Pride (ethics)

“ Yet Christians are civil and mannerly in a right way.—37. But unlike the world in the nature of it, and motives to it.—38. Testimonies in favour of our dissent and practice.
I. The third evil effect of pride, is an excessive desire of personal honour and respect.
Pride, therefore loves power, that she might have homage, and that every one may give her honour, and such as are wanting in that, expose themselves to her anger and revenge. And as pride, so this evil effect is more or less diffused through corrupt mankind; and has been the occasion of great animosity, and mischief in the world. ”

“ Upon this unexpected revelation I ask how it happens, if man is good and charitable, that the rich calumniate charity while the poor defile it? It is perversion of judgment on the part of the rich, say some; it is degradation of faculties on the part of the poor, say others. But how is it that judgment is perverted on the one hand, and on the other that faculties are degraded? How comes it that a true and cordial fraternity has not arrested on the one side and on the other the effects of pride and labor? ”

“ True and false pride.—We should, however, not confound a true and noble pride, without which man is but a thing and a slave, with a passion which looks like it, but which is but its phantom; I mean false pride. True pride is the just feeling man has of his moral dignity, and which interdicts him to humble the human personality in others, or to allow it to be humbled in himself. ”

“ It may be felt by some that this position would have an immoral effect upon youth if widely accepted. This need not be feared. On the contrary, we believe that one of the most powerful factors in ethical culture is pride due to the consciousness of being one who is fit and worthy. ”

“ What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of obedience. ”

“ But in the general commerce between man and man, in all offices of civility and society, that is, in cases where the stronger passions and more important interests of men are not directly concerned, as they are in what relates to property and power, the observation is clearly not true. Here, pride is the predominant vice of mankind. And pride is naturally softened and disarmed by placability and meekness. ”

“ For us to be above our business—for us to think ourselves too good or too dainty to soil our hands with honest toil—for us to feel that it is a lowering of our dignity to carry a bundle through the street, is to prove by our conduct that we are not up to the level of our business, that we are possessed of a great amount of false pride, and, in a higher sense, it shows that we have a foolish and wicked distaste of true service. ”

“ Its honest and avowed purpose was the interchange of those courtesies which render life agreeable, and the preservation of those general guards in society which, as checks to profligacy, are more useful than abstract theories of ethics, or codes of moral laws. People, unless lost, sin not so blindly in mixed communities—one individual forms a restraint on the others—children stand in awe of parents, and these, in their turn, acknowledge a wholesome control in the presence of their offspring—the good are a terror to the evil (for an alloy will ever exist) ”

“ And, mark the style in which they would have branded the immoral paradox! "Conscience,"—they would have cried,—"conscience, man's chief glory, was given to him exclusively; the notion of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit, is his noble privilege; to man, alone,—the lord of creation,—belongs the sublime power to resist his worldly propensities, to choose between good and evil, and to bring himself more and more into the resemblance of God through liberty and justice.... No; the holy image of virtue was never graven save on the heart of man." ”

“ Are our principles every where the mere children of circumstance, or is it in this country only that nothing is stable? For my own part I love inflexibility of character; and pride, even when ill founded, seems more respectable while it sustains itself, than concessions which, refused to the suggestions of reason, are yielded to the dictates of fear.—Yours. ”

“ Extreme cases in which moral laws may be suspended.—The particular duties, virtues, and laws which society has established and recognized are the expressions of reason and experience declaring the conditions of human well-being. As such they deserve our profoundest respect; our unswerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules to cover every case. There are legitimate, though very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties. For instance it is a duty to respect the property of others. ”

“ Seeing, then, that man, a reasonable being, should be chiefly occupied about his preservation and happiness—that he should love virtue—that he should be sensible of its advantages—that he should fear the consequences of crime—is it to be wondered I should insist so much on the practice of virtue as his chief good? Men ought to hate crime because it leads to misery. Society, to exist, must receive the united virtue of its members, obedience to good laws, the activity and intelligence of citizens to defend its privileges and its rights. ”

“ Envy, affectation, and vanity, may dictate the verdicts we give, and the worst principles of our nature may be at the bottom of our pretended zeal for morality; but if we only mean to inquire, why they who are well disposed to mankind apprehend, in every instance, certain rights pertaining to their fellow creatures, and why they applaud the consideration that is paid to those rights, we cannot assign a better reason, than that the person who applauds, is well disposed to the welfare of the parties to whom his applauses refer. ”

“ If morals were in reality not pure, nor principles severe, there was at least the vanity of posing as models of good breeding. Honor was a religion; politeness and courtesy were the current, though by no means always genuine, coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood in the place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty, ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the general harmony. ”

“ Honest men could then engage in business, without violating either honor, or conscience! Cheating and lying, would no longer form a part of the business code! At all times, and under all circumstances, to respect the sacredness of life, and the natural rights of man, would become the universal watchword! Justice would dethrone charity! The high moral tone of the industrial and commercial world, would pervade the social and political. The injury of the weakest, would become the concern of the strongest. ”

