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CHAPTER X: ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF HAPPINESS

Although Adam Smith never distinctly faces the problem of the supreme end of life, nor asks himself whether virtue and morality are merely means to the attainment of happiness, or whether they are ends in themselves irrespective of happiness, he leaves little doubt that happiness really occupies in his system very much the same place that it does in the systems of professed utilitarians. But he distinguishes between happiness 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 end.

"The happiness of mankind," he says, "as well as of all other rational creatures, seems to have been the original purpose of the Author of Nature," no other end appearing to be worthy of His supreme wisdom and beneficence. The fact therefore that we most effectually promote the happiness of mankind, and so to some extent promote the great plan of Providence by acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, is an additional reason, though not the primary one, for our doing so; and, conversely, the tendency of an opposite course of conduct to obstruct the scheme thus ordained for the happiness of the world, is an additional reason for abstaining from it. Accordingly, the ultimate sanction of our compliance with the rules for the promotion of human welfarethe ultimate sanction, that is, of virtuelies in a system of future rewards and punishments, by which our co-operation with the divine plan may be enforced.

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

Hence when he speaks of the perfection and happiness of mankind as "the great end" aimed at by nature, it is clear that he intends the temporal and general welfare of' the world, and that, though the happiness of another may be a motive to virtue, it is not so much the end and object of it as happiness in this. It is in this life, also, that virtue and happiness, vice and misery, are closely associated; and nature may be regarded as having purposely bestowed on every virtue and vice that precise reward or punishment which is best fitted either to encourage the one or to restrain the other. Thus the reward attached to industry and prudencenamely, success in every sort of businessis 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 humanity, the confidence and esteem of those we live with. It requires indeed a very extraordinary concurrence of circumstances to defeat those natural and temporal rewards or punishments for virtue or vice, which have been fixed in the sentiments and opinions of mankind.

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

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

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

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

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

In the highest situation we can fancy, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness are generally the same as those which, in a humbler station, we have at all times at hand and in our power. The poor man's son, "whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition," will go through, in the first month of his pursuit of the pleasures of wealth, more fatigue of body and uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life for the want of them. "Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened in the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you have either read of or heard of or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and be contented."

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

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be, blest.

And Horace asked Mecaenas the same question long ago:--

Qui fit, Mecaenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem

Seu ratio dederit, sen fors objecerit illa

Contentus vivat?

"What can be added," asks Adam Smith, "to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" And this condition, he maintains, is the ordinary condition of the greater part of mankind. Would you live freely, fearlessly, and independently, there is one sure way: "Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return, never come within the circle of ambition." The love of public admiration admits of no rival nor successor in the breast, and all other pleasures sicken by comparison with it. It is very true, as was said by Rochefoucault, "Love is commonly succeeded by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love."

The following passage is perhaps the best illustration of our philosopher's view of the objects of ambition. "Power and riches," he says, "are enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. `They are immense fabrics which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower but not the winter storm, but leave him as much, and sometimes more, exposed than before to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death."

The question then arises, Why do we all so generally flee from poverty and pursue riches? The answer is (and it is one of the happiest applications of the author's favourite theory, though it equally solves the problem of the great absence of contentment), from regard to the common sentiments of mankind; from the greater sympathy or admiration naturally felt for the rich than for the poor. For being as we are more disposed to sympathize with joy than with sorrow, we more naturally enter into the agreeable emotions which accompany the possessor of riches, whilst we fail of much real fellow-feeling for the distress and misery of poverty. Sympathy with poverty is a sympathy of pity; sympathy with wealth a sympathy of admiration, a sympathy altogether more pleasurable 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 consciousness 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 the same things happen to other people; thus all the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I.; and hence the misfortunes of 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 selfish expectations of benefit from their good-will. It arises rather from a simple admiration of the advantages of their position, and is primarily a disinterested sentiment. From a natural sympathetic admiration of their happiness, we desire to serve them for their own sakes, and require no other recompense than the vanity and honour of obliging them.

It would equally be a mistake to suppose that the common deference paid to the rich is founded on any regard for the general utility of such submission, or for the support it gives to the maintenance of social order, for even when it may be most beneficial to oppose them, such opposition is most reluctantly made. The tendency to reverence them is so natural, that even when a people are brought to desire the punishment of their kings, the sorrow felt for the mortification of a monarch is ever ready to revive former sentiments, of loyalty. The death of Charles I. brought about the Restoration, and 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 frivolous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing, called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher or a legislator." Not only the dress, and language, and behaviour of the rich and great become favourable, but their vices and follies too, vain men giving themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy of which in their hearts they do not approve and of which perhaps they are not guilty. For "there are hypocrites of wealth and greatness as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is apt to pretend to be what he is not in one way, as a cunning man is in the other."

