Observations on Man (6th edition)/Part I/Chapter IV/Section IV
Section IV[edit]
THE PLEASURES AND PAINS OF SYMPATHY.
The sympathetic affections may be distinguished into four classes, viz.
First, Those by which we rejoice at the happiness of others.
Secondly, Those by which we grieve for their misery.
Thirdly, Those by which we rejoice at their misery.
And Fourthly, Those by which we grieve for their happiness.
Of the first kind are sociality, good-will, generosity, and gratitude. Of the second, compassion and mercy. Of the third, moroseness, anger, revenge, jealousy, cruelty, and malice. And of the fourth, emulation and envy.
It is easy to be conceived, that associations should produce affections of all these four kinds, since in the intercourses of life the pleasures and pains of one are, in various ways, intermixed with, and dependent upon, those of others, so as to have clusters of their miniatures excited, in all the possible ways in which the happiness or misery of one can be combined with the happiness or misery of another; i.e. in the four above-mentioned. I will now enter upon the detail of the rise and progress of each of them.
The first of these is sociality, or the pleasure we take in the mere company and conversation of others, particularly of our friends and acquaintance, and which is attended with mutual affability, complaisance, and candour. Now most of the pleasures which children receive are conferred upon them by others, their parents, attendants, or play-fellows. And the number of the pleasures which they receive in this way, is far greater than that of the pains brought upon them by others. Indeed the hurts, and bodily injuries, which they meet with, are chiefly from themselves; and the denials of gratifications are either very few in number, or, if they be more frequent, give little uneasiness. It appears therefore, that, according to the doctrine of association, children ought to be pleased, in general, with the sight and company of all their acquaintance. And the same things, with some alterations, hold in respect of adults, through the whole course and general tenor of human life.
Besides the pleasures for which we are indebted to others, there are many which we enjoy in common with others, and in their company and conversation, and which therefore both enhance, and are enhanced by, the gaiety and happiness that appear in the countenances, gestures, words, and actions, of the whole company. Of this kind are the pleasures of feasting, sports and pastimes, rural scenes, polite arts, mirth, raillery, and ridicule, public shows, public rejoicings, &c. And in general it may be observed, that the causes of joy and grief are common to great numbers, affecting mankind according to the several divisions and subdivisions thereof into nations, ranks, offices, ages, sexes, families, &c. And by all these things it comes to pass, that the face of an old acquaintance brings to view, as it were, the indistinct mixed recollection, the remaining vestiges of all the good and evil which we have felt, while his idea has been present with us.
The same observation may be made upon places; and particularly upon those where a man has spent his infancy and youth.
To all this it is to be added, that the rules of prudence, good manners, and religion, by restraining all rusticity, moroseness, and insolence, and obliging us to actions of a contrary nature, even though we have not the proper internal feelings, do by degrees contribute to beget these in us, i.e. to beget sociality and complaisance; just in the same manner, as a person in a passion becomes much more inflamed from his own angry expressions, gestures, and actions.
Good-will, or benevolence, when understood in a limited sense, may be termed that pleasing affection which engages us to promote the welfare of others to the best of our power. If it carry us so far as to forego great pleasures, or endure great pains, it is called generosity. But good-will and benevolence, in a general sense, are put for all the sympathetic affections of the first and second class, viz. those by which we either rejoice in, and promote, the happiness of others, or grieve for, and endeavour to remove, their misery; as ill-will and malevolence, understood in a general sense also, are put for the contrary affections, viz. those of the third and fourth class.
Benevolence, in the limited sense, is nearly connected with sociality, and has the same sources. It has also a high degree of honour and esteem annexed to it, procures us many advantages, and returns of kindness, both from the person obliged, and others; and is most closely connected with the hope of reward in a future state, and with the pleasures of religion, and of self-approbation, or the moral sense. And the same things hold with respect to generosity in a much higher degree. It is easy therefore to see, how such associations may be formed in us, as to engage us to forego great pleasure, or endure great pain, for the sake of others; how these associations may be attended with so great a degree of pleasure as to overrule the positive pain endured, or the negative one from the foregoing of a pleasure; and yet how there may be no direct, explicit expectation of reward, either from God or man, by natural consequence, or express appointment, not even of the concomitant pleasure which engages the agent to undertake the benevolent or generous action. And this I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association, that there is, and must be, such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and nature of it.
