The Theory of Moral Sentiments (with an introduction by Herbert W. Schneider)

By Adam Smith

Written in 1759 by Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” provides much of the foundation for the ideas in his later works, most notably in “The Wealth of Nations.” Through this initial text, Smith expresses his general system of morals, exploring the propriety of action, reward and punishment, sense of duty, and the effect of numerous factors on moral sentiment. In so doing, Smith devised innovative theories on virtues, conscience, and moral judgment that are still relevant and accessible today. Though somewhat surprising to find a philosopher of Smith’s abilities discussing aspects such as luck and sympathy and how they affect self-image or relationships, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” never loses its critical excellence in its good-natured understanding of the human exploration for the meaning of being good. This edition includes an introduction by Herbert W. Schneider.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781420958461

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS

By ADAM SMITH

Introduction by

HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

By Adam Smith

Introduction by Herbert W. Schneider

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5845-4

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5846-1

This edition copyright © 2018. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of a statue of Adam Smith (1723-90), Monument on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, Scotland. Shutterstock Images.

Please visit www.digireads.com

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

ADVERTISEMENT.

PART I. OF THE PROPRIETY OF ACTION

SECTION I. OF THE SENSE OF PROPRIETY.

CHAPTER I. Of Sympathy.

CHAPTER II. Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

CHAPTER III. Of the manner in which we judge of the Propriety or Impropriety of the affections of other men, by their concord or dissonance with our own.

CHAPTER IV. The same subject continued.

CHAPTER V. Of the amiable and respectable Virtues.

SECTION II. OF THE DEGREES OF THE DIFFERENT PASSIONS WHICH ARE CONSISTENT WITH PROPRIETY.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. Of the Passions which take their origin from the Body.

CHAPTER II. Of those Passions which take their origin from a particular turn or habit of the Imagination.

CHAPTER III. Of the unsocial Passions.

CHAPTER IV. Of the social Passions.

CHAPTER V. Of the selfish Passions.

SECTION III. OF THE EFFECTS OF PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY UPON THE JUDGMENT OF MANKIND WITH REGARD TO THE PROPRIETY OF ACTION; AND WHY IT IS MORE EASY TO OBTAIN THEIR APPROBATION IN THE ONE STATE THAN IN THE OTHER.

CHAPTER I. That though our sympathy with sorrow is generally a more lively sensation than our sympathy with joy, it commonly falls much more short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.

CHAPTER II. Of the origin of Ambition, and of the distinction of Ranks.

CHAPTER III. Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition.

PART II. OF MERIT AND DEMERIT; OR, OF THE OBJECTS OF REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

SECTION I. OF THE SENSE OF MERIT AND DEMERIT.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. That whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude, appears to deserve reward; and that, in the same manner, whatever appears to be the proper object of resentment, appears to deserve punishment.

CHAPTER II. Of the proper Objects of Gratitude and Resentment.

CHAPTER III. That where there is no approbation of the conduct of the person who confers the benefit, there is little sympathy with the gratitude of him who receives it: and that, on the contrary, where there is no disapprobation of the motives of the person who does the mischief, there is no sort of sympathy with the resentment of him who suffers it.

CHAPTER IV. Recapitulation of the foregoing Chapters.

CHAPTER V. The Analysis of the Sense of Merit and Demerit.

SECTION II. OF JUSTICE AND BENEFICENCE.

CHAPTER I. Comparison of those two Virtues.

CHAPTER II. Of the sense of Justice, of Remorse, and of the consciousness of Merit.

CHAPTER III. Of the utility of this constitution of Nature.

SECTION III. OF THE INFLUENCE OF FORTUNE UPON THE SENTIMENTS OF MANKIND, WITH REGARD TO THE MERIT OR DEMERIT OF ACTIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. Of the Causes of this Influence of Fortune.

CHAPTER II. Of the Extent of this Influence of Fortune.

CHAPTER III. Of the final cause of this Irregularity of Sentiments.

PART III. OF THE FOUNDATION OF OUR JUDGMENTS CONCERNING OUR OWN SENTIMENTS AND CONDUCT, AND OF THE SENSE OF DUTY

CHAPTER I. Of the Principle of Self-approbation and of Self-disapprobation.

CHAPTER II. Of the love of Praise, and of that of Praise-worthiness; and of the dread of Blame, and of that of Blame-worthiness.

