3 1822 01144 4833 m\^' 3 1822 01144 4833 mMmifm Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item ,s subject to recall. Date Due m. k fv: LIST OF WORKS BY ADAM SMITH. 1. In a periodical called the Edinburgh Eeview, published in 1755, for a few numbers, a Eeview 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 Astronom}'. 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— 1790J J. A. FARRER AUTHOR of "primitive MANNERS AND CUSTOMS," ETC. NEW YORK a. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1881 PEEFACB 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 by 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 V.ie 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.t 1880. CONTENTS. PAGE BlOGEAPHICAL SkETCII . 1 CHAPTER I. Historical Inteoduction 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 46 CHAPTER V. Influence of Prosperity or Adversity. Chance, and Custom UPON Moral Sentiments 56 CHAPTER VI. Theory of Conscience and Duty 72 CHAPTER VII. Theory of Moral Principles 88 A 2 iv CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE The Relation of Religion to Mokality .... 98 CHAPTER IX. The Chabacter of Vietue 107 CHAPTER X. Adam Smith's Theoey of Happiness 127 CHAPTER XI. Adam Smith's Theoey 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 Theobt 172 ADAM SMITH. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. The fame of Adam Smith rests so deservedly on his great work, the Wealth of Naiiojis, that the fact is apt to he lost sight of, that long hefore he distinguished himself as a political econo- mist he had gained a reputation, not confined to his own country, hy 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 flict of tlie sort of competition that ensued for translating it into French. Rochefoucauld, grandson of the famous author of the Afaxims, got so far in a translalion of it as the end of the first Part, when a complete transhition by the Abbo Blavet compelled him to renounce the continuance of his work. The Abbe M(n-cllet — 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 Theorij with a great idea of its author's wisdom and depth of thought.' * M^inoirea, i. 211. "SaTheorie des Sentimens Moranx m'avnit donnd nne graiide iden de sa sa;jjacite et de sa pi-ofondem'." Yet, according to Giimin, it hud no success iu Paris. Corresj)., iv. 291. B ADAM SMITH. The puLlicatlon of these two books, the only writing's pub- lished by their author in his lifetime, are strictly speaking- the only episodes which form anything" like landmarks in Adam Smitli's career. The sixty-seven years of his life (1723-90) were in other respects strang-ely destitute of what are called " events ;" and beyond the adventure of his childhood, when he was carried away by g-ipsies 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 deg-ree 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 ask?;, " 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 ; 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 tag-e of the formula is, that it sets before us a definite aim, and alTords us at any time a measure of the happiness we enjoy or of that we see around us. Judged by this standard, however, the conchision must be — and it is a conclusion from which Adam Smith does not shrhik — that the lot of a bec'srar 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 Bailiol 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 vouehsaled B 2 ADAM SMITH. by her son's biographer. She is said to have been bhimed fur 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, INIiss 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 ;^ 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 liie, ' See, for some anet-dotes of this kind, the Q^uarlerly Review, vol. xxxvi. 200. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 5 describes hini as "certainly not fitted for the g-enernl com- merce of the world or for the business of active \\{q." 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 iu 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 topies of discourse. Of his early yeai's — 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 Kirkald}^, 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. Hutcheson, who has been called " the father of speculative ])hilosophy in Scotland in modern times,'' and whose tlieory 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 reading ^iMme's Treatise on Human Nature. The story is worth men- tioning, if only as an indication of the prevalent idea of Adam Smithes 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 Kiikaldy as at the chief seat of learning in England. To Oxford, so different in most colleges now from what it was in those dnys, he seems never to have expressed or felt the gratitude which through life attached hira 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 Kames, so well known in connexion with the Scotch literature of the last century, he delivered lectures on rhetoric and belles Icttres ; 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-eiglit. 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, Ik; expounded the doctrines which he afterwards published in the Moral Sentiments. On the subject of Justice, it was his inten- tion to write a sj'stem of natural jurisprudence, '' or a theory of the general prmciples 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 on the same subject, and the Theory of Moral Sentimenls 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.' One of Adam Smithes own pupils, and afterwards for life one of his most intimate friends, Dr. Millar, professor of law ' To this Lope he still clung even in the sixth edition of his woik, pub- lished the jear of his death, 1790. 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 becaine fashionable at this place, and his opinions were the chief topic of discussion in clubs and literary societies. Even the small ])eculiaritie3 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 diiferences on minor points, to ensure the permanence of their mutual affection. Both took tlie 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 jicrsons competent to judge of it. The letter is dated April 1-2, 1759 :— " I give you thanks for the agreeable present of your T/ieori/. Wcddcrburne and 1 made presents of our copies to such of our BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. acquaintances as we thought good judg-es, 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 pretty treatise ou the Sublime. Millar desired my permission to send one in j'our name to Dr. AVarburton. 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 Laio Tracts. A man might as W'ell think of making a fine sauce by a mixture of wormwood and aloes as an agrsealjle composition by joining metaphysics and Scotch law. .... I believe I have mentioned to you already Helvetius's book de VEsprlt. It is worth your read- ing, not for its philosophy, which I do not highly value, but for its agi'eeable 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 oldigcd him to strike it out But what is all this to my book ? say you. My dear Mr. Smith, have patience : compose your- self to tranquillity; show 3-oursclf a philosopher in practice as well as profession ; think ou the emptiness, and rashness, and futility of the common judgment of men ; how little they are regulated by 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 Phociou, 10 ADAM SMITH. 3'on know, always suspected himself of some blunder wlieu he was attended with the applauses of the populace. " Supposing-, 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 be 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 lii'e 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 Lira of the propriety of sending that young nobleman BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. ii to Glasg-ow ; for I could not hope that he could offer ycu any terms which would tempt you to renounce your professorship. But I missed him " In recompense for so many morlifying- thing's, which no- thing; but 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 Dulce of Bucclcuch came in about four years time j 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 leiter-writing that no records of this sort preserve his impressions of foreign life.* 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, 1765, 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'Alembert, Ilelvotius, INIarmontel, Morcllet; and it is to be regretted that !Moreliet, who mentions the fact of conversations * A ll'w of liis letters are published in Lord Brougham's ^fc'o««^ of Adam SiiiU/i's Lijc and WurLs, i. 27U-SD. 12 ADAM SMITH. between himself, Turg-ot, and Adam Smithy 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 Nafions. With IMorellet, 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, wdiich 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 cmn- panionship abroad the foundation of a friendship which lasted till the death of the latter, returned to London in October, 17G6. 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 Li m to Edinburgh from his retirement. "I want," he said, "to know what you have been doing, and propose to exact a BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. vj rig^oroTis account of the method in which you have eniplo3-eil yourself during" your retreat. I am positive you are wron-^- 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 1769. Seven years later, 1776, the WeallJi of Nations appeared, and Hume, who was then dying, again wrote his friend a congratulatory letter. " Eiige ! 