rospect of advantage
to ourselves, it is evident, that that sentiment must proceed from
a sympathy with those, who are dependent on the person we esteem and
respect, and who have an immediate connexion with him. We consider him
as a person capable of contributing to the happiness or enjoyment of
his fellow-creatures, whose sentiments, with regard to him, we naturally
embrace. And this consideration will serve to justify my hypothesis
in preferring the third principle to the other two, and ascribing our
esteem of the rich to a sympathy with the pleasure and advantage, which
they themselves receive from their possessions. For as even the other
two principles cannot operate to a due extent, or account for all the
phaenomena, without having recourse to a sympathy of one kind or other;
it is much more natural to chuse that sympathy, which is immediate and
direct, than that which is remote and indirect. To which we may add,
that where the riches or power are very great, and render the person
considerable and important in the world, the esteem attending them, may,
in part, be ascribed to another source, distinct from these three,
viz. their interesting the mind by a prospect of the multitude, and
importance of their consequences: Though, in order to account for the
operation of this principle, we must also have recourse to sympathy; as
we have observed in the preceding section.

It may not be amiss, on this occasion, to remark the flexibility of our
sentiments, and the several changes they so readily receive from
the objects, with which they are conjoined. All the sentiments of
approbation, which attend any particular species of objects, have a
great resemblance to each other, though derived from different sources;
and, on the other hand, those sentiments, when directed to different
objects, are different to the feeling, though derived from the same
source. Thus the beauty of all visible objects causes a pleasure pretty
much the same, though it be sometimes derived from the mere species and
appearance of the objects; sometimes from sympathy, and an idea of their
utility. In like manner, whenever we survey the actions and characters
of men, without any particular interest in them, the pleasure, or pain,
which arises from the survey (with some minute differences) is, in the
main, of the same kind, though perhaps there be a great diversity in the
causes, from which it is derived. On the other hand, a convenient house,
and a virtu