EXTERNAL ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Pride and humility have the qualities of our mind and body that is the self, for their natural and more immediate causes. • We find that there are many other objects which produce pride and humility. • The primary object is obscured and lost by the multiplicity of foreign and extrinsic objects. • We found a vanity on houses, gardens, equipages, as well as on personal merit and accomplishments. ◦ These external advantages are in themselves widely distant from thought or a person. ◦ Yet they considerably influence even a passion directed to that as its ultimate object. • This happens when external objects: ◦ acquire any particular relation to ourselves ◦ are associated or connected with us.

A beautiful fish in the ocean, an animal in a desert, and anything that neither belongs, nor is related to us, has no influence on our vanity: ◦ whatever extraordinary qualities it may be endowed with ◦ whatever degree of surprise and admiration it may naturally occasion. • It must be some way associated with us to touch our pride. • Its idea must hang on the idea of ourselves. ◦ The transition from the one to the other must be easy and natural. • It is remarkable that though the relation of resemblance operates on the mind in the same way as contiguity and causation, in conveying us from one idea to another. ◦ Yet it is seldom a foundation of pride or humility. • If we resemble a person in any of the valuable parts of his character, we must have the quality, in which we resemble him. • We always choose this quality to directly survey in ourselves rather than by reflection in another person, when we would found upon it any degree of vanity. • So that though a likeness may occasionally produce that passion by suggesting a more advantageous idea of ourselves, it is there the view fixes at last, and the passion finds its ultimate and final cause. • There are instances, wherein men show a vanity in resembling a great man in his countenance, shape, air, or other minute circumstances, that contribute not in any degree to his reputation; • But this does not extend very far • It is not of any considerable moment in these affections. • For this I assign the following reason.

