CHAPTER VI: THEORY OF CONSCIENCE AND DUTY
The theory of Hutcheson, that there exists in mankind an inward moral sense concerned with the direct perception of moral qualities in actions just as the sense of hearing or seeing is concerned with the direct perception of sounds or objects, or the theory of Shaftesbury that what we call conscience is a primary principle of human nature irresoluble into other facts, is very different from the theory of Adam Smith, who refers our moral perceptivity to the workings of the instinct of sympathy.
Having accounted for our moral judgments of the actions of others by bringing them to the test of our power to sympathize with them, he proceeds to explain our moral judgments concerning our own acts by a sort of reflex application of the same principle of sympathy. Our sense of duty, our feeling of conscience, arises simply from the application to our own conduct of the judgments we have learned to pass upon others. So that there really exists no moral faculty which is not originally borrowed from without.
In the same manner as we approve or disapprove of another man's conduct, according as we feel that, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we can sympathize or not with his motives; so we approve or disapprove of our own conduct according as we feel that, by making our case in imagination another man's, he can sympathize or not with our motives. The only way by which we can form any judgment about our own sentiments and motives is by removing ourselves from our own natural station, and by viewing them at a certain distance from us; a proceeding only possible by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as they are likely to view them. All our judgment, therefore, concerning ourselves must bear some secret reference either to what are or to what we think ought to be the judgment of others. We imagine ourselves the impartial spectator of our own conduct, and according as we, from that situation, enter or not into the motives which influenced us, do we approve or condemn ourselves.
We do not therefore start with a moral consciousness by which we learn to judge of others, but from our judgments about others we come to have a moral consciousness of our- selves. Our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduct of other people, and by observing that these command either our praise or blame, and that we our- selves affect them in the same way, we become anxious in turn to receive their praise and to avoid their censure. So we imagine what effect our own conduct would have upon us, were we our own impartial spectators, such a method being the only looking-glass by which we can scrutinize, with the eyes of other people, the propriety of our own conduct.
Accordingly our sense of personal morality is exactly analogous to our sense of personal beauty. Our first ideas of beauty and ugliness are derived from the appearance of others, not from our own. But as we are aware that other people exercise upon us the same criticism we exercise upon them, we become desirous to know how far our figure deserves their blame or approbation. So we endeavour by the help of a looking-glass to view ourselves at the distance and with the eyes of other people, and are pleased or displeased with the result, according as we feel they will be affected by our appearance.
But it is evident that we are only anxious about our own beauty or ugliness on account of its effect upon others; and that, bad we no connexion with society, we should be altogether indifferent about either. So it is with morality. If a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own kind, "he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face." Society is the mirror by which he is enabled to see all these qualities in himself. In the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into or disapprove of his sentiments, he first views the propriety or impropriety of his own passions, and the beauty or depravity of his own mind.
The consciousness of merit, the feeling of self-approbation, admits therefore of easy explanation. Virtue is amiable and meritorious, by reference to the sentiments of other men, by reason of its exciting certain sentiments in them; and the consciousness that it is the object of their favourable regards is the source of that inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction which attends it, just as the sense of incurring opposite sentiments is the source of the torments of vice. If we have done a generous action from proper motives, and survey it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, we applaud ourselves by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge, whilst, by a reflex sympathy with the gratitude paid to ourselves, we are conscious of having behaved meritoriously, of having made ourselves worthy of the most favourable regards of our fellow-men.
Remorse, on the other hand, arises from the opposite sentiments; and shame is due to the reflection of the sentiments our conduct will raise in other men. We again regard our- selves from their point of view, and so by sympathizing with the hatred which they must entertain for our conduct, we become the object of our own blame and hatred. We enter into the resentment naturally excited by our own acts, and anticipate with fear the punishment by which such resentment may express itself. This remorse is, of all the sentiments which can enter the human breast, the most dreadful; "it is made up of shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct; of grief for the effects of it; of pity for those who suffer by it; and of the dread and terror of punishment from the consciousness of the justly provoked resentment of all rational creatures."
