Adam Smith (1723-1790)

LIST OF WORKS BY ADAM SMITH.

1. In a periodical called the Edinburgh Review, published in 1755, for a

few numbers, a Review of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, and Observa
tions on the State of Learning in Europe.

2. Theory of Moral Sentiments and Dissertation on the Origin of

Language. 1759.

3. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776.

4. A volume of Essays, published posthumously, containing —

A History of Astronomy.

A History of Ancient Physics.

A History of Ancient Logic and Metaphysics.

An Essay on the Imitative Arts.

On certain English and Italian Verses.

On the External Senses.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS

"ADAM SMITH!

(1723— 1790)

BY

j. A. IFARRER)

AUTHOR OF "PRIMITIVE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS," ETC,

NEW YORK

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1881

7 ,,U,v
( I O

OF ^ >;

PBEFACE

THE EDITOR,

THE appearance of the first instalment of the Series of
English Philosophers affords the Editor an opportunity of
defining- the position and aim of this and the succeeding
volumes. We live in an age of series : Art, Science,
Letters, are each represented hy one or more; it is the object
of the present Series to add Philosophy to the list of subjects
which are daily becoming more and more popular. Had it
been our aim to produce a History of Philosophy in the
interests of any one school of thought, co-operation would
have been well-nigh impracticable. Such, however, is not
our object. We seek to lay before the reader what each
English Philosopher thought and wrote about the problems
with which he dealt, not what we may think he ought to
have thought and written. Criticism will be suggested rather
than indulged in, and these volumes will be expositions rather
than reviews. The size and number of the volumes compiled
by each leading Philosopher are chiefly due to tehe necessity ;
which Philosophers have generally considered imperative, of
demolishing all previous systems of Philosophy before they

PREFACE.

commence the work of constructing- their own. Of this work
of destruction little will be found in these volumes; we propose
to lay stress on what a Philosopher did rather than on what he
undid. In the summary will be found a general survey of the
main criticisms that have been passed upon the views of the
Philosopher who forms the subject of the work, and in the
bibliographic appendix the reader will be directed to sources
of more detailed criticism than the size and nature of the
volumes in the Series would permit. The lives of Philosophers
are not, as a rule, eventful, the biographies will consequently
be brief. It is hoped that the Series, when complete, will
supply a comprehensive History of English Philosophy. It
will include an Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, by
Professor H. Sidgwick.

OXFOBD, Nov., 1880.

CONTENTS.

PA OR

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 1

CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 22

CHAPTER II.
THE PHENOMENA OF SYMPATHY 29

CHAPTER III.

MORAL APPROBATION, AND THE FEELING OF PROPRIETY . . 33

CHAPTER IV.
THE FEELING OF MERIT AND DEMERIT 40

CHAPTER V.

INFLUENCE OF PROSPERITY OR ADVERSITY, CHANCE, AND CUSTOM

UPON MORAL SENTIMENTS 50

CHAPTER VI.
THEORY OF CONSCIENCE AND DUTY 72

CHAPTER VII.
THEOEY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 88

A 2

iv CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGE

THE KELATION OF EELIGION TO MORALITY .... 98

CHAPTER IX.
THE CHARACTER OF VIRTUE 107

CHAPTER X.
ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF HAPPINESS . . . ' . . 127

CHAPTER XL
ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF FINAL CAUSES IN ETHICS . . 135

CHAPTER XII.
ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF UTILITY 144

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RELATION OF ADAM SMITH'S THEORY TO OTHER SYSTEMS

OF MORALITY 152

CHAPTER XIV.
REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL CRITICISMS OF ADAM SMITH'S THEOET 172

ADAM SMITH.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

THE fnmo of Adam Smith rests so deservedly on his great work,
the Wealth of Nations, that the fact is apt to be lost sight of,
that long- before he distinguished himself as a political econo
mist he had gained a reputation, not confined to his own
country, by his speculations in moral philosophy. The Theory
of Moral Sentiments was first published in 1759, when its
author was thirty-six ; the Wealth of Nations in 1776, when
he was fifty-three. The success of the latter soon eclipsed that
of his first work, but the wide celebrity which soon attended
the former is attested by the fact of the sort of competition
that ensued for translating it into French. Rochefoucauld,
grandson of the famous author of the Maxims, got so far in a
translation of it as the end of the first Part, when a complete
translation by the Abbe Blavet compelled him to renounce the
continuance of his work. The Abbo Morellet-r-so conspicuous
a figure in the French literature of that period — speaks of him
self in his Memoirs as having been impressed by Adam Smith's
Theory with a great idea of its author's wisdom and depth of
thought.1

1 Memoires, i. 211. "SaTheorie des Sentlmens Moraux m'avait donr.tS
nne gramle idee de sa sagacite et de sa profondeur." Yet, according to
Grimm, it had 110 success iu Paris. Corresp., iv. 291.

B

ADAM SMITH.

The publication of these t\vo books, the only writings pub
lished by their author in his lifetime, are strictly speaking the
only episodes which form anything like landmarks in Adam
Smith's career. The sixty-seven years of his life (1723-90)
were in other respects strangely destitute of what are called
" events ;" and beyond the adventure of his childhood, when
Jie was carried away by gipsies but soon rescued, nothing
extraordinary ever occurred to ruffle the even surface of his
existence,

If, therefore, the happiness of an individual, like that of a
nation, may be taken to vary inversely with the materials
afforded by them to the biographer or the historian, Adam
Smith may be considered to have attained no mean degree of
human felicity. From his ideal of life, political ambition and
greatness were altogether excluded ; it was his creed that
happiness was equal in every lot, and that contentment alone
was necessary to ensure it. " What," he asks, " can be added
to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of
debt, and has a clear conscience? "

To this simple standard, circumstances assisted him to mould
his life. His health, delicate in his early years, became
stronger with age ; necessity never compelled him to seek a
competence in uncongenial pursuits j nor did a tranquil life of
learning ever tempt him into paths at variance with the laws
of his moral being or his country. In several passages of his
Moral Sentiments, it will appear that he took no pains to con
ceal his preference for the old Epicurean theory of life, that in
case of body and peace of mind consists happiness, the goal of
all desire.

But the charm of such a formula of life is perhaps more
obvious than its rendering into an actual state of existence.
Ease of body does not always come for the wishing; and peace
of mind often lies still further from command. The advan-

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3

tage of the formula is, that it sets before us a definite aim, and
affords us at any time a measure of the happiness we enjoy
or of that we see around us. Judged by this standard,
however, the conclusion must be — and it is a conclusion from
which Adam Smith does not shrink — that the lot of a beggar
may be equal in point of happiness to that of a king.

The result of this Epicurean theory of life on Adam Smith
was, fortunately for the world, a strong preference for the life
of learning and literature over the professional or political life.
He abjured from the first all anxiety for the prizes held out by
the various professions to candidates for wealth or reputation.
Though sent to Balliol at seventeen as a Snell exhibitioner,
for the purpose of fitting himself for service in the Church of
England, he preferred so much the peace of his own mind to
the wishes of his friends and relations, that, when he left Ox
ford after a residence of seven years, he declined to enter into
the ecclesiastical profession at all, and he returned to Scotland
with the sole and simple hope of obtaining through literature
some post of moderate preferment more suitable to his incli
nations.

Fortune seems to have favoured him in making such a
course possible, for after leaving Oxford he spent two years at
home with his mother at Kirkaldy. He had not to encounter
the difficulties which compelled Hume to practise frugality
abroad, in order to preserve his independence. His father, who
had died a few months before his birth, had been private secre
tary to the Principal Secretary of State for Scotland, and after
that Comptroller of the Customs at Kirkaldy. Adam Smith
was, moreover, an only child, and if there was not wealth at
home, there was the competence which was all he desired.

By the circumstances of his birth, his education, like that of
David Hume, devolved in his early years upon his mother, of
whom one would gladly know more than has been vouchsafed

B 2

ADAM SMITH.

by her son's biographer. She is said to have been blamed for
spoiling- him, but it is possible that what seemed to her Scotch
neighbours excessive indulgence meant no very exceptional
degree of kindness. At all events, the treatment succeeded,
nor had ever a mother a more devoted son. Her death, which
did not long precede his own, closed a life of unremitted affec
tion on both sides, and was the first and greatest bereavement
that Adam Smith ever had to mourn. The society of his mother
and her niece, Miss Douglas, who lived with them, was all that
he ever knew of family life; and when the small circle broke
up, as it did at last speedily and with short intervals of
survival for those who experienced the grief of the first sepa
ration, Adam Smith was well-advanced in years. He survived
his mother only six years, his cousin about two ; and he had
passed sixty when the former died.

It is said, that after a disappointment in early life, Adam
Smith gave up all thoughts of marriage; but if he thus
failed of the happiest condition of life, it is equally true that
he was spared the greatest sorrows of human existence, and
a number of minor troubles and anxieties. The domestic
economy was entirely conducted by his cousin, and to the
philosopher is attributed with more than usual justice all
that incapacity for the common details of life with which
the popular conception always clothes a scholar. It is said
that even the fancy of a La Bruyere has scarcely imagined
instances of a more striking absence of mind than might be
actually quoted of him ;2 and from boyhood upwards he had
the habit of laughing and talking to himself which sometimes
led casual observers to inferences not to his credit.

Dugald Stewart, whose somewhat meagre memoir on Adam
Smith is the chief authority for all that is known of his life,

2 See, for some anecdotes of this kind, the Quartwly Review, vol
xxx vi. 200.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

describes him as "certainly not fitted for the general com
merce of the world or for the business of active life." The
subject of his studies rendered him " habitually inattentive to
familiar objects and to common occurrences." Even in
company, he was apt to be engrossed with his studies,, and
would seem, by the motion of his lips as well as by his looks
and gestures, to be in all the fervour of composition. In con
versation " he was scarcely ever known to start a topic him
self," and if he did succeed in falling in with the common
dialogue of conversation, "he was somewhat apt to con
vey his own ideas in the form of a lecture/' Notwith
standing these defects, we are told of "the splendour of
his conversation," and of the inexhaustible novelty and
variety which belonged to it, by reason of his ready adap
tation of fanciful theories to all the common topics of
discourse.

Of his early years — often the most interesting of any, as
indicative of future character — singularly little remains known.
Some of those who were the companions of his first school
years at Kirkaldy, and who remained his friends for life, have
attested the passion he even then had for books and " the ex
traordinary powers of his memory."

At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of
Glasgow, where his favourite studies were mathematics and
natural sciences, and where he attended the lectures of Dr.
Huteheson, who has been called " the father of speculative
philosophy in Scotland in modern times," and whose theory
of the Moral Sense had so much influence on Adam Smith's
own later ethical speculations.

Beyond this reference to his studies, nothing is told of

Adam Smith's three years at Glasgow. His whole youth is

'in fact a blank for his biographer. We hear of no prizes, no

distinctions, no friendships, no adventures, no eccentricities of

ADAM SMITH.

any kind. Nor is it much better with regard to his career at
Oxford, to which he was sent by the University of Glasgow
at the age of seventeen. Only one anecdote remains, of very
doubtful truth, and not mentioned by Dugald Stewart, to the
effect that he once incurred rebuke from the college authori
ties of Balliol for having been detected in his rooms read inn-
Name's Treatise on Human Nature. The story is worth men
tioning, if only as an indication of the prevalent idea of Adam
Smith's bent of mind in his undergraduate days; and those
who, in spite of experience, still hold to the theory, that at the
bottom of every story some truth must lie, may gather from
this one, that even at college the future friend of the historian
was attracted by the bold scepticism which distinguished his
philosophy.

It was perhaps by reason of this attraction that at the end
of seven years at Oxford Adam Smith declined to take orders.
Leaving Oxford, which for most men means an entire change
of life, meant for him simply a change in the scene of his
studies ; a transfer of them from one place to another. Lan
guages, literature, and history, could, he found, be studied as
well at Kirkaldy as at the chief seat of learning in England.
To Oxford, so different in most colleges now from what it was
in those days, he seems never to have expressed or felt the
gratitude which through life attached him to Glasgow; and
his impressions of the English university have been immor
talized by him in no flattering terms in what he has said of it
in his Wealth of Nations.

After nearly two years spent at home, Adam Smith removed
to Edinburgh, where, under the patronage of Lord Kumes, so
well known in connexion with the Scotch literature of the last
century, he delivered lectures on rhetoric and Idles lettrcs ; and
the same subject formed the greater part of his lectures as
Professor of Logic at Glasgow, to which post he was elected

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

m 1751, at the age of twenty-eight. The next year he was
chosen Professor of Moral Philosophy at the same university ;
and the period of thirteen years, during which he held this
situation, he ever regarded as the most useful and happy of his
life.

Of his lectures at Glasgow only so much has been preserved
as he published in the Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations
respectively. He divided his course into four parts, the first
relating to Natural Theology, the second to Ethics, the third
to the subject of Justice and the growth of Jurisprudence, the
fourth to Politics. Under the latter head he dealt with the
political institutions relating to commerce and all the subjects
which enter into his maturer work on the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations ; whilst under the second head, he
expounded the doctrines which he afterwards published in the
Moral Sentiments. On the subject of Justice, it was his inten
tion to write a system of natural jurisprudence, 'f or a theory
of the general principles which ought to run through and be
the foundation of the laws of all nations/'' It was to have
been an improvement on the work of Grotius ou the same
subject, and the Theory of Moral Sentiments concludes with
a promise which, unfortunately, was never fulfilled. " I shall,"
he says, '" in another discourse, endeavour to give an account
of the general principles of law and government, and of the
different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages
and periods of society, not only in what concerns justice, but
in what concerns police, revenue, and arms, and whatever else
is the object of law. I shall not, therefore, at present, enter into
any further details concerning the history of jurisprudence.3

One of Adam Smith's own pupils, and afterwards for life
one of his most intimate friends, Dr. Millar, professor of law

3 To this hope he still clung even in the sixth edition of his work, pub
lished the .year of his death, 17(JO.

8 ADAM SMITH.

at Glasgow, and author of an excellent work on the Origin
of Ranks, has left a graphic description of the great success
which attended these lectures at Glasgow. " There was no
situation in which the abilities of Mr. Smith appeared to

greater advantage than as a professor His reputation

as a professor was accordingly raised very high, and a multi
tude of students from a great distance resorted to the Univer
sity, merely upon his account. Those branches of science
which he taught became fashionable at this place, and his
opinions were the chief topic of discussion in clubs and literary
societies. Even the small peculiarities in his pronunciation
or manner of speaking, became frequently the objects of
imitation."

It seems to have been during the early years of his pro
fessorship at Glasgow that Adam Smith formed that friendship
with David Hume which forms so pleasing a feature in the
life of both of them, and is so memorable in the history of
literary attachments. There was sufficient sameness in the
fundamental characteristics and opinions of each of them,
together with sufficient cliiferences on minor points, to ensure
the permanence of their mutual affection. Both took the
same interest in questions of moral philosophy and political
economy ; both had a certain simplicity and gentleness of
character ; both held the same ideas of the relation of natural
to revealed religion.

A letter written by Hume to his friend in 1759, on the
occasion of the publication of his Moral Sentiments, is of in
terest, not only as characteristic of the friendship between
them, but as indicative of the good reception which the book
immediately met with from all persons competent to judge of
it. The letter is dated April 12, 1759 :—

" I give you thanks for the agreeable present of your Theory.
"Wedderburne and 1 made presents of our copies to such of our

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

acquaintances as we thought good judges, and proper to spread
the reputation of the book. I sent one to the Duke of Argyll,
to Lord Lyttleton, Horace Walpole, Soame Jennyns, and
Burke, an Irish gentleman, who wrote lately a very prctly
treatise on the Sublime. Millar desired my permission to
send one in your name to Dr. Warburton. I have delayed
writing till I could tell you something of the success of the
book, and could prognosticate, with some probability, whether
it should be finally damned to oblivion, or should be registered
in the temple of immortality. Though it has been published
only a few weeks, I think there appear already such strong

symptoms, that I can almost venture to foretell its fate

I am afraid of Lord Kames's Law Tracts. A man might as
well think of making a fine sauce by a mixture of wormwood
and aloes as an agreeable composition by joining metaphysics

and Scotch law I believe I have mentioned to you

already llelvetius's book de V Esprit. It is worth your read
ing, not for its philosophy, which I do not highly value, but
for its agreeable composition. I had a letter from him a few-
days ago wherein he tells me that my name was much oftener
in the manuscript, but that the censor of books at Paris obliged

him to strike it out But what is all this to my book ?

say you. Mv dear Mr. Smith, have patience : compose your
self to tranquillity; show yourself a philosopher in practice as
well as profession ; think on the emptiness, and rashness, and
futility of the common judgment of men ; how little they are
regulated bv reason in any subject, much more in philosophical
subjects, which so far exceed the comprehension of the vulgar.
.... A wise man's kingdom is his own breast ; or, if he ever
looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few,
who are free from prejudices and capable of examining his
work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of
falsehood than the approbation of the multitude ; and Phocion,

io ADAM SMITH.

you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he
was attended with the applauses of the populace.

" Supposing1, therefore, that you have duly prepared yourself
for the woist by all these reflections, I proceed to tell you the
melancholy news, that your book has been very unfortunate,
for the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely. It was
looked for by the foolish people with some impatience ; and
the mob of literati are beginning- already to be very loud in its
praises. Three bishops called yesterday at Millar's shop in
order to buy copies and to ask questions about its author.
The Bishop of Peterborough said he had passed the evening
in a company where he heard it extolled above all books in
the world. The Duke of Argyll is more decisive than he uses
to be in its favour. I suppose he either considers it an exotic
or thinks the author will be serviceable to him in the Glasgow
elections. Lord Lyttleton says that Robertson, and Smith, and
Bower are the glories of English literature. Oswald protests
he does not know whether he has reaped more instruction or
entertainment from it. But you may easily judge what reli
ance can be placed on his judgment who has been engaged all
his life in public business, and who never sees any faults in
his friends. Millar exults and brags that two-thirds of the
edition are already sold, and that it is sure of success. You
see what a son of earth that is, to value books only by the
profit they bring him. In that view, I believe, it may prove
a very good book.

" Charles Townsend, who passes for the cleverest fellow in
England, is so taken with the performance that he said to
Oswald he would put the Duke of Buccleuch under the author's
care, and would make it worth his while to accept of that
charge. As soon as I heard this I called on him twice, with
a view of talking with him about the matter, and of con
vincing him of the propriety of sending that young nobleman

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. II

to Glasgow ; for I could not hope that he could offer you any
terms which would tempt you to renounce your professorship.
But I missed him

" In recompense for so many mortifying- things, which no
thing hut truth could have extorted from me, and which I
could easily have multiplied to a greater number, I doubt not
but you are so good a Christian as to return good for evil ;
and to flatter my vanity by telling me that all the godly in
Scotland abuse me for my account of John Knox and the
Reformation/' &c.

The invitation referred to by Hume in this letter to travel
with the Duke of Buccleuch carne in about four years time ;
and the liberal terms in which the proposal was made, together
with the strong temptation to travel, led to a final resignation
of the Glasgow professorship.

But here again curiosity is doomed to disappointment; for
Adam Smith wrote no journal of his travels abroad, and he
had such an aversion to letter-writing that no records of this
sort preserve his impressions of foreign life.4 Scarcely more
than the bare outline of his route is known. Some two weeks
at Paris were followed by eighteen months at Toulouse. Then
a tour in the South of France was followed by two months at
Geneva; and from Christmas, 17G5, to the following- October
the travellers were in Paris, this latter period being the only
one of any general interest, on account of the illustrious
acquaintances which the introductions of Hume enabled Adam
Smith to make in the French capital.

During this period Adam Smith became acquainted with
the chief men of letters and philosophers of Paris, such as
D'Alemhert, Uelvetius, Marmontel, Morcllet; and it is to be
regretted that Moreliet, who mentions the fact of conversations

4 A few of his letters are published in Lord Brougham's Account of
Adam Smith's Lijc and Wurks, i. 279-89.

12 ADAM SMITH.

between himself, Target, and Adam Smith, on subjects of
political economy and on several points connected with the
great work then contemplated by the latter, should have
given us no clue to the influence Turgot may have had in
suggesting or confirming the idea of free trade. That the
intercourse between them became intimate may at least be
inferred from the unverified story of their subsequent literary
correspondence ; and to Quesnai, the economist, it is known
that Adam Smith intended, but for the death of the former,
to have dedicated his Wealth of Nations. With Morellet, too,
Adam Smith seems to have been intimate. The abbe records
in his Memoirs that he kept for twenty years a pocket-book
presented to him as a keepsake by Adam Smith. The latter
sent him also a copy of the Wealth of Nations ten years later,
which Morellet, with his usual zeal for translating, set to work
upon at once. The Abbe Blavet, however, was again the first
in the field, so that Morellet could not find a publisher. It is
worth noticing that Morellet mentions the fact that Adam
Smith spoke French very badly, which is not the least incon
sistent with his biographer's claim for him of an " uncommonly
extensive and accurate knowledge" of modern languages.

The duke and the philosopher, having laid in their com
panionship abroad the foundation of a friendship which lasted
till the death of the latter, returned to London in October,
1766. The next ten years of his life Adam Smith spent at
home with his mother and cousin, preparing the work on
which his fame now chiefly rests. It was a period of quiet
uneventful study, and almost solitude. Writing to Hume, he
says that his chief amusements are long and solitary walks by
the sea, and that he never felt more happy, comfortable, or
contented, in his life. Hume made vain endeavours to tempt
him to Edinburgh from his retirement. " I want," he said,
"to know what you have been doing, and propose to exact a

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. rj

rigorous account of the method in which you have employed
yourself during" your retreat. I am positive you are wrong1 in
many of your speculations, especially where you have the
misfortune to differ from me. All these are reasons for our
meeting."

This was in 17G9. Seven years later, 1776, the Wealth of
Nations appeared, and Hume, who was then dying", again
wrote his friend a congratulatory letter. " Euge. ! Belle ! I
am much pleased with your performance, and the perusal of it
has taken me from a great state of anxiety. It was a work
of so much expectation, by yourself, by your friends, and by
the public, that I trembled for its appearance ; but am now
much relieved. Not but that the reading of it necessarily
requires so much attention, that I shall still doubt for some
time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth and
solidity, and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious
facts, that it must, at last, take the public attention. It is
probably much improved by your last abode in London. If
you were here, at my fireside, I should dispute some of your
principles. . . . But these, and a hundred other points, are fit
only to be discussed in conversation. I hope it will be soon,
for I am in a very bad state of health, and cannot afford a
long delay."

This letter seems to have led to a meeting between the
two friends, the last before the sad final separation. Of the
cheerfulness with which Hume met his death, Adam Smith
wrote an account in a letter addressed to Strahan, the pub
lisher, and appended to Hume's autobiography, telling how
Hume, in reference to his approaching departure, imagined a
conversation between himself and Charon, and how he con
tinued to correct his works for a new edition, to read books of
amusement, to converse, or sometimes play at whist with his
friends. He also extolled Hume's extreme gentleness of

14 ADAM SMITH.

nature, which never weakened the firmness of his mind nor
the steadiness of his resolutions; his constant pleasantry and
good humour ; his severe application to study, his extensive
learning-, his depth of thought. He thought that his temper
was more evenly balanced than in any other man he ever
knew; and that, however much difference of opinion there
might be among men as to his philosophical ideas, according
as they happened or not to coincide with their own, there
could scarcely be any concerning his character and conduct.
" Upon the whole," he concluded, " I have always considered
him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching
as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as
perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit/'

Considering that Hume counted among his friends such
churchmen as Robertson the historian, and Blair, author of
the Sermons, Adam Smith's confident belief in the uniformity
of judgment about his friend's character need not appear un
reasonable; but, unfortunately, a dignitary of the Church,
author of a Commentary on the Psalms, and afterwards Bishop
of Norwich, chose to consider the letter to Strahan a mani
festo against Christianity, and accordingly published anony
mously a letter to Adam Smith, purporting to be written
"by one of the people called Christians." The writer claimed
to have in his composition a large proportion of the milk of
human kindness ; to be no bigot nor enemy to human learn
ing; and never to have known the meaning of envy or
hatred. Strange then that, at the age of forty-six, Dr. Home
should have been guilty of a letter, which it would be difficult
to match for injustice of inference, or contemptibility of style,
and which he even thought fit to leave to posterity among his
other published works. He begins: "You have been lately
employed in embalming a philosopher; his body, I believe I
must say, for concerning the other part of his nature neither

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15

you nor he seem to have entertained an idea, sleeping- or
waking-. Else it surely might have claimed a little of your
care and attention ; and one would think the belief of the
soul's existence and immortality could do no harm, if it did
no good,, in a Theory of Moral Sentiments. But every gen
tleman understands his own business best/'

The letter, pervaded by the same spirit of banter through -
out, is too long1 to quote at length, but the following extracts
contain the leading idea : " Are you sure, and can you make
us sure, that there really exist no such things as God, a future
state of rewards and punishments ? If so, all is well. Let
us then, in our last hours, read Lucian, and play at whist,
and droll upon Charon and his boat,; let us die as foolish and
insensible, as much like our brother philosophers the calves
of the field and the asses of the desert, as we can, for the life

of us Upon the whole, doctor, your meaning is good;

but I think you will not succeed this time. You would per
suade us, by the example of David Hume, Esq., that atheism
is the only cordial for low spirits, and the proper antidote
against the fear of death."

It is difficult to say whether the puerility or the ignorance
displayed in this letter is the greater. Either the writer had
never read the Theory of Moral Sentiments at all, or he was so
little versed in philosophy as to see no difference between
Deism and Atheism, two distinct logical contradictories.
There is, moreover, not a word in Adam Smith's letter to
justify any reference to religious questions at all; and sub
sequent quotations from the Moral Sentiments will abundantly
demonstrate the total falsity of the churchman's assumptions.
Adam Smith treated his letter with the contemptuous silence
it so well deserved. The story quoted by Sir Walter Scott,
in an article in the Quarterly, that Johnson grossly insulted
Adam Smith at a literary meeting in Glasgow, by reason of

i5 ADAM SMITH.

his dislike for him, as the eulogizer of Hume, is easily shown
to rest on no foundation. Hume did not die till 1770, and it
was three years earlier that Johnson visited Glasgow.

The two years after the publication of his greatest work
Adam Smith spent in London, in the midst of that literary
society which we know so well through the pages of Boswell.
Then, at the request of the Duke of Buccleuch, he was made
one of the Commissioners of Custom in Scotland, and in this
occupation spent the last twelve years of his life, in the midst
of a society which must have formed an agreeable contrast to
the long years of his retirement and solitude. The light
duties of his office; the pleasures of friendship; the loss of
his mother and cousin, and increasing- ill -health, all combined
to prevent the completion of any more of his literary projects.
A few days before his death he ordered all his manuscripts to
be burnt, with the exception of a few essays, which may still
be read. They consist of a History of Astronomy, a History
of Ancient Physics, a History of Ancient Logic and Meta
physics, an Essay on the Imitative Arts, on certain English
and Italian verses, and on the External Senses. The destroyed
manuscripts are supposed to have comprised the lectures on
Rhetoric, read at Edinburgh forty-two years before, and the
lectures on Natural Theology and on Jurisprudence, which
formed part of his lectures at Glasgow. The additions which
he made to the Moral Sentiments, in the last winter of his life,
he lived to see published before his death.

Of the Theory of Moral Sentiments Sir James Mackintosh
says : " Perhaps there is no ethical work since Cicero's Offices,
of which an abridgment enables the reader so inadequately to
estimate the merit, as the Theory of Moral Sentiments. This
is not chiefly owing to the beauty of diction, as in the case of
Cicero, but to the variety of explanations of life and manners
which embellish the book more than they illuminate the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. i;

theory. Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned that, for
philosophical purposes, few books more need abridgment; for
the most careful reader frequently loses sight of principles
buried under illustrations. The naturally copious and flowing
style of the author is generally redundant, and the repetition
of certain formularies of the system is, in the later editions,
so frequent as to be wearisome, and sometimes ludicrous."

The justice of this criticism has been the guiding principle
in the attempt made in the following chapters to give an ac
count of Adam Smith's system of moral philosophy, the aim
having been to avoid sacrificing the main theory to the super
abundance of illustration which somewhat obscures it in the
original, while at the same time doing justice to the minor
subjects treated of, which, though they have little or nothing
to do with Adam Smith's leading principles, yet form a dis
tinctive feature in his work, and are in many respects the
most interesting part of it; for critics who have rejected
the Theory as a whole, have been uniformly loud in their
praises of its minor details and illustrations. Brown, for
instance, who has been the most successful perhaps of all the
adverse critics of the Theory, speaks of it as presenting in
these respects "a model of philosophic beauty.-" Jouffroy,
too, allows that the book is one of the most useful in moral
science, because Adam Smith, " deceived as he undoubtedly
was as to the principle of morality/' brought to light and
analyzed so many of the facts of human nature. Dugald
Stewart and Mackintosh both say much the same thing; so
that it is evident no account of Adam Smith's work can be
complete which omits from consideration all the collateral
inquiries he pursues or all the illustrations he draws, either
from history or from his imagination. To preserve, as far as
possible, the proportion which these collateral inquiries bear
to one another and to the main theory, as well as to retain

c

1 8 ADAM SMITH.

what is most characteristic of the original in point of illus
tration and style, having- been therefore the end in view, it
lias been found best to alter the arrangement in some degree,
and to divide the whole into chapters, the relations of which
to the divisions of the original will be best understood by a
brief reference to the structure of the latter.

Adam Smith divides his work into seven Parts, which pre
cede one another in the following order : —

I. Of the Propriety of Action.

TI. Of Merit and Demerit ; or the objects of Reward and
Punishment.

III. Of the Foundation of our judgments concerning our
own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty.

IV. Of the Effect of Utility upon the sentiment of Appro
bation.

V. Of the influence of Custom and Fashion upon the
sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation.

VI. Of the character of Virtue.

VII. Of systems of Moral Philosophy.

The excellence of this arrangement, however, is consi
derably marred by the division of these Parts into Sections,
and by the frequent further subdivison of the Sections them
selves into Chapters. An instance will illustrate how detri
mental this is to the clearness of the main argument. The
first three Parts exhaust the main theory, or that doctrine of
Sympathy, which is Adam Smith's own special creation, and on
which his rank as amoral philosopher depends; the other four
Parts having only to do with it incidentally or by acci
dent. But in following the first three Parts in which the
doctrine of Sympathy is expounded, we come across sections
which also are only connected incidentally with the leading
argument, and are really branches off the main line. Thus in
the Part devoted to the explanation of our ideas of Propriety

BIOGRAPHICAL SKE7CH. 19

in Action there occurs a section on the effect of prosperity or
adversity in influencing- our judgment; in the Part treating
of Merit and Demerit there is a section on the influence of
fortune or accident on our sentiments of men's merit or the
contrary; and there is, lastly, a distinct Part (Part V.)
allotted to the consideration of the influence of Custom and
Fashion on our sentiments of moral approbation or disappro
bation. These subjects are obviously so nearly allied, that they
might all have been treated together, apart from the doctrine
of sympathy of which they are quite independent; and ac
cordingly in the sequel the dissert itions concerning them in
the original are collected into a single chapter, the fifth, on
the influence of Prosperity and Adversity, Chance and Custom,
on our moral sentiments.

Consistently with the principles already explained, the order
of the original has been followed as closely as possible. The
second, third, and fourth chapters comprise Parts I. and II.
Part V., and the sections relating to the same subject in Parts
1. and II., make up the fifth chapter. Then Part III. is divided
for clearness' sake into two chapters, explaining the author's
Theory of Conscience and Theory of Moral Principles; and the
end of these two chapters, the sixth and seventh, concludes
the most important half of Adam Smith's treatise.

Part VI., on the Character of Virtue, which forms so large
a division in the original, and which was only added to the
sixth edition, corresponds with chapter IX., under the same
title. Part IV., on the effect of Utility on our moral senti
ments, forms chapter XII., in which all that is said on the sub
ject in different passages is brought together. Part VII., or
Systems of Moral Philosophy, helps in the thirteenth chapter to
throw into clear light the relation of Adam Smith's theory
to other theories of moral philosophy. The three chapters on
the relation of religion to morality, on the theory of happi-

c 2

20 ADAM SMITH.

ness, and on final causes in ethics, correspond with no similar
divisions in the original, but are severally collected from
different passages in the book, which, scattered through the
work, impress upon it a distinctive character, and constitute the
chief part of its colouring. The last chapter of all serves to
illustrate the historical importance of Adam Smith's work by
showing the large part which it fills in the criticisms of sub
sequent writers.

An accidental coincidence between Adam Smith's theory
and a passage in Polybius has unnecessarily been considered
the original source of the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The
very same passage is referred to by Hume, as showing that
Polybius, like many other ancient moralists, traced our ideas
of morality to a selfish origin. Yet there is nothing Adam
Smith resented more strongly than any identification of his
theory with the selfish system of morality. The coincidence
is therefore probably accidental ; but the passage is worth
quoting, as containing in a few lines the central idea of the
doctrine about to be considered. Polybius is speaking of the
displeasure felt by people for those who, instead of making
suitable returns of gratitude and assistance for their parents,
injure them by words or actions ; and he proceeds to say that
(i man, who among all the various kinds of animals is alone
endowed with the faculty of reason, cannot, like the rest, pass
over such actions, but will make reflection on what he sees ;
and comparing likewise the future with the present, will not
fail to express his indignation at this injurious treatment, to
which, as he foresees, he may also at some time be exposed.
Thus, again, when any one who has been succoured by another
in time of danger, instead of showing the like kindness to this
benefactor, endeavours at any time to destroy or hurt him ;
it is certain that all men must be shocked by such ingra
titude, through sympathy with the resentment of their neiffh-

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21

botir j and from an apprehension also that the case may be
their own. And from hence arises, in the mind of every man,
a certain notion of the nature and force of duty, in which con
sists both the beginning and end of justice. In like manner, the
man who, in defence of others is seen to throw himself the fore
most into every danger, never fails to obtain the loudest acclama
tions of applause and veneration from the multitude ; while he
who shows a different conduct is pursued with censure and
reproach. And thus it is that the people begin to discern the
nature of things honourable and base, and in what consists
the difference between them ; and to perceive that the former,
on account of the advantage that attends them, are to be
admired and imitated, and the latter to be detested and
avoided.""

7? ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

To explain the origin of our ideas of right and wrong, and to
find for them, if possible, a solid basis of authority, apart
from their coincidence with the dogmas of theology, was the
problem of moral philosophy which chiefly occupied the specu
lation of the last century, and to which Adam Smith's Theory
of Moral Sentiments was one of the most important contri
butions. His theory, like all others, must he understood as
an answer to the question : How do we come to regard certain
actions or states of mind with approval and to condemn their
contraries, and on what grounds can we justify our judgments
in such matters and hold them to accord universally with the
moral judgments of mankind ?

But in order to understand Adam Smith's answer to this
question, and his position in the history of thought, it is
necessary to refer briefly to the theories of his predecessors
down to the time when he took up the thread of the speculation
and offered his solution of the problems they had dealt with.

From the time when such problems first became popular in
England, two main currents of thought may be detected run
ning side by side in mutual antagonism to one another ; and
whilst according to the teaching of the one school the ulli-
rnate standard of morality was the interest of the individual
himself or the community he belonged to, the aim of the oppo
site school was to find some basis for morality which should

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 23

make it less dependent on changes of circumstance and give to
its maxims the authority of propositions that should hold true
of all times and places.

The names of Locke, Hobbes, Mandeville, and Hume, are
associated with the former school; those of Clarke, Price,
Lord Shaftesbury, Bishop Butler, and Hutcheson, with the
latter ; and the difference between them is generally ex
pressed by classing the former together as the Utilitarian,
Selfish, or Sceptical School, and the latter as the school of
Intuitional ists.

