Praise and Blame Simplified

³² Praise and blame actually express praiseworthiness and blameworthiness.

• The love of praise is the desire of obtaining our brethren’s favourable sentiments.
• The love of praiseworthiness is the desire of rendering ourselves the proper objects of those sentiments.

Those two principles resemble. The dread of blame and that of blame-worthiness has the similar affinity.

³³ The man who does a praise-worthy action may likewise desire the praise due to it.

Sometimes, he perhaps desires more than what is due to it. In this case, the 2 principles are blended together.

Even himself may not know how far his conduct may have been influenced by the one and how far by the other. It must almost always be so to other people.

They are disposed to:

• lessen his conduct’s merit
• impute it chiefly to the mere love of praise or mere vanity

Those who think more favourably of it, impute it chiefly to the love of praise-worthiness.

This is the love of:

• what is really honourable and noble in human conduct
• obtaining and deserving the approbation and applause of his brethren

The spectator’s imagination throws on it the one colour or the other, according to his habits of thinking or the favour or dislike he has for the person doing the action.

³⁴ Some bad-tempered philosophers have judged human nature as peevish individuals judge one another’s conduct.

They have imputed actions which should be ascribed to the love of praise-worthiness, to the love of praise or vanity. I shall hereafter give an account of some of their systems but not stop to examine them.

³⁵ Very few men can be satisfied with knowing that they have attained qualities or performed actions which they admire in other people, unless they acknowledged that they:

• have those praiseworthy qualities or
• have performed those praiseworthy actions.

In other words, unless they have actually obtained that praise which they think due to the one and to the other.

In this respect, however, people differ considerably from one another. Some seem indifferent about the praise when they are perfectly satisfied that they have attained the praiseworthiness. Others appear much less anxious about the praiseworthiness than about the praise.

³⁶ No man can be tolerably satisfied with having avoided everything blameworthy in his conduct, unless he has also avoided the blame.

A wise man may frequently neglect praise even when he has best deserved it. In serious matters, he will most carefully regulate his conduct to avoid blame-worthiness and every probable imputation of blame.

He will never avoid blame by:

• doing anything he judges blameworthy,
• omitting any part of his duty, or
• neglecting any opportunity of doing anything he judges to be praise-worthy.

But he will most anxiously and carefully avoid it. To show much anxiety about praise, even for praiseworthy actions, is seldom a mark of great wisdom. It is generally a mark of some weakness.

But there may be no weakness in being anxious to avoid blame or reproach. There frequently is the most praise-worthy prudence in doing so.

³⁷ Cicero says: ‘Many people inconsistently despise glory but are severely mortified by unjust reproach.’

However, this inconsistency is founded in the unalterable principles of human nature.

³⁸ The all-wise Author of Nature has taught man to:

• respect his brethren’s sentiments and judgments,
• be pleased when they approve of his conduct, and
• be hurt when they disapprove of it.

He has made man the immediate judge of mankind. He created man after his own image. He appointed man as his representative on earth to superintend his brethren’s behaviour.

They are taught by nature to:

• acknowledge that power and jurisdiction conferred on him,
• be humbled and mortified when they have incurred his censure, and
• be elated when they have obtained his applause.

³⁹ Man has become the immediate judge of mankind in this way, but only so in the first instance.

An appeal lies from his sentence to: the tribunal of the impartial and well-informed spectator, and the tribunal of their own consciences. This tribunal is much higher. It is the tribunal of the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct. The jurisdictions of those two tribunals are founded on different principles, which resemble each other in some respects.

The jurisdiction of the man outside is founded in the:

• desire of actual praise, and
• aversion to actual blame.

The jurisdiction of the man within is founded in:

• the desire of praise-worthiness, and
  • It is in the desire of the qualities and actions that we love in other people.
• the aversion to blame-worthiness
  • It is in the dread of qualities or actions that we hate in others.

If the man outside applauds us for actions we did not perform, the man within can immediately humble the pride from such groundless acclamations.

It would tell us that we would be despicable by accepting them, because we do not deserve them. On the contrary, if the man outside reproaches us for actions which we never did, the man within may immediately:

correct this false judgment, and assure us that we are not the proper objects of that censure. But the man within seems sometimes astonished and confounded by the vehemence and clamour of the man outside.

The violence and loudness of the blame poured on us, seems to stupify and benumb our natural sense of praise-worthiness and blame-worthiness. The judgments of the man within might not be altered or perverted absolutely.

