Whether we are just or not, in refusing our sympathy to the man of reason, and in giving our spontaneous approbation to the man of enthusiasm, we shall not here examine. But the reasonable man, who has been convinced of this propensity in human nature, will take it into his calculations; he will perceive, that he loses, in losing the pleasure of sympathy, part of the sum total of his possible happiness; he will consequently wish, that he could add this item of pleasure to the credit side of his account. This, however, he cannot accomplish, because, though he can by reason correct his calculations, it is not in the power, even of the most potent reason, suddenly to break habitual associations; much less is it in the power of cool reason to conjure up warm enthusiasm. Yet in this case, enthusiasm is the thing required.
What the man of reason cannot do for himself after his associations are strongly formed, might have been easily accomplished in his early education. He might have been taught the same general principles, but with different habits. By early associating the pleasures of sympathy, and praise, and affection with all generous and benevolent actions, his parents might have joined these ideas so forcibly in his mind, that the one set of ideas should never recur without the other. Whenever the words benevolence or generosity were pronounced, the feelings of habitual pleasure would recur; and he would, independently of reason, desire from association to be generous. When enthusiasm is fairly justified by reason, we have nothing to fear from her vehemence.
In rewarding children for the prudential virtues, such as order, cleanliness, economy, temperance, &c. we should endeavour to make the rewards the immediate consequence of the virtues themselves; and at the same time, approbation should be shown in speaking of these useful qualities. A gradation must, however, always be observed in our praises of different virtues; those that are the most useful to society, as truth, justice and humanity, must stand the highest in the scale; those that are most agreeable, claim the next place. Those good qualities, which must wait a considerable time for their reward, such as perseverance, prudence, &c. we must not expect early from young people. Till they have had experience, how can they form any idea about the future? Till they have been punctually rewarded for their industry, or for their prudence, they do not feel the value of prudence and perseverance. Time is necessary to all these lessons, and those who leave time out in their calculations, will always be disappointed in whatever plan of education they may pursue.
Many, to whom the subject is familiar, will be fatigued, probably, by the detailed manner in which it has been thought necessary to explain the principles by which we should guide ourselves in the distribution of rewards and punishments to children. Those who quickly seize, and apply, general ideas, cannot endure, with patience, the tedious minuteness of didactic illustration. Those who are actually engaged in practical education, will not, on the contrary, be satisfied with general precepts; and, however plausible any theory may appear, they are well aware that its utility must depend upon a variety of small circumstances, to which writers of theories often neglect to advert. At the hazard of being thought tedious, those must be minute in explanation who desire to be generally useful. An old French writer, more remarkable for originality of thought, than for the graces of style, was once reproached by a friend with the frequent repetitions which were to be found in his works. “Name them to me,” said the author. The critic, with obliging precision, mentioned all the ideas which had most frequently recurred in the book. “I am satisfied,” replied the honest author; “you remember my ideas; I repeated them so often to prevent you from forgetting them. Without my repetitions, we should never have succeeded.”
V. The Inquirer, p. 101.
Beccaria, Voltaire, Blackstone, &c.
See Cox’s Travels, vol. ii. 189.
See Beccaria, Blackstone, Colquhoun.
Mezentius. Virgil.
V. An Enquiry into the Principles of Taxation, p. 37, published in 1790.
Colquhoun. On the Police of the Metropolis.
V. The grand instructions to the commissioners appointed to frame a new code of laws for the Russian empire, p. 183, said to be drawn up by the late Lord Mansfield.
V. Dr. Priestley’s Miscellaneous Observations relating to Education, sect. vii. of correction, p. 67.
V. Code of Russian Laws
Colquhoun.
See the judicious Locke’s observations upon the subject of manners, section 67 of his valuable Treatise on Education.
See vol. ii. of Zoonomia.
We believe this is Williams’s idea.
Hume’s Dissertation on the Passions.
See Locke, and an excellent little essay of Madame de Lambert’s.
The Abbe St. Pierre. See his Eloge by D’Alembert.
CHAPTER X. ON SYMPATHY AND SENSIBILITY.
The artless expressions of sympathy and sensibility in children, are peculiarly pleasing; people who, in their commerce with the world, have been disgusted and deceived by falsehood and affectation, listen with delight to the genuine language of nature. Those who have any interest in the education of children, have yet a higher sense of pleasure in observing symptoms of their sensibility; they anticipate the future virtues which early sensibility seems certainly to promise; the future happiness which these virtues will diffuse. Nor are they unsupported by philosophy in these sanguine hopes. No theory was ever developed with more ingenious elegance, than that which deduces all our moral sentiments from sympathy. The direct influence of sympathy upon all social beings, is sufficiently obvious, and we immediately perceive its necessary connection with compassion, friendship, and benevolence; but the subject becomes more intricate when we are to analyse our sense of propriety and justice; of merit and demerit; of gratitude and resentment; self-complacency or remorse; ambition and shame.
