The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Pleasures of Imagination, bk. i. Beauty moral. Mind alone (bear witness, Earth and Heaven) Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand Taste. What then is taste, but those internal powers Different minds Incline to different objects: one pursues • The evening star. The vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; ... And gentlest beauty. Shakespeare looks abroad ... Pleasures of Imagination, bk. iii. 179. William Robertson, 1721-1793. (Handbook, par. 495.) The Regent Moray. There is no person of that age about whom historians have been more divided than about the Regent Moray, or whose character has been drawn in such opposite colours. Personal intrepidity, military skill, sagacity, and vigour in the administration of civil affairs, are virtues which even his enemies allow him to have possessed in an eminent degree. His moral qualities are more dubious, and ought neither to be praised nor censured without great reserve and many distinctions. In a fierce age he was capable of using victory with humanity, and of treating the vanquished with moderation. A patron of learning, which, among martial nobles, was either unknown or despised. Zealous for religion, to a degree which distinguished him, even at a time when professions of that kind were not uncommon. His confidence in his friends was extreme, and inferior only to his liberality towards them, which knew no bounds. A disinterested passion for the liberty of his country prompted him to oppose the pernicious system which the princes of Lorraine had obliged the queenmother to pursue. On Mary's return into Scotland, he served her with a zeal and affection, to which he sacrificed the friendship of those who were most attached to his person. But, on the other hand, his ambition was immoderate; and events happened that opened to him vast projects, which allured his enterprising genius, and led him to actions inconsistent with the duty of a subject. His treatment of the queen, to whose bounty he was so much indebted, was unbrotherly and ungrateful. The dependence on Elizabeth under which he brought Scotland, was disgraceful to the nation. He deceived and betrayed Norfolk, with a baseness unworthy of a man of honour. His elevation to such un expected dignity inspired him with new passions, with haughtiness and reserve; and instead of his natural manner, which was blunt and open, he affected the arts of dissimulation and refinement. Fond, towards the end of his life, of flattery, and impatient of advice, his creatures, by soothing his vanity, led him astray, while his ancient friends stood at a distance, and predicted his approaching fall. But amidst the turbulence and confusion of that factious period, he dispensed justice with so much impartiality, he repressed the licentious borderers with so much courage, and established such uncommon order and tranquillity in the country, that his administration was extremely popular, and he was long and affectionately remembered among the commons by the name of the Good Regent. History of Scotland, bk. v. 180. Adam Smith, 1723-1790. (Handbook, par. 420.) His writings are rich in illustration, and abound in forcible and eloquent passages. Source of Sympathy. Sympathy does not arise so much from the view of a passion in another, as from that of the situation that excites it. We sometimes feel for another a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behaviour; because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be overwhelmed, had we behaved in so absurd a manner. Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch who is in it laughs and sings, perhaps, and is altogether insensible to his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment. What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the moanings of her infant, that, during the agony of disease, cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins to its real helplessness her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms for her own sorrow the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly secure, and in its thoughtlessness and want of foresight, possesses an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will in vain attempt to defend it when it grows up to a man. We sympathize even with the dead, and, overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated in a little time from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in danger of being forgot by everybody; and by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own misery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation, seems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that what alleviates all other distresses, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most assuredly is affected by none of these circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy which the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change; from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the imagination that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable when we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of deaththe great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society. Moral Sentiments, pt. i. sec. I. Advantages of the Division of Labour. It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions in a well-governed society that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great quantity of his own work to dispose of beyond what he himself has occasion for; and every other workman being exactly in the same situation, he is enabled to exchange a great quantity of his own goods for a great quantity, or, what comes to the same thing, for the price of a great quantity of theirs. He supplies them abundantly with what they have occasion for, and they accommodate him as amply with what he has occasion for, and a general plenty diffuses itself through all the different ranks of society. Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the woolcomber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, |