The Influences and Authority of Conscience

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.