The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f the selfish passions.

Besides those two opposite sets of passions,

the social and unsocial, there is another which holds

a sort of middle place between them; is never either

so graceful as is sometimes the one set, nor is ever

so odious as is sometimes the other. Grief and

joy, when conceived upon account of our own private

good or bad fortune, constitute this third set of

passions. Even when excessive, they are never so

disagreeable as excessive resentment, because no opposite

sympathy can ever interest us against them:

and when most suitable to their objects they are never

so agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence;

because no double sympathy can ever

interest us for them. There is, however, this difference

between grief and joy, that we are generally

most disposed to sympathize with small joys and great

sorrows. The man, who, by some sudden revolution

of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition

of life, greatly above what he had formerly lived

in, may be assured that the congratulations of his

best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere.

An upstart, though of the greatest merit, is generally

disagreeable, and a sentiment of envy commonly

prevents us from heartily sympathizing with

his joy. If he has any judgment he is sensible of

59this, and instead of appearing to be elated with his

good fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can,

to smother his joy, and keep down that elevation of

mind with which his new circumstances naturally inspire

him. He affects the same plainness of dress,

and the same modesty of behaviour, which became

him in his former station. He redoubles his attention

to his old friends, and endeavours more than

ever to be humble, assiduous, and complaisant. And

this is the behaviour which in his situation we most

approve of; because we expect, it seems, that he

should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion

to his happiness, than we have with his happiness.

It is seldom that with all this he succeeds.

We suspect the sincerity of his humility, and he

grows weary of this constraint. In a little time,

therefore, he generally leaves all his old friends behind

him, some of the meanest of them excepted,

who may, perhaps, condescend to become his dependents:

nor does he always acquire any new ones;

the pride of his new connections is as much affronted

at finding him their equal, as that of his old ones

had been by his becoming their superior: and it requires

the most obstinate and persevering modesty

to atone for this mortification to either. He generally

grows weary too soon, and is provoked, by

the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by

the saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first

with neglect, and the second with petulance, till at

last he grows habitually insolent, and forfeits the

esteem of all. If the chief part of human happiness

arises from the consciousness of being beloved,

as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune

seldom contribute much to happiness. He is

happiest who advances more gradually to greatness,

60whom the public destines to every step of his preferment

long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon

that account, when it comes, it can excite no extravagant

joy, and with regard to whom it cannot

reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes,

or any envy in those he leaves behind.

Mankind, however, more readily sympathize

with those smaller joys which flow from less important

causes. It is decent to be humble amidst great

prosperity; but we can scarce express too much satisfaction

in all the little occurrences of common

life, in the company with which we spent the evening

last night, in the entertainment that was set before

us, in what was said and what was done, in

all the little incidents of the present conversation,

and in all those frivolous nothings which fill up the

void of human life. Nothing is more graceful than

habitual chearfulness, which is always founded upon

a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which

common occurrences afford. We readily sympathize

with it: it inspires us with the same joy, and

makes every trifle turn up to us in the same agreeable

aspect in which it presents itself to the person

endowed with this happy disposition. Hence it is

that youth, the season of gaiety, so easily engages

our affections. That propensity to joy which seems

even to animate the bloom, and to sparkle from the

eyes of youth and beauty, though in a person of

the same sex, exalts, even the aged, to a more

joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a

time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to

those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they

have long been strangers, but which, when the presence

61of so much happiness recalls them to their

breast, take their place there, like old acquaintance,

from whom they are sorry to have ever been parted,

and whom they embrace more heartily upon account

of this long separation.

It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexations

excite no sympathy, but deep affliction calls forth

the greatest. The man who is made uneasy by every

little disagreeable incident, who is hurt if either

the cook or the butler have failed in the least article

of their duty, who feels every defect in the highest

ceremonial of politeness, whether it be shewn to

himself or to any other person, who takes it amiss

that his intimate friend did not bid him good-morrow

when they met in the forenoon, and that his

brother hummed a tune all the time he himself was

telling a story; who is put out of humour by the

badness of the weather when in the country, by the

badness of the roads when upon a journey, and by

the want of company, and dullness of all public

diversions when in town; such a person, I say,

though he should have some reason, will seldom

meet with much sympathy. Joy is a pleasant emotion,

and we gladly abandon ourselves to it upon

the slightest occasion. We readily, therefore, sympathize

with it in others, whenever we are not prejudiced

by envy. But grief is painful, and the

mind, even when it is our own misfortune, naturally

resists and recoils from it. We would endeavour

either not to conceive it at all, or to shake it

off as soon as we have conceived it. Our aversion

to grief will not, indeed, always hinder us from

conceiving it in our own case upon very trifling occasions,

62but it constantly prevents us from sympathizing

with it in others when excited by the like

frivolous causes: for our sympathetic passions are

always less irresistible than our original ones. There

is, besides, a malice in mankind, which not only

prevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses, but

renders them in some measure diverting. Hence

the delight which we all take in raillery, and in the

small vexation which we observe in our companion,

when he is pushed, and urged, and teased

upon all sides. Men of the most ordinary good-breeding

dissemble the pain which any little incident

may give them; and those who are more thoroughly

formed to society, turn, of their own accord,

all such incidents into raillery, as they know

their companions will do for them. The habit

which a man, who lives in the world, has acquired

of considering how every thing that concerns himself

will appear to others, makes those frivolous calamities

turn up in the same ridiculous light to him,

in which he knows they will certainly be considered

by them.

Our sympathy, on the contrary, with deep distress,

is very strong and very sincere. It is unnecessary

to give an instance. We weep even at the

feigned representation of a tragedy. If you labour,

therefore, under any signal calamity, if by

some extraordinary misfortune you are fallen into

poverty, into diseases, into disgrace and disappointment;

even though your own fault may have been,

in part, the occasion, yet you may generally depend

upon the sincerest sympathy of all your

friends, and, as far as interest and honour will permit,

63upon their kindest assistance too. But if your

misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have

only been a little baulked in your ambition, if you

have only been jilted by your mistress, or are only

hen-pecked by your wife, lay your account with

the raillery of all your acquaintance.

64

SECTION III.

Of the effects of prosperity and adversity upon the judgment of mankind with regard to the propriety of action; and why it is more easy to obtain their approbation in the one state than in the other.