In this consciousness of the accordance or discordance of our conduct with the feelings of others consists then all the pleasure of a good conscience or of self-approbation, or all the pain of remorse or self-condemnation. The one is based on our love of praise, which the comparison of our own conduct with that of others naturally evolves in us, and the other on our aversion to blame, which arises in the same way.
But if a good or bad conscience consisted simply in knowing ourselves to be the objects of praise or blame, we might approve or condemn ourselves irrespective of the correspondence of external opinion with our real merit or demerit. It is not, therefore, mere praise or blame that we desire or dread, but praise-worthiness or blame-worthiness; that is to say, to the that thing, which, though it should be praised or blamed by nobody, is the proper object of those mental states. We desire the praise not merely of the spectator, but of the impartial and well-informed spectator.
Adam Smith devotes considerable argument to the origin and explanation of this principle of our moral nature, seeking in this way to raise the account he gives of conscience to a higher level than it could attain as a mere reflex from the sympathies of others about ourselves. As from the love or admiration we entertain for the characters of others, we come to desire to have similar sentiments entertained about ourselves, we should have no more satisfaction from a love or admiration bestowed on us undeservedly than a woman who paints her face would derive any vanity from compliments paid to her complexion. Praises bestowed on us either for actions we have not performed or for motives which have not influenced us, are praises bestowed in reality on another person, not on ourselves, and consequently give us no sort of satisfaction.
But for the same reason that groundless praise can give us no solid joy, the mere absence of praise deducts nothing from the pleasure of praise-worthiness. Though no approbation should ever reach us, we are pleased to have rendered ourselves the proper objects of approbation; and in the same way we are mortified at justly incurring blame, though no blame should ever actually be attached to us. We view our conduct not always as the spectator actually does view it, but as he would view it if he knew all the circumstances. We feel self-approbation or the reverse, by sympathy with sentiments which do not indeed actually take place, but which only the ignorance of the public prevents from taking place, which we know are the natural effects of our conduct, which our imagination strongly connects with it, and which we conceive therefore as properly belonging to it. The satisfaction we feel with the approbation which we should receive and enjoy, were everything known, resembles very much the satisfaction which men feel who sacrifice their lives to anticipate in imagination the praise that will only be bestowed on them when dead, the praise which they would receive and enjoy, were they themselves to live to be conscious of it.
Hence self-approbation, though originally founded on the imaginary approbation of other men, becomes at last independent of such confirmation, and the sense of the perfect propriety of our own conduct comes to need no external testimony to assure us of it. But the love of self-approbation, which is in fact the same as the love of virtue, is still founded on an implied reference to the verdict of persons external to ourselves, and thus the "still small voice" of conscience resolves itself into the acclamations of mankind.
Adam Smith, in accordance with a leading principle of his system, the importance of which will be noticed in a subsequent chapter, traces in this desire on our part for praise-worthiness as apart from our desire of praise, an intention of Nature for the good of society. For though in forming man for society, she endowed him with an original desire to please and an original aversion to offend his fellows, and, by making him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regards, taught him to love their approbation, and to dislike their disapproval, she yet saw that this mere love of the one, or dislike of the other, would not alone have rendered him fit for society. Since the mere desire for approbation could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society, could only have prompted him to the affectation of virtue, and to the concealment of vice; she endowed him not only with the desire of being approved of, but with the desire of being what ought to be approved of, or of being what he himself approves of in other men. So she made him anxious to be really fit for society, and so she sought to inspire him with the real love of virtue and a real abhorrence of vice.
