Direct and Indirect Misfortunes Simplified

Misfortunes make our feelings extreme

⁵⁴ There are two kinds of private misfortunes which make our feelings go beyond the bounds of propriety:

1. Those that affect us only indirectly.

They firstly affect other persons particularly dear to us such as our parents, children, brothers and sisters, intimate friends.

2. Those that affect ourselves immediately and directly

They affect our body, fortune, or reputation. Examples are pain, sickness, approaching death, poverty, disgrace, etc.

⁵⁵ In the first kind of misfortunes, our feelings might go very much beyond what exact propriety will admit of.

But they may likewise fall short of it. They frequently do so. The man who feels no more for the death of his own father than for the death of any other man’s father, would not appear as a good son. Such unnatural indifference would be highly disapproved.

However, of those domestic feelings:

• some offend by their excess
• some offend by their defect.

For the wisest purposes, Nature has rendered in everyone a parental tenderness. It is a much stronger affection than filial piety.

The continuance and propagation of the species depend on parental tenderness and not on filial piety. Ordinarily, the child’s existence and preservation depend on the parents’ care. The parents’ existence and preservation seldom depend on the child’s care. Therefore, Nature has rendered the parental tenderness so strong. It generally requires not to be excited, but to be moderated.

Moralists generally teach us how to restrain our:

• fondness
• excessive attachment
• our unjust preference to our own children above those of other people.

They seldom try to teach us how to indulge these.

On the contrary, they exhort us to:

• an affectionate attention to our parents, and
• make a proper return to them in their old age for their kindness during our infancy and youth.

In the Decalogue, we are commanded to honour our fathers and mothers. No mention is made of the love of our children. Nature had sufficiently prepared us to perform this latter duty. Men are seldom accused of being fonder of their children than they really are. They have sometimes been suspected of displaying their piety to their parents with too much ostentation. Similarly, the ostentatious sorrow of widows has been suspected of insincerity. Even the excess of such kind affections should be respected, if they were sincere. Even if we might not approve of it, we should not severely condemn it. The very affectation is a proof that it appears praise-worthy, at least in the eyes of those who affect it.

We blame a parent’s excessive fondness and anxiety as something which may be hurtful to the child in the end

In the meantime, it is excessively inconvenient to the parent. But we easily pardon it. We never regard it with hatred and detestation. But the defect of this excessive affection always appears peculiarly odious. The most detestable of all brutes is the man who feels nothing for his own children. He always treats them with unmerited severity and harshness. The sense of propriety is always much more offended by the defect than by the excess of that sensibility. In such cases, the stoical apathy is never agreeable. All the metaphysical sophisms which supports it only blows up a vain man’s hard insensibility to 10 times its native impertinence. The poets and romance writers best paint the refinements and delicacies of love and friendship and of all other private and domestic affections. Examples are Racine, Voltaire, Richardson, Maurivaux, and Riccoboni. In such cases, they are much better instructors than Zeno, Chrysippus, or Epictetus.

57 The following are not undelicious sensations:

that moderated sensibility to the misfortunes of others, which does not disqualify us from doing any duty, the sad remembrance of our departed friends. They outwardly wear pain and grief. But they are all inwardly stamped with virtue and self-approbation. Gray says of these as the pang to secret sorrow dear.

Direct Misfortunes

58 It is otherwise in the misfortunes which affect ourselves immediately and directly, in our body, fortune, or reputation.

The sense of propriety is often offended by the excess, than by the lack of our sensibility. We can have the stoical apathy only in a very few cases.

59 We have very little fellow-feeling with bodily sensations.

That pain from the cutting of flesh is perhaps the bodily sensation which the spectator feels the most lively sympathy with. His neighbour’s approaching death also affects him much. However in both cases, he feels so little compared to what the subject-person feels. The subject-person cannot offend his observer by appearing to suffer with too much ease.

68 Mere poverty excites little compassion.

Its complaints are often the objects of contempt than of fellow-feeling. We despise a beggar. We do not seriously sympathize with him even if we give him alms. The fall from riches to poverty commonly brings the most real distress to the sufferer. It seldom fails to excite the spectator’s most sincere sympathy. Though presently in society, this misfortune can seldom happen without some very considerable misconduct in the sufferer.