The doctrine of Hobbes, that morality was identical with
the positive commands and prohibitions of the lawgiver, and
that the law was thus the real ultimate source and standard
of all right and wrong, gave rise to several systems which
sought in different ways to find for our moral sentiments a
less variable and unstable foundation than was implied by
such an hypothesis. It was in opposition to such a theory that
Clarke and Price, and other advocates of the so-called Rational
or Intellectual system, attributed our perception of moral dis
tinctions to intuitions of our intellect, so that the truths of
morality might appear, like those of mathematics, eternal and
immutable, independent of peculiarities of time and place, and
| with an existence apart from any particular man or country,
| just as the definitions of geometry are independent of any
particular straight lines or triangles. To deny, for example,
that a man should do for others what he would wish done for
himself was, according to Clarke, equivalent to a contention
that, though two and three are equal to five, yet five is not
equal to two and three.

But the same foundation for an immutable morality that
Clarke sought for in the human intellect, others sought for in
a peculiar instinct of our nature. Thus Lord Shaftesbury
postulated the existence of a moral sense, sufficient of itself to

24 ADAM SMITH.

make us eschew vice and follow after virtue; and this moral
sense, or primitive instinct for good, was implanted in us by
nature, and carried its own authority with it. It judged of
actions by reference to a certain harmony between our affec
tions, and this harmony had a real existence, independent of
all fashion and caprice, like harmony in music. As symmetry
and proportion were founded in nature, howsoever barbarous
might be men's tastes in the arts, so, in morals, an equally
real harmony always presented a fixed standard for our
guidance.

This idea of a Moral Sense as the source and standard of
our moral sentiments was so far developed by Hutcheson, that
the Moral Sense theory of ethics- had been more generally
connected with his name than with that of its real originator.
Hutcheson argued that as we have external senses which per
ceive sounds and colours, so we have internal senses which per
ceive moral excellence and the contrary. This moral sense had
its analogues in our sense of beauty and harmony, our sympa
thetic sense, our sense of honour, of decency, and so forth. It
was a primitive faculty of our nature, a factor incapable of
resolution into simpler elements. It could not, for instance,
be resolved into a perception of utility, for bad actions were
often as useful as good ones arid yet failed to meet with appro
bation, nor could it be explained as a mode of: sympathy, for
we might morally approve even of the virtues which our
enemies manifested.

Bishop Butler, like his contemporary, Hutcheson, also
followed Lord Shaftesbury in seeking in our natural instincts
the origin of our moral ideas, Conscience with him taking the
place of the Moral Sense, from its being possessed, as he
thought, of a more authoritative character. Conscience, ac
cording to Butler, was a faculty natural to man, in virtue.
of which he was a moral agent; a faculty or principle of

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 2$

the human heart, in kind and nature supreme over all others,
and bearing" its own authority for being so. Using1 language
about it, which we meet again in the Theory of Adam Smith,
be spoke of it as " God's viceroy/' " the voice of God within
us/' "the guide assigned to us by the Author of our nature/'
The obligation to obey it therefore rested in the fact of its
being the law of our nature. It could no more be doubted
that shame was given us to prevent our doing wrong than that
our eyes were given us to see with.

It \vtts at this point that Adam Smith offered his solution of
the difficulty. For call it Conscience, Moral Sense, or what
you will, such expressions are evidently only re-statements of
the problem to be explained. To call the fact of moral appro
bation by such terms was simply to give it other names; and
to say that our conscience or moral sense admitted of no
analysis was equivalent to saying that our moral sentiments
admitted of no explanation. Adam Smith's theory must
therefore be understood as an attempt to explain what the
Intuitionalist school really gave up as inexplicable ; and it
represents the reaction against that a priori method which
they had employed in dealing with moral problems. In that
reaction, and in his appeal to the facts of experience, Adam
Smith followed the lead of both Hartley and Hume. Ten
years before him, the former, in his Observations on Man, had
sought to explain the existence of the moral sense, by tracing
it back to its lowest terms in the pleasures and pains of simple
sensation, and marking its growth in the gradual association
of our ideas. And Hume, a few years later, sought to discover
" the universal principle from which all censure or approba
tion was ultimately derived " by the experimental method of
inquiry ; by comparing, that is, a number of instances of
qualities held estimable on the one hand and qualities held
blameable on the other, and observing what was the common

26 ADAM SMITH.

element of each. From such an inquiry he inferred that those
acts were good which were useful and those bad which were
injurious, and that the fact of their being- useful or injurious
was the cause of their goodness or badness.

Thus it will be seen that the question of chief interest in
Adam Smith's time was widely different from that which had
divided the schools of antiquity. The aim or chief good of
life which chiefly occupied them had receded into the back
ground ; and the controversy concerned, as Hume declared,
" the general foundation of morals/' whether they were de
rived from Reason or from Sentiment, whether they were
arrived at by a chain of argument and process of reasoning or
by a certain immediate feeling and internal sense.

But round this central question of the origin of our feelings
of moral approbation other questions of considerable interest
were necessarily grouped. There was the question of the
authority and sanction of our moral sentiments, independently
of their origin; and there was the question of the ultimate
standard or test of moral actions. And these questions in
volved yet others, as for example : What was the relation of
morality to religion ? How far did they necessarily coincide,
and how far were they independent of each other? Was
human nature really corrupt, and to what degree \\vre the
ordinary sanctions of this life a sufficient safeguard for the
existence of morality ? Did happiness or misery, good or evil,
really predominate in ihe world; and was there such a thing
as disinterested benevolence, or might all virtue be resolved
into self-love and be really only vice under cloak and con
cealment ?

The latter alternative had been the thesis which Mamleville
had partly made and partly found popular. In his view the
most virtuous actions might be resolved into selfishness, and
Bell-love was the starting-point of all morality. This became

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 27

therefore, one of the favourite topics of speculation ; but it is
only necessary to notice Hume's treatment of it, inasmuch as
it supplies the first principle of Adam Smith's theory. Hume
assumed the existence of a disinterested principle underlying-
all our moral sentiments. He argued that "u natural prin
ciple of benevolence," impelling us to consider the interests of
others, was an essential part of human nature. " The very
aspect," he said, "of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives plea
sure ; that of pain, suffering, sorrow communicates uneasiness/'
And this fellow-feeling with others he had refused to resolve
into any more general principle, or to treat as other than an
original principle of human nature.

This phenomenon of Sympathy, or fellow-feeling, which we
have by nature with any passion whatever of another person,
is made by Adam Smith the cardinal point and distinctive
feature of his theory of the origin of moral approbation ; and
the first sentence of his treatise contains therefore not only
his answer — one of flat contradiction — to Mandeville, but the
key-note to the whole spirit of his philosophy. " Ho\v selfish
soever," he begins, " man may be supposed, there are evi
dently some principles in his nature which interest him in the
fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him,
though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of
seeing it/' So that pity or compassion, which Ilobbes had
explained as the consciousness of a possible misfortune to our
selves similar to that seen to befall another, is, with Adam
Smith, a primary, not a secondary, emotion of our nature, an
original and not a derivative passion, and one that is purely
disinterested in its manifestation.

In the next chapter and the four succeeding ones we shall
observe how on this basis of an original instinct of sympathy
Adam Smith constructs his explanation of the origin of our
moral ideas. "With regard to the explanations already offered

2S ADAM SMITH.

by previous writers, he believed that they all contained some
portion of the truth from the particular point of view taken
by each ; and in the explanation which he himself elaborated,
he thought that some part or other of his system embraced
and coincided with whatever was true in the different theories
of his predecessors.

CHAPTER II.

THE PHENOMENA OF SYMPATHY.

THE phenomena of sympathy or fellow-feeling1 show, accord
ing to Adam Smith, that it is one of the original passions of
human nature. We see it in the immediate transfusion of an
emotion from one man to another, which is antecedent to any
knowledge on our part of the causes of another man's grief or
joy. It is a primary factor of our constitution as human
beings, as is shown in the instinctive withdrawal of our limbs
from the stroke we see aimed at another. It is indeed some
thing almost physical, as we see in the tendency of a mob to
twist their bodies simultaneously with the movements of a
rope-dancer, or in the tendency of some people on beholding
sore eyes to feel a soreness in their own.

Sympathy originates in the imagination, which alone can
make us enter into the sensations of others. Our own senses,
for instance, can never tell us anything of the sufferings of a
man on the rack. It is only by imagining ourselves in his
position, by changing places with him in fancy, by thinking
what our own sensations would be in the same plight, that
we come to feel what he endures, and to shudder at the mere
thought of the agonies he feels. But an analogous emotion
springs up, whatever may be the nature of the passion, in the
person principally affected by it ; and whether it be joy or
grief, gratitude or resentment, that another feels, we equally
enter as it were into his body , and in some degree become

3o ADAM r.MITH.

the same person with him. The emotion of a spectator
always corresponds to what, by bringing the case of another
home to himself, he imagines should be that other's senti
ments.

But although sympathy is thus an instantaneous emotion,
and the expression of grief or joy in the looks or gestures of
another affect us with some degree of a similar emotion, from
their suggestion of a general idea of his bad or good fortune,
there are some passions with whose, expression no sympathy
arises till their exciting cause is known. Such a passion is
anger, for instance. When we witness the signs of anger in a
man we more readily sympathize with the fear or resentment
of those endangered by it than with the provoked man him
self. The general idea of provocation excites no sympathy
with his anger, for we cannot make his passion our own till
we know the cause of his provocation. Even our sympathy
with joy or grief is very imperfect, till we know the cause of
it : in fact, sympathy arises not so much from the view of any
passion as from that of the situation which excites it. Hence
it is that we often feel for another what he cannot feel him
self, that passion arising in our own breast from the mere
imagination which even the reality fails to arouse in his.
We sometimes, for instance, blush for the rudeness of another
who is insensible of any fault himself, because we feel how
ashamed we should have felt had his conduct and situation '
been ours. Our sorrow,, again, for an idiot is no reflection of
any sentiment of his, who laughs and sings, and is unconscious
of his misery; nor is our sympathy with the dead due to any
other consideration than the conception of ourselves as
deprived of all the blessings of life and yet conscious of our
deprivation. To the change produced upon them we join our
own consciousness of that change, our own sense of the loss of
the sunlight, of human affections, and human memory, and

THE PHENOMENA OF SYMPATHY.

then sympathize with their situation by so vividly imagiun.0
it our own.

But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, there is no
doubt of the pleasure which the consciousness of a concord of
feeling produces, and of the pain which arises from a sense of
its absence. Some have accounted for this by the principle
of self-love, by saying- that the consciousness of our own
weakness and our need of the assistance of others makes us to
rejoice in their sympathy as an earnest of their assistance, and
to grieve in their indifference as a sign of their opposition.
But both the pleasure and pain are felt so instantaneously, and
upon such frivolous occasions, that it is impossible to explain
them as a refinement of self-love. For instance, we are mor
tified if nobody laughs at our jests, and are pleased if they do;
not from any consideration of self-interest, but from an instinc
tive need and longing after sympathy.

Neither can the fact, that the correspondence of the senti
ments of others with our own is a cause of pleasure, and the
want of it a cause of pain, be accounted for entirely by the
additional zest W7hich the joy of others communicates to our
own, or by the disappointment which the absence of it causes.
The sympathy of others with our own joy may, indeed, enliven
that joy, and so give us pleasure; but their sympathy with
our grief could give us no pleasure, if it simply enlivened our
grief. Sympathy, however, whilst it enlivens joy, alleviates
grief, and so gives pleasure in either case, by the mere fact of
the coincidence of mutual feeling.

The sympathy of others being more necessary for us in grief
than in joy, we are more desirous to communicate to others
our disagreeable passions than our agreeable ones. " The
agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the
heart without any auxiliary pleasure. The bitter and painful
emotions of grief and resentment more strongly require the

32 ADAM SMITH.

healing consolation of sympathy." Hence we are less anxious
that our friends should adopt our friendships than that they
should enter into our resentments, and it makes us much more
angry if they do not enter into our resentments than if they
do not enter into our gratitude.

But sympathy is pleasurable, and the absence of it dis
tressing, not only to the person sympathized with, but to the
person sympathizing. We are ourselves pleased if we can
sympathize with another's success or affliction, and it pains
us if we cannot. The conciousness of an inability to sym
pathize with his distress, if we think his grief excessive, gives,
us even more pain than the sympathetic sorrow which the most;!
complete accordance with him could make us feel.

Such are the physical and instinctive facts of sympathy
upon which Adam Smith founds his theory of the origin of
moral approbation and our moral ideas. Before proceeding
with this development of his theory, it is worth noticing again^
its close correspondence with that of Hume, who likewise
traced moral sentiments to a basis of physical sympathy!
"Wherever we go," says Hume, " whatever we reflect on or
converse about, everything still presents us with the view of
human happiness or misery, and excites in our breast a sym-i
pathetic movement of pleasure or uneasiness." Censure or
applause are, then, the result of the influence of sympathy upon;
our sentiments. If the natural effects of misery, such as tears]
and cries and groans, never fail to inspire us with compassio^
and uneasiness, "can we be supposed altogether insensible or,
indifferent towards its causes, when a malicious or treacherous
character arid behaviour are presented to us ? "

CHAPTER III.

MORAL APPROBATION", AND THE FEELING OF PROPRIETY.

HAVING analyzed the facts of sympathy, and shown that the
correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own is a
direct cause of pleasure to us, and the want of it a cause of
pain, Adam Smith proceeds to show that the amount of
pleasure or pain felt by one man in the conduct or feelings of
another is the measure of his approbation or the contrary.
The sentiments of any one are just and proper, or the reverse,
according as they coincide or not with the sentiments of some
one else who observes them. His approbation varies with the
degree in which he can sympathize with them, and perfect
Mncord of sentiment means perfect approbation.

Just as a man who admires the same poem or picture
hat I do, or laughs at the same joke, allows the justice of
uy admiration or mirth, so he, who enters into my resent
ment, and by bringing my injuries home to himself shares
ny feelings, cannot but thereby approve of them as just
md proper. According as his sympathetic indignation fails
o correspond to mine, according as his compassion falls
hort of my grief, according, in short, to the degree of dis-
>roportion he may perceive between my sentiments and his,
loes he feel stronger or weaker disapproval of my feelings.

Moral approbation admits of the same explanation as intellec-
ual approbation. For just as to 'approve or disapprove of the
•pinions of others is nothing more than to observe their agree-
aent or disagreement with our own, so to approve or disap-

D

34 ADAM SMITH.

prove of their feeling's and passions is simply to mark a similar
agreement or disagreement existing1 between our own and theirs.

Consequently the sentiments of each individual are the
standard and measure of the correctness of another's, and it is
hardly possible for us to judge of another's feelings by any
other canon than the correspondent affection in ourselves.
The only measure by which one man can judge of the faculty
of another is by his own faculty of the like kind. As we
judge of another's eyesight, hearing, or reason, by comparison
with our own eyesight, hearing, or reason, so we can only
judge of another's love or resentment by our own love or our
own resentment. If, upon bringing the case of another home
to ourselves, we find that the sentiments which it produces
in him coincide and tally with our own, we necessarily ap- •»
prove of his as proportioned and suitable to their objects, ;
while if otherwise, we necessarily disapprove of them as \
extravagant and out of proportion.

Since, then, one point of view in every moral judgment is \
the " suitableness" which any affection of the heart bears to I
the cause or object which excites it, the propriety or impro- 1
priety of the action, which results from such affection, depends I
entirely on the concord or dissonance of the affection with j
that felt sympathetically by a spectator. Hence that part of I
moral approbation which consists in the sense of the Pro
priety of a sentiment to its cause (say, of anger to its provo*|
cation), arises simply from the perception of a coincidence!
between the sentiment of the person primarily affected by it
and that of the spectator who, by force of imagination, putsj
himself in the other's place.

Let us take, for instance, as a concrete case, the exhibition!
of fortitude under great distress. What is the source of ourj
approbation of it ? It is the perfect coincidence of another's'
firmness with our own insensibility to his misfortunes. By

PROPRIETY OF MORAL SENTIMFNTS. 35

his making no demand on us for that higher degree of sensi
bility which we find to our regret that we do not possess, he
effects a, most perfect correspondence between his sentiments
arid ours, which causes us to recognize the perfect propriety
of his conduct. The additional element which raises our
led ing of mere approbation into one of admiration, is the
wonder and surprise we feel at witnessing a degree of self-
command, far above that usually met with among mankind.

There are, however, several facts which modify our sense of
the propriety or impropriety of another person's sentiments
by their concord or disagreement with our own, and which it
is important to notice.

First of all, it is only when the objects which excite any
sentiment bear some direct relation to the person primarily
affected by the sentiment or to ourselves as sympathetically
affected by it, that any moral judgment of his sentiment arises
on our part. For instance, "the beauty of a plain, the great
ness of a mountain, the ornaments of a building, the expres
sion of a picture, the composition of a discourse, the conduct
of a third person ... all the general subjects of science and
taste, are what we and our companions regard as havim* no
peculiar relation to either of us/' There is no occasion for
sympathy, or for an imaginary change of situations, in order
to produce, with regard to such things, the most perfect har
mony of sentiments and affect-'ons. Where there is such
harmony, we ascribe to a man good taste or judgment, but
recognize no degree of moral propriety.

But it is otherwise with anything which more closely affects
us. A misfortune or injury to another is not regarded by him
and by us from the same point of view as a poeii or picture
fire, for the former cannot but more closely affect him.
.Hence a correspondence of feeling is much more difficult and
much more important with regard to matters which nearly

36 ADAM SMITH.

concern him, than with regard to matters which concern neither
him nor us, and are really indifferent to our actual interests.
We can easily bear with difference of opinion in matters of
speculation or taste; but we cease to be bearable to cne
another, if he has no fellow-feeling for my misfortunes or
my griefs; or if he feels either no indignation at my injuries
or none that bears any proportion to my resentment of them.

This correspondence of feeling, then, being at the same time
so difficult of attainment and yet so pleasurable when at
tained, two operations come into play : the effort on our part,
as spectators, to enter into the sentiments and passions of the
person principally concerned, and the effort on his part also to
bring his sentiments into unison with ours. Whilst we strive
to assume, in imagination, his situation, he strives to assume
ours, and to bring down his emotions to that degree with
which we as spectators can sympathize. Conscious as he is that
our sympathy must naturally fall short of the violence of his
own, and longing as he does for that relief which he can only
derive from a complete sympathy of feeling, he seeks to obtain
a more entire concord by lowering his passion to that
pitch which he is sensible that we can assume. Does he feel
resentment or jealousy, he will strive to tone it down to the
point at which we can enter into it. And by thus being-
led to imagine how he himself would be affected, were he only
a spectator of his own situation, he is brought to abate the
violence of his original passion. So that in a sort of meeting-
point of sympathy lies the point of perfect propriety, as has
bjen shown in the case of the propriety of fortitude.

On this twofold tendency of our moral nature two different
s^ts of virtues are based. On our effort to sympathize with
the passions and feelings of others are founded the gentler
virtues of condescension, toleration, and humanity ; whilst the
ereriier virtues of self-denial and self-command are founded on

PROPRIETY AND VIRTUE. 37

our effort to attune our passions to that pitch of which others
can approve. In a union of these two kinds of virtues — in feel
ing much for others and little for ourselves, in restraining our
selfish and indulging our benevolent affections — consists the
highest perfection of which human nature is capable.

But how do we pass from a perception of the propriety of
these good qualities to a perception of their virtue, for pro
priety and virtue mean different things ? The answer is, that
propriety of sentiment which, when displayed in the usual
degree, meets with our approbation merely, calls for our admi
ration and becomes virtuous when it surprises us by an unusual
manifestation of it. Admiration is " approbation, heightened
by wonder and surprise." " Virtue is excellence, something
uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what
is vulgar and ordinary." There is no virtue in the ordinary
display of the moral qualities, just as in the ordinary degree of
the intellectual qualities there are no abilities. For sensibility
to be accounted humanity it must exceed what is possessed by
the "rude vulgar of mankind ;" and, in like manner, for self-
command to amount to the virtue of fortitude, it must be
much more than the weakest of mortals is capable of
exerting.

There are, in fact, two different standards by which we often
measure the degree of praise or blame due to any action, one
consisting in the idea of complete propriety or perfection, in
comparison with which all human action must ever aDDear
blameable, and the other consisting in that approach to such
perfection of which the majority of men are capable. Just
in the same way as a work of art may appear very beautiful
when judged by the standard of ordinary perfection, ami
appear full of faults when judged by the standard of absolute
perfection, so a moral action or sentiment may frequently
deserve applause that falls short of an ideal virtue.

38 ADAM SMITH.

It having thus been shown that the propriety of any senti
ment lies in a meeting-point between two different sympathies,
or in a sort of compromise between two different aspects of the
same passion, it is evident that such propriety must lie in a
certain mediocrity or mean state bet ween two extremes, or in just
that amount of pass-ion into which an impartial spectator can
enter. That grief or resentment, for example, is proper which
errs neither on the side of excess or of defect, which is neither
too much nor too little. The impartial spectator, being unable
either to enter into an excess of resentment or to sympathize.
with its deficiency, blames the one extreme by calling it " fury/'
and the other by calling it " want of spirit."

On this point it is noticeable that Adam Smith's theory of
Propriety agrees, as he says himself, "pretty exactly " with
Aristotle's definition of Virtue, as consisting in a mean or
Meo-or^s between two extremes of excess or defect. For in-*
stance, courage, according to Aristotle, lies in the mean state
between the opposite vices of cowardice and rashness. Fruga
lity is a similar avoidance of both avarice and prodigality, and
magnanimity consists in avoiding the extremes of either arro
gance or pusillanimity. And as also coincident in every respccfci
with his own theory of Propriety, Adam Smith claims Plato's
account of virtue given in the Republic, where it is shown to*
consist in that state of mind in which every faculty confines
itself to its proper sphere without encroaching on that of any
other, and performs its proper office with exactly that degree
of strength which by nature belongs to it.

But it is obvious that the mean state or point of propriety
must be different in different passions, lying nearer to the
excess in some and nearer to the defect in others. And it will
be found that the decency or indecency of giving expression to
our passions varies exactly in proportion to the general dispo
sition of mankind to sympathize with them.

FIVE CLASSES OF PASSIONS. 39

To illustrate the application of this principle, Adam Smith
divides all human passions into five different classes. These
are the Passions which take their origin from the body, those
which take their origin from a particular turn of the imagina
tion, the unsocial Passions, the social Passions, and the selfish
Passions. And whatever doubts may be felt as to the truth of
Adam Smith's general theory of the origin of moral appro
bation, there is no doubt of the interest which attaches to his
account of the influence of our sympathies in conditioning the
nature of our moral sentiments.

1. To begin with the passions which have their origin from
the body. The bodily passions, such as hunger and thirst,
being purely personal, fail to excite any general sympathy,
and in proportion to the impossibility of such sympathy is the
impropriety or indecency of any strong expression of them.
The real origin of our dislike to such passions when we witness
them in others, the real reason why any strong expressions of
them are so disagreeable, is not the fact that such passions
are those which we share in common with the brutes (for we
also share with them natural affection and gratitude), but
simply the fact that we cannot enter into them, that they are
insufficient to command our sympathies.

With the passions which arise from the imngination \t is
otherwise than with passions which originate from the body.
For instance, a disappointment in love or ambition calls forth
more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil, for our imagina
tion lends itself more readily to sympathize with the misfor
tunes affecting the imaginations of others, than is possible
in the case of the sufferings of their bodies. Our imagi
nation moulds itself more easily upon the imngination of
another than our bodily frame can be affected by what affects his.
Thus we can readily sympathize with a man who has lost his
fortune, for he only suffers in his imagination, not in his body ;

40 ADAM SMITH.

and we can fancy, just as he does, the loss of dignity, the
neglect of his friends, the contempt from his enemies, the
dependence, want, and misery which he himself foresees in
store for him. The loss of a leg is a more real calamity thau
the loss of a -mistress; but whilst it would be ridiculous to
found a tragedy on the former loss, the latter misfortune has
given rise to many a fine play. Mere pain never calls forth
any lively sympathy, and for that reason there were no greater
breaches of decorum committed in the plays of the Greeks,
than in the attempt to excite compassion by the representation
of physical agonies, as in the cries of Philoctetes,1 or the tor
tures of Hippolytus and Hercules. 'It is on this little sym-
pathy which we feel with bodily pain that is founded the
propriety of constancy and patience in its endurance.

2. Where, however, a passion takes its origin from a parti
cular turn of tJ/e imagination, the imagination of others, not
having acquired that particular turn, cannot sympathize with
the passion, and so finds it in some measure ridiculous. This
is particularly the case with the passion of love. We may
sympathize with our friend's resentment, if he has been in
jured, or enter into his gratitude, if he has received a benefit;
but if he is in love, however reasonable we may think it, " the
passion appears to everybody, but the man who feels it, entirely
dispropcrtioned to the value of the object; and love, though
it is pardoned in a certain age, because we know it is natural,
is always laughed at because we cannot enter into it. All
serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third
person ; and though a lover may be good company to his mis-
tress, he is so to nobody else. He himself is sensible of this ; and,
as long as he continues in his sober senses, endeavours to treat
his own passion with raillery and ridicule. It is the only style
1 Lessing, in his Laocoan, iv. 3, criticizes Adam Smith's remarks on
this subject.

THE UNSOCIAL PASSIONS. 41

in which we care to hear of it, because it is the only style in
which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it."

Our philosopher however admits, that though we cannot
properly enter into the attachment of the lover, we readily
sympathize with his expectations of happiness. Though his
passion cannot interest us, his situation of mingled hope and
fear interests us, just as in the description of a sea voyage it
is not the hunger of the crew which interests us but the dis-
trers which it occasions them. When love is interesting on
the stage, it is so simply from the distress it occasions. A
scene of two lovers, in perfect security, expressing their
mutual fondness for one another, would excite laughter and
not sympathy. Such ti scene is never endured but from con
cern for the dangers and difficulties foreseen in the sequel, or
from interest in the secondary passions — fear, shame, and
despair — which are associated with love as a situation, and
with which alone we can really sympathize.

3. In the third place come the unsocial passions, such as
hatred and resentment, with all their modifications. They
also are founded on the imagination, but have to be consider
ably modified before they touch that point of propriety with
which an impartial spectator can sympathize. For these
passions give rise to a double sympathy, or rather divide our
sympathy between the person who feels them and the person
who is the object of them. Though we may sympathize with
him who has received a provocation, wre also sympathize with
his adversary, if he becomes the object of undue resentment.
We enter into the situation of both, and the fear we fed
with the one moderates the resentment we feel with the other.
Hence for resentment to attain the mean of propriety, it must
be more reduced from its natural degree than almost any
other passion ; and the greater restraint a man puts on his
anger, the more will mankind, who have a very strong sense

ADAM SMITH.

of the injuries done to another, enter into and Lear with his
resentment.

These unsocial passions are, however, necessary parts of
human nature, and as on the one hand we cannot sympathize
with excessive indignation, so on the other hand we blame
and despise a man " who tamely sits still and submits to
insults," from our inability to comprehend his insensibility
and want of spirit. These passions are therefore useful to theJ
individual, as serving1 to protect him from insult and injury ;
but there is still something disagreeable in them which makes
their appearance in others the natural object of our aversion.
It is so even when they are most justly provoked. Hence
they are the only passions, the mere expression of which does
not command our sympathies till we know the cause. The
voice of misery, or the sight of gladness, at once communi
cates to us corresponding sentiments ; but the tones of hatred
or resentment inspire us naturally with fear and aversion.
For that reason the music, which imitates such passions, is not
the most agreeable, its periods being, unlike those which
express joy or grief or love, "irregular, sometimes very short,
sometimes very long, and distinguished by no regular
pauses."

For all these reasons it is very difficult to adjust resentment
to the point of propriety demanded by the sympathy of
others. The provocation must be such that we should incur
contempt for not resenting it ; and smaller offences are better
neglected. We should resent more from a sense that mankind
expect it of us than from the impulse of the passion itself.
There is no passion concerning whose indulgence we should
more carefully consider the sentiments of the cool and impar
tial spectator. Magnanimity, or a regard to maintain our
own rank and dignity, can alone ennoble its expression ; and
we should show,, from our whole manner, that passion has not

THE SOCIAL AND SELFISH PASSIONS. 41

extinguished our humanity, and that, if we yield to revenge,
j we do so with reluctance and from necessity.

4. With regard to the social passions, such as generosity,
humanity, kindness, compassion, or friendship, the facts are
quite different. Not only is the mere expression of these
sentiments agreeable, but they are made doubly agreeable by
a division of the spectator's sympathies between the person
who feels them and the person who is the object of them.
We enter with pleasure into the satisfaction of both, into the
agreeable emotions of the man who is generous or compas
sionate, and into the agreeable emotions of the man who
receives the benefit of his generosity or compassion.

Hence in these passions the point of propriety lies nearer
to the excess than to the defect, just as in the opposite
passions it lay nearer to the defect. " There is something1
agreeable even in the weakness of friendship and humanity,"
and if we blame the too tender mother, the too indulgent
father, or the too generous friend, it is always with sympathy
and kindness, and with no feeling of hatred or aversion.

5. Between the social and the unsocial passions the selfish
passions occupy a middle place. These are joy and grief for
our own personal good or bad fortune. Since no opposite
sympathy can ever interest the spectator against them, their
excessive expression is never so disagreeable as excessive
resentment ; and for the reason that no double sympathy can
ever interest us for them, they are never so agreeable as
proper humanity and benevolence.

We are, Adam Smith thinks, naturally disposed to sympa
thize more with our neighbours' small joys than with their
great ones, and more with their great sorrows than with their
small ones. A man raised suddenly to a much higher position
may be sure that the congratulations of his best friends are
not perfectly sincere. If he has any judgment, he is sensible

44 ADAM S MIT PL

of this, and,, instead of appearing- elated, endeavours to smother
his joy, and keep down his elevation of mind. He affects the
same plainness of dress, and the same modesty of behaviour,-:
r which became him before, and redoubles his attentions to his'
former friends. So his conduct may meet with our approval,
for "we expect, it seems, that he should have more sympathy
with our envy and aversion to his happiness than we have
with his happiness/"

With the smaller joys of life it is different. The ability of
the spectators to sympathize with these places the point of
propriety in their indulgence much higher. We readily
sympathize with habitual cheerfulness, which spreads itself,
as it were, by infection. Hence it is hardly possible to
express too much satisfaction in the little occurrences of
common life, in the company of yesterday evening1, in thej
entertainment generally, in what was said or done, " and in
all those frivolous nothings which fill up the void of human
life."

It is otherwise with grief, for while small vexations excite
no sympathy, deep affliction calls for the greatest. A man
will meet with little sympathy, who is hurt if his cook or
butler have failed in the least article of their duty ; who is^
vexed if his brother hummed a tune all the time he was telling
a story ; who is put out of humour by the badness of the
weather when in the country, by the badness of the roads when
upon a journey, or by want of company and dulness when in
town. Grief is painful to ourselves or to others, and we should
endeavour either not to conceive it at all about trifles, or to
shake it off if we do. There is a certain " malice in mankind
which not only prevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses,
but renders them in some measure diverting."

But though we all take delight in raillery, and in the small
vexations which occur to our companions, our sympathy with

5 YMPA TH Y FOR DIS TRESS. 45

fthem in case of deep distress is very strong- and very sincere,
r If you labour under any signal calamity; if by some extra-
|ordinary misfortune you are fallen into poverty, into diseases,
into disgrace and disappointment . . . you may generally
depend upon the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and,
as far as interest and honour will permit, upon their kindest
assistance too. Bat if your misfortune is not of this dreadful
kind, if you have only been a little baulked in your ambition,
if you have only been jilted by your mistress, or are only
henpecked by your wife, lay your account with the raillery of
all your acquaintance. "

46 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FEELING OF MERIT AND DEMERIT.

THE sense of the propriety or impropriety of a moral action or
sentiment is, according to Adam Smith, only one side of the
fact of moral approbation, a sense of their merit or demerit
constituting1 the other side. An action or sentiment is proper
or improper in relation to its cause, or the motive which
excites it, whilst it is meritorious or the contrary in relation
to its effect, or in accordance with its beneficial or hurtful
tendency.

It is important to notice this distinction, for it is a protest,
as Adam Smith himself declares, against the theories of Dr.
Hutcheson and Hume, who, he complains, had considered too
much the tendency of affections, their good or bad results,
whilst neglecting the relation in which they stood to their
causes. This was to overlook the facts of common life, since
a person's conduct and sentiments are generally regarded
under both these aspects, a man receiving blame for excess of
love, or grief, or resentment, not only by reason of the ruinous
effects they tend to produce, but also on account of the little
occasion that was given for them. It is the want of propor
tion between a passion and its cause, as well as the sense of
its disastrous effects, which make up the whole character of
moral disapprobation. Whilst praise or blame are attached to
the first aspect of an action or sentiment, a stronger feeling of
sympathy or antipathy attaches itself to either in connexion

GRATITUDE AND RESENTMENT. 47

with their effects, a feeling that they deserve reward or punish
ment, a feeling in other words of their merit or demerit.

As gratitude is the feeling which most directly prompts us
to reward another man, and resentment that which most
directly prompts us to punish him, an action will call for
reward or punishment according as it is the object of either of
these feelings. The measure, therefore, of the merit or demerit
of any action will be the feeling of gratitude or resentment it
excites.

But here again the principle of sympathy must come into
play, to decide on the rightfulness of the gratitude or resent
ment. An action can only seem meritorious or the contrary,
as deserving of reward or punishment, if it is the proper and
right object of gratitude or resentment ; and only that grati
tude or resentment can be proper which commands the
sympathy of the impartial spectator. That man's action
deserves reward as meritorious who to somebody is the object
of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to beat
time to, whilst, his action seems to deserve punishment as bad
who to somebody is the object of a resentment which every
reasonable man can sympathize with and adopt. According
as everybody who hears of any action would wish to see it
rewarded or punished may it fairly be accounted meritorious
or the reverse.

In regarding, then, the beneficial or hurtful tendency of
actions, our sense of their merit or demerit, due to sympathy
with the gratitude or the resentment they respectively excite,
appears to arise in the following way.

Sympathizing as we do with the joy of others in prosperity,
we also join them in the satisfaction with which they regard
the cause of their good fortune. If the cause has been a man,
this is more especially the case. "VVe regard him in the same
engaging light in which we imagine he must appear to the

48 ADAM SMITH.

object of his bounty, whilst our sympathy with the joy of the
latter inspires us also with a rejection of the same gratitude
he feels.

In the same manner we sympathize not only with the
distress or sorrow of another, but with the aversion he feels!:
towards the cause of it. When we see one man oppressed ori
injured by another, our sympathy with the sufferer only!
animates our fellow-feeling- with his resentment against his
oppressor. So we even enter into the imaginary resentment
of the slain, and by an illusive sympathy with that resent
ment which we know he would feel, were he alive, exact <
vengeance from the criminal who murdered him.

But although our sympathy with the beneficial results of
an act may thus lead us to join in the gratitude it occasions,,
and so to regard it as meritorious or deserving of reward, this
is only, as has been said, one side or aspect o£ complete moral
approbation. To constitute the latter, a sense of the pro
priety of an action must be joined to a sense of its merit; and
an action is only then really good when we can sympathize
with the motives of the agent as well as with the gratitude
his conduct produces. Wherever we cannot enter into the'
affections of the agent, wherever we cannot recognize any
propriety in the motives which influenced him, w« i'ail to
sympathize with the gratitude of the person he has befriended.
"Where, for instance, the greatest benefits have been conferred:
from the most trivial motives, as where a man gives an estate
to another simplv because his name or his surname happen toil
be the same as his own, little gratitude seems due ; and con
sequently the action, though beneficial in its tendency, since
it fails to command our complete sympathy, fails to command
our complete approbation.