In the same way that we are thus taught to wish to be the objects of love and admiration are we taught to wish not to be the objects of hatred and contempt. We dread blame- worthiness, or being really blameworthy, irrespective of all actual blame that may accrue to us. The most perfect assurance that no eye has seen our action, does not prevent us from viewing it as the impartial spectator would have regarded it, could he have been present. We feel the shame we should be exposed to if our actions became generally known; and our imagination anticipates the contempt and derision from which we are only saved by the ignorance of our fellows. But if we have committed not merely an impropriety, which is an object of simple disapprobation, but a heinous crime, which excites strong resentment, then, though we might be assured that no man would ever know it, and though we might believe that there was no God who would ever punish it, we should still feel enough agony and remorse, as the natural objects of human hatred and punishment, to have the whole of our lives embittered. So great, indeed, are these pangs of conscience, that even men of the worst characters, who in their crimes have avoided even the suspicion of guilt, have been driven, by disclosing what could never have been detected, to reconcile themselves to the natural sentiments of mankind. So completely, even in per- sons of no sensibility, does the horror of blame-worthiness exceed the dread of actual blame.
The fact, Adam Smith thinks, calls for explanation, that while most men of ordinary capacity despise unmerited praise, even men of the soundest judgment are mortified by un- merited reproach. For, however conscious a man may be of his own innocence, the imputation seems often, even in his own imagination, to throw a shadow of disgrace over his character, and if he is brought to suffer the extreme punishment of human resentment, religion alone can afford him any effectual comfort, by teaching him of an approbation, higher and more important than that of humanity. Why, then, is unjust censure so much less indifferent than unmerited praise? The answer is, that the pain of the one is so much more pungent than the pleasure of the other. A man of sensibility is more humiliated by just censure than he is elevated by just applause. And it is much easier to rid oneself by denial, of the slight pleasure of unmerited praise, than of the pain of unjust reproach. Though nobody doubts any one's veracity when he disclaims some merit ascribed to him, it is at once doubted if he denies some crime which rumour lays to his charge.
When we are perfectly satisfied with every part of our own conduct, the judgment of others is of less importance to us than when we are in any doubt of the propriety of our actions; and the opinion of others, their approbation or the contrary, is a most serious matter to us, when we are uneasy as to the justice of our resentment or the propriety of any other passion. And, as a rule, the agreement or disagreement of the judgments of other people with our own varies in importance for us exactly in proportion to the uncertainty we feel of the propriety or accuracy of our own sentiments or judgments. Hence it is that poets and authors are so much more anxious about public opinion than mathematicians or men of science. The discoveries of the latter, admitting by nature of nearly perfect proof, render the opinion of the public a matter of indifference; but in the fine arts, where excellence can only be determined by a certain nicety of taste, and the decision is more uncertain, the favourable judgments of friends and the public are as delightful as their unfavourable judgments are mortifying. The sensibility of poets especially is due to this cause; and we may instance the sensibility of Racine, who used to tell his son that the most paltry criticisms had always given him more pain than the highest eulogy had ever given him pleasure: or that of Gray, who was so much hurt by a foolish parody of two of his finest odes, that he never afterwards attempted anything considerable.
It may happen that the two principles of desiring praise and desiring praiseworthiness are blended together, and it must often remain unknown to a man himself, and always to other people, how far he did a praiseworthy action for its own sake, or for the love of praise; how far he desired to deserve, or only to obtain, the approbation of others. There are very few men who are satisfied with their own consciousness of having attained those qualities, or performed those actions, which they think praiseworthy in others, and who do not wish their consciousness of praiseworthiness to be corroborated by the actual praise of other men. Some men care more for the actual praise, others for the real praiseworthiness. It is therefore needless to agree with those "splenetic philosophers" (Mandeville is intended) who impute to the love of praise, or what they call vanity, every action which may be ascribed to a desire of praiseworthiness.
From this distinction between our desire for praise and our desire for praiseworthiness, Adam Smith arrives at the result, that there are, so to speak, two distinct tribunals of morality. The approbation or disapprobation of mankind is the first source of personal self-approbation or the contrary. But though man has been thus constituted the immediate judge of mankind, he has been made so only in the first instance: "and an appeal lies from his sentence to a much higher tribunal, to the tribunal of their own consciences, to that of the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, to that of the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct." Two sorts of approbation are thus supposed, that of the ordinary spectator, and that of the well-informed one; or, as it may be otherwise put, of the man without and the man within the breast. Whilst the jurisdiction of the former is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise, and the aversion to actual blame, that of the latter is founded altogether in the desire of really possessing those qualities, or performing those actions which we love and admire in other people, and in avoiding those qualities and those actions which, in other people, arouse our hatred or con- tempt.
