Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/335

 wishing it leads us to threaten and inflict it, where it can afford no security or advantage to us.—Thirdly, As we improve in observation and experience, and in the faculty of analysing the actions of animals, we perceive that brutes and children, and even adults in certain circumstances, have little or no share in the actions referred to them; but are themselves under the influence of other causes, which therefore are to be deemed the ultimate ones. Hence, our resentment against them must be much abated in these cases, and transferred to the ultimate living cause, usually called the free agent, if so be that we are able to discover him.—Lastly, When the moral ideas of just and unjust, right and wrong, merit and demerit, have been acquired, and applied to the actions and circumstances of human life in the manner to be hereafter described, the internal feelings of this class, i.e. the complacency and approbation attending the first, the disgust, disapprobation, and even abhorrence, attending the last, have great influence in moderating or increasing our resentment. The associations of the first kind are at utter variance with those suggested by the sense of pain; of the last, coincide with and strengthen it. And as the rectitude of the moral sense is the highest matter of encomium, men are ashamed not to be thought to submit all their private feelings to its superior authority, and acquiesce in its determinations. And thus, by degrees, all anger and resentment in theory, all that even ill men will attempt to justify, is confined to injury, to sufferings which are not deserved, or which are inflicted by a person who has no right to do it. And this at last makes it so in fact, to a great degree, amongst those who are much influenced by their own moral sense, or by that of others. Yet still, as a confirmation of the foregoing doctrine, it is easy to observe, that many persons are apt to be offended even with stocks and stones, with brutes, with hurts merely accidental and undesigned, and with punishments acknowledged to be justly inflicted; and this in various degrees, according to the various natural and acquired dispositions of their minds.

Cruelty and malice are considered, not as passions of the mind, but as habits, as the deliberate wishing of misery to others, delighting in the view and actual infliction of it, and this without the consideration of injury received or intended. However, it will easily appear that they are the genuine and necessary offspring of anger indulged and gratified. They are most apt to arise in proud, selfish, and timorous persons, those who conceive highly of their own merits, and of the consequent injustice of all offences against them; and who have an exquisite feeling and apprehension, in respect of private gratifications and uneasinesses. The low and unhappy condition of those around a man gives a dignity to his own; and the infliction of punishment, or mere suffering, strikes a terror, and so affords security and authority. Add to these, the pleasures arising from gratifying the will