1. Power and riches are the chief sources of esteem for a person, as impotence and poverty are those of contempt. Esteem and contempt are species of love and hatred, so these phenomena must be explained here.

2. There are several principles to account for them, so many that we need to find the most influential (though they all may be operative in any given case). 1) Esteem may be caused by the objects possessed by the other person. They are agreeable in themselves, and so produce a feeling of pleasure in anyone who surveys them. 2) It may be caused by the expectation of an advantage from the rich and powerful person, who might share those possesses with us. 3) Esteem may be caused by sympathy, “which makes us partake of the satisfaction of everyone, that approaches us.”

3. Reflection on agreeable objects has more influence than it appears at first sight. Nearly always, when we reflect on what is beautiful or agreeable, we have an emotion of pleasure, and when we reflect on what is ugly or disagreeable, we have an emotion of uneasiness. [This is parallel to the emotions we have when we have sense-impressions of a beautiful thing.] We do not reflect much on beauty in our common, lazy way of thinking, but the effect of reflecting on it can be discovered easily in reading and conversation. In conversation, “men of wit” always bring the subject around to what is entertaining to the imagination, and poets do the same in their writing. The author gives the example of a writer who wrote a poem about cider, which is a better choice than beer, since cider is more agreeable than beer. But had he known wine in his native country, he would have chosen that as his subject. “We may learn from thence, that every thing, which is agreeable to the senses, is also in some measure agreeable to the fancy, and conveys to the thought an image of that satisfaction, which it gives by its real application to the bodily organs.”

4. There are reasons favoring the principle making reflection on a rich and powerful man’s possession as the basis for our esteem, but, this principle is not the only one or most compelling one. Ideas of pleasure are influential only by being so vivid as to approach the vivacity of impressions. So the ideas that are most influential most naturally will be those with a natural tendency to be strong and lively. The ideas we have of the passions and sensations of other humans are of this sort. “Every human creature resembles ourselves, and by that means has an advantage above any other object, in operating on the imagination.”

5. The nature of the imagination is such that when considering an object, it naturally moves to consideration of things related to it, “and in particular, to the person, who possesses them.” It is more natural that the passion (esteem) toward the rich person be produced by the relation of the person to the object. That person is the object of the passion in the first place, so our thoughts must turn toward him if the passion is to arise. If the passion arises by conceiving of him as enjoying his agreeable possessions, “’tis sympathy, which is properly the cause of the affection.” In that case, the third explanatory principle is “more powerful and universal” than the first one.

6. Even if a rich and powerful person never used his assets to acquire beautiful objects, we would still hold him in esteem, so those objects are not essential to explaining the source of esteem. To be sure, we can view money as the sort of thing that can buy those objects, and for this reason we may still take the objects to be the source of the passion. “But as this prospect is very distant, ’tis more natural for us to take a contiguous object, viz. the satisfaction, which this power affords the person, who is possesst of it.” Another consideration is that the power requires the will for its execution, so that the fact “riches represent the goods of life” implies that an idea of the usefulness of riches implies an idea of the person, “and cannot be consider’d without a kind of sympathy with his sensations and enjoyments.”

7. There is confirmation in a reflection that some would think to be too subtle and refined. It has been argued earlier, in Book I, Part II, Section XIV, that power distinguished from its exercise means nothing, or if anything, a mere possibility or probability reflecting the degree to which the object approaches reality and has an influence on the mind. When we have the power, the probability of the objects “seem to touch on the very verge of reality,” due to an “illusion of the fancy.” On the other hand, When someone else has the power, the probability of the objects is makes their approach to reality much weaker. The author has already asserted that the idea of a rich person’s possession is very faint without sympathy. A greedy person does not even have the power, in the sense just given, to use his money to produce pleasure and convenience, since there is almost no “probability or even possibility” (in the mind of the beholder) that this will happen. But it is possible in his own mind, since he has a more vivid conception of it: “To himself alone this power seems perfect and entire; and therefore we must receive his sentiments by sympathy, before we can have a strong intense idea of these enjoyments, or esteem him upon account of them.

8. The first principle, concerning reflection on the objects possessed by the rich person, gives way to the third, which gives credit to the feeling of sympathy we have with the esteemed person’s pleasure. The author will now turn to the second principle, that esteem results from the agreeable expectation of some advantage from the rich person.

9. The power rich and powerful people have to do services to us is much less than their power to please themselves. The power and the exercise of the power are much closer in the latter case due to self-love. To extend this connection to another person, the rich person would have to be connected in some way with him, through “a friendship and good-will.” Otherwise, why hope for advantage from the person? But we naturally esteem the rich even if this connection does not exist.