We can never have a vanity of resembling in trifles any person, unless he has very shining qualities, which make us respect and venerate him. • These qualities then are the causes of our vanity through their relation to ourselves. ◦ How are they related to ourselves? • They are parts of the person we value. ◦ Consequently, they are connected with these trifles which are also supposed to be parts of him. ◦ These trifles are connected with the resembling qualities in us. ◦ These qualities in us are parts connected with the whole. ◦ They form a chain of several links of the person we resemble. • This multitude of relations must weaken the connection. ◦ The mind, in passing from the shining qualities to the trivial ones, must by that contrast: ▪ better perceive the minuteness of the latter ▪ be ashamed of the comparison and resemblance. • Therefore, the relation of contiguity or the relation of causation between the cause and object of pride and humility, is alone requisite to cause pride and humility. • These relations are nothing else but qualities, by which the imagination is conveyed from one idea to another. • What effect can these possibly have on the mind? ◦ How can they become so requisite to the production of the passions? • The association of ideas operates in so silent and imperceptible a manner. ◦ We are scarce sensible of it. ◦ We discover it more by its effects than by any immediate feeling or perception. • It produces no emotion. ◦ It creates no new impression of any kind. ◦ It only modifies those ideas which the mind had and could recall. • From this reasoning and from experience, we may conclude that an association of ideas, however necessary, is not alone sufficient to give rise to any passion. • When the mind feels pride or humility on the appearance of a related object, there is an emotion or original impression produced by some other principle, besides the relation or transition of thought. • Is the emotion first produced by pride or humility itself, or some other impression related to it? • The relation of ideas, which is so requisite a circumstance to the production of pride or humility, would be entirely superfluous, were it not to: ◦ second a relation of affections ◦ facilitate the transition from one impression to another. • If nature immediately produced the passion of pride or humility, it would: ◦ be completed in itself ◦ require no further addition or increase from any other affection. • But supposing the first emotion to be only related to pride or humility, it is easily conceived to what purpose the relation of objects may serve • and how the two different associations, of impressions and ideas, by uniting their forces, may assist each other’s operation. • This is the only way we can conceive this subject. • An easy transition of ideas, which causes no emotion, of itself,, can never be necessary, or even useful to the passions, but by forwarding the transition between some related impressions. ◦ The same object causes a greater or smaller degree of pride in proportion to: ▪ the increase or decrease of its qualities and ▪ the distance or nearness of the relation. • This is a clear argument for the transition of affections along the relation of ideas. • Since every change in the relation produces a proportional change in the passion. • Thus one part of the preceding system on the relations of ideas is a sufficient proof of the other part on the relations of impressions. ◦ It is itself founded on experience that I will not waste time to further prove it. • This will appear more evidently in particular instances. • Men are vain of the beauty of their country, county, or parish. ◦ Here, the idea of beauty plainly produces a pleasure. ▪ This pleasure is related to pride. ▪ The object or cause of this pleasure is related to the self or the object of pride. ▪ By this double relation of impressions and ideas, a transition is made from the one impression to the other. • Men are also vain of: ◦ the temperature of the climate they were born in ◦ the fertility of their native soil ◦ the goodness of the wines, fruits or victuals, produced by it ◦ the softness or force of their language; with other particulars of that kind. • These objects: ◦ reference sensory pleasures. ◦ are originally as agreeable to the feeling, taste or hearing. • How could they have ever become objects of pride, except through the above-explained transition? • Some people: ◦ discover an opposite kind of vanity ◦ affect to depreciate their own country compared with those they have traveled to. ▪ Their distant relation to a foreign country is formed by their having seen and lived in it. • When they are at home and surrounded by their countrymen, they find that the strong relation between them and their own nation is shared with so many, that it is lost to them in a way. ◦ Whereas their relation to a foreign country is increased by their considering how few have done the same. • This is why they always admire the beauty, utility and rarity of what is abroad, above what is at home. • We can be vain of a country, climate or any inanimate object related to us. ◦ It is no wonder that we are vain of the qualities of those connected to us by blood or friendship. • The very same qualities which produce pride in ourselves, also produce pride in a lesser degree when discovered in persons related to us. ◦ The beauty, address, merit, credit and honours of their kindred are carefully displayed by the proud, as some of their most considerable sources of their vanity. • As we are proud of riches in ourselves, so to satisfy our vanity we: ◦ desire that everyone connected to us should likewise have them ◦ are ashamed of anyone that is mean or poor among our friends and relations. ▪ This is why we remove the poor as far from us as possible. • We cannot prevent poverty in some distant collaterals. ◦ Our forefathers are our nearest relations. ◦ On this account, everyone affects to be: ▪ of a good family ▪ descended from a long succession of rich and honourable ancestors. • I have frequently observed that those who boast of the antiquity of their families are glad when they can join two circumstances, that: ◦ their ancestors have been uninterrupted proprietors of the same land for many generations ◦ their family has never changed its possessions, or been transplanted into any other province. • It is an additional subject of vanity when they can boast that: ◦ these possessions have been transmitted through a descent composed entirely of males ◦ the honour and fortune have never past through any female. • Let us explain these phenomena by the foregoing system. • When any one boasts of his family’s antiquity, the subjects of his vanity are: ◦ the span of time ◦ the number of ancestors ◦ their riches and credit. ▪ These are supposed to reflect a lustre on himself because of his relation to them. • He is first affected by these objects in an agreeable way. ◦ Then returning back to himself through the relation of parent and child, he is elevated with pride through the double relation of impressions and ideas. • Since pride depends on these relations, whatever strengthens any of the relations must also increase pride. ◦ Whatever weakens the relations must reduce pride. • The identity of the possesion strengthens the relation of ideas arising from blood and kindred. ◦ It conveys the fancy with greater facility from one generation to another, from the remote ancestors to their posterity, who are both their heirs and their descendants. • By this facility the impression is transmitted more entire, and excites a greater degree of pride and vanity. • The case is the same with the transmission of the honours and fortune through a succession of males without their passing through any female. ◦ The imagination naturally turns to whatever is important and considerable (Part 2, Sec, 2). ◦ If a small and a great object are presented, it usually leaves the small and dwells entirely on the great. • In the society of marriage, the male sex has the advantage above the female. ◦ The husband first engages our attention. ◦ The thought rests on him with greater satisfaction whether we: ▪ consider him directly, or ▪ reach him by passing through related objects. ◦ It arrives at him with greater facility than his wife. • This property must: ◦ strengthen the child’s relation to the father ◦ weaken that to the mother. • All relations are nothing but a propensity to pass from one idea ma another. ◦ Whatever strengthens the propensity strengthens the relation. • We have a stronger propensity to pass from the idea of the children to the idea of the father, than to the idea of the mother. ◦ We should regard the former relation as the closer and more considerable.

This is why children commonly:

• bear their father’s name
• are esteemed to be of nobler or baser birth, according to his family.

The mother usually may have a superior spirit and genius to the father. ◦ But the general rule prevails despite the exception, according to the doctrine explained above.

Even when a superiority of any kind is so great, or when any other reasons have such an effect, as to make the children rather represent: • the mother’s family than the father’s, • the general rule still retains such an efficacy. ◦ It weakens the relation and makes a kind of break in the line of ancestors. • The imagination does not run along them with facility. • It is unable to transfer the ancestors’ honour and credit to their posterity of the same name and family so readily • as when the transition is conformable to the general rules, and passes from father to son, or from brother to brother.