![The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith
Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved
[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose
material that has been added, but can be read as
though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and
also indenting of passages that are not quotations,
are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a
thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the
omission of a brief passage that seems to present more
difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported
between brackets in normal-sized type.—In Adam Smith’s day a
‘sentiment’ could be anything on a spectrum
with feelings at one end and opinions at the other. This work of
his is strongly tilted in the ‘feeling’ direction [see
especially the chapter starting on page 168), but throughout the
present version the word ‘sentiment’ will be left
untouched. First launched: July 2008
Contents
Part I: The Propriety of Action 1
Section 1: The Sense of Propriety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1: Sympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: The pleasure of mutual sympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-1-320.jpg)
![Chapter 2: Systems that make reason the source of approval . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chapter 3: Systems that make sentiment the source of approval .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Section 4: What different authors have said about the practical
rules of morality . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Smith on Moral Sentiments Sympathy
Part I: The Propriety of Action
Section 1: The Sense of Propriety
Chapter 1: Sympathy
No matter how selfish you think man is, it’s obvious that
there are some principles [here = ‘drives’, ‘sources of energy’;
see
note on page 164] in his nature that give him an interest in the
welfare of others, and make their happiness necessary to
him, even if he gets nothing from it but the pleasure of seeing
it. That’s what is involved in pity or compassion, the emotion
we feel for the misery of others, when we see it or are made
to think about it in a vivid way. The sorrow of others often
makes us sad—that’s an obvious matter of fact that doesn’t
need to be argued for by giving examples. This sentiment,
like all the other basic passions of human nature, is not
confined to virtuous and humane people, though they may
feel it more intensely than others do. The greatest ruffian,
the most hardened criminal, has something of it.
We have ·of course· no immediate experience of what
other men feel; so the only way we can get an idea of what
someone else is feeling is by thinking about what we would](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-7-320.jpg)
![feel if we were in his situation. . . . Our imagination comes
into this, but only by representing to us the feelings we would
have if etc. We see or think about a man being tortured on the
rack; we think of ourselves enduring all the same torments,
entering into his body (so to speak) and becoming in a way
the same person as he is. In this manner we form some idea
of his sensations, and even feel something that somewhat
resembles them, though it is less intense. When his agonies
are brought home to us in this way, when we have adopted
them and made them our own, they start to affect us and we
then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.
Just as being in pain or distress of any kind arouses the
most excessive sorrow, so conceiving or imagining being in
pain or distress arouses some degree of the same emotion,
the degree being large or small depending on how lively or
dull the conception is. [Notice Smith’s talk of ‘bringing home to
us’
someone’s emotional state; he often uses that turn of phrase to
express
the idea of imaginatively putting oneself in someone else’s
position.]
So my thesis is that our fellow-feeling for the misery of
others comes from our imaginatively changing places with
the sufferer, thereby coming to •conceive what he feels or
even to •feel what he feels. If this doesn’t seem to you
obvious enough, just as it stands, there is plenty of empirical
evidence for it. When we see someone poised to smash a
stick down on the leg or arm of another person, we naturally
shrink and pull back our own leg or arm; and when the stick
connects, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it
along with the sufferer. When a crowd are gazing at a dancer
on a slack rope, they naturally writhe and twist and balance
their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel they](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-8-320.jpg)
![would have to do if they were up on the rope where he is. . . .
Men notice that when they look at sore eyes they often feel
soreness in their own eyes. . . .
It’s not only in situations of pain or sorrow that this
fellow-feeling of ours is evoked. When someone has any
passion about any object, the thought of his situation cre-
ates an analogous emotion in the breast of every attentive
spectator. [In Smith’s day it was normal to use ‘the breast’ to
mean
something like ‘the emotional part or aspect of the person’. It
will be
1
Smith on Moral Sentiments Sympathy
retained sometimes in this version, always with that meaning.]
Our joy
over the deliverance of the heroes of tragedy or romance
is as sincere as our grief for their distress. . . . We enter
into their gratitude towards the faithful friends who stayed
with them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with
their resentment against the perfidious traitors who injured,
abandoned, or deceived them. [The phrase ‘go along with’,
though
it sounds late modern, is Smith’s; he uses it about 30 times in
this work.]
In every passion of which the mind of man is capable, the
emotions of the bystander always correspond to what he
imagines must be the feelings of the sufferer, which he does
by bringing the case home to himself, ·i.e. imagining being
himself in the sufferer’s situation·.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-9-320.jpg)
![‘Pity’ and ‘compassion’ are labels for our fellow-feeling
with the sorrow of others. ‘Sympathy’, though its meaning
may originally have been the same, can now fairly properly be
used to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.
[Since Smith’s time, ‘sympathy’ has moved back to what he
says was its
original meaning: we don’t say ‘She had great sympathy for his
joy’. In
the present version the word will be retained; his broadened
meaning for
it needs to be remembered.]
We sometimes see sympathy arise merely from the view of
a certain emotion in another person: the passions sometimes
seem to be passed from one man to another instantaneously,
without the second man’s having any knowledge of what
aroused them in the first man. When grief or joy, for example,
are strongly expressed in someone’s look and gestures, they
immediately affect the spectator with some degree of a similar
painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is a cheerful
object to everyone who sees it, and a sorrowful face is a
melancholy one.
But this doesn’t hold for every passion. There are some
passions the expressions of which arouse no sort of sym-
pathy; they serve rather to disgust and provoke us against
them, before we know what gave rise to them. The furious
behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us
against •him than against •his enemies. Because we don’t
know what provoked him, we can’t bring his case home to
ourselves, imaginatively putting ourselves in his position.
But we can put ourselves in the position of those with whom
he is angry; we can see what violence they may be exposed to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-10-320.jpg)
![What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the
moanings of her infant who can’t express what it feels during
the agony of disease? In her idea of what it suffers, she
brings together
•her child’s real helplessness,
•her own consciousness of that helplessness, and
•her own terrors for the unknown consequences of the
child’s illness,
and out of all these she forms, for her own sorrow, the
most complete image of misery and distress. [The phrase
‘for her own sorrow’ is Smith’s, as is ‘for our own misery’ in
the next
paragraph.] But the infant feels only the unpleasantness of
the present instant, which can never be great. With regard
to the future, the infant is perfectly secure. Its lack of
thoughtfulness and of foresight gives it an antidote against
•fear and •anxiety—those great tormentors of the human
breast, from which reason and philosophy will in vain try to
defend the child when it grows up to be a man.
We sympathize even with the dead. Ignoring what is of
real importance in their situation, namely the awe-inspiring
question of what future is in store for them ·in the after-life·,
we are mainly affected by factors that strike our senses but
can’t have any influence on their happiness. It is miserable,
we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out
from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey
to corruption and worms; to be no more thought of in this
world, but to be quite soon obliterated from the affections,
and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and
relatives. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for
those who have suffered such dreadful calamity! The tribute
of our fellow-feeling seems to be doubly due to them now,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-13-320.jpg)
![[Smith’s next paragraph is not unclear but is very com-
pressed. What follows here is a more fully spelled-out
statement of its content. Our immediate topic is (let’s say) the
pleasure I get from seeing that my companions are enjoying
my jokes. Smith has been expounding this explanation of
the pleasure:
(1) I enjoy the jokes, and I want others to sympathize
with my frame of mind by enjoying them too; and I
suffer disappointment if this doesn’t happen.
This, Smith holds, is an instance of the natural universal hu-
man desire for others to show sympathy. In our present
paragraph he mentions a different possible explanation:
4
Smith on Moral Sentiments Pleasure of mutual sympathy
(2) I enjoy the jokes; if others also enjoy them, then by
sympathetically taking in their pleasure I increase my
own; and if they don’t enjoy them, I suffer from the
absence of a hoped-for extra pleasure.
This has nothing to do with a desire to be sympathised with;
it is simply an instance of sympathy. This may be a part of
the story, Smith says, but isn’t all of it. Now let him take
over:] When we have read a book or poem so often that we
can no longer enjoy reading it by ourselves, we can still take
pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the
graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration
that it naturally arouses in him but can no longer arouse
in us; we consider the ideas that it presents in the light in
which they appear to him rather than in the light in which](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-16-320.jpg)
![they appear to ourselves, and we enjoy by sympathy his
enjoyment that thus enlivens our own. If he seemed not
to be entertained by the book, we would be annoyed and
could no longer take pleasure in reading it to him. It’s like
that with our attempts to amuse others. The company’s
merriment no doubt enlivens our own, and their silence no
doubt disappoints us. But though this may contribute both
to the pleasure we get from success and the pain we feel if we
fail, it is far from being the only cause of either the pleasure
or the pain; it can’t account for the pleasure we get when
our sentiments are matched by the sentiments of others, or
the pain that comes from a failure of such a match. [The main
thing Smith says about why that’s not the whole story is that it
can’t be
any of the grief or pain side of the story.] I hope my friends will
feel
sad when I am sad, but not because I want their feelings to
reflect back on me and increase my sadness! I do want their
sympathy; if they show that they sympathize, this alleviates
grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable
sensation that it is capable of receiving at that time. ·The
pattern here is that of (1) and not (2)·.
So it’s important to notice ·that the grief and pain side
is more important to us than the joy side·. We’re more
concerned to communicate to our friends our disagreeable
passions than our agreeable ones; and it’s in connection
with the disagreeable passions that we get more satisfaction
from their sympathy and are more upset when they don’t
sympathize.
When an unfortunate person finds others to whom he
can communicate the cause of his sorrow, how does this
bring him relief? Their sympathy seems to unload some
of his burden of distress; it’s not wrong to say that they](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-17-320.jpg)
![we don’t usually outright resent this; whereas we seriously
quarrel with them if they live in friendship with any of our
enemies. The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy
and support the heart without any supplementary pleasure,
but the bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment
strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.
Just as the person who is primarily concerned in any
event is pleased with our sympathy and hurt by the lack
of it, so also we seem to be pleased when we can sym-
pathize with him and upset when we can’t. We run not
only to congratulate the successful but also to condole with
the afflicted; and the •pleasure we get from contact with
someone with whom we can entirely sympathize in all the
passions of his heart seems to do more than compensate
for the •painfulness of the sorrow that our knowledge of his
situation gives us. When we find that we can’t sympathize
with a friend’s sorrow, that spares us sympathetic pain;
but there’s no pleasure in that. If we hear someone loudly
lamenting his misfortunes, and find that when we bring
his case home to ourselves it has no such violent effect on
us, we are shocked at his grief; and because we can’t enter
into it we call it pusillanimity and weakness. [English still
contains ‘pusillanimous’, from Latin meaning ‘small mind’;
here it means
something like ‘weak-spirited, lacking in gumption’.] And on
the other
side, if we see someone being too happy or too much elevated
(we think) over some little piece of good fortune, this irritates
us. . . . We are even annoyed if our companion laughs louder
or longer at a joke than we think it deserves—i.e. longer than
we feel that we could laugh at it.
Chapter 3: How we judge the propriety of other men’s
affections by their concord or dissonance with our own](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-19-320.jpg)
![your sentiments and mine, in contrast to a discord or
‘dissonance’. We’ll
see in due course that he uses musical metaphors a lot. e.g. on
page 10
where we find ‘flatten’ ([). ‘sharpness’ (]), ‘tone’, ‘harmony’,
and ‘concord’
in one short sentence.]
When someone’s passions are in perfect concord with
the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they necessarily
strike the spectator as being just and proper, and suitable to
their •objects; and if on the other hand the spectator finds
that when he brings the case home to himself those passions
don’t coincide with what he feels, they necessarily appear to
him unjust and improper, and unsuitable to the •causes that
arouse them. Expressing approval of someone’s passions
as suitable to their •objects is the same thing as saying
that we entirely sympathize with them; and disapproving
them as not suitable to their •objects is the same thing as
saying that we don’t entirely sympathize with them. [Smith
does not distinguish a passion’s ‘object’ from its ‘cause’.] The
man
who resents the injuries that have been done to me, and
6
Smith on Moral Sentiments Judging others’ affections
sees that I resent them precisely as he does, necessarily
approves of my resentment. . . . He who admires a picture](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-21-320.jpg)
![or poem in the way I do must surely admit the justness
of my admiration. He who laughs along with me at a joke
can’t very well deny the propriety of my laughter. And on
the other hand, someone who in such cases either feels no
emotion such as I feel, or feels none that have a level of
intensity anywhere near to mine, can’t avoid disapproving
my sentiments because of their dissonance with his own. . . .