So on the other hand, however hurtful in their tendency a.
man's actions or intentions may be, if we sympathize with his

MORAL DISAPPROBATION,

49

motives, that is, if we look upon him as in the right, we can
feel no sympathy with the resentment of the person in
juriously affected by him. If he suffers no more than our own
sympathetic indignation would have prompted us to inflict
upon him, we have no fellow-feeling with his suffering, and
consequently no sense of the demerit of the action he regards
with resentment. It would be impossible, for instance, to
sympathize with the resentment expressed by a murderer
against his judge. So that to constitute the sentiment of
complete moral disapprobation, there must be impropriety of
motive on the part of the agent as well as a hurtful result to
some one else ; or, in other words, for an action to be pro
nounced by our sympathetic imagination completely bad, it
must be both improper in its motive and injurious in its result.
It is not enough for it to be simply injurious.

It results therefore from this analysis, that a complete
sense of the merit of an action, or the feeling of perfect
moral approbation, is really "a compounded sentiment/' made
up of two distinct sympathetic emotions, namely, of a direct
sympathy with the sentiments of the agent, and an indirect
sympathy with the gratitude of those who receive the benefit
of his actions. Take our sense of the good desert of a par
ticular character in history — Scipio, Timoleon, or Aristides.
In imagination we become those very persons, and, by a direct
sympathy with them, enter into their designs, and feel the
same generous sentiments that they felt. But we also by an
indirect sympathy feel the benefit of their great actions, and
enter into the gratitude of those who experienced them. The
sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love, which we thus
feel when we bring home to our own breast the situation of
those originally concerned, account for our whole sense of the
merit of such actions, and for our desire of their meeting with
a fitting recompence.

50 ADAM SMITH.

In the same way a complete sense of the demerit of an action

is a compounded sentiment made up of two distinct emotions;

of a direct antipathy to the sentiments of the agent, and an

indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer. We

feel a direct antipathy to the detestable sentiments which

actuated a Borgia or a Nero, while we sympathize indirectly

with the resentment of those they afflicted. Our sense of the

atrocity of their conduct, and our delight in hearing of its

punishment — in short, our whole feeling of ill desert, and of

the justice of inflicting evil on the person who is guilty of it, '

and of making him grieve in his turn — arises from the sym- ;

pathetic indignation which boils up in our breast whenever

we thoroughly bring home to ourselves the case of the sufferer.

Nor is it any degradation of our sense of the demerit of

actions to ascribe it to our sympathy with the resentment of

another. Resentment is in every respect the counterpart of

gratitude, and if our sense of merit arises from our sympathy

with the one, our sense of demerit may well arise from our

sympathy with the other. Resentment, too, as a principle of

human nature, is only evil when it appears in excess as

revenge ; and as it is excessive a hundred times for once that

it is moderate, we are apt to consider it altogether detestable,

because in its ordinary manifestation it is so. But it is not

disapproved of when properly humbled, and entirely brought

down to the level of the sympathetic indignation of the

spectator. When we as bystanders entertain an animosity

corresponding to that of the sufferer, when his resentment in

no respect exceeds our own, when no word nor gesture escapes

him that denotes an emotion more violent than we can shaiv,

and when he never aims at inflicting a punishment severer

than that we should rejoice to see inflicted or would inflict

ourselves, it is impossible that we should not entirely approve

of his sentiments.

THE MORALITY OF ACTIONS. 51

It appears then in Adam Smith's theory, that the element
of morality in actions only really arises from reference to their
tendency. The sentiment or affection of the heart from which
all action results may in relation to its cause or motive be
regarded as unsuitable or disproportionate, according- as it
exceeds or falls short of that mean point with which the
general observer can sympathize. It may be thus approved
or disapproved as proper or improper, but it is not applauded
or condemned as moral or immoral. An anger which is out
of proportion to the cause of its provocation, a state of joy or
sorrow out of keeping with their origin, a generosity or bene
volence that seem excessive, are blamed not as immoral, but
as out of harmony with the feelings of a spectator. So with
reference to the bodily passions, it is the office of temperance
to confine them within those limits " which grace, which pro
priety, which delicacy, and modesty require," (not within
those which morality require). It is only when regard is paid
to the effects which flow from different actions, that a stronger
feeling appears, a feeling not merely of propriety or im
propriety, but of their merit or demerit, or in other words, of
their moral worth or the contrary.

It is only actions of a beneficent tendency, which proceed
from proper motives, that are thus meritorious, for such
actions alone seem to deserve a reward, from the gratitude
they command from a spectator through sympathy. And it
is only actions of a hurtful tendency, which proceed from im
proper motives, that seem really wicked, for they alone seem
to deserve a punishment, from the resentment they inspire a
spectator with by sympathy.

Adam Smith illustrates his theory that the wrongfulness or
demerit of actions depends on our sense of their deserving to
be punished by the two virtues of beneficence and justice.
The mere want of beneficence, the neglect to do the good

E 2

52 ADAM SMITH.

expected of one, may give rise to feelings of dislike and dis
approbation, but as it does no real positive evil, it provokes
no feeling of sympathetic resentment. Take a case of the
blackest ingratitude, where a man fails to recompense his
benefactor, when the latter stands in great need of his assist
ance. Every impartial spectator rejects all fellow-feeling
with the selfishness of his motives, and he is the proper object
of the highest disapprobation. Still since he does no positive
hurt, but only neglects to do the good he might, he is the
object of hatred, not of resentment, two passions which differ
in this respect, that whilst the former is called forth by im
propriety of sentiment and behaviour, the latter is only
provoked by actions which tend to do real and positive hurt to
some particular persons. Ingratitude therefore cannot be
punished. It is improper, and meets with the disapprobation
of the spectator, but it is not wrong or immoral, in the sense
in which it would be, if it went a step further, and raised a
feeling of resentment by actual liurtfulness of tendency
against somebody.

The proper degree of beneficence, moreover, as that which
ordinary experience leads us to expect, and also makes the
measure of our praise or blame, is in itself neither praiseworthy
nor blameable. As it is only the defect of ordinary bene
ficence which incurs our blame, so it is only the excess of it
which deserves our praise. A father, or son, or brother, who
behaves to the correspondent relation neither better nor worse
than the average of mankind do, seems to deserve neither
praise nor blame. His conduct, though it may attain that
point at which we recognize its propriety and so command
our approbation, commands nothing more. It is only when
we are surprised by unexpected, though proper kindness, or
by unexpected and improper unkindness, that it attains the
point of being praiseworthy or the reverse.

THE VIRTUE OF JUSTICE. 53

Beneficence, when it thus attains a high degree, when it
becomes productive of the greatest good, at once becomes the
object of the liveliest gratitude, appears to be deserving of
the highest reward, and consequently appears as meritorious
and praiseworthy.

The virtue of justice differs from that of beneficence in
that the violation of it, by doing real and positive hurt to
some particular persons, from motives that are disapproved
of, is the natural object of resentment, and calls in conse
quence for punishment. Resentment was given to us " by
nature for defence, and for defence only. It is the safeguard
of justice and the security of innocence. It prompts us to
beat off the mischief which is attempted to be done to us, and
to retaliate that which is already done, that the offender may be
made to repent of his injustice, and that others, through fear of
the like punishment, may be terrified from being guilty of the
like offence." As mankind generally approve of the violence
employed to avenge the hurt which is done by injustice, so
they much more approve of that which is employed to pre
vent and beat off the injury, and to restrain the offender from
hurting his neighbour. Even the person^ guilty of intending
injustice feels that force may be used against him, both by
the person he is about to injure, or by others, either to
obstruct the execution of his crime, or to punish him when
he has executed it.

This fact accounts for the great distinction between justice
and all the other social virtues, that we feel a higher obliga
tion to act according to justice than according to friendship,
charity, or generosity; and that, while the practice of the
latter virtues seems to be left in some measure to our own
choice, we feel ourselves to be " in a peculiar manner tied,
bound, and obliged to the observation of justice." For we
feel that force may, with the utmost propriety, and with the

54 ADAM SMITH.

approbation of mankind, be made use of to compel us to
observe the rules of the one, but not to follow the precepts of
•the others.

It is this feeling-, then, of the legitimate use of force and
punishment which makes us view with so much stronger a
sense of disapprobation actions which are unjust — that is,
injurious to others — than actions which are merely breaches
of that propriety which we like to see observed in the various
relationships that connect men together. A father who fails
in the ordinary degree of parental affection to a son, or a son
who is wanting in filial respect for his father, or a man who
shuts up his heart against compassion, incur, indeed, blame;
but not that superior degree of blame which relates to actions
of a positively hurtful tendency.

But though this superior form of discipprobation attaches
itself to acts of injustice, just as a superior form of approba
tion attaches itself to actions of great beneficence, there is no
more merit in the observance of justice than there is demerit
in the neglect of beneficence. " There is, no doubt, a pro
priety in the practice of justice, and it merits upon that
account all the approbation which is due to propriety. But
as it does no real positive good, it is entitled to very little
gratitude. Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a nega
tive virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour.
The man who barely abstains from violating either the person
or the estate or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely
very little positive merit. . . . "VVe may often fulfil all the
rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing." As before
explained, the sense of the merit of an action is different from
the sense of its propriety, and unless an action has both
these characteristics, it does not really satisfy the conditions
of morality.

In proportion, therefore, to the resentment naturally felt by

DEGREES OF INJURY. 55

a sufferer from injustice is the sympathetic indignation of the
spectator, and the sense of guilt in the agent. But the re
sentment itself, being proportioned to the evil done by an act,
the demerit of an act may be measured by the evil it causes.
Death being the greatest evil one man can do to another,
and consequently incurring the highest indignation from those
connected with the slain man, takes rank as the worst of all
crimes. Injuries to a man's property and possessions being
less hurtful to him than an injury to his life or person, theft
and robbery rank next to murder in atrocity. And as it is a
smaller evil to be disappointed of what \ve have only in ex
pectation than to be deprived of what we have in possession,
breach of contract is a less heinous crime than one which
attacks a man's actual property.

56 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER V.

INFLUENCE OF PllOSPERITY OR ADVERSITY, CHANCE, AND
CUSTOM UPON MORAL SENTIMENTS.

IN the estimation of Dugald Stewart, the most valuable con
tribution of Adam Smith to the improvement of moral science
is his attempt to account for the irregularity of our moral
sentiments, and for their liability to be modified by other con
siderations, very different from the propriety or impropriety
of the affections of the agent, or from their beneficial or
hurtful tendency. Adam Smith was, he thinks, the first
philosopher to appreciate thoroughly the importance of the
difficulty, which is equally great in every theory of the origin
of our moral sentiments; namely, that our actual moral senti
ments of approbation, or the contrary, are greatly modified
by matters extraneous to the intention of the agent ; as, for
example, by the influence on the act itself of quite fortuitous
or accidental circumstances.

There are, first of all, the effects of prosperity and adversity
on the moral judgments of men with regard to the propriety
of action, whereby it is easier to obtain approbation in the
one condition than it is in the other.

In equal degrees of merit there is scarcely any one who
does not more respect the rich and great than the poor and
humble; and, on the other hand, an equal amount of vice
and folly is regarded with less aversion and contempt in the'
former than it is in the latter. How is this to be explained?

NATURAL SYMPATHY WITH JOY. 57

and what is the origin of this perversion of moral senti
ment?

The real explanation of it is to be sought in the fact of our
sympathetic emotions, which, as they enter more vividly into
the joys than into the sorrows of others, feel more pleasure in
the condition of the wealthy than in that of the poor. It is
agreeable to sympathize with joy, and painful to enter into
grief; so that, where there is no envy in the case, our pro
pensity to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our
propensity to sympathize with sorrow; and our fellow-feeling
for the agreeable emotion approaches nearer to its original
intensity than our fellow-feeling for the painful emotion of
another person. It is for this reason that we are more
ashamed to weep than to laugh before company, though \ve
may often have as real occasion to do the one as the other :
we always feel that the spectators are more likely to go along
with us in the agreeable than in the painful emotion. Hence
our disposition to admire the rich and powerful, and to despise
or neglect the poor and lowly, arises from our association of
joy and pleasure with the condition of the former, and of pain
and distress with that of the latter.

The condition of the former, in the delusive eo]ours of our
imagination, seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect
and happy state. Hence we feel a peculiar satisfaction with
the satisfaction we attribute to them. We favour all their
inclinations, and forward all their wishes. We are eager
to assist them in completing a system of happiness that
approaches so near to perfection.

It is from the command which wealth thus has over the
sympathetic and agreeable sentiments of mankind that leads
to so eager a pursuit and parade of it, and to so strong an
aversion to, and concealment of, poverty. To what purpose
is all the toil of the world for wealth, power, and pre-eini-

58 ADAM SMITH.

nence ? The only advantage really looked to from it is " to
be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with
sympathy, complacency, and approbation;" and the rich man;
glories more in his riches, because they naturally draw upon
him the attention of the world, than for any of the other
advantages connected with them. And for the same reason
the poor man is ashamed of his poverty, for though he may
be as well supplied as the rich man with the necessities of
life, he is mortified at being placed out of the sight of man
kind; at being treated with neglect, and at being an object of
the antipathy rather than of the sympathy of his fellows.

.Rank and distinction are therefore coveted, as setting us in
a situation most in view of general, sympathy and attention.
"And thus, place — that great object which divides the wives of
aldermen — is the end of half the labours of human life, and is the
cause of all the tumult and bustle, all the rapine and injustice,
which avarice and ambition have introduced into the world."

And thus, from our natural disposition to admire the rich
and powerful, a different standard of judgment arises about
the propriety of their conduct than that employed about the
behaviour of other men. A single transgression of the rules
of temperance and propriety by a common man is generally
more resented than their constant and avowed neglect by a
man of fashion. In the superior stations of life, the road to
virtue and that to fortune are not always the same, as they
are generally in the middling and inferior stations. In the
latter stations of life success nearly always depends on the
favour and good opinion of equals and neighbours, and these
can seldom be obtained without a tolerably regular conduct.
In them, therefore, "we may generally expect a considerable
degree of virtue ; and fortunately for the good morals of
society, these are the situations of by far the greater part of
mankind."

CHANCE AND MORAL SENTIMENTS. 59

Not only however has prosperity or adversity great iu-
luence on our moral sentiments, leading- us to see a propriety
n a certain course of behaviour in the one condition which
e are apt to condemn as improper in the other, but the
>raise or blame we attach to any action depends to a great
xtent on the effect upon it of fortune or accident. Although
verybody allows that the merit or demerit of actions is still
iie same, whatever their unforeseen consequences may be, yet,
vhen we come to particular cases, it is clear that our senti
ments of merit or demerit are very much affected by the
ctual consequences which happen to proceed from any action,
nd that our sense of either of them is thereby enhanced or
diminished.

Every action consists of three parts, some one of which
aust constitute the basis of whatever praise or blame we
ttribute to it. These three parts are : the intention or af-
eetion of the heart, from which the action proceeds ; the
ixternal movement of the body which this affection causes ; and
he good or bad consequences which actually flow from it.
It is evident that the movement of the body, being often the
same in the most innocent as in the most blameable actions —
as in the case of shooting at a bird and shooting at a man —
cannot be the source of praise or blame. Neither can the
accidental consequences of an action, which depend on fortune,
not on the agent. The only consequences for which the latter
is responsible are those in some way connected with his in
tention; so that it is to the intention or affection of the heart,
to the propriety or impropriety, to the beneficence or hurt-
fulness of the design, that all praise or blame, all approbation
or disapprobation of any kind, must ultimately belong.

The problem then to be explained is the fact that our
sense of a man's merit or demerit is at all influenced by re
sults which lie beyond his control, and that we moderate our

60 ADAM SMITH.

praise or blame of his conduct according- as his good or ba
intention fails or not of its intended benefit or injury. Th<
explanation is as follows.

The passions of gratitude and resentment, on which depenc
our feeling of the merit or dement of actions, are ultimately
based on the bodily sensation of pleasure and pain. They an
excited primarily by whatever produces pleasure or pain, ever
by inanimate objects. " We are angry for a moment ever
with the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barb
at it, a choleric man is apt to curse it." We should fee!
guilty of a sort of inhumanity, if we neglected to avenge oui
friend by the destruction of the instrument that had acci-
dently caused his death. So it is with gratitude. A sailoi!
who mended his fire with the plank that had saved him from!
shipwreck would seem guilty of an unnatural act, for we
should expect him to preserve it with care and affection. So
we conceive something like a real love and affection for at
snuff-box, or pen-knife, or a stick, to which we have long been!
accustomed. "The house which we have long lived in, the
tree whose verdure and shade we have long enjoyed, are both!
looked upon with a sort of respect which seems due to suclii
benefactors. The decay of the one, or the ruin of the other, j
affects us with a kind of melancholy, though we should')
sustain no loss by it."

Nevertheless to be the proper object of gratitude and re
sentment, a thing must not only be the cause of pleasure and
pain, but itself capable of feeling them in return. Animals |
therefore are less improper objects of gratitude and resent
ment than inanimate things. " The dog that bites, the ox
that gores, are both of them punished. If they have been the ;
causes of the death of any person, neither the public, nor the
relations of the slain, can be satisfied, unless they are put to
death in their turn/' And on the other hand, animals that

GRATITUDE AND RESENTMENT. 61

have done a great service, are regarded with much gratitude;
and we are shocked with the ingratitude of the officer, in the
Turkish Spy, who stabbed the horse which had carried him
across an arm of the sea, lest it should ever distinguish some
other person by a similar feat.

But something more is still necessary to the complete
gratification of gratitude and resentment than the mere capa
bility for feeling pleasure or pain in return for pain or pleasure
caused. The latter must have been caused by design, and
there must be a consciousness of design in the return. ' The
object of resentment is chiefly not so much to make our enemy
feel pain in his turn, as to make him conscious that he feels it
ipon account of his past conduct, and to make him repent of
'hat conduct. And the chief object of gratitude is not only
o make our benefactor feel pleasure in his turr., but to make
)im conscious that he meets with that reward on account
)f his past conduct, and to make him pleased with that
Conduct.

Hence three different qualifications are necessary to render
janything the complete and proper object of gratitude or re-
sentment. It must first of all be the cause of pleasure or pain ;
it must secondly be capable of feeling pleasure or pain; and
it must thirdly produce pleasure or pain from a design, ap
proved of in the one case or disapproved of in the otheit

Since then the productiveness of pleasure or pain is the
primary exciting cause of gratitude or resentment, though the
intentions of any person should be ever so proper and bene
ficent, or ever so improper and malevolent, yet, if he has
'failed in producing the good or evil he intended, less gratitude
or resentment seems due to him, or in other words, less merit
or^ demerit seems to attach to him, because the pleasure or
pain, the exciting causes of gratitude or resentment, are in
either case wanting. And so, where in a man's intentions

62 ADAM SMITH.

there has been no laudable benevolence or blamcable malice,
but his actions have nevertheless done great good or great
evil, then some gratitude or resentment will attach to him,
because their exciting causes have been present in either case.
But since the consequences of a man's actions rest altogether
with fortune, our sentiments of merit or demerit depend to a
great extent upon her influence on events, upon her control
of the good or bad, the pleasurable or painful results, which
flow from our actions.

Thus the irregularity of our moral sentiments concerning
the merit or demerit of actions depends ultimately on the
accidental amount of pleasure or pain they produce, since
these are the primary exciting causes of our gratitude or
resentment. Having explained the cause of the phenomenon,
it remains to illustrate the effects.

Even the impartial spectator feels in some measure a
difference of merit in a man's conduct according as his good
intentions have produced or not the results intended by him,
although they may only have been defeated by accident. It
is indeed common to say, that we are equally obliged to the
man who has endeavoured to serve us, as to the man who
really has served us; but this saying, "like all other fine
speeches, must be understood with a grain of allowance/'
When all other circumstances are equal, there will always be,
even in the best and noblest mind, some difference of affection
in favour of the friend who carries out his good intention, as
against the friend who fails to do so.

And as the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good is
diminished by its miscarriage, so is the demerit of an un
successful attempt to do evil. Except in the case of treason,
the conception of which is in many countries punished as
severely as its commission, the mere design to commit a crime
is scarcely ever punished as heavily as its actual perpetration.

CRIMINAL ATTEMPTS. 63

In hardly any country is the man, who fires a pistol at his
enemy but misses him, punished with death, though there is
the same degree of depravity in the criminal design as in the
criminal action. "The resentment of mankind, however,
runs so high against this crime, their terror for the man who
shows himself capable of committing it is so great, that the
mere attempt to commit it ought in all countries to be capital.
The attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always
punished very lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all.
The thief, whose hand has been caught in his neighbour's
wcket before he had taken anything out of it, is punished
vith ignominy only. If he had got time to take away a
landkerchief, he would have been put to death/'1 The state
)f the law only reflects the natural feelings of individuals,
<vho feel less resentment when a man has failed in executing
he mischief he intended than when he has actually done them
n injury.

For the same reason, a man, who has been saved purely by
ccident from the commission of a crime he intended, though
ie is conscious that his real guilt, that of his heart, remains
lhe same, considers himself as less deserving of resentment
md punishment; and thus all the sense of his guilt is either
diminished or destroyed by the mere fact of fortune having
avoured him.

Again, as Fortune influences our moral sentiments by lessen-
ng the good or evil, the pleasure or pain, intended by our
actions, so does she increase our sense of their merit or demerit,
)eyond what their mere intention would justify, when thev
lappen to give rise to extraordinary pleasure or pain. Even

It is remarkable, as characteristic of the difference of feeling between
A.dam Smith's time and our own, that he should have mentioned this fnct
n the criminal law of his time, without the slightest comment of cU-
pprovul.

64. ADAM SMITH.

when an intention deserves neither praise nor blame, we are J
conscious of a shade of merit or demerit, according to its agree
able or disagreeable effects on us. We feel a transitory grati
tude to the bearer of good tidings, and a transitory resentment
to the innocent author of our sorrow. And though we think it
barbarous in Tigranes, king of Armenia, to have struck off the
head of a man for being the first to announce the approach of
an enemy, yet we think it reasonable that, by the custom of
all courts, the officer who first brings the news of a victory
should be entitled to considerable preferments.

When the negligence of one man causes damage to another,
even though his negligence should be no more than a -want of
extreme circumspection, the law often insists on compen
sation. In Rome there was a law which compelled any one
who, by reason of his horse taking fright and becoming
unmanageable, rode over another man's slave, to compensate
the loss. The man himself who thus unintentionally hurts
another shows some sense of his own demerit by at least
offering an apology. Yet why should he make an apology
more than any one else ? It is because he is aware that the
impartial spectator will feel some sympathy with the natural,
but unjust, resentment of the person he has accidentally
injured.

But the negligence displa}7ed in any action may be so great
as to call not merely for blame and censure, but for actual
punishment. For we may so far enter into the resentment felt
by one man on account of an unintended injury done to him
by another, as to approve of his inflicting a punishment on the
offender which would have seemed in excess of the demerit of
his offence had no unlucky consequences ensued. For instance,
though nothing would appear more shocking to our natural
sense of equity than to execute a man merely for having care
lessly thrown a stone into the street without hurting anybody,

CUSTOM AND FASHION. 65

yet, if the stone happened to kill anybody, so great would be
the effect of this accident on our moral sentiments that, though
the man's folly and inhumanity would not be greater in one
case than in the other, we should not consider the severest
punishment too hard for him. Gross negligence is, there
fore, in law almost the same as malicious design. Lata cu/jja
propc dolum est.

But our moral sentiments are considerably affected, not only
by the fact of the prosperity or adversity of the person whose
conduct we judge, and by the influence of fortune or accident
on the result of his intentions, but they are also greatly
modified by those two great principles of Custom and Fashion,
which have caused so wide a difference of opinion about what
is blameable or praiseworthy to prevail in different ages and
nations. For the virtues of the savage state are different
from those of the civilized statp. the virtues of one profession
are different from those of another, and those again which we
admire in youth are different from those we look for in old
age.

This fact is due to the influence of custom., or of fashion,
which is a species of custom, as the custom of persons of high
rank or character. For both these affect our moral sentiments,
albeit in a less degree, yet in exactly the same way that they
affect our ideas and feelings about beauty in all objects sub
mitted to our observation.

The influence of custom on our ideas of beauty is very great.
For whenever two objects have been seen in frequent conjunc
tion together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing
easily from the one to the other; and thus, from the mere
habit of expecting to see one when we see the other, though
there should be no real beauty in their union, we are conscious
of an impropriety when they chance to be separated. If even
a suit of clothes is without some insignificant bat usual orna-

C5 ADAM SMITH.

mentj such as a button, we are in some measure displeased by
its absence.

The fashion of things changes with a rapidity proportioned
to the durableness of their material. The modes of- furniture
change less rapidly than those of dress, because furniture is
generally more durable; but in five or six years it generally
undergoes a complete revolution, and every man sees its fashion
change in many different ways even in his own lifetime. But
the productions of such arts as music, poetry, or architecture,
being much more lasting, the fashion or custom, which prevails
no less over them than over whatever else is the object of taste,
may cojitinue unchanged for a much longer time. A Imildino-
may endure for ages, a beautiful -air may be handed down
through generations, a poem may last as long as the world,
and thus they may ail set the fashion of their particular style
or taste much longer than the design of a f articular mode of
dress or furniture. It is only because of the greater per
manence of their fashion, which prevents our having much
experience of any change in them, that makes it less easy for
us to recognize that the rules we think ought to be observed
in each of the fine arts are no more founded on reason and the
nature of things than they are in the matter of our furniture
and dress.

In architecture, for instance, no reason can be assigned
beyond habit and custom for the propriety of attaching to
each of the five orders their peculiar ornaments. The eye,
having been used to associate a certain ornamentation with a
certain order, would be offended at missing their conjunction;
but it is inconceivable that, prior to established custom, five
hundred other forms should not have suited those proportions
equally well.

It is the same in poetry. The ancients thought that a
certain species of verse was by nature appropriated to a par-

IDEAS OF BEAUTY. 6;

ticular species of writing, according to the sentiment or
character intended to be described. One kind of verse was
fit for grave and another for gay themes, nor could either be
interchanged without the greatest impropriety. Yet that
which is the verse of burlesque in English is the heroic verse
in French, simply because " custom has made the one nation
associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and seriousness with
that measure which the other has connected with whatever is
gay, flippant, and ludicrous."

Custom influences our judgment no less with regard to the
beauty of natural objects; and the proportions which we
admire in one kind of animal are quite different from those \ve
admire in another. Every class of things has a beauty of its
own, distinct from that of every other species.

Adam Smith stops short, however, of adopting the theory,
FO ably advocated in the last century by the Jesuit Buffier,
and followed by Sir Joshua Reynolds,, that custom is the sole
principle of beauty, and that the beauty of every object con
sists simply in that form and colour which is most usual in
ever} particular class of things. According to Burner, in each
species of creatures, that form was most beautiful which bore
the strongest character of the general fabric of its species, and
had the strongest resemblance to the greater number of the
individuals with which it was classed. Hence the most cus
tomary form was the most beautiful, and much practice was
needed to judge of the beauty of distinct species of things, or
to know wherein the middle or most usual form consisted.
Hence, too, different ideas of beauty existed in different
countries, where difference of climate produced difference of
type. Adam Smith so far agrees with this doctrine as to
acknowledge that there is scarcely any external form so beau
tiful as to please, if quite contrary to custom, nor any so
deformed as not to be agreeable, if uniformly supported by it;

CS ADAM SMITH.

but he also argues that, independently of custom, we are
pleased by the appearance of the utility of any form — by its
fitness for the purposes for which it was intended. Certain
colours, moreover, are more agreeable than others, even the
first time they are beheld by us ; and though he does not lay
the same stress on smoothness as Burke did, who held that
nothing was beautiful that was not smooth, he also admits
that a smooth surface is naturally more agreeable than a rough
one.

The influence of custom and fashion upon our ideas of beauty
generally being so great as has been explained, what is their
influence upon our ideas of beauty of conduct ? To this the
answer is, that their influence is perfectly similar in kind,
though not so great, or rather less potent, over morals than it
is over anything else. Although there is no form of external
objects to which custom will not reconcile us, nor fashion
render agreeable to us, the characters or the conduct of a Nero
or a Claudius are what no custom can ever make agreeable, or
other than the objects of our hatred or derision; for the senti
ments of moral approbation and disapprobation are founded on
the strongest passions of human nature, and, though they can
be warpt, they can never be perverted.

Just as custom diminishes our sense of the impropriety of
things which we are accustomed to see together, as in the case
of absurdity of dress, so familiarity from youth upwards with
violence, falsehood, and injustice takes away all sense of the
enormity of such conduct; and, on the other hand, when
custom and fashion coincide with the principles of right and
wrong, they enhance our moral ideas and increase our abhor
rence for everything evil. "Those who have been educated
in what is really good company — not in what is commonly
called such — who have been accustomed to see nothing in the
persons whom they esteemed and lived with but justice.

VARIABILITY OF MANNERS. 69

modesty, humanity and good order, are more shocked with
whatever seems to be inconsistent with the rules which those
virtues prescribe."

Custom affords an explanation of the different ideas of good
conduct prevalent in different degrees of civilization. For
every age and country look upon that degree of each quality
which is most usual in those among themselves who are most
esteemed as the golden mean of that particular talent or
virtue. Their sentiments concerning the degree of each
quality that deserves praise or blame vary according to the
degree which is most common in their own country and times ;
thus, that degree of politeness which might be thought
effeminate adulation in Russia might be regarded as barbarous
rudeness in France.

In general, the style of manners prevalent in any nation is
that which is most suitable to its situation. That which is
most suitable being, then, that which is naturally most com
mon, different standards arise with regard to the general
propriety of behaviour. A savage, in continual danger, or
exposed to frequent want, acquires a hardiness of character, an
insensibility to the sufferings of himself or others, which is
most suitable to the circumstances of his situation, and which
affords a very different standard of self-command than that
which is either usual or necessary in civilized life. The
general security and happiness which prevail in ages of cul
ture, by affording little exercise to contempt of danger, or to
the endurance of pain or hunger, enable the virtues which are
founded on humanity to be more cultivated than those which
are founded on self-denial; so that to complain when in pain,
to grieve in distress, to be overcome by love or anger, are not
regarded as weaknesses, as they would be in savage life, nor
as affecting the essential parts of a man's character.

In the different professions and ages of life the same iuflu-

70 ADAM SMITH.

ence of custom may be traced. In each rank and profession
we expect a degree of those manners which experience has
taught us to look for in them. As in each species of natural
objects we are pleased with the conformity to the general type,
so "in each species of men we are pleased, " if they have neither
too much nor too little of the character which usually accom
panies their particular condition and situation." Our appro
bation of a certain kind of military character is founded entirely
on habit ; for we are taught by custom to annex to the mili
tary profession "the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly
freedom, as well as of some degree of dissipation." Whatever
behaviour we have been accustomed to see in any order ot
men, comes to be so associated with -that order, that whenever
we see the one we expect to see the other, and are pleased or
disappointed according as we see it or not. Nevertheless,
there may exist a propriety of professional behaviour, inde
pendent of the custom which leads us to expect it ; and wo
i'eel that, apart from all custom, there is a propriety in the
gravity of manners which custom has allotted to the profession
of a clergyman.

In the same way different manners are assigned to the dif
ferent periods which mark human life. In youth we look
for that sensibility, gaiety, and vivacity which experience
teaches us to expect at that age; and at the extreme of life, a
certain gravity and sedateness is the character which custom
teaches us is both most natural and most respectable.

But nevertheless it is necessary not to exaggerate the effects
of custom and fashion on our moral sentiments ; for it is more
concerning the propriety or impropriety of particular usages
than about things of the greatest importance that their in
fluence is most apt to cause perversion of judgment. "We
expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a
young, from a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it is

INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM ON MORALS. ;i

in matters of small moment only that we look for the distin
guishing- marks of their respective characters.-" No society
could subsist a moment if custom could exercise such perver
sion over our moral sentiments, with regard to the general
stj le of conduct and behaviour, as it exercises with regard to
the propriety of particular usages. Uninterrupted custom
prevented the philosophers of Athens recognizing the evil of
infanticide ; and to say that a thing is commonly done is daily
offered as an apology for what in itself is the most unjust and
unreasonable conduct.

72 ADAM SMI1IL

CHAPTER VI.

THEORY OF CONSCIENCE AND DUTY.

THE theory of Hutcheson, that there exists in mankind an
inward moral sense concerned with the direct perception of
moral qualities in actions just as the sense of hearing- or seeing*
is concerned with the direct perception of sounds or objects,
or the theory of Shaftesbury that what we call conscience is
a primary principle of human nature irresoluble into other
facts, is very different from the theory of Adam Smith, who
refers our moral perceptivity to the workings of the instinct
of sympathy.

Having accounted for our moral judgments of the actions
of others by bringing them to the test of our power to sym
pathize with them, he proceeds to explain our moral judgments
concerning our own acts by a sort of reflex application&of the
same principle of sympathy. Our sense of duty, our feeling
of conscience, arises simply from the application to our own
conduct of the judgments we have learned to pass upon others.
So that there really exists no moral faculty which is not
originally borrowed from without.

In the same manner as we approve or disapprove of another
man's conduct, according as we feel that, when we bring his
case home to ourselves, we can sympathize or not with hi! mo
tives ; so we approve or disapprove of our own conduct accord
ing as we feel that, by making our case in imagination another

ORIGIN OF SELF-APPROBATION. ??>

man's, lie can sympathize or not with our motives. The only
way by which we can form any judgment about our own
sentiments and motives is by removing ourselves from our own
natural station, and by viewing them at a certain distance
from us ; a proceeding only possible by endeavouring to view
them with the eyes of other people, or as they are likely to
view them. All our judgment, therefore, concerning ourselves
must bear some secret reference either to what are or to what
we think ought to be the judgment of others. We imagine
ourselves the impartial spectator of our own conduct, and
j according as we, from that situation, enter or not into the
motives which influenced us, do we approve or condemn
ourselves.

We do not therefore start with a moral consciousness by
which we learn to judge of others, but from our judgments
about others we come to have a moral consciousness of our
selves. Our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the
characters and conduct of other people, and by observing that
these command either our praise or blame, and that we our
selves affect them in the same way, we become anxious in turn
to receive their praise and to avoid their censure. So we
imagine what effect our own conduct would have upon us,
were M7e our own impartial spectators, such a method being
the only looking-glass by which we can scrutinize, with the
eyes of other people, the propriety of our own conduct.

Accordingly our sense o£ personal morality is exactly analo
gous to our sense of personal beauty. Our first ideas of beauty
and ugliness are derived from the appearance of others, not
from our own. But as we are aware that other people exercise
upon us the same criticism we exercise upon them, we become
desirous to know how far our figure deserves their blame or
approbation. So we endeavour by the help of a looking-glass
to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other

74 ADAM SMITH.

people, and are pleased or displeased with the result, according
as we feel they will be affected by our appearance.

But it is evident that we are only anxious about our own
beauty or ugliness on account of its effect upon others ; and
that, had we no connexion with society, we should be alto
gether indifferent about either. So it is with morality. If a
human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary
place, without any communication with his own kind, ffhe
could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or
demerit of his own sentiments, of the beauty or deformity of
his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own
face." Society is the mirror by which he is enabled to see all
these qualities in himself. In the countenance and behaviour
of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter
into or disapprove of his sentiments, he first views the pro
priety or impropriety of his own passions, and the beauty or
depravity of his own mind.

The consciousness of merit, the feeling of self-approbation,
admits therefore of easy explanation. Virtue is amiable and
meritorious, by reference to the sentiments of other men, by
reason of its exciting certain sentiments in them ; and the
consciousness that it is the object of their favourable regards
is the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction
which attends it, just as the sense of incurring opposite senti
ments is the source of the torments of vice. If we have dbne
a generous action from proper motives, and survey it in the
light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, we
applaud ourselves by sympathy with the approbation of this
supposed impartial judge, whilst, by a reflex sympathy with
the gratitude paid to ourselves, we are conscious of having
behaved meritoriously, of having made ourselves worthy of
the most favourable regards of our fellow-men.

