ver have
been acquainted.

Heroism, or military glory, is much admired by the generality of
mankind. They consider it as the most sublime kind of merit. Men of
cool reflection are not so sanguine in their praises of it. The infinite
confusions and disorder, which it has caused in the world, diminish much
of its merit in their eyes. When they would oppose the popular notions
on this head, they always paint out the evils, which this supposed
virtue has produced in human society; the subversion of empires, the
devastation of provinces, the sack of cities. As long as these are
present to us, we are more inclined to hate than admire the ambition
of heroes. But when we fix our view on the person himself, who is the
author of all this mischief, there is something so dazzling in his
character, the mere contemplation of it so elevates the mind, that we
cannot refuse it our admiration. The pain, which we receive from its
tendency to the prejudice of society, is over-powered by a stronger and
more immediate sympathy.

Thus our explication of the merit or demerit, which attends the
degrees of pride or self-esteem, may serve as a strong argument for the
preceding hypothesis, by shewing the effects of those principles
above explained in all the variations of our judgments concerning that
passion. Nor will this reasoning be advantageous to us only by shewing,
that the distinction of vice and virtue arises from the four principles
of the advantage and of the pleasure of the person himself, and of
others: But may also afford us a strong proof of some under-parts of
that hypothesis.

No one, who duly considers of this matter, will make any scruple of
allowing, that any piece of in-breeding, or any expression of pride
and haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our
own pride, and leads us by sympathy into a comparison, which causes the
disagreeable passion of humility. Now as an insolence of this kind
is blamed even in a person who has always been civil to ourselves in
particular; nay, in one, whose name is only known to us in history; it
follows, that our disapprobation proceeds from a sympathy with others,
and from the reflection, that such a character is highly displeasing
and odious to every one, who converses or has any intercourse with
the person possest of it. We sympathize with those people in their
uneasiness; and as their uneasiness proceeds in part from a sympathy
with the person who insults them, we may