If my grief exceeds what his most tender compassion can go
along with, if my admiration is either too high or too low to
fit with his, if I laugh heartily when he only smiles, or I only
smile when he laughs heartily—in all these cases, as soon
as he moves from considering the object to seeing how I am
affected by it, I must incur some degree of his disapproval
depending on how much disproportion there is between his
sentiments and mine. On all occasions his own sentiments
are the standards and measures by which he judges mine.
Approving of another man’s opinions—adopting those
opinions—they are the same thing! If the arguments that
convince you convince me too, I necessarily approve of your
conviction; and if they don’t, I necessarily disapprove of
it. . . . Everyone accepts that approving or disapproving
of the opinions of others is observing the agreement or
disagreement of those opinions with our own. Well, this is
equally the case with regard to our approval or disapproval
of the sentiments or passions of others.
[Smith mentions a class of counter-examples. •I see that
the joke is funny and that I would ordinarily laugh at it,
but right now I’m not in the mood for jokes. •Someone is
pointed out to me on the street as grieving for the recent
death of his father; I can’t share in his grief, because I don’t
know him or his father; but I don’t doubt that if I were fully
informed of all the details of his situation I would fully and
sincerely sympathize with him. Smith continues:] The basis](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-22-320.jpg)
![for my approval of his sorrow is my consciousness of this
conditional sympathy, although the actual sympathy doesn’t
take place. . . .
The sentiment or affection of the heart that leads to some
action can be considered in two different relations: (1) in
relation to the cause that arouses it, or the motive that
gives rise to it; (2) in relation to the end that it proposes, or
the effect that it tends to produce. [Smith builds into this
one-sentence paragraph a striking clause saying that the
‘whole virtue or vice’ of the action ‘must ultimately depend’
on the sentiment or affection of the heart that leads to it.
And in the next paragraph he says it again:]
The propriety or impropriety. . . .of the consequent action
consists in the suitableness or unsuitableness, the propor-
tion or disproportion, that the affection seems to bear to the
cause or object that arouses it.
The merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which
it is entitled to reward or deserving of punishment, consists
in the beneficial or harmful nature of the effects that the
affection aims at or tends to produce.
In recent years philosophers have focussed on the
•behavioural upshots of affections, to the neglect of an affec-
tion’s relation to the •cause that arouses it. But in everyday
life when we judge someone’s conduct and the sentiments
that directed it we constantly consider them under both
these aspects. When we blame someone’s excesses of love,
of grief, of resentment, we consider not only the ruinous
effects that they tend to produce but also the slightness of
their causes. ‘The merit of his favourite’, we say, ‘is not so
great, his misfortune is not so dreadful, his provocation is
not so extraordinary, as to justify such violent passion. We
would have approved or at least indulged the violence of his](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-23-320.jpg)
![them responsive to all the various details of their objects;
we not only approve of his sentiments but wonder and are
surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acuteness
and comprehensiveness. In this case he appears to deserve
a high degree of •admiration and •applause. For approval
heightened by wonder and surprise constitutes the sentiment
that is properly called •‘admiration’, the natural expression
of it being •applause. [In this next sentence and in many further
places, ‘ugliness’ replaces Smith’s ‘deformity’, and similarly
with ‘ugly’
and ‘deformed’. That clearly is what he means by ‘deformed’
and ‘de-
formity’; like some other writers of his time he seems to have
preferred
8
Smith on Moral Sentiments The same continued
those two words over ‘ugly’ and ‘ugliness’, which occur only
once each
in this entire work.] The verdict of the man who judges that
exquisite beauty is preferable to gross ugliness, or that twice
two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by us
all but surely we won’t much admire it. What arouses our
admiration, and seems to deserve our applause is
•the acute and delicate discernment of the man of
taste, who distinguishes the tiny barely perceptible
differences of beauty and ugliness; and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-26-320.jpg)
![•the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced math-
ematician, who easily unravels the most intricate and
puzzling proportions.
In short, the greater part of the praise we give to what are
called ‘the intellectual virtues’ goes to the great leader in
science and taste, the man who directs and leads our own
sentiments, and fills us with astonished wonder and surprise
by the extent and superior soundness of his talents.
You may think that what first recommend those talents
to us is their utility; and no doubt the thought of their
utility does give them a new value, once we get around to
it. But at the start we approve of another man’s judgment
not as •useful but as •right, precise, agreeable to truth and
reality; and it’s obvious that we attribute those qualities to
his judgment simply because it agrees with our own. In
the same way, taste is initially approved of not as •useful
but as •just, delicate, and precisely suited to its object. The
thought that such qualities as these are useful is clearly
an after-thought, not what first recommends them to our
approval.
[We are about to meet the word ‘injury’. Its meaning in Smith’s
day
was in one way •broader and in another •narrower than its
meaning
today. •It wasn’t even slightly restricted to physical injury; it
covered
every kind of harm, though only when •the harm was caused by
a
person.]
(2) With regard to objects that affect in some special
way either ourselves or the person whose sentiments we
are judging, it’s •harder to preserve this matching of senti-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-27-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments The same continued
and I am enraged by your cold lack of feeling.
In any such case, what is needed for there to be some
correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and
his companion is for the spectator to try his hardest to put
himself in the other man’s situation and to bring home to
himself every little detail of distress that could possibly have
occurred to the sufferer. He must adopt the situation of
his companion with all its tiniest details, and try to make
as perfect as possible the imaginary change of situation on
which his sympathy is based.
Even after all this, the spectator’s emotions won’t be
as violent as the sufferer’s. Although people are naturally
sympathetic, they never respond to what has happened to an-
other person with the level of passion that naturally animates
that person himself. [A couple of dozen times Smith refers to
the
latter as ‘the person principally concerned’. This will usually be
replaced
by the shorter ‘the sufferer’, a label that Smith also uses quite
often.]
The imaginary change of situation on which their sympathy
is based is only momentary. The thought of their own safety,
the thought that they aren’t really the sufferers, continually
pushes into their minds; and though this doesn’t prevent
them from having a passion somewhat analogous to what the
sufferer feels, it does prevent them from coming anywhere
near to matching the level of intensity of his passion. The
sufferer is aware of this, while passionately wanting a more
complete sympathy. He longs for the relief that he can only
get from the perfect concord of the spectators’ affections with
his own. . . . But his only chance of getting this is to lower his](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-29-320.jpg)
![sufferer’s efforts to bring his emotions down to a level where
the spectator can go along with them. These are the bases
for two different sets of virtues. (1) One is the basis for
the soft, gentle, likeable virtues, the virtues of openness
to others and indulgent humaneness. (2) The other is
the source of the great, awe-inspiring and respectworthy
virtues, the virtues of self-denial and self-control—i.e. the
command of our passions that subjects all the movements
of our nature to the requirements of our own dignity and
honour, and the propriety of our own conduct. [Smith’s words
are ‘amiable’ and ‘respectable’, but their present meanings—
especially
of ‘respectable’—would make them too distracting. Regarding
‘propriety’:
remind yourself of the note on page 116.]
(1) Someone whose sympathetic heart seems to echo all
the sentiments of those he is in contact with, who grieves for
their calamities, resents their injuries, and rejoices at their
good fortune—how likeable he seems to be! When we bring
home to ourselves the situation of his companions, we enter
into their gratitude and feel what consolation they must get
from the tender sympathy of such an affectionate friend. As
for someone whose hard and stubborn heart feels for no-one
but himself, and who has no sense of the happiness or misery
of others—how disagreeable he seems to be! Here again we
enter into the pain that his presence must give to everyone
who has anything to do with him, and especially to those
with whom we are most apt to sympathize, the unfortunate
and the injured.
(2) Now consider someone who, in his own case, exerts
the togetherness and self-control that constitute the dignity
of every passion, bringing it down to what others can enter](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-32-320.jpg)
![into—what noble propriety and grace do we feel in his con-
duct! We’re disgusted with the clamorous grief that bluntly
calls on our compassion with sighs and tears and begging
lamentations. But we reverence the reserved, silent, majestic
sorrow that reveals itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in
the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant yet
touching coolness of the whole behaviour. It imposes the
same silence on us. We regard it with respectful attention,
and keep a cautious watch on our own behaviour lest we
should do anything to disturb the over-all tranquillity that it
takes such an effort to maintain.
On the other side, there is nothing more detestable than
the insolence and brutality of the anger of someone who
indulges its fury without check or restraint. [We are about
to meet the word ‘generous’, used—as it often is by Smith—in a
sense
that it doesn’t often have today: ‘noble-minded, magnanimous,
free from
meanness or prejudice’.] But we admire the noble and generous
11
Smith on Moral Sentiments Likeable and respectworthy virtues
resentment that •governs its pursuit of ·the author of· great
injuries not by the rage that such injuries are apt to arouse
in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation that they
naturally call forth in the breast of an impartial spectator;
that •allows no word or gesture to escape it that wouldn’t be
dictated by this more equitable sentiment [i.e. by the feelings of
an impartial spectator]; that •never, even in thought, attempts](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-33-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments The passions that originate in the
body
and even qualify as (in a certain sense) ‘virtuous’, because it
shows an effort of high-mindedness and magnanimity that
most men are not capable of. . . .
In cases of this kind, when we are settling how much
blame or applause an action deserves, we often use two
different standards. (1) One standard is the idea of complete
propriety and perfection, which in these difficult situations
no human conduct could ever achieve. . . . (2) The other stan-
dard is the idea of the nearness to this complete perfection
that the actions of most men commonly achieve. Whatever
goes beyond this seems to deserve applause, and whatever
falls short of it to deserve blame.
[Smith adds a paragraph about a similar double standard
in judging works of art that ‘address themselves to the imag-
ination’: •the idea of complete but not humanly attainable
perfection that the critic has in his mind, and •the idea of
how near to complete perfection most works of art get.]
Section 2: The degrees of the different passions that are
consistent with propriety
Introduction
For a passion aroused by an object that is specially related
to oneself, the proper level of intensity—the level at which
the spectator can go along with it—is clearly somewhere
in the middle [Smith: ‘. . . must lie in a certain mediocrity’]. If
the
passion is too high, or too low, the spectator can’t enter into
it. Grief and resentment for private misfortunes and injuries](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-36-320.jpg)
![original; it’s not an artifact of this version.]
We have such an aversion for all the appetites that origi-
nate in the body that we find all strong expressions of them
loathsome and disagreeable. Some ancient philosophers
held that these are the passions that we share with the
lower animals, so that they are beneath our dignity because
they have no connection with the characteristic qualities of
human nature. But there are many other passions that we
have in common with the lower animals—e.g. resentment,
natural affection, even gratitude—that don’t strike us as
animal-like. The real cause of the special disgust we have
for the body’s appetites when we see them in other men is
that we can’t enter into them, ·can’t sympathize with them·.
To the person who has such a passion, as soon as it is
gratified the object that aroused it ceases to be agreeable;
even its presence often becomes offensive to him; he looks in
vain for the charm that swept him away the moment before,
and he can’t now enter into his own passion any more than
anyone else can. After we have dined, we order the table
to be cleared; and we would treat in the same manner the
objects of the most ardent and passionate desires if they
were the objects only of passions that originate in the body.
The virtue of temperance, properly so-called, is the com-
mand of the body’s appetites. •Prudence involves keeping
those appetites within the limits required by •a concern
for one’s health and fortune. But •temperance keeps them
within the limits required by •grace, propriety, delicacy, and
modesty.
(2) It’s for that same reason that it always seems unmanly
and unbecoming to cry out with bodily pain, however in-
tolerable it is. Yet there is a good deal of sympathy even](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-39-320.jpg)
![fallen in love in that way, or are disposed to do so; and that
lets us readily enter into the high hopes of happiness that
the lover expects from his love’s gratification, as well as into
the intense distress that he fears from its disappointment. It
concerns us not as a passion but as a situation that gives
rise to other passions that concern us—to hope, fear, and
distress of every kind. (Similarly, when we read about a
sea voyage, our concern is not with the hunger but with the
distress that the hunger causes.) Without properly entering
into the lover’s attachment, we readily go along with the
expectations of romantic happiness that he gets from it. We
feel how natural it is for the mind, at a time when it is lazily
relaxed and fatigued with the violence of desire,
to long for serenity and quiet, to hope to find them
in the gratification of the passion that distracts it,
and to form for itself the idea of a life of pastoral
tranquillity and retirement of the sort that the elegant,
tender, and passionate ·Latin poet· Tibullus takes so
much pleasure in describing—a life like the one the
·ancient· poets describe in the Fortunate Islands, a
life of friendship, liberty, and repose; free from labour,
from care, and from all the turbulent passions that
accompany them.