Remorse, on the other hand, arises from the opposite senti-

ORIGIN OF REMORSE. 75

merits j and shame is due to the reflection of the sentiments
our conduct will raise in other men. We again regard our
selves from their point of view, and so by sympathizing with
the hatred which they must entertain for our conduct, we
become the object of our own blame and hatred. We enter
into the resentment naturally excited by our own acts, and
anticipate with fear the punishment by which such resentment
may express itself. This remorse is, of all the sentiments
which can enter the human breast, the most dreadful; u it is
made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past
conduct; of grief for the effects of it; of pity for those who
suffer by it; and of the dread and terror of punishment from
the consciousness of the justly provoked resentment of all
rational creatures."

In this consciousness of the accordance or discordance of
our conduct with the feelings of others consists then all the
pleasure of a good conscience or of self-approbation, or all the
pain of remorse or self-condemnation. The one is based on
iGiir love of praise, which the comparison of our own conduct
jwith that of others naturally evolves in us, and the other on
jour aversion to blame, which arises in the same way.

But if a good or bad conscience consisted simply in knowing
ourselves to-be the objects of praise or blame, we might ap
prove or condemn ourselves irrespective of the correspondence
of external opinion with our real merit or demerit. It is not,
therefore, mere praise or blame that we desire or dread, but
Ipraise-worthiness or blame-worthiness ; that is to say, to be
jthat thing, which, though it should be praised or blamed by
nobody, is the proper object of those mental states. We desire
the praise not merely of the spectator, but of the impartial
and well-informed spectator.

Adam Smith devotes considerable argument to the origin
and explanation of this principle of our moral nature, seeking

76 ADAM SMITH.

in this way to raise the account he gives of conscience to a
higher level than it could attain as a mere reflex from the
sympathies of others about ourselves. As from the love or
admiration we entertain for the characters of others, we come
to desire to have similar sentiments entertained about our
selves, we should have no more satisfaction from a love or
admiration bestowed on us undeservedly than a woman who
paints her face would derive any vanity from compliments paid
to her complexion. Praises bestowed on us either for actions
we have not performed or for motives which have not influ
enced us, are praises bestowed in realit}^ on another person, not
on ourselves, and consequently give us no sort of satisfaction.
But for the same reason that groundless praise can give us
no solid joy, the mere absence of praise deducts nothing from
the pleasure of praise-worthiness. Though no approbation
should ever reach us, we are pleased to have rendered ourselves
the proper objects of approbation ; and in the same way we
are mortified at justly incurring blame, though no blame should
ever actually be attached to us. We view our conduct not
always as the spectator actually does view it, but as he would
view it if he knew all the circumstances. We feel self-appro-
bation or the reverse, by sympathy with sentiments which do
not indeed actually take place, but which only the ignorance
of the public prevents from taking place, which we know are
the natural effects of our conduct, which our imagination
strongly connects with it, and which we conceive therefore
as properly belonging to it. The satisfaction we feel with the
approbation which we should receive and enjoy, were every
thing known, resembles very much the satisfaction which men
feel who sacrifice their lives to anticipate in imagination the
praise that will only be bestowed on them when dead, the
praise which they would receive and enjoy, were they themselves
to live to be conscious of it.

PRAISE AND PRAISE-WORTHINESS. 77

Hence self- approbation,, though originally founded on the
imaginary approbation of other men, becomes at last inde
pendent of such confirmation, and the sense of the perfect
propriety of our own conduct comes to need no external
testimony to assure us of it. But the love of self-approbation,
which is in fact the same as the love of virtue, is still founded
on an implied reference to the verdict of persons external to
ourselves, and thus the " still small voice " of conscience
resolves itself into the acclamations of mankind.

Adam Smith, in accordance with a leading principle of his
system, the importance of which will be noticed in a subse
quent chapter, traces in this desire on our part for praise-
worthiness as apart from our desire of praise, an intention of
Nature for the good of society. For though in forming man
for society, she endowed him with an original desire to please
and an original aversion to offend his fellows, and, by making
him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their un
favourable regards, taught him to love their approbation, and
to dislike their disapproval, she yet saw that this mere love
of the one, or dislike of the other, would not alone have ren
dered him fit for society. Since the mere desire for approba
tion could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for
society, co.uld only have prompted him to the affectation of
virtue, and to the concealment of vice; she endowed him not
only with the desire of being approved of, but with the desire
of being what ought to be approved of, or of being what he
himself approves of in other men. So she made him anxious
to be really fit for society, and so she sought to inspire him
with the real love of virtue and a real abhorrence of vice.

In the same way that we are thus taught to wish to be the
objects of love and admiration are we taught to wish not to
be the objects of hatred and contempt. We droad blame-
worthiness, or being really blameworthy, irrespective of all

;8 ADAM SMITH.

actual blame that may accrue to us. The most perfect
assurance that no eye has seen our action, does not prevent us
from viewing it as the impartial spectator would have re
garded it, could he have been present. We feel the shame
we should be exposed to if our actions became generally
known ; and our imagination anticipates the contempt and
derision from which we are only saved by the ignorance ot
our fellows. But if we have committed not merely an im
propriety, which is an object of simple disapprobation, but a
heinous crime, which excites strong resentment, then, though
we might be assured that no man would ever know it, and
though we might believe that there was no God who would
ever punish it, we should still feel enough agony and remorse,
as the natural objects of human hatred and punishment, to
have the whole of our lives embittered. So great, indeed,
are these pangs of conscience, that even men of the worst
characters, who in their crimes have avoided even the suspi
cion of guilt, have been driven, by disclosing what could
never have been detected, to reconcile themselves to the
natural sentiments of mankind. So completely, even in per
sons of no sensibility, does the horror of blame-worthiness
exceed the dread of actual blame.

The fact, Adam Smith thinks, calls for explanation, that
while most men of ordinary capacity despise unmerited praise,
even men of the soundest judgment are mortified by un
merited reproach. For, however conscious a man may be of
his own innocence, the imputation seems often, even in his
own imagination, to throw a shadow of disgrace over his
character, and if he is brought to suffer the extreme, punish
ment of human resentment, religion alone can afford him any
effectual comfort, by teaching him of an approbation, higher
and more important than that of humanity. Why, then, is
unjust censure so much less indifferent than unmerited praise?

DESIRE OF PUBLIC APPROVAL. 79

The answer is, that the pain of the one is so much more
pungent than the pleasure of the other. A man of sensibility-
is more humiliated by just censure than he is elevated by
just applause. And it is much easier to rid oneself by denial,
of the slight pleasure of unmerited praise, than of the pain ot
unjust reproach. Though nobody doubts any one's veracity
when he disclaims some merit ascribed to him, it is at once
doubted if he denies some crime which rumour lays to his
charge.

When we are perfectly satisfied with every part of our
own conduct, the judgment of others is of less importance to
us than when we are in any doubt of the propriety of our
actions ; and the opinion of others, their approbation or the
contrary, is a most serious matter to us, when we are uneasy
as to the justice of our resentment or the propriety of any
other passion. And, as a rule, the agreement or disagree
ment of the judgments of other people with our own varies in
importance for us exactly in proportion to the uncertainty we
feel of the propriety or accuracy of our own sentiments or
judgments. Hence it is that poets and authors are so much
more anxious about public opinion than mathematicians or
men of science. The discoveries of the latter, admitting by
nature of 'nearly perfect proof, render the opinion of the
public a matter of indifference; but in the fine arts, where
excellence can only be determined by a certain nicety of
taste, and the decision is more uncertain, the favourable
judgments of friends and the public are as delightful as their
unfavourable judgments are mortifying. The sensibility of
poets especially is due to this cause; and we may instance
the sensibility of Racine, who used to tell his son that the
most paltry criticisms had always given him more pain than
the highest eulogy had ever given him pleasure : or that of
Gray, who was so mudi hurt by a foolish parody of two of

8o ADAM SMITH.

his finest odes, that he never afterwards attempted anything j
considerable.

It may happen that the two principles of desiring praise |
and desiring* pralseworthiness are blended together, and it
must often remain unknown to a man himself, and always to
other people, how far he did a praiseworthy action for its own
sake, or for the love of praise; how far he desired to deserve,
or only to obtain, the approbation of others. There are very
few men who are satisfied with their own consciousness of
having attained those qualities, or performed those actions,
which they think praiseworthy in others, and who do not
wish their consciousness of praiseworthiness to be corroborated
by the actual praise of other men. Some men care more for
the actual praise, others for the real praiseworthiness. It is
therefore needless to agree with those " splenetic philo- i
sophers " (Mandeville is intended) who impute to the love of
praise, or what they call vanity, every action which may be
ascribed to a desire of praiseworthiness.

From this distinction between our desire for praise and our
desire for praiseworthiness, Adam Smith arrives at the result,
that there are, so to speak, two distinct tribunals of morality.
The approbation or disapprobation of mankind is the first
source of personal self-approbation or the contrary. But
though man has been thus constituted the immediate judge
of mankind, he has been made so only in the first instance:
" and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher
tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of
the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, to that of |
the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of
their conduct." Two sorts of approbation are thus supposed,
that of the ordinary spectator, and that of the well-informed
one ; or, as it may be otherwise put, of the man without and '
the man within the breast. Whilst the jurisdiction of the i

THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIENCE. 81

former is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise,
and the aversion to actual blame, that of the latter is founded
altogether in the desire of really possessing those qualities,
or performing those actions which we love and admire in
other people, and in avoiding those qualities and those
actions which, in other people, arouse our hatred or con
tempt.

If Conscience, then, which may be defined as "the testi
mony of the supposed impartial spectator of the breast,"
originates in the way described, whence has it that very
great influence and authority which belong to it ? and how
does it happen that it is only by consulting it that we can
see what relates to ourselves in its true light, or make any
proper comparison between our own interests and those of
other people ?

The answer is, By our power of assuming in imagination
another situation. It is with the eye of the mind as with
the eye of the body. Just as a large landscape seems smaller
than the window which looks out on it, and we only learn by
habit and experience to judge of the relative magnitude of
objects by transporting ourselves in imagination to a different
station, from whence we can judge of their real proportions,
so it is necessary for the mind to change its position before
we can ever regard our own selfish interests in their due
relation to the interests of others. We have to view our in
terests and another's, " neither from our own place nor from
his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the
place and with the eyes of a third person, who has no parti
cular connexion with either, and who judges with impartiality
between us." By habit and experience we come to do this
so easily, that the mental process is scarcely perceptible to
us, by which we correct the natural inequality of our senti
ments. V»re learn both the moral lesson, and the lesson in

G

82 ADAM SMITH.

vision, so thoroughly, as no longer to be sensible that it has
been a lesson at all.

" It is reason , principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the
breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our
conduct," who alone can correct the natural misrepresenta
tions of self-love, who shows us the propriety of generosity
and the deformity of injustice, the propriety of resigning our
own greatest interests for the yet greater interests of others, and
the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another in order
to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves. But for this
correction of self-love by conscience, the destruction of the
empire of China by an earthquake would disturb a man's
sleep less than the loss of his own little finger, and to prevent
so paltry a misfortune to himself he would be willing to
sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, pro
vided he had never seen them. It is not the love of our
neighbour, still less the love of mankind, which would ever
prompt us to self-sacrifice. It is a stronger love, a more
powerful affection, " the love of what is honourable and noble,
of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own
characters."

The sense of duty in its various forms is the result of the
commands of conscience, which thus exists within us as the
reflection of external approbation. "When the happiness or
misery of others depends on our conduct, conscience, or " the
man within," immediately calls to us that if we prefer our
selves to them, or the interest of one to the interest of many,
we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and
resentment of our fellows.

The control of our passive feelings, of our natural preference \
for our own interests and our natural indifference to those of j
others, can only be acquired by a regard to the sentiments j
of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct. This is the I

SELF-COMMAND. 83

discipline ordained by nature for the acquisition of the virtue
of self-command as well as of all other virtues. The whole of
life is an education in the acquisition of self-command. A
child, as soon as it mixes with its equals at school, wishes
naturally to gain their favour and avoid their contempt ; and
it is taught by a regard to its own safety to moderate its anger
and other passions to the degree with which its play -fellows
are likely to be pleased. From that time forth, the exercise
of discipline over its feelings becomes the practice of its life.

Only the man who has been thoroughly bred in the great
school of self-command, the bustle and business of the world,
maintains perfect control over his passive feelings upon all
occasions. He has never dared to forget for one moment the
judgment likely to be passed by the impartial spectator upon
his sentiments and conduct, nor suffered the man within the
breast to be absent for one moment from his attention. With
the eyes of this great inmate he has been accustomed to
regard all that relates to himself. From his having been
under the constant necessity of moulding, or trying to mould,
his conduct and feelings in accordance with those of this
spectator, the habit has become perfectly familiar to him; and
he almost identifies himself with, he almost becomes himself
that impartial spectator ; he hardly ever feels but as that
great arbiter of his conduct directs.

But with most men conscience, which is founded on the
approbation of an imaginary spectator, requires often to be
aroused by contact with a real one. " The man within the
breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and
conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his
duty by the presence of the real spectator." In other words,
conscience requires to be kept fresh by contact with the
world ; solitude leads us to overrate the good actions we may
have done or the injuries we may have suffered, and causes us

G 2

84 ADAM SMITH.

to be too much dejected in adversity as well as too much
elated in prosperity.

Nevertheless if the actual spectator is not impartial like
the distant one of imagination or reality, the rectitude of our
judgments concerning our own conduct is liable to be much
perverted ; and this fact accounts for many anomalies of our
moral sentiments.

Take, for instance, the conduct of two different nations to
one another. Neutral nations, the only indifferent and im
partial spectators of their conduct, are so far off as to be almost
out of sight. The citizen of either nation pays little regard
to the sentiments of foreign countries, but only seeks to
obtain the approbation of his own fellow-citizens, which he can
never do better than by enraging and offending the enemies
they have in common. Thus the partial spectator is at hand,
the impartial one at a distance. Hence the total disregard
in the life of nations of the rules of morality in force in
private life. " In war and negotiation the laws of justice are
very seldom observed. Truth and fair dealing are almost
totally disregarded. Treaties are violated ; and the violation,
if some advantage is gained by it, sheds scarce any dishonour
upon the violator. The ambassador who dupes the minister
of a foreign nation is admired and applauded." The same
conduct which in private transactions would make a man be
loved and esteemed, in public transactions would load him with
contempt and detestation. Not only are the laws of nations
violated without dishonour, but they are themselves laid down
with very little regard to the plainest rules of justice. It is
in the most perfect conformity with what are called the laws
of nations that the goods of peaceable citizens should be
liable to seizure on land and sea, that their lands should be
laid waste, their homes burnt, and they themselves either
murdered or taken into captivity.

I

PARTY-SPIRIT. 85

Nor is the conduct of hostile parties, civil or eccclesiastical,
more restrained by the power of conscience than that of
hostile nations to one another. The laws of faction pay even
less regard to the rules of justice than the laws of nations do.
Though it has never been doubted whether faith ought to be
kept with public enemies, it has often been furiously debated
whether faith ought to be kept with rebels and heretics. Yet
rebels and heretics are only those who, when things have
come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to
belong to the weaker party. The impartial spectator is never
at a greater distance than amidst the rage and violence of
contending parties. For them it may be said that " such a
spectator scarce exists anywhere in the universe. Even to
the great judge of the universe they impute all their own
prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by
all their own vindictive and implacable passions." Those
who might act as the real controllers of such passions are too
few to have any influence, being excluded by their own
candour from the confidence of either party, and on that
account condemned to be the weakest, though they may be
the wisest men of their community, lor " a true party man
hates and despises candour ; and in reality there is no vice
which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a
party man as that single virtue."

But even when the real and impartial spectator is not at a
great distance, but close at hand, our own sellish passions
may be so strong as entirely to distort the judgment of the
(t man within the breast." We endeavour to view our own
conduct in the light in which the impartial spectator would
view it, both when we are about to act and when we have
acted. On both occasions our views are apt to be partial, but
they are more especially partial when it is most important
that they should be otherwise.

86 ADAM SMITH.

This is the explanation of the moral phenomenon of self-
deceit, and accounts for the otherwise remarkable fact, that
our conscience in spite of its great authority and the great
sanctions by which its voice is enforced, is so often prevented
from acting with efficacy. When we are about to act, the
eagerness of passion seldom allows us to consider what we are
doing with the candour of an indifferent person. Our view
of things is discoloured, even when we try to place ourselves
in the situation of another and to regard our own interests
from his point of view. We are constantly forced back by
the fury of our passions to our own position, where everything
seems magnified and misrepresented by self-love, whilst we
catch but momentary glimpses of the view of the impartial
spectator.

When we have acted, we can indeed enter more coolly into
the sentiments of the indifferent spectator, and regard our
own actions with his impartiality. We are then able to
identify ourselves with the ideal man within the breast and
view in our own character our own conduct and situation with
the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator. But even our
judgment is seldom quite candid. It is so disagreeable to
think ill of ourselves, that we often purposely turn away our
view from those circumstances which might render our judg
ment unfavourable. Rather than see our own behaviour in a
disagreeable light, we often endeavour to exasperate anew
those unjust passions which at first misled us ; we awaken
artificially our old hatreds and irritate afresh our almost
forgotten resentments ; and we thus persevere in injustice
merely because we were unjust, and because we are ashamed
and afraid to see that we were so.

And this partiality of mankind with regard to the propriety
of their own conduct, both at the time of action and alter it,
is, our author thinks, one of the chief objections to the hypo-

SELF-DECEIT. 87

thesis of the existence of a moral sense, and consequently an
additional argument in favour of his own theory of the pheno
mena of self-approbation. If it was by a peculiar faculty, liko
the moral sense, that men judged of their own conduct — it'
they were endowed with a particular power of perception
which distinguished the beauty and deformity of passions and
affections — surely this faculty would judge with more accuracy
concerning their own passions, which are more nearly exposed
to their view, than concerning those of other men, which arc
necessarily of more distant observation. But it is notorious
that men generally judge more justly of others than they ever
do about themselves.

83 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER VII.

THEORY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES.

CLOSELY connected in Adam Smith's theory with his account
of the growth of conscience is his account of the growth of
those general moral principles we find current in the world.
He regards these as a provision of Nature on our behalf, in
tended to counteract the perverting influences of self-love and
the fatal weakness of self-deceit. They arise in the following
way.

Continual observations on the conduct of others lead us i
gradually to form to ourselves certain general rules as to what |
it is fit and proper to do or to avoid. If some of their actions !
shock all our natural sentiments, and we hear other people j
express like detestation of them, we are then satisfied that we |
view them aright. We resolve therefore never to be guilty of
the like offences, nor to make ourselves the objects of the
general disapprobation they incur. Thus we arrive at a general
rule, that all such actions are to be avoided, as tending to
make us odious, contemptible, or punishable. Other actions,
on the contrary, call forth our approbation, and the expressions
of the same approval by others confirm us in the justice of
our opinion. The eagerness of everybody to honour and re
ward them excite in us all those sentiments for which we have
by nature the strongest desire — the love, the gratitude, the
admiration of mankind. We thus become ambitious of per-

GENERAL RULES OF MORALITY. 89

forming- the like, and thereby arrive at another general rule,
that all such actions are good for us to do.

These general rules of morality, therefore, are ultimately
founded on experience of what, in particular instances, our
moral faculties approve of or condemn. They are not moral
intuitions, or major premisses of conduct supplied to us by
nature. We do not start with a general rule, and approve or
disapprove of particular actions according as they conform or
not to this general rule, but we form the general rule from
experience of the approval or disapproval bestowed on par
ticular actions. At the first sight of an inhuman murder,
detestation of the crime would arise, irrespective of a reflec
tion, that one of the most sacred rules of conduct prohibited
the taking away another man's life, that this particular murder
was a violation o£ that rule, and consequently that it was
blameworthy. The detestation would arise instantaneously,
and antecedent to our formation of any such general rule.
The general rule would be formed afterwards upon the detesta
tion we felt at such an action, at the thought of this and every
other particular action of the same kind.

So when we read in history or elsewhere of either generous
or base actions, our admiration for the one and our contempt
for the other does not arise from the consideration that there
are certain general rules which declare all actions of the one
kind admirable and all of the other contemptible. Those rules
are all formed from our experience of the effects naturally
produced on us by all actions of one kind or the other.

Again, an amiable, a respectable, or a horrible action natu
rally excites for the person who performs them the love, the
respect, or the horror of the spectator. The general rules,
which determine what actions are or are not the objects of
those different sentiments, can only be formed by observing
what actions severally excite them.

ADAM SMITH.

When once these moral principles, or general rules, have
been formed, and established by the concurrent voice of all
mankind, they are often appealed to as the standards of judg.
ment, when we seek to apportion their due degree of praiea or
blame to particular actions. From their being cited on all
such occasions as the ultimate foundations of what is just and
unjust, many eminent authors have been misled, and have
drawn up their systems as if they supposed " that the original
judgments of mankind, with regard to right and wrong, were
formed, like the decisions of a court of judicatory, by con
sidering first the general rule, and then, secondly, whether the
particular action under consideration fell properly within its
comprehension."

To pass now from the formation of such general rules to
their function in practical ethics. They are most useful in
correcting the misrepresentations of things which self-love is
ever ready to suggest to us. Though founded on experience,
they are none the less girt round with a sacred and unim
peachable authority. Take a man inclined to furious resent
ment, and ready to think that the death of his enemy is a
small compensation for his provocation. From his observations
on the conduct of others he has learned how horrible such
revenges always appear, and has formed to himself a general
rule, to abstain from them on all occasions. This rule pre
serves its authority with him under his temptation, when he
might otherwise believe that his fury was just, and such as
every impartial spectator would approve. The reverence for
the rule, impressed upon him by past experience, checks the
impetuosity^of his passion, and helps him to correct the too
partial views which self-love might suggest as proper in his
situation. Even should he after all give way to his passion,
he is terrified, at the moment of so doing, by the thought that
he is violating a rule which he has never seen infringed with-

SENSE OF DUTY. 91

>ut the strongest expressions of disapprobation, or the evil
XHisequences of punishment.

That sense of duty, that feeling of the obligatoriness of the
•ules of morality, which is so important a principle in human
ife, and the only principle capable of governing- the bulk of
mankind, is none other than an acquired reverence for these
general principles of conduct, arrived at in the manner de
scribed. This acquired reverence often serves as a substitute
for the sense of the propriety or impropriety of a particular
course of conduct. For many men live through their lives
without ever incurring much blame, who yet may never feel
the sentiment upon which our approbation of their conduct is
founded, but act merely from a regard for what they see are
the established rules of behaviour. For instance, a man who
has received great benefits from another may feel very little
gratitude in his heart, and yet act in every way as if he did
so, without any selfish or blameable motive, but simply from
reverence for the established rule of duty. Or a wife, who
may not feel any tender regard for her husband, may also act
as if she did, from mere regard to a sense of the duly of such
conduct. And though such a friend or such a wife are doubt
less not the best of their kind, they are perhaps the second
best, and will be restrained from any decided dereliction from
their duty. Though "the coarse clay of which the bulk of
mankind are formed, cannot be wrought to such perfection"
as to act on all occasions with the most delicate propriety,
there is scarcely anybody who may not by education, disci
pline, and example, be so impressed with a regard to general
rules of conduct, as to act nearly always with tolerable decency,
and to avoid through the whole of his life any considerable
degree of blame.

Were it not indeed for this sense of duty, this sacred regard

for general rules, there is no one on whose conduct much rcli-

92 ADAM SMITH.

ance could be placed. The difference between a man of prin
ciple and a worthless fellow is chiefly the difference between
a man who adheres resolutely to his maxims of conduct and
the man who acts " variously and accidentally as humour,
inclination, or interest chance to be uppermost.'" Even the
duties of ordinary politeness, which are not difficult to ob
serve, depend very often for their observance more on regard
for the general rule than on the actual feeling of the moment;
and if these slight duties would, without such regard, be so
readily violated, how slight, without a similar regard, would
be the observance of the duties of justice, truth, fidelity, and
chastity, for*the violation of which so many strong motives
might exist, and on the tolerable keeping of which the very
existence of human society depends.!

The obligatoriness of the rules of morality being thus first !
impressed upon us by nature, and afterwards confirmed by |
reasoning and philosophy, comes to be still further enhanced i
by the consideration that the said rules are the laws of God, i
who will reward or punish their observance or violation.

For whatever theory we may prefer of the origin of our
moral faculties, there can be no doubt, Adam Smith argues,
but "that they were given us for the direction of our conduct
in this life." Our moral faculties " carry along with them
the most evident badges of this authority, which denote that
they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all
our actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appe
tites, and to judge how far each of them was either to be in
dulged or restrained." Our moral faculties are not on a level
in this respect with the other faculties and appetites of our
nature, for no other faculty or principle of action judges of
any other. Love, for instance, does not judge of love, nor
resentment of resentment. These two passions may be oppo
site to one another, but they do not approve or disapprove of

AUTHORITY OF OUR MORAL FACULTIES. 93

one another. It belongs to our moral faculties to judge
in this way of the other principles of our nature. What is
agreeable to our moral faculties is fit, and right, and proper
to be done ; what is disagreeable to them is the contrary.
The sentiments which they approve of are graceful and be
coming ; the contrary ungraceful and unbecoming. The very
words — right, wrong, fit, improper, graceful, unbecoming —
mean only what pleases or displeases our moral faculties."

Since, then, they " were plainly intended to be the governing
principles of human nature, the rules which they prescribe are
to be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, pro
mulgated by those vicegerents which He has thus set up
within us." These " vicegerents of God within us " never
fail to punish the violation of the rules of morality by the
torments of inward shame and self-condemnation, whilst they
always reward obedience to them with tranquillity and self-
satisfaction.

Having thus added the force of a religious sanction to the
authority of moral rules, and accounted for the feeling of
obligation in morality, from the physical basis of the pain or
pleasure of an instinctive antipathy or sympathy, the philo
sopher arrives at the question, How far our actions ought to
arise chiefly or entirely from a sense of duty or a regard to
general rules, and how far any other sentiment ought to
concur and have a principal influence. If a mere regard for
duty is the motive of most men, how far may their conduct
be regarded as right ?

The answer to this question depends on two circumstances,
which may be considered in succession.

First, it depends on the natural agreeableness or deformity
of the affection of the mind which prompts us to any action,
whether the action should proceed rather from that affection
than from a regard to the general rule. Actions to which the

94 ADAM SMITH.

social or benevolent affections prompt us should proceed as
much from the affections or passions themselves as from any
regard to the general rules of conduct. To repay a kindness
from a cold sense of duty, and from no personal affection to
one's benefactor, is scarcely pleasing to the latter. As a father
may justly complain of a son, who, though he fail in none
of the offices of filial duty, yet manifests no affectionate
reverence for his parent, so a son expects from his father some
thing more than the mere performance of the duties of his
situation.

The contrary maxim applies to the malevolent and unsocial
passions. If we ought to reward from gratitude and gene
rosity, without any reflections on the propriety of rewarding,
we ought always to punish with reluctance, and more from a
sense of the propriety of punishing than from a mere dispo
sition to revenge.

Where the selfish passions are concerned, we should attend
to general rules in the pursuit of the lesser objects of private
interest, but feel more passion for the objects themselves when
they are of transcendent importance to us. The parsimony,
for instance, of a tradesman should not proceed from a desire of
the particular threepence he will save by it to-day, nor his
attendance in his shop from a passion for the particular
tenpence he will gain by it, but from a regard to the general
rule which prescribes severe economy as the guiding principle
of his life. To be anxious, or to lay a plot to gain or save a
single shilling, would degrade him in the eyes of all his neigh
bours. But the more important objects of self-interest should
be pursued with more concern for the things themselves and
for their own sake ; and a man would justly be regarded as
mean-spirited who cared nothing about his election to Par
liament or about the conquest of a province.

Secondly, it depends upon the exactness or inexactness of

RULES OF JUSTICE. 95

the general rules themselves, how far our conduct ought to
proceed entirely from a regard to them.

The general rules of almost all the virtues, which determine
what are the duties of prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude,
or friendship, admit of so many modifications and exceptions,
that it is hardly possible to regulate our conduct entirely from
regard to them. Even the rule of gratitude, plain as it seems
to be, that it behoves us to make a return of equal, or, if pos
sible, superior value to the benefit received from another, gives
rise to numberless questions, whenever we seek to apply it to
particular cases. For instance, if your friend lent you money
in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his? and,
if so, how much ? and when ? and for how long a time ? No
definite answer can be given to such questions. And even
still more vague are the rules which indicate the duties of
friendship, hospitality, humanity, and generosity.

Justice, indeed, is the only virtue of which the general rules
determine exactly every external action required by it. If,
for instance, you owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that
you should pay him precisely that sum. The whole nature of
your action is prescribed and fixed. The most sacred regard,
therefore, is due to the rules of justice, and the actions it re
quires are never more properly performed than from a regard
to the general rules themselves. In the practice of the other
virtues, our conduct should be directed rather by a certain
idea of propriety, by a certain taste for a particular kind of
behaviour, than by any regard to a precise rule or maxim ;
and we should consider more the end and foundation of the
rule than the rule itself. But it is otherwise with justice,
where we should attend more to the rule itself than to its
end. Though the end of the rules of justice is to hinder us
from hurting our neighbour, it would still be ;v crime to
violate them, although we might pretend, with some show

96 ADAM SMITH.

of reason, that this particular violation could do him no
harm.

The rules of justice, and those of the other virtues, may
therefore be compared in this way. The rules of justice are-
like the rules of grammar, those of the other virtues like the
rules laid down by critics for the attainment of elegance in
composition. Whilst the former are precise and accurate,
the latter are vague and indeterminate, and present us rather
with a general idea of perfection to be aimed at than any cer
tain directions for acquiring it. As a man may be taught to
write grammatically by rule, so perhaps may he be taught to
act justly. But as there are no rules which will lead a man
infallibly to elegance in composition, so there are none by
which we can be taught to act on all occasions with prudence,
magnanimity, or beneficence.

Lastly, in reference to moral principles, may be considered
the case of their liability to perversion by a mistaken idea of
them. There may be a most earnest desire so to act as to
deserve approbation, and yet an erroneous conscience or a
wrong sense of duty may lead to a course of conduct with
which it is impossible for mankind to sympathize. " False
notions of religion are almost the only causes which can occa
sion any very gross perversion of our natural sentiments in
this way; and that principle which gives the greatest autho
rity to the rules of duty, is alone capable of distorting them
in any considerable degree. In all other cases common
sense is sufficient to direct us, if not to the most ex
quisite propriety of conduct, yet to something which is not
very far from it ; and, provided we are desirous in earnest to
do well, our behaviour will always, upon the whole, be praise
worthy." All men are agreed that the first rule of duty is to
obey the will of God, but it is concerning the particular com
mandments imposed by that will that they difier so widely;

ERRORS OF CONSCIENCE. 97

and crimes committed from a sense of religious duty are not
regarded with the indignation felt for ordinary crimes. The
sorrow we feel for Seid and Palmira in Voltaire's play of
Mahomet, when they are driven by a sense of religious duty to
murder an old man whom they honoured and esteemed, is the
same sorrow that we should feel for all men in a similar way
misled by religion.

93 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY.

THE relation which, in Adam Smith's system, religion bears
to ethics has been already indicated in the last chapter.
Although he regards morality as quite independent of religion,
as intelligible and possible without it, religion nevertheless
stands out visibly in the background of his theory, and is
appealed to as a strong support of virtuous conduct, and as
lending additional sanctity to the authority of moral rules.

These moral rules, though sufficiently sanctioned by the
same feelings of human approbation or disapprobation which
originally gave rise to them, derive an additional sanction
rom natural religion. It was too important for the happiness
of mankind, that the natural sense of duty should thus be
enforced by the terrors of religion, " for nature to leave it
dependent upon the slowness and uncertainty of philosophical
lesearches."

This identification therefore of the rules of morality with
the rules of religion was first impressed upon mankind by
nature, and then afterwards confirmed by philosophy.
Naturally led as men everywhere are, and were, to ascribe to i
those beings, which in any countrv happen to be the objects
of religious fear, all their own sentiments and passions, it |
could not but arise, that as they ascribed to them those |
passions which do least honour to our own species — such as j
lust, avarice, envy, or revenge — they should also ascribe to j

RELATION OF RELIGION TO MORALITY. 99

them those qualities which are the great ornaments of
humanity — the love of virtue and beneficence, and the hatred
cf vice and injustice. The injured man would call on Jupiter
to witness his wrong", never doubting but that it would be
beheld by him with the same indignation that would actuate
the meanest of mankind against it; whilst the man, who did
the wrong, transferred to the same omnipresent and irresistible
being the resentment he was also conscious of in mankind.
'•' These natural hopes, and fears, and suspicions, were pro
pagated by sympathy, and confirmed by education ; and the
gods were universally represented and believed to be the
rewarders of humanity and mercy, and the avengers of perfidy
and injustice. And thus religion, even in its rudest form,
gave a sanction to the ruY'S of morality, long before the age
of artificial reasoning and philosophy."

Reasoning, when applied, confirmed the original antici
pations of nature. For from the recognition of the fact,
already noticed, that our moral faculties were intended to be
the governing principles of our nature, it became clear that
the rules they foirnulated, in compliance with such an in
tention, might be regarded as the laws of the Deity, who set
up those moral faculties as His " vicegerents within us."

Another consideration confirms this reasoning. As by
obeying the rules prescribed to us by our moral faculties, we
pursue the most effectual means for promoting the happiness
of mankind, and as the happiness of mankind seems to be the
original purpose intended by the Author of Nature, it is
evident that by obeying the moral rules we in some sense co
operate with the Deity, and advance, as far as is in em
power, the plan of Providence. As also by acting otherwise
we obstruct in some measure His scheme, we declare ourselves
in some measure the enemies of God, so we are naturally
eucouraired to look for His favour and reward in the one

t?

n 2

ioo ADAM SMITH.

case, and to dread His vengeance and punishment in the
other.

Moreover, although virtue and vice, as far as they can be
either rewarded or punished by the sentiments and opinions
of mankind, meet even here, according- to the common course
of things, with their deserts, we are compelled by the best
principles of our nature, by our love of virtue and our
abhorrence of vice and injustice, to look to a future life for
the rectification of occasional results of virtue or vice which
shock all our natural sentiments of justice. The indignation
we feel when we see violence and artifice prevail over sincerity
and justice, the sorrow we feel for the sufferings of the
innocent, the resentment we feel and often cannot satisfy
against the oppressor, all prompt us to hope "that the great
Author of our nature will Himself execute hereafter, what all
the principles which He has given us for the direction of our
conduct prompt us to attempt even here ; that He will com
plete the plan which He Himself has thus taught us to begin;
and will, in a life to come, render to every one according to
the works which he has performed in this world/'

When, therefore, the general rules of morality which deter
mine the merit or demerit of actions come thus to be regarded,
says Adam Smith, as the laws of an all-powerful Being, who
watches over our conduct, and who, in a life to come, will
reward the observance and punish the breach of them, they
necessarily acquire a new sacredness. The sense of propriety,
which dictates obedience to the will of the Deity as the
supreme rule of our conduct, is confirmed by the strongest
motives of self-interest. For it is an idea, well capable of
restraining the most headstrong passions, that however much
we may escape the observation or the punishment of man
kind, we can never escape the observation nor the punishment
of God.

CHARACTER OF THE RELIGIOUS MAN. 101

It is on account of the additional sanction which religion
thus confers upon the rules of morality that so great con
fidence is generally placed in the probity of those who seem
deeply impressed with a sense of religion. They seem to act
under an additional tie to those which regulate the conduct
of others. For regard to the propriety of action and to re
putation, regard to the applause of his own breast as well as
to that of others, are motives which have the same influence
over the religious man as over the man of the world; but
the former acts under another restraint, that of future
recompense, and accordingly greater trust "is reposed in hi.s
conduct.