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 T shall still doubt for some time of its beiug at first ver}' 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 autobiographv, 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 v/hist with his friends. He also extolled Hume's extreme e'cutleness of 14 ADAM SMITH, nature, which never weakened the firmness of his mind nor the steadiness of his resohitions; his constant pleasantry and good humour ; his severe apphcation 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 ihe 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 contemptibillty of style, and which he even thought fit to leave to posterity among his other published works. He begins: "You have been lately emploj-ed in embalming a philosopher; his hodij, I believe I must say, for concerning the other part of his nature neither BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 you nor lie 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 Sentimenfs. But every gen- tleman understands his own business best/' The letter, pervaded by the same spirit of banter through- out, is too long to quote at length, but the following extracts contain the leading idea : " Are you sure, and can 3'ou make ns 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 Inst 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 3-ou 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 jigainst the fear of death." It is diflleult 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 denaonstrate the total fulsity 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 eulngizer of Hume, is easily shown to rest on no foundation. Hume did not die till lllQ, 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 "vve know so well through the pages of Boswell. Then, at the request of the Duke of Buecleuch, 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 supjiosed 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 Sentimenh, in the last winter of his life, he lived to see published before his death. Of the Theory of Moral Sentiments Sir James I\Tackintosh 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 variet}' of explanations of life and manners which embellish the book more than they illuminate the BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. \y theory. Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned that, for philosophieal 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, 60 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, fn- inst-ance, 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 possj! tie, 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 orig-inal in point of illus- tration and stylcj having been therefore the end in view, it has been found best to alter the arrangement in some degree, and to divide the whole into chapters, the relations of which to tlie 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. II. Of Merit and Demerit ; or the objects of Ueward 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 f, equent 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. Put 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 niOGRAPIIICAL SKETCH. 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 accideiit on our sentiments of men's merit or tlie 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 tiie 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 I. and II., make up the fifth chapter. Then Part III is divided for clearress' sake into two chapters, explaining the author's Theory of Conscience and Theory of floral 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 samo title. Part IV., on the effect of Utility on our moral senti- menrs, 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 tinow into clear light the relation of Adam Smith's theory to other theories of moral phili)sophy. The three chapters on the relation of religion to morality, on the theory of ha2:>pi- C 2 20 ADAM SMITH. iiess, and on final canses in ethics, correspond with no simihir 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 servos 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 Pol^^bius 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 '• 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 neigh- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 hour ; aujd 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, tlie 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 INTIIODUCTIUN'. To explain the orig-in 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- hition of the last century, and to which Adam Smith's Thcor// of Moral Seni'nnoifs was one of the most important contri- butions. His theory, like all others, must he undcTstood as an answer to the question : How do we come to regard certain actions or states of mind wilh a])proval and to condemn their contraries, and on what grounds can we justify our judgments in such matters and hold them to accord universally with tlie moral judg-ments of mankind ? But in order to undcr.star.d 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 predecc: Fors down to the time when he took up the thread of the speculation and ofTered his solution of the })roblems they had dealt witli. From the time when such problems first hccame popuhir 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 uhi- mate standard of morality was the interest of the individual himself or the community he Ijclonged to, the aim of the ojipo- site school w^as to find some basis i'or morality whiLh sh(jiild HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 21 make it less dependent on chang-es of circumstance and ^\\c to its maxims the authority of propositions that should hold true of all times and places. Tiie names of Locke, Hobbes, INIandeville, 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, Sclfihh, or Sceptical School^ and the latter as the school of Intuitionalists. 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 diflPerent ways to find for our moral sentiments a less variable and unstable foundation than was implied l)y sueh an hypothesis. It was in opposition to such a theory th;it 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 otliers 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 jieculiar instinct of our nature. Thus Lord Shaftesbury pobtuluted the existence of a moral sense, sufficient of itself to 24 ADAM SMITH. make us eschew vice and follow after virtue ; aud tliis moial sensCj 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 Hutclieson, that the Moral Sense theory of ethics had been more generally connected with his name than with that of its real originator, lluteheson 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 i-n our sense of beauty and harmon}^, 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 and 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 contemporaiy, 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. 25 the human hearty in kind and nature supreme over all others, and bearing- its own authority i'or being- so. Using language about it, whieli we meet again in the Theory of Adam Smith, he 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 WdS 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 f/act 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" b}^ the experimental method of inquiry ; by comparing, that is, a number of instances of qualities held estimable on the one hand and qtialities held blaraeable on the other, and observing what was the commoa 26 ADAM SMITH. element of each. From such an inquiry he inferred that those acts were g-ood which were useful and those bad which were injurious, and that the fact of their being" useful or injurious was the cause of their g-oodness 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 were the ordinary sanctions of this life a sufficient safeguard for the existence of morality ? Did happiness or misery, good or evil, really predominate in the 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? '^fhe latter alternative had been the thesis which Mandeville had partly made and partly found popular. In his view the most virtuous actions might be resolved into selfishness, and self-love was the starting-point of all morality. This became HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 27 therefore, one of the favourite topics of sjiecuUition ; hut it is only necessary to notice Hume's treatment of it, inasmuch as it supplies the first principle of Adam Smith's theory. Ihnne assumed the existence of a disinterested principle underlyiii}^ all our moral sentiments. He arg-ued that " a natural ])riii- 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 relused to I'esolve into any more genei'al principle, or to treat as other than an original princijjle of human nature. This phenomenon of Sympathy, or fellow-feeling, which we have by nature with any passion whatever of another })erson, 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 Mandeviile, but the key-note to the whole spirit of his philosojihy. " How selfish soever,'^ he begins, "man maybe supposed, there are evi- dently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their hapj)iness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, ixcept the ]>l('asuie of seeing it.'" So that pity or compnssion, which Hol)bes had explained as the consciousness of a ]iossible misfortune to our- selves similar to that seen to la-full another, is, with Adam Smith, a primary, not a secondary, emotion of our nature, an original and not a derivative passion, and one tliat is purely disinterested in its manifestation. In the next cha])ter and the four succeeding ones we shall observe how on this basis of an origiiuil instinct of sympathy Adam Smith constructs his explanation of the origin of our moral ideas. AVith regard to the explanations already offered 2S ADAAf SMITH. by previous writers^ he believed that they all contained some portion of the truth from the particular point of view taken by each j and in the explanation which he himself elaborated, he thoug-ht that some part or otlier of his system embraced and coincided with whatever was true in the different theories of his predecessors. CHAPTER 11. THE PIIEN'O.MEXA OF SYMPATHY. The phenomena of sympathy or fellow-feeling- 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 being's, 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 Iheir 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 ov/n 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 30 ADAM r.MITH. the same person with him. The emotion of a spectator always corresponds to what, by brino'iiig' tlie 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 sjmpathy 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. 