Even scenes of this kind engage us most when they are
depicted as •hoped for rather than •actually enjoyed. The
grossness of the passion that is mixed in with love and is
perhaps its foundation disappears when its gratification is
far off and at a distance; but when it is described as what
is immediately possessed it makes the whole description
offensive. For this reason [he means: because of the grossness
of
lust] we are less drawn into the lover’s happy passion than
we are to the fearful and the melancholy ·aspects of it·.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-45-320.jpg)
![We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and
agreeable hopes, and thus enter into all the anxiety, concern,
and distress of the lover.
[Smith now has a paragraph applying this line of thought
to the presentation of romantic love ‘in some modern
tragedies and romances’. Then:]
The reserve that the laws of society impose on the female
sex with regard to this weakness [i.e. with regard to romantic
love] makes it especially stressful for them; and for just that
reason we are more deeply concerned with their part in a
love situation. We are charmed with the •love of Phaedra as it
is expressed in Racine’s Phèdre, despite all the extravagance
and guilt that come with it. That very extravagance and guilt
are part of what recommends •it to us. Her fear, shame,
remorse, horror, despair, become thereby more natural and
engaging. All the secondary passions (if I may be allowed to
call them that) that arise from the situation of love become
necessarily more furious and violent, and it’s only with
these secondary passions that we can properly be said to
sympathize.
However, of all the passions that are so extravagantly
disproportionate to the value of their objects, love is the only
one that appears to have anything in it that is either graceful
or agreeable. (None of the others do, even to the weakest
minds!) ·It has three things going for it·:
•Although it may be ridiculous, it isn’t naturally odi-
ous.
•Although its consequences are often fatal and dreadful
its intentions are seldom bad.
•Although there is little propriety in the passion itself,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-46-320.jpg)
![there’s a good deal of propriety in some of the passions
that always accompany it.
17
Smith on Moral Sentiments The unsocial passions
There is in love a strong mixture of humaneness, gen-
erosity, kindness, friendship, esteem. And these are the
passions that we are most disposed to sympathize with, even
when we’re aware that they are somewhat excessive. The
sympathy that we feel with them makes the passion that
they accompany less disagreeable and supports it in our
imagination, despite all the vices that commonly go along
with it: always eventual ruin and infamy for the woman;
and for the man—though he is supposed to come off more
lightly—it usually causes inability to work, neglect of duty,
disregard of ·lost· reputation. [In the original, as in this version,
Smith doesn’t signal where he is switching from romantic love
generally
to what he is evidently thinking of here—consummated
romantic love
between two people who are not married to one another.]
Despite all
this, the degree of sensibility and generosity that is supposed
to accompany such love makes it something that some people
are vain about—they like to appear to be capable of a feeling
that would do them no honour if they really did have it.
It’s for this kind of reason that a certain reserve is
necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies,
our own professions. We can’t expect our companions to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-47-320.jpg)
![•Those passions are useful to the individual, because they
make it dangerous to insult or injure him; and, as I’ll show
later, •they are useful to the public as guardians of justice
and of the equality of its administration; and yet •they have
in themselves something disagreeable that makes it natural
for us to dislike seeing them in other people. Suppose that
we are in company, and someone insults me; if I express
anger that goes beyond merely indicating that I noted the
insult, that is regarded not only as an insult to him but also
as a rudeness to the whole company. Respect for them
ought to have restrained me from giving way to such a
rowdy and offensive emotion. It’s the •remote effects of
these passions that are agreeable; the •immediate effects
are mischief to the person against whom they are directed
[Smith’s phrase]. But what makes an object—·a passion or
anything else·—agreeable or disagreeable to the imagination
is its •immediate effect, not its •remote ones. A prison
is certainly more useful to the public than a palace; and
someone who establishes a prison is generally directed by a
much sounder spirit of patriotism than someone who builds
a palace. But the immediate effect of a prison—namely, the
confinement of the wretches shut up in it—is disagreeable;
and the imagination either doesn’t bother to trace out the
remote consequences, or sees them from too great a distance
to be much affected by them. So a prison will always be
a disagreeable object; and the fitter it is for its intended
purpose the more disagreeable it will be. A palace, on the
other hand, will always be agreeable; and yet its remote
effects may often be thoroughly bad for the public—e.g. pro-
moting luxury, and setting an example of the dissolution of
manners. [In Smith’s day, ‘luxury’ stood for very excessive
indulgence
in physical comforts; see note on page 162.]. . . . Paintings or
models
of the instruments of music or of agriculture make a common](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-50-320.jpg)
![and an agreeable ornament of our halls and dining-rooms.
A display of that kind composed of the instruments of
surgery—dissecting and amputation-knives, saws for cutting
the bones, trepanning instruments, etc.—would be absurd
and shocking. Yet instruments of surgery are always more
finely polished, and usually more exactly adapted to their
intended purpose, than instruments of agriculture. And
their •remote effect—the health of the patient—is agreeable.
But because their •immediate effect is pain and suffering,
the sight of them always displeases us. [Smith adds that
swords and such are liked, associated with courage etc.,
and even wanted as fashion accessories. It’s true that their
immediate effects are pain and suffering, but only for ‘our
enemies, with whom we have no sympathy’. He continues:] It
is the same with the qualities of the mind. The ancient stoics
held that because the world was governed by the all-ruling
providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every single
event ought to be regarded as a necessary part of the plan
of the universe, and as tending to promote the general order
and happiness of the whole; so that men’s vices and follies
were as necessary a part of this plan as their wisdom or
19
Smith on Moral Sentiments The unsocial passions
their virtue. . . . No theory of this sort, however, no matter
how deeply it might be rooted in the mind, could lessen our
natural abhorrence for vice, whose immediate effects are
so destructive and whose remote ones are too distant to be
traced by the imagination.
It’s the same with hatred and resentment. Their immedi-
ate effects are so disagreeable that even when the sufferer is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-51-320.jpg)
![absolutely entitled to them there’s still something about them
that disgusts us. That’s why these are the only passions
that we aren’t inclined to sympathize with until we learn
about the cause that arouses them. ·In contrast with that·,
the plaintive •voice of misery, when heard at a distance,
won’t let us be indifferent about the person from whom it
comes; as soon as we hear •it we are concerned about his
fortune, and if •it continues it almost forces us to rush to
his assistance. The sight of a smiling face elevates even a
brooding person into a cheerful and airy mood that disposes
him to sympathize with the joy it expresses; and he feels his
heart, which just then had been shrunk and depressed by
thought and care, instantly expanded and elated. [Smith
goes on at colourful length about the different effect on us of
expressions of hatred and resentment. He concludes:] Grief
powerfully •engages and attracts us to the person who is
grieving; and hatred and resentment, while we are ignorant of
their cause, equally powerfully •disgust and detach us from
the person who has them. It seems to have been Nature’s
intention that the rougher and more dislikeable emotions
that drive men apart should be less easily and more rarely
passed on from man to man.
When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it
inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in a
mood that disposes us to have them. But when it imitates
the notes of anger, it inspires us ·not with anger but· with
fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all naturally
musical passions. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and
melodious; and they naturally express themselves in phrases
that are separated by regular pauses, which makes it easy to
adapt them to them to the words of a song. In contrast with
this, the voice of anger and of all the passions like it is harsh
and discordant. Its phrases are all irregular, some long and
others short, and not marked off by regular pauses. So it is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-52-320.jpg)
![exposing ourselves to perpetual insults. Smaller offences are
always better neglected; and there’s nothing more despicable
than the quarrelsome temperament that takes fire under the
slightest provocation. ·Secondly·, we should resent more
from a sense of the propriety of resentment—·i.e.· from
a sense that mankind expect and require it of us—than
because we feel in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable
passion. With the passion of resentment—more than any
other of which the human mind is capable—we ought to ask
ourselves sceptically ‘Is it all right for me to feel this?’, letting
our indulgence in it be subject to careful consultation with
our natural sense of propriety, i.e. to diligent consideration
of what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial
spectator. The only motive that can ennoble the expressions
of this disagreeable passion is magnanimity, i.e. a concern
to maintain our own rank and dignity in society. This motive
must characterize our whole style and deportment. These
must be plain, open, and direct; determined but not domi-
neering, and elevated without insolence; not only free from
petulance and low abusiveness, but generous, fair-minded,
and full of all proper regard even for the person who has
offended us. [In that sentence ‘fair-minded’ replaces Smith’s
‘candid’.
He always uses it with that meaning, which is quite remote from
what
it means today.] In short, it must appear from our whole
manner—without our laboriously making a special point
of it—that our passion hasn’t extinguished our humaneness,
and that if we answer the call to get revenge we do so with
reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence of great and
repeated provocations. When resentment is guarded and
qualified in this manner it can even count as generous [see
note on page 11] and noble.
Chapter 4: The social passions](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-54-320.jpg)
![parental favour; and where everything presents us
with the idea of peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and
contentment.
What pleasure we get from seeing a family like that! Then
consider being a visitor to
a household in which jarring contention sets half of
the members against the other half; where, along with
the surface appearance of smoothness and good tem-
per, suspicious looks and sudden flashes of passion
reveal the mutual jealousies that burn within them,
ready at any moment to burst out through all the
restraints that the presence of visitors imposes.
What an unpleasant experience that is!
The likeable passions, even when they are clearly exces-
sive, are never regarded with aversion. There’s something
agreeable even in the excess of friendship and humaneness.
The too tender mother, the too indulgent father, the too
generous and affectionate friend, may be looked on with a
sort of pity, though there’s love mixed in with it; and they
can never be regarded with hatred and aversion, or even
with contempt, except by the most brutal and worthless of
mankind. When we blame them for the extravagance of their
attachment, we always do it with concern, with sympathy
and kindness. [Smith goes on to say that our only regret
regarding any extreme case of the social passions is ‘that
it is unfit for the world because the world is unworthy of
it’, so that the person in question is too open to abuse and
ingratitude that he doesn’t deserve and couldn’t easily bear.
He contrasts this with our much more robust disapproval of
extreme hatred and resentment.]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-57-320.jpg)
![like
one on page 22—are replacements for Smith’s ‘raillery’, which
means
something like ‘lighted-hearted unaggressive mockery’.] It is
quite
otherwise with grief. Small vexations arouse no sympathy,
but deep affliction calls forth the greatest. The man who
is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident. . . .will
seldom meet with much sympathy. [Smith builds into that
sentence sketches of eight such trivial incidents.] Joy is a
pleasant emotion, and we gladly give ourselves over to it on
the slightest occasion. So we readily sympathize with it in
others except when we are prejudiced by envy. But grief
is painful, and the mind naturally resists and recoils from
it—and that includes resisting being grieved by one’s own
misfortunes. We try either not to be grieved at all, or to
shake our grief off as soon as it comes over us. It’s true that
our aversion to grief won’t always stop us from grieving over
trifling troubles that we meet, but it constantly prevents us
from sympathizing with the grief that others have because
of similar trivial causes. ·How can there be that difference?·
It’s because our •sympathetic passions are always easier to
resist than our •original ones. Also, human nature includes
a malice that not only •prevents all sympathy with little
unhappinesses but •makes them somewhat amusing. Hence
the delight we all take in teasing, and in the small vexation
that we observe in our companion when he is pushed, and
urged, and teased on all sides. [Smith adds details about how
such matters are managed in society. A ‘man who lives in the
world’, he says, stays in tune with his social surroundings by
teasing himself regarding trivial calamities [Smith calls them
‘frivolous calamities’] that befall him.]
On the other side, our sympathy with deep distress is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-61-320.jpg)
![excessive, we may still have some fellow-feeling with it. What
we feel then doesn’t amount to the complete sympathy, the
perfect harmony and matching of sentiments, that consti-
tutes approval. We don’t weep and exclaim and lament with
the sufferer. We’re conscious of his weakness and of the
extravagance of his passion, and yet we often have a definite
feeling of concern on his account. But if we don’t entirely
enter into and go along with a person’s joy, we have no
sort of regard or fellow-feeling for it. We have contempt
and indignation for the man who dances about with an
intemperate and senseless joy that we can’t accompany him
in.
It’s also relevant that pain, whether of mind or body, is a
more forceful [Smith: ‘pungent’] sensation than pleasure; and
our sympathy with pain, though it falls well short of what
is naturally felt by the sufferer, is usually a more lively and
distinct perception than our sympathy with pleasure, despite
the fact that our sympathy with pleasure often comes close
to the natural vivacity of the original passion.