Gratitude includes benevolence, and therefore has the same sources with some additional ones; these last are the explicit or implicit recollection of the benefits and pleasures received, the hope of future ones, the approbation of the moral character of the benefactor, and the pleasures from the honour and esteem attending gratitude, much enhanced by the peculiar baseness and shamefulness of ingratitude.
Compassion is the uneasiness which a man feels at the misery of another. Now this in children seems to be grounded upon such associations as these that follow: the very appearance and idea of any kind of misery which they have experienced, or of any signs of distress which they understand, raise up in their nervous systems a state of misery from mere memory, on account of the strength of their imaginations; and because the connexion between the adjuncts of pain, and the actual infliction of it, has not yet been sufficiently broken by experience, as in adults.—When several children are educated together, the pains, the denials of pleasures, and the sorrows, which affect one, generally extend to all in some degree, often in an equal one.—When their parents, attendants, &c. are sick or afflicted, it is usual to raise in their minds the nascent ideas of pains and miseries, by such words and signs as are suited to their capacities; they also find themselves laid under many restraints on this account. And when these and such like circumstances have raised the desires and endeavours to remove the causes of these their own internal uneasy feelings, or, which is the same thing, of these miseries, of others (in all which they are much influenced, as in other like cases, by the great disposition to imitate before spoken of); and a variety of internal feelings and desires of this kind are so blended and associated together, as that no part can be distinguished separately from the rest; the child may properly be said to have compassion.
The same sources of compassion remain, though with some alterations, during our whole progress through life; and an attentive person may plainly discern the constituent parts of his compassion, while they are yet the mere internal, and as one may say, selfish feelings above-mentioned; and before they have put on the nature of compassion by coalescence with the rest.
Agreeably to this method of reasoning, it may be observed, that persons whose nerves are easily irritable, and those who have experienced great trials and afflictions, are in general more disposed to compassion than others; and that we are most apt to pity in those diseases and calamities, which we either have felt already, or apprehend ourselves in danger of feeling hereafter.
But adults have also many other sources of compassion, besides those already mentioned, and which differ according to their educations and situations in life. When love, natural affection, and friendship, have taught men to take a peculiar delight in certain objects, in mutual endearments and familiar intercourses, those miseries affecting the beloved objects, which either totally destroy, or greatly interrupt, these intercourses, must give an exquisite uneasiness; and this uneasiness, by mixing itself with the other parts of our compassionate affections, will greatly increase the sum total in respect of these beloved objects.—A compassionate temper being great matter of praise to those who are endued with it, and the actions which flow from it being a duty incumbent on all, men are led to practise these actions, and to inculcate upon themselves the motives of compassion, by attending to distress actually present, or described in history, real or fictitious.—The peculiar love and esteem which we bear to morally good characters, make us more sensibly touched with their miseries; which is farther augmented by our indignation, and want of compassion, for morally ill characters, suffering the just punishment of their crimes. In like manner, the simplicity, the ignorance, the helplessness, and the many innocent diverting follies of young children, and of some brutes, lead men to pity them in a peculiar manner.
Mercy has the same general nature and sources as compassion, and seems to differ from it only in this, that the object of it has forfeited his title to happiness, or the removal of misery, by some demerit, particularly against ourselves. Here therefore resentment for an injury done to ourselves, or what is called a just indignation against vice in general, interferes, and checks the otherwise natural course of our compassion, so as, in the unmerciful, entirely to put a stop to it. But, in the merciful, the sources of compassion prevail over those of resentment and indignation; whence it appears, that the compassion required in acts of mercy, is greater than that in common acts of mere compassion; agreeable to which, it is observable, that mercy is held in higher esteem than mere compassion.
