go along with; if my admiration is either too high or tog Tow to tally with his own; if I laugh loud and heartily at what he only fmiles, or, on the contrary, only fmile, when ⚫he laughs loud and heartily; in all thefe cafes, as foon as he comes from confidering the object, to observe how I am affected by it, according as there is more or lefs difproportion between his fentiments and mine, I muft incur a greater or lefs degree of his difapprobation and upon all occafions his own fentiments are the standards and measures by which ⚫he judges of mine, To approve of another man's opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to approve of them. If the ⚫ fame arguments which convince you, eonvince me likewise, I neceffarily approve of your conviction; and if they do not, I neceffarily difapprove of it: neither can I poffibly conceive that I fhould do the one without the other. To approve or disapprove, therefore, of the opinions of others, is acknowleged by every body to mean no more than to obferve their agreement or difagreement with our own. But this is equally the cafe with regard to our approbation or disappro'bation of the fentiments or paffions of others. There are, indeed, fome cafes in which we feem to approve without any fympathy or correfpondence of fentiments, and in which, confequently, the fentiment of approbation would seem to be different from the perception of this coincidence. A little attention, however, will convince us, that even in thefe cafes our approbation is ultimately founded upon a fympathy or correfpondence of this kind. I fhall give an instance in things of a very frivolous nature, because in them the judgments of mankind are lefs apt to be pervert ed by wrong fyftems. We may often approve of a jeft, and think the laughter of the company quite juft and proper, though we ourselves do not laugh, because, perhaps, we are in a grave humour, or happen to have our attention engaged with other objects. We have learned, however, from experience, what fort of pleafantry is, upon moft occafions, ⚫ capable of making us laugh, and we obferve that this is one $ of that kind. We approve, therefore, of the laughter of the company, and feel that it is natural and fuitable to its object; because, though in our prefent mood we cannot ealily enter into it, we are fenfible, that upon moft occafions we should very heartily join ii it. The fame thing often happens with regard to all the other paffions. A ftranger paffes by us in the street with all the marks of the deepest affiction; and we are immediately told, that that he has juft received the news of the death of his father. It is impoffible that, in this cafe, we fhould not approve of his grief. Yet it may often happen, without any defect of humanity on our part, that, fo far from entering into the violence of his forrow, we fhould fcarce conceive the first movements of concern upon his account. Both he and his father, perhaps, are entirely unknown to us, or we happen to be employed about other things, and do not take time to picture out in our imagination the different circumftances of diftrefs which must occur to him. We have learned, however, from experience, that fuch a misfortune naturally excites fuch a degree of forrow, and we know that if we took time to confider his fituation fully, and in all its parts, we fhould, without doubt, moft fincerely fympathize with him. It is upon the confcioufnefs of this conditional fympathy, that our approbation of his forrow is founded, even in thofe cafes in which that sympathy does not actually take place; and the general rules derived from our preceding experience of what, upon moft occafions, our fentiments would correfpond with, correct the impropriety of our present emotions.' If we confider all the different paffions of human nature, our Author fays, we fhall find that they are regarded as decent or indecent, juft in proportion as mankind are more or less difpofed to fympathize with them. It is indecent to exprefs any ftrong degree of thofe paffions which arife from a certain fituation or difpofition of the body; because the company, not being in the fame difpofition, cannot be expected to fympathize with them. Violent hunger, for example, though upon many occafions not only natural, but unavoidable, is always indecent, and to eat voracioufly is univerfally regarded as a piece of ill-manners. It is the fame cafe with the paffion by which nature unites the two fexes. Though naturally the moft furious of all the paffions, all ftrong expreffions of it are upon every occafion indecent, even between perfons in whom its moft compleat indulgence is acknowleged by all laws, both human and divine, to be perfectly innocent, All the paffions which take their origin from the body, excite either no fympathy at all, or fuch a degree of it, as is altogether disproportioned to the violence of what is felt by the fufferer: and even of the paffions derived from the imagination, thofe which take their origin from a peculiar turn or habit it has acquired, though they may be acknowleged to be perfectly natural, are, however, but little fympathized with. The ima ginations of mankind not having acquired that particular turn, cannot enter into them; and fuch paffions, though they may be allowed to be almost unavoidable in fome part of life, are always in fome measure ridiculous. This is the cafe with that ftrong attachment which naturally grows up between two perfons of different fexes, who have long fixed their thoughts upon one another. Our imagination not having run in the fame channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter into the eagerness of his emotions. If our friend has been injured, we readily fympathize with his refentment, and grow angry with the very perfon with whom he is angry. If he has received a benefit, we readily enter into his gratitude, and have a very high fenfe of the merit of his benefactor. But if he is in love, though we may think his paffion juft as reasonable as any of the kind, yet we never think ourselves bound to conceive a paffion of the fame kind, and for the fame perfon for whom he has conceived it. The paffion appears to every body, but the man who feels it, entirely difproportioned to the value of the object; and love, though it is pardoned in a certain age, because we know it is natural, is always laughed at, because we cannot enter into it. All ferious and ftrong expreffions of it appear ridiculous to a third perfon; and if the lover is not good company to his miftrefs, he is good company to no body else. He himself is fenfible of this, and as long