Over and above all this, we often struggle to keep down
our sympathy with the sorrow of others. When we aren’t
in the presence of the sufferer we try for our own sakes to
suppress it as much as we can. We don’t always succeed,
·because· the opposition that we put up to sympathetic
sorrow and the reluctance with which we give in to it force
us to be more explicitly aware of it. In contrast, we never
have occasion to put up such opposition to our sympathy
with joy. Whenever there’s any envy in the case, we don’t
feel the slightest propensity towards joy; but if there’s no
envy we give way to joy without any reluctance. When we
are envious we are always ashamed of being so, which is
why we often say that we sympathize with someone’s joy
(and perhaps even wish we could do so) when we are really](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-63-320.jpg)
![pleasure.]
Whereas when we condole with our friends in their afflic-
tions, how little we feel in comparison with what they feel!
[Smith adds details, including the remark that our relative
lack of real sympathy may produce guilt, which makes us]
work ourselves up into an artificial sympathy;. . . .but as soon
as we have left the room this vanishes and is gone for ever.
It seems that when Nature loaded us with our own sorrows,
she thought that they were enough, and therefore didn’t
command us to take any share other people’s sorrows except
for what is necessary to prompt us to help them.
[There follow two long rapturous paragraphs in praise of
‘magnanimity amidst great distress’, with poetic praise for
the serene suicides of Cato and Socrates. Then:]
In contrast with this, anyone who is sunk in sorrow and
dejection because of some calamity that has befallen him
always appears somewhat mean and despicable. We can’t
bring ourselves to feel for him what he feels for himself,
even though we might feel it for ourselves if we were in his
situation. So perhaps it is unjust of us to despise him, if any
sentiment can regarded as unjust when nature compels us to
have it. There’s never anything agreeable about the weakness
of sorrow, except when it arises from what we feel for others
more than from what we feel for ourselves. A son whose
kindly and respectworthy father has died may give way to
sorrow without much blame. His sorrow is mainly based on
a sort of sympathy with his departed parent, and we readily
enter into this humane emotion. But if he were to indulge
the same weakness on account of a misfortune that affected
only himself, we would no longer be patient with him. If he
were reduced to beggary and ruin, if he were exposed to the
most dreadful dangers, indeed if he were led out to a public
execution and there shed one single tear on the scaffold,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-67-320.jpg)
![he would disgrace himself for ever in the minds of all the
gallant and generous part of mankind. [Re ‘generous’, see note
on page 11.] Their compassion for him would be strong and
sincere; but because it would still fall short of his excessive
weakness they would not pardon his thus exposing himself
in the eyes of the world. His behaviour would affect them
with shame rather than with sorrow; and the dishonour that
he had thus [i.e. by weeping on the scaffold] brought on himself
would appear to them the most lamentable circumstance in
his misfortune. . . .
Chapter 2: The origin of ambition, and differences of
rank
It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more
entirely with our joy than with our sorrow that we parade
our riches and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so humiliating
as having to expose our distress to the public view, and to
feel that although our situation is there for everyone to see,
no-one feels for us a half of what we feel. Indeed, this concern
for the sentiments of everyone else is the main reason why
we pursue riches and avoid poverty. Consider: what is the
purpose of all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the
purpose of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth,
power, and pre-eminence? Is it to supply the necessities
of nature? The wages of the poorest labourer can supply
them: his means afford him food and clothing, and the
comfort of a house and of a family. If we strictly examined
his personal budget we would find that he spends a great
part of his income on conveniences that can be regarded as
luxuries. . . . Why, then, are we so concerned to avoid being
in his situation, and why should those who have grown up
in the higher ranks of life regard it as worse than death to be
reduced to live—even without his labour—on the same simple](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-68-320.jpg)
![happy state. It is exactly the state that we in our daydreams
had sketched out to ourselves as the ultimate object of all
our desires. That gives us a special sympathy with the
satisfaction of those who are in that state. We favour all
28
Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank
their inclinations, and support all their wishes. What a pity
it would be (we think) if anything were to spoil and corrupt
such an agreeable situation! We could even wish them to
be immortal; and it seems hard to us that death should at
last put an end to such perfect enjoyment. . . . Great King,
live for ever! is the Asian compliment that we would readily
offer them if experience didn’t teach us its absurdity. [In
the original, as well as in this version, the preceding sentence
has the
first occurrence of ‘king’ in this work.] Every calamity that
befalls
them, every injury that is done them, arouses in the breast
of the spectator ten times more compassion and resentment
than he would have felt if the same things had happened
to other men. The only proper subjects for tragedy are
the misfortunes of kings. In this respect they resemble the
misfortunes of lovers. Those two situations are the ones
that chiefly interest us in the theatre; because, in spite of
everything that reason and experience can tell us to the
contrary, the prejudices of the imagination attach to these
two states a happiness superior to any other. To disturb or
to put an end to such perfect enjoyment seems to be the
most atrocious of all injuries. . . . All the innocent blood that
was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-71-320.jpg)
![nobleman is instructed in how to support the dignity of
his rank, and to make himself worthy of the superiority
over his fellow-citizens that he has acquired through the
virtue of his ancestors, what accomplishments is he told to
acquire for this purpose? Is he to make himself worthy of
his rank by knowledge, hard work, patience, self-denial, or
any other kind of virtue? Because his least move is noticed,
he acquires a habit of care over every detail of ordinary
behaviour, and tries to perform all those small duties with
the most exact propriety. Being conscious of how much he
is observed, and of how much people are disposed to allow
him to have whatever he wants, he acts—even in utterly
ordinary situations—with the freedom and loftiness that are
naturally inspired by the thought of how the populace view
him. Everything about his conduct marks an elegant and
graceful sense of his own superiority—something that those
who are born lower down the social scale can hardly ever
achieve. These are the arts [here = ‘the devices’ or even ‘the
tricks’]
by which he proposes to make mankind more easily submit
to his authority and govern their inclinations according to
his wishes; and in this he usually succeeds. . . . During most
of his reign Louis XIV ·of France· was widely regarded as the
most perfect model of a great prince. What were the talents
and virtues by which he acquired this great reputation?
The scrupulous and inflexible rightness—the danger and
difficulty—the tireless energy—of everything he did? His
broad knowledge, his exquisite judgment, his heroic valour?
It was none of these. What he did have was the status of the
most powerful prince in Europe, which gave him the highest
rank among kings; and then, says his historian. . . [and
Smith gives a long quotation about Louis XIV’s grand and
imposing personal manner, his fine voice, his handsomeness,
and so on. Then:] These trivial accomplishments—supported
by his rank and no doubt by a degree of other talents and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-74-320.jpg)
![virtues, though not an outstanding degree—established this
prince in the esteem of his own age and later generations’
respect for his memory. Compared with this kingly manner,
no other virtue appeared to have any merit. . . .
But a man of lower rank can’t hope to distinguish himself
in any such way as that. Polish [Smith’s word is ‘politeness’] is
so
much a virtue of the great that it won’t bring much honour to
anyone else. The fool who imitates their manner, pretending
to be eminent by the extreme properness of his ordinary
behaviour, is rewarded with a double share of contempt for
his •folly and •presumption. [Smith goes on a bit about the
absurdity of pretentious behaviour in ordinary low-ranked
people. Then:] The behaviour of a private man ought to be
marked by perfect modesty and plainness, along with as
much casualness as is consistent with the respect due to
the people he is with. If he hopes ever to distinguish himself,
it will have to be by more important virtues. He’ll have to
acquire dependents to match the dependents of the great;
and because his only access to funds from which to support
30
Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank
them will be through the labour of his body and the activity
of his mind, he’ll have to cultivate these. So he’ll need to
acquire superior knowledge in his profession, and to work
unusually hard in the exercise of it. He must be patient
in labour, resolute in danger, and firm in distress. He’ll
have bring these talents into public view by the difficulty
and importance of his undertakings, by the good judgment
and the severe and unrelenting application with which he](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-75-320.jpg)
![The disgrace, Smith says sharply, was to spend the rest of
his life in comfort and safety, on a generous pension. What
he had lost was ‘the admiring mob of fools, flatterers, and
dependents who had formerly been accustomed to attend to
everything he did’.]
‘Love’, says Rochefoucauld, ‘is often followed by ambition,
but ambition is hardly ever followed by love.’ Once the pas-
sion of ambition has taken possession of the breast, it won’t
allow any rival or any successor. To those who have been
accustomed to having or even hoping for public admiration,
all other pleasures sicken and die. Some fallen statesmen
have tried to become happier by working to overcome their
ambition, and to despise the honours that they could no
longer have; but how few have been able to succeed! Most of
them have spent their time in listless and insipid laziness,
•angry at the thought of their own insignificance, •unable to
take an interest in the occupations of private life, •enjoying
nothing but talk about their former greatness, •satisfied in
no activity except pointless attempts to recover that. Are
you sincerely determined never to barter your liberty for the
lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and
independent? Here is one way to keep to that virtuous
resolution, and it may be the only one: Never enter the place
from which so few have been able to return, never come
within the circle of ambition, and never compare yourself
with those masters of the earth who have already occupied
the attention of half of mankind before you.
[Smith’s next paragraph starts with some rather obscure
remarks about people’s attitude to ‘place’, which he distin-
guishes from ‘rank’. He continues:] But no-one despises
rank, distinction, pre-eminence, unless he is either vastly
•better than the human average or vastly •worse, i.e. unless
he is either](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-78-320.jpg)
![•so confirmed in wisdom and real philosophy that
he is convinced that as long as the propriety of his
conduct entitles him to approval it doesn’t matter
much whether people notice him or approve of him,
or else
•so habituated to the idea of his own low condition, so
sunk in slothful and sottish indifference, that he has
entirely forgotten the desire. . . .for superiority.
What gives to prosperity all its dazzling splendour is the
prospect of being a natural object of the joyous congratu-
lations and sympathetic attention of mankind; and, corre-
spondingly, what makes the gloom of adversity so horribly
dark is the feeling that our misfortunes are objects (not
of the fellow-feeling, but) of the contempt and aversion of
our brethren. It’s because of this that the most dreadful
calamities aren’t always the ones that it is hardest to bear.
It is often more humiliating to appear in public under small
disasters than under great misfortunes. The small ones
arouse no sympathy, whereas the great calamities evoke a
lively compassion. Although in the latter case the spectators’
sympathetic feelings aren’t as lively as the anguish of the
sufferer, the gap between sufferer and spectator is smaller
in those cases than in the case of small misfortunes, so that
the spectator’s imperfect fellow-feeling does give the sufferer
some help in bearing his misery. It would be more humil-
iating for a gentleman to appear at a social event covered
with filth and rags than to appear with blood and wounds.
The latter situation would draw people’s pity, whereas the
other would make them laugh. The judge who orders a
criminal to be set in the pillory dishonours him more than if
he had condemned him to the scaffold. [Smith adds some
remarks about (dis)honour, apparently connecting it with the
(un)likelihood of attracting pity. Then:] That’s why persons](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-79-320.jpg)
![33
Smith on Moral Sentiments Admiring the rich etc.
is gaudy and glittering in its colouring, (2) the other is more
correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline; (1) one
forces itself on the notice of every wandering eye, (2) the
other doesn’t attract much attention from anyone but the
most studious and careful observer. (1) The admirers and
worshippers of wealth and greatness are the great mob of
mankind (and how odd it seems that most of them aren’t
in this camp because they hope to get anything out of it).
(2) The real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue are
mostly wise and virtuous themselves; they’re a select group,
but not a large one, I’m afraid. The two •objects of respect
produce two •kinds of respect; it’s not hard to tell them apart,
and yet they have a great deal in common, so that inattentive
observers are apt to mistake the one for the other, i.e. to
observe a case of respect for wealth and greatness and to
mistake it for a case of respect for wisdom and virtue.
Almost everyone respects the rich and great more than
the poor and the humble. [Smith starts that sentence with ‘In
equal
degrees of merit. . . ’, which suggests that his point might be: If
a rich
man is morally on a par with a poor one, nearly everyone will
give the
rich one more respect. But the rest of the paragraph doesn’t
suggest any
concern with moral equality across differences of rank.] With](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-82-320.jpg)
![men· can never be great enough to be above the law, and
that inevitably overawes them into some sort of respect for
the rules of justice, or at least the more important of them.
•And the success of such people nearly always depends on
the favour and good opinion of their neighbours and equals,
and that can seldom be had unless their conduct is tolerably
regular [i.e. pretty much in accordance with the rules]. So the
good
old proverb that honesty is the best policy holds true here;
and we can generally expect a considerable degree of virtue
in such situations, which are (fortunately for the good morals
of society!) the situations that the vast majority of mankind
are in.