If Conscience, then, which may be defined as "the testimony of the supposed impartial spectator of the breast:," originates in the way described, whence has it that very great influence and authority which belong to it? and how does it happen that it is only by consulting it that we can see what relates to ourselves in its true light, or make any proper comparison between our own interests and those of other people?
The answer is, By our power of assuming in imagination another situation. It is with the eye of the mind as with the eye of the body. Just as a large landscape seems smaller than the window which looks out on it, and we only learn by habit and experience to judge of the relative magnitude of objects by transporting ourselves in imagination to a different station, from whence we can judge of their real proportions, so it is necessary for the mind to change its position before we can ever regard our own selfish interests in their due relation to the interests of others. We have to view our interests and another's, "neither from our own place nor from his, neither with our own eyes nor yet with his, but from the place and with the eyes of a third person, who has no particular connexion with either, and who judges with impartiality between us." By habit and experience we come to do this so easily, that the mental process is scarcely perceptible to us, by Which we correct the natural inequality of our sentiments. We learn both the moral lesson, and the lesson in vision, so thoroughly, as no longer to be sensible that it has been a lesson at all.
"It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct," who alone can correct the natural misrepresentations of self-love, who shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice, the propriety of resigning our own greatest interests for the yet greater interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves. But for this correction of self-love by conscience, the destruction of the empire of China by an earthquake wou1d disturb a man's sleep less than the loss of his own little finger, and to prevent so paltry a misfortune to himself he would be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, pro- vided he had never seen them. It is not the love of our neighbour, still less the love of mankind, which would ever prompt us to self-sacrifice. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, "the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters."
The sense of duty in its various forms is the result of the commands of conscience, which thus exists within us as the reflection of external approbation. When the happiness or misery of others depends on our conduct, conscience, or "the man within," immediately calls to us that if we prefer our- selves to them, or the interest of one to the interest of many, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and resentment of our fellows.
The control of our passive feelings, of our natural preference for our own interests and our natural indifference to those of others, can only be acquired by a regard to the sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct. This is the discipline ordained by nature for the acquisition of the virtue of self-command as well as of all other virtues. The whole of life is an education in the acquisition of self-command. A child, as soon as it mixes with its equals at school, wishes naturally to gain their favour and avoid their contempt; and it is taught by a regard to its own safety to moderate its anger and other passions to the degree with which its play-fellows are likely to be pleased. From that time forth, the exercise of discipline over its feelings becomes the practice of its life.
Only the man who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-command, the bustle and business of the world, maintains perfect control over his passive feelings upon all occasions. He has never dared to forget for one moment the judgment likely to be passed by the impartial spectator upon his sentiments and conduct, nor suffered the man within the breast to be absent for one moment from his attention. With the eyes of this great inmate he has been accustomed to regard all that relates to himself. From his having been under the constant necessity of moulding, or trying to mould, his conduct and feelings in accordance with those of this spectator, the habit has become perfectly familiar to him; and he almost identifies himself with, he almost becomes himself that impartial spectator; he hardly ever feels but as that great arbiter of his conduct directs.
But with most men conscience, which is founded on the approbation of an imaginary spectator, requires often to be aroused by contact with a real one. "The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty by the presence of the real spectator." In other words, conscience requires to be kept fresh by contact with the world; solitude leads us to overrate the good actions we may have done or the injuries we may have suffered, and causes us to be too much dejected in adversity as well as too much elated in prosperity.
Nevertheless if the actual spectator is not impartial like the distant one of imagination or reality, the rectitude of our judgments concerning our own conduct is liable to be much perverted; and this fact accounts for many anomalies of our moral sentiments.
