done to the Person in whose Favour these Marks of Esteem are
displayed: So that the highest Honour which Men can give to Mortals,
whilst alive, is in Substance no more, than the most likely and most
effectual Means that Human Wit can invent to gratify, stir up, and
encrease in Him, to whom that Honour is paid, the Passion of
Self-liking.

Hor. I am afraid it is true.

Cleo. To render what I have advanced more conspicuous, we need only
look into the Reverse of Honour, which is Dishonour or Shame, and we
shall find, that this could have had no Existence any more than
Honour, if there had not been such a Passion in our Nature as
Self-liking. When we see Others commit such Actions, as are vile and
odious in our Opinion, we say, that such Actions are a Shame to them,
or that they ought to be ashamed of them. By this we shew, that we
differ from them in their Sentiments concerning the Value which we
know, that they, as well as all Mankind, have for their own Persons;
and are endeavouring to make them have an ill Opinion of themselves,
and raise in them that sincere Sorrow, which always attends Man's
reflecting on his own Unworthiness. I desire, you would mind, that the
Actions which we thus condemn as vile and odious, need not to be so
but in our own Opinion; for what I have said happens among the worst
of Rogues, as well as among the better Sort of People. If one Villain
should neglect picking a Pocket, when he might have done it with Ease,
another of the same Gang, who was near him and saw this, would upbraid
him with it in good Earnest, and tell him, that he ought to be ashamed
of having slipt so fair an Opportunity. Sometimes Shame signifies the
visible Disorders that are the Symptoms of this sorrowful Reflection
on our own Unworthiness; at others, we give that Name to the