In the upper stations of life the case is not, unfortunately,
always like that. In the courts of princes and in the drawing-
rooms of the great, success and advancement depend not
34
Smith on Moral Sentiments Admiring the rich etc.
on the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals but on
the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous,
and proud superiors; and flattery and falsehood too often
prevail over merit and abilities. In such societies the ability
to please is valued above the ability to serve. In times of
peace a prince or great man wishes only to be amused, and
is even apt to imagine •that he has almost no need for service
from anyone, or •that those who amuse him are sufficiently
able to serve him. The trivial accomplishments of. . . .a man
of fashion are commonly more admired than the solid and
masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher,
or a legislator. All the great and awe-inspiring virtues—the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-84-320.jpg)
![ones that can equip a man for the council, the senate, or
the battlefield—are regarded with the utmost contempt and
derision by the insolent and insignificant flatterers who
commonly loom largest in such corrupted societies. When
the duke of Sully was called on by Louis XIII to give his advice
in a great emergency, he noticed the courtiers giggling to
one another about his unfashionable appearance. ‘Whenever
your majesty’s father’, said the old warrior and statesman,
‘did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons
of the court to leave the room.’
It’s because of our disposition to admire and therefore to
imitate the rich and the great that they are able to set fash-
ions—in dress, language, deportment. Even their vices and
follies are fashionable, and most men are proud to imitate
and resemble them in the very qualities that dishonour and
degrade them. [Some people, Smith says, act as though they
had •the vices and follies of the rich and great, wanting to
be admired for this, even when they don’t approve of •them
and perhaps don’t even have •them. ‘There are hypocrites
of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue.’
He is sharply critical of the not-very-rich man who tries to
pass himself off as rich without thinking about the fact that
if he really adopts the way of life of a rich man he will soon
reduce himself ‘to beggary’. Then:]
To attain to this envied situation the candidates for
fortune too often abandon the path of virtue, which un-
fortunately sometimes goes in the exact opposite direction
from the path to wealth, status, fame. The ambitious man
comforts himself with the thought that in the splendid
situation that he is aiming at he’ll have so many ways to draw
the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be able to
act with such superior propriety and grace that the glow of
his future conduct will entirely cover or erase the foulness](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-85-320.jpg)
![of the steps by which he got there. In many governments
the candidates for the highest stations are above the law
[that clause is verbatim Smith]; and if they can attain the object
of their ambition they have no fear of being indicted for
anything they did to get there. So they often try to supplant
and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their
greatness—not only by fraud and falsehood (the ordinary
and vulgar arts of intrigue and plotting), but also sometimes
by committing the most enormous crimes, by murder and
assassination, by rebellion and civil war. They fail more
often than they succeed, and usually gain nothing but the
disgraceful punishment that their crimes deserve. And even
when they do attain that wished-for greatness, they find
nothing like the happiness that they had expected to enjoy
in it. What the ambitious man is really after is not ease or
pleasure but always some kind of honour (though often an
honour that he doesn’t understand well); and the honour of
his exalted station seems to him and to other people to be
polluted and defiled by the baseness of his way of achieving it.
[Smith continues with a colourful account of the ambitious
man who reaches the top by disgusting means, tries every
trick to get •others and •himself to forget how he got there,
and fails in •both attempts. ’He is still secretly pursued by
the avenging furies of shame and remorse.’]
35
Smith on Moral Sentiments Reward and punishment
Part II: Merit and demerit: the objects of reward and
punishment
Section 1: The sense of merit and demerit](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-86-320.jpg)
![Introduction
The actions and conduct of mankind can be brought within
range of approval/disapproval in two different ways: one is
through their being proper or improper, decent or graceless,
·right or wrong·; the other is through their having merit or
demerit, the qualities of deserving reward and of deserving
punishment.
I have already remarked that the sentiment or affection of
the heart [Smith’s phrase; see note on page 116 about
‘affection’] from
which an action comes, and on which its whole virtue or vice
depends, can be considered under two different aspects or
in two different relations:
(1) It can be considered in relation to the cause or object
that arouses it. The affection’s (un)suitableness or
(dis)proportion to the cause or object that arouses it
is what determines the (im)propriety, ·the rightness
or wrongness·, of the consequent action.
(2) It can be considered in relation to the end at which
it aims or the effect that it is likely to produce. The
affection’s tendency to produce beneficial or harmful
effects is what determines the merit or demerit, the
good or ill desert, of the action to which it gives rise.
In Part I of this work I have explained what our sense of (1)
the propriety or impropriety of actions consists in. I now
start to consider what (2) the good or ill desert of actions
consists in.
Chapter 1: Whatever appears to be the proper object of
gratitude (resentment) appears to deserve reward (pun-
ishment)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-87-320.jpg)
![[Smith’s first paragraph repeats, at greater length but with
no more content, the proposition that is the chapter-title.
Then:]
The sentiment that most immediately and directly
prompts us to reward ·someone· is gratitude, and what most
immediately and directly prompts us to punish ·someone· is
resentment. So it’s bound to be the case that any action that
appears to be a proper and approved object of gratitude will
seem to us to deserve reward, and any action that appears
to be a proper and approved object of resentment will seem
to us to deserve punishment.
Rewarding is recompensing or repaying, returning good
for good received. Punishing is also recompensing or repay-
ing, though in a different manner; it is returning evil for evil
that has been done.
Gratitude and resentment are not the only passions that
interest us in the happiness or misery of other people; but
they are the ones that most directly arouse us to cause such
happiness or misery. If habitual approval of someone gives
us love and esteem for him, we are of course pleased that he
should have good fortune, and so we’re willing to lend a hand
to promote that. But our •love for him is fully satisfied if
his good fortune comes about without help from us. All this
passion wants is to see him happy, without regard for who is
36
Smith on Moral Sentiments Gratitude and resentment
the author of his prosperity. But •gratitude can’t be satisfied](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-88-320.jpg)
![natural object of someone’s gratitude, this being an instance
37
Smith on Moral Sentiments Gratitude and resentment
of gratitude that every human heart is disposed to beat
time to [Smith’s phrase], and thereby applaud. And a person
appears to deserve punishment if he is the natural object of
someone’s resentment, this being an instance of resentment
that the breast of every reasonable man is ready to adopt
and sympathize with. It is surely right to say that an action
appears to deserve reward if everyone who knows of it will
want it to be rewarded, and appears to deserve punishment
if everyone who hears of it is angry about it and for that
reason is happy to see it punished. ·I shall now put flesh on
these two lots of bones·.
[The words ‘benefactor’ and ‘beneficiary’ will be used quite a
lot in
this version, though Smith doesn’t use ‘benefactor’ so much and
never
uses ‘beneficiary’. The aim is brevity—sparing us Smith’s ‘the
person
who receives the benefit’ and ‘the person who bestows the
benefit’.]
(1) Just as we sympathize with the joy of our companions
when they prosper, so also we join with them in their
contented and satisfied attitude to whatever is the cause
of their good fortune. We •enter into the love and affection
that they have for that cause, and •begin to love it too. We](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-91-320.jpg)
![disapproval of the motives of the person who does
someone harm, there’s absolutely no sympathy
with the victim’s resentment
[The first paragraph of this chapter repeats, without signifi-
cant additions, what is said in the chapter’s heading. Then:]
(1) When we can’t sympathize with the affections of the
benefactor, when there seems to be no propriety in his
reasons for acting as he did, we’re less disposed to enter
into the gratitude of the beneficiary. A very small return
seems enough to reward the foolish and profuse generosity
that confers great benefits for trivial reasons—e.g. giving a
man an estate merely because he has the same personal
name and family name as the giver. . . . In a case like that,
our contempt for the folly of the benefactor hinders us from
thoroughly entering into the gratitude of the beneficiary; the
benefactor seems unworthy of it. . . . Monarchs who have
heaped wealth, power, and honours onto their favourites
haven’t often aroused the degree of attachment to their
persons that has often been experienced by those who were
less lavish in handing out favours. The good-natured but
unwise lavishness of James I of Great Britain doesn’t seem
to have brought him anyone’s personal loyalty; despite his
social and harmless disposition, he appears to have lived and
died without a friend. Whereas the whole gentry and nobility
of England risked their lives and fortunes in the cause of his
more frugal and discriminating son, ·Charles I·, despite the
coldness and distant severity of his ordinary behaviour.
(2) When one person suffers at the hands of another, and
the agent’s conduct appears to have been entirely directed
by motives and affections that we thoroughly enter into
and approve of, we can’t have any sort of sympathy with
the sufferer’s resentment, no matter how great the harm](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-94-320.jpg)
![that has been done to him. When two people quarrel, if we
sympathize with and entirely adopt the resentment of one of
them, we can’t possibly enter into the other’s. Our sympathy
with the person whose motives we go along with, and whom
we therefore look on as in the right, is bound to harden us
against all fellow-feeling with the other ·party to the quarrel·,
whom we necessarily regard as being in the wrong. Whatever
he has suffered, while it is no more than what we ourselves
would have wanted him to suffer, no more than what our
own sympathetic indignation would have prompted us to
inflict on him, it can’t either displease or provoke us. When
an inhuman murderer is brought to the scaffold, though
we have some compassion for his misery we can’t have any
sort of fellow-feeling with any resentment that he is absurd
enough to express any against his prosecutor or his judge.
The natural outcome of their just indignation is indeed most
fatal and ruinous to him; but we can’t be displeased with
the consequences of a sentiment that we feel that we cannot
avoid adopting when we bring the case home to ourselves.
39
Smith on Moral Sentiments Analysing the sense of merit and
demerit
Chapter 4: Recapitulation of the preceding chap-
ters
[This short chapter is what its title says it is, and no more.]
Chapter 5: Analysing the sense of merit and demerit
(1) So it comes down to this: When one person x acts upon
another person y (if I may put it like that; ·I mean when x](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-95-320.jpg)
![acts in some way that has consequences affecting y·), our
sense of the propriety of x’s conduct arises from what I’ll
call a •direct sympathy with x’s affections and motives; and
our sense of the merit of x’s conduct arises from what I’ll
call an •indirect sympathy with y’s gratitude. [Strictly speaking,
there is nothing indirect about the latter sympathy; what is
indirect is
that sympathy’s relationship to x.]
On this account,. . . .the sense of merit seems to be a
compound sentiment, made up of two distinct emotions—a
direct sympathy with the sentiments of the benefactor and
an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of his beneficiaries.
[Smith now offers a fairly long paragraph applying this
account to our emotions as we read works of history. This
doesn’t add anything to the account, except for the remark
that ‘we are shocked beyond all measure if beneficiaries
seem by their conduct to have little sense of the obligations
conferred on them’.]
(2) In the same way that our sense of the impropriety of
the conduct of a person x arises from our lack of sympathy for
(or even an outright antipathy to) x’s affections and motives,
so also our sense of its demerit arises from what I’ll again
call an indirect sympathy with the person y who has suffered
from x’s conduct.
So it seems that the sense of demerit is like the sense
of merit in being a compounded sentiment, made up of two
distinct emotions; a direct antipathy to x’s sentiments and
an indirect sympathy with y’s resentment.
[Again Smith applies this to the varying emotional states](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-96-320.jpg)
![of a reader of history. This colourful account reaches a
climax here:] Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity
of such conduct, the delight we get from hearing that it was
properly punished, the indignation we feel when it escapes
this due retaliation, in short our whole sense and feeling of
what that conduct deserves—of the propriety and fitness of
inflicting evil on the person who is guilty of it and making
him grieve in his turn—arises from the sympathetic indig-
nation that naturally boils up in the breast of the spectator
whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the situation
of the sufferer.
[The rest of this chapter was originally a long footnote.]
I have attributed our natural •sense of the ill desert of
human actions to our sympathy with the resentment of the
sufferer; and many people—perhaps most—will see this as
a degradation of •that sentiment. Resentment is commonly
regarded as so odious they they’ll tend to think it impossible
that something as praiseworthy as the sense of the ill desert
of vice should be in any way based on it. They may be
more willing to admit that our sense of the merit of good
actions is based on our sympathy with the gratitude of the
beneficiaries, because gratitude—along with all the other
benevolent passions—is regarded as a likeable motive that
can’t detract from the value of whatever is based on it. ·But
that immediately puts them in a difficulty, because· gratitude
and resentment are obviously in every respect counterparts
to one another; if our sense of merit arises from a sympathy
with the one, our sense of demerit can hardly not come from
a fellow-feeling with the other.