CHAPTER XI: ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF FINAL CAUSES IN ETHICS

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

To a certain extent this conception of Nature, and recognition 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 view of things, and the assumption of Final Causes as explanatory 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 system 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 immense 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 contemplation of the moral one, and blessed him with that optimistic 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 conscious we may be of the justice of another's lamentation, and however much we may reproach ourselves for our want of sensibility, our sympathy with the afflictions of our friends generally vanishes when we leave their presence. Such is the fact, the final cause of which is thus stated: "Nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take any further share in those of others than was necessary to prompt us to relieve them."

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

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

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

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

This is a good illustration of the difficulties of this kind of reasoning in general. It will be easily seen that it raises more doubts than it solves. If there really is this parental care on the part of Nature for mankind, why are her measures incomplete? If the reward she bestows on fortitude did entirely compensate for the misfortunes it contends with, would not all the evil of them be destroyed? And might not Nature, with her parental care, have made laws which could 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 happiness and guard against misery." Against those "whining and melancholy Moralists," who reproach us for being happy in the midst of all the misery of the world, he replies, not only that if we take the whole world on an average, there will be for every man in pain or misery twenty in prosperity and joy, and that we have no more reason to weep with the one than to rejoice with the twenty, but also that, if we were so constituted as to feel distress for the evil we do not see, it could serve no other purpose than to increase misery twofold. This is true enough; but it is another thing to argue from the fact to the purpose, and to say that it has been wisely ordained by Nature that we should not feel interested in the fortune of those whom we can neither serve nor hurt. For it is to men whose sympathies have been wider than the average that all the diminution of the world's misery has been due; and it is fair, if we must argue about Nature at all, to say that had she endowed men generally with wider sympathies than she has done, the misery in the world might have been still more reduced than it has been, and the sum-total of happiness proportionately greater.

Similar thoughts arise with respect to the following passage, wherein Adam Smith contends, in words that seem a foretaste of the Wealth of Nations, that Nature leads us intentionally, 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 continual 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.(7) 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 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 and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life which would have been made had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants.... When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last, too, enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them."

Adam Smith applies the same argument to the condition of children. Nature, he maintains, has for the wisest purposes 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 altogether 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 sufficiently provided for that. "In the eye of Nature, it would seem, a child is a more important object than an old man, and excites a much more lively as well as a more universal sympathy." Thus, again, with regard to the excessive credulity of children, and their disposition to believe whatever they are told, "nature seems to have judged it necessary for their preservation that they should, for some time at least, put implicit confidence in those to whom the care of their childhood, and of the earliest and most necessary parts of their education, is entrusted."

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

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

CHAPTER XII: ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF UTILITY

The influence which Hume's philosophy exercised over that of Adam Smith has already been noticed with respect to the fundamental facts of sympathy, and the part played by them in the formation of our moral sentiments. But it is chiefly with respect to the position of Utility in moral philosophy that Adam Smith's theory is affected by Hume's celebrated Inquiry concerning, the Principles of Morals. Not only are all his speculations coloured by considerations of utility, but be 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 perception 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; stimulating us, not merely to a passive feeling of approbation or the contrary, but to a desire to confer actual reward or punishment on the agent, it is evident that the greater part of moral approbation consists in the perception of utility of tendency.

So far, Adam Smith agrees with the utilitarian theory but he refuses altogether to assent to the doctrine, that the perception of the utility of virtue is its primary recommendation, 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 deformity 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 immense 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, or 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 prospect of prosperity and satisfaction both to the person himself and to every one connected with him; whilst the rash, insolent, slothful, or effeminate character, portends ruin to the individual, and misfortune to all who have anything to do with him. In the former character there is all the beauty which can belong to the most perfect machine ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose; in the other there is all the deformity of an awkward and clumsy contrivance.

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

"For, in the first place, it seems impossible that the approbation 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 approbation 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 us, as spectators, as the pleasure that tempts him at this moment, that we approve of his sacrifice of present to future enjoyment. We approve of his acting as if the remote object interested him as much as the future one, because then his affections correspond exactly with our own, and we recognize the perfect propriety of his conduct..

With respect again to such qualities which are most useful to othersas humanity, justice, generosity, and public spiritthe 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 exposes 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 our 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. But he viewed them, not as a father, but as a Roman citizen; that is to say, he entered so thoroughly into the sentiments of the impartial spectator, or of the ordinary Roman citizen, that even his own sons weighed as nothing in the balance with the smallest interest of Rome. The propriety of the action, or the perfect sympathy of feeling between the agent and the spectator, is the cause of our admiration of it. Its utility certainly bestows upon it a new beauty, and so still further recommends it to our approbation. But such beauty "is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and speculation, and is by no means the quality which first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind."

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

For instance, a man coming into his room and finding all the chairs in the middle, will perhaps be angry with his servant 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 arrangement than the convenience which he really cares for, since to attain the convenience he puts himself to more trouble than he could have suffered from the want of it, seeing that nothing was easier for him than to have sat down at once on one of the chairs, which is probably all he does when his labour is over.

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

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

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