the person
possessed of it, or such as incapacitates him for business and action,
it is instantly blamed, and ranked among his faults and imperfections.
Indolence, negligence, want of order and method, obstinacy, fickleness,
rashness, credulity; these qualities were never esteemed by any one
indifferent to a character; much less, extolled as accomplishments or
virtues. The prejudice, resulting from them, immediately strikes our
eye, and gives us the sentiment of pain and disapprobation.

No quality, it is allowed, is absolutely either blameable or
praiseworthy. It is all according to its degree. A due medium, says
the Peripatetics, is the characteristic of virtue. But this medium is
chiefly determined by utility. A proper celerity, for instance, and
dispatch in business, is commendable. When defective, no progress is
ever made in the execution of any purpose: When excessive, it engages
us in precipitate and ill-concerted measures and enterprises: By such
reasonings, we fix the proper and commendable mediocrity in all moral
and prudential disquisitions; and never lose view of the advantages,
which result from any character or habit. Now as these advantages
are enjoyed by the person possessed of the character, it can never
be SELF-LOVE which renders the prospect of them agreeable to us,
the spectators, and prompts our esteem and approbation. No force of
imagination can convert us into another person, and make us fancy, that
we, being that person, reap benefit from those valuable qualities,
which belong to him. Or if it did, no celerity of imagination could
immediately transport us back, into ourselves, and make us love and
esteem the person, as different from us. Views and sentiments, so
opposite to known truth and to each other, could never have place, at
the same time, in the same person. All suspicion, therefore, of selfish
regards, is here totally excluded. It is a quite different principle,
which actuates our bosom, and interests us in the felicity of the person
whom we contemplate. Where his natural talents and acquired abilities
give us the prospect of elevation, advancement, a figure in life,
prosperous success, a steady command over fortune, and the execution of
great or advantageous undertakings; we are struck with such agreeable
images, and feel a complacency and regard immediately arise towards him.
The ideas of happiness, joy, triumph, prosperity, are connected with
every circumstance of his character, and di