Nor is this greater trust unreasonably placed in him. For
" wherever the natural principles of religion are not corrupted
by the factious and party zeal of some worthless cabal ; where-
ever the first duty which it requires is to fulfil all the
obligations of morality; wherever men are not taught to
regard frivolous observances as more immediate duties of
religion than acts of justice and beneficence; and to imagine,
that by sacrifices, and ceremonies, and vain supplications,
they can bargain with the Deity for fraud, and perfidy, and
violence, the world undoubtedly judges right in this respect,
and justly places a double confidence in the rectitude of the
religious man's behaviour."

At the same time Adam Smith resents strongly the doctrine
that religious principles are the only laudable motives of
action, the doctrine, " that we ought neither to reward from
gratitude nor j unish from resentment, that we ought neither
to protect the helplessness of our children, nor afford support
to the infirmities of our parents, from natural affection; but
that we ought to do all things from the love of the Deity, and
from a desire only to render ourselves agreeable to Him, and
to direct our conduct according to His will/'' It should not

102 ADAM SMITH.

be the sole motive and principle of our conduct in the per
formance of our various duties that God has commanded us
to perform them, though that it should be our ruling- and
governing- principle is the precept of philosophy and common
sense no less than it is of Christianity.

In the same way that Adam Smith regards religion as an
additional sanction to the natural rules of morality, does
he regard it as the only effectual consolation in the case of a
man unjustly condemned by the world for a crime of which
lie is innocent. To such an one, that humble philosophy
which confines its' view to this life can afford but little com
fort. Deprived of everything that could make either life or
death respectable, condemned to death and to everlasting
infamy, the view of another world, where his innocence will be
declared and his virtue rewarded, can alone compensate him
for the misery of his situation.

"Our happiness in this life is thus, upon many occasions,
dependent upon the humble hope and expectation of a life to
come — a hope and expectation deeply rooted in human nature,
which can alone support its lofty ideas of its own dignity, can
alone illumine the dreary prospect of its continually approach
ing mortality, and maintain its cheerfulness under all the
heaviest calamities to which, from the disorders of this life,
it may sometimes be exposed. That there is a world to come,

.where exact justice will be done to every man is a

doctrine, in every respect so venerable, so comfortable to the
weakness, so flattering to the grandeur of human nature, that
the virtuous man who has the misfortune to doubt of it can
not possibly avoid wishing most earnestly and anxiously to
believe it."

This doctrine, Adam Smith thinks, could never have fallen
into disrepute, had not a doctrine been asserted of a future
distribution of rewards and punishments, at total variance with

FALSE IDEAS OF RELIGION. 103

.ill our moral sentiments. The preference of assiduous flattery
to merit or service, which is regarded as the greatest reproach
even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns, is often ascribed tc
divine perfection ; "and the duties of devotion, the public and
private worship of the Deity, have been represented, even by
men of virtue and abilities, as the sole virtues which can either
entitle to reward, or exempt from punishment, in the life to
come/'

There is the same absurdity in the notion, which had even
its advocate in a philosopher like Massillon, that one hour
or day spent in the mortifications of a monastery has more merit
in the eye of God than a whole life spent honourably in
the profession of a soldier. Such a doctrine is surely con
trary to all our moral sentiments, and the principles by
which we have been taught by nature to regulate our admi
ration or contempt. " It is this spirit, however, which, while
it has reserved the celestial regions for monks and friars, or
for those whose conduct or conversation resembled those of
monks and friars, has condemned to the infernal all the
heroes, all the statesmen and lawyers, all the poets and
philosophers of former ages; all those who have invented,
improved, or excelled in the arts which contribute to the
subsistence, to the conveniency, or to the ornament of life ;
all the great protectors, instructors, and benefactors of man
kind; all those to whom our natural sense of praise worthi
ness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and the most
exalted virtue. Can we wonder that so strange an applica
tion of this most respectable doctrine should sometimes have
exposed it to derision and contempt?"

Although, then, Adam Smith considers that reason corro
borates the teaching of natural religion regarding the ex
istence of God and the life hereafter, he nowhere recognizes
any moral obligation in the belief of one or the other; and

104 ADAM SMITH.

they occupy in his system a very similar position to that
which they occupy in Kant's, who treats the belief in the
existence of God and in immortality as Postulates of the
Practical Ileason, that is to say, as assumptions morally
necessary, however incapable of speculative proof. Adam
Smith, however, does not approach either subject at all from
the speculative side, but confines himself entirely to the
moral basis of both, to the arguments in their favour which
the moral phenomena of life afford, such as have been already
indicated.

But besides the argument in favour of the existence of God
derived from our moral sentiments, the only argument he
employs is derived, not from the logical inconceivability of
a contrary belief, but from the incompatibility of such a con
trary belief with the happiness of the man so believing. A
man of universal benevolence or boundless goodwill can enjov
no solid happiness unless he is convinced that all the inhabi
tants of the universe are under the immediate care of that all-
wise Being, who directs all the movements of nature, and who
is compelled, by His own unalterable perfections, to maintain
in it at all times the greatest possible quantity of happiness.
To a man of universal benevolence, " the very suspicion of a
fatherless world must be the most melancholy of all reflections ;
from the thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and
incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless
misery and wretchedness. All the splendour of the highest
prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dread
ful an idea must necessarily overshadow the imagination ; nor,
in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most
afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily
springs from the habitual and thorough conviction of the
truth of the contrary system/'

It was a well-known doctrine of the Stoic philosophy, that

RESIGNATION. 105

a man should resign all his wishes and interests with perfect
confidence to the benevolent wisdom which directs the universe,
and should seek his happiness chiefly in the contemplation of
the perfection of the universal system. With this conception
of resignation Adam Smith very closely agrees, in his descrip
tion of the sentiments which become the wise and virtuous
man with regard to his relation to the great sum of things.
Just as he should be willing to sacrifice his own interest to
that of his own order, and that of his own order again to
that of his country, so he should be willing to sacrifice all
those inferior interests " to the greater interest of the universe,
to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intel
ligent beings, of which God Himself is the immediate ad
ministrator and director. If he is deeply impressed with the
habitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and
all-wise Being can admit into the system of His government
no partial evil which is not necessary for the universal good,
he must consider all the misfortunes which may befall him
self, his friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for
the prosperity of the universe, and therefore as what he
ought not only to submit to with resignation, but as what
he himself, if he had known all the connexions and depen
dencies of things, ought sincerely and devoutly to have wished
for."

A wise man should be capable of doing what a good soldier
is always ready to do. For the latter, when ordered by his
general, will march with alacrity to the forlorn station, knowing
that he would not have been sent there but for the safety of
the whole army and the success of the war, and he will cheer
fully sacrifice his own little system to the welfare of a greater.
But "no conductor of an army can deserve more unlimited
trust, more ardent and zealous affection, than the great Con
ductor of the universe. In the greatest public as well as
private disasters, a wise man ought to consider that he himself,

io6 ADAM SMITH.

his friends and countrymen, have only been ordered upon the
forlorn station of the universe; that had it not been necessary
for the good of the whole, they would not have been so ordered ;
and that it is their duty, not only with humble resignation
to submit to this allotment, but to endeavour to embrace it
with alacrity and joy."

To the question, how far a man should seek his highest
happiness in the contemplation of the system of the universe;
or, in other words, whether the contemplative or the prac
tical life is the higher and better, Adarn Smith replies
hesitatingly in favour of the latter. The most sublime object
of human contemplation is " the idea of that Divine Being,
whose benevolence and wisdom have from all eternity contrived
and conducted the immense machine of the universe, so as at
all times to produce the greatest possible quantity of hap
piness." A man believed to be chiefly occupied in this sub
lime contemplation seldom fails of the highest veneration;
and even though his life should be altogether contemplative,
is often regarded with a sort of religious respect far higher
than is generally bestowed on the most useful and active
citizen. Marcus Antoninus has, perhaps, received more ad
miration for his meditations on this subject than for all the
different transactions of his just and beneficent reign.

Nevertheless, the care of the universe not being the concern
of man, but only the care of his own happiness, or that of his
family, friends, or country, he can never be justified in
neglecting the more humble department of affairs because he
is engaged in the contemplation of the higher. He must not
lay himself open to the charge which was brought against
Marcus Antoninus, that whilst he was occupied in contem
plating the prosperity of the universe he neglected that of the
Roman empire. " The most sublime speculation of the con
templative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of
the smallest active dutv."

CHAPTER IX.

THE CHAEACTEE OF VIETTJE.

THE science of ethics, according to Adam Smith, deals mainly
with two principal questions, the first concerning1 the nature
of moral approbation, or the origin of our feelings of right
and wrong, and the second concerning the nature of virtue,
or the moral elements of which virtue consists. The first
question is that to which the answer has already been given ;
the second question to which the answer yet remains to be
given, is " What is the tone of temper, and tenor of conduct,
which constitutes the excellent and praiseworthy character,
the character which is the natural object of esteem, honour,
and approbation ? " Does virtue consist in benevolence, as
some have maintained, or is it but a form of self-love, as
others have maintained ; or does it consist in some relation of
the benevolent and selfish affections to one another ?

The general answer which Adam Smith makes to this
question is, that virtue consists in a certain relation to one
another of our selfish and unselfish affections, not exclusively
in a predominance of either of them. " The man of the most
perfect virtue," he says, "the man whom we naturally love and
revere the most, is he who joins, to the most perfect command
of his own original and selfish feelings, the most exquisite sensi
bility both to the original and sympathetic feelings of others."
It is the man who unites the gentler virtues of humanity and
sensibility with the severer virtues of self-control and self-denial.
" To feel much for others, and little for ourselves, to restrain

io8 ADAM SMITH.

our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, consti
tutes the perfection of humanity."

Consequently any man's character for virtue must depend
upon those two different aspects of his conduct which regard
both himself and others ; and a character completely virtuous
will consist in a combination of those qualities which have a
beneficial effect alike on an individual's own happiness as on
that of his fellow-men. These qualities are Prudence, Justice
and Beneficence j and " the man who acts according- to the
rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper
benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtuous/'

1. The quality of Prudence is that side of a man's character
which concerns only his own happiness, and it has for its
object the care of his perconal health, fortune, rank, and repu
tation. The first lessons in this virtue are taught us "by the
voice of nature herself," who directs us by the appetites of
hunger and thirst, and by agreeable or disagreeable sensations,
to provide for our bodily preservation and health. As we
grow older we learn that only by proper care and foresight
with respect to our external fortune can we ensure the means
of satisfying our natural appetites, and we are further led to
a desire of the advantages of fortune by experience that
chiefly on their possession or supposed possession depends
that credit and rank among our equals which is perhaps the
strongest of all our desires. Security therefore of health,
fortune, and rank, constitutes the principal object of Prudence.

This outline of the subject-matter of Prudence, Adam
Smith proceeds to fill up with a sketch of the character of the
Prudent Man, which modelled, as it appears to be, on
Aristotle's delineation of imaginary types of the different
virtues, is so characteristic an illustration of our author's style
and thought, that it is best presented to the reader in the
following extracts from the original : —

THE CHARACTER OF THE PRUDENT MAN. 109

" The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to
understand whatever he professes to understand and not
merely to persuade other people that he understands it ; and
though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are
always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose
upon you by the cunning" devices of an artful impostor, nor
by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the con
fident assertions of a superficial and impudent pretender ; he
is not ostentatious even of the abilities he really possesses.
His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all
the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust
themselves into public notice

"The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the
very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends
upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere,
he is not always frank and open ; and though he never tells
anything but the truth, he does not always think himself
bound, when not properly called upon, to tell the whole truth.
As he is cautious in his actions, so he is reserved in his speech,
and never rashly or unnecessarily obtrudes his opinion con
cerning either things or persons.

" The prudent man, though not always distinguished by
the most exquisite sensibility, is always very capable of friend
ship. But his friendship is not that ardent and passionate
but too often transitory affection which appears so delicious
to the generosity of youth and inexperience. It is a sedate,
but steady and faithful attachment to a few well-chosen com
panions ; in the choice of whom he is not guided by the giddy
admiration of shining accomplishments, but by the sober
esteem of modesty, discretion, and good conduct. But though
capable of friendship, he is not always much disposed to
general sociality. He rarely frequents, and more rarely
figures in, those convivial societies which are distinguished for

I io ADAM SMITH.

the jollity and gaiety of their conversation. Their way of
life might too often interfere with the regularity of his tem
perance, might interrupt the steadiness of his industry, or breal^
in upon the strictness of his frugality.

" But though his conversation may not always be very
sprightly or diverting, it is always perfectly inoffensive. He
hates the thought of J)eing guilty of any petulance or rtide-
ness; he never assumes impertinently over anybody, and
upon all occasions is willing to place himself rather below than
above his equals. Both in his conduct and conversation he is
an exact observer of decency, and respects with an almost
religious scrupulosity all the established decorums and cere
monials of society

" The man who lives within his- income is naturally con
tented with his situation, which by continual though small
accumulations is growing better and better every day. lie is
enabled gradually to relax both in the rigour of his parsimony
and in the severity of his application ; . . . He has no
anxiety to change so comfortable a situation, and does not go
in quest of new enterprises and adventures which might
endanger, but could not well increase, the secure tranquillity
which he actually enjoys. If he enters into any new projects,
they are likely to be well concerted and well prepared. He
can never be hurried or driven into them by any necessity,
but has always time and leisure to deliberate soberly and
coolly concerning what are likely to be their consequences.

" The prudent man is not willing to subject himself to any
responsibility which his duty does not impose upon him. He
is not a bustler in business where he has no concern ; is not a
meddler in other people's affairs ; is not a professed counsellor
or adviser, who obtrudes his advice where nobody is asking it ;
he confines himself as much as his duty will permit to his own
affairs, and has no taste for that foolish importance which

THE CHARACTER OF VIRTUE. in

many people wish to derive from appearing to have some
influence in the management of those of other people • he is
averse to enter into any party disputes, hates faction, and is
not always very forward to listen to the voice even of noble
and great amhition. When distinctly called upon he will not
decline the service of his country; but he will not cabal in
order to force himself into it, and would be much better
pleased that the public business were well managed by some
other person than that he himself should have the trouble and
incur the responsibility of managing it. In the bottom of his
heart he would prefer the undisturbed enjoyment of secure
tranquillity, not only to all the vain splendour of successful
ambition, but to the real and solid glory of performing the
greatest and most magnanimous actions."

Such is Adam Smith's account of the character of the
Prudent Man, a character which he himself admits commands
rather a cold esteem than any very ardent love or admiration,
lie distinguishes it from 1lu,t higher form of prudence which
belongs to the great general, statesman, or legislator, and which
is the application or' wise and judicious conduct to greater and
nobler purposes than the mere objects of personal interest.
This superior prudence necessarily supposes the utmost per
fection of all the intellectual and all the moral vinues; it is
the most 'perfect wisdom combined with the most perlect
| virtue ; it is the best head joined to the best heart.

2. Justice and Benevolence — the disposition either to refrain
from injuring our neighbour, or else to benefit him — are the
j two qualities of a virtuous character which affect the happi
ness of other people. A sacred and religious regard not to
hurt or disturb the happiness of others, even in cases where
no law can protect them, constitutes the character of the
perfectly innocent and just man, and is a character which can
scarcely fail to be accompanied by many other virtues, such

112 ADAM SMITH.

as great feeling- for others, great humanity, and great benevo
lence. But whilst benevolence is a positive moral factor,
justice is only a negative one; benevolence, therefore, requires
the greater consideration of the two.

3. Benevolence comprises all the good offices which we owe
to our family, our friends, our country, and our fellow-
creatures. This is the order in which the world is recom
mended to our beneficent affections by Nature, who has
strictly proportioned the strength of our benevolence to the
degree in which it is necessary or likely to be useful.

Thus evary man is first and principally recommended to
his own care, being better able to take care of himself than
of any other person. After himself, the members of his own
family, those who usually live in the same house with him —
his parents, children, or brothers and sisters — are naturally the
objects of his warmest affections. The earliest friendships
are those among brothers and sisters, whose power for giving
pleasure or pain to one another renders their good agreement
so much the more necessary for the happiness of the family.
The sympathy between more distant relations, being less
necessary, is proportionately weaker.

Here, again, may be noticed the influence of custom over
our moral sentiments. Affection is really habitual sympathy;
and, from our general experience that the state of habitual
sympathy in which near relations stand to one another pro
duces a certain affection between them, we expect always to
find such affection, and are shocked when we fail to do so.
Hence the general rule is established, from a great number of
instances, that persons related to one another in a certain
degree ought to be affected towards one another in a certain,
manner, and that the highest impropriety exists in the absence
of any such affection between them.

This disposition to accommodate and assimilate our senti-

DEGREES OF FRIENDSHIP. II3

nents and principles to those of persons we live with or see
>ften — a disposition which arises from the obvious convenience
>f such a general agreement — leads us to expect to find friend-
hip subsisting between colleagues in office, partners in trade,
>r even between persons living in the same neighbourhood.
There are certain small good offices which are universally
egarded as due to a neighbour in preference to any other
icrson; and a certain friendliness is expected of neighbours,
rorn the mere fact of the sympathy naturally associated with
iving in the same locality.

But these sort of attachments, which the Romans expressed

>y the word nccessitndo, as if to denote that they arose from

he necessity of the situation, are inferior to those friendships

vhich are founded not merely on a sympathy, rendered

i.'ibitual for the sake of convenience, but on a natural sym-

athy and approbation of a man's good conduct. Such

riendship can subsist only among the good. " Men of virtue

nly can feel that entire confidence in the conduct and be-

wviourof one another, which can at all times assure them that

hey can never either offend or be offended by one another.

Vice is always capricious, virtue only is regular and orderly.

.lie attachment which is founded upon the love of virtue, as

t is certainly of all attachments the most virtuous, so it is

ikewise the happiest, as well as the most permanent and

ecure. Such friendships need not be confined to a single

person, but may safely embrace all the wise and virtuous

with whom we have been long and intimately acquainted,

and upon whose wisdom and virtue we can, upon that account,

entirely depend/'

And the same principles which direct the order of our
benevolent affections towards individuals, likewise direct their
order towards societies, recommending to them before all
| others those to which they can be of most importance. Oar

I

ADAM SMITH.

native country is the largest society upon which our good or
bad conduct can have much influence. It is that to which '
alone our good-will can be directed with effect. Accordingly,
it is by nature most strongly recommended to us, as compre
hending not only our own personal safety and prosperity, but
that of our children, our parents, our relations, and friends.
It iff thus endeared to us by all our private benevolent, as well
as by our selfish affections. Hence its prosperity and glory
seem to reflect some sort of honour upon ourselves, and "when
we compare it with other societies of the same kind, we are
proud of its superiority, and mortified, in some degree, if it
appears in any respect below them/'

But it is necessary to distinguish the love of our own
country from a foolish dislike to every other one. " The love
of our own nation often disposes us to view, with the most
malignant jealousy and envy, the prosperity and aggrandize-;
ment of any other neighbouring nation. Independent andj
neighbouring nations, having no common superior to decide
their disputes, all live in continual dread and suspicion of one
another. Each sovereign, expecting little justice from his[
neighbours, is disposed to treat them with as little as he
expects from them. The regard for the laws of nations, or
for those rul^s winch independent states profess or pretend to
think themselves bound to observe in their dealings with one
another, is often very little more than mere pretence and pro
fession. From the smallest interest, upon the slightest
provocation, we see those rules every day either evaded or
directly violated without shame or remorse. Each nation!
foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the:
increasing power and aggrandizement of any of its neigh-i
"hours; and the mean principle of national prejudice is often'
founded on the noble one of the love of our own country.!
. • . . France and England may each of them have some

FA TRIOTISMAND NA TIONAL PREJUDICE. 115

reason to dread the increase of the naval and military power
of the other; but for either of them to envy the internal
happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its
lands, the advancement of its manufactures, the increase of
its commerce, the security and number of its ports and har
bours, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences, is
surely beneath the dignity of two such great nations. These
are the real improvements of the world we live in. Mankind
are benefited, human nature is ennobled by them. In such
improvements each nation ought not only to endeavour itself
to excel, but, from the love of mankind, to promote, instead
•)f obstructing, the excellence of its neighbours. These are
all proper objects of national emulation, not of national
prejudice or envy/'

This passage is of interest as coming from the future author
of the Wealth of Nations, the future founder of the doctrine of
free trade; and of historical interest, as reflecting cultivated
opinion at a time when England was just in the middle of the
Seven years' war, is the remark that the most extensive
public benevolence is that of the statesmen who project or
form alliances between neighbouring or not very distant
nations, "for the preservation either of what is called the
balance of power, or of the general peace and tranquillity of
the states within the circle of their negotiations/''

But the ordinary love of our country involves two things :
a certain reverence for the form of government actually
established, and an earnest desire to render the condition of
our fellow-citizens as safe, respectable, and happy, as possible.
It is only in times of public discontent and faction that these
two principles may draw different ways, and lead to doubt
whether a change in the constitution might not be most con
ducive to the general happiness. In such times, the leaders
of the discontented party often propose " to new-model the

,i6 ADAM SMITH.

constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential parts,
that system of government under which the subjects of a great
empire have enjoyed perhaps peace, security, and even glory,
during the course of several centuries together." And it may
require the highest effort of political wisdom to determine
when a real patriot ought to support and try to re-establish
the authority of the old system, and when he ought to give
way to the more daring, but oiten dangerous, spirit of
innovation.

Nothing, indeed, is more fatal to the good order of society
than the policy of "a man of system," who is so enamoured
of his own ideal plan of government as to be unable to suffer
the smallest deviation from any part of it, and who insists
upon establishing, and establishing all at once, and in spite of
all opposition, whatever his idea may seem to require. Such
a man erects his own judgment into the supreme standard of
right and wrong, and fancies himself the only wise and|
worthy man in the commonwealth. " It is upon this account j
that of all political speculators sovereign princes are by far
the most dangerous. This arrogance is perfectly familiar to
them. They entertain no doubt of the immense superiority
of their own judgment .... and consider the state as made
lor themselves, not themselves for the state."

It is otherwise with the real patriot, with the man whose
public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and bene
volence. He " will respect the established powers and privi
leges even of individuals, and still more those of the great
orders and societies into which the state is divided. Thou
he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive,
he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannon
annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer|
the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion,
he will not attempt to subdue them by force, but will

THE VIRTUE OF SELF-COMMAND. 117

eligiously observe what by Cicero is justly called the divine
naxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country, no more
ban to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can,
is public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices
f the people; and will remedy, as well as he can, the incon-
eniences which may flow from the want of those regulations
r-hich the people are adverse to submit to. When he cannot
stablish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the
rrong; but, like Solon, where he cannot establish the bost
Astern of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that

people can bear."

.But although Prudence, Justice, and Benevolence comprise
II the qualities and actions which go to make up the highest
'irtue, another quality, that of Self-Command, is also neces-
ry, in order that we may not be misled by our own passions
violate the rules of the other three virtues. The most
erfect knowledge, unless supported by the most per-

ect self-command, will not of itself enable us to do our
uty.
The two sets of passions which it is necessary to command

re those which, like fear and anger, it is difficult to control
ven for a moment, or those which, like the love of ease,
ieasure, applause, or other selfish gratifications, may be
sstrained indeed often for a moment, but often prevail in the
>ng run, by reason of their continual solicitations. The
>mmand of the first set of passions constitutes what the

ncient moralists denominated fortitude, or strength of mind;

hat of the other set what they called temperance, decency,

noderation.
Self-command therefore is a union of the qualities of forti-

ude and temperance; and independently of the beauty it

enves from utility, as enabling us to act according to the

ictates of prudence, justice, and benevolence, it has a beautv

I IS ADAM SMITH.

of its own, and deserves for its own sake alone some degree of
our admiration and esteem.

For self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but it is
the chief source of the lustre of all the other virtues. Thus
the character of the most exalted wisdom and virtue is that of
a man who acts with the greatest coolness in extreme dangers
and difficulties, who observes religiously the sacred rules of
justice, in spite of the temptation by his strongest interests or
by the grossest injuries to violate them, and who suffers not
the benevolence of his temper to be damped by the ingratitude
of its objects.

The fust quality in the character of self-command is
Courage, or the restraint of the passion of fear. The command
of fear is more admirable than that of anger. The exertion
displayed by a man/ who in persecution or danger suffers no
word or gesture to escape him, which does not perfectly accord
with the feelings of the most indifferent spectator, commands
a high degree of admiration. Had Socrates been suffered tc
die quietly in his bed, even his glory as a philosopher mighl
never have attained that dazzling splendour which has ever
been attached to him. Courage even causes some degree ol
regard to be paid to the greatest criminals who die with firm
ness; and the freedom from the fear of death, the great feai
of all, is that which ennobles the profession of a soldier, afld
bestows upon it a rank and dignity superior to that of ever)
other profession. It is for this reason that some sort o!
esteem is attached to characters, however worthless, who havt
conducted with success a great warlike exploit, though under
taken contrary to every principle of justice, and carried or
with no regard to humanity.

The command of the passion of anger, though it has nd
special name like that of the passion of fear, merits on manji
occasions much admiration. But whilst courage is always.

TEMPERANCE. 119

admired irrespective of its motive, our approval of the com
mand of anger depends on our sense of its dignity and
propriety. Our whole sense of the beauty of the Philippics
of Demosthenes or of the Catiline orations of Cicero is derived
from the propriety with which a just indignation is expressed
in them. This just indignation is nothing but anger re
strained to that degree with which the impartial spectator can
sympathize. It is because a blustering and noisy anger
interests the spectator less for the angry man than for the
person with whom he is angry that the nobleness of pardoning
so often appears superior to the most perfect propriety of
resentment. But the fact that the restraint of anger may be
due to the presence of fear accounts for the less general
admiration that is paid to the former than is often paid to the
latter. The indulgence of anger seems to show a sort of
courage and superiority to fear, and for that reason it is some
times an object of vanity, whilst the indulgence of fear is
never an object of a similar ostentation.

The next quality in Self-Command is Temperance, or the
Command of those less violent passions which appeal to our
love of ease or pleasure. The command of these passions can
seldom, like the command of anger or fear, be directed^ any
bad end. Temperance and moderation, which include^ such
virtues as industry, frugality, or chastity, are always amiable;
but inasmuch as their exercise requires a gentler though
steadier exertion than is necessary for the restraint of anger
or fear, the beauty and grace which belong to them are less
dazzling, though none the less pleasing, than the qualities
which attend the more splendid actions of the hero, the states
man, or the legislator.

It has already been observed that the point of propriety, or
degree of any passion with which an impartial spectator can
approve, is differently situated in different passions, in some

ADAM SMITH.

cases lying- nearer to the excess, and in others nearer to
the defect. But it remains to be noticed, " that the passions
^ which the spectator is most disposed to sympathize with,
I and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may
Le said to stand high, are those of which the immediate feel-
ing cr sensation is more or less agreeable to the person
principally concerned; and that, on the contrary, the passions
which the spectator is least disposed to sympathize with,
and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may
be said to stand low, are those of which the immediate
feeling or sensation is more or less disagreeable or even
painful to the person principally concerned/'

For instance, the disposition to • the social affections, to
humanity, kindness, natural affection, or friendship, being
always agreeable to the person who feels them, meets with
more sympathy in its excess than in its defect. Though we
blame a disposition, that is too ready and indiscriminate in
its kindness, we regard it with pity rather than with the
dislike which we feel towards a person who is defective in
kindness, or characterized by what is called hardness of heart.
On the other hand, the disposition to the unsocial affections _
to angqr, hatred, envy, or malice — as it is more agreeable to
the person principally concerned in defect than in excess, so
any defect of those passions approaches nearer to the point of
propriety approved of by the spectator than any excess in
their manifestation. Their excess renders a man wretched
and miserable in his own mind, and hence their defect is more
pleasing to others. Nevertheless even the defect may be ex
cessive. The want of proper indignation is a most essential
defect in any character, if it prevents a man from protecting
either himself or his friends from insult or injustice. Or
again, that defect of or freedom from envy, which, founded on
indolence or good nature, or on an aversion to trouble or op-

SENSIBILITY. 121

position, suffers others readily to rise far above us, as it gene
rally leads to much regret and repentance afterwards, so it
often gives place c< to a most malignant envy in the end, and
to a hatred of that superiority which those who have once
attained it may often become really entitled to, by the very
circumstance of having attained it. In order to live com
fortably in the world, it is upon all occasions as necessary to
defend our dignity and rank as it is to defend our lives or our
fortune."

Sensibility to our own personal dangers, injuries, or mis
fortunes, is more apt to offend by its excess than by its defect,
and here again the same rule prevails, for a fretful or timid
disposition renders a man miserable to himself as well as
offensive to others. A cairn temper, which contentedly lavs
its account to suffer somewhat from both the natural and
moral evils infesting the world, is a blessing to the man him
self, and gives ease and security to all his fellows. But such
defect of sensibility may also be excessive, for the man who
feels little for his own misfortunes or injuries will always feel
less for those of other people, and be less disposed to relieve or
resent them.

A defect of sensibility to the pleasures and amusements of
life is more offensive than the excess, for both to the person
primarily affected and to the spectator a strong propensity to
joy is more pleasing than the contrary. This propensity is
only blamed when its indulgence is nnsuited to time or place,
to the age or the situation of a person, and when it leads to
the neglect of his interest or duty. But it is rather in such
cases the weakness of the sense of propriety and duty that is
blamed than the strength of the propensity to joy.

Self-esteem also is more agreeable in excess than in defect,
for it is so much more pleasant to think highly than it is to
think meanly of ourselves. And just as we apply two different

122 ADAM SMITH.

standards to our judgment about others, so in self-estimation
we apply to ourselves both the standard of absolute perfection
and that of the ordinary approximation thereto. To these
two standards the same man often bestows a different degree"
of attention at different times. In every man there exists an>
idea of exact propriety and perfection ; an idea gradually
formed from observations of himself and others, " the slow,
gradual, and progressive work of the great demigod within
the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct." It is an
idea which, in every man, is more or less accurately drawn,
more or less justly coloured and designed, according to the
delicacy and care with which the observations have been
made.

But it is the wise and virtuous man who, having made these
observations with the utmost care, directs his conduct chiefly
by this ideal standard, and esteems himself rightly in consc- ;
(pence. He feels the imperfect success of all his best endea
vours to assimilate his conduct to that archetype of perfection,
and remembers with humiliation the frequency of his aber-'j
ration from the exact rules of perfect propriety. And so con
scious is he of his imperfection that, even when he judges!
himself by the second standard of ordinary rectitude, he is
unable to regard with contempt the still greater imperfection
of other people. Thus his character is one of real modesty, j
for he combines, with a very moderate estimate of his own
merit, a full sense of the merit of others.

The difference indeed between such a man and the ordinary
man is the difference between the great artist who judges of
his own works by his conception of ideal perfection and the
lesser artist who judges of his work merely by comparison •
with the work of other artists. The poet Boileau, who used
to say that no great man was ever completely satisfied with :
his own work, being once assured by Santeuil, a writer, of

PRIDE AND VANITY. 123

Latin verses, that lie, for his own part, was completely satisfied
with his own, replied that he was certainly the only great man
who ever was so. Yet how much harder of attainment is the
ideal perfection in conduct than it is in art ! For the artist
may work undisturbed, and in full possession of all his skill
and experience. But " the wise man must support the pro
priety of his own conduct in health and in sickness, in success
and in disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy
indolence, as well as in that of the most wakened attention.
The most sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and
distress must never surprise him. The injustice of other
people must never provoke him to injustice. The violence of
faction must never confound him. All the hardships and
hazards of war must never either dishearten or appal him."

Pride and vanity are two distinct kinds of that excessive
self-estimation which wre blame in persons who enjoy no dis
tinguished superiority over the common level of mankind ;
and though the proud man is often vain, and the vain man
proud, the two characters are easily distinguishable.

The proud man is sincere, and in the bottom of his heart
convinced of his own superiority. lie wishes you to view
him in no other light than that in which, when he places him
self in your situation, he really views himself. He only de
mands justice. He deigns not to explain the grounds of his
pretensions; he disdains to court esteem, and even affects to
despise it. He is too well contented with himself to think
that his character requires any amendment. He does not
always feel at ease in the company of his equals, and still less
in that of his superiors. Unable as he is to lay down his
lofty pretensions, and overawed by such superiority, he has
recourse to humbler company, for which he has little respect,
and in which he finds little pleasure — that of his inferiors or
dependants. If he visits his superiors, it is to show that he

124 ADAM SMITH.

is entitled to live with them more than from any real satisfac
tion he derives from them. He never flatters,, and is often
S3arcely civil to anybody. He seldom stoops to falsehood;
but if he does, it is to lower other people, and to detract from
that superiority which he thinks unjustly attached to them.

The Vain man is different in nearly all these points. He is
not sincerely convinced of the superiority he claims. Se'jing
the respect which is paid to rank and fortune, talents or virtues,
he seeks to usurp such respect ; and by his dress and mode of
living- proclaims a higher rank and fortune than really belong-
to him. He is delighted with viewing himself, not in the
light in which we should view him if we knew all that he
knows, but in that in which he imagines that he has induced
us to view him. Unlike the proud man, he courts the com
pany of his superiors, enjoying the reflected splendour of
associating with them. " lie haunts the courts of kings and
the levees of ministers, .... he is fond of being admitted to
the tables of the great, and still more fond of magnifying to
other people the familiarity with which he is honoured there;
he associates himself as much as he can with fashionable people,
with those who are supposed to direct the public opinion —
with the witty, with the learned, with the popular ; and he
shuns the company of his best friends, whenever the very
uncertain current of public favour happens to run in any respect
against them/' Nevertheless, " vanity is almost always a
sprightly and gay, and very often a good-natured passion/'
Even the falsehoods of the vain man are all innocent false
hoods, meant to raise himself, not to lower other people. He
does not, like the proud man, think his character above im
provement ; but, in his desire of the esteem and admiration
of others, is actuated by a, real motive to noble exertion.
Vanity is frequently only a premature attempt to usurp glory
before it is due; and so "the great secret of education is to

DIFFERENT VIRTUES COMPARED. 125

direct vanity to proper objects/' by discouraging pretensions
to trivial accomplishments, but not those to more important
ones.

Both the proud and the vain man are constantly dissatisfied ;
the one being tormented by what he considers the unjust
superiority of other people, and the other dreading the shame
of the detection of his groundless pretensions. So that here
again the rule holds good; and that degree of self-estimation
which contributes most to the happiness and contentment of
the person himself, is likewise that which most commends
itself to the approbation of the impartial spectator.

It remains, then, to draw some concluding comparisons
between the virtues of Self-command and the three primary
virtues — Prudence, Justice, and Benevolence.

The virtues of self-command are almost entirely recommended
to us by the sense of propriety, by regard to the sentiments
of (he supposed impartial spectator; whilst the virtues of
prudence, justice and benevolence, are chiefly recommended to
us by concern for our own happiness or the happiness of other
people. They are recommended to us primarily by our selfish
or benevolent affections, independently of any regard us to
what are or ought to be the sentiments of other people. Such
regard indeed comes later to enforce their practice ; and no
man ever trod steadily in their paths whose conduct was not
principally directed by a regard to the sentiments of the sup
posed impartial spectator, the great inmate of the breast and
arbiter of our conduct. But regard for the sentiments of
other people constitutes the very foundation of the virtues of
self-restraint, and is the sole principle that can moderate our
passions to that degree where the spectator will give his
approval.

Another difference is, that while regard to the beneficial
effects of prudence, justice, and benevolence recommend them.

126 ADAM SMITH.

originally to the agent and afterwards to the spectator, no such
sense of their utility adds itself to our sense of the propriety
of the virtues of self-command. Their effects may be agree
able or the contrary, without affecting the approbation be
stowed on them. Valour displayed in the cause of justice is
loved and admired, but in the cause of injustice it is still re
garded with some approbation. In that, as in all the other
virtues of self-command, it is the greatness and steadiness of the
exertion, and the strong sense of propriety necessary to main
tain that exertion, which is the source of admiration. The
effects are often, only too little regarded.

CHAPTER X.

ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF HAPPINESS.

