The Point of Propriety

¹⁴ The point of propriety is the degree of any passion which the impartial spectator approves of. This point is differently situated in different passions.

In some passions, the excess is less disagreeable than the shortage.

In such passions, the point of propriety seems to stand high, or nearer to the excess than to the shortage.

In other passions, the shortage is less disagreeable than the excess.

In such passions, the point of propriety seems to stand low, or nearer to the defect than to the excess.

As a general rule, the passions which the spectator can sympathize with are those which have a high point of propriety.

• Their immediate feeling is agreeable to the subject-person.

On the contrary, the passions which the spectator cannot easily sympathize with are those which have a low point of propriety.

• The immediate feeling from these is more or less disagreeable or even painful, to the person principally concerned.

This rule has no exception.

The Unifying and Divisive Force

¹⁵ A man might show excessive humanity, kindness, natural affection, friendship, or esteem to others. However, we still regard it with compassion and kindness.

He sees his excessive affections as agreeable and delicious. Rude people might give him heartfelt distress. In such a case, we regard him with pity.

He feels the highest indignation against those who hates his weakness and imprudence.

Those people have a lack of such affections and is called ’the hardness of heart’. It renders=

• a man insensible to other people’s feelings and distresses.
• other people equally insensible to his.

¹⁶ The disposition to drive men from one another tends to break the bands of human society. The disposition to anger, hatred, envy, malice, revenge offends by its excess than its shortage.

The excess makes a man as the object of hatred, and sometimes even of horror, to other people.

The shortage of those passions is very seldom complained of.

A manly character lacks a sense of revenge. This shortage of revenge makes him incapable of protecting himself or his friends from insult and injustice.

Envy is an odious and detestable passion. Even its excess and improper direction can be a shortage.

• An envious man dislikes the superiority of really superior people. .
• A man who allows inferior people to rise above him in important matters, is justly condemned as mean-spirited.

This weakness is commonly founded in:

• indolence,
• good nature, sometimes,
• an aversion to opposition, bustle and solicitation, and
• a sort of ill-judged magnanimity, sometimes.

A man with a lack of envy imagines that he can despise the advantage of superiority, and so he easily gives up. However, such weakness is commonly followed by much regret and repentance.

What seemed as magnanimity in the beginning frequently gives way to=

• envy in the end, and
• a hatred of that superiority attained by others.

In order to live comfortably, we always need to defend our dignity and rank just as we defend our life or fortune.

Sensibility and Insensibility

¹⁷ Our sensibility to personal danger and distress, like that to personal provocation, is much more apt to offend by its excess than by its defect.

No character is more contemptible than that of a coward.

No character is more admired than that of the man who:

• faces death with intrepidity
• maintains his tranquillity and presence of mind amidst the most dreadful dangers

We esteem the man who supports pain and even torture with manhood and firmness. We can have little regard for the man who:

• sinks under them
• abandons himself to useless outcries and womanish lamentations

His fretful temper makes him:

• feel every little cross accident with too much sensibility
• miserable in himself
• offensive to other people

A calm character which does not allow its tranquility to be disturbed by the small injuries or little disasters:

• is a blessing to the man himself, and
• gives ease and security to all his companions.

Amidst the natural and moral evils infesting the world, this character:

• lays its account, and
• is contented to suffer a little from both evils.

¹⁸ Our sensibility to our own injuries and misfortunes is generally too strong.

It may likewise be too weak.

The man who feels little for his own misfortunes must always:

• feel less for those of other people
• be less disposed to relieve them

The man who has little resentment for the injuries done to himself must always:

• have less resentment for those done to other people
• be less disposed to protect or avenge them

A stupid insensibility to the events of human life necessarily extinguishes all that keen and earnest attention to the propriety of our own conduct. This propriety is the real essence of virtue.

We can feel little anxiety about the propriety of our own actions when we are indifferent about their effects.

The real man of virtue is alone someone who:

• feels the full distress of the calamity which has befallen him,
• feels the whole baseness of the injustice done to him, but feels more strongly the dignity required by his own character
• does not abandon himself to undisciplined passions naturally inspired by his situation
• governs his whole behaviour and conduct according to those restrained and corrected emotions which the great inmate, the great demi-god within the breast prescribes and approves of

A real man of virtue is the only real and proper object of love, respect, and admiration.

Insensibility is so different from that exalted self-command. That noble firmness is founded in the sense of dignity and propriety. In many cases, the merit of self-command is entirely removed in proportion as insensibility takes place.

¹⁹ The total lack of sensibility to personal injury, danger, and distress would remove the whole merit of self-command.

However, that sensibility may very easily be too exquisite.

The sense of propriety is the authority of the judge within the breast.

• That authority is very noble when it can control this extreme sensibility.
• But its exertion might be too tiring.

The contest between the 2 principles is the warfare within the breast.

The wise man will avoid, as much as duty and propriety will permit, the situations he is not perfectly fit for. He was endowed by Nature with this too exquisite sensibility. His too lively feelings have not been sufficiently blunted and hardened by early education and proper exercise.

A weak man might be too sensible to pain, hardship, and bodily distress. He should not become a soldier.

The man who is too sensible to injury should not engage in the contests of faction. The sense of propriety might be strong enough to command all those sensibilities But the mind’s composure must always be disturbed in the struggle.

In this disorder, the judgment cannot always maintain its ordinary acuteness and precision. He may always mean to act properly.

But he may often act:

• rashly and imprudently, and
• in a way which he will be forever ashamed of.

The best preparatives for the great exertions of self-command are:

• intrepidity,
• firmness of nerves, and
• hardiness of constitution, whether natural or acquired.

²⁰ War and faction are certainly the best:

• schools for forming every man to this hardiness and firmness of temper, and
• remedies for curing him of the opposite weaknesses.

Yet the consequences might not be agreeable if the day of trial comes before:

• he has completely learned his lesson
• the remedy has had time to produce its proper effect

²¹ In the same way, our sensibility to the pleasures, amusements, and enjoyments of human life may offend by its:

• excess, or
• defect

Of the 2, however, the excess seems less disagreeable than the defect.

To the spectator and to the person principally concerned, a strong propensity to joy is certainly more pleasing than a dull insensibility to the objects of amusement and diversion.

We are charmed with:

• the gaiety of youth
• the playfulness of childhood

But we soon grow weary of the flat and tasteless gravity which frequently accompanies old age. This grave propensity is justly blamed as excessive when it is:

• it is not restrained by the sense of propriety
• it is unsuitable to the time, place, age or situation of the person
• he neglects his interest or duty to indulge it

It is as hurtful to the individual and to society.

In most of such cases, however, what is chiefly to be found fault with is, not so much the strength of the propensity to joy, as the weakness of the sense of propriety and duty.

A young man is disliked as formal and pedantic if he:

• has no relish for the diversions and amusements that are natural and suitable to his age
• talks of nothing but his book or his business

We give him no credit for his abstinence even from improper indulgences, to which he seems to have so little inclination.