“ If he comes in contact with the law then his indifference changes into hate, revenge, ferocity, and he is persuaded that he is in the right. Although so defective on the moral side, these persons are well able to make use of the abstracted intellectual conceptions of honour, morality, philanthropy ”

“ It subordinates the lifelong welfare of a person to the acquisition of material things. It introduces fraud and injustice into the inmost center of one's life, and makes respect of self, happiness in marriage, faith in human nature forever impossible. ”

“ Go learn to know the under side of worldly splendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility." The traps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrust association with a thing that makes us hateful to our neighbors and robs us of clearness of vision.
He who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the most important of all—that possession is a public trust. Without doubt, individual wealth is as legitimate as individual existence and liberty. ”

“ Our civilization is unpleasantly decorated with countless examples of this discrepancy between professed and practiced codes. The desire for praise and the fear of blame and its consequences, the desire, as we say, for the "good-will" and "respect of others," will lead to all the public manifestations of virtue, "with a private vice or two to appease the wayward flesh." The utterance of conventional moral formulas by men in public, and the infringement of those high doctrines in private, needs unfortunately not to be illustrated. ”

“ And if you allow a particular implication of purity to impose its claim in a society whose impurity in other directions makes it entirely impracticable, then you are reducing your social ethics to mere pretence and mockery; and honest youth will find you out, and will turn away from your religions and your ethical codes with the contempt which they deserve. ”

“ If it be this morality which I have defined, that makes us what we are, ought we not to labor strenuously for the happiness of our race? If it be this morality that makes us reasonable; that enables us to distinguish good from evil, the useful from the hurtful; that makes us sociable, and enables us to live in society to receive and repay mutual benefits; we ought at least to respect all those who are its friends. ”

“ This is the enormous advantage which society derives from the honor of its members, and for the sake of which society permits the individual to do things which are otherwise both by ethics and law positively forbidden. ”

“ Color, race, nationality, physical features, natural talent, etc., are not of our own choosing. These are for us or against us. We are bound by these fetters and yet we cannot be held morally accountable for them. They determine in a greater or lesser degree our future in many things. Our moral responsibility would make it our duty to accept without pride or regret, without boasting or apology, without compliment or complaint, our God-given, parent-inherited possibilities. ”

“ One may distinguish between a physical, a political, a social, a sympathetic, and a moral sanction. Doubtless the conduct recommended by self-love, as a result of these sanctions, coincides, to a very large extent, to a larger extent than egoists in the rule perceive, with that which the good of society demands; but it is just as certain that, in many cases, the way of selfish cunning and that of virtue diverge. The outer sanctions do not insure the coincidence of duty and one's own happiness; nor does the sympathetic sanction secure this, for sympathy is often on the side opposed to duty. ”

“ This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. ”

“ But when the teachers of the populace hear their vulgar pupils boldly declare that vice is as good as virtue, provided a man can follow it with success, pride prevents them from seeing that this maxim is one of their own doctrines stripped of its equestrian robes, and shown in democratic plainness. They did not venture to deride the gods, or even to assert that they took no cognizance of human affairs ”

“ In an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition; but of those that would enter the serene House of Beauty the question that we ask is not what they had ever meant to do, but what they have done. ”

“ This system of ethics maintains that we have from nature social affections which lead us into friendly fellowship with our kind, and incline us to consult the interests of others, no less than private feelings, which excite us to promote our own personal advantage. It holds that we grow up to be the moral agents that we are through an innate sense of duty, which at once approves of our conduct when we do right, and disapproves of it when we do wrong. ”

“ Those acts which help or tend to help beings to those experiences for which they are striving are, therefore, right and proper, and are, they and their authors, called good. While those acts which compel beings to undergo that which they are striving to avoid are improper and wrong, and are, they and their authors, called bad. Kindness, courtesy, justice, mercy, generosity, sympathy, love, and the like, are good, and selfishness, cruelty, deceit, pillage, injustice, and murder, are bad, because they are respectively the promoters and destroyers of wellbeing and happiness in the world. ”

“ Every passion, habit, or turn of character (say they) which has a tendency to our advantage or prejudice, gives a delight or uneasiness; and 'tis from thence the approbation or disapprobation arises. We easily gain from the liberality of others, but are always in danger of losing by their avarice: Courage defends us, but cowardice lays us open to every attack: justice is the support of society, but injustice, unless check'd, wou'd quickly prove its ruin: Humility exalts; but pride mortifies us. ”

“ Because strongly impure inclinations often usurp the name of virtue, was it a reason for disinterested inclinations in the noblest heart to be also rendered suspicious? Because the moral epicurean had willingly relaxed the law of reason, in order to fit it as a plaything to his customs, was it a reason to thus exaggerate harshness, and to make the fulfilment of duty, which is the most powerful manifestation of moral freedom, another kind of decorated servitude of a more specious name? ”