The Analysis of the Sense of Merit and Demerit

The Sense of Merit arises from sympathy

^22-23 The sense of merit is a compounded feeling made up of 2 distinct feelings:

1. A direct sympathy with the subject-person’s feelings
2. An indirect sympathy with its object-person’s gratitude

²⁴ We can plainly distinguish these 2 feelings uniting in our sense of merit of a character or action. For example, after we read about beneficent actions, we:

• are animated by their generosity
• become keen for their success and grieve at their disappointment
• imagine that we are the subject-person – we think ourselves acting the part of a Scipio, Camillus, Timoleon or Aristides.

We also have an indirect sympathy with the object-persons who receive benefit when:

• we feel as thankful towards those who served them, with a warm fellow-feeling,
• we embrace their benefactor.

In short, the sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love is the source of our sense of:

• the merit of such actions,
• the propriety of recompensing them, and
• making the person who performed them rejoice from the recompense

Through gratitude and love, we:

• bring to our own breast the situation of those who feel the gratitude
• are transported towards the generous man

The Sense of Demerit arises from lack of sympathy

²⁵ 2. Our sense of demerit on the subject-person’s action arises from a lack of sympathy or a direct antipathy to the subject-person’s feelings and motives.

Likewise, our sense of its demerit arises from an indirect sympathy with the resentment of the object-person.

²⁶ We cannot enter into the object-person’s resentment unless our heart beforehand=

• disapproves the subject-person’s motives and
• renounces all fellow-feeling with them.

Likewise, the sense of merit and demerit are compounded sentiments made up of two distinct emotions=

• a direct antipathy to the subject-person’s feelings, and
• an indirect sympathy with the object-person’s resentment.

²⁷ Here we can plainly distinguish those two emotions uniting in our sense of demerit of an action. When we read about the cruelty of a Borgia or a Nero, our heart:

• rises up against the detestable feelings which influenced their conduct, and
• horridly renounces all fellow-feeling with such execrable motives.

So far, our feelings are founded on:

• the direct antipathy to the subject-person’s feelings, and
• the indirect sympathy with the object-person’s resentment which is still more sensibly felt.

When we bring home to ourselves the situation of the persons they insulted, murdered, or betrayed, we feel indignation against such oppressors.

• Our sympathy with the distress of the innocent sufferers is just as real and lively with our fellow-feeling for their just resentment.
• Our sympathy for their distress only heightens our sympahty for their resentment.

When we think of the sufferers’ anguish, we take part with them more earnestly against their oppressors. We more eagerly enter into their schemes of vengeance.

We feel wreaking that punishment, which our sympathetic indignation tells us their oppressors must receive. The sympathetic indignation naturally boils up in the spectator’s breast whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the sufferer’s case.

This indignation causes:

• our sense of the horror of such conduct,
• our delight in hearing that it was properly punished,
• our indignation when it escapes this punishment, and
• our whole feeling of its badness and the propriety and fitness of inflicting evil on the guilty person and making him grieve in his turn.