Of the foundation of our judgments concerning our own fentiments and conduct, and of the fenfe of duty..

Confifting of one SECTION..

CHAP. I.

Of the consciousness of merited praife or blame.

IN

N the two foregoing parts of this discourse, I have chiefly confidered the origin and foundation of our judgments concerning the fentiments and conduct of others. I come now to confider the origin of those concerning

our own.

The defire of the approbation and esteem of those we live with, which is of fuch importance to our happiness, cannot be fully and intirely contented but by rendering ourselves the juft and proper objects of those fentiments, and by adjusting our own character and conduct according to those measures and rules by which esteem and approbation are naturally bestowed. It is not fufficient, that from ignorance or mistake, esteem and approbation fhould fome way or other be betowed upon us. If we are conscious that we

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Part III. do not deferve to be fo favourably thought of, and that if the truth was known, we fhould be regarded with very oppofite fenti ments, our fatisfaction is far from being com plete. The man who applauds us either for actions which we did not perform, or for mo tives which had no fort of influence upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another perfont We can derive no fort of fatisfaction from his praises. To us they should be more mortifying than any cenfure, and should perpetually call to our minds, the most humbling of all reflexions, the reflexion upon what we ought to be, but what we are not. A woman who paints to conceal her ugliness, could derive, one should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to her beauty. Thefe, we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of the fentiments which her real complexion would excite, and mortify her the more by the contraft. To be pleased with fuch groundless applaufe is a proof of the most fuperficial levity and weakness. It is what is properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one fhould imagine the leaft fpark of common fenfe would fave us from. The foolish lyer, who endeavours to excite the admiration of the company by the relation of adventures which never had any existence, the important coxcomb who gives himself airs of rank and diftinction which he

well

well knows he has no just pretenfions to, are both of them, no doubt, pleased with the applause which they fancy they meet with. But their vanity arises from fo grofs an illusion of the imagination, that it is difficult to conceive how any rational creature fhould be imposed upon by it. When they place themfelves in the fituation of those whom they fancy they have deceived, they are struck with the higheft admiration for their own perfons. They look upon themselves, not in that light in which, they know, they ought to appear to their companions, but in that in which they believe their companions actually look upon them. Their fuperficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from feeing themselves in that defpicable point of view in which their own confciences fhould tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth fhould ever come to be known.

As ignorant and groundless praise can give no folid joy, no fatisfaction that will bear any ferious examination, fo, on the contrary, it often gives real comfort to reflect, that though no praise should actually be bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has been fuch as to deferve it, and has been in every refpect fuitable to thofe measures and rules by which praife and approbation are naturally and commonly bestowed. We are pleafed not only with praife, but with having done what is praife-worthy. We are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves the natural objects

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Part III. of approbation, though no approbation should ever actually be bestowed upon us and we are mortified to reflect that we have justly incurred the blame of those we live with, tho' that fentiment should never actually be exerted against us. The man who is conscious to himself that he has exactly observed thofe measures of conduct which experience informs him are generally agreeable, reflects with fatisfaction on the propriety of his own behaviour; when he views it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he thoroughly enters into all the motives which influenced it; he looks back upon every part of it with pleasure and approbation, and though mankind should never be acquainted with what he has done, he regards himself not fo much according to the light in which they actually regard him, as according to that, in which they would regard him if they were better informed. He anticipates the applaufe and admiration which in this cafe would be bestowed upon him, and he applauds and admires himself by fympathy with fentiments which do not indeed actually take place, but which the ignorance of the public alone hinders from taking place, which he knows are the natural and ordinary effects of fuch conduct, which his imagination ftrongly connects with it, and which he has acquired a habit of conceiving as fomething that naturally and in propriety ought to flow from it. Men have often voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after death a renown which they

could

could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in the mean time, anticipated that fame which was thereafter to be bestowed upon them. Thofe applaufes which they were. never to hear rung in their ears. The thoughts. of that admiration, whofe effects they were never to feel, played about their hearts, banifhed from their breafts the strongest of all natural fears, and tranfported them to perform actions which feem almoft beyond the reach of human nature. But in point of reality there is furely no great difference between that approbation which is not to be bestowed till we can no longer enjoy it, and that which indeed is never to be bestowed, but which would be beftowed if the world was ever made to understand properly the real circumstances of our behaviour. If the one often produces fuch violent effects, we cannot wonder that the other should always be highly regarded.

On the contrary, the man who has broke thro' all thofe measures of conduct, which can alone render him agreeable to mankind, tho' he fhould have the most perfect affurance that what he had done was for ever to be concealed

from every human eye, it is all to no purpose. When he looks back upon it, and views it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he finds that he can enter into none of the motives which influenced it. He is abashed and confounded at the thoughts of it, and neceffarily feels a very high degree of that shame which he would be expofed to, if his actions fhould ever come to be generally 0 2 known.