Family Relations

Men are also vain 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

These objects:

• reference sensory pleasures
• are originally as agreeable to the feeling, taste or hearing

Why We Admire Foreign Countries

Some people:

• discover an opposite kind of vanity
• affect to depreciate their own country compared with those they have traveled to.

Their relation to a foreign country is formed when they live in it.

When they return home and are surrounded by their fellow countrymen, they find that their strong relation to their own nation is shared with so many.

• It is lost to them.

Whereas their relation to the foreign country is increased by them considering how few have been there.

This is why they admire the beauty, utility and rarity of what is abroad, over what is at home.

We can be vain of a country, climate or any inanimate object related to us.

Likewise, 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 some pride when discovered in persons related to us.

The beauty, address, merit, credit and honours of their kindred are displayed by the proud, as sources of their vanity.

We are proud of riches in ourselves.

So to satisfy our vanity we:

• want 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 people:

• avoid the poor as much as possible
• claim to be descended from a long succession of rich and honourable ancestors

Those who boast of the antiquity of their families are glad when:

1. Their ancestors have been uninterrupted proprietors of the same land for many generations
2. Their family has never changed its possessions, or been transplanted into any other province.

They feel prouder when:

• their possessions have been transmitted through a descent composed entirely of males
• their honour and fortune have never past through any female.

Why does this happen?

When any one boasts of his family’s antiquity, his vanity is based on:

• 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.

Pride depends on these relations.

• Whatever strengthens the relations also increases pride.
• Whatever weakens the relations reduces 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.

This:

• transmits the impression more entirely, and
• excites more pride and vanity

The case is the same with the transmission of the honours and fortune through a succession of males.

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 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:

• strengthens the child’s relation to the father
• weakens the child’s relation to the mother.

All relations are nothing but a propensity to pass from one idea to 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 my doctrine.

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.