The Sad Moralists
Table of Contents
47 Self-love suggests to us to prefer the interest of one to the interest of many.
But when the happiness or misery of others depends on our conduct, we dare not follow this.
The impartial specatator immediately tells us that:
- we value ourselves too much, and
- we value others too little.
This makes us the proper object of our brethren’s contempt and indignation.
For example, a soldier feels that his companions would scorn him if he ran away from danger.
48 A person must never prefer himself so much that he hurts others just to benefit himself.
- This is even if his benefit should be much greater than the hurt to the other.
The poor man must not steal from the rich even if the theft might be much more beneficial to the poor man than the loss could hurt the rich man.
The impartial specatator immediately tells him that:
- he is no better than his neighbour, and
- his action renders him the proper object of contempt and punishment
Commonly, an honest man dreads less suffering from the greatest external calamity which was not caused by him, than:
- the inward disgrace of his unjust action, and
- the stain it would forever stamp on his own mind.
The great stoical maxim is:
- Death, poverty, pain, and all of man’s external misfortunes are less contrary to nature, than it is for one man to:
- deprive another unjustly of anything, or
- unjustly promote his own advantage by another’s loss.
All honest men inwardly feel this truth.
49 We do not always need to restrain our natural anxiety on our own affairs or our natural indifference on the affairs of others when:
the happiness or misery of others do not depend on our conduct, and our interests are detached from theirs, so that there is no connection nor competition between them. The most vulgar education teaches us to act with some impartiality between ourselves and others on important times.
Even ordinary world commerce can adjust our active principles to some degree of propriety. But, it has been said, that only the most artificial and refined education can correct the inequalities of our passive feelings. It has been pretended that we must have recourse to the severest and profoundest philosophy.
Two Sets of Negative Moral Philosophers: One increases our fellow-feeling through pessimism, another reduces our ego
50 Two sets of philosophers, with exaggerated doctrines, have tried to teach us this hardest lesson of morality.
- Those who increased our sensibility to the interests of others
These make us feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves.
51 These are those whining and sad moralists.
They perpetually reproach our happiness while so many of our brethren are in misery, *7
They think:
- many poor people are:
- labouring under calamities
- in the languor of poverty
- in the agony of disease
- in the horrors of death
- under the insults and oppression of their enemies.
- our natural joy of prosperity is impious
The constant suffering of other people whom we never saw, should damp the pleasures of the fortunate. It should render a certain sad dejection habitual to all.
But this extreme sympathy with misfortunes which we do not know seems absurd.
For one man who suffers pain or misery on the earth, you will find twenty in prosperity or in tolerable circumstances
There is no reason why we should weep with the one than rejoice with the twenty.
This artificial sympathy is absurd and unattainable.
Those who feel this way commonly only have a certain sentimental sadness.
Without reaching the heart, it only renders the conversation impertinently dismal.
Even if this disposition could be attained, it would be perfectly useless.
It could only render the person who possessed it miserable.
Whatever interest we take in the fortune of people unconnected to us can only produce anxiety in us.
It does not produce any advantage to them.
Why should we trouble ourselves about the world on the moon? Everyone is entitled to our good wishes.
We naturally give them our good wishes.
But if they are unfortunate, it is not our duty to give ourselves any anxiety about it.
Nature seems to have wisely ordered that we should be but little interested in the fortune of people who: we can neither serve nor hurt, and are so very remote from us
We could still gain nothing if this original constitution changed.
52 We have too little fellow-feeling with the joy of success.
Envy usually prevents it
Whenver envy allows it, our favour to prosperity is often too great.
The same moralists who blame us for lack of sympathy with the miserable, reproach us for our levity in admiring the fortunate, powerful, and the rich.
53 2. The philosophers who reduce our sensibility to our own interest.
All the ancient sects of philosophers tried to correct the natural inequality of our passive feelings by reducing our sensibility to what concerns ourselves.
The Stoics were the best examples of this.
According to them, man should regard himself as:
- a citizen of the world,
- a member of the vast commonwealth of nature, not as something separated.
He should always be willing to sacrifice his own little interest to the greater interest of this community.
Whatever concerns himself should affect him no more than whatever concerns any other part of this immense system.
We should view ourselves as how any other person would view us, not as how our own selfish feelings place us.
What befalls ourselves we should regard as what befalls our neighbour, or, what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour regards what befalls us.
Epictetus says:
‘When our neighbour loses his wife or son, everyone knows that this is a human calamity. It is a natural event according to the ordinary course of things. But, when the same thing happens to ourselves, we cry out, as if we had suffered the most dreadful misfortune. However, we should remember how we were affected when it happened to another. Such as we were in his case, such we should be in our own case.’
Epictetus