Sympathy, antipathy, kindness, esteem, contempt, respect, enthusiasm, indignation, these are the various terms by which we express the diverse sentiments of the soul touching virtue and vice.
Sympathy is a disposition to share the same impressions with other men; to sympathize with their joy is to share that joy; to sympathize with their grief is to share that grief. It may happen that one sympathizes with the defects of others when they are the same as our own; but, as a general thing, people sympathize above all with the good qualities, and experience only antipathy for the bad. At the theatre, all the spectators, good and bad, wish to see virtue rewarded and crime punished.
The contrary of sympathy is antipathy.
Kindness is the disposition to wish others well. Esteem is a sort of kindness mingled with judgment and reflection, which we feel for those who have acted well, especially in cases of ordinary virtues; for before the higher and more difficult virtues, esteem becomes respect; if it be heroism, respect turns into admiration and enthusiasm; admiration being the feeling of surprise which great actions excite in us, and enthusiasm that same feeling pushed to an extreme; carrying us away from ourselves, as if a god were in us.[3] Contempt is the feeling of aversion we entertain towards him who does wrong; it implies particularly a case of base and shameful actions. When these actions are only condemnable without being odious, the sentiment is one of blame, which, like esteem, is nearer being a judgment than a sentiment. When, finally, it is a case of criminal and revolting actions, the feeling is one of horror or execration.
12. Liberty.—We have already said that man or the moral agent is free, when he is in a condition to choose between right and wrong, and able to do either at his will.
Liberty always supposes one to be in possession of himself. Man is free when he is awake, in a state of reason, and an adult. He is not free, or very little so, when he is asleep, or delirious, or in his first childhood.
Liberty is certified to man.
1. By the inward sentiment which accompanies each of his acts; for instance, at the moment of acting, I feel that I can will or not will to do such or such an action; if I enter on it, I feel that I can discontinue it as long as it is not fully executed; when it is completed, I am convinced that I might have acted otherwise.
2. By the very fact of moral law or duty; I ought, therefore I can. No one is held to do the impossible. If, then, there is in me a law that commands me to do good and avoid evil, it is because I can do either as I wish.
3. By the moral satisfaction which accompanies a good action; by the remorse or repentance which follows a bad one. One does not rejoice over a thing done against his will, and no one reproaches himself for an act committed under compulsion. The first word of all those reproached for a bad action is, that it was not done on purpose, intentionally. They acknowledge thereby that we can only be reproached for an action done wilfully; namely, freely.