2.1.5. Chap. V
The analysis of the sense of Merit and Demerit
1. As our sense, therefore, of the propriety of conduct
arises from what I shall call a direct sympathy with the
affections and motives of the person who acts, so our sense of
its merit arises from what I shall call an indirect sympathy with
the gratitude of the person who is, if I may say so, acted upon.
As we cannot indeed enter thoroughly into the gratitude of
the person who receives the benefit, unless we beforehand approve
of the motives of the benefactor, so, upon this account, the
sense of merit seems to be a compounded sentiment, and to be made
up of two distinct emotions; a direct sympathy with the
sentiments of the agent, and an indirect sympathy with the
gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions.
We may, upon many different occasions, plainly distinguish
those two different emotions combining and uniting together in
our sense of the good desert of a particular character or action.
When we read in history concerning actions of proper and
beneficent greatness of mind, how eagerly do we enter into such
designs? How much are we animated by that high-spirited
generosity which directs them? How keen are we for their success?
How grieved at their disappointment? In imagination we become the
very person whose actions are represented to us: we transport
ourselves in fancy to the scenes of those distant and forgotten
adventures, and imagine ourselves acting the part of a Scipio or
a Camillus, a Timoleon or an Aristides. So far our sentiments are
founded upon the direct sympathy with the person who acts. Nor is
the indirect sympathy with those who receive the benefit of such
actions less sensibly felt. Whenever we place ourselves in the
situation of these last, with what warm and affectionate
fellow-feeling do we enter into their gratitude towards those who
served them so essentially? We embrace, as it were, their
benefactor along with them. Our heart readily sympathizes with
the highest transports of their grateful affection. No honours,
no rewards, we think, can be too great for them to bestow upon
him. When they make this proper return for his services, we
heartily applaud and go along with them; but are shocked beyond
all measure, if by their conduct they appear to have little sense
of the obligations conferred upon them. Our whole sense, in
short, of the merit and good desert of such actions, of the
propriety and fitness of recompensing them, and making the person
who performed them rejoice in his turn, arises from the
sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love, with which, when we
bring home to our own breast the situation of those principally
concerned, we feel ourselves naturally transported towards the
man who could act with such proper and noble beneficence.
2. In the same manner as our sense of the impropriety of
conduct arises from a want of sympathy, or from a direct
antipathy to the affections and motives of the agent, so our
sense of its demerit arises from what I shall here too call an
indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer.
As we cannot indeed enter into the resentment of the
sufferer, unless our heart beforehand disapproves the motives of
the agent, and renounces all fellow-feeling with them; so upon
this account the sense of demerit, as well as that of merit,
seems to be a compounded sentiment, and to be made up of two
distinct emotions; a direct antipathy to the sentiments of the
agent, and an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the
sufferer.
We may here too, upon many different occasions, plainly
distinguish those two different emotions combining and uniting
together in our sense of the ill desert of a particular character
or action. When we read in history concerning the perfidy and
cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, our heart rises up against the
detestable sentiments which influenced their conduct, and
renounces with horror and abomination all fellow-feeling with
such execrable motives. So far our sentiments are founded upon
the direct antipathy to the affections of the agent: and the
indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferers is still
more sensibly felt. When we bring home to ourselves the situation
of the persons whom those scourges of mankind insulted, murdered,
or betrayed, what indignation do we not feel against such
insolent and inhuman oppressors of the earth? Our sympathy with
the unavoidable distress of the innocent sufferers is not more
real nor more lively, than our fellow-feeling with their just and
natural resentment: The former sentiment only heightens the
latter, and the idea of their distress serves only to inflame and
blow up our animosity against those who occasioned it. When we
think of the anguish of the sufferers, we take part with them
more earnestly against their oppressors; we enter with more
eagerness into all their schemes of vengeance, and feel ourselves
every moment wreaking, in imagination, upon such violators of the
laws of society, that punishment which our sympathetic
indignation tells us is due to their crimes. Our sense of the
horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight which
we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation
which we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, our whole
sense and feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety
and fitness of inflicting evil upon the person who is guilty of
it, and of making him grieve in his turn, arises from the
sympathetic indignation which naturally boils up in the breast of
the spectator, whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the
case of the sufferer.[1]
[_]
1. To ascribe in this manner our natural sense of the
ill desert of human actions to a sympathy with the resentment of the
sufferer, may seem, to the greater part of people, to be a
degradation of that sentiment. Resentment is commonly regarded as
so odious a passion, that they will be apt to think it impossible
that so laudable a principle, as the sense of the ill desert of
vice, should in any respect be founded upon it. They will be more
willing, perhaps, to admit that our sense of the merit of good
actions is founded upon a sympathy with the gratitude of the
persons who receive the benefit of them; because gratitude, as
well as all the other benevolent passions, is regarded as an
amiable principle, which can take nothing from the worth of
whatever is founded upon it. Gratitude and resentment, however,
are in every respect, it is evident, counterparts to one another;
and if our sense of merit arises from a sympathy with the one,
our sense of demerit can scarce miss to proceed from a
fellow-feeling with the other.