Yet he is almost always so much pitied. He is scarce ever allowed to fall into extreme poverty: by his friends, and frequently by the indulgence of those very creditors who complain of his imprudence. He is almost always supported in some decent, though humble, mediocrity. We might easily pardon some weakness in such unfortunate persons. But, at the same time, we always approve of persons who: carry the firmest countenance, accommodate themselves with the greatest ease to their new situation, and feel no humiliation from the change. They always command our highest admiration in resting their rank in society on their character and conduct, instead of their fortune.

61 The undeserved loss of reputation is certainly the greatest external misfortune which can affect an innocent man immediately and directly.

A sensibility to whatever caused so great a calamity is not always ungraceful or disagreeable. We often esteem a young man the more he resents, though with some violence, any unjust reproach on his character or honour. The affliction of an innocent young lady from the groundless surmises circulated about her conduct appears often perfectly amiable. Old persons have long experience of the world’s folly and injustice. They have learned to pay little regard to its censure or applause. They neglect and despise verbal abuse. They do not even deign to honour its futile authors with any serious resentment. This indifference is founded on a firm confidence in their own well-tried and well-established characters. It would be disagreeable in young people who cannot and should not have any such confidence. It might create in them a most improper insensibility to real honour and infamy in their advancing years.

62 In all other private misfortunes which affect ourselves immediately and directly, we can very seldom offend by appearing to be too little affected.

We frequently remember our sensibility to the misfortunes of others with pleasure and satisfaction. We can seldom remember our sensibility to our own misfortunes without some shame and humiliation.

63 If we examine our weakness and self-command in common life, we will see that this control of our passive feelings is acquired from:

that great discipline which Nature established for the acquisition of virtues. a regard to the sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct. It is not acquired from the abstruse syllogisms of a quibbling dialectic.

64 A very young child has no self-command.

By the violence of its outcries, it always tries to alarm its nurse’s or parents’ attention, whatever its emotions are. While it remains with such partial protectors, its anger is the first and, perhaps, the only passion which it is taught to moderate. By noise and threats, they often frighten it into good temper for their own ease. The passion which incites the child to attack, is restrained by the passion which teaches it to attend to its own safety. When it is old enough to go to school or mix with its equals, it soon finds that they have no such indulgent partiality. It naturally wishes to: gain their favour, and avoid their hatred or contempt. It is taught to do so from a regard to its own safety. It soon finds that it can do so only by moderating its anger and all its other passions to the degree which its play-fellows are pleased with. It thus enters into the great school of self-command. It studies to be master of itself more and more. It begins to exercise a discipline over its own feelings. The longest life is very seldom enough to perfect this discipline.

65 In all private misfortunes, pain, sickness, sorrow, the weakest man is immediately impressed with the view that visiting friends or strangers are likely to have on his situation.

Their view calls off his attention from his own view. His breast is somewhat calmed when they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and mechanically. But it does not last long with a weak man. His own view of his situation immediately recurs on him. He abandons himself, as before, to sighs and tears and lamentations. Like a child that has not yet gone to school, he tries to produce some harmony between his own grief and the spectator’s compassion. He does this by importunately calling on the spectator instead of moderating his grief.

66 With a firmer man, the effect is somewhat more permanent.

He tries, as much as he can, to fix his attention on the view which the visitors are likely to take of his situation. At the same time, he feels their natural esteem and approbation for him when he preserves his tranquility. Though under the pressure of some great calamity, he appears to feel for himself no more than what they really feel for him. He approves and applauds himself by sympathy with their approbation. His pleasure from this enables him more easily to continue this generous effort. In most cases, he avoids mentioning his own misfortune. If his visitors are tolerably well bred, they would not anything which can remind him of it. He tries to: entertain them in his usual way on indifferent subjects or if he feels himself strong enough to venture to mention his misfortune, he tries to talk of it as he thinks they are capable of talking of it. He even feels it no further than they are capable of feeling it. if he has not been well inured to the hard discipline of self-command, he soon grows weary of this restraint. A long visit fatigues him. Towards its end, he is constantly in danger of abandoning himself to all the weakness of excessive sorrow. He always does this when the visit is over. Modern good manners are extremely indulgent to human weakness. For some time, they forbid the visits of strangers to persons under great family distress. They only allow the visits of nearest relations and most intimate friends. The presence of intimate friends is thought to impose less restraint than the presence of the nearest relations. The sufferers can more easily accommodate themselves to the feelings of those, from whom they have reason to expect a more indulgent sympathy. Secret enemies are frequently fond of making those charitable visits as early as the most intimate friends. In this case, the weakest man in the world tries to support his manly countenance. He tries to behave with as much gaiety and ease as he can, from indignation and contempt of their malice.