31 then sympathize witli their situation by so vividly imagining it our own. But whatever may be the cause of sjmpathy, there is do 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 which the joy of others communicates to our own, or by the disappointment which the absence of it causes. The sympath}' of others with our own joy may, indeed, enliven that j"y, and so give us pleasure; but their sympathy with our grief could give us no pleasure, if it simply enlivened our grief. S3'mpatln', 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 thnn in jo}', we are more desirous to communicate to otiiers 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. healiiig- consolation of c?ympathy.'^ Ilenee 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 afRiction, and it pains us if we cannot. The conciousness of an inalnlity 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 sympath}^ 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 Plume, " 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- 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 compassion and uneasiness, "can we be supposed altogether insensible or indifferent towards its causes, when a malicious or treacherous character and behaviour arc presented to us ? " CHAPTER III. MORAL APPROBATTOX, AND THE FEELING OP 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 apprv)bation 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 onecljc who observes them. Ilis ajiprobation varies with the degree in which he can sympathize with them, and perfect concord of sentiment means perfect approbation. Just as a man who admires the same poem or picture that I do, or laughs at the same joke, allows the justice of my admiration or mirth, so he, who enters into my resent- ment, and by bringing my injuries home to himself shares my feelings, cannot but thereby approve of them as just and proper. According as his sympathetic indignation fails to correspond to mine, according as his compassion falls short of my grief, according, in short, to the degree of dis- proportion he may perceive between my sentiments and his, does he feel stronger or weaker disapproval of my feelings. Moral approbation admits of the same explanation as intellec- jual approbation. For just as to approve or disapprove of the )pinionsof 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 feelings and passions is simply to mark a similar agreement or disagreement existing 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 atfection 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 ej^esight^ 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, w'e 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 the cause or object wdiich excites it, the propriety or impro- ])riety of the action, which results from such affection, depends entirely on the concord or dissonance of the affection with that felt sympathetically by a spectator. Hence that part of 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 betv\-eon the sentiment of the person primarily aflected by it and that of the spectator who, by force of imagination, i)uts himself in the other's place. Let us take, for instance, as ix, concrete case, the exhibition of fortitude under great distress. AVhat is the source of our approbation of it ? It is the ])erfcct coincidence of another's firmness witli our own insensibility to his misfortunes. i3y PROPRIETY OF MORAL SENTIMFNTS. 35 his malciiig' no domand 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 and oui's, which causes us to recognize the perfect propriety of his conduct. The additional element which raises our feeling 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 primarilv alfected 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 having no peculiar relation to either of us.^' There is no occasion for sympath}^ or for an imaginary change of situations, iii order to produce, with regard to such things, the most perfect har- mony of sentiments and affect'ons. Where there is such harmou}^, 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 b)^ us from the same point of view as a poeii or picture are, 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 D 2 36 ADAM SMITH. concern himj than with regard to matters which concern neither liim nor us, and are really indifferent to our actual interests. "VVe can easily bear with difference of opinion in matters of speculation or taste; but we cease to be bearable to one 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 been 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 sterner 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. Eut 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 bj- 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 annear 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, and 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 seiiti- ment lies in a meeting'-point between two different sympathies, or in a sort of compromise between two diff'erent aspects of the same passion, it is evident that such propriety must lie in a certain mediocrity or mean state betweentwo extremes, orinjust that amount of pass-ion into which an impartial spectator can enter. Thatgrief 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 unaljle 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 Smithes theory of Propriety agrees, as he says himself, ''pretty exactly^' with Aristotle's definition of Virtue, as consisting in a mean or MeaoTTj^; 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 prodigalitj^, and magnanimity consists in avoiding the extremes of either arro- gance or pusillanimity. And as also coincident in every respect 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 FASSIONS. 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 orig-in 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 Smithes 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 v/ith the passions which have their ov\^\x\fro7n the body. The bodily passions, such as hunger and thirst, being purely personal, fail to excite any general sympatliy, and in proportion to the impossibility of such sj'mpathy 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 imagination \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 imagination 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. jind we can fancy, just as he does, the loss of dig-nit}^, 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 than the loss of a mistress; but whilst it would be ridiculous to found a tragedy on the former loss, the latter misfortune has ^¥en 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,' or the tor- tures of Hippoiytus 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/row? a paril- cidar turn cyf ilie hvaginailon, the imagination of others, not having acquired that particular turn, cannot S3n'!pathize 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 disproportioned 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. lie 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 ' Lessing, in bis Laocoon, 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, Thoug-h 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 hut the dis- tress 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 a scene is never endured but from con- cern for the dangei's and difficulties foreseen in the sequel, or from interest in the secondary passions — fear, shamCj and despair — which are associated with love as a situation, and with w^hich 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, we 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 d2 ADAM SMITH. of the injuries done to another, enter into and bear with his resentment. These unsocial passions are, however; necessary parts of human nature, and as on the one hand we cannot sympathize with excessive indig-nation, 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 the individual, as serving- 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 shoWj from our whole manner, that passion has not iHE SOCIAL AND SELFISH PASSIONS. aI extinguished our humanity, and that; if we yield to revenge, 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 dilferent. 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 something 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 sjectator 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 4.^ ADAM SMITH. of this, anrlj 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, 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 evening-, in the entertainment g-enerally, in what was said or done, " and in all those frivolous nothing's 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 THY FOR DIS TRESS. 