Let it be considered too that resentment, though, in the
degrees in which we too often see it, the most odious, perhaps,
of all the passions, is not disapproved of when properly humbled
and entirely brought down to the level of the sympathetic
indignation of the spectator. When we, who are the bystanders,
feel that our own animosity entirely corresponds with that of the
sufferer, when the resentment of this last does not in any
respect go beyond our own, when no word, no gesture, escapes him
that denotes an emotion more violent than what we can keep time
to, and when he never aims at inflicting any punishment beyond
what we should rejoice to see inflicted, or what we ourselves
would upon this account even desire to be the instruments of
inflicting, it is impossible that we should not entirely approve
of his sentiments. Our own emotion in this case must, in our
eyes, undoubtedly justify his. And as experience teaches us how
much the greater part of mankind are incapable of this
moderation, and how great an effort must be made in order to
bring down the rude and undisciplined impulse of resentment to
this suitable temper, we cannot avoid conceiving a considerable
degree of esteem and admiration for one who appears capable of
exerting so much self-command over one of the most ungovernable
passions of his nature. When indeed the animosity of the sufferer
exceeds, as it almost always does, what we can go along with, as
we cannot enter into it, we necessarily disapprove of it. We even
disapprove of it more than we should of an equal excess of almost
any other passion derived from the imagination. And this too
violent resentment, instead of carrying us along with it, becomes
itself the object of our resentment and indignation. We enter
into the opposite resentment of the person who is the object of
this unjust emotion, and who is in danger of suffering from it.
Revenge, therefore, the excess of resentment, appears to be the
most detestable of all the passions, and is the object of the
horror and indignation of every body. And as in the way in which
this passion commonly discovers itself among mankind, it is
excessive a hundred times for once that it is moderate, we are
very apt to consider it as altogether odious and detestable,
because in its most ordinary appearances it is so. Nature,
however, even in the present depraved state of mankind, does not
seem to have dealt so unkindly with us, as to have endowed us
with any principle which is wholly and in every respect evil, or
which, in no degree and in no direction, can be the proper object
of praise and approbation. Upon some occasions we are sensible
that this passion, which is generally too strong, may likewise be
too weak. We sometimes complain that a particular person shows
too little spirit, and has too little sense of the injuries that
have been done to him; and we are as ready to despise him for the
defect, as to hate him for the excess of this passion.
The inspired writers would not surely have talked so
frequently or so strongly of the wrath and anger of God, if they
had regarded every degree of those passions as vicious and evil,
even in so weak and imperfect a creature as man.
Let it be considered too, that the present inquiry is not
concerning a matter of right, if I may say so, but concerning a
matter of fact. We are not at present examining upon what
principles a perfect being would approve of the punishment of bad
actions; but upon what principles so weak and imperfect a
creature as man actually and in fact approves of it. The
principles which I have just now mentioned, it is evident, have a
very great effect upon his sentiments; and it seems wisely
ordered that it should be so. The very existence of society
requires that unmerited and unprovoked malice should be
restrained by proper punishments; and consequently, that to
inflict those punishments should be regarded as a proper and
laudable action. Though man, therefore, be naturally endowed with
a desire of the welfare and preservation of society, yet the
Author of nature has not entrusted it to his reason to find out
that a certain application of punishments is the proper means of
attaining this end; but has endowed him with an immediate and
instinctive approbation of that very application which is most
proper to attain it. The oeconomy of nature is in this respect
exactly of a piece with what it is upon many other occasions.
With regard to all those ends which, upon account of their
peculiar importance, may be regarded, if such an expression is
allowable, as the favourite ends of nature, she has constantly in
this manner not only endowed mankind with an appetite for the end
which she proposes, but likewise with an appetite for the means
by which alone this end can be brought about, for their own
sakes, and independent of their tendency to produce it. Thus
self-preservation, and the propagation of the species, are the
great ends which Nature seems to have proposed in the formation
of all animals. Mankind are endowed with a desire of those ends,
and an aversion to the contrary; with a love of life, and a dread
of dissolution; with a desire of the continuance and perpetuity
of the species, and with an aversion to the thoughts of its
intire extinction. But though we are in this manner endowed with
a very strong desire of those ends, it has not been intrusted to
the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason, to find outthe
proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us
to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts.
Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love
of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those
means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their
tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of
nature intended to produce by them.
Before I conclude this note, I must take notice of a difference
between the approbation of propriety and that of merit or
beneficence. Before we approve of the sentiments of any person as
proper and suitable to their objects, we must not only be
affected in the same manner as he is, but we must perceive this
harmony and correspondence of sentiments between him and
ourselves. Thus, though upon hearing of a misfortune that had
befallen my friend, I should conceive precisely that degree of
concern which he gives way to; yet till I am informed of the
manner in which he behaves, till I perceive the harmony between
his emotions and mine, I cannot be said to approve of the
sentiments which influence his behaviour. The approbation of
propriety therefore requires, not only that we should entirely
sympathize with the person who acts, but that we should perceive
this perfect concord between his sentiments and our own. On the
contrary, when I hear of a benefit that has been bestowed upon
another person, let him who has received it be affected in what
manner he pleases, if, by bringing his case home to myself, I
feel gratitude arise in my own breast, I necessarily approve of
the conduct of his benefactor, and regard it as meritorious, and
the proper object of reward. Whether the person who has received
the benefit conceives gratitude or not, cannot, it is evident, in
any degree alter our sentiments with regard to the merit of him
who has bestowed it. No actual correspondence of sentiments, therefore,
is here required. It is sufficient that if he was
grateful, they would correspond; and our sense of merit is often
founded upon one of those illusive sympathies, by which, when we
bring home to ourselves the case of another, we are often
affected in a manner in which the person principally concerned is
incapable of being affected. There is a similar difference
between our disapprobation of demerit, and that of
impropriety.