And here is another point. Resentment at the level at
40](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-97-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments Analysing the sense of merit and
demerit
which we too often see it is indeed just about the most odious
of all the passions, but it isn’t disapproved of when it doesn’t
fly so high and is brought right down to the level of the spec-
tator’s sympathetic indignation. When we bystanders feel
that the sufferer’s resentment doesn’t in any way go beyond
our own, when no word or gesture escapes him that indicates
an emotion more violent than what we can keep time to, and
when he never aims at inflicting any punishment beyond
what we would rejoice to see inflicted. . . ., it is impossible
that we won’t entirely approve of his sentiments. Our own
emotion in this case is bound to strike us as clearly justifying
his. And as we learn from experience how incapable most
people are of this moderation, and how great an effort it
would take them to bring the rough undisciplined impulse of
resentment down to this suitable level, we can’t help having
a considerable degree of esteem and admiration for anyone
who manages to do so. When the sufferer’s animosity exceeds
(as it nearly always does) anything that we can go along with,
we can’t enter into it and so, inevitably, we disapprove of it.
[Smith says that our disapproval of excessive resentment is
greater than our disapproval of any other excess of passion,
amounts of excess being equal. Then:] That is why revenge,
the excess of resentment, appears to be the most detestable
of all the passions and is an object of everyone’s horror and
indignation. And because excessive instances of this passion
outnumber moderate ones a hundred to one, we’re much
inclined to regard it as odious and detestable right across
the board. (Depraved as we are, Nature hasn’t built into
us any drive or motive that is wholly evil in every way, i.e.
that can’t be properly praised and approved of whatever its
intensity level and direction of aim.) On some occasions we](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-98-320.jpg)
![have a sense that this usually-too-strong passion is too weak.
[Smith elaborates that along the lines of page 21 above.]
The writers ·in the Old Testament· wouldn’t have talked
so often or so strongly of God’s wrath and anger if they had
regarded every degree of those passions as vicious and evil,
even in so weak and imperfect a creature as man.
Please bear in mind that this inquiry is about a matter not
of •right but of •fact. We’re concerned here with principles ·or
criteria· to guide approval of the punishment of bad actions;
the topic isn’t the principles on the basis of which a perfect
being would arrive at such approvals but rather the ones
by which weak and imperfect men actually do arrive at
them. It’s obvious that the principles I have mentioned have
a great effect on a man’s sentiments; and it seems wisely
ordered that they should do so. The very existence of society
requires that undeserved and unprovoked malice should be
restrained by proper punishments, and thus that inflicting
those punishments should be regarded as a proper and
laudable action. And men are naturally endowed with a
desire for •the welfare and preservation of society; but the
Author of nature hasn’t left it to men to use their reason
to work out what kinds and levels of punishment are right
for •this purpose; rather, he has endowed men with an
immediate and instinctive approval of just precisely the kind
and level of punishment that is most proper to attain •it.
The arrangement that nature has made here is like what
it has done in many other contexts. With regard to all the
specially important purposes—the ones that we might call
nature’s favourites—she has endowed mankind not only with
an appetite for the end that she proposes, but also with an
appetite for the only means by which this end can be brought
about. (I mean: an appetite for them for their own sakes,
independently of any thought about what they might lead to.)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-99-320.jpg)
![Thus self-preservation and the propagation of the species
seem to be the great ends that Nature has proposed in the
formation of all animals; and men are endowed with a desire
for those ends, and an aversion to the contrary. . . . But it
41
Smith on Moral Sentiments Comparing those two virtues
hasn’t been left to the slow and uncertain conclusions of our
reason to discover how to bring those ends about. Nature
has directed us to most of them by basic immediate instincts:
hunger,
thirst,
sexual passion,
the love of pleasure,
the fear of pain.
We seek all these for their own sakes, and not because they
are conducive to survival and the propagation of our species;
but they are conducive to them, and they are what the great
Director of nature intended as a means to them.
[The enormous footnote concludes with an extremely
difficult, confusing, and probably confused paragraph about
a certain ‘difference between the approval of propriety and
the approval of merit’.]
Section 2: Justice and beneficence
Chapter I: Comparing those two virtues
The only actions that seem to require reward are ones that](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-100-320.jpg)
![•tend to do good and •come from proper motives, because
they’re the only ones that are approved objects of gratitude,
i.e. that arouse the sympathetic gratitude of the spectator.
The only actions that seem to seem to deserve pun-
ishment are ones that •tend to do harm and •come from
improper motives, because they’re the only ones that are
approved objects of resentment, i.e. arouse the sympathetic
resentment of the spectator.
Beneficence is always free, it can’t be extorted by force,
and merely not giving doesn’t expose one to punishment,
because the mere lack of beneficence doesn’t tend to produce
real positive evil. It may disappoint someone who had rea-
sonably expected some benefit, and on that account it may
justly arouse dislike and disapproval; but it can’t provoke
any resentment that mankind will go along with. The man
who doesn’t recompense his benefactor when he has it in his
power to do so, and when his benefactor needs his help, is no
doubt guilty of black ingratitude. No impartial spectator will
have any fellow-feeling with the selfishness of his motives,
and he is the proper object of the highest disapproval. But
still he does no positive harm to anyone. [Smith presumably
means ‘he doesn’t positively do harm’.] He merely doesn’t do
the
good that in propriety he ought to have done. He is an object
of •hatred, a passion naturally aroused by impropriety of
sentiment and behaviour. but not of •resentment, a passion
that is properly aroused only by actions that tend to do real
positive harm to some particular persons. So this person’s
lack of gratitude can’t be punished. To oblige him by force
to do what gratitude should lead him to do, and what every
impartial spectator would approve of him for doing, would
be even more improper than his neglecting to do it. His
benefactor would dishonour himself if he tried by violence to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-101-320.jpg)
![force him into gratitude, and it would be mere meddling for
any third person to intervene unless he was the superior of
one of the other two [‘superior’ here means ‘employer or
commanding
officer or. . . ’]. But of all the duties of beneficence, those that
42
Smith on Moral Sentiments Comparing those two virtues
are recommended by gratitude come closest to what is called
a perfect and complete obligation—·i.e. come closest to the
status of ‘You deserve to be punished if you don’t’·. What we
are prompted to do by friendship, by generosity, by charity,
meeting with universal approval when we do so, is even more
free than the duties of gratitude, even further from being
extortable by force. We have the phrase ‘a debt of gratitude’;
we do not speak of ‘a debt of charity’ or ‘. . . of generosity’ or
even ‘. . . of friendship’ except when the friendship relation
has bases for gratitude mixed in with it.
It seems that nature gave us resentment for our own
defence and only for that. It is the safeguard of justice and
the security of innocence. It prompts us to beat off harm
that others are trying to do to us, and to retaliate for harm
already done, so that •the offender may be caused to be sorry
for what he did, and so that •others, through fear of similar
punishment, may be frightened off from similar offences.
So resentment must be reserved for these purposes; the
spectator will never go along with it when it is exerted for any
other purpose. And the mere lack of the beneficent virtues
doesn’t (and doesn’t try to) do any harm from which we can
have occasion to defend ourselves.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-102-320.jpg)
![affection, or
•a man shuts out compassion and refuses to relieve
the misery of his fellow-creatures though he could
easily do so
—in all these cases, though everyone blames the conduct,
no-one imagines that those who might have reason to expect
more kindness have any right to extort it by force. The
sufferer can only complain, and the spectator can’t interfere
except advising and persuading. In all such cases it would
be thought the highest degree of insolence and presumption
for equals to use force against one another.
A superior may sometimes require people under his
jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain degree of
propriety towards one another; and no-one will find fault with
his doing this. The laws of all civilized nations •oblige parents
to support their children, and ·adult· children to support
their ·aged· parents, and •impose on men many other duties
of beneficence. [The phrase ‘the civil magistrate’, which we are
about
to meet, referred to any official whose job is to apply and
enforce the
laws; but Smith and some other writers extended it to cover also
anyone
who makes the civil laws.] The civil magistrate is entrusted
with the power not only of •preserving the public peace by
restraining injustice, but also of •promoting the prosperity
of the commonwealth by establishing good discipline and
discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety. So it is
all right for him to prescribe rules that don’t just prohibit
citizens from harming one another but also command that](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-105-320.jpg)
![fellow-creatures with confidence and benevolent satisfaction,
knowing that he has made himself worthy of their most
favourable regards. The combination of all these sentiments
constitute the consciousness of merit, i.e. the consciousness
of deserving to be rewarded.
Chapter 3: The utility of this constitution of nature
That is how man, who can’t survive except in society, was
equipped by nature for the situation for which he was made.
Each member of the human society needs help from the
others, and is vulnerable to harm from them. When the
needed help is given and returned from love, gratitude,
friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy.
Its different members are all bound together by the agreeable
bands of love and affection. . . .
But even if the needed help is not given from such
generous and disinterested motives, even if the different
members of the society don’t have love and affection for one
another, the society won’t necessarily fall apart, though it will
be less happy and agreeable. Society can stay alive among
different men, as it can among different merchants, from
a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection.
Even if no-one has any obligations or debts of gratitude to
anyone else, society can still be held together by a trade
[Smith says ‘mercenary exchange’] in benefits, on the basis of
agreed valuation for each benefit.
What society can’t do is to survive among those who are
constantly ready to harm and injure one another. The mo-
ment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment
and hostility kick in, all society’s bands are snapped and its
different members are (so to speak) dissipated and scattered
around by the violence and opposition of their discordant](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-112-320.jpg)
![affections [see page 116 note on ‘affection’]. (If there is any
society
among robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstain
from robbing and murdering one another.) So beneficence
is less essential than justice is to the existence of society; a
lack of beneficence will make a society uncomfortable, but
the prevalence of injustice will utterly destroy it.
That is why Nature, while urging mankind to acts of
beneficence by the pleasing awareness of deserved reward,
hasn’t thought it necessary to guard and enforce beneficent
conduct by the terrors of deserved punishment in case it
should be neglected. Beneficence is an ornament that makes
the building more beautiful, not the foundation that holds
it up; so it’s good that it should be •recommended, but it
doesn’t have to be •imposed. In contrast with that, justice
47
Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution
is the main pillar that holds up the entire building. If it is
removed, the whole of human society—
the great, the immense structure whose creation and
support seems to have been Nature’s special care, her
cherished project
—must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce
the maintenance of justice, therefore, Nature has implanted
in mankind the awareness of guilt, the terrors of deserved
punishment that come with its violation, as the great safe-
guards of human society, to protect the weak, curb the
violent, and punish the guilty. Although men are naturally](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-113-320.jpg)
![sympathetic,
•they feel so little for anyone with whom they have no
special connection, compared with what they feel for
themselves,
•the misery of someone who is merely their fellow-
creature matters so little to them in comparison with
even a small convenience of their own, and
•they have it so much in their power to harm their
fellow-creature and may have so many temptations to
do so,
that if this fear-of-punishment mechanism didn’t go to work
within them in the fellow-creature’s defence, aweing them
into a respect for his innocence, they would like wild beasts
be ready at all times to attack him, and a man would enter
an assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
All through the universe we see means delicately adjusted
to the ends they are intended to produce. In the mechanism
of a plant or animal body we admire how everything is con-
trived for advancing the two great purposes of nature—•the
support of the individual and •the propagation of the species.
But in everything like this we still distinguish the cause of the
various motions and structures from their purpose. [Smith
calls this distinguishing their ‘efficient cause’ from their ‘final
cause’.]
The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood,. . . .and
so on are all operations that are necessary for the great
purposes of animal life. But we don’t try to explain them
in terms of those purposes in the way one might explain
them in terms of their efficient causes. We don’t imagine
that the blood circulates or the food digests of its own accord,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-114-320.jpg)
![intending to achieve the purposes of circulation or digestion.
The wheels of a watch are admirably adjusted to the purpose
for which it was made, telling the time. All their various
motions work together in the most precise way to produce
this effect. If they wanted and intended to tell the time,
they couldn’t do it better! But we attribute that desire and
intention not to the wheels but to the watch-maker, and
we know that what makes them move is a spring, which
doesn’t intend to produce its effect any more than they
do. ·This is standard stuff·: When we are explaining the
operations of bodies, we always in this way distinguish
the cause from the purpose [‘the efficient from the final cause’].
Yet when we are explaining the operations of minds, we
are apt to run these two different things together. When
natural forces lead us to pursue purposes that a refined
and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we’re apt
to think of that enlightened reason as though it were the
efficient cause of the sentiments and actions by which we
pursue our purpose. . . . On a superficial view, this cause
seems sufficient to produce the effects that we credit it with,
and the system of human nature seems to be simpler and
more agreeable when all its different operations are in this
way explained in terms of a single cause, ·namely reason·.
