which can take nothing from the worth of whatever is founded upon it. Gratitude and resentment, however, are in every respect, it is evident, counterparts of one another; and if our sense of merit arises from a sympa|thy with the one, our sense of demerit can scarce miss to proceed from a fellow-feeling with the other.
Let it be considered too that resentment, tho', in the degrees in which we too often see it, the most odious, perhaps, of all the passions, is not disapproved of when properly humbled and intirely brought down to the le|vel of the sympathetic indignation of the spectator. When we, who are the bystanders, feel that our own animosity intirely corresponds with that of the sufferer, when the resentment of this last does not in any respect go beyond our own, when no word, no gesture, escapes him that denotes an emotion more violent than what we can keep time to, and when he never aims at inflict|ing any punishment beyond what we should rejoice to see inflicted, or what we ourselves would upon his ac|count even desire to be the instruments of inflicting, it is impossible, that we should not intirely approve of his sentiments. Our own emotion in this case must, in our eyes, undoubtedly justify his. And as experience teach|es us how much the greater part of mankind are inca|pable of his moderation, and how great an effort must be made in order to bring down the rude and undisci|plined impulse of resentment to this suitable temper, we cannot avoid conceiving a considerable degree of esteem and admiration for one who appears capable of exerting so much self-command over one of the most ungovern|able passions of his nature. When indeed the animosity of the sufferer exceeds, as it almost always does, what we can go along with, as we cannot enter into it, we necessarily disapprove of it. We even disapprove of it more than we should of an equal excess of almost any other passion derived from the imagination. And this too violent resentment, instead of carrying us along with it, becomes itself the object of our resentment and indignation. We enter into the opposite resent|ment of the person who is the object of this unjust emo|tion,
