The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f the social passions.

As it is a divided sympathy which renders the

whole set of passions just now mentioned, upon

most occasions, so ungraceful and disagreeable; so

there is another set opposite to these, which a redoubled

sympathy renders almost always peculiarly

agreeable and becoming. Generosity, humanity,

kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem,

all the social and benevolent affections, when expressed

in the countenance or behaviour, even towards

55those who are peculiarly connected with ourselves,

please the indifferent spectator upon almost

every occasion. His sympathy with the person who

feels those passions, exactly coincides with his concern

for the person who is the object of them. The

interest, which, as a man, he is obliged to take in

the happiness of this last, enlivens his fellow-feeling

with the sentiments of the other, whose emotions are

employed about the same object. We have always,

therefore, the strongest disposition to sympathize

with the benevolent affections. They appear in

every respect agreeable to us. We enter into the

satisfaction both of the person who feels them, and

of the person who is the object of them. For as

to be the object of hatred and indignation gives more

pain than all the evils which a brave man can fear

from his enemies; so there is a satisfaction in the

consciousness of being beloved, which, to a person

of delicacy and sensibility, is of more importance

to happiness than all the advantage which he can

expect to derive from it. What character is so detectable

as that of one who takes pleasure to sow

dissension among friends, and to turn their most tender

love into mortal hatred? Yet wherein does the

atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist?

Is it in depriving them of the frivolous good offices,

which had their friendship continued, they might

have expected from one another? It is in depriving

them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of

each others affections, from which both derived so

much satisfaction; it is in disturbing the harmony of

their hearts, and putting an end to that happy commerce

which had before subsisted between them.

These affections, that harmony, this commerce, are

felt, not only by the tender and the delicate, but by

56the rudest vulgar of mankind, to be of more importance

to happiness than all the little services which

could be expected to flow from them.

The sentiment of love is, in itself, agreeable to

the person who feels it. It sooths and composes

the breast, seems to favour the vital motions, and

to promote the healthful state of the human constitution;

and it is rendered still more delightful by

the consciousness of the gratitude and satisfaction

which it must excite in him who is the object of it.

Their mutual regard renders them happy in one

another, and sympathy, with this mutual regard,

makes them agreeable to every other person. With

what pleasure do we look upon a family, through

the whole of which reign mutual love and esteem,

where the parents and children are companions for

one another, without any other difference than what

is made by respectful affection on the one side, and

kind indulgence on the other; where freedom and

fondness, mutual raillery, and mutual kindness,

show that no opposition of interest divides the brothers,

nor any rivalship of favour sets the sisters at

variance, and where every thing presents us with

the idea of peace, chearfulness, harmony, and contentment?

On the contrary, how uneasy are we

made when we go into a house in which jarring

contention sets one half of those who dwell in it

against the other; where amidst affected smoothness

and complaisance, suspicious looks and sudden

starts of passion betray the mutual jealousies which

burn within them, and which are every moment

ready to burst out through all the restraints which

the presence of the company imposes?

57Those amiable passions, even when they are acknowledged

to be excessive, are never regarded with

aversion. There is something agreeable even in the

weakness of friendship and humanity. The too

tender mother, the too indulgent father, the too generous

and affectionate friend, may sometimes, perhaps,

on account of the softness of their natures, be

looked upon with a species of pity, in which, however,

there is a mixture of love, but can never be

regarded with hatred and aversion, nor even with

contempt, unless by the most brutal and worthless

of mankind: It is always with concern, with sympathy

and kindness, that we blame them for the extravagance

of their attachment. There is a helplessness

in the character of extreme humanity which

more than any thing interests our pity. There is

nothing in itself which renders it either ungraceful

or disagreeable. We only regret that it is unfit for

the world, because the world is unworthy of it, and

because it must expose the person who is endowed

with it as a prey to the perfidy and ingratitude of

insinuating falsehood, and to a thousand pains and

uneasinesses, which, of all men, he the least deserves

to feel, and which generally too he is, of all

men, the least capable of supporting. It is quite

otherwise with hatred and resentment. Too violent

a propensity to those detestable passions, renders a

person the object of universal dread and abhorrence,

who, like a wild beast, ought, we think, to be hunted

out of all civil society.

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