As society •cannot survive unless the laws of justice are
mainly observed, and as social interactions •cannot take
place among men who don’t generally abstain from injuring
one another; it has been thought that our awareness of this
•necessity is what led us to approve of the enforcement of
48
Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-115-320.jpg)
![intrinsic detestableness. [Smith then presents in a rather
tangled form two lines of thought involving the claims that
the principles in question
(a) are natural and proper objects of hatred and
49
Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution
detestation,
(b) are ones that we hate and detest,
(c) ought to be condemned.
Defending (c) purely on the basis of (b) wouldn’t appear to
be conclusive (Smith says we think). It might be better to
base (c) on (b) if that were based on (a). But the fact is
that when we are confronted by people who reject the basic
principles of justice, it’s not going to do any good to talk
about actual or legitimate hatred and detestation because,
Smith continues:] when we are asked ‘Why shouldn’t we do
A?’ the very question seems to show that doing A doesn’t
appear to the questioner to be ·in itself· a natural and proper
object of hatred. So we must show him that A ought to be
done for the sake of something else. And that is what starts
us looking around for other arguments, and then what we
come up with first is the disorder and confusion of society
that would result from everyone’s behaving unjustly. We
seldom fail, therefore, to insist on this topic.
But although it’s usually obvious that the welfare of
society is put at risk by •licentious practices, that thought is
seldom what first arouses us against •them. All men, even
the most stupid and unthinking ones, loathe fraud, perfidy,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-118-320.jpg)
![the delicately detailed concern that we might have for an
individual friend, lover, mentor or the like. All we have here
is a concern for someone because he is our fellow-creature.
How we feel about him personally doesn’t come into it; or
anyway it shouldn’t, though Smith admits that it is likely to
do so, damping down our resentment of someone who has
unjustly harmed a nasty victim.]
Sometimes indeed we both punish and approve of punish-
ment purely on the grounds of the general interests of society,
interests that we think can’t be secured without the punish-
ment in question. All the punishments inflicted for breaches
of. . . .military discipline are examples of this. Such crimes
don’t immediately or directly harm any particular person;
but it is thought that their remote consequences will or might
included great harm to society. A sentinel who falls asleep
50
Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution
on his watch suffers death by the laws of war, because such
carelessness might endanger the whole army. This severity
may often seem to be necessary, and therefore to be just and
proper. . . . Yet this punishment, however necessary it may
be, always appears to be excessively severe—a punishment
so great for a crime seemingly so small. . . . A humane person
must gather his thoughts, make an effort, and exert his
whole firmness and resolution before he can bring himself
either to inflict such a punishment or to go along with its
being inflicted by others. This is different from his view
of just punishment of an ungrateful murderer or parricide,
where his heart vigorously—even joyfully—applauds the just
retaliation that seems right for such detestable crimes. . . .](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-120-320.jpg)
![Whatever praise or blame can be due to any action must
be based on
(1) the intention or affection of the heart from which
the action comes,
(2) the external action or movement of the body which
this affection causes, or
(3) the good or bad consequences that actually come
from it.
These three constitute the whole nature and circumstances
of the action, and must be the basis for any quality that
belongs to it.
It is abundantly evident that (2) and (3) can’t be a basis
for any praise or blame, and no-one has ever said that
they could. The (2) external action or movement of the
body is often the same in the most innocent and in the
most blameworthy actions. •Shooting a bird, •shooting a
man—these are the same external movement, pulling the
trigger of a gun. And (3) the consequences that actually
happen to come from an action are as irrelevant to praise
and blame as is the external movement of the body—even
more irrelevant if that is possible! The consequences of the
action depend not on the agent but on luck [Smith’s word, here
and throughout, is ‘fortune’], so they can’t be the proper basis
for
any sentiment of which the agent’s character and conduct
are the objects.
The only consequences for which he is accountable, or
by which he can deserve either approval or disapproval of
any kind, are ones that were in some way intended, or ·if not
outright intended, then· at least show some agreeable or dis-
agreeable quality in the intention from which the agent acted.
So there we have it: any judgment of the action’s rightness](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-122-320.jpg)
![is often the main purpose of our revenge, which is always
incomplete when it can’t accomplish this. . . .
Thus, before anything can be a complete and proper
object of either gratitude or resentment it must possess
three different qualifications. (1) It must be the cause of
pleasure in one case, of pain in the other. (2) It must be
capable of feeling those sensations. (3) It must not merely
have produced those sensations but must have done so
from design—a design that is approved of in one case and
disapproved of in the other. It’s (1) that makes an object
capable of arousing gratitude and resentment; it’s because
of (2) that these passions can in some way be satisfied; and
(3) is not only needed for the gratitude or resentment to be
complete, but also provides an extra cause of those passions
because of the special and intense pleasure or pain that it
involves.
The sole arousing cause of gratitude is something that
gives pleasure; so that even when a person’s intentions are
utterly proper and beneficent, if he has failed actually to
produce the good that he intended, less gratitude seems to
be due to him because one of the arousing causes is lacking.
And the sole arousing cause of resentment is something
that gives pain; so that even when a person’s intentions are
utterly improper and malevolent, if he has failed actually to
produce the evil that he intended, less resentment seems
to be due to him because one of the arousing causes is
lacking. [Smith really does move from ‘the sole cause’ to ‘one
of the
causes’, a move that he needs for his conclusion about ‘less’
gratitude or
resentment rather than none.] On the other hand, even when
a person’s intentions don’t have any laudable degree of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-127-320.jpg)
![benevolence, if his actions happen to produce great good,
because one of the arousing causes has occurred some
gratitude is apt to arise towards him—a shadow of merit
seems to fall on him. And when a person’s intentions don’t
have any blameworthy degree of malice, if his actions should
happen to produce great evil, because one of the arousing
causes has occurred some resentment is apt to arise towards
him—a shadow of demerit seems to fall on him. And, as the
consequences of actions are entirely under the dominance
of luck [remember that Smith’s word throughout is ‘fortune’],
what I
have been describing is the source of luck’s influence on the
sentiments of mankind regarding merit and demerit.
54
Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence
Chapter 2: The extent of this influence of luck
The effect of this influence of luck is (1) to lessen our sense
of the merit or demerit of actions that arose from praisewor-
thy or blameworthy intentions but failed to produce their
intended effects; and (2) to increase our sense of the merit
or demerit of actions, beyond what is due to the motives
or affections that they come from, when they accidentally
give rise to either extraordinary pleasure or extraordinary
pain. ·This chapter will be devoted to discussions of these
two effects·.
(1) To repeat the point: however proper and beneficent
(or improper and malevolent) a person’s intentions in acting
are, if the intended effect doesn’t happen his merit seems
imperfect (or his demerit seems incomplete). This irregularity](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-128-320.jpg)
![of sentiment is felt not only •by those who are immediately
affected by the consequences of the action in question
but also to some extent even •by the impartial spectator.
·In discussing this matter, I shall start with failed •good
intentions and then turn to failed •bad ones·.
(1a). . . .It is often said that we are equally obliged to •a
man who has tried to help us and to •one who actually did
so. That’s the speech that we regularly make after every
unsuccessful attempt of this kind; but like all other fine
speeches it mustn’t be taken too strictly. The sentiments
that a generous-minded man has for the friend who fails ·to
help him· may often be nearly the same as what he feels
for the one who succeeds; and the more generous he is the
nearer his sentiments will come to that level. [For ‘generous’
see note on page 11.] A truly generous-minded man will get
more pleasure from—and be more grateful for—•the love
and respect he gets from people he thinks to be worthy of
respect than for all the •advantages he can ever expect to
flow from that love and respect. So when he loses those
advantages he seems to be losing only a trifle that is hardly
worth thinking about. But still he does lose something, so
that his pleasure and gratitude are not perfectly complete.
Therefore, as between the friend who fails and the friend
who succeeds, other things being equal, the noblest and best
mind will have some little difference of affection in favour of
the one who succeeds. Indeed, people are so unjust about
this that even when the intended benefit is procured, they
are apt to think that less gratitude is due to the benefactor if
he wasn’t the sole producer of the benefit. . . .
Even the merit of talents and abilities that some accident
has prevented from producing their effects seems somewhat
imperfect, even to people who are fully convinced that the
person does have the capacity to produce those effects.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-129-320.jpg)
![[Smith gives the example of a general whose battle plans
were excellent but who is robbed of victory by political
interference from his own side:] Although he might deserve
all the approval that is due to a great military plan, he still
lacks the actual merit of having performed a great action. . . .
It angers an architect when his plans are either not carried
out at all, or carried out with so many alterations that the
effect of the building is spoiled. The only thing that depends
on the architect is the plan; and good judges can see his
genius being revealed in that as completely as in the actual
building. But even to those who know most about such
things a •plan doesn’t give the same pleasure as does a
•noble and magnificent building. . . . There may be many
men of whom we believe ‘He is more talented than Caesar
and Alexander; placed in the situations they were in, he
would perform still greater feats’. But in the mean time,
however, we don’t view such a man with the wonder and
admiration with which those two heroes have been regarded
in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind
may approve of him more, but the mind isn’t dazzled and
55
Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence
carried away by the splendour of great actions. . . .
(1b) Just as the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do
good seems to ungrateful mankind to be lessened if the
attempt fails, so also does the demerit of an unsuccessful
attempt to do evil. The plan to commit a crime, however
clearly it is proved to exist, is hardly ever punished with
the same severity as the actual commission of the crime.
The only exception to this may be the crime of treason.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-130-320.jpg)
![attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always punished
lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all. The thief
whose hand has been caught in his neighbour’s pocket
before he had taken anything out of it is punished only
with the disgrace of being exposed as a thief; if he’d had
time to steal a handkerchief, he would have been put to
death. The burglar who has been found setting a ladder to
his neighbour’s window but hasn’t gone through the window
is not exposed to capital punishment. The attempt to ravish
a woman is not punished as a rape. The attempt to seduce a
married woman is not punished at all, though ·successful·
seduction is punished severely. Our resentment against
someone who tried and failed to commit a crime is seldom
strong enough to lead us to punishment in the way we would
have thought proper if he had succeeded. In the failure
case, our joy at being spared the actual crime alleviates
•our sense of the atrocity of his conduct; in the success
case, the grief of our misfortune increases •it. Yet his real
demerit is undoubtedly the same in both cases, since his
intentions were equally criminal; and there is in this respect,
therefore, an irregularity in the sentiments of all men, and a
consequent relaxation of discipline in the laws of, I believe, all
nations the most civilized as well as the most barbarous. [The
‘irregularity’ Smith speaks of is just the phenomenon of our
accepting
a general rule—Latin regula—and then having sentiments that
don’t
conform to it. We’ll meet the term again.]. . . .
56
Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-132-320.jpg)
![[Smith next writes about the fundamentally decent person
who somehow gets involved in planning a crime, and is
prevented from succeeding by some accident. He must think
that this was a lucky rescue, saving him from spending ‘the
rest of his life in horror, remorse, and repentance’. He knows
that his heart is as guilty as it would have been if he had
succeeded, but his failure to commit the crime eases his
conscience so that he ‘considers himself as less deserving of
punishment and resentment’ than he would have been if he
has succeeded.]
(2) The second effect of this influence of luck is to increase
our sense of the merit (or demerit) of actions beyond what is
due to the motives or feelings that produce them, when they
happen to cause extraordinary pleasure (or pain). . . . For
example, a messenger who brings bad news is disagreeable
to us, whereas we feel a sort of gratitude to the man who
brings us good news. For a moment we regard them as the
authors of our good fortune (in one case) and of our bad
fortune (in the other), looking at them rather as though they
had really brought about the events that they only report to
us. [Smith goes into some details about this, concluding
thus:] King Tigranes of Armenia struck off the head of the
man who brought him the first account of the approach of
a formidable enemy. To punish the bringer of bad news
in this way seems barbarous and inhuman; but rewarding
the messenger bringing good news is not disagreeable to
us—we think it suitable to the generosity of kings. Why
do we make this distinction when if there’s no fault in the
one there’s no merit in the other? It is because any sort
of reason seems sufficient to authorize the expressing of
the social and benevolent affections, whereas it requires the
most solid and substantial reasons to make us sympathetic
to the expression of unsocial and malevolent ones.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-133-320.jpg)
![paid for by the person who was guilty of it.
[Smith now gives us a whole page about a still lower level
of negligence, which consists in not acting with ‘the most
anxious timidity and circumspection’, i.e. with a kind of
caution that would be a fault, not a virtue—a fault because
life can’t satisfactorily be lived with that much concern for
possible bad consequences. If one person hurts another
through this kind of ‘negligence’, it is usual and natural
for him to apologize and express his concern for the suf-
ferer’s welfare, and (if he is a decent person) he will offer
compensation for the damage he has done and do what he
can to soothe the resentment that the sufferer is likely to
feel. Smith continues:] To make no apology, to offer no
atonement, is regarded ·by us all· as the highest brutality.
