The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f the unsocial passions.

There is another set of passions, which though

derived from the imagination, yet before we can

enter into them, or regard them as graceful or becoming,

must always be brought down to a pitch

much lower than that to which undisciplined nature

would raise them. These are hatred and resentment,

with all their different modifications.

With regard to all such passions, our sympathy is

divided between the person who feels them and the

person who is the object of them. The interests of

these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy

with the person who feels them would prompt

us to wish for, our fellow-feeling with the other

would lead us to fear. As they are both men, we

are concerned for both, and our fear for what the

one may suffer, damps our resentment for what the

other has suffered. Our sympathy, therefore, with

the man who has received the provocation, necessarily

falls short of the passion which naturally animates

him, not only upon account of those general causes

which render all sympathetic passions inferior to the

original ones, but upon account of that particular

cause which is peculiar to itself, our opposite sympathy

47with another person. Before resentment, therefore,

can become graceful and agreeable, it must

be more humbled and brought down below that

pitch to which it would naturally rise, than almost

any other passion.

Mankind, at the same time, have a very strong

sense of the injuries that are done to another. The

villain, in a tragedy or romance, is as much the object

of our indignation, as the hero is that of our

sympathy and affection. We detest Iago as much

as we esteem Othello; and delight as much in the

punishment of the one, as we are grieved at the distress

of the other. But though mankind have so

strong a fellow-feeling with the injuries that are

done to their brethren, they do not always resent

them the more that the sufferer appears to resent

them. Upon most occasions, the greater his patience,

his mildness, his humanity, provided it does

not appear that he wants spirit, or that fear was the

motive of his forbearance, the higher the resentment

against the person who injured him. The amiableness

of the character exasperates their sense of the

atrocity of the injury.

These passions, however, are regarded as necessary

parts of the character of human nature. A person

becomes contemptible who tamely sits still, and submits

to insults, without attempting either to repel or

to revenge them. We cannot enter into his indifference

and insensibility: we call his behaviour mean-spiritedness,

and are as really provoked by it as by

the insolence of his adversary. Even the mob are

enraged to see any man submit patiently to affronts

and ill usage. They desire to see this insolence resented,

48and resented by the person who suffers from

it. They cry to him with fury, to defend, or to revenge

himself. If his indignation rouses at last,

they heartily applaud, and sympathize with it. It

enlivens their own indignation against his enemy,

whom they rejoice to see him attack in turn, and

are as really gratified by his revenge, provided it is

not immoderate, as if the injury had been done to

themselves.

But though the utility of those passions to the individual,

by rendering it dangerous to insult or injure

him, be acknowledged; and though their utility

to the public, as the guardians of justice, and of the

equality of its administration, be not less considerable,

as shall be shewn hereafter; yet there is still

something disagreeable in the passions themselves,

which makes the appearance of them in other men

the natural object of our aversion. The expression

of anger towards any body present, if it exceeds a

bare intimation that we are sensible of his ill usage,

is regarded not only as an insult to that particular

person, but as a rudeness to the whole company.

Respect for them ought to have restrained us from

giving way to so boisterous and offensive an emotion.

It is the remote effects of these passions which are

agreeable; the immediate effects are mischief to

the person against whom they are directed. But it

is the immediate, and not the remote effects of objects

which render them agreeable or disagreeable

to the imagination. A prison is certainly more

useful to the public than a palace; and the person

who founds the one is generally directed by a much

juster spirit of patriotism, than he who builds the

other. But the immediate effects of a prison, the

49confinement of the wretches shut up in it, are disagreeable;

and the imagination either does not take

time to trace out the remote ones, or sees them at

too great a distance to be much affected by them.

A prison, therefore, will always be a disagreeable

object; and the fitter it is for the purpose for which

it was intended, it will be the more so. A palace,

on the contrary, will always be agreeable; yet its

remote effects may often be inconvenient to the

public. It may serve to promote luxury, and set

the example of the dissolution of manners. Its immediate

effects, however, the conveniency, the pleasure,

and the gaiety of the people who live in it,

being all agreeable, and suggesting to the imagination

a thousand agreeable ideas, that faculty generally

rests upon them, and seldom goes further

in tracing its more distant consequences. Trophies

of the instruments of music or of agriculture, imitated

in painting or in stucco, make a common and

an agreeable ornament of our halls and dining-rooms.

A trophy of the same kind, composed of the instruments

of surgery, of dissecting and amputation-knives,

of saws for cutting the bones, of trepanning

instruments, &c. would be absurd and shocking.

Instruments of surgery, however, are always more

finely polished, and generally more nicely adapted

to the purposes for which they are intended, than

instruments of agriculture. The remote effects of

them too, the health of the patient, is agreeable,

yet as the immediate effect of them is pain and suffering,

the sight of them always displeases us. Instruments

of war are agreeable, though their immediate

effect may seem to be in the same manner pain

and suffering. But then it is the pain and suffering

of our enemies, with whom we have no sympathy.

