CHAPTER VII.

OF CERTAIN PRINCIPLES WHICH CO-OPERATE WITH OUR MORAL POWERS IN THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE CONDUCT.

In order to secure still more completely the good order of society, and to facilitate the acquisition of virtuous habits, nature has superadded to our moral constitution a variety of auxiliary principles, which sometimes give rise to a conduct agreeable to the rules of morality, and highly useful to mankind, where the merit of the individual, considered as a moral agent, is inconsiderable. Hence some of them have been confounded with our moral powers, or even supposed to be of themselves sufficient to account for the phenomena of moral perception, by authors whose views of human nature have not been sufficiently comprehensive. The most important principles of this description, are, 1st, A regard to Character. 2d, Sympathy. 3d, The Sense of the Ridiculous. And, 4th, Taste. The principle of Self-love (which was treated of in a former section) co-operates very powerfully to the same pur

poses.

SECT. I.—OF DECENCY, OR A REGARD TO CHARACTER.

Upon this subject I had formerly occasion to offer various remarks in treating of the desire of esteem. But the view of it which I then took was extremely general, as I did not think it necessary for me to attend to the distinction between Intellectual and Moral qualities. There can be no doubt that a regard to the good opinion of our fellow-creatures has great influence in prompting our exertions to cultivate both the one and the

other; but what we are more particularly concerned to remark at present, is the effect which this principle has in strengthening our virtuous habits, and in restraining those passions which a sense of duty alone would not be sufficient to regulate.

I before observed, that the desire of esteem operates in children before they have a capacity of distinguishing right from wrong; and that the former principle of action continues for a long time to be much more powerful than the latter. Hence it furnishes a most useful and effectual engine in the business of education, more particularly by training us early to exertions of self-command and self-denial. It teaches us, for example, to restrain our appetites within those bounds which delicacy prescribes, and thus forms us to habits of moderation and temperance. And although our conduct cannot be denominated virtuous, so long as a regard to the opinion of others is our sole motive, yet the habits we thus acquire in infancy and childhood render it more easy for us to subject our passions to reason and conscience as we advance to maturity. The subject well deserves a more ample illustration; but at present it is sufficient to recall these remarks to the recollection of the reader.

SECT. II.-OF SYMPATHY.

That there is an exquisite pleasure annexed by the constitution of our nature to the sympathy or fellow-feeling of other men with our joys and sorrows, and even with our opinions, tastes, and humours, is a fact obvious to vulgar observation. It is no less evident that we feel a disposition to accommodate the state of our own minds to that of our companions, wherever we feel a benevolent affection towards them, and that this accommodating temper is in proportion to the strength of our affection. In such cases sympathy would appear to be grafted on benevolence; and perhaps it might be found, on an accurate examination, that the greater part of the pleasure which sympathy yields is resolvable into that which arises from the exercise of kindness, and from the consciousness of being beloved.

The phenomena generally referred to sympathy have appeared to Mr. Smith so important, and so curiously connected, that he has been led to attempt an explanation from this single principle of all the phenomena of moral perception. In this attempt, however, (abstracting entirely from the vague use which he occasionally makes of the word,) he has plainly been misled, like many eminent philosophers before him, by an excessive love of simplicity; and has mistaken a very subordinate principle in our moral constitution (or rather a principle superadded to our moral constitution as an auxiliary to the sense of duty) for that faculty which distinguishes right from wrong, and which (by what name soever we may choose to call it) recurs on us constantly in all our ethical disquisitions, as an ultimate fact in the nature of man.

I shall take this opportunity of offering a few remarks on this most ingenious and beautiful theory, in the course of which I shall have occasion to state all that I think necessary to observe concerning the place which sympathy seems to me really to occupy in our moral constitution. In stating these remarks, I would be understood to express myself with all the respect and veneration due to the talents and virtues of a writer, whose friendship I regard as one of the most fortunate incidents of my life, but, at the same time, with that entire freedom which the importance of the subject demands, and which I know that his candid and liberal mind would have approved.

In addition to the incidental strictures which I have already hazarded on Mr. Smith's theory, I have yet to state two objections of a more general nature, to which it appears to me to be obviously liable. But before I proceed to these objections, it is necessary for me to premise (which I shall do in Mr. Smith's words) a remark which I have not hitherto had occasion to mention, and which may be justly regarded as one of the most characteristical principles of his system.

"Were it possible," says he, " that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his

own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. All these are objects which he cannot easily see, which naturally he does not look at, and with regard to which he is provided with no mirror which can present them to his view. Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments, and it is here that he first views the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and deformity of his own mind.”*

To this account of the origin of our moral sentiments it may be objected, 1st, That granting the proposition to be true, "that a human creature who should grow up to manhood without any communication with his own species, could no more think of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face," it would by no means authorize the conclusion which is here deduced from it. The necessity of social intercourse as an indispensable condition implied in the generation and growth of our moral sentiments, does not arise merely from its effect in holding up a mirror for the examination of our own character, but from the impossibility of finding, in a solitary state, any field for the exercise of our most important moral duties. In such a state the moral faculty would inevitably remain dormant and useless, for the same reason that the organ of sight would remain useless and unknown to a person who should pass his whole life in the darkness of a dungeon.

2d, It may be objected to Mr. Smith's theory, that it confounds the means or expedients by which nature enables us to correct our moral judgments, with the principles in our constitution to which our moral judgments owe their origin. These means or expedients he has indeed described with singular penetration and sagacity, and by doing so, has thrown new and *[Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III. chap. i. sub initio.]

most important lights on practical morality; but, after all his reasonings on the subject, the metaphysical problem concerning the primary sources of our moral ideas and emotions, will be found involved in the same obscurity as before. The intention of such expedients, it is perfectly obvious, is merely to obtain a just and fair view of circumstances; and after this view has been obtained, the question still remains, what constitutes the obligation upon me to act in a particular manner? In answer to this question it is said, that, from recollecting my own judgments in similar cases in which I was concerned, I infer in what light my conduct will appear to society; that there is an exquisite satisfaction annexed to mutual sympathy; and that, in order to obtain this satisfaction, I accommodate my conduct, not to my own feelings, but to those of my fellow-creatures. Now, I acknowledge, that this may account for a man's assuming the appearance of virtue, and I believe that something of this sort is the real foundation of the rules of good breeding in polished society; but in the important concerns of life, I apprehend there is something more,-for when I have once satisfied myself with respect to the conduct which an impartial judge would approve of, I feel that this conduct is right for me, and that I am under a moral obligation to put it in practice. If I had had recourse to no expedient for correcting my first judgment, I would, nevertheless, have formed some judgment or other of a particular conduct as right, wrong, or indifferent, and the only difference would have been, that I should probably have decided improperly, from an erroneous or a partial view of the case.

From these observations I conclude, that the words right and wrong, ought and ought not, express simple ideas or notions,

1 This remark I borrow from Dr. Beattie, who, in his Essay on Truth, observes, that "the foundation of good breeding is that kind of sensibility or sympathy by which we suppose ourselves in the situation of others, adopt their sentiments, and in a manner perceive their very thoughts." (P. 38,

2d edit. Edin. 1771.) The observation well deserves to be prosecuted.

2 Dr. Hutcheson, in his Illustrations on the Moral Sense, calls ought a confused word: "As to that confused word ought," &c. &c. (end of Section I.) But for this he seems to have had no better reason than the impossibility of defining