However, they are so much shaken in their steadiness and firmness. Their natural effect in securing the mind’s tranquility is frequently much destroyed. We do not dare to absolve ourselves: when all our brethren loudly condemn us, and when the opinion of the real spectators is unanimously and violently against us. The supposed impartial spectator of our conduct gives his opinion in our favour fearfully and hesitantly. He tries to consider our conduct from their view. In such cases, this demigod within the breast appears like the demigods of the poets. Though he is partly immortal, he is also partly mortal. When his judgments are firmly directed by the sense of praiseworthiness and blame-worthiness, he acts suitably to his divine extraction. But when he is astonished and confounded by the judgments of ignorant and weak man, he discovers his connection with mortality. He then acts suitably to the human than to the divine part of his origin.

⁴⁰ In such cases, a humbled and afflicted man’s only effective consolation lies in an appeal to a higher tribunal.

This higher tribunal is that of the all-seeing Judge of the world. His eye can never be deceived. His judgments can never be perverted. During his mind’s weakness and despondency, only a firm confidence in this great tribunal’s unerring rectitude can support him.

In due time, this tribunal declares his innocence. It finally rewards his virtue, under the perturbation and astonishment of the man within the breast. Nature has set up the man within the breast in this life as the great guardian of his innocence and tranquility. Thus, our happiness in this life depends on the humble hope and expectation of a life to come.

It is a hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature. It alone can: support its lofty ideas of its own dignity, illuminate the dreary prospect of its continually approaching mortality, and maintain its cheerfulness under all the calamities from life’s disorders. The belief that there is a world to come is a very venerable doctrine.

It is so comfortable to the weakness of human nature. It is so flattering to the grandeur of human nature.

This is a belief in a world where:

• exact justice will be done to every man, and
• every man will be ranked with those who are really his equals in moral and intellectual qualities.

The owner of those humble talents and virtues could not display them, because they were depressed by fortune. Even the man within the breast could not afford him any distinct and clear testimony of them.

That modest, silent, and unknown merit will be placed above those with the highest reputation or those who could do the most splendid and dazzling actions from their advantageous situation.

The virtuous man who unluckily doubted this belief, must earnestly wish to believe it.

Its most zealous assertors have taught us that the distributions of rewards and punishments was to be made in that world to come. This made this belief hated by the scoffers. Because frequently, this is opposite to all our moral sentiments.

⁴¹ Many venerable but discontented old officers have complained:

• that the assiduous courtier is often more favoured than the faithful servant,
• that adulation are often shorter and surer roads to preferment than merit or service, and
• that a campaign at Versailles or St. James’s is often worth two in Germany or Flanders.

But the greatest reproach, even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns, has been ascribed as an act of justice to divine perfection.

The sole virtues which can reward or exempt from punishment in the life to come were: the duties of devotion, and the worship of the Deity. Perhaps, they were the virtues most suitable to their station in which they chiefly excelled. We are all naturally disposed to overrate the excellencies of our own characters.

Jean Baptiste Massillon was eloquent and philosophical.

He gave his benediction to the regimental standards of Catinat in a discourse addressed to the officers: ‘What is most deplorable in your situation, Gentlemen, is that you always suffer in vain for the life to come and frequently even for this life. Your life is hard and painful. Your services and the duties sometimes go beyond the rigour and severity of the most austere cloisters.

Alas! The solitary monk, obliged to mortify his flesh and to subject it to the spirit, is supported by: the hope of an assured recompence, and the secret unction of that grace which softens the Lord’s yoke. But on your deathbed, can you dare to tell Him your fatigues and daily hardships of your employment? Can you dare to solicit Him for any recompence?

What is there that He should place to His own account in all: your exertions, and the violences that you have done to yourselves?

The best days of your life have been sacrificed to your profession.

Ten years service has worn out your body more than a whole life of mortification. Alas! my brother, one single day of those sufferings, consecrated to the Lord would perhaps have obtained you an eternal happiness. One single action, painful to nature, and offered up to Him, would perhaps have secured to you the inheritance of the Saints. And you have done all this in vain for this world.’

⁴² It is surely contrary to all our moral sentiments to:

• compare a monastery’s futile mortifications with a war’s ennobling hardships and hazards, and
• suppose that one day spent in the monastery should have more merit than a whole honourable life spent in war

This spirit has reserved the celestial regions for monks and friars.

However, it has condemned the following to the infernal:

• heroes
• statesmen and lawgivers
• poets and philosophers of the past
• people who have invented, improved, or excelled in the arts which contribute to human life’s subsistence, convenience or ornament
• mankind’s great protectors, instructors, and benefactors
• people to whom our natural sense of praise-worthiness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and most exalted virtue

Can we wonder that those who perhaps did not have devout and contemplative virtues hated the strange application of this most respectable doctrine?*6