ALTHOUGH Adam Smith never distinctly faces the problem of
the supreme end of life, nor asks himself whether virtue and
morality are merely means to the attainment of happiness, or
whether they are ends in themselves irrespective of happiness,
he leaves little doubt that happiness really occupies in his sys
tem very much the same place that it does in the systems ot
professed utilitarians. But he distinguishes between happi
ness as the natural result of virtue and happiness as the end
or purpose of virtue; and, by satisfying- himself that it 7* the
natural result,, he saves himself from considering whether,
if it were not, virtue would remain in and for itself desirable
as an end.

"The happiness of mankind/'' he says, " as well as of all
other rational creatures, seems to have been the original
purpose of the Author of Nature/' no other end appearing
to be worthy of His supreme wisdom and beneficence. The
fact therefore that we most effectually promote the happi
ness of mankind, and so to some extent promote the great
plan of Providence by acting according to the dictates of our
moral faculties, is an additional reason, though not the primary
one, for our doing so; and, conversely, the tendency of an
opposite course of conduct to obstruct the scheme thus ordained
for the happiness of the world, is an additional reason for ab
staining from it. Accordingly, the ultimate sanction of our

128 ADAM SMITH.

compliance with the rules for the promotion of human wel
fare — the ultimate sanction, that is, of virtue — lies in a system
of future rewards and punishments, by which our co-operation
with the divine plan may be enforced.

To this extent, therefore, Adam Smith seems to agree with
the utilitarianism of Paley in making- the happiness of another
world the ultimate motive for virtuous action in this. But
although he thus appeals to religion as enforcing the sense of
duty, he is far from regarding morality as only valuable for
that reason. He protests against the theory that " we ought
not to be grateful from gratitude, we ought not to be chari
table from humanity, we ought not to be public-spirited from
the love of our country, nor generous and just from the
love of mankind, and that our sole motive in performing
these duties should be a sense that God has commanded
them/'

Hence when he speaks of the perfection and happiness of
mankind as "the great end" aimed at by nature, it is clear
that he intends the temporal and general welfare of the world,
and that, though the happiness of another may be a motive to
virtue, it is not so much the end and object of it as happiness
in this. It is in this life, also, that virtue and happiness, vice-
and misery, are closely associated ; and nature may be regarded
as having purposely bestowed on every virtue and vice that
precise reward or punishment which is best fitted either to
encourage the one or to restrain the other. Thus the reward
attached to industry and prudence — namely, success in every
sort of business — is precisely that which is best calculated to
encourage those virtues, just as in the same way and for the
same reason there is attached to the practice of truth, justice,
arid humanity, the confidence and esteem of those we live with.
It requires indeed a very extraordinary concurrence of cir
cumstances to defeat those natural and temporal rewards or

VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS. 129

punishments for virtue or vice, which have been fixed in the
sentiments and opinions of mankind.

Adam Smith does not then regard virtue entire! v as its own
end, irrespective of its recompence in the increase of our hap
piness. Still less, however, does he acknowledge the cardinal
doctrine of the utilitarian school, that virtue derives its whole
and sole merit from its conduciveness to the general welfare of
humanity. He takes up a sort of middle ground between the
Epicurean theory, that virtue is good as a means to happiness
as the end, and the theory of the Stoics, that virtue is an end
in itself independently of happiness. The practice of virtue,
he would have said, is a means to happiness, and has been so
related to it by nature; but it has, nevertheless, prior claims
of its own, quite apart from all reference to its effect upon our
welfare.

There is little attempt on the part of our author at any
scientific analysis of human happiness like that attempted by
Aristotle, and in modern times by Ilutcheson or Bentham.
But if we take Aristotle's classification of the three principal
classes of lives as indicative of the three main ideas of human
happiness current in the world, namely, the life of pleasure,
the life of ambition, and the life of contemplation and know
ledge, there is no doubt under which of these three types
Adam Smith would have sought the nearest approximation to
earthly felicity.

The life of pleasure, or that ideal of life which seeks happiness
in the gratification of sensual enjoyment, he rejects rather by im
plication than otherwise, by not treating it as worthy of discus
sion at all. But his rejection of the life of ambition is of more
interest, both because he constantly recurs to it, and because
it seems to express his own general philosophy of life and to
contain the key to his own personal character.

Happiness, he says, consists in tranquillity and enjoyment.

K

130 ADAM SMITH.

"Without tranquillity there can no be enjoyment, and with
tranquillity there is scarcely anything1 but may prove a source
of pleasure. Hence the Stoics were so far right, in that they
maintained that as between one permanent situation and
another there was but little difference with regard to real
happiness ; and the great source of all human misery is our
constant tendency to overrate the difference between such
situations. Thus avarice overrates the difference between
poverty and wealth, ambition that between public and private
life, vain-glory that between obscurity and renown. (< In ease
of body and peace of mind all the different ranks of life are
nearly on a level, and the beggar who suns himself by the
side of the highway possesses that security which kings are
fighting for."

The story, therefore, of what the favourite of the king of
Epirus said to his master admits of general application to men in
all the situations of human life. When Pyrrhus had recounted
all his intended conquests, Cincas asked him, "What does
your majesty propose to do then?" "I propose," said the
king, " to enjoy myself with rny friends, and endeavour to be
good company over a bottle." And the answer was, " What
hinders your majesty from doing so now ? "

In the highest situation we can fancy, the pleasures from
which we propose to derive our real happiness are generally the
same as those which, in a humbler station, we have at all
times at hand and in our power. The poor man's son, " whom
heaven in its anger has visited with ambition," will go
through, in the first month of his pursuit of the pleasures of
wealth, more fatigue of body and uneasiness of mind than he
could have suffered through the whole of his life for the want
of them. "Examine the records of history, recollect what
has happened in the circle of your own experience, consider with
attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly

CONTENTMENT. 131

unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you have
either read of or heard of or remember, and you will find that
the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen
from their not knowing" when they were well, when it was
proper for them to sit still and be contented. "

Pope taught the same lesson better and more briefly in his
well-known lines : —

Hope springs eternal in the human breast ;
Man never is, but always to be, blest.

And Horace asked Mecsenas the same question long- ago : —

Qui fit, Meccenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem
Sou ratio dederit, seu forsobjecerit ilia
Contentus vivat?

"What can be added/' asks Adam Smith, "to the happi
ness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has
a clear conscience ? " And this condition, he maintains, is the
ordinary condition of the greater part of mankind. Would
you live freely, fearlessly, and independently, there is one sure
'way: "Never enter the place from whence so few have been
able to return, never come within the circle of ambition/' The
ove of public admiration admits of no rival nor successor in
;he breast, and all other pleasures sicken by comparison with
t. It is very true, as was said by llochefoucault, " Love is
commonly succeeded by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever
succeeded by love/'

The following passage is perhaps the best illustration of our
)hilosopher's view of the objects of ambition. " Power and
lobes," he says, "are enormous and operose machines con -
rived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, con-
isting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be
tept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in
pite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into

K 2

132 ADAM SMITH.

pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor, i
They are immense fabrics which it requires the labour of a life i
to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the per
son that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, though
they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can I
protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season.
They keep off the summer shower but not the winter storm,
but leave him as much, and sometimes more, exposed than
before to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow ; to diseases, to danger,
and to death."

The question then arises, Why do we all so generally flee
from poverty and pursue riches ? The answer is (and it is one
of the happiest applications of the author's favourite theory,
though it equally solves the problem of the great absence of
contentment), from regard to the common sentiments of man
kind ; from the greater sympathy or admiration naturally felt
for the rich than for the poor. For being as we are more
disposed to sympathize with joy than with sorrow, we more
naturally enter into the agreeable emotions which accompany
the possessor of riches, whilst we fail of much real fellow-feeling
for the distress and misery of poverty. Sympathy with
poverty is a sympathy of pity; sympathy with wealth a
sympathy of admiration, a sympathy altogether more pleasur
able than the other. The situation of wealth most sets a man
in the view of general sympathy and attention ; and it is thej
consciousness of this sympathetic admiration which riches!
bring with them, not the ease or pleasure they afford, that makes
their possession so ardently desired. It is the opposite con
sciousness which makes all the misery of poverty ; the feeling
of being placed away from the sight or notice of mankind, the
feeling that a man's misery is also disagreeable to others.
Hence it is that for every calamity or injury which affects the
rich, the spectator feels ten times more compassion than when

SYMPATHY WITH THE RICH. 133

tie same things happen to other people ; thus all the innocent
blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation
than the death of Charles I. ; and hence the misfortunes of
king's, like those of lovers, are the only real proper subjects of
tragedy, for in spite of reason and experience our imagination
attaches to these two conditions of life a happiness superior to
that of any other.

But this disposition of mankind to sympathize with all the
passions of the rich and powerful has also its utility as the
source of the distinction of ranks and of the peace and order
of society. It is not the case, as was taught by Epicurus, that
the tendency of riches and power to procure pleasure makes
them desirable, and that the tendency to produce pain is the
great evil of poverty. Riches are desirable for the general
sympathy which goes along with them, and the absence of
such sympathy is the evil of their want. Still less is the
reverence of men for their superiors founded on any selfish
expectations of benefit from their good-will. It arises rather
from a simple admiration of the advantages of their position,
and is primarily a disinterested sentiment. From a natural
sympathetic admiration of their happiness, we desire to serve
them for their own sakes, and require no other recompense
than the vanity and honour of obliging them.

It would equally be a mistake to suppose that the common
deference paid to the rich is founded on any regard for the
general utility of such submission, or for the support it gives
to the maintenance of social order, for even when it may be
most beneficial to oppose them, such opposition is most reluct
antly made. The tendency to reverence them is so natural,
that even when a people are brought to desire the punishment
of their kings, the sorrow felt for the mortification of a
monarch is ever ready to revive former sentiments of loyalty.
The death of Charles I. brought about the Restoration, and

134 ADAM SMITH.

sympathy for James II. when he was caught by the populace;
making his escape on board ship, went very nigh to preventing
the Revolution.

But although this disposition to sympathize with the rich
is conducive to the good order of society, Adam Smith admits}
that it to a certain extent tends to corrupt moral sentiments.
For in equal degrees of merit, the rich and great receive more
honour than the poor and humble; and it' it be " scarce
agreeable to good morals or even to good language, to say |
that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and
virtue, deserve our respect/' it is certain that they almost
always obtain it, and that they are therefore pursued as its
natural objects.

Hence it comes about, that " the external graces, the frivo
lous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing,
called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the
solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a'
philosopher or a legislator." Not only the dress, and lan
guage, and behaviour of the rich and great become favourable,
but their vices and follies too, vain men giving themselves
airs of a fashionable profligacy of which in their hearts they
do not approve and of which perhaps they are not guilty.
For " there are hypocrites of wealth and greatness as well as
of religion and virtue ; and a vain man is apt to pretend to be
what he is not in one way, as a cunning man is in the
other."

CHAPTER XL

ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF FINAL CAUSES IN ETHICS.

IN our sympathy for rank and wealth, as explained in the
last chapter, Adam Smith sees plainly the " benevolent wisdom
of nature/' " Nature/' he says, " has wisely judged that the
distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, would rest
more securely upon the plain and palpable difference of birth
and fortune than upon the invisible and often uncertain differ
ence of wisdom and virtue/' And ia discussing the pervert
ing influence of chance upon our moral sentiments, he finds
the same justification for our admiration of Success. For
equally with our admiration for mere wealth it is necessary for
the stability of society. We are thereby taught to submit
more easily to our superiors, and to regard with reverence, or
a kind of respectful affection, that fortunate violence we can
no longer resist. By this admiration for success, we acquiesce
with less reluctance in the government which an irresistible
force often imposes on us, and submit no less easily to an
Attila or a Tamerlane than to a Crcsar or an Alexander.

To a certain extent this conception of Nature, and recog
nition of design, entered into the general thought of the time.
Even Hume said, "It is wisely ordained by nature that
private connexions should commonly prevail over universal
views and considerations ; otherwise our affections and actions
would be dissipated and lost for want of a proper limited
object/' But Adam Smith more particularly adopted this

136 ADAM SMITH.

view of things, and the assumption of Final Causes as explana
tory of moral phenomena is one of the most striking- features
in his philosophy ; nor does he ever weary of identifying- the
actual facts or results of morality with the actual intention of
nature. It seems as if the shadow of Mandeville had rested
over his pen, and that he often wrote rather as the advocate
ofasytem of nature which he believed to have been falsely
impugned than as merely the analyst of our moral sentiments.
Writing- too as he describes himself to have done, with an im
mense landscape of lawns and woods and mountains before his
window, it is perhaps not surprising-, that his observation of
the physical world should have pleasantly affected his con
templation of the moral one, and blessed him with that opti
mistic and genial view of things, which forms so agreeable a
feature in his Theory.

The extent to which Adam Smith applies his doctrine of
final causes in ethics is so remarkable, that it is worth while
to notice the most striking examples of it.

Our propensity to sympathize with joy being, as has been
said, much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with
sorrow, we more fully sympathize with our friends in their
joys than in their sorrows. It is a fact, that however con
scious we may be of the justice of another's lamentation, and
however much we may reproach ourselves for our want of
sensibility, our sympathy with the afflictions of our friends
generally vanishes when we leave their presence. Such is the
fact, the final cause of which is thus stated : " Nature, it
seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that
they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take
any further share in those of others than was necessary to
prompt us to relieve them/''

Another purpose of nature may be traced in the fact, that
as expressions of kindness and gratitude attract our sympathy,

FINAL CAUSE OF RESENTMENT. 137

those of hatred and resentment repel it. The hoarse discord
ant voice of anger inspires us naturally with fear and aversion,
and the symptoms of the disagreeable affections never excite,
but often disturb, our sympathy. For, man having- been
formed for society, " it was, it seems, the intention of nature
that those rougher and more unamiable emotions which drive
men from one another should be less easily and more rarely
communicated."

Our natural tendency to sympathize with the resentment of
another has also its purpose. For instance, in the case of a
murder, we feel for the murdered man the same resentment
which he would feel, were he conscious himself, and into
which we so far enter as to carry it out as his avengers ; and
thus, with regard to the most dreadful of all crimes, has
nature, antecedent to all reflections on the utility of punish
ment, stamped indelibly on the human heart an immediate
and instinctive approbation of the sacred and necessary law of
retaliation.

Resentment within moderation is defensible as one of the
original passions of our nature, and is the counterpart of
gratitude. Nature " does not seem to have dealt so unkindly
with us as to have endowed us with any principle which is
wholly and in every respect evil." The very existence of
society depending as it does on the punishment of unprovoked
malice, man has not been left to his own reason, to discover
that the punishment of bad actions is the proper means to pre
serve society, but he has been endowed with an immediate and
instinctive approbation of that very application of punishment
which is so necessary. In this case, as in so many others, the
economy of nature is the same, in endowing mankind with an
instinctive desire for the means necessary for the attainment
of one of her favourite ends. As the self-preservation of the
individual is an end^ for which man has not been left to the

138 ADAM SMITH.

exercise of his own reason to find out the means, but has been
impelled to the means themselves, namely, food and drink., by
the immediate instincts of hunger and thirst, so the preser
vation of society is an end, to the means to which man is
directly impelled by an instinctive desire for the punishment
of bad actions.

The same explanation is then applied to the fact, that bene
ficence, or the doing good to others, as less necessary to society
than justice, or the not doing evil to others, is not enforced
by equally strong natural sanctions. Society is conceivable
without the practice of beneficence, but not without that of
justice. Without justice, society, " the peculiar and darling
care of nature," must in a moment crumble to atoms. It is
the main pillar which upholds the whole edifice, whilst bene
ficence is only the ornament which embellishes it. For this
reason stronger motives were necessary to enforce justice than
to enforce beneficence. Therefore nature " implanted in the
human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of
merited punishment which attend its violation, as the great
safeguard of the association of mankind, to protect the weak,
to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty."

In the influence of fortune over our moral sentiments, in
our disposition to attach less praise where by accident a good
intention has stopped short of real action, to feel less resent
ment where a criminal design has stopped short of fulfilment,
and to feel a stronger sense of the merit or demerit of actions
when they chance to occasion extraordinary but unintended
pleasure or pain, Adam Smith again traces the working of a
final cause, and sees in this irregularity of our sentiments an
intention on the part of Nature to promote the happiness of
our species. For were resentment as vividly kindled by a
mere design to injure as by an actual injury, were bad wishes
held equivalent to bad conduct, mere thoughts and feelings

LIMITS OF FORTITUDE. 139

would become the objects o£ punishment, and a state of uni
versal suspicion would allow of no security even for the most
innocent. If, on the other hand, the mere wish to serve
another were regarded as equivalent to the actual service, an
indolent benevolence might take the place of active well
doing, to the detriment of those ends which are the purpose of
man's existence. In the same way, man is taught, by that
mere animal resentment which arises naturally against every
injury, howsoever accidental, to respect the well-being of his
fellows, and, by a fallacious sense of guilt, to dread injuring
them by accident only less than he dreads to do so by
design.

Let us take next the manifestation of fortitude under mis
fortune. A man's self approbation under such circumstances
is exactly proportioned to the degree of self-command necessary
to obtain it ; or, in other words, to the degree in which he can
assume with regard to himself the feelings of the impartial and
indifferent spectator. Thus a man who speaks and acts the
moment after his leg has been shot off by a cannon-ball with
his usual coolness, feels, as a reflex of the applause of the
indifferent spectator, an amount of self-approbation exactly
proportioned to the self-command he exhibits. And thus
Nature exactly apportions her reward to the virtue of a man's
behaviour. But it is nevertheless not fitting that the reward
which Nature thus bestows on firmness of conduct should
entirely compensate him for the sufferings which her laws
inflict on him. For, if it did so, a man could have no motive
from self-interest for avoiding accidents which cannot but
diminish his utility both to himself and society. Nature
therefore, " from her parental care of both, meant that he
should anxiously avoid all such accidents.'"

This is a good illustration of the difficulties of this kind of
reasoning in general. It will be easily seen that it raises

140 ADAM SMITH.

more doubts than it solves. If there really is this parental
care on the part of Nature for mankind, why are her measures
incomplete? If the reward she bestows on fortitude did
entirely compensate for the misfortunes it contends with,
would not all the evil of them be destroyed? And might not
Nature, with her parental care, have made laws which could j
not be violated, rather than make laws whose observance
needs the protection of misfortune? It does not solve the
problem of moral evil, to show here and there beneficial results;
it only makes the difficulty the greater. AY here there is so
much good, why should there be any evil ?

To this question Adam Smith attempts no answer, or thinks
the problem solved by the discovery of some good side to
everything evil. His whole system is based on the theory
that the works of Nature " seem all intended to promote hap
piness and guard against misery/'' Against those " whining
and melancholy moralists," who reproach us for being happy
in the midst of all the misery of the world, he replies, not only
that if we take the whole world on an average, there will be
for every man in pain or misery twenty in prosperity and joy,
and that we have no more reason to weep with the one than
to rejoice with the twenty, but also that, if we were so con
stituted as to feel distress for the evil we do not see, it could
serve no other purpose than to increase misery twofold. This
is true enough ; but it is another thing to argue from the fact
to the purpose, and to say that it has been wisely ordained by
Nature that we should not feel interested in the fortune of
those whom we can neither serve nor hurt. For it is to men
whose sympathies have been wider than the average that all
the diminution of the world's misery has been due; and it is
fair, if we must argue about Nature at all, to say that had she
endowed men generally with wider sympathies than she has
done, the misery in the world might have been still more

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 141

reduced than it has been, and the sum-total of happiness pro
portionately greater.

Similar thoughts arise with respect to the following passage,
wherein Adam Smith contends, in words that seem a fore
taste of the Wealth of Nations, that Nature leads us inten
tionally, by an illusion of the imagination, to the pursuit of
riches. " It is well that Nature imposes upon us in this
manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in con
tinual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first
prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to
found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve
all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human
life ; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe,
have turned the rude forests of nature into agreeable and
fertile plains, and made the trackless and barren ocean a new
fund of subsistence, and the great high road of communication

to the different nations of the earth It is to no

purpose that the proud and unfeeling landlord views his
extensive fields, and, without a thought for the wants of his
brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest

that grows upon them The capacity of his stomach

bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires, and will
receive no more than that of the meanest peasant.1 The rest
he is obliged to distribute among those who prepare, in the
nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of,
among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be
consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the
different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the
economy of greatness ; all of whom thus derive from his
luxury and caprice that share of the necessaries of life which
they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his
justice. The produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly
Cf. Ilor. Sat. i. 45-6.

I42 ADAM SMITH.

that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining
The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and
agreeable. They consume little more than the poor ; and in
spite of their natural selfishness aud rapacity,, though they
mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which
they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they
employ be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable
desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their
improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make
nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which
would have been made had the earth been divided into equal

portions among all its inhabitants When Providence

divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither
forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out
in the partition. These last, too, enjoy their share of all that
it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human
life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem
so much above them."

Adam Smith applies the same argument to the condition
of children. Nature, he maintains, has for the wisest pur
poses rendered parental tenderness in all or most men much
stronger than filial affection. For the continuance of the
species depends upon the former, not upon the latter ; and
whilst the existence and preservation of a child depends alto
gether on the care of its parents, the existence of the parents
is quite independent of the child. In the Decalogue, though
we are commanded to honour our fathers and mothers, there
is no mention of love for our children, Nature having suffi
ciently provided for that. " In the eye of Nature, it would
seem, a child is a more important object than an old man,
and excites a much more lively as well as a more universal
sympathy." Thus, again, with regard to the excessive
credulity of children, and their disposition to lelieve whatever
they are told, " nature seems to have judged it necessary for

LOVE OF CO UNTR Y. 143

their preservation that they should, for some time at least, put
implicit confidence in those to whom the care of their child
hood, and of the earliest and most necessary parts of their
education, is entrusted."

The love of our country, again, is by nature endeared to
us, not only by all our selfish, but by all our private bene
volent affections; for in its welfare is comprehended our own,
a,nd that of all our friends and relations. We do not therefore
love our country merely as a part of the great society of man
kind, but for its own sake, and independently of other con
siderations. "That wisdom which contrived the system of
human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature,
seems to have judged that the interest of the great society of
mankind would be best promoted by directing the principal
attention of each individual to that particular portion of it
which was most within the sphere both of his abilities and of
his understanding/'

To sum up our author's application of his theory to his
general scheme of ethics. Man, having been intended by
nature for society, was fitted by her for that situation.
Hence she endowed him with an original desire to please, and
an original aversion to offend, his brethren. By teaching
him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their un
favourable regards, she laid, in the reward of their approba
tion, or the punishment of their disapproval, the foundation
of human ethics. In the respect which she has taught him
to feel for their judgment and sentiments, she has raised in
his mind a sense of Duty, and girt her laws for his conduct
with the sanction of obligatory morality. And so happily
has she adjusted the sentiments of approbation and disappro
bation to the advantage both of the individual and of society,
that it is precisely those qualities which are useful o** advan
tageous to the individual himself, or to others, wfiicn are
always accounted virtuous or the contrary.

144 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER XII.

ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF UTILITY.

THE influence which Hume's philosophy exercised over that of
Adam Smith has already been noticed with respect to the
fundamental facts of sympathy, and the part played by them
in the formation of our moral sentiments. But it is chiefly
with respect to the position of Utility in moral philosophy
that Adam Smith's theory is affected by Hume's celebrated
Inquiry concerning tlie Principles of Morals. Not only are
all his speculations coloured by considerations of utility, but
he devotes a special division of his book to the "Effect of
Utility upon the Sentiment of Approbation/'

In Adam Smith's theory, the tendency of any affection to
produce beneficial or hurtful results is only one part of the
phenomenon of moral approbation, constituting our sense of
merit or demerit, while the other part consists in our per
ception of the propriety or impropriety of the affection to the
object which excites it. And as the sense of the merit or
demerit of any action or conduct is much stronger than our
sense of the propriety or impropriety of affections ; stimu
lating us, not merely to a passive feeling of approbation or
the contrary, but to a desire to confer actual re ward or punish
ment on the agent, it is evident that the greater part cf
moral approbation consists in the perception of utility of
tendency.

So far, Adam Smith agrees with the utilitarian theory

RELATION OF UTILITY TO VIRTUE. 145

but he refuses altogether to assent to the doctrine, that the
perception of the utility of virtue is its primary recommenda
tion, or that a sense of the evil results of vice is the origin of
our hatred against it. It is true that the tendency of virtue
to promote, and of vice to disturb the order of society, is to
reflect a very great beauty on the one, and a very great
deformity on the other. But both the beauty and the de
formity are additional to an already existent beauty and
deformity, and a beauty and deformity inherent in the objects
themselves. Human society may be compared to "an im
mense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements
produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in any other
(beautiful and noble machine that was the production of
human art, whatever tended to render its movements more
smooth and easy, would derive a beauty from this effect ; and
on the contrary, whatever tended to obstruct them, would
displease upon that account; so virtue, which is, as it were,
he fine polish to the wheels of society, necessarily pleases ;
while vice, like the vile rust, which makes them jar and grate
upon one another, is as necessarily offensive."

According to Hume, the whole approbation of virtue may
)e resolved into the perception of beauty which results from
he appearance of its utility, no qualities of the mind being
iver approved of as virtuous, or disapproved of as vicious, but
5ueh as are either useful or agreeable to the person himself, or
toothers, or else have a contrary tendency. Adam Smith
fully admits the fact, that the characters of men may be fitted
rither to promote or to disturb the happiness both of the
ndividual himself and of the society to which he belongs, and
hat there is a certain analogy between our approbation of a
iseful machine and a useful course of conduct. The character of
>radence, equity, activity, and resolution, holds out the pro-
peut of prosperity and satisfaction both to the person himself

L

I46 ADAM SMITH.

and to every one connected with him ; whilst the rash, inso
lent, slothful, or effeminate character, portends ruin to the
individual, and misfortune to all who have anything to do
with him. In the former character there is all the beauty
which can belong- to the most perfect machine ever invented
for promoting the most agreeable purpose; in the other there
is all the deformity of an awkward and clumsy contrivance.

But this perception of beauty in virtue, or of deformity in
vice, though it enhances and enlivens our feelings with regard
to both, is not the first or principal source of our approbation
of the one, or of our dislike for the other.

" For, in the first place, it seems impossible that the appro
bation of virtue should be a sentiment of the same kind with
that by which we approve of a convenient and well-contrived
building; or, that we should have no other reason for
praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of
drawers."

"And, secondly, it will be found, upon examination, thatj
the usefulness of any disposition of mind is seldom the firstj
ground of our approbation ; and that the sentiment of appro-j
bation always involves in it a sense of propriety quite distinct!
from the perception of utility."

For instance, superior reason and understanding is a quality
most useful to ourselves, as enabling us to discern the remotej
consequences of our actions, and to foresee the advantage 01
disadvantage likely to result from them ; bufc it is a quality!
originally approved of as just and right, and accurate, ant]
not merely as useful or advantageous. Self-command, alsoi
is a virtue we quite as much approve of under the aspect oj
propriety, as under that of utility. It is the correspondencii
of the agent's sentiments with our own, that is the source o:
our approbation of them ; and it is only because his pleasurj
a week or a year hence is just as interesting or indifferent t<

APPROBATION OF PROPRIETY. 147

us, as spectators, as the pleasure that tempts him at this mo
ment, that we approve of his sacrifice of present to future
enjoyment. We approve of his acting- as if the remote object
interested him as much as the future one, because then his
affections correspond exactly with our own, and we recognize
the perfect propriety of his conduct..

With respect again to such qualities which are most useful

to others— as humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit—

| the esteem and approbation paid to them depends in the same

i way on the concord between the affections of the agent and

those of the spectator. The propriety of an act of generosity,

as when a man sacrifices some great interest of his own to

that of a friend or a superior, or prefers some other person to

"limself, lies not in the consideration of the good effect of such

m action on society at large, but in the agreement of the

ndividual's point of view with that of the impartial spectator.

Thus, if a man gives up his own claims to an office which had

)een a great object of his ambition, because he imagines that

mother man's services are better entitled to it, or if he ex-

loscs his life to defend that of a friend which he considers of

more importance, it is because he considers the point of view

)f disinterested persons, who would prefer that other man or

riend to himself, that his conduct seems clothed with that

ippearance of propriety which constitutes the approbation

bestowed on it. It is the accommodation of the feelings of the

ndividual to those of the impartial bystander, which is the

)urce of the admiration bestowed on a soldier, who throws

iway his life to defend that of his officer, and who deserves

ad wins applause, not from any feeling of concern for his

)fficer, but from the adjustment of his own feelings to those

f every one else who consider his life as nothing when

ompared with that of his superior.

So with regard to public spirit, the first source of out
L 2

,43 ADAM SMITH.

admiration of it is not founded so much on a sense of its
utility as upon the great and exalted propriety of the actions
to which it prompts. Take, for instance, the case of Brutus,
leading his own sons to capital punishment for their con
spiracy against the rising liherty of Rome. Naturally be
ought to have felt much more for the death of his own sons
than for all that Rome could have suffered from the want of
the example. But he viewed them, not as a father, but as a
Roman citizen ; that is to say, he entered so thoroughly into
the sentiments of the impartial spectator, or of the ordinary
Roman citizen, that even his own sons weighed as nothing in
the balance with the smallest interest of Rome. The propriety
of the action, or the perfect sympathy of feeling between the
agent and the spectator, is the cause of our admiration of it.
Its utility certainly bestows upon .it a new beauty, and so
still further recommends it to our approbation. But such
beauty "is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and specu
lation, and is by no means the quality which first recom
mends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of
mankind."

Adam Smith also differs from Hume no less in his theory
of the cause of the beauty which results from a perception of
utility than in his theory of the place assignable to utility in
the principle of moral approbation. According to Hume, the
utility of any object is a source of pleasure from its suggestion
of the conveniency it is intended to promote, from its fitness
to produce the end intended by it. Adam Smith maintains,
rather by way of supplement than of contradiction, that the
fitness of a thing to produce its end, or the happy adjustment
of means to the attainment of any convenience or pleasure is
often more regarded than the end or convenience itself, and
he gives several instances to illustrate the operation of tbifl
principle.

ENDS AND MEANS. 149

For instance, a man coming into his room and finding- all
the chairs in the middle, will perhaps be angry with his ser
vant and take the trouble to place them all with their backs
to the wall, for the sake of the greater convenience of having
the floor free and disengaged. But it is more the arrange
ment than the convenience which he really cares for, since to
attain the convenience he puts himself to more trouble than
he could have suffered from the want of it, seeing that nothing
was easier for him than to have sat down at once on one of
the chairs, which is probably all he does when his labour is
over.

The same principle applies to the pursuit of riches, under
circumstances which imply much more trouble and vexation
than the possession of them can ever obviate. The poor man's
son, cursed with ambition, who admires the convenience of a,
palace to live in, of horses to carry him, and of servants to
wait on him, sacrifices a real tranquillity for a certain artificial
and elegant repose he may never reach, to find at last that
" wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility,
no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of
mind, than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys/'' Indeed,
there is no other real difference between them than that the
conveniences of the one are somewhat more observable than
those of the other. The palaces, gardens, or equipage of the
great are objects of which the conveniency strikes every one ;
their utility is obvious; and we readily enjoy by sympathy
the satisfaction they are fitted to afford. But the conveniency
of a toothpick or of a nail-cutter, being less obvious, it is less
easy to enter into the satisfaction of their possessor. They
are less reasonable objects of vanity than wealth and great
ness, and less effectually gratify man's love of distinction. To
a man who had to live alone on a desolate island, it might be
a matter of doubt, " whether a palace, or a collection of

150 ADAM SMITH.

such small conveniences as are commonly contained in a
tweezer-case, would contribute most to his happiness and
enjoyment."

The fact that the rich and the great are so much the object
of admiration is due not so much to any superior ease or
pleasure they are supposed to enjoy, as to the numberless
artificial and elegant contrivances they possess for promoting
such ease and pleasure. The spectator does not imagine
" that they are really happier than other people, but he
imagines that they possess more means of happiness. And it
is the ingenious and artful adjustment of those means to the
end for which they were intended, that is the principal source
of his admiration."

Again, the sole use and end of all constitutions of govern
ment is to promote the happiness -of those who live under
them. But from this love of art and contrivance, we often
come to value the means more than the end, and to be eager
to promote the happiness of our fellows, less from any sympathy
with their sufferings or enjoyment than from a wish to perfect
and improve a beautiful system. Men of the greatest public
spirit have often been men of the smallest humanity, like
Peter the Great ; and if a public-spirited man encourages the
mending of roads, it is not commonly from a fellow-feeling
with carriers and waggoners so much as from a regard to the
general beauty of order.

This admits however of a practical application, for if you
wish to implant public virtue in a man devoid of it, you will
tell him in vain of the superior advantages of a well-governed
state, of the better homes, the better clothing, or the better
food. But if you describe the great system of government
which procures these advantages, explaining the connexions
and subordinations of their several parts, and their general
subserviency to the happiness of their society ; if you show

ORIGIN OF PUBLIC SPIRIT. 15i

the possibility of introducing- such a system into his own
country, or of removing the obstructions to it, and setting- the
wheels of the machine of government to move with more
harmony and smoothness, you will scarce fail to raise in him
the desire to help to remove the obstructions, and to put in
motion so beautiful and orderly a machine. It is less the
results of a political system that can move him than the
contemplation of an ingenious adjustment of means to ends.

IS2 ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RELATION OF ADAM SMITHES THEORY TO OTHER SYSTEMS
OF MORALITY.

THE longest and perhaps the most interesting division of
Adam Smith's treatise is that in which he reviews the relation
of his own theory to that of other systems of moral philo
sophy. For like all writers on the same difficult subject, he
finds but a very partial attainment of truth in any system
outside his own, and claims for the latter a comprehensive
survey of all the phenomena, which his predecessors had only
grasped singly and in detail. Every system of morality,
every theory of the origin of our moral sentiments, has been
derived, he thinks, from some one or other of the principles
expounded by himself. And " as they are all of them in this
respect founded upon natural principles, they are all of them
in some measure in the right. But as many of them are
derived from a partial and imperfect view of nature, there are
many of them too in some respects in the wrong."

I. Thus with regard, first, to the nature of Virtue, all the
different theories, whether in ancient or in modern times, may,
Adam Smith thinks, be reduced to three, according as they
make it to consist in Propriety, Prudence, or Benevolence:
or in other words, according as they place it in the proper
government and direction of all our affections equally, whether
selfish or social; in the judicious pursuit of our own private
interest and happiness by the right direction of the selfish

THREE THEORIES OF VIRTUE'. 153

affections alone ; or in the disinterested pursuit of the happiness
of others under the sole direction of the benevolent affections.
Adam Smith's own theory differed from all these, in that
it took account of all these three different aspects of virtue
together, and gave no exclusive preference to any one of them.
With Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, who made virtue to
j consist in propriety of conduct, or in the suitableness of the
motive of action to the object which excites it, or with such
modern systems as those of Lord Shaftesbury or Clarke, who
defined virtue as maintaining1 a proper balance of the affections
and passions, or as acting1 according to the relations or to the
truth of things, he so far agreed as to regard such propriety as
constituting one element in our approbation of virtue ; but
he maintained that this propriety, though an essential in
gredient in every virtuous action, was not always the only
one. Propriety commanded approbation, and impropriety dis
approbation, but there were other qualities which commanded
a higher degree of esteem or blame, and seemed to call for
reward or punishment respectively. Such were beneficent or
vicious actions, in which something WAS recognized besides
mere propriety or impropriety, and raised feelings stronger
than those of mere approval or dislike, and that was their
tendency to produce good or bad results. Moreover, none of
the systems which placed virtue in a propriety of affection
gave any measure by which that propriety might be ascer
tained, nor could such a measure be found anywhere but
in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed
spectator.

Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, only regarded, in their
account of virtue, that part of it which consists in propriety
of conduct. According to Plato, the soul was composed of
three different faculties — reason, passion, and appetite; and
that higher form of justice which constitutes perfect virtue

154 ADAM SMITH.

was nothing- more than that state of mind in which every
faculty confined itself to its proper sphere, without encroaching
upon that of any other, and performed its office with precisely
that degree of strength which belonged to it. In other words,
this justice, the last and greatest of the cardinal virtues, and
that which comprehended all the others, meant that exact and
perfect propriety of conduct, the nature of which has been
already discussed. Nearly the same account o£ virtue was
given by Aristotle, who defined it as the habit of moderation
in accordance with right reason ; by which he meant a right
affection of mind towards particular objects, as in being
neither too much nor too little affected by objects of fear.
And the Stoics so far coincided with Plato and Aristotle as to
place perfect virtue, or rectitude of conduct, in a proper choice
or rejection of different objects and circumstances according
as they were by nature rendered more or less the objects of
our desire or aversion. In this propriety of the mind towards
external things consisted the life according to nature, or in
other words, the virtuous conduct of life.

No less incomplete than systems which placed virtue in
propriety alone were those systems which placed it in pru
dence, or in a prudential regard for mere personal welfare.
Such were the systems of the Cyrenaics and Epicureans in
ancient times, and of writers like Hobbes and Mandeville in
modern times. According to Epicurus, the goodness or bad
ness of anything was ultimately referable to its tendency to
produce bodily pleasure or pain. Thus power and riches were
desirable as good things, from their tendency to procure plea
sure, whilst the evil of the contrary conditions lay in their
close connexion with pain. Honour and reputation were of
value, because the esteem of others was of so much impor
tance to procure us pleasure and to defend us from pain.
And in the same way the several virtues were not desirable

EPICUREAN THEORY OF VIRTUE. 155

simply for themselves, but only by reason of their intimate
connexion with our greatest well-being-, ease of body and
tranquillity of mind. Thus temperance was nothing but
prudence with regard to pleasure, the sacrifice of a present
enjoyment to obtain a greater one or to avoid a greater pain.
Courage was nothing but prudence with regard to danger or
labour, not good in itself, but only as repellent of some greater
evil. And justice too was nothing but prudence with regard
to our neighbours, a means calculated to procure their esteem,
and to avoid the fear that would flow from their resentment. '
Adam Smith's first reply to this theory is, that whatever
may be the tendency of the several virtues or vices, the sen
timents which they excite in others are the objects of a much
more passionate desire or aversion than all their other con
sequences; that to be amiable and the proper object of esteem
is of more value to us than all the ease and security which
love or esteem can procure us : and that to be odious, or the
proper object of contempt, or indignation is more dreadful
I than all we can suffer in our body from hatred, contempt, or
indignation ; and that therefore our desire of the one character
and our aversion to the other cannot arise from regard to the
I effects which either of them is likely to produce on the body.
Secondly, there is one aspect of nature from which the
Epicurean system derives its plausibility. " By the wise con
trivance of the Author of nature, virtue is upon all ordinary
occasions, even with regard to this life, real wisdom, and the
'surest and readiest means of obtaining both safety and advan
tage." The success or failure of our undertakings must very
much depend on the good or bad opinion entertained of us,
and on the general disposition of others to assist or oppose us.
'Hence the tendency of virtue to promote our interest and of
vice to obstruct it, undoubtedly stamps an additional beauty
and propriety upon the one, and a fresh deformity and im-

156 ADAM SMITH.

propriety upon the other. And thus temperance, magnani
mity, justice and beneficence, come to be approved of, no!
only under their proper characters, but under the additional
character of the most real prudence and the highest wisdom :
whilst the contrary vices come to be disapproved of, not only
under their proper characters, but under the additional cha
racter of the most short-sighted folly and weakness. So thai
the conduciveness of virtue to happiness is only secondary
and so to speak accidental to its character ; it is not its first
recommendation to our pursuit of it.

But if the theories which resolved virtue into propriety 01
prudence were thus one-sided, the remaining theory — that
best represented by Hutcheson — was no less so, which made
virtue to consist solely in benevolence, or in a disinterested
regard to the good of others or the public generally. So fail ,
indeed did Hutcheson carry this theory, that he even rejected
as a selfish motive to virtuous action the pleasure of self-
approbation, "the comfortable applause of our own con
sciences," holding that it diminished the merit of anyj
benevolent action. The 'principle of self-love could never be!
virtuous in any degree, and it was merely innocent, not good,|
when it led a man to act from a reasonable regard to hisj
own happiness.

Several reasons seem, indeed, at first sight, to justify thej
identification of virtue with benevolence. It is the most!
agreeable of all the affections. It is recommended to us by a
double sympathy, and we feel it to be the proper object of
gratitude and reward. Even its weakness or its excess is not!
very disagreeable to us, as is the excess of every other
passion. And as it throws a peculiar charm over every action
which proceeds from it, so the want of it adds a peculiar de
formity to actions indicative of disregard to the happiness ofj
others. Our sense too of the merit of any action is just soj

HUTCHESON'S THEORY OF VIRTUE. 157

far increased or diminished according as we find that bene
volence was or was not the motive of the action. If, for
instance, an act supposed to proceed from gratitude is found
to proceed from the hope of some fresh favour, all its merit is
gone; and so if an action attributed to a selfish motive is
found to have been due to a benevolent one, pur sense of its
merit is all the more enhanced. And lastly, in all dis
putes concerning the rectitude of conduct, the public good,
or the tendency of actions to promote the general welfare, has
always been the standard of reference, that being accounted
morally good which tends to promote happiness, and that bad
or wrong which tends to the contrary result.

These reasons led Hutcheson to the conclusion, that an act
was meritorious in proportion to the benevolence evidenced by
it j hence that the virtue of an action was proportioned to the
extent of happiness it tended to promote, so that the least
virtuous affection was that which aimed no further 'than at
the happiness of an individual, as a son, a brother, or a
friend, whilst the most virtuous was one which embraced as
its object the happiness of all intelligent beings. The per
fection of virtue consisted therefore in directing all our actions
to promote the greatest possible good, and in subjecting- all
inferior affections to the desire of the general happiness of
mankind.

The first defect which Adam Smith finds in this theory
of his former teacher is, that it fails to explain sufficiently our
approbation of the inferior virtues of prudence, temperance,
constancy, and firmness. Just as other theories erred in re
garding solely the propriety or impropriety of conduct, and
in disregarding its good or bad tendency, so this system erred
by disregarding altogether the suitableness of affections to
their exciting cause, and attending only their beneficient or
hurtful e fleets.

158 ADAM S MIT PL

In the second place, a selfish motive is not always a badl
one. Self-love may often be a virtuous motive to action.
Every man is by nature first and principally recommended to
his own care ; and because he is fitter to take care of himself
than of any other person, it is right that he should do so.
Regard to our own private happiness and interest may con
stitute very laudable motives of action. The habits of
economy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of
thought, though cultivated from self-interested motives, are
nevertheless praiseworthy qualities, and deserve the esteem
and approbation of everybody. On the other hand, careless
ness and want of economy are universally disapproved of,
not as proceeding from a want of benevolence, but from a
want of a proper attention to the objects of self-interest.

And as to the standard of right and wrong being frequently
the tendency of conduct to the welfare or disorder of society,
it does not follow that a regard to society should be the sola
virtuous motive of action, but only that in any competition
it ought to cast the balance against all other motives.

It was, again, a general defect of each of the three theories
which defined virtue as propriety, prudence, or benevolence, that
they tended to give a bias to the mind to some principles of i
action beyond the proportion that is due to them. Thus the
ancient systems, which placed virtue in propriety, insisted
little on the soft and gentle virtues, rather regarding them as
weaknesses to be expunged from the breast, while they laid
chief stress on the graver virtues of self-command, fortitude,
and courage. And the benevolent system, while encouraging
the milder virtues in the highest degree, went so far as to
denj the name of virtue to the more respectable qualities of
the mind, calling them merely " moral abilities," unworthy of j
the approbation bestowed on real virtue. Nevertheless the j
general tendency of each of these systems was to encourage :

THE S YSTEM OF MANDE VILLE. 1 59

the best and most laudable habits of the mind, and it were
well for society if mankind regulated their conduct by the
precepts of any one of them.

This general good tendency of these three theories leads our
author to classify by itself, and to treat in a distinct chapter,
si system which, he says, destroys altogether the distinction
between virtue and vice, and of which the tendency conse
quently is wholly pernicious, and that is the system, which he
designates as the Licentious System, expounded by Mande-
ville in the Table of the Bees.

Adam Smith considers that this system, ee which once made
so much noise in the world . . . could never have imposed
upon so great a number of persons, nor have occasioned so
general alarm among those who are the friends of better prin
ciples, had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth/'

Mandeville's famous definition of the moral virtues as " the
political offspring which flattery begot upon pride/' was
based on the assumption that morality was not natural to
man, but was the invention of wise men, who, by giving the
title of noble to persons capable of self-denial and of pre
ferring the public interest to their own, won mankind gene
rally, through this subtle flattery, to what they chose to
denominate virtue. Hence whatever men did from a sense of
propriety, or from a regard to what was praiseworthy, they
really did from a love of praise, from pride or vanity. This
love of praise was one of the strongest of man's selfish affections,
and the foundation of the love of honour. In conduct appa
rently the most disinterested, this selfish motive was present.
If a man sacrificed his own interest to that of his fellows, he
knew that his conduct would be agreeable to their self-love,
and that they would not fail to express their satisfaction by
bestowing on himself the most extravagant praises. The
pleasure he would derive from this source counterbalanced the

1 66 ADAM SMITH.

interest he abandoned to procure it. Hence all public spirit,
or preference of public to private interest was a mere cheat|
and imposition on mankind.

The fallacy of this system lies, according to Adam Smith,
in a sophistical use of the word vanity — in its application to a
remote affinity that prevails between two really very different
things. To desire praise for qualities which are not praise
worthy in any degree, or for qualities praiseworthy in
themselves but unpossessed by the individual concerned,
is vanity proper ; but this frivolous desire for praise at any
price is very different from the desire of rendering our
selves the proper objects of honour and esteem, or of acquiring
honour and esteem by really deserving them. The affinity
between these very different desires, of which Mandeville
made so much use, lay in the fact that vanity as well as
the love of true glory aims at acquiring esteem and approba
tion; but the difference consists in this, that the desire of the
one is unjust and ridiculous, while that of the other is just
and reasonable.

There is also an affinity between the love of virtue and the
love of true glory, which gives a certain speciousness to
Mandeville's theory. For there is a close connexion between
the desire of becoming what is honourable and estimable,
which is the love of virtue, and the desire of actual honour
and esteem, which is the love of true glory. They both have —
and herein lies their superficial resemblance to vanity — some
reference to the sentiments of others. Even in the love of
virtue there is still some reference, if not to what is, yet to
what in reason and propriety ought to be, the opinion of
others. The man of the greatest magnanimity, who desires
virtue for its own sake, and is most indifferent about the
actual opinions of mankind, is still delighted with the thoughts
of what those opinions ought to be, and with the conscious-

FALLACIES OF MANDEVILLE. 161

ness that though he may neither be honoured nor applauded,
he is yet the proper object of honour and applause.

Another feature of Mandeville's system was to deny the
existence of any self-denial or disinterestedness in human
virtue of any kind. Thus wherever temperance fell short
of the most ascetic abstinence, he treated it as gross
luxury; and all our pretensions to self-denial were based,
not on the conquest, but on the concealed indulgence, of our
passions.

Here the fallacy lay in representing every passion as wholly
vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction.
There are some of our passions which have no other names
than those which mark the disagreeable and offensive degree,
they being more apt to attract notice in this degree than in
any other. It is not therefore to demolish the reality of such
a virtue as temperance, to show that the same indulgence of
pleasure which when unrestrained is regarded as blameable, is
also present when the passion is restrained. The virtue in
such cases consists, not in an entire insensibility to the
objects of passion, but in the restraint of our natural desire of
them.

The same fallacy underlies the famous paradox that " private
vices are public benefits," and that it is not the good, but the
evil qualities of men, which lead to greatness. By using the
word luxury, as it was used in the fashionable asceticism of
his time, as in every respect evil, it was easy for Mandeville
to show that from this evil all trade and wealth and prosperity
flowed, and that without it no society could flourish. " If/'
Adam Smith replies, "the love of magnificence, a taste for
the elegant arts and improvements of human life; for
whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or equipage; for
architecture, statuary, painting, and music, is to be regarded
as luxury, sensuality, and ostentation, even in those whoso

M

162 ADAM SMITH.

situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence
of those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality, and
ostentation are public benefits/7 If everything is to be
reprobated as luxury which exceeds what is absolutely neces
sary for the support of human nature, " there is vice even in
the use of a clean shirt, or of a convenient habitation/'
Hence the whole point of the paradox rests on a loose and
unscientific use of the word luxury.

II. To turn now to the other great question of ethics, to
the nature of moral approbation, and its source in the
mind.

As the different theories of the nature of virtue may all be
reduced to three, so all the different theories concerning the
origin of moral approbation may be reduced to a similar
number. Self-love, reason, and sentiment, are the three
different sources which have been assigned for the principle of
moral approbation. According to some, we approve or dis
approve of our own actions and of those of others from self-
love only, or from some view of their tendency to our own
happiness or disadvantage; according to others, we distin
guish what is fit or unfit, both in actions and affections, by
reason, or the same faculty by which we distinguish truth
from falsehood ; and according to yet a third school, the dis
tinction is altogether the effect of immediate sentiment and
feeling, arising from the pleasure or disgust with which
certain actions or affections inspire us.

According to Adam Smith, there was again some truth in
each of these theories, but they each fell short of that com
pleteness of explanation which was the merit of his own
peculiar system.

The self-love theory, best expounded by Hobbes and Man-
deville, reduced the principle of approbation to a remote
perception of the tendency of conduct upon personal well-

SELFISH THEOR Y OF MORALS. 163

being- ; and the merit of virtue or demerit of vice consisted in
their respectively serving- to support or disturb society, the
preservation of winch was so necessary to the security of
individual existence.

To this our author objects, that this perception of the good
effects of virtue enhances indeed our appreciation of it, but
that it does not cause it. When the innumerable advan
tages of a cultivated and social life over a savage and solitary
one are described, and the necessity of virtue pointed out for
the maintenance of the one, and the tendency of vice to
reproduce the other, the reader is charmed with the noveltv
of the observation ; "he sees plainly a new beauty in virtue
and a new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice
of before; and is commonly so delighted with the discovery,
that he seldom takes time to reflect that this political view,
having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot possiblv
be the ground of that approbation and disapprobation with
whick he has always been accustomed to consider tho.-e
lifferent qualities/'

In the application of the self-love theory to our praise or
blame of actions or conduct in past time — as of the virtue
of Cato or of the villany of Catiline — there was only an
imaginary, not an actual, reference to self; and in praising or
blaming in such cases we thought of what might have hap
pened to us, had we lived in those times, or of what might
still happen to us if in our own times we met with
such characters. The idea which the authors of this theory
"were groping about,, but which they were never able to
unfold distinctly, was that indirect sympathy which we feel
with the gratitude or resentment of those who received the
benefit or suffered the damage resulting from such opposite
characters."

Is the principle of sympathy then a selfish principle? Is
M 2

164 ADAM SMITH.

sympathy with the sorrow or indignation of another an em
tion founded on self-love, because it arises from bringing- t
case of another home to oneself, and then conceiving of on<
own feelings in the same situation ?

The answer to this question is important, and is best giv

in Adam Smith's own words, as he himself admits that t

whole account of human nature which deduces all sen

ments and affections from self-love, seems to have aris

" from some confused misapprehension of the system of sy:

pathy." His answer, which is as follows, will perhaps not

thought completely satisfactory : " Though sympathy is v(

properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situatk

with the person principally concerned, yet this imagins

change is not supposed to happen to me in my own pen

and character, but in that of the person with whom I sym]

thize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only s

in order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I

person of such a character and profession, should suffer if 1 1

a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die ; but I consi

what I should suffer if I was really you ; and I not o

change circumstances with you, but I change persons \

characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your accoi;

and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in

least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passi

which does not arise even from the imagination of anyth

that has befallen, or that relates to myself in my own prc

person or character, but is entirely occupied about what rel;

to you ?" Yet if a reference to self be the fundamental fac

sympathy, it would seem that this is equivalent to makin

reference to self the foundation of all moral sentiment; as

Hobbes' explanation of pity, that it is grief for the cnlan

of another, arising from the imagination of the like calar

befalling oneself. And it is remarkable that the same pass

THE RA TIONA L SYS TEM. 165

of Polybius which has been thought to be an anticipation of the
theory of sympathy, should have also been quoted by Hume, as
showing- that Polybius referred all our sentiments of virtue to
a selfish origin.

Next to the theory which founded moral approbation in self-
love, comes that which founded it in reason. This theory
originated in the opposition to the doctrine of Hobbes, who
made the laws of the civil magistrate the sole ultimate stan
dards of just and unjust, of right and wrong — implying the
consequence, that there was no natural distinction between
right and wrong, but that they were the arbitrary creations
of law. Cudworth taught, that, antecedent to all law or
positive institution, there was a faculty of the mind which
distinguished moral qualities in actions and affections, and
that this faculty was reason ; the same faculty that distin
guished truth from falsehood, thus also distinguishing right
from wrong. It became therefore the popular doctrine, when
the controversy with llobbes was at its height, that the
essence of viitue and vice did not consist in the conformity
or nonconformity of actions with the law of a superior,
but in their conformity or nonconformity with reason; and
reason thus came to be considered as the original source of all
moral approbation.

In this theory also Adam Smith recognizes some elements
of truth. " That virtue consists in conformity to reason is
true in some respects ; and this faculty may very justly be
considered as, in some sense, the source and principle of moral
approbation and disapprobation, and of all solid judgments
concerning right and wrong." Induction too is one of the
operations of reason, and it is by induction and experience
that the general rules of morality are formed. They are esta
blished inductively, from the observation in a number of par
ticular cases of what is pleasing or displeasing to our moral

1 66 ADAM SMITH.

faculties. So it is by reason that we discover those general
rules of justice by which we ought to regulate our actions;
and by the same faculty we form those more indeterminate
ideas of what is prudent, decent, generous, or noble, according
to which we endeavour to model our conduct. And as it is by
these general rules, so formed by an induction of reason, that
we most regulate our moral judgments, which would be very
variable if they depended merely upon feeling and sentiment,
virtue may so far be said to consist in conformity to reason,
and so far may reason be considered as the source of moral
approbation.

This admission, however, is a very different thing from the
supposition that our first perceptions of right and wrong can
be derived from reason. These first perceptions, upon which
from a number of particular cases the general rules of morality
are founded, mustbethe object of an immediate sense and feeling,
not of reason. " It is by finding in a vast variety of instances
that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a certain manner,
and that another as constantly displeases the mind, that we
form the general rules of morality. But reason cannot render
any particular object either agreeable or disagreeable to the
mind for its own sake. Reason may show that this object is
the means of obtaining some other which is naturally either
pleasing or displeasing, and in this manner may render it
either agreeable er disagreeable for the sake of something else;
but nothing can be agreeable or disagreeable for its own sake,
which is not rendered such by immediate sense and feeling.
If virtue, therefore, in every particular instance, necessarily
pleases for its own sake, and if vice as certainly displeases the
mind, it cannot be reason, but immediate sense and feeling
which in this manner reconciles us to the one and alienates us
from the other."

There remained therefore the theories which made sentiment

fHEORY OF THE MORAL SENSE. 167

or feeling- the original source of moral approbation ; and the
best exposition of this theory was that given by Hutcheson
in his doctrine of the Moral Sense.

If the principle of approbation was founded neither on self-
love nor on reason, there must be some faculty of a peculiar
kind, with which the human mind was endowed to produce
the effect -in question. Such a faculty was the moral sense
— a particular power of perception exerted by the mind
at the view of certain actions and affections, by which
those that affected the mind agreeably were immediately
stamped with the characters of right, laudable, and virtuous,
while those that affected it otherwise were immediately
stamped with the characters of wrong, blameable, and
vicious.

This moral sense was somewhat analogous to our external
senses; for as external bodies, by affecting our senses in a
certain way, seemed to possess the different qualities of sound,
taste, smell, or colour, so the various affections of the mind,
by touching the moral sense in a certain way, appeared to
possess the different qualities of right or wrong, of virtue or
of vice. The moral sense too was a reflex internal sense, as
distinct from a direct internal sense ; that is to say, as the
perception of beauty was a reflex sense presupposing the
direct sense which perceived objects and colours, so the per
ception of the beauty or deformity of passions and affections
was a reflex sense presupposing the perception by a direct
internal sense of the several passions and affections them
selves. Other reflex senses of the same kind wore, a public
sense, by which we sympathize with the happiness or misery
of our fellows; a sense of shame and honour; and a sense
of ridicule.

One consequence of this analogy between the moral sense
and the external senses, and a consequence drawn by Hutche-

i63 ADAM SMITH.

son himself, was that our moral faculties themselves could
not be called virtuous or vicious, morally good or morally
evil ; for the qualities of any object of sense cannot be
applied to the sense itself. An object may have the quality
of black or white, but the sense of seeing- is not black nor
white; and in the same way, though an action or sentiment
may appear good or bad, the qualities of goodness or badness
cannot attach to the moral faculty which perceives such quali
ties in nature.

Adam Smith objects to this, that we do recognize some
thing morally good in correct moral sentiments, and that we
do consider a man worthy of moral approbation whose praise
and blame are always accurately suited to the value or worth-
lessness of conduct. If we saw a man " shouting with admi-

O

ration and applause at a barbarous and unmerited execution,
which some insolent tyrant had ordered," we should be surely
justified in calling such behaviour vicious, and morally evil in
the highest degree, though it expressed nothing but a depraved
state of the moral faculties. There is no perversion of sen
timent or affection we should be more averse to enter into,
or reject with greater disapprobation, than one of this kind;
and so far from regarding such a state of mind as merely
strange, and not at all vicious or evil, we should rather re
gard it " as the very last and most dreadful stage of moral
depravity/'

TsTor are the difficulties less if we found the principle of
moral approbation, not upon any sense analogous to the
external senses, but upon some peculiar sentiment, intended
for such a purpose ; if we say, for instance, that as resentment
may be called a sense of injuries, or gratitude a sense of
benefits, so approbation and disapprobation, as feelings or
emotions which arise in the mind on the view of different

DIFFERENT MORAL EMOTIONS. 169

actions and characters, may be called a sense of right and
wrong-, or a moral sense.

For if approbation and disapprobation were, like gratitude
or resentment, an emotion of a particular kind, distinct from
every other, whatever variations either of them might undergo
we should expect them to retain clearly marked and distin
guishable general features ; just as in all the variations of the
emotion of anger, it is easy to distinguish the same general
features. With regard to approbation it is otherwise, for
there are no common features running through all manifesta
tions of moral approval, or the contrary. " The approbation
with which we view a tender, delicate, and humane sentiment,
is quite different from that with which we are struck by one
that appears great, daring, and magnanimous. Our appro
bation of both may, upon different occasions, be perfect and
entire; but we are softened by the one and we are elevated
by the other, and there is no sort of resemblance between the
emotions wJiich they excite in us." And, in the same way,
our horror for cruelty has no resemblance to our contempt for
meanness of spirit.

By his own theory Adam Smith thinks that this dif
ference in the character of approbation is more easily explained.
It is because the emotions of the person whom we approve
of are different when they are humane and delicate from
what they are when they are great and daring, and because
our approbation arises from sympathy with these different
emotions, that our feeling of approbation with regard to the
one sentiment is so different from what it is with regard to
the other.

Moreover, not only are the different passions and affections
of the human mind approved or disapproved as morally good
or evil, but the approbation or disapprobation itself is marked

i;0 ADAM SMITH.

with the same moral attributes v The moral sense theory
cannot account for this fact ; and the only explanation pos
sible is, that, in this instance at least, the coincidence or
opposition of sentiments between the person judging and the
person judged constitutes moral approbation or the contrary.
When the approbation with which our neighbour regards the
conduct of another person coincides with our own, we approve
of his approbation as in some measure morally good ; and so,
on the contrary, when his sentiments differ from ou.r own, we
disapprove of them as morally wrong.

If a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every other, were really
the source of the principle of approbation, it is strange that
such a sentiment " should hitherto have been so little taken
notice of as not to ha,ve got a name in any language. The
word ' moral sense' is of very late formation, and cannot yet

be considered as making part of the English tongue

The word 'conscience' does not immediately denote any moral
faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience sup
poses, indeed, the existence of some such faculty, and properly
signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably to its
directions. When love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resent
ment, with so many other passions which are all supposed to
be the subjects of this principle, have made themselves con
siderable enough to get them titles to know them by, is ifc
not surprising that the sovereign of them all should hitherto
have been so little heeded that— a few philosophers excepted—
nobody has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name
upon it?"

In opposition then to the theory which derives moral appro
bation from a peculiar sentiment, Adam Smith reduces it
himself to four sources, in some respects different from one
another. ''First, we sympathize with the motives of the
a°-cntj secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who

SOURCES OF MORAL APPROBATION. i;r

receive the benefit of his actions; thirdly, we observe that his
conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which
those two sympathies generally act; and last of all, when we
consider such actions as making a part of a system of
behaviour which tends to promote the happiness either of
the individual or of the society, they appear to derive a beauty
from this utility not unlike that which we ascribe to any
well-contrived machine. "

ADAM SMITH.

CHAPTER XIV.

REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL CRITICISMS OF ADAM SMITHES
THEORY.

THE result of the preceding chapter, in which the relation of
Adam Smith's theory to other ethical theories has been
defined, is that it is a theory in which all that is true in the
" selfish^ system of Hobbes or Mandeville, in the " benevo
lent" system of Hutcheson, or in the "utilitarian" system of
Hume, is adopted and made use of, to form a system quite
distinct from any one of them. It seeks to bridge over their
differences, by avoiding the one-sidedness of their several
principles, and taking a wider view of the facts of humar
nature. It is therefore, properly speaking, an Eclectic theory,
if by eclecticism be understood, not a mere commixture of
different systems, but a discriminate selection of the elements
of truth to be found in them severally.

The ethical writers who most influenced Adam Smith were
undoubtedly Hume and Hutcheson, in the way of agreement
and difference that has been already indicated. Dugald
Stewart has also drawn attention to his obligations to Butler.1
It would be interesting to know whether he ever read Hart
ley's Observations on Man, a work which, published in 1749 —
that is, some ten years before his own — would have
materially assisted his argument. For Adam Smith's account
of the growth of conscience — of a sense of duty, is in reality
1 Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 412.

HARTLEY. 173

closely connected with the theory which explains its origin by
the working of the laws of association. From our expe
rience of the constant association between the acts of others
and pleasurable or painful feelings of our own,, according as
we sympathize or not with them, comes the desire of ourselves
causing' in others similar pleasurable, and avoiding similar
painful, emotions — or in other words, that desire of praise and
aversion to blame which, refined and purified by reference to
an imaginary and ideal spectator of our conduct, grows to be
a conscientious and disinterested love of virtue and detestation
of vice. The rules of moral conduct, formed as they are by
generalization from particular judgments of the sympathetic
instinct, or from a number of particular associations of plea
surable and painful feelings with particular acts, are them
selves directly associated with that love of praise or praise-
worthiness which originates in our longing for the same
sympathy from other men with regard to ourselves that we
know to be pleasurable in the converse relation. The word
"association" is never once used by Adam Smith, but it is
implied at every step of his theory, and forms really as funda
mental a feature in his reasoning as it does in that of the
philosopher who was the first to investigate its laws in their
application to the facts of morality. This is, perhaps, in
ternal evidence enough that Adam Smith never saw Hartley's
work.2

But the writer who, perhaps, as much as any other contri
buted to the formation of Adam Smith's ideas, seems to have

2 Yet in his Essay on the External Senses, of which the date is un
certain, and in his History of Astronomy, which he certainly wrote
before 1758, mention is made by Adam Smith of the association of ideas.
It is probable, however, that he was acquainted with the doctrine, not
from Hartley, but from Hume's statement of it in the Inquiry concern
ing Human Understanding.

174 ADAM SMITH.

been Pope, who in his Essay on Man anticipated many of
the leading- thoughts in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The
points of resemblance between the poet and the philosopher
are frequent and obvious. There is in both the same constant
appeal to nature, and to the wisdom displayed in her laws ;
the same reference to self-love as the basis of the social virtues
and benevolence ; the same identification of virtue with hap
piness ; and the same depreciation of greatness and ambition
as conducive to human felicity.

Adam Smith's simple theory of happiness, for instance,
reads like a commentary on the text supplied by Pope in the
lines, —

" Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words — Health, Peace, and Competence."

Said in prose, the same teaching- is conveyed by the philo
sopher : <( What can be added to the happiness of the man
who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear con
science ? "

Or, to take another instance. Adam Smith's account of
the order in which individuals are recommended by nature to
our care is precisely the same as that given by Pope. Says
the former : "Every man is first and principally recommended
to his own care," and, after himself, his friends, his country,
or mankind become by decrees the object of his sympathies
So said Pope before him : —

" God loves from whole to parts : but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ;
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds
Another still, and still another spreads ;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace ;
His country next; and next all human race."

RELATIVITY OF MORALITY. 175

To turn now from the theory itself to the criticisms upon
it : it may perhaps be said, that if the importance of an ethical
theory in the history of moral philosophy may be measured
by the amount of criticism expended upon it, Adam Smith's
Theory of Moral Sentiments must take its place immediately
after Hume's Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals.
The shorter observations on it by Lord Kames and Sir James
Mackintosh bear witness to the great interest that attached
to it, no less than the longer criticisms of Dr. Brown, Dug-aid
Stewart, or Jouffroy, the French moral philosopher. The
various objections raised by these writers, all of whom have
approached it with that impartial acuteness so characteristic of
philosophers in regard to theories not their own, will best
serve to illustrate what have been considered the weak points
in the general theory proposed by Adam Smith. But in
following the main current of such criticism, it is only fair
that we should try in some measure to hold the scales between
the critics and their author, and to weigh the value of the
arguments that have been actually advanced on the one side
and that seem capable of being advanced on the other.

First of all, it is said that the resolution of all moral appro
bation into sympathy really makes morality dependent on the
mental constitution of each individual, and so sets up a
variable standard, at the mercy of personal influences and
local custom. Adam Smith says expressly indeed, that there
is no other measure of moral conduct than the sympathetic
approbation of each individual. " Every faculty in one man
is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in
another ;" and as he judges of other men's power of sight or
hearing by reference to his own, so he judges of their love,
resentment, or other moral states, by reference to his own
consciousness of those several affections.

Is not this to destroy the fixed character of morality, and to

ADAM SMITH.

deprive it — as Protagoras, the Greek sophist, deprived it long
ago in his similar teaching that man was the measure of all
things — of its most ennobling qualities, its eternity and immu
tability ? Is it not to reduce the rules of morality to the level
merely of the rules of etiquette ? Is it not to make our
standard of conduct dependent merely on the ideas and pas
sions of those we happen to live with ? Does it not justify
Brown's chief objection to the system of sympathy, that it
fixes morality "on a basis not sufficiently firm" ?

Adam Smith's answer to this might have been, that the con
sideration of the basis of morality lay beyond the scope of his
inquiry, and that, if he explained the principle of moral appro
bation by the laws of sympathy he appealed to, the facts com
manded acceptance, whatever the consequences might be. He
would have reasserted confidently, that no case of approbation
occurred without a tacit reference to the sympathy of the ap
prover ; and that the feeling, of approbation or the contrary
always varied exactly with the degree of sympathy or anti
pathy felt for the agent. Therefore, if as a matter of fact
every case of such approbation implied a reference to the feel
ings of the individual person approving, then those feelings
were the source of moral judgment, however variable or rela
tive morality might thus be made to appear.

He would also have denied that the consequence of his
theory did really in any way weaken the basis of morality, or
deprive it of its obligatory power over our conduct. The
assertion of such a consequence has been perhaps the most
persistent objection raised against his system. Sir James
Mackintosh, for instance, makes the criticism, that " the sym
pathies have nothing more of an imperative character than
any other emotions. They attract or repel, like other feelings,
according to their intensity. If, then, the sympathies continue
in mature rninds to constitute the whole of conscience, it be-

JOUFFROY'S CRITICISM. i;;

comes utterly impossible to explain the character of command
and supremacy, which is attested by the unanimous voice of
mankind to belong to that faculty, and to form its essential
distinction. " 3 But as, of all Adam Smith's critics, Jouffroy
has been the one who has urged this argument with the
greatest force, it will be best to follow his reasoning,, before
considering the force of the objection.

According to him, no more moral authority can attach to
the instinct of sympathy than can attach to any other instinct
of our nature. The desire of sympathy,, being simply an in
stinct, can have no claim to prevail over the impulses of our
other instincts, whenever they happen to come into conflict,
than such as is founded on its possible greater strength. For
instance,, the instinct of self-love often comes into conflict
with, and often prevails over, the instinct of sympathy, the
motive of self-interest well-understood being thus superior to
our sympathetic impulses both in fact and by right. If then
there is a superiority in the instinct of sympathy above all
our other instincts, it must come from a judgment of reason,
decisive of its title; but since such decision of reason implies
a reference to some rule other and higher than instinct, our
motive in preferring the inspirations of instinctive sympathy
to all other impulses must be derived from this higher motive,
or, in other words, from reason and not from instinct. Hence,
since the sympathetic instinct bears no signs of an authority
superior to that of other instincts, there is no real authority in
the motive which, according to Adam Smith, impels us to
right conduct. Instead of proving that the instinct of sym
pathy is the true moral motive, Adam Smith describes truly
and beautifully the characteristics of this moral motive, and

3 Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 210; compare also Dugal.1
Stewart's Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 331.

N

i;8 ADAM SMITH.

then gratuitously attributes them to the instinct of sympathy.
But he fails to apply to rules of conduct founded upon such
an instinct, that which is the special characteristic of the
moral motive, namely, that it alone is obligatory — alone pre
sents us, as an end to be pursued, an end which ought to be
pursued, as distinct from other ends suggested by other
motives, which may be pursued or not as we please. " Among
all possible motives, the moral motive alone appears to us as
one that ought to govern our conduct."

Jouffroy applies the same reasoning to Adam Smith's ex
planation of our moral ideas, those, for example, of Right and
Duty. For if the motive of sympathy bears with it no autho
rity, it is evident that it cannot explain ideas both of which
imply and involve a motive of obligation. If duty is obedience
to rules of conduct that have been produced by sympathy,
and these rules are only generalizations of particular judg
ments of instinctive sympathy,, it is plain that the authority
of these rules can be no greater than that of the judgments
which originally gave rise to them. If it is equally a duty to
obey the instinct as to obey the rules it gives rise to, it is
superfluous to explain duty as a sense of the authority of
these rules, seeing that it is already involved in the process of
their formation. And if again it can never be a duty to obey
the instinct, because neither its direction nor the desire of
sympathy which impels us to follow it can ever be obligatory,
it can none the more be a duty to obey the rules which are
founded upon the instinct. The authority of the moral rules
or principles of conduct stands or falls with the authority of
the instinct ; for if the latter can enforce obligation to a cer
tain degree, it can enforce it in all degrees; and if it cannot
enforce it to this degree, then it cannot in any. It is
therefore Jouffroy's conclusion, that " there is not, in the
system of Smith, any such thing as a moral law; and it is

MORAL OBLIGATION. 179

incompetent to explain our ideas of duty, of right, and of all
other such ideas as imply the fact of obligation/'4

The question then is, How far is such criticism well-founded ?
How far is it relevant to the subject-matter of Adam Smith's
treatise ?

