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CHAPTER I: HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

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

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

From the time when such problems first became popular in England, two main currents of thought may be detected running side by side in mutual antagonism to one another; and whilst according to the teaching of the one school the ultimate standard of morality was the interest of the individual himself or the community he belonged to, the aim of the opposite school was to find some basis for morality which should make it less dependent on changes of circumstance and give to its maxims the authority of propositions that should hold true of all times and places.

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

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

But the same foundation for an immutable morality that Clarke sought for in the human intellect, others sought for in a peculiar instinct of our nature. Thus Lord Shaftesbury postulated the existence of a moral sense, sufficient of itself to make us eschew vice and follow after virtue; and this moral sense, or primitive instinct for good, was implanted in us by nature, and carried its own authority with it. It judged of actions by reference to a certain harmony between our affections, and this harmony had a real existence, independent of' all fashion and caprice, like harmony in music. As symmetry and proportion were founded in nature, howsoever barbarous might be men's tastes in the arts, so, in morals, an equally real harmony always presented a fixed standard for our guidance.

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

Bishop Butler, like his contemporary, Hutcheson, also followed Lord Shaftesbury in seeking in our natural instincts the origin of our moral ideas, Conscience with him taking the place of the Moral Sense, from its being possessed, as he thought, of a more authoritative character. Conscience, ac- cording to Butler, was a faculty natural to man, in virtue of which he was a moral agent; a faculty or principle of the human heart, in kind and nature supreme over all others, and bearing its own authority For being so. Using language about it, which we meet again in the Theory of Adam Smith, he spoke of it as "God's viceroy," "the voice of God within us," " the guide assigned to us by the Author of our nature." The obligation to obey it therefore rested in the fact of its being the law of our nature. It could no more be doubted that shame was given us to prevent our doing wrong than that our eyes were given us to see with.

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

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

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

The latter alternative had been the thesis which Mandeville had partly made and partly found popular. In his view the most virtuous actions might be resolved into selfishness, and self-love was the starting-point of all morality. This became therefore, one of the favourite topics of speculation; but it is only necessary to notice Hume's treatment of it, inasmuch as it supplies the first principle of Adam Smith's theory. Hume assumed the existence of a disinterested principle underlying all our moral sentiments. He argued that "a natural principle of benevolence," impelling us to consider the interests of others, was an essential part of human nature. "The very aspect," he said, "of happiness, joy, prosperity, gives pleasure; that of pain, suffering, sorrow communicates uneasiness." And this fellow-feeling with others he had refused to resolve into any more general principle, or to treat as other than an original principle of human nature.

This phenomenon of Sympathy, or fellow-feeling, which we have by nature with any passion whatever of another person, is made by Adam Smith the cardinal point and distinctive feature of his theory of the origin of moral approbation; and the first sentence of his treatise contains therefore not only his answerone of flat contradictionto Mandeville, but the key-note to the whole spirit of his philosophy. "How selfish soever," he begins, "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." So that pity or compassion, which Hobbes had explained as the consciousness of a possible misfortune to ourselves similar to that seen to befall another, is, with Adam Smith, a primary, not a secondary, emotion of our nature, an original and not a derivative passion, and one that is purely disinterested in its manifestation.

In the next chapter and the four succeeding ones we shall observe how on this basis of an original instinct of sympathy Adam Smith constructs his explanation of the origin of our moral ideas. With regard to the explanations already offered by previous writers, he believed that they all contained some portion of the truth from the particular point of view taken by each; and in the explanation which he himself elaborated, he thought that some part or other of his system embraced and coincided with whatever was true in the different theories of his predecessors.

CHAPTER II: THE PHENOMENA OF SYMPATHY

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

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

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

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

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

The sympathy of others being more necessary for us in grief than in joy, we are more desirous to communicate to others our disagreeable passions than our agreeable ones. "The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the heart without any auxiliary pleasure. The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy." Hence we are less anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships than that they should enter into our resentments, and it makes us much more angry if they do not enter into our resentments than if they do not enter into our gratitude.

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

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

CHAPTER III: MORAL APPROBATION, AND THE FEELING OF PROPRIETY

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

Just as a man who admires the same poem or picture that I do, or laughs at the same joke, allows the justice of my admiration or mirth, so he, who enters into my resentment, and by bringing my injuries home to himself shares my feelings, cannot but thereby approve of them as just and proper. According as his sympathetic indignation fails to correspond to mine, according as his compassion falls short of my grief, according, in short, to the degree of disproportion he may perceive between my sentiments and his, does he feel stronger or weaker disapproval of my feelings.

Moral approbation admits of the same explanation as intellectual approbation. For just as to approve or disapprove of the opinions of others is nothing more than to observe their agreement or disagreement with our own, so to approve or disapprove of their feelings and passions is simply to mark a similar agreement or disagreement existing between our own and theirs.