We come now to the affections of the third class, viz. moroseness, anger, revenge, jealousy, cruelty, and malice. Now moroseness, peevishness, severity, &c. are most apt to arise in those persons who have some real or imaginary superiority over others, from their rank, years, office, accomplishments, &c. which either magnifies the failures of duty in inferiors with respect to them, or engages them to be very attentive to these.—Bodily infirmities, and frequent disappointments, by making the common intercourses of life insipid, and enhancing small injuries; delicacy and effeminacy, by increasing the sensibility both of body and mind, with respect to pain and uneasiness; luxury, by begetting unnatural cravings which clash not only with the like craving of others, but also with the common course and conveniences of human life; and, in short, all kinds of selfishness; have the same ill effect upon the temper.—The severe scrutiny which earnest penitents make into their own lives, during their novitiate, and the rigid censures which they pass upon their own actions, are often found, in proud and passionate tempers, to raise such indignation against vice, as breaks out into an undue severity of language and behaviour, in respect of others; and this, especially if they seem to themselves to have overcome all great vices, and are not yet arrived at a just sense of the many latent corruptions still remaining in them. And this is much increased by all opinions which represent the Deity as implacable towards a part of mankind, and this part as reprobate towards Him. By all which we may see, that every thing which makes disagreeable impressions upon our minds at the same time that our fellow-creatures, or their ideas, are present with us; and especially if these be linked together in the way of cause and effect, or by any such relation, will, in fact, beget in us moroseness and peevishness. This follows from the doctrine of association; and is also an evident fact. It is likewise a strong argument for cheerfulness, and the pleasures of innocent moderate mirth.
Anger and cruelty are the opposites to mercy and compassion; the first, as a sudden start of passion, by which men wish and endeavour harm to others, and rejoice in it when done; which is revenge: the latter as a more settled habit of mind, disposing men to take a delight in inflicting misery and punishment, and in satiating their thirst after these, by beholding the tortures and anguish of the sufferers.
Anger and revenge may be analysed as follows. The appearance, idea, approach, actual attack, &c. of any thing from which a child has received harm, must raise in his mind, by the law of association, a miniature trace of that harm. The same harm often arises from different causes, and different harms from the same cause: these harms and causes have an affinity with each other: and thus they are variously mixed and connected together, so as that a general confused idea of harm, with the uneasy state of the nervous system, and the consequent activity of the parts, are raised up in young children upon certain appearances and circumstances. By degrees the denial of gratifications, and many intellectual aggregates, with all the signs and tokens of these, raise up a like uneasiness, in the manner before explained. And thus it happens, that when any harm has been received, any gratification denied, or other mental uneasiness occasioned, a long train of associated remainders of painful impressions enhance the displeasure, and continue it much beyond its natural period. This is the nascent state of the passion of anger, in which it is nearly allied to fear, being the continuance of the same internal feelings, quickened, on one hand, by the actual, painful, or uneasy impression, but moderated on the other by the absence of the apprehension of future danger.
By degrees the child learns, from observation and imitation, to use various muscular exertions, words, gestures, &c. in order to ward off or remove the causes of uneasiness or pain, so as to strike, talk loud, threaten, &c. and so goes on multiplying perpetually, by farther and farther associations, both the occasions of anger, and the expressions of it; and particularly associates a desire of hurting another with the apprehension, or the actual receiving, of harm from that other.