Adam Smith might have replied to Joufifroy's objections by
asking whether, patting aside the question of the soundness
of his theory of the origin of moral approbation, any theory
that accounted for the approbation did not ijyso facto account
for the obligation. He might have said that, if he showed
why one course of conduct was regarded as good and another
as bad, he implicitly showed why one course was felt to be
right and the other to be wrong — why it was felt that one
course ought to be followed and the other course ought to be
avoided. For the feeling of authority and obligation is in
volved in the fact of approbation. As it has been well put
by Brown, " The very conceptions of the rectitude, the obliga
tion, the approvableness (of certain actions) are involved in
the feeling of the approbation itself. It is impossible for us

to have the feeling, and not to have these To know

that we should feel ourselves unworthy of self-esteem, and objects
rather of self-abhorrence, if we did not act in a certain manner,
is to feel the moral obligation to act in a certain manner, as it
is to feel the moral rectitude of the action itself. We are so
constituted that it is impossible for us, in certain circum
stances, not to have this feeling ; and having the feeling, we
must have the notions of virtue, obligation, merit.5 r'

Moreover, Adam Smith expressly pointed out that the
difference between moral approbation and approbation of all
other kinds lay in the impossibility of our being as indifferent
about conduct as about other things, because conduct, either

4 Introduction to Ethics ; translation, vol. ii., p. 147.
6 Lectures on Ethics, p. 13.
N -2

iSo ADAM SMITH.

directly or by our imagination, affected ourselves ; so that the
additional strength thus conferred on the feeling1 of moral
approbation was quite sufficient to account for that feeling of
the imperative and obligatory force which inculcates obedience
to moral rules. If there is no authority in an instinct per se,
it may nevertheless be so constituted and may so operate that
the strictest sense of duty may ultimately grow from it and
upon it. The obligation is none the less real because it can
be accounted for ; nor are the claims of duty any the less sub
stantial because they are capable of being traced to so humble
a beginning as an instinctive desire for the sympathy of our
fellows.

It may therefore be said, on behalf of Adam Smith, that it
is not to weaken the basis of morality, nor the authority of
conscience, to trace either of them to their sources in senti
ments of sympathy, originally influenced by pleasure and pain.
The obligatory nature of moral rules remains a fact, which no
theory of their origin can alter or modify; just as benevolent
affections remain facts of our moral being, irrespective of their
possible superstructure on instincts of self-interest. If con
science is explicable as a kind of generalization or summary
of moral sympathies, formed by the observation of the distri
bution of praise or blame in a number of particular instances
and by personal experience of many years, its influence need
be none the less great nor its control any the less authoritative
than if it were proved to demonstration to be a primary prin
ciple of our moral consciousness.

It is also necessary to remember that Adam Smith carefully
restricted the feeling of obligation to the one single virtue of
justice, and throughout -his treatise avoided generally tha use
of words which, like "right" and " wrong/' seem to suggest the
idea of obligation. By the use of the words " proper" and
'' improper," or " meritorious," as applied to sentiments and

A UTHORIT Y OF MORAL FA CUL TIES. 1 8 1

conduct, he seems to have wished to convey the idea that he
did regard morality as relative to time, place, and circumstance,
as to a certain extent due to custom and convention, and not
as absolute, eternal, or immutable. Properly speaking, justice,
or the abstinence from injury to others, was, he held, the only
virtue which, as men had a right to exact it from us, it was
our duty to practise towards them. The consciousness that
force might be employed to make us act according to the rules
of justice, but not according to the rules of any other virtues,
such as friendship, charity, or generosity, was the source of
the stricter obligation felt by us in reference to the virtue of
justice. " We feel ourselves/' he said, " to be in a peculiar
manner tied, bound, and obliged to the observation of jus
tice," whilst the practice of the other virtues " seems to be
left in some measure to our own choice." " In the practice
of the other virtues, our conduct should rather be directed
by a certain kind of propriety, by a certain taste for a
particular tenor of conduct, than by any regard to a precise
rule or maxim ;" but it is otherwise with regard to justice, all
the miles of which are precise, definite, and certain, and alone
admit of no exception.

As to the authority of our moral faculties, of our perception,
howsoever derived, of different qualities in conduct, it is, in
Adam Smith's system, an ultimate fact, as indisputable as the
authority of other faculties over their respective objects ; for
example, as the authority of the eye about beauty of colour, or
as that of the ear about harmony of sounds. " Our moral
faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety/' approve
or disapprove of actions instantaneously, and this approval or
judgment is their peculiar function. They judge of the other
faculties and principles of our nature; how far, for example,
love or resentment ought either to be indulged or restrained,
and when the various senses ought to be gratified. Hence

182 ADAM SMITH.

they cannot be said to be on a level with our other natural
faculties and appetites, and endowed with no more right to
restrain the latter than the latter are to restrain them. There
can be no more appeal from them about their objects than
there is from the eye, or the ear, or the taste with regard to
the objects of their several jurisdictions. According as any
thing is agreeable or not to them, is it fit, right, and proper,
or unfit, wrong, and improper. " The sentiments which they
approve of are graceful and becoming ; the contrary, ungraceful
and unbecoming'. The very words, right, wrong, fit, proper,
graceful, or becoming, mean only what pleases or displeases
those faculties."

Hence the question of the authority of our moral faculties
is as futile as the question of the authority of the special senses
over their several objects. For " they carry along with them
the most evident badges of this authority, which denote that
they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiter of all
our actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appe
tites, and to judge how far either of them was either to be
indulged or restrained." That is to say, it is impossible for
our moral faculties to approve of one course of conduct and to
disapprove of another, and at the same time to feel that there
is no authority in the sentiment which passes judgment either
way.

Perhaps the part of Adam Smith's theory which has given
least satisfaction is his account of the ethical standard, or
measure of moral actions. This, it will be remembered, is
none other than the sympathetic emotion of the impartial
spectator — which seems again to resolve itself into the voice of
public opinion. It will be of interest to follow some of the
criticism that has been devoted to this point, most of which
turns on the meaning of the word impartial.

If impartiality means, argues Jouffroy, as alone it can mean

THE ABSTRACT SPECTATOR. 183

impartiality of judgment, the impartiality of a spectator must
be the impartiality of his reason, which rises superior to the
suggestions of his instincts or passions ; but if so, a moral
judgment no longer arises from a mere instinct of sympathy,
but from an operation of reason. If instinct is adopted as our
rule of moral conduct, there must be some higher rule by
which we make choice of some impulses against the influence
of others ; and the impartiality requisite in sympathy is itself
a recognition of the insufficiency of instinctive feelings to
supply moral rules.

It may be said, in reply to this, that by impartiality Adam
Smith meant neither an impartiality of reason nor of instinct,
but simply the indifference or coolness of a mind that feels not
the full strength of the original passion, which it shares, and
which it shares in a due and just degree precisely because it
feels it not directly but by reflection. If the resentment of
A. can only fairly be estimated by the power of B. to sympa
thize with it, the latter is only impartial in so far as his feeling
of resentment is reflected and not original. His feeling of
approbation or disapprobation of A.'s resentment need be none
the less a feeling, none the less instinctive and emotional,
because he is exempt from the vividness of the passion as it
affects his friend. It is simply that exemption, Adam Smith
would say, which enables him to judge; and whether his
judgment is for that reason to be considered final and right or
not, it is, as a matter of fact, the only way in which a moral
judgment is possible at all.

The next objection of Jouffroy, that the sympathy of an
impartial spectator affords only variable rules of morality,
Adam Smith would have met by the answer, that the rules of
morality are to a certain extent variable, and dependent on
custom. Jouffroy supposes himself placed as an entire stranger
in the presence of a quantity of persons of different ages;,

ADAM SMITH.

sexes, and professions, and then asks, how should he judge of
the propriety of any emotion on liis part by reference to the
very different sympathies which such an emotion would
arouse. Lively sensibilities would partake of his emotions
vividly, cold ones but feebly. The sympathies of the men
would be different from those of the women, those of the
young- from those of the old, those of the merchant from those
of the soldier, and so forth. To this it might fairly be replied,
that as a matter of fact there are very few emotions with
which different people do not sympathize in very different
degrees, and of which accordingly they do not entertain very
different feelings of moral approbation or the reverse. Each
man's sympathy is in fact his only measure of the propriety
of other men's sentiments, and for that reason it is that there
is scarcely any single moral action of which any two men
adopt the same moral sentiment. That morality is relative
and not absolute, Adam Smith nowhere denies. Nevertheless,
he would say, there is sufficient uniformity in the laws of
sympathy, directed and controlled as they are by custom, to
make the rule of general sympathy or of the abstract spectator
a sufficiently permanent standard of conduct.

It is moreover a fact, which no one has explained better
than Adam Smith, in his account of the growth in every indi
vidual of the virtue of self-command, that though our moral
estimate of our own conduct begins by reference to the sym
pathy of particular individuals, our parents, schoolfellows, or
others, we yet end by judging ourselves, not by reference to
any one in particular so much as from an abstract idea of
general approbation or the contrary, derived from our experi
ence of particular judgments in the course of our life. This
is all that is meant by " the abstract spectator," reference to
\vhora is simply the same as reference to the supposed verdict
of public opinion. If we have done anything wrong, told a

THE STANDARD OF MORALITY. 185

lie, for example, the self-condemnation we pass on ourselves is
the condemnation of public opinion, with which we identify
ourselves by long force of habit ; and had we never heard a lie
condemned,, nor known it punished, we should feel no self-con
demnation whatever in telling- one. We condemn it, not by
reference, as Jouffroy puts it, to the feelings of John or Peter,
but by reference to the feelings of the general world, which we
know to be made up of people like John and Peter. There is
nothing inconsistent therefore in the notion of an abstract
spectator, " who has neither the prejudices of the one nor the
weaknesses of the other, and who sees correctly and soundly
precisely because he is abstract." The identification of this
abstract spectator with conscience, is so far from being, as
Jouffroy says it is, a departure from, and an abandonment of
the rule of sympathy, that it is its logical and most satisfac
tory development. There is no reason to repeat the process
by which the perception of particular approving sympathies
passes into identification with the highest rules of morality
and the most sacred dictates of religion. By reference to his
own experience, every reader may easily test for himself the
truth or falsity of Adam Smith's argument upon this
subject.

It is said with truth, that to make the judgment of an im
partial or abstract spectator the standard of morality is to
make no security against fallibility of judgment; and that
such a judgment is only efficacious where there is tolerable
unanimity, but that it fails in the face of possible differences
of opinion. But this objection is equally true of any ethical
standard ever yet propounded in the world, whether self-
interest, the greatest possible happiness, the will of the sove
reign, the fitness of things, or any other principle is suggested
as the ultimate test of rectitude of conduct. This part of the
theory may claim, therefore, not only to be as good as any

1 86 ADAM SMITH.

other theory, but to be in strict keeping with the vast amount
of variable moral sentiment which actually exists in the
world.

In further disproof of Adam Smith's theory, JoufTroy
appeals to consciousness. We are not conscious, he says, in
judging of the acts of others, that we measure them by refer
ence to our ability to sympathize with them. So far are we
from doing- this, that we consider it our first duty to stifle our
emotions of sympathy or antipathy, in order to arrive at an
impartial judgment. As regards our own emotions, nlso,
there is no such recourse to the sympathies of others ; and even
when there is, we often prefer our own judgment after all to
that which we know to be the judgment of others. Conscious-
ness therefore attests the falsity of the theory that we seek
in our own sensibility the judgments we pass upon others, or
that we seek in the opinions of others the principle of estima-,
tion for our own sentiments and conduct.

The truth of the fact stated in this objection may evidently
be conceded, and yet the validity of the main theory be left
untouched. The latter is a theory mainly of the origin of
moral feelings, and of their growth ; and emotions of sym
pathy which originally give rise to moral feelings may well
disappear and be absent when long habit has once fixed them
in the mind. It is quite conceivable, for instance, that if
we originally derived our moral notions of our own conduct
from constant observation of the conduct of others, we might
yet come to judge ourselves by a standard apparently un
connected with any reference to other people, and yet really
made up of a number of forgotten judgments passed by us
upon them. Children are always taught to judge them
selves by appeals to the sentiments of their parents or other
relations about their conduct; and though the standard of
morality, thus external at first, may in time come to bo in-

BROWN'S CRITICISM. 18;

ternal, and even to be more potent than when it was ex
ternal, it none the more follows that recourse to such sym
pathy never took place because it ceases to take place or to
be noticed when the moral sentiments are fully formed.
In learning to read and write, an exactly analogous process
may be traced. The letters which so painfully affected our con
sciousness at first, when we had to make constant reference
to the alphabet, cease at last to affect it at all ; yet the pro
cess of spelling- really goes on in the mind in every word we
read or write, however unconscious w^e may be of its operation.
Habit and experience, says Adam Smith, teach us so easily
and so readily to view our own interests and those of others
from the standpoint of a third person, that " we are scarce
sensible" of such a process at all.

Then again, the question has been raised, Is it true that
symp.-ithy with an agent or with the object of his action is a
necessary antecedent to all moral approbation or the con
trary ?

It is objected, for instance, by Brown, that sympathy is not
a perpetual accompaniment of our observation of all the
actions that take place in life, and that many cases occur in
which we feel approval or disapproval, in which consequently
moral estimates are made, and yet without any preceding-
sympathy or antipathy. " In the number of petty affairs
which are hourly before our eyes, what sympathy is felt," he
asks, " either with those who are actively or with those who
are passively concerned, when the agent himself performs his
little offices with emotions as slight as those which the
objects of his actions reciprocally feel? Yet in these cases we
are as capable of judging, and approve or disapprove — not with
tlie same liveliness of emotion indeed, but with as accurate
estimation of merit or demerit — as when we consider the most
heroic sacrifices which the virtuous can make, or the

1 88 ADAM SMITH.

atrocious crimes of which the sordid and the cruel can he
guilty."" There must he the same sympathy in the case of
the humblest action we denominate right as in that of then
most glorious action ; yet such actions often excite no sym
pathy whatever. Unless therefore the common transactions
of life are to be excluded altogether from morality, from the
field of right and wrong, it is impossible to ascribe such moral
qualities to them, if sympathy is the source of our approval of
them.

To this objection, founded on the non-universality of sym
pathy, and on its not being coextensive with feelings of moral
approbation, Adam Smith might have replied, that there was I
no action, howsoever humble, denominated right, in which
there was not or had not been to start with a reference to
sentiments of sympathy. It is impossible to conceive any
case i'n the most trivial department of life in which approba
tion on the ground of goodness may not be explained by
reference to such feelings. Brown himself lays indeed less
stress on this argument than on another which has, it must
be confessed, much greater force.

That is, that the theory of sympathy assumes as already
existing those moral feelings which it professes to explain.
If, he says, no moral sentiments preceded a feeling of sym
pathy, the latter could no more produce them than a mirror,
without pre-existence and pre-supposition of light, could
reflect the beautiful colours of a landscape.

If we had no principle of moral approbation previous to
sympathy, the most perfect sympathy or accordance of passions
would prove nothing more than a mere agreement of feeling;
nor should we be aware of anything more than in any case of
coincidence of feeling with regard to mere objects of taste,
such as a picture or an air of music. It is not because we
sympathize with the sentiments of an agent that we account

5 YMPA TH V A ND A PPR OB A TION. i S9

tliem moral, but it is because his moral sentiments agree with
our own that we sympathize with them. The morality is
there before the sympathy. If we regard sentiments which
differ from our own, not merely as unlike our own, but 'as
morally improper and wrong, we must first have conceived
our own to be morally proper and right, by which we measure
those of others. Without this previous belief in the moral
propriety of our own sentiments, w^e could never judq-e of the
propriety or impropriety of others, nor regard them at morally
unsuitable to the circumstances out of which they arose.
Hence the sympathy from which we are said to derive our
notions of propriety or the contrary assumes independently of
sympathy the very feelings it is said to occasion.

A similar criticism Brown also applies to that sympathy
with the gratitude of persons who have received benefits or
injuries which is said to be the source of feelings of merit and
demerit. If it is true that our sense of the merit of an agent
; is due to our sympathy with the gratitude of those he has
benefited — if the sympathy only transfuses into our own
breasts the gratitude or resentment of persons so affected, it is
evident that our reflected gratitude or resentment can only
give rise to the same sense of merit or demerit that has been
already involved in the primary and direct gratitude or resent
ment. « If our reflex gratitude and resentment involve
notions of merit and demerit, the original gratitude and
resentment which we feel by reflexion must in like manner
have involved them. . . . But if the actual gratitude or re
sentment of those who have profited or suffered imply no
feelings of merit or demerit, we may be certain, at least, that
in whatever source we are to strive to discover those feelings,
.it is not in the mere reflexion of a fainter gratitude or resent
ment that we can hope to find them. . . . The feelings with
which we sympathize are themselves moral feelings or senti-

I9o ADAM SMITH.

rnents ; or if they are not moral feelings, the reflexion of
them from a thousand breasts cannot alter their nature/'

Unless therefore we already possessed moral feelings of our
own, the most exact sympathy of feelings could do no more
than tell us of the similarity of our own feelings to those of
some other person, which they might equally do whether they
were vicious or virtuous ; and in the same way, the most
complete dissonance of feeling could supply us with no more
than a consciousness of the dissimilarity of our emotions. As
a coincidence of taste with regard to a work of art pre-sup-
poses in any two minds similarly affected by it an inde
pendent susceptibility of emotions, distinguishing what is
beautiful from what is ugly, irrespectively of others being*
present to share them ; so a coincidence of feeling with regard
to any moral action pre-supposes an independent capacity in
the two minds similarly affected by them of distinguishing
what is right from what is wrong, a capacity which each
would have singly, irrespectively of all reference to the feel
ings of the other. There is something more that we recog
nize in our moral sentiments than the mere coincidence of
feeling recognized in an agreement of taste or opinion. We
feel that a person has acted not merely as we should have
done, and that his motives have been similar to those we
should have felt, but that he has acted rightly and
properly.

It is perhaps best to state Brown's criticism m his own
words: "All which is peculiar to the sympathy is, that
instead of one mind only affected with certain feelings, there
are two minds affected with certain feelings, and a recogni
tion of the similarity of these feelings ; a similarity which far
from being confined to our moral emotions, may occur as.
readily and as frequently in every other feeling of which the
mind is susceptible. What produces the moral notions there-

MORAL IDEAS PRIOR TO SYMPATHY.

fore must evidently be something. more than a recognition cf
similarity of feeling- which is thus common to feelings of
every class. There must be an independent capacity of moral
emotion, in consequence of which we judge those sentiments
of conduct to be right which coincide with sentiments of con
duct previously recognized as right— or the sentiments of
others to be improper, because they are not in unison with
those which we previously recognized as proper. Sympathy
then may be the diffuser of moral sentiments, as of various
other feelings ; but if no moral sentiments exist previously to
our sympathy, our sympathy itself cannot mve rise to
them."

«* The same inconsistency Brown detects in Adam Smith's
theory of moral sentiments relating to our own conduct,
according to which it would be impossible for us to distinguish
without reference to the feelings of a real or imaginary spec
tator any difference of propriety or impropriety, merit or
demerit, in our own actions or character. If an impartial
spectator can thus discover merit or demerit in us by making
our case his own and assuming our feelings, those feelings
which he thus makes his own must surely speak to us to the
same purpose, and with even greater effect than they speak to
him. In no^ case then can sympathy give any additional
Knowledge : it can only give a wider diffusion to feelings
which already exist.

It is therefore, according to Brown, as erroneous in ethics
to ascribe moral feelings to sympathy, or the mental reflection
by which feelings are diffused, as it would be, in a theory of
the source of light, to ascribe light itself to the reflection
which involves its existence. " A mirror presents to us a
fainter copy of external things ; but it is a copy which it pre
sents. We are in like manner to each other mirrors that re
flect from breast to breast, joy, sorrow, indignation, and all tho

T92 ADAM SMITH.

vivid emotions of which, the individual mind is susceptible ;
but though, as mirrors, we mutually give and receive emotions,
these emotions must have been felt before they could be com
municated."

The objection contained in this analogy of the mirror is
perhaps more fatal to the truth of Adam Smith's theory than •
any other. If a passion arises in every one analogous to,
though weaker than, the original passion of the person
primarily affected by it; if, for instance, by this force of
fellow-feeling we enter into or approve of another person's
resentment or gratitude; it seems clear that the original
gratitude or resentment must itself involve, irrespective
of all sympathy, those feelings of moral approbation, or tl£
contrary, which it is asserted can only arise by sympathy.
It is impossible to state this objection more clearly than in
the words already quoted from Brown. But when the latter
insists on the irregular nature of sympathy as the basis of
morality— on its tendency to vary even in the same individual
"many times in the day, so that what was virtuous in tl.e
morning might seem vicious at noon, it is impossible to
recognize the justice of the" criticism. Adam Smith might
fairly have replied, that the educational forces of life, which
are comprised in ordinary circumstances and surroundings,
and which condition all sympathy, were sufficiently uniform
in character to ensure tolerable uniformity in the result, and
to give to our notions of morality all that appearance of
certainty and sameness which undoubtedly belongs to them.

Adam Smith seems himself to have anticipated one of the
difficulties raised in Brown's criticism, namely, the relation of
moral approbation to the approbation of another person's taste
or opinions. Why should the feeling of approbation be of a
different kind when we sympathize with a person's sentiments
or actions than when we sympathize with his intellectual

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL A GREEMENT. 1 93

judgments ? The feeling of sympathy being- the same in
either case, why should the feeling of resultant approbation
be different?

No one could state more clearly than does Adam Smith the
analogy there is between coincidence of moral sentiment and
coincidence of intellectual opinion ; nor is anything more
definite in his theory than that approval of the moral senti
ments of others, like approval of their opinions, means
nothing more than their agreement with our own. The
following are his words : '< To approve of another man's
opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to
approve of them. If the same arguments which convince you
^convince me likewise, I necessarily approve of your convic
tion; and if they do not, I necessarily disapprove of it;
neither can I possibly conceive that I should do the one
without the other. To approve or disapprove, therefore, of
the opinions is acknowledged by everybody to mean no more
than to observe their agreement or disagreement with our
own. But this is equally the case with regard to our appro
bation or disapprobation of the sentiments or passions of
others/'

Whence, then, comes the stronger feeling of approbation in
the case of agreement of sentiments than in that of agreement
of opinion? Why do we esteem a man whose moral senti
ments seem to accord with our own, whilst we do not
necessarily esteem him simply for the accordance of his
opinions with our own ? Why in the one case do we ascribe
to him the quality of rightness or rectitude, and in the other
only the qualities of good taste or good judgment ? To quote
Brown once more : " If mere accordance of emotion imply
the feeling of moral excellence of any sort, we should cer
tainly feel a moral regard for all whose taste coincides with
ours; yet, however gratifying the sympathy in such a case

o

I94 ADAM SMITH.

may be, we do not feel, in consequence of this sympathy, any
morality in the taste which is most exactly accordant with our
own."

Adam Smith's answer is, that matters of intellectual
agreement touch us much less nearly than circumstances of
behaviour which affect ourselves or the person we judge of;
that we look at such things as the size of a mountain or the
expression of a picture from the same point of view, and
therefore that we agree or disagree without that imaginary
change of situation which is the foundation of moral sym
pathy. The stronger feeling of approbation in the one case
than in the other arises from the personal element, which
influences our judgment of another person's conduct, and
which is absent in our judgment of his opinions about things.
It will be best again to let Adam Smith speak for himself.

"Though/' he says, "you despise that picture, or that
poem, or even that system of philosophy whi-;h I admire,
there is little danger of our quarrelling upon that account.
Neither of us can reasonably be much interested about them.
They ought all of them to be matters of great indifference to
us both ; so that, though our opinions may be opposite, our
affect ions may still be very nearly the same. But it is quite
otherwise with regard to those objects by which either you or
I are particularly affected. Though your judgments in
matters of speculation, though your sentiments in matters
of taste, are quite opposite to mine, I can easily overlook this
opposition; and, if I have any degree of temper, I may still
find some entertainment in your conversation, even upon those
very subjects. Bu'; if you have either no fellow- feel ing for
the misfortunes I have met with, or none which bears any
proportion to the grief which distracts me; or if you have
either no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or none
that bears any proportion to the resentment which transports

EMOTIONAL AND MORAL SYMPATHY. 195

me, we can no longer converse upon these subjects. We
become intolerable to one another. I can neither support
your company, nor you mine. You are confounded at my
violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold insen
sibility and want of feeling."

Accordingly, we only regard the sentiments which we
share as moral, or the contrary, when they affect another
person or ourselves in a peculiar manner; when they bear no
relation to either of us, no moral propriety is recognized in a
mere agreement of feeling. It is obvious that this explana
tion, to which Brown pays no attention whatever, is satis
factory to a certain point. A plain, or a mountain, or a
picture, are matters about which it is intelligible that agree
ment or difference should give rise to very different feelings
from those produced by a case of dishonesty, excessive anger,
or untruthfulness. Being objects so different in their nature,
it is only natural that they should give rise to very different
sentiments. Independently of all sympathy, admiration of a
picture or a mountain is a very different thing from admi
ration of a generous action or a display of courage. The
language of all men has observed the difference, and the
admiration in the one case is with perfect reason called moral,
to distinguish it from the admiration which arises in the
other. But when Adam Smith classes "the conduct of a
third person " among things which, like the beauty of a plain
or the size of a mountain, need no imaginary change of
situation on the part of observers to be approved of by them,
he inadvertently deserts his own principle, which, if this were
true, would fail to account for the approbation of actions done
long ago, in times or places unrelated to the approver.

Bui, even if Adam Smith's explanation with regard to the
difference of approbation felt where conduct is concerned from
that felt in matters of taste or opinion be accepted as satis-

o 2

196 ADAM SMITH.

factory, it is strange that he should not have seen the diffi
culty of accounting by his theory for the absence of anything
like moral approbation in a number of cases where sympathy
none the less strongly impels us to share and enter into the
emotions of another person. For instance, if we see a man in
imminent danger of his life — pursued by a bull or seeming to
fall from a tight rope — though we may fully sympathize with
his real or pretended fear, in neither case do we for that
reason morally approve of it. In the same way, we may
sympathize with or enter into any other emotion he manifests
— his love, his hope, or his joy — without any the more
approving them or passing any judgment on them whatever
Sympathy has been well defined as " a species of involuntary
imitation of the displays of feeling enacted in our presence,
which is followed by the rise of the feelings themselves.""6
Thus we become affected with whatever the mental state may
be that is manifested by the expressed feelings of another
person ; but unless his emotion already contains the element
of moral approbation, or the contrary, as in a case of gratitude
or resentment, the mere fact of sympathy will no more give
rise to it than will sympathy with another person's fear give
rise to any moral approval of it. It is evident, therefore, that
sympathy does not necessarily involve approbation, and that
it only involves moral approbation where the sentiments shared
by sympathy belong to the class of emotions denominated
moral.

What, then, is the real relation between sympathy and
approbation? and to what extent is the fact of sympathy an
explanation of the fact of approbation ?

It is difficult to read Adam Smith's account of the iden
tification of sympathy a*id approbation, without feeling that
throughout his argument there is an unconscious play upon
6 Bain, Mental and Moral Science, p 277.

6- YMPA THY AND APPROBA TION. 197

words, and that an equivocal use of the word "sympathy"
lends all its speciousness to the theory he expounds. The first
meaning of the word sympathy is fellow-feeling, or the par
ticipation of another person's emotion, in which sense we may
be said to sympathize with another person's hope or fear; the
second meaning contains the idea of approval or praise, in
which sense we may be said to sympathize with another person's
gratitude or resentment. Adam Smith begins by using the
word sympathy in its first and primary sense, as meaning par
ticipation in another person's feelings, and then proceeds to
use it in its secondary and less proper sense, in which the idea
of approbation is involved. But the sympathy in the one case
is totally different from the sympathy in the other. In the
one case a mere state of feeling is intended, in the other a
judgment of reason. To share another person's feeling belongs
only to our sensibility; to approve of it as proper, good, and
right, implies the exercise of our intelligence. To employ
the word "sympathy" in its latter use (as it is sometimes
employed in popular parlance) is simply to employ it as a
synonym for "approbation;" so that sympathy, instead of
being really the source of approbation, is only another word
for that approbation itself. To say that we approve of another
person's sentiments when we sympathize with them is, there
fore, nothing more than saying that we approve of them when
we approve of them -a purely tautological proposition.

It cannot therefore be said that Adam Smith's attempt to
trace the feeling of moral approbation to emotions of sympathy
is altogether successful, incontestable as is the truth of his appli
cation of it to many of the phenomena of life and conduct.
Yet although sympathy is not the only factor in moral appro
bation, it is one that enters very widely into the growth of
our moral perceptions. It plays, for instance, an important
part in evolving in us that sense of right and wrong which is

198 ADAM

generally known as Conscience or the Moral Faculty. It is one
of the elements, just as self-love is another, in that ever-forming
chain of association which goes to distinguish one set of
actions as good from another set of actions as bad. Our
observation in others of the same outward symptoms which
we know in our own case to attend joy or grief, pleasure or
pain, leads us by the mere force of the remembrance of our own
pleasures and pains, and independently of any control of our
will, to enter into those of other people, and to promote
as much as we can the one and prevent the other.

Sympathy accordingly is the source of all disinterested
motives in action, of our readiness to give up pleasures and
incur pains for the sake of others ; and Adam Smith was so
far right, that he established, by reference to this force of our
sympathetic emotions, the reality of a disinterested element as
the foundation of our benevolent affections. In the same way,
self-love is the source of all the prudential side of morality ;
and to the general formation of our moral sentiments, all our
other emotions, such as anger, fear, love, contribute together
with sympathy, in lesser perhaps but considerable degree.
None of them taken singly would suffice to account for
moral approbation.

Although any action that hurts another person may so
affect our natural sympathy as to give rise to the feeling of
disapprobation involved in sympathetic resentment, and
although an action that is injurious to ourselves may also be
regarded with similar feelings of dislike, the constant pressure
of authority, exercised as it is by domestic education, by
government, by law, and by punishment, must first be
brought to bear on such actions before the feeling of moral
disapprobation can arise with regard to them. The associa
tion of the pain of punishment with certain actions, and the
association of the absence of such pain (a negative pleasure)

GROWTH OF MORAL APPROBATION. 199

with certain others, enforces the natural dictates of our
sympathetic or selfish emotions, and impresses on them the
character of morality, of obligation, and of duty. The associa
tion is so close and constant, that in course of time the feeling
of the approbation or disapprobation of certain actions becomes
perfectly independent of the various means, necessary at first
to enforce or to prevent them; just as in many other cases our
likes and dislikes become free of the associations which first
permanently fixed them.

In this way the feeling1 of moral approbation is seen to be
the product of time and slow growth of circumstance, a phe
nomenon to which both reason and sentiment contribute in
equal shares in accordance with the laws that condition their
development. Moral approbation is no more given instan
taneously by sympathy than it is given instantaneously by a
moral sense. Sympathy is merely one of the conditions
under which it is evolved, one of the feelings which assist in
its formation. It is indeed the feeling on which, more than
on any other, the moral agencies existing in the world build up
and confirm the notions of right and wrong; but it does of
itself nothing more than translate feelings from one mind to
another, and unless there is a pre-existent moral element in
the feeling so translated, the actual passage will not give rise
to it. Sympathy enables one man's fear, resentment, or
gratitude to become another man's fear, resentment, or grati
tude ; but the feeling of moral approbation which attends
emotions so diffused, arises from reference to ideas otherwise
derived than from a purely involuntary sympathy — from refer
ence, that is, to a standard set up by custom and opinion. A
child told for the first time of a murder might so far enter by
sympathy into the resentment of the victim as to feel indig
nation prompting him to vengeance ; but his idea of the
murder itself as a wron"1 and wicked act — his idea of it as a

200 ADAM SMITH.

deed morally worse than the slaughter of a sheep by a butcher,
would only arise as the result of the various forces of edu
cation, availing- themselves of the original law of sympathy,
by which an act disagreeable to ourselves seems disagreeable
in its application to others. And what is true in this case,
the extreme form of moral disapprobation, is no less true in all
the minor cases, in which approbation or the contrary is felt.

The feeling of moral approbation is therefore much more
complex than it is in Adam Smith's theory. Above all things
it is one and indivisible, and it is impossible to distinguish
our moral judgments of ourselves from our judgments of
others. There is an obvious inconsistency in saying that we
can only judge of other people's sentiments and actions by
reference to our own power to sympathize with them, and yet
that we can only judge of our own by reference to the same
power in them. The moral standard cannot primarily exist
in ourselves, and yet, at the same time, be only derivable from
without. If by the hypothesis moral feelings relating to our
selves only exist by prior reference to the feelings of others,
how can we at the same time form any moral judgment
of the feelings of others by reference to any feelings of our
own ?

But although the two sides of moral feeling are thus really
indistinguishable, the feeling of self-approbation or the con
trary may indeed be so much stronger than our feeling of
approval or disapproval of others as to justify the application
to it of such terms as Conscience, Shame, Remorse. The
difference of feeling, however, is only one of degree, and in
either case, whether our own conduct or that of others is
under review, the moral feeling that arises is due to the force
of education and opinion acting upon the various emotions
of our nature. For instance, a Mohammedan woman seen
without a veil would have the same feeling of remorse or

FORCE OF EDUCATION. 201

of moral disapprobation with regard to herself that she would
have with regard to any other woman whom she might see in
the same condition, though of course in a less strong- degree.
In either case her feeling would he a result of all the com
plex surroundings of her life, which is meant by education in
its broadest sense. Sympathy itself would be insufficient to
explain the feeling, though it might help to explain how it
was developed. All that sympathy could do would be tc
extend the dread of punishment associated by the woman
herself with a breach of the law, to all women who might
offend in a similar way ; the original feeling of the immorality
of exposure being accountable for in no other way than by its
association with punishment, ordained by civil or religious
law, or by social custom, and enforced by the discipline of
early home life. It is obvious that the same explanation
applies to all cases in which moral disapprobation is felt, and
conversely to all cases in which the sentiment of moral
approbation arises.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS.

Edited by IWAN MULLER, A.M.,

NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.

The objects of the proposed Series are : —

(1) To present, in a connected and historical form, a view
of the contributions made to Philosophy by English thinkers,
together with such biographical details as their l.fe and times
may render expedient.

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the requirements of general readers, English and American, no
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To each Philosopher will be assigned a separate volume, giv
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contributions to Philosophy as possible, explanatory rather than
critical, opening with a brief biographical sketch, and concluding
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EDITOR'S PREFACE.

The appearance of the first installment of the Series of English Phil
osophers affords the editor an opportunity of defining the position ond aim
of this and the succeeding volumes. We live in an age of series ; Art,
Science, Letters, are each represented by one or more ; it is the object of
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coming more and more popular. Had it been our aim to produce a History
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would have been well-nigh impracticable. Such, however, is not our object.
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and wrote about the problems with which he dealt, not what we may think
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ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS.

commence the work of constructing their own. Of this work of destruction
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CALDERWOOD (HENRY) Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Uni-
sity of Edinburgh, author of " The Philosophy of the Infinite," etc.
On Teaching: Its End and Means. i2mo, cloth, . r 25
" A book of practical value ; Multum in parvo. Should be in the hands of

every teacher and parent."— Syracuse Journal,

PUTNAM. The Best Reading. A Classified Bibliography
for- Easy Reference. With hints on the Selection of Books ;
on the Formation of Libraries, public and private ; on Courses of
Reading, etc. A Guide for the Librarian, Bookbuyer, and Book
seller. The Classified Lists, arranged under about 500 subject head
ings, include all the most desirable books now to be obtained, either
in Great Britain or the United States, with the prices annexed. New
Edition, corrected and enlarged. I2mo, paper, 1.25 ; cloth, I 75

"The best work of its kind we have seen."— College Courant.
" We know ot no manual that can take its place as a guide to the selection of a
library." — N. Y. Independent.

ARMITAGE (E. S.) The Childhood of the English Nation ;
or, The Beginnings of English History. i2mo, cloth, i 25
" It would be quite impossible for us to praise this little book beyond its de
serts. It does admirably what it attempts. * * * One of the very best of the recent
histories for both young" and oM."— Christian Register.

"The author has thought out her subject honestly and thoroughly, and has
given us the result in a clear and attractive shape."— Saturday Kevie-uu.

529

AIJ6 25 1983

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