Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind

by James Mill

The affirmation in the text is that not merely the self-regarding virtue—Prudence, but also the two great social virtues—Justice and Beneficence, are developed from associations with our own personal interest. In other words, they grow up exactly by the same course as the virtue of Prudence; they are strong as that happens to be strong, and weak as that happens to be weak; the most prudent man being the most just and beneficent man. This inference can be avoided only by drawing some distinction between the interested associations entering into prudence, and the interested associations entering into justice and beneficence; but no such distinction 304 is drawn in the foregoing chapter, at least in such a way as to meet the difficulty thus suggested.

Now, on an appeal to the facts, we find that the virtue of prudence is not uniformly concomitant with the virtues of justice and beneficence; that, on the contrary, except in the more highly cultivated moral natures, they are frequently manifested in the inverse proportion. A human being, by cherishing interested associations, does not as a matter of course attain to either justice or beneficence. Even the most far-sighted prudence, as regards self, would not develop the whole virtue of justice, nor the whole virtue of beneficence. On the other hand, beneficence is often abundant and pronounced in cases where interested associations with self have been very slightly cultivated.

The illustration of this generic discrepancy, between the author’s theory and the more obvious facts, might be extended. There is, however, another mode of proceeding, perhaps more decisive; that is, to show that the mind contains sources of the moral sentiment besides the associations with self-interest.

It does not appear easy, at first sight, to establish the existence of purely disinterested impulses in our mental constitution; the admixture of self being so seldom unequivocally absent from human conduct. Still, if these impulses do exist, there will probably be found instances where they are manifested in convincing isolation.

Perhaps the desired isolation is most readily afforded in some of the familiar forms of Pity. There are instances, no doubt, where pity may have a selfish motive, as when we compassionate the sufferings of parents, friends, and benefactors. But, in other instances, it arises not only without any selfish bearing, but in opposition to powerful associations of interest. The pity that we often extend to enemies and to criminals is a case in point. Even when the punishment of wrong-doers is bound up with our strongest interests, the spectacle of their sufferings often moves us to remit the punishment necessary for our own protection. Now, with beings made up of purely 305 interested considerations, the argumentum ad misericordiam, under those circumstances, would be void of effect.

Another example is furnished by those acts of lavish generosity and charity that perhaps ruin the giver, and do harm to the recipient. If one’s moral education were exclusively conducted through the building up of associations with self, by what class of associating links is this impulse generated?

It is no less difficult to account for the actions of men wholly devoted to philanthropy, like Howard. So very small is the result to self from the labours and sacrifices of such men, that we are unable to account for their motives without assuming an independent source of disinterested affections. The difficulty is greatly increased in the case of minds little cultivated, as in the heroic devotion of the common soldier.

Observation of children reveals a specific power in the spectacle of misery or suffering to awaken pity and generous sympathies. The effective impulse to sympathy has little to do with a prudential education, or with the following out of self-interest in its associations with the welfare of others. The patriotic orator never trusts wholly to interested motives; he does not omit these; but he expects much from the lively description of suffering and misery to people generally; and if the picture comes home to the experience of his hearers, they will be moved by it, on account of each other, as well as on account of their separate selves.

From such facts as these, it is admissible to lay down, as a general law, that the sight of misery in others prompts us, irrespective of our own interest, to enter into, and to relieve, that misery. This is the essential fact of Sympathy.

The principle thus announced is not an ultimate law of the mind. It may be brought under a still higher law, of which some notice will be taken afterwards (see [note] on the Will, chap. XXIV.), namely, the tendency of every idea to act itself out, to become an actuality, not with a view to bring pleasure or to ward off pain—which is the proper description of the will—but from an independent prompting of the mind that often makes us throw away pleasure and embrace pain. The full 306 exposition of this principle would add greatly to the evidence for pure disinterested impulses, by showing that the fact described operates in a much wider sphere than the moral sentiment.