As men grow up to adult age, and distinguish living creatures from things inanimate, rational and moral agents from irrational ones, they learn to refer effects to their ultimate causes; and to consider all the intermediate ones as being themselves effects depending on the ultimate cause. And thus their resentment passes from the inanimate instrument to the living agent; and more especially, if the living agent be a rational and moral one. For, first, Living rational agents are alone capable of being restrained by threatenings and punishments from committing the injurious action. All our expressions of anger must therefore be directed against them.—Secondly, Inanimate things are incapable of feeling the harms which anger wishes: the desire of revenge must therefore be entirely confined to animals. And these two things have great influence on each other. Our threatening harm merely from a motive of security, leads us to wish it really; wishing it leads us to threaten and inflict it, where it can afford no security or advantage to us.—Thirdly, As we improve in observation and experience, and in the faculty of analysing the actions of animals, we perceive that brutes and children, and even adults in certain circumstances, have little or no share in the actions referred to them; but are themselves under the influence of other causes, which therefore are to be deemed the ultimate ones. Hence, our resentment against them must be much abated in these cases, and transferred to the ultimate living cause, usually called the free agent, if so be that we are able to discover him.—Lastly, When the moral ideas of just and unjust, right and wrong, merit and demerit, have been acquired, and applied to the actions and circumstances of human life in the manner to be hereafter described, the internal feelings of this class, i.e. the complacency and approbation attending the first, the disgust, disapprobation, and even abhorrence, attending the last, have great influence in moderating or increasing our resentment. The associations of the first kind are at utter variance with those suggested by the sense of pain; of the last, coincide with and strengthen it. And as the rectitude of the moral sense is the highest matter of encomium, men are ashamed not to be thought to submit all their private feelings to its superior authority, and acquiesce in its determinations. And thus, by degrees, all anger and resentment in theory, all that even ill men will attempt to justify, is confined to injury, to sufferings which are not deserved, or which are inflicted by a person who has no right to do it. And this at last makes it so in fact, to a great degree, amongst those who are much influenced by their own moral sense, or by that of others. Yet still, as a confirmation of the foregoing doctrine, it is easy to observe, that many persons are apt to be offended even with stocks and stones, with brutes, with hurts merely accidental and undesigned, and with punishments acknowledged to be justly inflicted; and this in various degrees, according to the various natural and acquired dispositions of their minds.
Cruelty and malice are considered, not as passions of the mind, but as habits, as the deliberate wishing of misery to others, delighting in the view and actual infliction of it, and this without the consideration of injury received or intended. However, it will easily appear that they are the genuine and necessary offspring of anger indulged and gratified. They are most apt to arise in proud, selfish, and timorous persons, those who conceive highly of their own merits, and of the consequent injustice of all offences against them; and who have an exquisite feeling and apprehension, in respect of private gratifications and uneasinesses. The low and unhappy condition of those around a man gives a dignity to his own; and the infliction of punishment, or mere suffering, strikes a terror, and so affords security and authority. Add to these, the pleasures arising from gratifying the will before explained, and perhaps some from mere curiosity, and the rousing an obdurate callous mind to a state of sensibility. Thus we may perceive how nearly one ill passion is related to another; and that it is possible for men to arrive at last at some degree of pure disinterested cruelty and malice.
The jealousy against a rival in the affections of a beloved person of the other sex; also that peculiar resentment against this beloved person, when suspected to be unfaithful, which goes by the same name; are easily deducible from their sources, in the manner so often repeated. And it is owing to the extraordinary magnitude of the passions and pleasures between the sexes, and the singular contempt and ridicule thrown upon the person despised and deceived, (the last of which springs from the first,) that these two sorts of jealousy rise to such a height. This is more peculiarly remarkable in the southern climates, where the passions between the sexes are more violent than amongst us. The nature and origin of jealousies and suspicions of other kinds, with the affections attending them, may easily be understood from what has been already advanced.
Emulation and envy make the fourth class of the sympathetic affections. These are founded in the desire of pleasures, honours, riches, power, &c. and the consequent engrossing what others desire, losing what they obtain, in a comparison of our own acquisitions with those of others, &c. by which the happiness of others is connected with our misery; so that at last we become uneasy at their happiness, even where there is no such connexion, i.e. emulate and envy where our own interest is no ways concerned.
Having now seen, in some measure, the nature and origin of the principal sympathetic affections, pleasing and tormenting, moral and immoral, let us consider the several objects upon which these various and contrary affections are exerted.
I begin with the most intimate of all the relations of life, that of husband and wife. Where this union is cemented by the several pleasures of sensation and imagination before-mentioned, also by those of the moral and religious kinds, hereafter to be described, love, generosity, gratitude, compassion, and all the affections of the first and second class, prevail in the highest degree possible, to the exclusion of all those of the third and fourth class; so that the marriage state, in these cases, affords the most perfect earnest and pattern, of which our imperfect condition here admits, of the future happiness of the good in another world. And it is remarkable, that this state is in Scripture made the emblem of future happiness, and of the union of Christ with the church.