Take, for instance, the conduct of two different nations to one another. Neutral nations, the only indifferent and impartial spectators of their conduct, are so far off as to be almost out of sight. The citizen of either nation pays little regard to the sentiments of foreign countries, but only seeks to obtain the approbation of his own fellow-citizens, which he can never do better than by enraging and offending the enemies they have in common. Thus the partial spectator is at hand, the impartial one at a distance. Hence the total disregard in the life of nations of the rules of morality in force in private life. "In war and negotiation the laws of justice are very seldom observed. Truth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded. Treaties are violated; and the violation, if some advantage is gained by it, sheds scarce any dishonour upon the violator. The ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation is admired and applauded." The same conduct which in private transactions would make a man beloved and esteemed, in public transactions would load him with contempt and detestation. Not only are the laws of nations violated without dishonour, but they are themselves laid down with very little regard to the plainest rules of justice. It is in the most perfect conformity with what are called the laws of nations that the goods of peaceable citizens should be liable to seizure on land and sea, that their lands should be laid waste, their homes burnt, and they themselves either murdered or taken into captivity.
Nor is the conduct of hostile parties, civil or ecclesiastical, more restrained by the power of conscience than that of hostile nations to one another. The laws of faction pay even less regard to the rules of justice than the laws of nations do. Though it has never been doubted whether faith ought to be kept with public enemies, it has often been furiously debated whether faith ought to be kept with rebels and heretics. Yet rebels and heretics are only those who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to belong to the weaker party. The impartial spectator is never at a greater distance than amidst the rage and violence of contending parties. For them it may be said that "such a spectator scarce exists anywhere in the universe. Even to the great judge of the universe they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions." Those who might act as the real controllers of such passions are too few to have any influence, being excluded by their own candour from the confidence of either party, and on that account condemned to be the weakest, though they may be the wisest men of their community. For "a true party man hates and despises candour; and in reality there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party man as that single virtue."
But even when the real and impartial spectator is not at a great distance, but close at hand, our own selfish passions may be so strong as entirely to distort the judgment of the "man within the breast." We endeavour to view our own conduct in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, both when we are about to act and when we have acted. On both occasions our views are apt to be partial, but they are more especially partial when it is most important that they should be otherwise.
This is the explanation of the moral phenomenon of self-deceit, and accounts for the otherwise remarkable fact, that our conscience in spite of its great authority and the great sanctions by which its voice is enforced, is so often prevented from acting with efficacy. When we are about to act, the eagerness of passion seldom allows us to consider what we are doing with the candour of an indifferent person. Our view of things is discoloured, even when we try to place ourselves in the situation of another and to regard our own interests from his point of view. We are constantly forced back by the fury of our passions to our own position, where everything seems magnified and misrepresented by self-love, whilst we catch but momentary glimpses of the view of the impartial spectator.
When we have acted, we can indeed enter more coolly into the sentiments of the indifferent spectator, and regard our own actions with his impartiality. We are then able to identify ourselves with the ideal man within the breast and view in our own character our own conduct and situation with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator. But even our judgment is seldom quite candid. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves, that we often purposely turn away our view from those circumstances which might render our judgment unfavourable. Rather than see our own behaviour in a disagreeable light, we often endeavour to exasperate anew those unjust passions which at first misled us; we awaken artificially our old hatreds and irritate afresh our almost forgotten resentments; and we thus persevere in injustice merely because we were unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so.
And this partiality of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and after it, is, our author thinks, one of the chief objections to the hypothesis of the existence of a moral sense, and consequently an additional argument in favour of his own theory of the phenomena of self-approbation. If it was by a peculiar faculty, like the moral sense, that men judged of their own conductif they were endowed with a particular power of perception which distinguished the beauty and deformity of passions and affectionssurely this faculty would judge with more accuracy concerning their own passions, which are more nearly exposed to their view, than concerning those of other men, which are necessarily of more distant observation. But it is notorious that men generally judge more justly of others than they ever do about themselves.
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Author: James Anson Farrer