CHAPTER III. Of the Influences and Authority of Conscience.

CHAPTER IV. Of the Nature of Self-deceit, and of the Origin and Use of general Rules.

CHAPTER V. Of the influence and authority of the general Rules of Morality, and that they are justly regarded as the Laws of the Deity.

CHAPTER VI. In what cases the Sense of Duty ought to be the sole Principle of our Conduct; and in what cases it ought to concur with other Motives.

PART IV. OF THE EFFECT OF UTILITY UPON THE SENTIMENT OF APPROBATION

CHAPTER I. Of the Beauty which the Appearance of Utility bestows upon all the Productions of Art, and of the extensive Influence of this Species of Beauty.

CHAPTER II. Of the Beauty which the appearance of Utility bestows upon the Characters and Actions of Men; and how far the Perception of this Beauty may be regarded as one of the original Principles of approbation.

PART V. OF THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOM AND FASHION UPON THE SENTIMENTS OF MORAL APPROBATION AND DISAPPROBATION

CHAPTER I. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon our Notions of Beauty and Deformity.

CHAPTER II. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon Moral Sentiments.

PART VI. OF THE CHARACTER OF VIRTUE

INTRODUCTION.

SECTION I. OF THE CHARACTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL, SO FAR AS IT AFFECTS HIS OWN HAPPINESS; OR OF PRUDENCE.

SECTION II. OF THE CHARACTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL, SO FAR AS IT CAN AFFECT THE HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. Of the Order in which Individuals are recommended by Nature to our care and attention.

CHAPTER II. Of the order in which Societies are by nature recommended to our Beneficence.

CHAPTER III. Of universal Benevolence.

SECTION III. OF SELF-COMMAND.

CONCLUSION OF THE SIXTH PART.

PART VII. OF SYSTEMS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

SECTION I. OF THE QUESTIONS WHICH OUGHT TO BE EXAMINED IN A THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS.

SECTION II. OF THE DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS WHICH HAVE BEEN GIVEN OF THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety.

CHAPTER II. Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Prudence.

CHAPTER III. Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence.

CHAPTER IV. Of Licentious Systems.

SECTION III. OF THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS WHICH HAVE BEEN FORMED CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLE OF APPROBATION

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I. Of those Systems which deduce the Principle of Approbation from Self-love.

CHAPTER II. Of those Systems which make Reason the Principle of Approbation.

CHAPTER III. Of those Systems which make Sentiment the Principle of Approbation.

SECTION IV. OF THE MANNER IN WHICH DIFFERENT AUTHORS HAVE TREATED OF THE PRACTICAL RULES OF MORALITY.

INTRODUCTION.

Four intellectual environments shaped the mind of Adam Smith: the University of Glasgow, where he went as a student at the age of 14 in 1737 and where he was a professor from 1749-1763; Oxford University, whither he was sent in 1740 by his parents to prepare for orders in the church and where he apparently spent his six years studying, instead, rhetoric and belles-lettres; pre-Revolutionary France, where he visited for the greater part of three years (1764-1766); and Edinburgh, where he gave public lectures (1747-1748), where he was appointed to the Board of Customs in 1778, and where he spent much of his leisure during the closing years of his life (he died in 1790) in the private company of a distinguished and enlightened circle of friends and scholars, among them David Hume and Lord Karnes.

At Glasgow his professor of Moral Philosophy was Francis Hutcheson, to whose chair Smith succeeded in 1752. In addition to moral philosophy he studied at Glasgow rational or logical philosophy and a little natural philosophy. His studies in logic and rhetoric were continued at Oxford, and his first appointment at Glasgow (1749) was to the chair of Logic. According to John Millar, soon after his appointment Smith "saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the logic and metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and explaining so much of the ancient logic as was requisite to gratify curiosity with respect to an artificial method of reasoning, which had once occupied the universal attention of the learned, he dedicated all the rest of his time to the delivery of a system of rhetoric and belles lettres.... The most useful part of metaphysics arises from an examination of the several ways of communicating our thoughts by speech."{1} In other words, Smith reproduced and expanded what he had learned at Oxford and what he had delivered in his public lectures at Edinburgh after his return home from Oxford under the title On Taste, Composition, and the History of Philosophy. There is no doubt that Smith was both theoretically and practically interested in the theory of style, and that his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), was not only a work in moral philosophy, but a literary work in which he exhibited his rhetorical skill. To its rhetorical quality this work owed its immediate popularity and its later unpopularity.

As Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow Adam Smith followed more closely the established academic pattern than he did as Professor of Logic, for in this field Francis Hutcheson had made an enduring impression on his student and had fixed the general structure of his thinking as well as of his lectures. Hutcheson had employed the traditional divisions of moral philosophy in introducing his subject under the following heads:

I. Ethics, taken more strictly, teaching the nature of virtue and regulating the internal dispositions.

II. The Law of Nature or Natural Jurisprudence:

1. Private rights, laws obtaining in natural liberty.

2. Oeconomicks, laws and rights of the several members of a family.

3. Politicks, the various plans of civil government and the rights of states with respect to each other.

The lectures which Hutcheson delivered on the basis of this conception of moral philosophy were divided into four parts: Natural Theology, Ethics, Jurisprudence, and Political Economy; and this scheme was not only followed by Adam Smith but was for several generations the accepted curriculum in moral philosophy among the Scottish universities.

Of the first part of his course of lectures, the course in natural theology, we know practically nothing. His notes on this subject were among those which he refused to publish and which he was concerned to have burned before he died. There are incidental passages, however, in both his major works which are unmistakable testimony to his faith in natural law and natural religion. He seems to have been content to leave this subject as it had been expounded by Paley and Butler, and we know not only that he did not share Hume’s skepticism but that he refused to publish Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion after the author’s death, though he had been requested to do so. He may have gone beyond the conventional expositions of the deist faith in attempting to show that even the basic doctrines of revealed religion are reasonable extensions of natural religion. The following passage on the doctrine of the atonement was retained during the first five editions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but, giving offense, was finally eliminated by the author:

That the Deity loves virtue and hates vice, as a voluptuous man loves riches and hates poverty, not for their own sakes, but for the effects which they tend to produce; that he loves the one, only because it promotes the happiness of society, which his benevolence prompts him to desire; and that he hates the other, only because it occasions the misery of mankind, which the same divine quality renders the object of his aversion; is not the doctrine of nature, but of an artificial, though ingenious, refinement of philosophy. All our natural sentiments prompt us to believe that as perfect virtue is supposed necessarily to appear to the Deity, as it does to us, for its own sake, and without any further view, the natural and proper object of love and reward, so must vice, of hatred and punishment. . . . To such a being, man can scarce imagine, that his littleness and weakness should ever seem to be the proper object, either of esteem or of reward. . . . Repentance, sorrow, humiliation, contrition at the thought of his past conduct, are upon this account, the sentiments which become him, and seem to be the only means which he has left for appeasing that wrath which, he knows, he has justly provoked. He even distrusts the efficacy of all these. . . . Some other intercession, some other sacrifice, some other atonement, he imagines, must be made for him, beyond what he himself is capable of making, before the purity of the divine justice can be reconciled to his manifold offences. The doctrines of revelation coincide, in every respect, with those original anticipations of nature; and, as they teach us how little we can depend upon the imperfection of our own virtue, so they show us, at the same time, that the most powerful intercession has been made, and that the most dreadful atonement has been paid for our manifold transgressions and iniquities.{2}

It may be that Adam Smith’s lectures on natural theology contained similar attempts to make Calvinism reasonable and that he refused to publish them because he wished to avoid theological polemic. In any case it is important to remember that, though he made no significant contribution to natural theology, his whole system of ethics and political economy rests on the foundation of this faith.

Underlying this system of Professor Smith was the distinction between the two approaches to social philosophy, the psychological and the legal, treating respectively the inner and the institutional aspects of virtue, or ethics strictly so called and the natural laws of principles of private and public social order. Hutcheson had abandoned the attempts of others to explain morality as the product of some one basic human motive—such as self-love, reason, or utility—and had developed his own theory of a specific or sixth moral sense. This doctrine was taken up by Hume and defended not by appealing to the presence in human consciousness of a distinct moral faculty or sense (as Hutcheson had done) but by using what he called the experimental method, appealing to human experience and history for illustrations of the overt operation of the moral sense. And he thought he could prove that man is pleased even by utility, not for rational reasons but on sentimental grounds. Justice alone, of all the virtues, Hume defended as an artificial virtue, grounded not in human nature but in human intelligence or prudence. Justice, he argued, is useful; but utility itself is pleasing to the moral sense.