45 them in case of deep distress is very strong' and very sincere. " If you labour under any signal calamity; if by some extra- ordinary misfortune you are fallen into povei'ty, 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. But if 3'our misfortune is not of this dreadlul 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 OP MERIT AND DEMERIT. The sense of the propriety or impropriety of a moral aetion or sentiment is, according' to Adam Smith, only one side of the fact of moral approbation, a sense of their merit or demerit constituting- the other side. An action or sentiment \^ proper or improper in relation to its cause, or the motive which excites it, wliilst it is meritorious or the contrary in relation to its enTect, or in accordance with its beneficial or hurtful tendency. It is important to notice this distinction, for it is a protest, as Adam Smitli 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 Bympathy or antipathy attaches itbclf to either in connexion GRATITUDE AND RESENTMENT. 47 with thoir 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, thereCore, of the merit or demerit of any action will be the feeling of gratitude or resentment it excites. But here again the pi'lnciple 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 mau^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 ever}'body 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. Syitipathizing 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. We 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 sj'mpathy with the joy of the latter inspires us also with a reflection 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 or 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 of 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, we fail 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 simply because his name or his surname happen to 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 wo look upon him as in the right, we can feel no sympathy with the resentment of the person in- juriously afifected by him. If he suffers no more than our own sympathetic indii^'nation would have prompted us to inllict upon him, we have no fellow-feeling" with his suffering, anre in a man's intentions 62 ADAM SMITH. there has been no laudable benevolence or blameable malice, but his actions have nevertheless done gi-eat 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 acrime is scarcely ever punished as heavily as its actual perpetration. CRIMINAL ATTEMPTS. Gi 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 pocket before he had taken anything out of it, is punished with ignominy only. If he had got time to take away a handkerchief, he would have been put to death.''^' The state of the law only reflects the natural feelings of individuals, who feel less resentment when a man has failed in executing the mischief he intended than when he has actually done them an injury. For the same reason, a man, who has been saved purely by accident from the commission of a crime he intended, though he is conscious that his real guilt, that of his heart, remains the same, considers himself as less deserving of resentment and punishment; and thus all the sense of his guilt is either diminished or destroyed by the mere fact of fortune having favoured him. Again, as Fortune influences our moral sentiments by lessen- ing tl:e good or evil, the pleasure or pain, intended by our actions, so does she increase our sense of their merit or demerit, beyond what their mere intention would justify, when they happen to give rise to extraordinary pleasure or pain. Even * It is rcmaikable, as characteristic of the difference of feeling between Adam Smith's time and our own, that he should have mentioned this f;tct in the criminal law of his time, without the slijjhtest comment of d.s- a^iprovul. 6i ADAM SMITH. when an intention deserves neither praise nor blame, we are 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, l)ut unjust, resentment of the person he has accidentally injured. But the negligence displayed 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. CUS TOM A ND FA SHION. 65 yet, if the stone hnppened to kill anybocl}^, 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 culjja prope 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 af^cident 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, \Qi 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 fi*equent 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, thougii tliere 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- P I SMITH. CHAPTER YIII. THE RELATION OF KELIGION TO MORALITY. The relation which, in Adam Smith's system, religion bears to ethics has been ah'eady indicated in the last chapter. Although he regards morahty 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 researches." This identification therefore of the rules of moralit}' 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 those heings, which in any country 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 lust, avarice, envy, or revenge — they should also ascribe to 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 of 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 ru\'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 inteufled to be the governing principles of our nature, it became clear that the rules they foimulated, in compliance with such an in- tention, might be regarded as the laws of the Deit}', 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 j)urpose 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 our 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 encouraged to look lor His favour and reward in the one u 2 100 ADAM SMITH. case, and to dread His vengeance and punishment in the other. Moreover, althoug-h 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 wdiich 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 reorarded, 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 Giod. CHARACTER OF THE RELIGIOUS MAN. loi It is on account of the additional sanction which reh'gion 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. Tliey 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 anot'ier restraint, that of future recompense, and accordingly greater trust is reposed in his 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 fulfd 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 punish 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 Ilini, and to direct our conduct according to His will.'"* It should not 102 ADAM SMITH. be tbe 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 g-overning- 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 be 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 all 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 praiseworthi- Dess 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 liis system a very similar position to that which they occupy in Kant's^ who treats the belief in the existence of God and in immovtalit}'' as Postulates of the Practical Keason, that is to say, as assumptions morally necessary, however incapable of speculative proof. Adam Smith, however, does not approach cither 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 fovour 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 enjoy no solid happiness unless he is convinced that all the inhalji- 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 highes«t 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 w-hich 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 wilh 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 s^'stem. 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 ordei', and that of his own order again to that of his country, so he shonld 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 tlie luibitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and all-wise Being can admit into the sjstem 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 necessarj'' 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- fidly 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 aflection, 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, Adam 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. Mai-cus Antoninus has, perhaps, received more ad- miration for his meditations on this sul)jeet than for all the different transactions of his just and beneficent reign. Nevei'theless, 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 duty." CHAPTER IX. THE CHAEACTER OF VIllTUE. The science of ethics, according to Adam Smith, deals mainly with two principal questions, the first concerning 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 o£ 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 aflfections, 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 sympathetjc 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 ADA3f SMITH. onv selfish, and to indulg-e our benevolent affections, consti- tutes the perfection of humanity." Consequently any man's charact'^r 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 individuaFs own happiness as on that of his fellow-men. These qualities are Prudence, Justice and Beneficence ; 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 whicli 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 learri 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 thoug-h his talents may not always be very brilliant^ tliey 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 quaekish arts by which other peo})le so frecpiently thrust themselves into public notice " The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the very thought of exjiosing 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 anytliing 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 sensiljility, 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 w^ell-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 lor no ADAM SMITH. the jollity and gaiety of their conversation. Their way of life mi<^ht too often interfere with the rei»ularity of his tem- perance, might interrupt the steadiness of his industry, or