2.1.3. Chap. 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 sirname 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 nobody 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.