Our natural love and hatred for others Simplified

¹⁶ We wamt to be loved because of our natural love for some people.

We dread to be hated because of our natural hatred for some people.

A person does something really bad in secret.

• When he looks back on it, he feels ashamed if he views it how the impartial spectator would view it
• He still feels that he would be the natural object of hatred.
• He trembles at what he would suffer if he were punished.
• He would feel the agony of horror and remorse.

These natural pangs of an fearful conscience are the demons, the avenging furies which haunt the guilty.

Skilled criminals commit crime so coolly as to avoid the suspicion. Sometimes, they discover their guilt by themselves and admit their crime.

¹⁷ In such cases, the horror of blame-worthiness conquers the dread of blame.

To pacify the remorse of their own consciences, they voluntarily submitted themselves to the punishment which they might easily have avoided.

¹⁸ Only the most superficial people can be happy with unmerited praise.

• But unmerited reproach can severely mortify anyone.

Foolish tales frequently circulate in society.

• Those tales always die away after a few weeks from their own falsehood.
• People with ordinary constancy learn to despise them.

But an innocent man is often shocked by the false imputation of a crime, especially when that imputation is supported by some circumstances.

He is perfectly conscious of his own innocence. But the very imputation throws a shadow of disgrace on his character. His just indignation at so gross an injury might frequently be improper and sometimes even impossible to revenge. But it itself is a very painful sensation. The greatest tormentor of the human breast is a violent resentment which cannot be gratified.

An innocent man, brought to the scaffold by the false imputation of an infamous or odious crime, suffers the most cruel misfortune.

His agony might frequently be greater than the agony of criminals who are really guilty.

Profligate criminals, such as common thieves and highwaymen, frequently have little sense of their own conduct’s baseness. Consequently, they have no remorse.

They do not trouble themselves on the punishment’s justice or injustice. They always expected the gibbet to fall to them.

When it does fall, they:

• consider themselves only as less lucky than their companions,
• submit to their fortune with only the uneasiness from the fear of death.

Such worthless wretches, frequently see such fear and can easily conquer them completely. On the contrary, the innocent man is tormented by the injustice done to him, over and above his uneasiness from this fear of death.

He is horrified at the thoughts of the infamy which the punishment may shed on his memory.

He foresees, with the most exquisite anguish, that he will be remembered by his dearest friends and relations with shame and horror for his supposed disgraceful conduct, instead of with regret and affection. The shades of death bring him a darker and more melancholy gloom than natural.

We hope that such fatal accidents happen very rarely in any country, for mankind’s tranquility.

But they happen sometimes in all countries, even in those where justice is well administered. Galas was an unfortunate man of much more than ordinary constancy. He broke upon the wheel and burnt at Tholouse for the supposed murder of his own son, of which he was perfectly innocent. He seemed to deprecate, not so much the cruelty of the punishment, as the disgrace which the imputation might bring on his memory.

After he had been broken and before going into the fire, a monk who attended the execution, exhorted him to confess his crime. Galas said, “My Father, can you bring yourself to believe that I am guilty?”

¹⁹ To persons in such unfortunate circumstances, that humble philosophy which confines its views to this life, perhaps can afford little consolation.

Everything that could render life or death respectable is taken from them. They are condemned to death and everlasting infamy. Only religion can afford them any effectual comfort.

She alone can tell them, that it is of little importance what man may think of their conduct, while the all-seeing Judge of the world approves of it. She alone can present to them the view of another world.

It is a world of more candour, humanity, and justice, than the present. It is where: their innocence in due time will be declared, and their virtue to be finally rewarded.

The same great principle which can alone strike terror into triumphant vice, affords the only effectual consolation to disgraced and insulted innocence.

²⁰ In smaller offences and greater crimes, a person of sensibility is frequently much more hurt by the unjust imputation, than the real criminal is by the actual guilt.

A woman of gallantry laughs even at the well-founded surmises circulated about her conduct. The worst founded surmise of the same kind is a mortal stab to an innocent virgin. We may lay as a general rule, that the person who is deliberately guilty of a disgraceful action can seldom have much sense of the disgrace. The person who is habitually guilty of it, can scarce ever have any sense of disgrace

²¹ Why does unmerited reproach can severely mortify men of the best judgement?

²² In almost all cases, pain is a more pungent sensation than pleasure.

Pain almost always depresses us far below our natural state of happiness than pleasure raises us above it. A man of sensibility is more humiliated by just censure than he is ever elevated by just applause. A wise man always rejects unmerited applause with contempt.

But he often feels the injustice of unmerited censure very severely.

He feels that he is guilty of a mean falsehood by:

• being applauded for something that he has not done,
• assuming a merit which does not belong to him, and
• deserving the contempt of those persons who admired him by mistake.

He might be pleased to find that he has been thought capable by many people of doing something that he did not do.

But he would think himself guilty of the greatest baseness if he did not immediately undeceive them.

It gives him little pleasure to look on himself as how others would actually look on him.

When he is conscious that, if they knew the truth, they would see him in a very different light. A weak man, however, is often much delighted with viewing himself in this false and delusive light.

He assumes the merit of every laudable action that is ascribed to him. He pretends to the merit of many actions which nobody ever thought of ascribing to him. He pretends to: have done what he never did, have written what another wrote, have invented what another discovered.

He is led into all the miserable vices of plagiarism and common lying. No man of middling good sense can derive much pleasure from the imputation of a laudable action which he never performed. Yet a wise man may suffer great pain from the serious imputation of a crime which he never committed.

In this case, Nature has rendered the pain more pungent than the opposite and correspondent pleasure. She has rendered it so in a much greater than the ordinary degree.

A denial rids a man at once of the foolish and ridiculous pleasure. But it will not always rid him of the pain. When he refuses the merit ascribed to him, nobody doubts his veracity. It may be doubted when he denies the crime which he is accused of.

He is at once enraged at the falsehood of the imputation. He is mortified to find that any credit should be given to it. He feels that his character is insufficient to protect him. He feels that his brethren, far from looking on him in that light in which he anxiously desires to be viewed by them, think him capable of being guilty of what he is accused of.

He knows perfectly:

• that he has not been guilty
• what he has done but perhaps scarce any man can know perfectly what he himself is capable of

Every person might doubt what his own mind may or may not admit of.

The trust and good opinion of his friends and neighbours, relieves him the most from this doubt. Their distrust and unfavourable opinion to increase it

He may think himself very confident that their unfavourable judgment is wrong: but this confidence can seldom be so great as to hinder that judgment from making some impression upon him.

This impression will likely be greater the greater his:

The greater his sensibility, the greater his delicacy, the greater his worth in short