break 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 being guilty of any petulance or rude- 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. He is enabled gradually to relax both in the rigour of his parsimonv and in the severity of his application ; . . . He has no anxiety to change so comfortable a situation, and does not go in cpiest 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 necessit}', 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 j^ermitto his own affairs, and has no taste for that foolish importa-uce which THE CHARACTER OF VIRTUE. in many people wish to derive from appearing to have some inflnence in the management of those of other people; he is averse to enter into any party dispntes, hates faction, and is not always very forward to listen to the voice even of noble and great ambition. AVhen distinctly called npon he will not decline the service of his eonntry ; 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 onl}' to all the vain splendour of successful amhition, but to the real and solid glory of performing the greatest and most magnanimous actions." Such is Adam Smithy's account of the character of the Prudent !Man, a character which he himself admits commands ralluT a cold esteem than any very ardent love or admiration. lie distinguishes it from Ihat higher form of prudence whiih belongs to the great general^ statesman, or legislator, and which is the application of 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 viriues ; it is the most perfect wisdom combined with the most perfect 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 two qualities of a virtuous character which affect the happi- ness of otiier 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 jieifectly 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 degi'ee in which it is necessary or likely to be useful. Thus every man is first and piincipally 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 afl'ections. The earliest friendships are those among brothers and sisters, whoso 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, beings 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. 113 ments and principles to those of persons we live with or see often — a disposition which arises from the obvious convenience of such a general agreement — leads us to expect to find friend- ship subsisting between colleagues in office, partners in trade, or even between persons living in the same neighbourhood. There are certain small good offices which are universally regarded as due to a neighbour in preference to any other person ; and a certain friendliness is expected of neighbours, from the mere fact of the sympathy naturally associated with living in the same locality. But these sort of attachments, which the Romans expressed by the word necessitndo, as if to denote that they arose from the necessity of the situation, are inferior to those friendshijjs which are founded iiot merely on a sympathy, rendered habitual for the sake of convenience, but on a natural sym- pathy and approbation of a man's good conduct. Such friendship can subsist only among the good. " jNIen of virtue only can feel that entire confidence in the conduct and be- haviour of one another, which can at all times assure them that they can never either offend or be offended by one another. Vice is always capricious, virtue only is regular and orderly. The attachment which is founded upon the love of virtue, as it is certainly of all attachments the most virtuous, so it is likewise the happiest, as well as the most permanent and secure. 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 w hich they can be of most importance. Oar I IH ADAM SMITH. native countiy is the largest society ujdoii whicli our good or bad conduct can have much influence. It is tha,t 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 is 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 mortifled, 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 and 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 rules which 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- bours; 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 h-ive souiy FA TRIOTISMAND NA TIONAL PREJUDICE. 115 reason to dread tlie 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 of 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. Tt 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 I 2 lie ADAM SMITH. constitution^ and to alter, in some of its most essential parts, that system of g-overnmcnt 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 often dangerous, 6j)irit 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 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 for themselves, not themselves for the state.'' It is otiierwise with the real patrijt, with the man whose public sj^irit is prompted altogether by humanit}^ 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. Though lie should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannot anniliilute without great violence. AYhen he cannot concjuer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not atten)pt to subdue them by forcCj but will THE VIRTUE OF SELF-COMMAND. 117 velig-iously observe what by Cicero is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country, no more than to his parents. He will accommodate; as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy, as well as he can, the incon- veniences which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are adverse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but, like Solon, where he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear.''' But although Prudence, Justice, and Benevolence comprise all the qualities and actions which go to make up the highest Virtue, another quality, that of Self-Command, is also neces- sary, in order that we may not be misled by our own passions to violate the rules of tlie other three virtues. The most perfect knowledge, unless supported by the most per- fect self-command, will not of itself enable us to do our duty. The two sets of passions which it is necessary to command are those which, like fear and anger, it is difficult to control even for a moment, or those which, like the love of ease, pleasure, applause, or other selfish gratifications, may be restrained indeed often for a moment, but often prevail in the long run, by reason of their continual solicitations. The command of the first set of passions constitutes what the ancient moralists denominated fortitude, or strength of mind; that of the other set what they called temperance, decency, moderation. Self-command therefore is a union of the qualities of forti- tude and temperance; and independently of the beauty it derives from utility, as enabling us to act according to the dictates 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 diimped by the ingratitude of its objects. The fiist 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 to die quietly in his bed, even his glory as a philosopher might never have attained that dazzling splendour which has ever been attached to him. Courage even causes some degree of regard to be paid to the greatest criminals who die with firm- ness ; and the freedom from the fear of death, the great fear of all, is that which ennobles the profession of a soldier, and bestows upon it a rank and dignity superior to that of every other profession. It is for this reason that some sort of esteem is attached to characters, however v>"orthless, who have conducted with success a great warlike exploit, though under- taken contrary to every principle of justice, and carried on with no regard to humanity. The command of the passion of anger, though it has no special name like that of the passion of fear, merits on many occasions much admiration. But whilst courage is always TEMPERANCE, 1 19 admired irrespective of its motive, our approval of tlie com- mand of ang-er depends on our sense of its dig-uity 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 olten 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 loss violent passions which appeal to our love of ease or pleasure. The command of these passions can seldom, like the command of anger or feai', be directed to any bad end. Temperance and moderation, which include such virtues as industry, frugalit}^ or chastity, are always amia]>le; 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 pi'opriety, or degree of any passion with which an impartial spectator can appro ve, is diDTercntly situated in different passions, in some 120 ADAM SMITH. eases 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, and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may be said to stand hig-h, 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 aflTections, 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 wliich we feel towards a person who is defective in kindness, or chai'acterized by what is called hardness of heart. On the other hand, the disposition to the unsocial affections — to anger, 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. 12 1 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 ''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 calm temper, which contentedly lays 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 senpibility 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 unsuited 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 tl;an it is to think meanly of ourselves. And just as we appl}' two different ADAM SMITH. standards to our judgement about others, so in self-estimation we apply to ourselves both the standard of absolute perfection and tliat 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 wliich, 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. Eut 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 conse- quence. 