We allow, without hesitation, that a being destitute of sympathy, could never have any of these feelings, and must, consequently, be incapable of all intercourse with society; yet we must at the same time perceive, that a being endowed with the most exquisite sympathy, must, without the assistance and education of reason, be, if not equally incapable of social intercourse, far more dangerous to the happiness of society. A person governed by sympathy alone, must be influenced by the bad as well as by the good passions of others; he must feel resentment with the angry man; hatred with the malevolent; jealousy with the jealous; and avarice with the miser: the more lively his sympathy with these painful feelings, the greater must be his misery; the more forcibly he is impelled to action by this sympathetic influence, the greater, probably, must be his imprudence and his guilt. Let us even suppose a being capable of sympathy only with the best feelings of his fellow-creatures, still, without the direction of reason, he would be a nuisance in the world; his pity would stop the hand, and overturn the balance of justice; his love would be as dangerous as his pity; his gratitude would exalt his benefactor at the expense of the whole human race; his sympathy with the rich, the prosperous, the great, and the fortunate, would be so sudden, and so violent, as to leave him no time for reflection upon the consequences of tyranny, or the miseries occasioned by monopoly. No time for reflection, did we say? We forgot that we were speaking of a being destitute of the reasoning faculty! Such a being, no matter what his virtuous sympathies might be, must act either like a madman or a fool. On sympathy we cannot depend, either for the correctness of a man’s moral sentiments, or for the steadiness of his moral conduct. It is very common to talk of the excellence of a person’s heart, of the natural goodness of his disposition; when these expressions distinctly mean any thing, they must refer to natural sympathy, or a superior degree of sensibility. Experience, however, does not teach us, that sensibility and virtue have any certain connection with each other. No one can read the works of Sterne, or of Rousseau, without believing these men to have been endowed with extraordinary sensibility; yet, who would propose their conduct in life as a model for imitation? That quickness of sympathy with present objects of distress, which constitutes compassion, is usually thought
a virtue, but it is a virtue frequently found in persons of an abandoned character. Mandeville, in his essay upon Charity Schools, puts this in a strong light.
“Should any one of us,” says he, “be locked up in a ground room, where, in a yard joining to it, there was a thriving good humoured child at play, of two or three years old, so near us, that through the grates of the window we could almost touch it with our hands; and if, whilst we took delight in the harmless diversion, and imperfect prattle, of the innocent babe, a nasty overgrown sow should come in upon the child, set it a screaming, and frighten it out of its wits; it is natural to think that this would make us uneasy, and that with crying out, and making all the menacing noise we could, we should endeavour to drive the sow away — But if this should happen to be an half-starved creature, that, mad with hunger, went roaming about in quest of food, and we should behold the ravenous brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it; — to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage pleasure over the horrid banquet; to hear and see all this, what torture would it give the soul beyond expression!* * * * * * Not only a man of humanity, of good morals, and commiseration, but likewise an highwayman, an house-breaker, or a murderer, could feel anxieties on such an occasion.”
Amongst those monsters, who are pointed out by the historian to the just detestation of all mankind, we meet with instances of casual sympathy and sensibility; even their vices frequently prove to us, that they never became utterly indifferent to the opinion and feelings of their fellow-creatures. The dissimulation, jealousy, suspicion, and cruelty of Tiberius, originated, perhaps, more in his anxiety about the opinions which were formed of his character, than in his fears of any conspiracies against his life. The “judge within,” the habit of viewing his own conduct in the light in which it was beheld by the impartial spectator, prompted him to new crimes; and thus his unextinguished sympathy, and his exasperated sensibility, drove him to excesses, from which a more torpid temperament might have preserved him. When, upon his presenting the sons of Germanicus to the senate, Tiberius beheld the tenderness with which these young men were received, he was moved to such an agony of jealousy, as instantly to beseech the senate that he might resign the empire. We cannot attribute either to policy or fear, this strong emotion, because we know that the senate was at this time absolutely at the disposal of Tiberius, and the lives of the sons of Germanicus depended upon his pleasure.
The desire to excel, according to “Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments,” is to be resolved principally into our love of the sympathy of our fellow-creatures. We wish for their sympathy, either in our success, or in the pleasure we feel in superiority. The desire for this refined modification of sympathy, may be the motive of good and great actions; but it cannot be trusted as a moral principle. Nero’s love of sympathy, made him anxious to be applauded on the stage as a fiddler and a buffoon. Tiberius banished one of his philosophic courtiers, and persecuted him till the unfortunate man laid violent hands upon himself, merely because he had discovered that the emperour read books in the morning to prepare himself with questions for his literary society at night. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sued in the most abject manner for an Olympic crown, and sent a critic to the galleys for finding fault with his verses. Had not these men a sufficient degree of sensibility to praise, and more than a sufficient desire for the sympathy of their fellow-creatures?