Apparently Hutcheson called Adam Smith’s attention to Hume’s Treatise in 1740, almost immediately on its publication, and just before Smith left for Oxford. Smith then conceived the task of proving by Hume’s experimental method that ethics is based not on a specific moral sense but on the social or sympathetic functioning of man’s various sentiments. This pluralistic and social approach to the psychology of morals became his great pre-occupation and remains today his chief contribution to ethics. Adam Smith states succinctly and with great precision the relation of his system to those of Hutcheson and Hume in his historical sketch of Systems of Moral Philosophy. He also summarizes his own theory of moral sentiments. The psychological approach to morals was Smith’s own chief interest, but he states emphatically that he regards the theory of the nature of morals as of more practical importance than the theory of moral motives.

The question concerning the nature of virtue necessarily has some influence upon our notions of right and wrong in many particular cases. That concerning the principle of approbation can possibly have no such effect. To examine from what contrivance or mechanism within those different notions or sentiments arise, is a mere matter of philosophical curiosity.

Neither of Adam Smith’s chief works is sytematic in its exposition, though the author’s thought is systematic. The best clue to his moral system is contained in. the historical sketch (Part VII) which is appended to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith classifies moral systems in two ways:

I. According to their view of the nature of morality as

(1) Propriety

(2) Prudence

(3) Benevolence

(4) Licentiousness

II. According to their view of the motive of morality as

(1) Self-love

(2) Reason

(3) Sentiment

While in general he betrays his sympathy for an ethics of benevolence based on sentiment, he is clearly repudiating the attempt to reduce morality to any one trait or single motive. His interest is in the interrelations and consequences of all these various factors. Especially, in view of the controversies of his own day, is he interested in the interrelations of justice, benevolence, and prudence. Given man’s sympathetic or social sentiments, he tries to prove that a sense of propriety, a sense of merit, a sense of benevolence, and a sense of prudence can be explained as natural growths of man’s social consciousness or feeling, whereas justice cannot depend on our sense of justice but must find its embodiment objectively in law. There is, however, a psychological basis for justice in the impartial spectator which is formed within each person through the process of self-judgment, for through the habitual appeal of the conscientious person to this impartial spectator he becomes interested in general rules of self-appraisal. Adam Smith was aware of the dangers of self-deceit. One’s own judgment of one’s own character is quite unreliable. This moral looking-glass is not always a very good one . . . There is not in the world such a smoother of wrinkles as is every man’s imagination with regard to the blemishes of his own character. But by sympathy, seeing ourselves as reflected by the praise or blame of others, we acquire an impartial moral looking-glass. Thus there is formed within the breast the psychological basis for the observance of natural laws. In the early versions of The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith pictured this impartial spectator as largely a projection of the moral imagination, a mythical judge, but as he revised his system this judge became an inner reality, the very essence of conscience, a personal possession though a product of sympathy. And on the basis of this social psychology of impartiality, Smith became increasingly confident (as he revised his system) that the most adequate ethics is one which emphasizes neither propriety, nor prudence, nor benevolence, but self-command. Smith succeeded in transforming the Stoic ethics into a social philosophy. The ethics of self-command is the culmination of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments; it is also the foundation of his jurisprudence and political economy. Freedom, both moral and economic, meant to him self-reliance, the ability of the individual (through his moral sentiments) to command himself according to the objective principles of equity, natural law, prudence and justice. Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre.

There is a long discussion on vanity and pride both in the historical sketch and in the final theoretical section on self-command which may seem pedantic to the reader today, but which was in his day a polemic of great theoretical and practical concern. There were two traditions, the Calvinist theology and the self-love school of ethics (Hobbes and Mandeville), which agreed in condemning a morality of self-reliance as vanity. The theological polemic Smith ignores, because he is confining his argument to systems based on natural principles, but Mandeville’s argument that all pretense to disinterested benevolence, all love of propriety, all concern for approbation, is vanity and pride, Smith is at great pains to refute, for it seems to him not merely a licentious argument, but a malicious confusion between genuine vanity, genuine pride, and genuine self-respect, which three he distinguishes very carefully. These passages may still be read with profit as a classic defense of moral liberalism against systems which emphasize the fallen state of human nature.