10. This holds not only when they “show no inclination to serve us,” but when there is no way they could. Prisoners of war are treated with respect for their riches, even if they are in no position to be of service to anyone. And people long dead are esteemed for the riches they had.

11. “But not to go so far as prisoners of war and the dead to find instances of this disinterested esteem for riches,” we can find them in common life and conversation by paying a little attention. People who come into contact with strangers treat them with respect proportionate to what he knows about their wealth and power, “tho’ ’tis impossible he can ever propose, and perhaps wou’d not accept any advantage from them.” If a traveler has a train of servants and fine objects with him, indicating his wealth, he is always admitted into company and is met with civility. “In short, as the different ranks of men are, in a great measure, regulated by riches, and that with regard to superiors as well as inferiors, strangers as well as acquaintances.”

12. One might appeal to general rules to undermine these considerations The author has brought against the second explanatory principle. The reasoning would begin from cases in which the rich have given advantage and we esteem them on that account. Then we extend this to cases of people who are likewise rich, but from whom we could never expect advantage. “The general rule still prevails, and by giving a bent to the imagination draws along the passion, in the same manner as if its proper object were real and existent.”

13. The author dismisses this suggestion on the grounds that general rules are based on customary associations based on a large number of cases, and the number of cases in this regard are too few to establish a custom. “Of a hundred men of credit and fortune I meet with, there is not, perhaps, one from whom I can expect advantage; so that ’tis impossible any custom can ever prevail in the present case.”

14. The primary explanation of esteem is that “riches give satisfaction to their possessor; and this satisfaction is convey’d to the beholder by the imagination, which produces an idea resembling the original impression in force and vivacity.” The idea of the other’s satisfaction is connected with the passion of love, an agreeable passion which is directed to a thinking being. There is a relation of impressions (sympathetic pleasure to esteem, which is pleasurable) and an identity of object (the rich person as the one with whom we sympathize and the object of our esteem).

15. The best support for this explanation is the observation of the force of sympathy in the world. In all animals that do not prey on one another and are not violently agitated, there is a “remarkable desire of company, which associates them together, without any advantages they can ever propose to reap from their union.” Men have the greatest desire of this kind. Our wishes are always directed toward society, and a perfectly solitary life is the greatest punishment we can imagine. “Every pleasure languishes when enjoy’d apart from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable.” The other passions, “pride, ambition, avarice, curiosity, revenge or lust,” are animated by sympathy and would not exist “were we to abstract entirely from the thoughts and sentiments of others.” A completely solitary person with control over the universe would still be miserable until he got a companion with whom to share his happiness, “and whose esteem and friendship he may enjoy.”

16. There are many particular instances in which the force of sympathy can be observed. Our sentiment of beauty is enhanced by the usefulness of objects to their possessors. “The observation of convenience gives pleasure, since convenience is beauty.” But since the objects are not our own, they “must delight us merely by communication” and sympathy with the owner. “We enter into his interest by the force of imagination, and feel the same satisfaction, that the objects naturally occasion in him.”

17. The observation just made extends to every artificial thing, “it being an universal rule, that their beauty is chiefly deriv’d from their utility, and form their fitness for that purpose, to which they are destin’d.” Only the owner reaps the advantage, and so the beauty others find in useful objects is based only on sympathy for the pleasure the owner gets from them.

18. The author continues by comparing the beauty of a cultivated field to one overgrown with natural plants that are of no use. They may be equally beautiful in themselves, but only to the senses. To the imagination, the cultivated field is more beautiful, because the pleasure of their usefulness to the owner enters into our minds “the vivacity of the fancy.”

19. No rule in painting is more reasonable than that of balance, relative to the center of gravity of a figure. This is because figures not in balance is precarious and disagreeable, “because it conveys the ideas of its fall, of harm and of pain: Which ideas are painful, when by sympathy they acquire any degree of force and vivacity.”

20. A further consideration is personal beauty, where “an air of health and vigor” is the main contributor. This is because of the utility of those qualities to he person, whose pleasure is conveyed to us by sympathy. [See also Book III, Part III, Section 4, Paragraph 4 for the same point made in the context of personal beauty as a virtue.]

21. The minds of men mirror one another. They reflect one another’s emotions and as well produce a multiple reflection (or “rebound”) effect when facing each other. The original pleasure the rich man gets from his possessions is thrown back on the beholder, who gets his own pleasure and has the passion of esteem. The rich man sympathizes with this and gets a “secondary satisfaction in riches arising from the love and esteem he acquires by them.” This “vanity” is one of the best things about riches “and is the chief reason, why we either desire them for ourselves and esteem them in others. More rebounds occur, though they are difficult to distinguish because they are so faint and confused. [The rebound effect is discovered in another phenomenon, concerning the vice of over-weaning pride, in Book III, Part III, Section 2, Paragraph 17].

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