50With regard to us, they are immediately connected

with the agreeable ideas of courage, victory, and

honour. They are themselves, therefore, supposed

to make one of the noblest parts of dress, and the

imitation of them one of the finest ornaments of

architecture. It is the same case with the qualities

of the mind. The ancient stoics were of opinion,

that as the world was governed by the all-ruling

providence of a wise, powerful, and good God,

every single event ought to be regarded, as making

a necessary part of the plan of the universe, and as

tending to promote the general order and happiness

of the whole: that the vices and follies of mankind,

therefore, made as necessary a part of this plan as

their wisdom or their virtue; and by that eternal

art which educes good from ill, were made to tend

equally to the prosperity and perfection of the great

system of nature. No speculation of this kind,

however, how deeply soever it might be rooted in

the mind, could diminish our natural abhorrence for

vice, whose immediate effects are so destructive, and

whose remote ones are too distant to be traced by

the imagination.

It is the same case with those passions we have

been just now considering. Their immediate effects

are so disagreeable, that even when they are most

justly provoked, there is still something about them

which disgusts us. These, therefore, are the only

passions of which the expressions, as I formerly observed,

do not dispose and prepare us to sympathize

with them, before we are informed of the cause

which excites them. The plaintive voice of misery,

when heard at a distance, will not allow us to be

indifferent about the person from whom it comes.

51As soon as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his fortune,

and, if continued, forces us almost involuntarily

to fly to his assistance. The sight of a smiling

countenance, in the same manner, elevates even the

pensive into that gay and airy mood, which disposes

him to sympathize with, and share the joy which it

expresses; and he feels his heart, which with thought

and care was before that shrunk and depressed, instantly

expanded and elated. But it is quite otherwise

with the expressions of hatred and resentment.

The hoarse, boisterous, and discordant voice of

anger, when heard at a distance, inspires us either

with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards it,

as to one who cries out with pain and agony. Women,

and men of weak nerves, tremble and are

overcome with fear, though sensible that themselves

are not the objects of the anger. They conceive

fear, however, by putting themselves in the situation

of the person who is so. Even those of stouter

hearts are disturbed; not indeed enough to make

them afraid, but enough to make them angry; for

anger is the passion which they would feel in the situation

of the other person. It is the same case with

hatred. Mere expressions of spite inspire it against

no body, but the man who uses them. Both these

passions are by nature the objects of our aversion.

Their disagreeable and boisterous appearance never

excites, never prepares, and often disturbs our sympathy.

Grief does not more powerfully engage

and attract us to the person in whom we observe it,

than these, while we are ignorant of their cause,

disgust and detach us from him. It was, it seems,

the intention of Nature, that those rougher and more

unamiable emotions, which drive men from one

another, should be less easily and more rarely communicated.

52When music imitates the modulations of grief or

joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions,

or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to

conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of

anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love,

admiration, devotion, are all of them passions which

are naturally musical. Their natural tones are all

soft, clear, and melodious; and they naturally express

themselves in periods which are distinguished

by regular pauses, and which upon that account are

easily adapted to the regular returns of the correspondent

airs of a tune. The voice of anger, on the

contrary, and of all the passions which are akin to

it, is harsh and discordant. It periods too are all

irregular, sometimes very long, and sometimes

very short, and distinguished by no regular pauses.

It is with difficulty, therefore, that music can imitate

any of those passions; and the music which does

imitate them is not the most agreeable. A whole

entertainment may consist, without any impropriety,

of the imitation of the social and agreeable passions.

It would be a strange entertainment which consisted

altogether of the imitations of hatred and resentment.

If those passions are disagreeable to the spectator,

they are not less so to the person who feels them.

Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the

happiness of a good mind. There is, in the very

feeling of those passions, something harsh, jarring,

and convulsive, something that tears and distracts

the breast, and is altogether destructive of that composure

and tranquillity of mind which is so necessary

to happiness, and which is best promoted by the

53contrary passions of gratitude and love. It is not

the value of what they lose by the perfidy and ingratitude

of those they live with, which the generous

and humane are most apt to regret. Whatever

they may have lost, they can generally be very

happy without it. What most disturbs them is the

idea of perfidy and ingratitude exercised towards

themselves; and the discordant and disagreeable

passions which this excites, constitutes, in their own

opinion, the chief part of the injury which they

suffer.

How many things are requisite to render the

gratification of resentment compleatly agreeable,

and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathize

with our revenge? The provocation must first of

all be such that we should become contemptible, and

be exposed to perpetual insults, if we did not, in

some measure, resent it. Smaller offences are always

better neglected; nor is there any thing more

despicable than that froward and captious humour

which takes fire upon every slight occasion of quarrel.

We should resent more from a sense of the

propriety of resentment, from a sense that mankind

expect and require it of us, than because we feel

in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable passion.

There is no passion, of which the human mind is

capable, concerning whose justness we ought to be

so doubtful, concerning whose indulgence we ought

so carefully to consult our natural sense of propriety,

or so diligently to consider what will be the sentiments

of the impartial spectator. Magnanimity, or

a regard to maintain our own rank and dignity in

society, is the only motive which can ennoble the

expressions of this disagreeable passion. This motive

54must characterize our whole stile and deportment.

These must be plain, open, and direct;

determined without positiveness, and elevated without

insolence; not only free from petulance and

low scurrility, but generous, candid, and full of all

proper regards, even for the person who has offended

us. It must appear, in short, from our whole

manner, without our labouring affectedly to express

it, that passion has not extinguished our humanity;

and that if we yield to the dictates of revenge, it is

with reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence

of great and repeated provocations. When resentment

is guarded and qualified in this manner, it may

be admitted to be even generous and noble.