Observations on Man (6th edition)/Part I/Chapter IV/Section III
Section III[edit]
THE PLEASURES AND PAINS OF SELF-INTEREST.
Self-interest may be distinguished into three kinds, viz.
First, Gross self-interest, or the cool pursuit of the means whereby the pleasures of sensation, imagination, and ambition, are to be obtained, and their pains avoided.
Secondly, Refined self-interest, or a like pursuit of the means that relate to the pleasures and pains of sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense.
And, Thirdly, Rational self-interest, or the pursuit of a man’s greatest possible happiness, without any partiality to this or that kind of happiness, means of happiness, means of a means, &c.
The love of money may be considered as the chief species of gross self-interest, and will help us, in an eminent manner, to unfold the mutual influences of our pleasures and pains, with the factitious nature of the intellectual ones, and the doctrine of association in general, as well as the particular progress, windings, and endless redoublings of self-love. For it is evident at first sight, that money cannot naturally and originally be the object of our faculties; no child can be supposed born with the love of it. Yet we see, that some small degrees of this love rise early in infancy; that it generally increases during youth and manhood; and that at last, in some old persons, it so engrosses and absorbs all their passions and pursuits, as that from being considered as the representative, standard, common measure and means of obtaining the commodities which occur in common life, it shall be esteemed the adequate exponent and means of happiness in general, and the thing itself, the sum total of all that is desirable in life. Now the monstrous and gigantic size of this passion, in such cases, supported evidently by association alone, will render its progress and growth more conspicuous and striking; and consequently greatly contribute to explain the corresponding particulars in other passions, where they are less obvious.
Let us inquire, therefore, for what reason it is that children first begin to love money. Now they observe, that money procures for them the pleasures of sensation, with such of imagination as they have acquired a relish for. They see that it is highly valued by others; that those who possess it are much regarded and caressed; that the possession of it is generally attended by fine clothes, titles, magnificent buildings, &c.; imitation, and the common contagion of human life, having great power here, as in other cases. Since therefore ideas exciting desire are thus heaped upon money by successive associations perpetually recurring, the desire of it in certain sums and manners, viz. such as have often recurred with the concomitant pleasures, must at last grow stronger than the fainter sensible and intellectual pleasures; so that a child shall prefer a piece of money to many actual gratifications to be enjoyed immediately.
And as all the fore-mentioned associations, or such as are analogous to them, continue during life, it seems probable, that the love of money would at last devour all the particular desires, upon which it is grounded, was it not restrained by counter-associations; just as it was observed above, that the pleasure of gratifying the will would devour all the particular pleasures, to which it is a constant associate, did not repeated disappointments preserve us from this enormous increase of wilfulness.
Let us next examine how the love of money is checked.
First, then, It is checked by the strong desires of young persons, and others, after particular gratifications; for these desires, by overpowering their acquired aversion to part with money, weaken it gradually, and consequently weaken the pleasure of keeping, and the desire of obtaining, all which are closely linked together in this view; notwithstanding that the last, viz. the desire of obtaining, and by consequence (in an inverted order) the pleasure of keeping, and the aversion to part with, are strengthened by the desires of particular pleasures to be purchased by money, in another view. And this contrariety of our associations is not only the means of limiting certain passions, but is a mark set upon them by the Author of nature, to shew that they ought to be limited, even in our progress through this life; and that they must ultimately be annihilated, every one in its proper order.
Secondly, The insignificancy of riches in warding off death and diseases, also shame and contempt in many cases, and in obtaining the pleasures of religion, and the moral sense, and even those of sympathy, ambition, imagination, and sensation, first lessen their value in the eyes of those who make just observations upon things in their progress through life, and afterwards fix a positive nothingness and worthlessness upon them.
Thirdly, The eager pursuit of any particular end, as fame, learning, the pleasures of the imagination, &c. leaves little room in the mind either for avarice, or any other foreign end.
Now by these and such like considerations we may account not only for the limitation put to the love of money, but also for certain mixtures of tempers and dispositions, which are often found in fact, and yet seem at first sight inconsistent ones. Thus profuseness, in respect of sensual and selfish pleasures, is often joined with avarice. Covetous persons are often rigidly just in paying, as well as exacting; and sometimes generous, where money is not immediately and apparently concerned. They have also moderate passions in other respects; for the most part, are suspicious, timorous, and complaisant. And the most truly generous, charitable, and pious persons, are highly frugal, so as to put on the appearance of covetousness, and even sometimes, and in some things, to border upon it.
