the
fashionable style; their air and deportment, the fashionable
behaviour. Even their vices and follies are fashionable; and the
greater part of men are proud to imitate and resemble them in the
very qualities which dishonour and degrade them. Vain men often
give themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which, in their
hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are
really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they
themselves do not think praise-worthy, and are ashamed of
unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practise in secret,
and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration.
There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of
religion and virtue; and a vain man is as apt to pretend to be
what he is not, in the one way, as a cunning man is in the other.
He assumes the equipage and splendid way of living of his
superiors, without considering that whatever may be praise-worthy
in any of these, derives its whole merit and propriety from its
suitableness to that situation and fortune which both require and
can easily support the expence. Many a poor man places his glory
in being thought rich, without considering that the duties (if
one may call such follies by so very venerable a name) which that
reputation imposes upon him, must soon reduce him to beggary, and
render his situation still more unlike that of those whom he
admires and imitates, than it had been originally.
To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for
fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for
unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads
to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the
ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to
which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the
respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act
with such superior propriety and grace, that the lustre of his
future conduct will entirely cover, or efface, the foulness of
the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many
governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the
law; and, if they can attain the object of their ambition, they
have no fear of being called to account for the means by which
they acquired it. They often endeavour, therefore, not only by
fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and
cabal; but sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous
crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war,
to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of
their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed; and
commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due
to their crimes. But, though they should be so lucky as to attain
that wished-for greatness, they are always most miserably
disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy in it.
It is not ease or pleasure, but always honour, of one kind or
another, though frequently an honour very ill understood, that
the ambitious man really pursues. But the honour of his exalted
station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other
people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through
which he rose to it. Though by the profusion of every liberal
expence; though by excessive indulgence in every profligate
pleasure, the wretched, but usual, resource of ruined characters;
though by the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and
more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavour to efface, both
from his own memory and from that of other people, the
remembrance of what he has done; that remembrance never fails to
pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and dismal powers of
forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has
done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must
likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most
ostentatious greatness; amidst the venal and vile adulation of
the great and of the learned; amidst the more innocent, though
more foolish, acclamations of the common people; amidst all the
pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still
secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse;
and, while glory seems to surround him on all sides, he himself,
in his own imagination, sees black and foul infamy fast pursuing
him, and every moment ready to overtake him from behind. Even the
great Caesar, though he had the magnanimity to dismiss his
guards, could not dismiss his suspicions. The remembrance of
Pharsalia still haunted and pursued him. When, at the request of
the senate, he had the generosity to pardon Marcellus, he told
that assembly, that he was not unaware of the designs which were
carrying on against his life; but that, as he had lived long
enough both for nature and for glory, he was contented to die,
and therefore despised all conspiracies. He had, perhaps, lived
long enough for nature. But the man who felt himself the object
of such deadly resentment, from those whose favour he wished to
gain, and whom he still wished to consider as his friends, had
certainly lived too long for real glory; or for all the happiness
which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem of his
equals.