"A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind"
About this Quote
Shenstone sketches a psychological trap with the light touch of a poet: our judgments about “mankind” are rarely neutral reportage and more often a self-portrait. The line works because it reverses the usual posture of moral commentary. The person who announces that people are corrupt, selfish, or petty sounds like a clear-eyed realist; Shenstone quietly suggests he’s mostly advertising his own instincts, his own habits of mind. Cynicism, in this framing, isn’t intelligence. It’s leakage.
The phrasing is doing extra work. “Generally” cushions the claim just enough to sound like observed wisdom rather than a scold, while “good or ill qualities” refuses nuance in the way that everyday talk about human nature does: we sort the world into virtues and vices, then pretend that sorting came from the world itself. “Attributes” is the tell. To attribute is to assign, to project, to pin a label on something that can’t easily protest.
Context matters: Shenstone writes in an 18th-century moral tradition that loved maxims, but this one anticipates modern ideas about projection and confirmation bias. It’s also a rebuke to the era’s fashionable generalizations about “human nature,” the kind of salon pessimism that flatters the speaker as sophisticated. Shenstone’s subtext is sharper: if you want to know someone’s ethics, don’t listen for the principles they claim; listen for the species they invent. Their “mankind” will sound suspiciously like them.
The phrasing is doing extra work. “Generally” cushions the claim just enough to sound like observed wisdom rather than a scold, while “good or ill qualities” refuses nuance in the way that everyday talk about human nature does: we sort the world into virtues and vices, then pretend that sorting came from the world itself. “Attributes” is the tell. To attribute is to assign, to project, to pin a label on something that can’t easily protest.
Context matters: Shenstone writes in an 18th-century moral tradition that loved maxims, but this one anticipates modern ideas about projection and confirmation bias. It’s also a rebuke to the era’s fashionable generalizations about “human nature,” the kind of salon pessimism that flatters the speaker as sophisticated. Shenstone’s subtext is sharper: if you want to know someone’s ethics, don’t listen for the principles they claim; listen for the species they invent. Their “mankind” will sound suspiciously like them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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