Where the ties of affection are weaker, and particularly where there is a great deficiency in the moral or religious dispositions of either or both the parties, the passions of the third class intermix themselves with those of the first and second; and in many cases, the opposite affections prevail in great degrees alternately, and even at short and frequent intervals. And indeed each kind often becomes more violent from succeeding its opposite.
In very immoral and wicked persons the passions of the third class prevail almost entirely, and that especially where the peculiar affection, called love by young persons, and which springs from the pleasures of sensation, imagination, and ambition, in the manner above explained, was originally weak.
The affection of parents towards children seems to begin from the pain which the mother feels in bringing them into the world, and the sympathetic fears and cares of the father in consequence thereof, and in some degree from children’s being supposed to belong to their parents in a very peculiar sense, and being parts of their own bodies. It is increased, especially in mothers, by all the signs of life, sense, and distress, which the helpless tender infant shews; many religious and moral considerations, with the language in which these are expressed, adding also great force thereto. The giving suck in the mother, with all the fears and cares in both parents, increases it still farther, and as the child advances in age and understanding, diverts by his little follies, pleases by his natural beauty, draws on the encomiums of others, surprises by his agility or wit, &c. the affections continue to rise. When the time comes for the cultivation of the moral and religious powers of the mind, these either increase the affection by their proper appearance and growth, or check it by being deficient, and by giving occasion to censures and corrections. Yet even these last, when justly proportioned, and followed by mental improvement, add greatly to the warmth of affection by raising compassion. And thus the remainders of former affections, and the accessions of new ones, seem to make a sum total, which grows perpetually greater in tender and religious parents.
The little affection commonly shewn to bastards agrees very well with the foregoing history of parental affection.
The affection towards grand-children is, in general, the same as that towards children, differing chiefly in this, that it is more fond and tender, and less mixed with severity, and the necessary corrections. This may be, perhaps, because the appearance of the helpless infant, after so long an interval, raises up all the old traces of parental affection with new vigour, from their not having been exerted for some years, and by recalling many of the most moving scenes of the foregoing life; so that these old traces, increased by the addition of new similar ones, make together a greater sum total than before: or, perhaps, because old persons have more experience of pain, sorrow, and infirmity; and so are more disposed to compassion, in the same manner as they are more apt to weep; and because they excuse themselves from the uneasy task of censuring and reproving.
The affections of children towards their parents are founded in the many pleasures which they receive from them, or in their company. These affections are afterwards increased by their improvement in morality and religion, and by the several common causes of good-will, gratitude, compassion, &c. prevailing here with peculiar force. It seems, however, that the sources of this affection are fewer and weaker than the sources of that towards children; and it is observed in fact, that the affection of children is in general weaker than that of parents. For which also an evident final cause may be assigned. It is to be added farther, that the many engagements and distractions which lay hold of the opening faculties of young persons, upon their entrance into life, have a principal share in this effect.
Friendship, with the bitter enmities that sometimes succeed the breaches of it, and the emulation and envy that are apt to arise in friends, from the equality and similarity of their circumstances, may be easily understood from what has been delivered already.
In like manner we may explain the affections between persons of the same family, brothers, cousins, &c. of the same age, sex, district, education, temper, profession, &c.
By all these artificial ties our good-will and compassion are perpetually extended more and more, growing also perpetually weaker and weaker, in proportion to their diffusion. Yet still the common blessings and calamities, which fall upon whole nations and communities; the general resemblance of the circumstances of all mankind to each other, in their passage through life; their common relation to God as their creator, governor, and father; their common concern in a future life, and in the religion of Christ, &c. are capable of raising strong sympathetic affections towards all mankind, and the several larger divisions of it, in persons of religious dispositions, who duly attend to these things. In like manner the opinions of savageness, barbarity, and cruelty, which ignorant and unexperienced persons are apt to entertain, concerning some distant nations, raise up in their minds some degrees of general dislike, aversion, and hatred.