We may see also, why the love of money must, in general, grow stronger with age; and especially if the particular gratifications, to which the person was most inclined, become insipid or unattainable—Why frequent reflections upon money in possession, and the actual viewing large sums, strengthen the associations by which covetousness is generated—Why children, persons in private and low life, and indeed most others, are differently affected towards the same sum of money, in different forms, gold, silver, notes, &c.
Let us next inquire, for what reasons it is that the love of money has the idea of selfishness attached to it in a peculiar manner, much more so than the pursuit of the pleasures of honour, imagination, or sympathy; whereas all are equally generated by association, from sensible and selfish pleasures, all in their several degrees promote private happiness, and are all pursued, in some cases, coolly and deliberately, from the prospect of obtaining private happiness thereby. Now the reasons of this seem to be,
First, That whatever riches one man obtains, another must lose; so that the circulation of money by trades, professions, offices, &c. is a kind of gaming; and has most of the same disgustful ideas annexed to it, when considered with some attention, and exclusively of private selfish feelings; whereas the pleasures of sympathy consist in doing good to others; those of ambition are scarce attainable in any great degree without this, or at least the appearance of it; and the pleasures of imagination are both capable of a very extensive communication, and most perfect when enjoyed in company.
Secondly, A regard to self frequently recurring must denominate a pleasure selfish; so that if any of the most generous pleasures, and such as at first view have no immediate relation to self-interest, be pursued in a cool deliberate way, not from the influence of a present inclination, but the pre-conceived opinion that it will afford pleasure, this is referred to self-interest. Now money has scarce any other relation to pleasure than that of an evident means; so that even after it has gained the power of pleasing instantaneously, the intermediate deliberate steps and associations must, however, frequently appear. It procures the other pleasures for us every day, after it has become pleasant in itself; and therefore must always be considered as a principal means. The other pleasures have, in general, a far greater share of indirect associations with previous pleasures, and acquire the power of gratifying, not so much from being manifest causes of other gratifications, as their most common adjuncts; whereas money is generally the most visible of all the causes. But honour, power, learning, and many other things, are pursued, in part, after the same manner, and for the same reasons, as riches; viz. from a tacit supposition, that the acquisition of every degree of these is treasuring up a proportional degree of happiness, to be produced and enjoyed at pleasure. And the desires of each of these would in like manner increase perpetually during life, did they not curb one another by many mutual inconsistencies, or were not all damped by the frequent experience and recollection, that all the means of happiness cease to be so, when the body or mind cease to be disposed in a manner proper for the reception of happiness.
It is also worthy of observation, that riches, honours, power, learning, and all other things, that are considered as means of happiness, become means and ends to each other in a great variety of ways, thus transferring upon each other all the associated pleasures which they collect from different quarters, and approaching nearer and nearer perpetually to a perfect similarity and sameness with each other, in the instantaneous pleasures which they afford when pursued and obtained as ends.
It appears likewise that all aggregates of pleasure, thus collected by them all, must, from the mechanism and necessity of our natures, and of the world which surrounds us, be made at last to centre and rest upon Him who is the inexhaustible fountain of all power, knowledge, goodness, majesty, glory, property, &c. So that even avarice and ambition are, in their respective ways, carrying on the benevolent designs of Him who is All in All. And the same thing may be hoped of every other passion and pursuit. One may hope, that they all agree and unite in leading to ultimate happiness and perfection. However, they differ greatly in their present consequences, and in their future ones, reaching to certain intervals of time, indefinite and unknown to us, thus becoming good or evil, both naturally and morally, in respect of us, and our limited apprehensions, judgments, and anticipations. And yet one may humbly hope, as was said above, that every thing must be ultimately good, both naturally and morally.