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- 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 owe of real modesty, 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 ai'tist who judges of his own works by his conception of ideal perfection and the lesser artist who judges of his work merely by comi)arison with the work of other artists. The poet Boileau, wlio 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 nndisturhed, and in fidl 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 we 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. He wishes you to view him in no other light than that in wdiich, 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 be 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 doeSj 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. Seeing 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. " He 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 miieh as he can with fashionable people, with those who are supposed to direct the public opinion — Avith 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 accomplisbnieutSj but not those to more important ones. Both the prond 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 the supposed impartial spectjitor; whilst the virtues of prudence, justice and benevolence, are chiefly recommended to us by concern for our own happiness or the happiness of other j)eople. They are recommended to us primarily by our selfish or benevolent aflections, independently of any regard as 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 difTerence 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. Tlieir effects may be agree- able or the contrary, without afT'ecting 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 iu all the other virtues of self-command, it is the greatness and steadiness of the exertion, and the strong sense of propriety necessaiy to main- tain that exertion, which is the source of admiration. The effects are olten only too little regarded. CHAPTEE X. ADAM smith's THLORY OP HAPPINESS. Altiiot^oii Adam Smith never distinctly faces the proLlem 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 svstems ot professed utilitarians. But he disting'uishes between happi- ness as the natural result of virtue and happiness as the end or purpose of virtue; and, by satisfying" himself that it is the natural result, he saves himself from considering- whether, if it were not, virtue would remain in and for itself desirable as an ^d. "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 haj ])iness 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 enfoicod. 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 'Sve 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 cither 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, and humanit}^, 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 vicC;, which have been fixed in the sentiments and opinions of mankind, Adam Smith does not then reursue 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 mnn- 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 sym2)athy of pity ; sj'mpathy 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 the 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. OJ tl.o same things happen to other people ; thus all the innocent llooJ that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I.; and hence the misfortunes of kings,, 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 selfisli 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 vanit\^ 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 Ivestoration, 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 if 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 ibolish thing"^ called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a ])hilosopher 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 gi'eatness as well as of religion and virtue ; and a vain man is i\\)i to pretend to be what he is not in one way, as a cunning man is in the other.^'' CHAPTER XT. ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF FINAL CAUSES IN ETHICS. I'o 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 in 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 ibr the slability 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 Caesar 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 17,6 ' 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 of a sytem 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 grq^itude attract our sympathy, FINAL CAUSE OF RESENTMENT. 137 those of hatred and resentment repel it. The hoarse discord- ant voice of ang-cr 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 tlie 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 rellections 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. llesentraent 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 tiiis 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, lor which man has not been left to the 138 AD A AT 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 bungler and thirst, so the preser- vation of society is an end, to the means to whicli man is directly impelled by an instinctive desire for the punishment of bad actions. The same explanation is then applied to the fact, tLat 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 of 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 iuditferent 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 indilferent 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 indict 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 anxiousl}' 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 mig'ht not Nature, with her parental care, have made laws which could 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. Where 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 jo}^, 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 thfng 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 symj)athies have been wider than the avernge 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 DIS TRIE UTION OF WE A LTH. 141 reduced than it has been, and the sum-total of happiness pro- portionately g-reater. Similar thoughts arise with respect to the following- passage, wherein Adam Smith contends, in words that seem a fore- taste of the ireaHh 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.' 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. 142 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 tbeif improvements. They are led bv an invisible hand to mate 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 world 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 Natuie, 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 believe whatever they are told, '^ nature seems to have judged it necessarv for LOVE OF COUNTRY. tlioii- prescrvntion that they should, for some time at least, put imj)li(_'it 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 lis, not only by all our selfish, but by f.ll our private bene- volent affections; for in its welfare is comprehended our own, and that of all our friends and relations. AVe do not therefore love our country merelj' as a part of the great society of man- kind, but for its own sake, and independently of other con- siderations. ''That wih^dom which contrived the svstem of human affecticns, as well as that of ever}' 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 bis abilities and of his understanding.^^ To sum up our author's application of his theory to his general scheme of ethics. INfan, having been intended by nature for society, was fitted by her for that situati' n. 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 wdiich she has taught him to feel for their jiidgment 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 hap])ily 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, wnicn are always accounted virtuous or the contrary. 144 ADA AT SMITH. CHAPTER XII. ADAM smith's theory OF UTILITY. The influence which Hume's philosophj^ exercised over that of Adam Smith has ah'eady 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 Inquhy concerning i/ie 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 reward 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 fafj 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, the 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 be resolved into the perception of beauty which results from the appearance of its utility, no qualities of the mind being ever approved of as virtuous, or disapproved of as vicious, but such as are either useful or agreeable to the person himself, oi* to others, or else have a contrary tendency. Adam Smith fully admits the fact, that the characters of men may be fitted either to promote or to disturb the happiness both of the individual himself and of the society to which he belongs^ and that there is a certain analogy between our approbation of a useful machine and a useful course of conduct. The character of prudence, equity, activity, and resolution, holds out the pro- spect of prosperity and satisfaction both to the person himself L 146 ADAM SMITH. and to every one connected with him ; whilst the rash, inso- lent, slothful, or efleminate character, portends rain to the individual, and misfcrtuno' 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, that the usefulness of any disposition of mind is seldom the first ground of our approbation ; and that the sentiment of appro- 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 remote consequences of our actions, and to foresee the advantage or disadvantage likely to result from them ; but it is a quality originally approved of as just and right, and accurate, and not merely