Meanwhile Adam Smith was also working on the objective side of moral philosophy, the theory of natural law or jurisprudence. The lectures on jurisprudence and political economy have by good fortune been preserved for us at least in part, and the general outline of these lectures as he delivered them about 1763 is the following:

I. Justice

(1) Public Jurisprudence [government]

(2) Domestic Law [law of family relations]

(3) Private Law [law of property and contract]

II. Police [policy]

(1) Cleanliness and Security

(2) Cheapness and Plenty [public economy]

III. Revenue

IV. Arms

V. The Laws of Nations [international law]

In all these branches of jurisprudence and political economy Adam Smith seeks to formulate the natural principles on which positive law and economy should be based.

In 1764, just before his trip to France, he gathered together his notes on Cheapness and Plenty, Revenue and Arms and drafted a treatise On Public Opulence (published only in 1937), in which the basic ideas of The Wealth of Nations are expressed. On his return from France he enlarged this treatise, adding illustrative material and a few minor theoretical revisions which his contacts on the Continent had suggested to him, and, in 1776, published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which made him famous immediately and which remained substantially unchanged despite the several editions it underwent before the author’s death in 1790.

In his Lectures Adam Smith had tried to relate his economy or theory of police, revenue and arms directly to his theory of natural law by asserting that there are natural wants of mankind, the satisfaction of which constitutes the criterion in natural law for the guidance of public jurisprudence and policy. Public opulence would be prudently limited by the natural subserviency of the fine arts and luxuries to the three necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. But this highly interesting section on natural wants is ambiguous, for no sooner has Smith pointed out that as an animal man has these three primary needs, than he explains that on account of man’s peculiar delicacy of body and mind it is impossible for him to be contented with the provision nature makes for him, and feels that improvement of his natural condition is his most elementary want. Whether Smith realized the difficulties in this position, or whether he regarded such speculations as irrelevant, he eliminated this theme from The Wealth of Nations and rested his whole case for self-command in production and for the division of labor on man’s constant effort to better his own condition and on his tendency to barter. These postulates were not derived from his psychology but were clearly introduced as ad hoc principles in order to obviate a theory of natural wants. Similarly his appeal to the principle of self-interest is not to be interpreted as a psychological doctrine but as a methodological principle of police, revenue and arms, as equity is the principle of jurisprudence. The Wealth of Nations is philosophically the objective analysis of prudence, but it received recognition immediately as the formulation of a new natural science, the science of political economy.

Thus the Wealth of Nations is not based, as some have maintained, on a psychology of self-interest, but on a theory of natural laws of prudence (dictates of right reason) or social art of self-command, which is not a theory of motivation at all, but a theory of moral judgment. For the psychology of propriety, benevolence, justice, and prudence we must turn to the Theory of Moral Sentiments; for the natural law or objective embodiment of these same virtues we must turn to jurisprudence and political economy. The two approaches complement each other.

The principle of laissez-faire as conceived by Adam Smith is, therefore, not primarily an attack on government or a reliance on the automatic workings of the divine government in which he believed, but a principle of individual independence. Let’s go! Let us act for ourselves, a better general maxim than ‘Guard us, help us, ye mighty.’ This was the meaning which French merchants had given the phrase, and this was its meaning for Adam Smith.{3} Similarly competition was conceived by him not as a type of struggle, but as a positive interest in improvement. As a theory of polity this formula supplanted both the mercantilist reliance on money and the physiocratic reliance on resources. It was intended to free and stimulate enterprising adventurers or entrepreneurs. It is in this context, too, that Smith’s theory of labor as the origin of value is to be interpreted. By labor he meant productive labor; and by production he meant production of capital or wealth. It is important to keep in mind that The Wealth of Nations was conceived not as a treatise on national welfare or the greatest happiness, but merely of public opulence, of economy in the Scottish sense; for Smith’s theory of justice and benevolence we must turn elsewhere.

The last part of Adam Smith’s system, which he did not live to develop or publish, would have been a theory of international law—the regulation of war, peace and commerce. That he would have relied heavily on Grotius is probable in view of his praise of Grotius’ attempt to establish international law on natural law. But for the rest we can only speculate on the basis of scattered remarks in his other works. Particularly worth noting, not only for their bearing on international relations but also for their psychology of morals, are the following comments on the influence of commerce on manners:

Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it. These virtues in a rude and barbarous country are almost unknown. . . . A dealer is afraid of losing his character, and is scrupulous in observing every engagement. . . . They whom we call politicians are not the most remarkable men in the world for probity and punctuality. Ambassadors from different nations are still less so. . . . If states were obliged to treat once or twice a day, as merchants do, it would be necessary to be more precise, in order to preserve their character. . . .