67 The man of real constancy and firmness is the wise and just man who has been thoroughly bred in:

the great school of self-command the bustle and business of the world He has been perhaps exposed to:

the violence and injustice of faction the hardships and hazards of war Such a man always maintains this control of his passive feelings.

He wears nearly the same countenance whether in solitude or in society. He is affected very nearly in the same manner. He has often been under the necessity of supporting this manhood: in success and in disappointment in prosperity and in adversity before friends and enemies He has never dared to forget for one moment the judgment which the impartial spectator would pass on his sentiments and conduct. He has never dared to suffer the man within the breast to be absent one moment from his attention. With the eyes of this great inmate he has always been accustomed to regard whatever relates to himself. This habit has become perfectly familiar to him. He has been in the constant practice and under the constant necessity of modelling or of trying to model: his outward conduct and behaviour even his inward sentiments and feelings as much as he can, according to those of this awful and respectable judge. He does not merely affect the sentiments of the impartial spectator. He really adopts them. He almost identifies himself with it. He almost becomes himself that impartial spectator. He even only feels what that great arbiter of his conduct directs him to feel.

68 The self-approbation which every man uses to survey his own conduct, is proportional to the degree of self-command needed to obtain that self-approbation.

Where little self-command is necessary, little self-approbation is due. The man who has only scratched his finger cannot applaud himself much even if he immediately forgets this paltry misfortune. The man who has lost his leg by a cannon shot but acts with his usual coolness naturally feels a higher degree of self-approbation because he exerts more self-command. Most men would entirely erase all other views from the vivacity and strength such a misfortune. They would feel nothing. They could only attend to their own pain and fear. The judgment of the real spectators and of the ideal man within the breast would be entirely overlooked and disregarded.

69 The reward which Nature bestows on good behaviour under misfortune, is thus exactly proportional to the degree of that good behaviour.

The only compensation she could make for the bitterness of pain and distress is thus too, in equal degrees of good behaviour, exactly proportioned to the degree of that pain and distress. The pleasure and pride of the conquest are so much greater relative to the degree of the self-command necessary to conquer our natural sensibility. This pleasure and pride are so great that all men who completely enjoys them cannot be unhappy. Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast of the person who has complete self-satisfaction. With the Stoics, the wise man’s happiness under such an accident is equal to his happiness in any other circumstance. Yet this complete enjoyment of his own self-applause alleviates his own sufferings. Though it might not extinguish them.

70 In such attacks of distress, the wisest and firmest man makes a considerable and even a painful exertion to preserve his equanimity.

The following presses hard on him: his natural feeling of his own distress and his natural view of his own situation. He needs a very great effort to take the view of the impartial spectator. Both views present themselves to him at the same time. His whole attention is directed to the impartial spectator’s view by his: sense of honour, and regard to his own dignity He is being continually called into the his own natural view by his undisciplined feelings. In this case, he does not perfectly identify himself with the ideal man within the breast. He does not become the impartial spectator of his own conduct. The different views of both characters exist in his mind separate from one another. Each directs him to a behaviour different from what the other directs him to. When he follows that view which honour and dignity point out to him, Nature does not leave him without a recompense. He enjoys: his own complete self-approbation and the applause of every candid and impartial spectator. By Nature’s unalterable laws, however, he still suffers. The recompense she bestows is very considerable. But it is not enough to compensate the sufferings inflicted by those laws. Neither is it fit that it should. If it did completely compensate them, he could not have any motive from self-interest to avoid an accident which would reduce his utility to himself and society. Nature, from her parental care of both, meant that he should anxiously avoid all such accidents. Therefore he suffers in the attack of distress. He maintains: the manhood of his countenance and the sedateness and sobriety of his judgment. It requires his utmost exertions to do so.

71 However, agony can never be permanent.

If he survives the agony, he effortlessly enjoys his ordinary tranquility. A man with a wooden leg suffers. He foresees that he must continue to suffer much inconvenience for the rest of his life. However, he soon views it as an inconvenience under which he can enjoy all the ordinary pleasures of solitude and society. This is exactly how every impartial spectator views it. He soon identifies himself with the ideal man within the breast. He soon becomes himself the impartial spectator of his own situation. He no longer weeps, laments, or grieves over it, as a weak man sometimes does in the beginning. The view of the impartial spectator becomes so perfectly habitual to him. He never thinks of surveying his misfortune in any other view.