It is not from any perverse love of sophistry, that the word sensibility has been used in these instances instead of irritability, which seems better to characterize the temper of a Dionysius, or a Tiberius; but, in fact, irritability, in common language, merely denotes an excessive or ill governed degree of sensibility. The point of excess must be marked: sympathy must be regulated by education, and consequently the methods of directing sensibility to useful and amiable purposes, must be anxiously studied by all who wish either for the happiness or virtue of their pupils.
Long before children can understand reasoning, they can feel sympathy; during this early period of their education, example and habit, slight external circumstances, and the propensity to imitation, govern their thoughts and actions. Imitation is the involuntary effect of sympathy in children; hence those who have the most sympathy, are most liable to be improved or injured by early examples. Examples of the malevolent passions, should therefore be most carefully excluded from the sight of those who have yet no choice in their sympathy; expressions of kindness and affection in the countenance, the voice, the actions, of all who approach, and of all who have the care of infants, are not only immediately and evidently agreeable to the children, but ought also to be used as the best possible means of exciting benevolent sympathies in their mind. Children, who habitually meet with kindness, habitually feel complacency; that species of instinctive, or rather of associated affection, which always rises in the mind from the recollection of past pleasures, is immediately excited in such children by the sight of their parents. By an easy transition of ideas, they expect the same benevolence, even from strangers, which they have experienced from their friends, and their sympathy naturally prepares them to wish for society; this wish is often improperly indulged.
At the age when children begin to unfold their ideas, and to express their thoughts in words, they are such interesting and entertaining companions, that they attract a large portion of our daily attention: we listen eagerly to their simple observations; we enter into their young astonishment at every new object; we are delighted to watch all their emotions; we help them with words to express their ideas; we anxiously endeavour to understand their imperfect reasonings, and are pleased to find, or put them in the right. This season of universal smiles and courtesy, is delightful to children whilst it lasts, but it soon passes away; they soon speak without exciting any astonishment, and instead of meeting with admiration for every attempt to express an idea, they are soon repulsed for troublesome volubility; even when they talk sense, they are suffered to talk unheard, or else they are checked for unbecoming presumption. Children feel this change in public opinion and manners most severely; they are not sensible of any change in themselves, except, perhaps, they are conscious of having improved both in sense and language. This unmerited loss of their late gratuitous allowance of sympathy, usually operates unfavourably upon the temper of the sufferers; they become shy and silent, and reserved, if not sullen; they withdraw from our capricious society, and they endeavour to console themselves with other pleasures. It is difficult to them to feel contented with their own little occupations and amusements, for want of the spectators and the audience which used to be at their command. Children of a timid temper, or of an indolent disposition, are quite dispirited and bereft of all energy in these circumstances; others, with greater vivacity, and more voluntary exertion, endeavour to supply the loss of universal sympathy, by the invention of independent occupations; but they feel anger and indignation, when they are not rewarded with any smiles or any praise for their “virtuous toil.” They naturally seek for new companions, either amongst children of their own age, or amongst complaisant servants. Immediately all the business of education is at a stand; for neither these servants, nor these playfellows, are capable of becoming their instructers; nor can tutors hope to succeed, who have transferred their power over the pleasures, and consequently over the affections of their pupils. Sympathy now becomes the declared enemy of all the constituted authorities. What chance is there of obedience or of happiness, under such a government?
Would it not be more prudent to prevent, than to complain of these evils? Sympathy is our first, best friend, in education, and by judicious management, might long continue our faithful ally.
Instead of lavishing our smiles and our attention upon young children for a short period, just at that age when they are amusing playthings, should we not do more wisely if we reserved some portion of our kindness a few years longer? By a proper economy, our sympathy may last for many years, and may continually contribute to the most useful purposes. Instead of accustoming our pupils early to such a degree of our attention as cannot be supported long on our parts, we should rather suffer them to feel a little ennui, at that age when they can have but few independent or useful occupations. We should employ ourselves in our usual manner, and converse, without allowing children to interrupt us with frivolous prattle; but whenever they ask sensible questions, make just observations, or show a disposition to acquire knowledge, we should assist and encourage them with praise and affection; gradually as they become capable of taking any part in conversation, they should be admitted into society, and they will learn of themselves, or we may teach them, that useful and agreeable qualities are those by which they must secure the pleasures of sympathy. Esteem, being associated with sympathy, will increase its value, and this connection should be made as soon, and kept as sacred, in the mind as possible.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 712