The second species of self-interest is that which I call refined self-interest. As the foregoing species is generated by an attention to, and frequent reflection upon, the things which procure us the pleasures of sensation, imagination, and ambition; and, therefore, cannot prevail, in any great degree, till these pleasures have been generated, and prevailed for some time; so this species, or refined self-interest, which is a cool, deliberate seeking for ourselves the pleasures of sympathy, religion, and the moral sense, pre-supposes the generation of these pleasures, and the enjoyment of them for a sufficient time. And as some degree of gross self-interest is the natural and necessary consequence of the three first classes of pleasures, so is some degree of refined self-interest of the three last. A person who has had a sufficient experience of the pleasures of friendship, generosity, devotion, and self-approbation, cannot but desire to have a return of them, when he is not under the particular influence of any one of them, but merely on account of the pleasure which they have afforded; and will seek to excite these pleasures by the usual means, to treasure up to himself such means, keep himself always in a disposition to use them, &c. not at all from any particular vivid love of his neighbour, or of God, or from a sense of duty to him, but entirely from the view of private happiness. At least, there will be a great mixture of this refined self-interest in all the pleasures and duties of benevolence, piety, and the moral sense.
But then this refined self-interest is neither so common, nor so conspicuous in real life, as the gross one, since it rises late, is never of any great magnitude in the bulk of mankind, through their want of the previous pleasures of sympathy, religion, and the moral sense, in a sufficient degree, and in some it scarce prevails at all; whereas gross self-interest rises early in infancy, and arrives at a considerable magnitude before adult age. The detail of this second species of self-interest may be seen in books of practical religion.
The third species of self-interest is the rational. This is the same thing with the abstract desire of happiness, and aversion to misery, which is supposed to attend every intelligent being during the whole course of his existence. I have already endeavoured to shew, that this supposition is not true in the proper sense of the words; and yet that very general desires do frequently recur to the mind, and may be excited by words and symbols of general import.
The hopes and fears relating to a future state, or to death, which is our entrance into it, are of this kind, and may be considered as proceeding from rational self-interest, in the highest and most abstracted sense that the terms admit of practically, since we have no definite knowledge of the nature and kind of the happiness or misery of another world. These hopes and fears are also the strongest of our selfish affections, and yet at the same time the chief foundation of the pure disinterested love of God, and of our neighbour, and the principal means of transferring our associations, so as that we may love and hate, pursue and fly, in the manner the best suited to our attainment of our greatest possible happiness. For hope, being itself a pleasure, may, by association, render indifferent, and even disagreeable, objects and actions pleasant; and fear may make agreeable ones painful: hence we can either increase desires and aversions, that are suitable to our state, or obliterate and convert them into their contraries, if they be unsuitable, by means of their connexion with the hopes and fears of death, and a future state. I will therefore briefly state the rise and progress of these hopes and fears.
All our first associations with the idea of death are of the disgustful and alarming kind; and they are collected from all quarters, from the sensible pains of every sort, from the imperfection, weakness, loathsomeness, corruption, and disorder, where disease, old age, death, animal or vegetable, prevail, in opposition to the beauty, order, and lustre of life, youth, and health; from the shame and contempt attending the first in many instances; whereas the last are honourable, as being sources of power and happiness, the reward of virtue, &c.; and from the sympathetic passions in general. And it is necessary, that the heedlessness and inexperience of infancy and youth should be guarded by such terrors, and their head-strong appetites and passions curbed, that they may not be hurried into danger and destruction before they are aware. It is proper also that they should form some expectations with respect to, and set some value upon, their future life in this world, that so they may be better qualified to act their parts in it, and make the quicker progress to perfection during their passage through it.
When children begin to have a sense of religion and duty formed in them, these do still farther heighten and increase the fear of death for the most part. For though there are rewards on the one hand, as well as punishments on the other; yet fear has got the start from the natural causes of it before-mentioned: and as pain is in general greater than pleasure, as was shewn above, from its consisting in stronger vibrations; so fear is in general more vivid than hope, especially in children.
Moreover, the sensual and selfish appetites are the original of all the rest; yet these are sinful, and inconsistent with our own and others’ happiness; they must therefore be restrained, and at last eradicated. But parents and governors are, in this case, more apt to have recourse to fear than to hope (in general, I suppose with reason, because hope is too feeble to withstand the violence of the natural appetites and passions.) And it is to be added to all, that adults, by discovering, in general, much more of fear and sorrow in the apprehensions or prospect of death, than of hope and comfort, from the continuance of the causes just mentioned, propagate and increase the fear still farther in one another, and in children, infecting all around them, as is usual in other cases of the like kind. And by this means it comes to pass, that the fear of death does in some circumstances, particularly where the nervous system is, through a bodily disorder, reduced to an aptness to receive uneasy and disgustful vibrations, only or chiefly, being in a state of irritability approaching to pains, grow to a most enormous size, collecting and uniting every disagreeable idea and impression under the associations belonging to death; so that such persons live in perpetual anxiety and slavery to the fear of death. And where there is the consciousness of past guilt, or the want of an upright intention for the future, it rages with still greater fierceness, till these be removed entirely, or in part, by repentance and amendment.