as useful or advantageous. Self-command, also, is a virtue we quite as much approve of under the aspect of propriety, as under that of utility. It is the correspondence of the agent's sentiments with our own, that is the source of our approbation of them ; and it is only because his pleasure a week or a year hence is just as interesting or indifferent to 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. AVe 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 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 himself, lies not in the consideration of the good effect of such an action on society at large, but in the agreement of the individual's point of view with that of the impartial spectator. Thus, if a man gives up his own claims to an office which had been a great object of his ambition, because he imagines that another man's services are better entitled to it, or if he ex- poses his life to defend that of a friend which he considers of more importance, it is because he considers the point of view of disinterested persons, who would prefer that other man or friend to himself, that his conduct seems clothed with that appearance of propriety which constitutes the approbation bestowed on it. It is the accommodation of the feelings of the individual to those of the impartial bystander, which is the source of the admiration bestowed on a soldier, who throws away his life to defend that of his officer, and who deserves and wins applause, not from any feeling of concern for his officer, but from the adjustment of his own feelings to those of every one else who consider his life as nothing when compared with that of his superior. So with regard to public spirit, the first source of ou/ L % I4S 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 liberty of Rome. Naturally he 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. Bat 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 euch beauty " is chiefly perceived by men of i-eflection 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 convoniency 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 this principle. ENDS AND MEANS. 149 For instance, a man coming into his room and finding all the chaii-s in the middle, will perhaps be ang-ry 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 ai"e 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 I50 ADAM SMITH. such small conveniences as are commonly contained in a tweezer-case, would contribute most to his happiness and enjoj-ment." 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. 151 the possibility of introducing- such a system into liis 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. ADAM SMITH. CHAPTER XIII. THE EELATION OF ADAM SMITh's THEORY TO OTHER SYSTEMS OF MORALITY. The long-est and perhaps the most interesting division of Adam Smithes treatise is that in which he reviews the relation of his own theory to that of other systems of moi'al philo- sophy. For like all writers on the same difficult subject, he finds hut 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 heen 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, v/hether 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 affexitions 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 atrections alone j or in the disinterested pursuit of the liappiness of others under the sole direction of the benevolent afTections. Adam Smith's own theory differed from all these, in that it took account of all these three different aspects of virtue together, and g'ave no exclusive preference to any one of them. "With Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, who made virtue -to 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 maintaining- a proper balance of the affections and passions, or as acting- 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 i)art of it which consists in propriety of conduct. According to Plato, the soul was composed of three different facullics — reason, passion, and appetite; and that higher form of justice which conttitutcs perfect virtue 154 ADAM SMITH. was nothing more than that state of mind in which eveiy 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 of 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 EPICURE A N THE OR V OF VIR TUE. 1 5 5 simply for themselves, but only by reason of their intimate conn^jxion 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 than all we can suflTer 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 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, not 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 that 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 or 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 far 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 any 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 his own happiness. Several reasons seem, indeed, at first sight, to justify the 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 of others. Our sense too of the merit of any action is just so HUTCHESON'S THEORY OF VIRTUE. 157 far increased or diminishecl 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 I'ouiul to have been due to a benevolent one, our 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 ; hence that the virtue of an action was proportioned to the extent of happiness it tended to promote, so that the least virtuous afl^ection 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 effects. 158 ADAM SMITH. In the second place, a selfish motive is not always a bad 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 soeiet}', 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 propriet}', prudence, or benevolence, that they tended to give a bias to the mind to some principles of action beyond the proportion that is due to them. Thus the ancient systems, which placed virtue in pi'opriety, 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 the approbation bestowed on real virtue. Nevertheless the genera! tendency of each of these systems w^as to encourage THE SYSTEM OE MANDEVILLE. 159 the best and most laudable habits of the mind, and it were well for society if mankind reg-ulated 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, a 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 Maude- ville in the Fable of the Bees. Adam Smith considers that this system, " 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- rall}^ 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 l6o ADAM SMITH. interest he abandoned to procure it. Hence all pubjic 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 desii-e of rendering our- selves the proper objects of honour and esteem, or of acquiring honour and esteem by reallj'" deserving them. The affinity between these very different desires, of whicb 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 tlie 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. i6i ness tliat though he may neiihcr 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 g-ross 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 de*ree, 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 i62 ADAM SMITH. situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence cf those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality, and ostentation are public benefits." If everj^thing" is to bo 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 liabitation/' Hence the whole point of the paradox rests on a loose and unscientific use of the word luxury. 11. 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 thi-ee, 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 fiilsehood; 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 Ilobbes and Man- deville, reduced the principle of approbation to a remote perception of the tendency of conduct upon personal well- SELFISH THEORY 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 which 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 novelty 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 discoverv, that he seldom takes time to reflect that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot possibly be the ground of that approbation and disapprobation with which 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 haj)- 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 sjmipathy 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? I3 i64 ADAM SMITH. sympathy with the sorrow or indignation of another an emo- tion founded on self-love, because it arises from bringing the case of another home to oneself, and then ccuiceiving of one's own feelings in the same situation ? The answer to this question is important, and is best given in Adam Smithes own words, as he himself admits that the whole account of human nature which deduces all senti- ments and aifections from self-love, seems to have arisen '^ from some confused misapprehension of the system of sym- pathy." His answer, which is as follows, will perhaps not be thought completely satisfactory : "Though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, j'et this imaginary change is not supposed to haj)pen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympa- thize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only son, in order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die ; but I consider what I should suffer if I was really you ; and I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own.. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion, which does not arise even from the imagination of anything that has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person or character, but is entirely occupied about what relates to you V Yet if a referejice to self be the fundamental fact of sympathy, it would seem that this is equivalent to making a reference to self the foundation of all moral sentiment; as in Hobbes' explanation of pity, that it is grief for the calamity of another, arising from the imagination of the like calamity b(!f'alling oneself. And it is remarkable that the samejiassage THE RATIONAL SYSTEM. 