Direct and Indirect Misfortunes
Table of Contents
Misfortunes make our feelings extreme
54 There are 2 kinds of private misfortunes which make our feelings go beyond the bounds of propriety:
- Those that affect us only indirectly.
They affect other persons dear to us such as our parents, children, brothers and sisters, intimate friends.
- 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 the bounds of propriety.
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.
The Decalogue commands us 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.
60 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.