It is farther to be observed, that the fear of death is much increased by the exquisiteness of the punishments threatened in a future state, and by the variety of the emblems, representations, analogies, and evidences, of natural and revealed religion, whereby all the terrors of all other things are transferred upon these punishments; also by that peculiar circumstance of the eternity of them, which seems to have been a general tradition previous to the appearance of Christianity, amongst both Jews and Pagans, and which has been the doctrine and opinion of the Christian world ever since, some very few persons excepted. The consideration of any thing that is infinite, space, time, power, knowledge, goodness, perfection, &c. quite overpowers the faculties of the soul with wonder and astonishment: and when the peculiar feeling and concern belonging to self are applied here, and excited by the word infinite, by meditation, reading, &c. we must, and we ought to be alarmed to the full extent of our capacities. And the same conclusion follows, though we should suppose the punishments of a future state not to be absolutely and metaphysically infinite. For their great exquisiteness, and long duration, which are most clearly and plainly declared in the Scriptures, make them practically so.
This is a brief sketch of the origin and progress of the fears attending the consideration of death, and a future state. We now come to inquire, how the hopes are generated.
First, then, We are to observe, that repentance, amendment, and consciousness of past virtue, and of good intentions for the future, give a title to the hopes and rewards of a future state; and that though while there are perpetual alternations of opposite consciousnesses, i.e. recollections and judgments on our own actions, the fear may prevail in general, both from the additional weight of the natural fear, and from the previous possession which the religious fear has obtained; yet by degrees the agreeable consciousness must prevail in those who are sincere (and sometimes it is to be feared a delusive one of the same kind in others), moderate the religious fear by little and little, and, in great measure, overcome the natural one; for which the way has been prepared from the superior strength of the religious fear, which has already obscured it in serious persons. And thus by degrees hope will begin to take place, as the general state of the mind, and the consideration of death, and a future state, become, for the most part, matter of joy and comfort.
Secondly, The deliverance from the fear of death adds greatly to this joy, in the same way as the removal of other pains is made the source of pleasure. And the returns of the fear of death at certain intervals, according to the state of our bodies or minds, and the moral qualities of our actions, will, if they be not too frequent, keep up this source of pleasure in the hope of futurity.
Thirdly, When the slavish fear of God is thus removed by faith and hope, all the pleasing sympathetic affections, such as love, gratitude, confidence, begin to exert themselves with respect to God, in a manner analogous, but in a degree far superior, to that in which they are exerted towards men. And it is easy to see how these, and such like causes concurring, may, in many cases, quite overcome the natural and religious fears of death and pain, and even make them acceptable.
Cor. From hence we may pass to the fervours of devotion; these being chiefly the hopes, and pleasing affections, just spoken of, coalescing together so intimately by repeated associations, as that the separate parts there mentioned cannot be distinguished from each other in the compound. And as these fervours are themselves often esteemed a sign of holiness, and consequently a foundation of farther hope, they perpetuate and increase themselves for a certain time, i.e. till the new convert finds the reiterated appearance of the same ideas give less and less emotion and pleasure, just as in the other pleasures, sensible and intellectual; looks upon this as a mark of spiritual desertion; finds numberless, unexpected, unthought of, sins and imperfections, not yet subdued; falls into bodily disorders, from unseasonable severities, or spiritual intemperance, &c.; and thus becomes dejected, scrupulous, and fearful.
By degrees the fears taken from death, and a future state, are confined to the mere apprehension of transgression, without any regard had to those, and even where they, when considered and expected, raise no fears.
However, all these things mortify pride, and the refined self-interest; lead, or even compel, men to resign all to God; and so advance them to a more pure, disinterested, and permanent love of God, and of their neighbour, than they could have arrived at (all other things remaining the same), had they not undergone these anxieties; and therefore are to be esteemed the kind corrections of an Infinitely Merciful Father.