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

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

Let us take, for instance, as a concrete case, the exhibition of fortitude under great distress. What is the source of our approbation of it? It is the perfect coincidence of another's firmness with our own insensibility to his misfortunes. By his making no demand on us for that higher degree of sensibility which we find to our regret that we do not possess, he effects a most perfect correspondence between his sentiments and ours, which causes us to recognize the perfect propriety of' his conduct. The additional element which raises our feeling of mere approbation into one of admiration, is the wonder and surprise we feel at witnessing a degree of self-command far above that usually met with among mankind.

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

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

But it is otherwise with anything which more closely affects us. A misfortune or injury to another is not regarded by him and by us from the same point of view as a poem or picture are, for the former cannot but more closely affect him. Hence a correspondence of feeling is much more difficult and much more important with regard to matters which nearly concern him, than with regard to matters which concern neither him nor us, and are really indifferent to our actual interests. We can easily bear with difference of opinion in matters of speculation or taste; but we cease to be bearable to one another, if he has no fellow-feeling for my misfortunes or my griefs; or if he feels either no indignation at my injuries or none that bears any proportion to my resentment of them.

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

On this twofold tendency of our moral nature two different sets of virtues are based. On our effort to sympathize with the passions and feelings of others are founded the gentler virtues of condescension, toleration, and humanity; whilst the sterner virtues of self-denial and self-command are founded on our effort to attune our passions to that pitch of which others can approve. In a union of these two kinds of virtuesin feeling much for others and little for ourselves, in restraining our selfish and indulging our benevolent affectionsconsists the highest perfection of which human nature is capable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With the passions which arise from the imagination it is otherwise than with passions which originate from the body. For instance, a disappointment in love or ambition calls forth more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil, for our imagination lends itself more readily to sympathize with the misfortunes affecting the imaginations of others, than is possible in the case of the sufferings of their bodies. Our imagination moulds itself more easily upon the imagination of another than our bodily frame can be affected by what affects his. Thus we can readily sympathize with a man who has lost his fortune, for he only suffers in his imagination, not in his body; and we can fancy, just as he does, the loss of dignity, the neglect of his friends, the contempt from his enemies, the dependence, want, and misery which he himself foresees in store for him. The loss of a leg is a more real calamity than the loss of a mistress; but whilst it would be ridiculous to found a tragedy on the former loss, the latter misfortune has given rise to many a fine play. Mere pain never calls forth any lively sympathy, and for that reason there were no greater breaches of decorum committed in the plays of the Greeks, than in the attempt to excite compassion by the representation of physical agonies, as in the cries of Philoctetes,(5) or the tortures of Hippolytus and Hercules. It is on this little sympathy which we feel with bodily pain that is founded the propriety of constancy and patience in its endurance.

2. Where, however, a passion takes its origin from a particular turn of the imagination, the imagination of others, not having acquired that particular turn, cannot sympathize with the passion, and so finds it in some measure ridiculous. This is particularly the case with the passion of love. We may sympathize with our friend's resentment, if he has been injured, or enter into his gratitude, if he has received a benefit; but if he is in love, however reasonable we may think it, "the passion appears to everybody, but the man who feels it, entirely disproportioned to the value of the object; and love, though it is pardoned in a certain age, because we know it is natural, is always laughed at because we cannot enter into it. All serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person; and though a lover may be good company to his mistress, he is so to nobody else. He himself is sensible of this; and, as long as he continues in his sober senses, endeavours to treat his own passion with raillery and ridicule. It is the only style in which we care to hear of it, because it is the only style in which we ourselves are disposed to talk of it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are, Adam Smith thinks, naturally disposed to sympathize more with our neighbours' small joys than with their great ones, and more with their great sorrows than with their small ones. A man raised suddenly to a much higher position may be sure that the congratulations of his best friends are not perfectly sincere. If he has any judgment, he is sensible of this, and, instead of appearing elated, endeavours to smother his joy, and keep down his elevation of mind. He affects the same plainness of dress, and the same modesty of behaviour, which became him before, and redoubles his attentions to his former friends. So his conduct may meet with our approval, for "we expect, it seems, that he should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness than we have with his happiness."

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

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

But though we all take delight in raillery, and in the small vexations which occur to our companions, our sympathy with them in case of deep distress is very strong and very sincere. "If you labour under any signal calamity; if by some extraordinary misfortune you are fallen into poverty, into diseases, into disgrace and disappointment . you may generally depend upon the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and, as far as interest and honour will permit, upon their kindest assistance too. But if your misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have only been a little baulked in your ambition, if you have only been jilted by your mistress, or are only henpecked by your wife, lay your account with the raillery of all your acquaintance."