Further reflections on the natural virtues
Table of Contents
Bodily Pain And Pleasure
Pride & humility and love & hatred are excited by advantages or disadvantages of the mind, body, or fortune.
These advantages or disadvantages do this by producing pain or pleasure.
The pain or pleasure arising from the general survey or view of any action or quality of the mind:
- constitutes its vice or virtue, and
- gives rise to our approbation or blame
This is nothing but a fainter and more imperceptible love or hatred.
We have assigned four sources of this pain and pleasure.
The advantages or disadvantages of the body and fortune produce a pain or pleasure from the very same principles.
An object’s usefulness and ability to convey pleasure to its owner or to others:
- convey an immediate pleasure to the person who considers the object
- command his love and approbation.
The following example is a phenomenon with bodily advantages which proves this.
Though it might appear trivial and ludicrous.
‘Good women’s men’ are men:
- who have signalized themselves by their amorous exploits, or
- whose body promises extraordinary vigour in amorous exploits.
They are well-received by women.
They naturally engage the affections, even of women whose virtue prevents the use of those men’s talents.
The ability of such a man to give enjoyment is the real source of the love and esteem he gets from women.
At the same time, the women who love and esteem him:
- have no prospect of receiving that enjoyment themselves, and
- can only be affected by their sympathy with his lover.
This instance is singular and merits our attention.
Another source of the pleasure we receive from bodily advantages is their utility to the person who has them.
A considerable part of the beauty of men and other animals is in their:
- strength and agility, and
- capacity for action or exercise.
The following are beautiful in our species because they are signs of force and vigour:
- broad shoulders
- a lank belly
- firm joints
- tapered legs
These are advantages we naturally sympathize with.
They convey to the beholder a share of that satisfaction they produce in the possessor.
An air of health and strength and agility, makes a considerable part of beauty which brings immediate pleasure.
A sickly air is always disagreeable because of the idea of pain and uneasiness it conveys to us.
On the other hand, we are pleased with the regularity of our own features.
Even if it is:
- neither useful to ourselves nor others, and
- necessary at a distance to make it convey any satisfaction to us.
We commonly:
- consider ourselves as we appear in the eyes of others, and
- sympathize with the advantageous sentiments they entertain with regard to us.
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This is nothing but a fainter and more imperceptible love or hatred.
We have assigned four sources of this pain and pleasure.
The advantages or disadvantages of the body and fortune produce a pain or pleasure from the very same principles.
An object’s usefulness and ability to convey pleasure to its owner or to others:
- convey an immediate pleasure to the person who considers the object
- command his love and approbation.
The following example is a phenomenon with bodily advantages which proves this.
Though it might appear trivial and ludicrous.
‘Good women’s men’ are men:
- who have signalized themselves by their amorous exploits, or
- whose body promises extraordinary vigour in amorous exploits.
They are well-received by women.
They naturally engage the affections, even of women whose virtue prevents the use of those men’s talents.
The ability of such a man to give enjoyment is the real source of the love and esteem he gets from women.
At the same time, the women who love and esteem him:
- have no prospect of receiving that enjoyment themselves, and
- can only be affected by their sympathy with his lover.
This instance is singular and merits our attention.
Another source of the pleasure we receive from bodily advantages is their utility to the person who has them.
A considerable part of the beauty of men and other animals is in their:
- strength and agility, and
- capacity for action or exercise.
The following are beautiful in our species because they are signs of force and vigour:
- broad shoulders
- a lank belly
- firm joints
- tapered legs
These are advantages we naturally sympathize with.
They convey to the beholder a share of that satisfaction they produce in the possessor.
An air of health and strength and agility, makes a considerable part of beauty which brings immediate pleasure.
A sickly air is always disagreeable because of the idea of pain and uneasiness it conveys to us.
On the other hand, we are pleased with the regularity of our own features.
Even if it is:
- neither useful to ourselves nor others, and
- necessary at a distance to make it convey any satisfaction to us.
We commonly:
- consider ourselves as we appear in the eyes of others, and
- sympathize with the advantageous sentiments they entertain with regard to us.
Our Sympathy For Pleasures (also in Book 2, Part 2, Section 5)
The advantages of fortune produce esteem and approbation from the same principles.
Our approbation of fortunate people is from 3 causes:
- Our pleasure from the view of a rich man’s beautiful clothes, equipage, gardens, or houses
- The advantage we hope to reap from him by his generosity and liberality
- The pleasure and advantage he reaps from his possessions
These produce an agreeable sympathy in us.
Most people ascribe our esteem of the rich to:
- self-interest, and
- the prospect of advantage.
But our esteem:
- extends beyond any prospect of advantage to ourselves
- comes from a sympathy with those who:
- are dependent on the person we esteem and respect, and
- have an immediate connection with him.
We consider him as a person capable of contributing to the happiness of his fellow-creatures.
We naturally embrace their sentiments for him.
This consideration will justify my hypothesis in:
- preferring cause #3 to the other two causes, and
- ascribing our esteem of the rich to a sympathy with the pleasure and advantage which the rich receive from their possessions.
Because, without having recourse to a sympathy of one kind or another, the other two causes cannot:
- operate to a due extent, or
- account for all the phenomena.
It is much more natural to choose that immediate and direct sympathy, than the remote and indirect sympathy.
When riches or power are very great and render the person globally important, the esteem attending them might be partly ascribed to other causes:
- Their interesting the mind by a prospect of the multitude
- The importance of their consequences
But to account for this principle’s operation, we must also have recourse to sympathy as in the preceding section.
It may not be amiss to remark the flexibility of:
- our sentiments, and
- the several changes they readily receive from the objects conjoined to them.
All the sentiments of approbation, which attend any species of objects, have a great resemblance to each other, though derived from different sources.
On the other hand, those sentiments, when directed to different objects, are different to the feeling, though derived from the same source.
Thus, the beauty of all visible objects causes a pleasure pretty much the same.
Though it is sometimes derived from:
- the mere species and appearance of the objects,
- sympathy, and
- an idea of their utility.
Similarly, whenever we survey men’s actions and characters without any interest in them, the pleasure or pain from the survey (with some minute differences) is mainly of the same kind.
Though there might be a great diversity in the causes it is derived from.
On the other hand, a convenient house, and a virtuous character do not cause the same feeling of approbation, even if the source of our approbation:
- is the same, and
- flow from:
- sympathy, and
- an idea of their utility.
There is something very inexplicable in this variation of our feelings.
But we have experience of this with regard to all our passions and sentiments.