165 of Pol} bins wliicli lias been thoug-lit 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 arbitrarj'- 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 wron^. It became therefore the popular doctrine, when the controversy with Hobbes 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 inductivcl}'^, from the observation in a number of par- ticular cases of what is pleasing or displeasing to our moral i66 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 couformity 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 or 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 fi^eling. If vii'tue, 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 Ilutcheson in bis 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 percej^tion 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 analagons 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 were, a ])ul)lic 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 Ilutche- i63 ADAM SMITH. son biraself'j was that our moral faculties themselves conld not be called virtuous or vicious, morally good or morally evil ; for the qualities of any ol)ject 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- 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 .■'•' IS^or 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 dillercnt 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 resentmejit, 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. "VA'ith regard to approbation it is otherwise, for there are no common features running through all manifesta- tions of moral ajiproval, 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 \)y 'the one and we are elevated by the other, and there is no sort of resemblance between the emotions which 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 peison 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 dit^approbation itself is marked 170 ADAM SMITH. with the same moral attributes. 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 apjirobation 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 our own, we disaf)prove 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 have 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' docs not immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience sup- ])oses, 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 it rot 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 agent j secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who SOURCES OF MORAL APPROBATION. i;i receive the beneiit 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 wo 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. EEVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL CRITICISIIS OF ADAM SMITH's 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 diffei'ences, 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.* It would be interesting to know whether he ever read Hart- ley's Observations on Man, a work which, published in 1 749 — that is, some ten years before his own — would have materially assisted his argument. For Adam Smith's account (if the growth of conscience — of a sense of duty, is in reality * 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 tlie 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 gcnei'alization 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 ever}^ 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.' But the writer who, perhaps, as much as any other contri- buted to the formation of Adam Smith's ideas, seems to have ' 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 Ad;im Smith of the association of ideas. It is probable, however, that he was acquainted with tlie doctrine, not from II;irtloy, but from Hume's statement of it in the Inquiry concern- ing Human Understanding. 174 AI)A3f SMITH. been Pope, who in liis Essni/ on Man anticipated many of the leading- thoug-hts in the Theorjj of Moral SetiUnienfs. 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 Smitl/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 J03-S 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 degrees 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 bi;t serves the virtuous mind to walce, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds Another still, and still another spreads ; Friend, parent, neigiibour, first it will embrace ; His country- next; and next all human race." RELATIVITY OF MORALITY. i;5 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 amoimt of criticism expended upon it^ Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments must take its place immediately after Hume's Enquiry concerning the Trinciples of Morals. The shorter observations on it by Lord Karnes and Sir James Mackintosh bear witness to the great interest that attached to it, no less than the longer criticisms of Dr. Brown, Dugald 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 theorj'- proposed by Adam Smith, Bat i.n 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 stan':lard, 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 j" 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 otb.er moral states, by reference to his own consciousness of those several affections. Is not this to destroy the fixed character of morality, and to T75 ABA AT SMITH. deprive it — as Protagoras, the Greek sophist, deprived it long" ao-o in liis similar teaehino- that man was the measure of ull 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 imperalive character than any other emotions. They attract or repel, like other feelings, according to their intensity. If, then, the sympathies continue in mature minds to conjititute the whole of conscience, it be- yOUFFROY'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 v/ords, 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 leauiilully the cliaracteristics of this moral motive, and ^ Progress of Ethical PhiJosophy, p. 210; compare also DugalJ S;ewart's Jv/irc and Mural Powers, vol. i., p. 331. N I7S ADAM SMITH. then gratuitously attributes them to the instinct of sympathy. But he fails to apply to rules of conduct founded upon such an instinctj that which is tlie 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 sug-g-ested 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 Kig/if, and Butj/. 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-obedieuce 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 Ibunded 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 riglit, and of all other such ideas as imply the fact of oblig-ation/'^ The question tlien is, How far is such criticism well-founded ? How far is it relevant to the subject-matter of Adam Smith's treatise ? Adam Smith mig-ht have replied to JoutFroy's objections by asking whether, putting- aside the question of the soundness of his theory of the origin of moral approbation, any theory that accounted for the approbation did not ipso 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.* •" 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 * Introduction to Ethics ; translation, vol. ii., p. 117. * Lectures on Ethics, p. 13. N -l i8o ADAM SMITH. directly or by our imag-ination^ affected ourselves ; so that the additional strength thus conferred on the feeling 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 ^ier 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 o£ 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 the 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 UTHORITY OF MORAL FA CUL TIES. 1 8 1 cnnduct^ 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 duii) 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 pecuHar 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 rules of which ai*e 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 sj'stem, 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 ouMit to be gratified. Hence 1 82 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 thau there is from the eye, or the ear, or the taste with regard to tlie 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 j^leases 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 imparilal. If impartiality moans, argues Jouffroy, as alone it can mean THE A BS TRA CT SPECTA TOR . i S 3 impartiality of judgment, the impartiality of a spectator must be the impartiality of bis 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, wdiich 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 wath it, the latter is only impartial in so far as his feeling of resentment is reflected and not original. His feeliniJered imperative, of demolishing all previous systems of Philosophy before they ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS. 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 book, 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 j ermit. The lives of PhiloFophers are not, as a rule, eventful, and the biogiapliies will consequently be brief. It is hoped that the Series, \\hen complete, wiil supply a comprehensive History of English Philosophy. It will mclude an Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, by Professor H. Sidgwii^k. It remains for the Editor to thank those ladies and gentlemen who have so kindly promised their assistance to the work. The volumes will appear in rapid succession, definite airangcments having been already made for the following : ADAM SMITH, J. Farrer, M.A., Author of " Primitive Manners and Customs." BACON, Professor Fowler. BERKELEY, Professor T. H. Green. 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