Our Esteem For The Rich And Powerful

Nothing has a greater tendency to give us an esteem or a contempt for any person, than his power and riches, or his poverty and meanness.

Esteem and contempt are a species of love and hatred.

It will be proper in this place to explain these phenomena.

Most fortunately, the greatest difficulty is not to discover a principle capable of producing such an effect, but to choose the chief and predominant among several principles that present themselves.

Our satisfaction in the riches of others and our esteem for their possessors may be ascribed to three causes.

1. To the objects they possess which are agreeable in themselves.

These necessarily produce a sentiment of pleasure in anyone who considers them.

2. To the expectation of advantage from the rich and powerful, by our sharing their possessions.

3. To sympathy.

This makes us partake of the satisfaction of every one, that approaches us.

All these principles may concur in producing the present phenomenon.

1. The question is, to which of them we should principally ascribe it.

The first principle, the reflection on agreeable objects, has a greater influence than what we might imagine.

• We seldom reflect on what is beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, without an emotion of pleasure or uneasiness.
• These sensations do not appear much in our common indolent way of thinking.

But it is easy to discover them in reading or conversation.

Men of wit always turn their discourse on subjects that are entertaining to the imagination.

• Poets only present objects that are entertaining.

Mr. Philips has chosen cyder for the subject of an excellent poem.

• Beer would not have been so proper, as it is not so agreeable to the taste nor the eye.
• But he would certainly have preferred wine could his native country have afforded it to him.

We may learn from this that everything agreeable to the senses:

• is also agreeable to the fancy
• conveys an image of that satisfaction to the thought which it gives by its real application to the bodily organs.

Many other reasons may keep us from regarding these three reasons as the principal ones.

The ideas of pleasure can influence only through their vivacity, which makes them approach impressions.

Those ideas naturally should have:

• that influence favoured by most circumstances
• a tendency to become strong and lively, such as our ideas of the passions and sensations of any human.

Every human resembles ourselves.

This resemblance gives us an advantage above any other object in operating on the imagination.

No matter how lively and agreeable the ideas of a rich man’s pleasant wines, music, or gardens may become, the fancy will not confine itself to them.

The imagination will carry its view to:

• the related objects
• to the person who possesses them, in particular.

The pleasant idea or image here naturally produces a passion towards the person, through his relation to the object.

He unavoidably enters into the original conception, since he makes the object of the derivative passion.

But it is sympathy which causes the affection, if he:

• enters into the original conception
• is considered as enjoying these agreeable objects.

The third principle is more powerful and universal than the first.

Riches and power alone, even though unemployed, naturally cause esteem and respect.

Consequently, these passions do not arise from the idea of any beautiful or agreeable objects.

Money implies a kind of representation of such objects, by the power it affords of obtaining them.

For that reason, it is still proper to convey those agreeable images, which may give rise to the passion.

But this prospect is very distant.

It is more natural for us to take a contiguous object, namely the satisfaction, which this power affords the person who has it.

Riches represent the goods of life, only through the will which employs them.

Riches in their very nature, therefore, imply an idea of the person.

It cannot be considered without a kind of sympathy with his sensations and enjoyments.

We can confirm this by a subtle and refined reflection.

Power, as distinguished from its exercise:

• has no meaning at all, or
• is nothing but a possibility of existence by which any object:
  • approaches to reality
  • has a sensible influence on the mind.

By an illusion of the fancy, this approach appears much greater when we ourselves have the power, than when it is enjoyed by another.

In the former case, the objects seem to:

• touch on the very verge of reality
• convey almost an equal satisfaction, as if actually in our possession.

Where we esteem a person on account of his riches, we must enter into this sentiment of the proprietor

Without such a sympathy, the idea of the agreeable objects, which they give him the power to produce, would have but a feeble influence on us.

An avaritious man is respected for his money, even if he does not have a power.

There is no probability or even possibility of his employing it to acquire life’s pleasures and conveniences.

To himself alone, this power seems perfect and entire.

We must receive his sentiments by sympathy before we can:

• have a strong idea of these enjoyments, or
• esteem him because of them.

Thus the first principle:

• resolves itself into the third
• becomes a sympathy with the person we esteem or love.

Let us now examine the second principle.

Riches and authority undoubtedly give their owner a power of doing us service.

Yet this power is not on the same footing with the power he has in pleasing himself.

Self-love approaches the power and exercise very near each other in the latter case.

But to produce a similar effect in the former, we must suppose a friendship and goodwill to be conjoined with the riches.

Without that circumstance, it is difficult to conceive what can be the basis of our hope of advantage from the riches of others.

Though we naturally esteem and respect the rich, even before we discover any such favourable disposition in them towards us.

We respect the rich and powerful when:

• they show no inclination to serve us
• we lie so much out of their sphere of activity, that they cannot even have that power.

Prisoners of war are always treated with a respect suitable to their condition.

Riches go very far towards fixing the condition of any person.

If birth and quality enter for a share, this still affords us an argument of the same kind.

A ‘man of birth’ is but one who:

• is descended from a long succession of rich and powerful ancestors
• acquires our esteem by his relation to persons whom we esteem.

His dead ancestors are respected, in some measure:

• because of their riches
• consequently, without any kind of expectation.