[On the other hand there are bad effects of commerce.] We find that in the commercial parts of England, the tradesmen are for the most part in a despicable condition; their work through half the week is sufficient to maintain them, and through want of education they have no amusement for the other but riot and debauchery. So it may very justly be said that the people who clothe the whole world are in rags themselves. . . . Another bad effect of commerce is that it sinks the courage of mankind, and tends to extinguish martial spirit. . . . Our ancestors were brave and warlike, their minds were not enervated by cultivating arts and commerce, and they were all ready with spirit and vigour to resist the most formidable foe. . . . These are the disadvantages of a commercial spirit. The minds of men are contracted, and rendered incapable of elevation. Education is despised, or at least neglected, and heroic spirit is almost utterly extinguished. To remedy these defects would be an object worthy of serious attention.{4}

HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER.

1948.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Since the first publication of the Theory Of Moral Sentiments, which was so long ago as the beginning of the year 1759, several corrections, and a good many illustrations of the doctrines contained in it, have occurred to me. But the various occupations in which the different accidents of my life necessarily involved me, have till now prevented me from revising this work with the care and attention which I always intended. The reader will find the principal alterations which I have made in this New Edition, in the last Chapter of the third Section of Part First; and in the four first Chapters of Part Third. Part Sixth, as it stands in this New Edition, is altogether new. In Part Seventh, I have brought together the greater part of the different passages concerning the Stoical Philosophy, which, in the former Editions, had been scattered about in different parts of the work. I have likewise endeavoured to explain more fully, and examine more distinctly, some of the doctrines of that famous sect. In the fourth and last Section of the same Part, I have thrown together a few additional observations concerning the duty and principle of veracity. There are, besides, in other parts of the work, a few other alterations and corrections of no great moment.

In the last paragraph of the first Edition of the present work, I said, that I should in another discourse endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions which they had 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. In the Enquiry concerning the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I have partly executed this promise; at least so far as concerns police, revenue, and arms. What remains, the theory of jurisprudence, which I have long projected, I have hitherto been hindered from executing, by the same occupations which had till now prevented me from revising the present work. Though my very advanced age leaves me, I acknowledge, very little expectation of ever being able to execute this great work to my own satisfaction; yet, as I have not altogether abandoned the design, and as I wish still to continue under the obligation of doing what I can, I have allowed the paragraph to remain as it was published more than thirty years ago, when I entertained no doubt of being able to execute everything which it announced.

PART I. OF THE PROPRIETY OF ACTION

CONSISTING OF THREE SECTIONS

SECTION I. OF THE SENSE OF PROPRIETY.

CHAPTER I. Of Sympathy.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulness of the conception.

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body complain, that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other; because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would suffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of. Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.

Neither is it those circumstances only, which create pain or sorrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of the by-stander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer.

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions, upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man to another, instantaneously and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every body that sees it, a cheerful object; as a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.

This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no sort of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occasion to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive anything like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger.

If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the general idea of some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe them: and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person who feels those emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are concerned, and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it.

Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and still more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very considerable.

Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes feel for another, a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behaviour; because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother, when she hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly secure, and in its thoughtlessness and want of foresight, possesses an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will, in vain, attempt to defend it, when it grows up to a man.

We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated, in a little time, from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in danger of being forgot by everybody; and, by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own misery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation seems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.

CHAPTER II. Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love, think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain. Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness, and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured of that assistance; and grieves whenever he observes the contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is mortified when, after having endeavoured to divert the company, he looks round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself. On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest applause.

Neither does his pleasure seem to arise altogether from the additional vivacity which his mirth may receive from sympathy with theirs, nor his pain from the disappointment he meets with when he misses this pleasure; though both the one and the other, no doubt, do in some measure. When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On the contrary, we should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the same case here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us. But though this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one, and to the pain which we feel from the other, it is by no means the sole cause of either; and this correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own appears to be a cause of pleasure, and the want of it a cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manner. The sympathy, which my friends express with my joy, might, indeed,