as he continues in his fober fenfes, endeavours to treat his own paffion with raillery and ridicule. It is the only ftile in which we care to hear of it, because it is the only ftile in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it. We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, longsentenced love of Cowley and Propertius, who never have done with exaggerating the violence of their attachments; but the gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, are always agreeable. A Having fhewn, in the first part of his Theory, wherein our fenfe of the propriety or impropriety of actions confifts, our Author proceeds, in the fecond, to confider wherein consists that of their good or ill defert. The fentiment which most immediately and directly prompts us to reward, he fays, is gratitude; that which moft immediately and directly prompts us to punish, is refentment. He, therefore, muft appear to deferve reward, who appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude; and he to deferve punishment, who appears to be that of refentment. To be the proper and approved object either of gratitude or refentment,' continues he, ( can mean nothing but to be the object of that gratitude and of that refentment, which naturally seems proper, and is approved of. But thefe, as well as all the other paffions of human nature, fcem proper, and are approved of, when the heart of every every impartial fpectator entirely fympathizes with them; when every indifferent by-ftander entirely enters into, and goes along with them. He, therefore, appears to deserve reward, who, to some ⚫ perfon or perfons, is the natural object of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to beat time to, and thereby applaud and he, on the other hand, appears to deferve 'punishment, who in the fame manner is to fome person or perfons the natural object of a refentment, which the breast of every reasonable man is ready to adopt and fympathize with. To us, furely, that action must appear to deferve rc'ward, which every body who knows of it, would wish to reward, and therefore delights to fee rewarded: and that action must as furely appear to deserve punishment, which every body who hears of it is angry with, and upon that ' account rejoices to see punished. 1. As we fympathize with the joy of our companions when in prosperity, fo we join with them in the complacency and fatisfaction with which they naturally regard whatever is the cause of their good fortune. We enter into the love and affection which they conceive for it, and begin to love it too. We fhould be forry for their fakes if it was deftroyed, or even if it was placed at too great a distance from them, and out of the reach of their care and protection, though they fhould lofe nothing by its abfence, ex<cept the pleasure of feeing it. If it is man who has thus been the fortunate inftrument of the happiness of his brethren, this is ftill more peculiarly the cafe. When we see one man affifted, protected, relieved by another, our fympathy with the joy of the perfon who receives the benefit ferves only to animate our fellow-feeling with his gratitude towards him who bestows it. When we look upon the perfon who is the caufe of his pleafure, with the eyes with which < we imagine he must look upon him, his benefactor feems to ftand before us in the moft engaging and amiable light. We readily therefore sympathize with the grateful affection which he conceives for a perfon to whom he has been so much obliged, and confequently applaud the returns which he is dif • pofed to make for the good offices conferred upon him. As • we entirely enter into the affection ftom which these returns proceed, they neceffarily feem every way proper and fuitable to their object. 2. In the fame manner, as we fympathize with the forrow of our fellow-creature, whenever we fee his distress, fo we likewife enter into his abhorrence and averfion for what• ever . ever has given occafion to it. Our heart, as it adopts and beats time to his grief, fo is it likewife animated with that • fpirit by which he endeavours to drive away or destroy the cause of it. The indolent and paffive fellow-feeling, by which we accompany him in his fufferings, readily gives way to that more vigorous and active fentiment by which we go along with him in the effort he makes, either to repel them, or to gratify his averfion to what has given occafion to them. This is ftill more peculiarly the cafe, when it is man who has caused them. When we fee one man oppreffed or injured by another, the fympathy which we feel ⚫ with the distress of the fufferer, feems to ferve only to ani mate our fellow-feeling with his refentment against the of fender. We are rejoiced to fee him attack his adverfary in his turn, and are eager and ready to affift him, whenever he exerts himself for defence, or even for vengeance within • a certain degree. If the injured fhould perish in the quarrel, we not only fympathize with the real refentment of his friends and relations, but with the imaginary resentment which in fancy we lend to the dead, who is no longer çapable of feeling that or any other human fentiment. But as we put ourselves in his fituation, as we enter, as it were, into his body, and in our imaginations, in fome measure, animate anew the deformed and mangled carcafe of the flain, when we bring home in this manner his case to our own bofoms, we feel upon this, as upon many other occa fions, an emotion which the perfon principally concerned is incapable of feeling, and which yet we feel by an illufive fympathy with him. The fympathetic tears which we hed for that immenfe and irretrievable lofs, which in our fancy he appears to have fuftained, feems to be but a small part of the duty which we owe him. The injury which he has fuffered demands, we think, a principal part of our attention. We feel that refentment which we imagine he ought to feel, and which he would feel, if in his cold and lifeless body there remained any consciousness of what paffes upon earth. His blood, we think, calls aloud for vengeance. The very afhes of the dead feem to be difturbed at the thought that his injuries are to pass unrevenged. The horrors which are fuppofed to haunt the bed of the murderer, the ghofts which, fuperftition imagines, rife from the graves to demand vengeance upon thofe who brought them to an untimely end, all take their origin ftom this natural fympathy with the imaginary refentment of the flain. And with regard, at leaft, to this moft dreadful of all crimes, nature, antecedent to all reflections upon the utility of punishment, . |