Yet why should he apologize more than anyone else? Why
should he, since he was as innocent as any other bystander,
be thus singled out from among all mankind to make up
for someone else’s bad luck? This task wouldn’t have been
imposed on him if it weren’t for the fact that the impartial
spectator feels some indulgence for what may be regarded
as the unjust resentment of the sufferer. [Here and in one
other place, Smith speaks of ‘animal resentment’, evidently
meaning
‘resentment that is natural but not defensible through any
acceptable
general moral principles’.]
Chapter 3: The purpose of this irregularity of senti-
ments
That is how the good or bad consequences of an action
affect the sentiments both of the agent and of others; so](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-136-320.jpg)
![that is how luck [‘fortune’], which governs the world, has
influence in the area where we should be least willing to
allow it any, and partly directs the sentiments of mankind
regarding the character and conduct both of themselves and
of others. Everyone judges by the outcome, and not by the
design—that has been the complaint down through the ages,
and is the great discouragement of virtue. Everyone agrees
to the •general maxim that because the outcome doesn’t
depend on the agent it oughtn’t to influence our sentiments
58
Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity
regarding the merit or propriety of his conduct. But our
sentiments in •particular cases almost never exactly conform
to what this reasonable maxim would require. The happy or
unprosperous outcome of any action not only •is apt to give
us a good or bad opinion of the prudence with which it was
conducted, but nearly always also •sparks our gratitude or
resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the design.
But when Nature planted the seeds of this irregularity
in the human breast, she seems to have intended—as she
always does—the happiness and perfection of our species. If
the only causes of our •resentment were the harmfulness of
the design and the malevolence of the affection, we would
feel all the furies of •that passion against anyone whom
we suspected of having such designs or affections, even if
they had never broken out into any action. Sentiments,
thoughts, intentions, would become objects of punishment;
and if the indignation of mankind ran as high against them
as against actions—if the baseness of a •thought that didn’t
lead to any action seemed to us all to call as loudly for](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-137-320.jpg)
![to fear the animal resentment that he feels is ready to burst
out against him if he should unintentionally be the unhappy
instrument of their calamity. ·Here is a kind of model or
metaphor for the point I want to make·:
In the ancient heathen religion, holy ground that
had been consecrated to some god was not to be
walked on except on solemn and necessary occasions.
Someone who violated this, even if he did it in igno-
rance, became piacular from that moment, and until
proper atonement was made he was vulnerable to
the vengeance of the powerful and invisible being for
whom that ground had been set apart.
[To be ‘piacular’ is to be in a state in which one needs to make
atonement,
to expiate, for something one has done.] Now compare that with
this:
By the wisdom of Nature the happiness of every
innocent man is made holy, consecrated, hedged
round against the approach of every other man; not to
be wantonly walked on, and not even to be in any
way violated, even ignorantly and unintentionally,
without requiring some expiation, some atonement
in proportion to the magnitude of the unintended
violation.
A humane man who accidentally and with absolutely no
blameworthy negligence has been the cause of the death of
another man feels that he is •piacular, though not •guilty.
During his whole life he regards this accident as one of the
greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the
family of the slain man is poor and he himself is fairly well
off, he immediately takes them under his protection. . . .and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-140-320.jpg)
![thinks them entitled to every degree of favour and kindness.
If they are wealthier than he is, he tries by every submission,
by every expression of sorrow, by giving them any service
that he can devise and they will accept, to atone for what
has happened and to placate as much as possible their
resentment for the great though unintended offence that he
has given them. (Their resentment is certainly most unjust,
but it is also natural.)
[Smith adds a paragraph about the role of this aspect
of the human condition—‘this fallacious sense of guilt’—in
theatrical drama. Of Oedipus and Jocasta he says that they
are both ‘in the highest degree piacular’ though neither is ‘in
the smallest degree guilty’.]
Despite all these seeming irregularities of sentiment, if a
man has the bad luck to cause evils that he didn’t intend, or
to fail in producing good that he did intend, Nature hasn’t
left his innocence with no consolation or his virtue with no
reward. What the man does is to get help from that just
and equitable maxim: Outcomes that didn’t depend on our
conduct ought not to lessen the respect that is due to us. He
summons up his whole magnanimity and firmness of soul,
and works to regard himself not in the light in which he does
at present appear, but in the light
60
Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity
•in which he ought to appear,
•in which he would have appeared if his generous plans
had met with success, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-141-320.jpg)
![new joy, or the idea of his •sorrow any new sorrow, although
thoughts about the causes of •those passions might often
arouse both. But then, bring him into society and all his
own passions will immediately become the causes of new
passions. He will observe that mankind approve of some of
them, and this will elate him; and that they are disgusted by
others, which will cast him down. His desires and aversions,
his joys and sorrows, will now often cause new desires and
new aversions, new joys and new sorrows; so they will now
interest him deeply, and often call on his most attentive
consideration. [In this paragraph, the notion of what will
‘interest’ the
man may be partly the notion of what will be in his interests.]
[Smith now compares that with our thoughts about our
own physical beauty or ugliness, summing up thus:] It’s
obvious that we are concerned about our own beauty and
ugliness only because of its effect on others. If we had no
connection with society, we would be altogether indifferent
about both.
In the same way our first moral criticisms are directed
at the characters and conduct of other people; and we are
all conscious of how each of these affects us. But we soon
learn that other people are equally frank about our own
character and conduct. We become concerned to know how
far we deserve their censure or applause. . . . So we start
to examine our own passions and conduct, and to think
about how these must appear to them by thinking about
how they would appear to us if we were in the situation of
the others. We suppose ourselves to be the spectators of our
own behaviour, and try to imagine what effect our conduct
would have on us when seen in this light. That’s the only
mirror in which we can, with the eyes of other people, have
some kind of view of the propriety of our own conduct. . . .](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-145-320.jpg)
![Whenever I try to examine my own conduct—whenever I
try to pass sentence on it, and either approve or condemn
it—it’s obvious •that I divide myself into two persons (so
to speak), and •that in my role as examiner and judge I
represent a different character [Smith’s exact phrase] from that
of myself as the person whose conduct is examined and
judged. One is the spectator, whose sentiments concerning
•my own conduct I try to enter into by placing myself in
his situation and considering how •it would appear to me
when seen from that particular point of view. The other
is the agent, the person whom I properly call ‘myself’, the
person about whose conduct I as spectator was trying to
form some opinion. The first is the judge, the second the
person judged. But the judge can’t be in every respect the
same as the person judged of, any more than a cause can be
in every respect the same as the effect.
To be likeable and to be praiseworthy—i.e. to deserve
love and to deserve reward—are the great characters [Smith’s
63
Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
word] of virtue; and to be odious and punishable are the great
characters of vice. But all these characters immediately bring
in the sentiments of others. Virtue is said to be likeable or
praiseworthy not •because it is an object of its own love
or gratitude but •because it arouses those sentiments in
other men. The inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction that
naturally accompany virtue are caused by the awareness of
being an object of such favourable regards, just as the inner
torment that naturally accompanies vice results from the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-146-320.jpg)
![suspicion that one is viewed with disfavour. What can be a
greater happiness than to be beloved, and to know that we
deserve to be beloved? What can be a greater misery than to
be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
Chapter 2: The love of praise and of praiseworthi-
ness; the dread of blame and of blameworthiness
Man naturally desire, not only to be loved but to be lovely,
i.e. to be a natural and proper object of love. He naturally
fears not only to be hated but to be hateful, i.e. a natural
and proper object of hatred. [That used to be the only standard
meaning of ‘hateful’; is still is standard except in the USA
where a
‘hateful’ person is one who is full of hate.] He wants not only
praise
but praiseworthiness, i.e. to be a natural and proper object of
praise, whether or not anyone actually praises him. He fears
not only blame but blameworthiness, i.e. to be a natural
and proper object of blame, whether or not anyone actually
blames him.
The love of praiseworthiness is emphatically not derived
solely from the love of praise. Those two drives resemble one
another, are connected, and often blend with one another,
but they are in many respects distinct and independent of
one another.
The love and admiration that we naturally have for those
whose character and conduct we approve of necessarily lead
us to want to become, ourselves, objects of such agreeable
sentiments, and to be as likeable and admirable as those
whom we love and admire the most. Our intense desire to
excel is based on our admiration of the excellence of others.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-147-320.jpg)
![what we •ought to be but •are not. . . . To be pleased with
such groundless applause is a proof of the most superficial
levity and weakness. It is what is properly called ‘vanity’,
and is the basis for the most ridiculous and contemptible
vices, namely the vices of affectation and common lying.
[Smith scornfully presents two examples: a fool who tries to
attract admiration by telling lying stories about adventures
he has come through, and the self-important idiot who
parades himself as someone with ‘rank and distinction’
that he knows he doesn’t have. Smith continues with an
acute psychological account of such people:] They look on
themselves not in •the light in which they know they ought
to appear to their companions, but in •the light in which
they believe their companions actually look on them. Their
superficial weakness and trivial folly prevent them from ever
looking into themselves, seeing themselves in the way (their
consciences must tell them) that everyone would see them if
the real truth were known.
Matching the fact that ignorant and groundless praise
can give no solid joy, no satisfaction that will bear serious
examination, is the fact that
it is often really comforting to reflect that although no
praise has been actually bestowed on us, our conduct
has deserved praise, having entirely conformed to the
measures and rules by which praise and approval are
naturally and commonly bestowed.
We are pleased not only with praise but also with having
acted in a praiseworthy way. We are pleased to think that
we have made ourselves natural objects of approval, even
if no approval has ever actually been bestowed on us; just
as we are humiliated by the thought that we have deserved
the blame of those we live with, even if we have never been](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-149-320.jpg)
![But this alone wouldn’t have equipped him for the society
for which he was made. So Nature endowed him not only
with a desire to be approved of but also with (2) a desire to
65
Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
be something that ought to be approved of, or a desire to be
what he himself approves of in other men. Desire (1) could
only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society; to be
concerned about really being fit, he needed desire (2). . . . In
every well-formed mind desire (2) seems to be the stronger of
the two. Only the weakest and most superficial of mankind
can be much delighted with praise that they themselves
know to be altogether unmerited. [Smith goes on at some
length about the attitude of ‘a wise man’, to whom what
matters above all is to deserve approval, whether or not he
actually gets it from anyone.]
To want praise when none is due—or even to accept
praise when it is not due—can only be the effect of the
most contemptible vanity. To want it when it is really due is
to want merely that a most essential act of justice should be
done to us. The love of just fame or true glory, even for its
own sake and independently of any advantage one might get
from it, is not unworthy even of a wise man. But such a man
sometimes neglects and even despises fame of that kind; and
he is most likely to do so when he is absolutely confident of
the perfect propriety of every part of his own conduct. When
this is so, his self-approval doesn’t need to be confirmed by
the approval of other men. It is sufficient on its own, and he
is contented with it. This self-approval is the principal object
(if not indeed the only one) about which he can or ought to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-151-320.jpg)
![be concerned. The love of it is the love of virtue.
Just as the love and admiration that we naturally have
for some others dispose us to want to become ourselves
the proper objects of such agreeable sentiments, so also
the hatred and contempt that we equally naturally have
for some others dispose us, perhaps even more strongly, to
dread the very thought of resembling them in any respect.
And here again what we fear is less the thought of being
hated and despised than the thought of being hateful and
despicable. . . . The man who has broken through all the
measures of conduct that could make him agreeable to
mankind may have the most perfect assurance that what he
has done will for ever be concealed from every human eye;
but that won’t do him any good. When he looks back on his
behaviour and views with the eyes of an impartial spectator,
he finds that he can’t enter into any of the motives that
influenced it. He. . . .feels a high degree of the shame that he
would be exposed to if his actions were ever to be generally
known. . . . And if what he has been guilty of is not merely
wrong actions that would be objects of simple disapproval,
but an enormous crime that would arouse detestation and
resentment, he can never think of it. . . .without feeling all the
agony of horror and remorse. [Smith adds colourful detail
about the ‘natural pangs of an affrighted conscience’ that
can’t be allayed by convincing oneself that there is no God.
He says that some terrible criminals have confessed to their
crimes when they were not under suspicion. He continues
with this theme:] They hoped by their death •to reconcile
themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural
sentiments of mankind; •to be able to consider themselves
as less worthy of hatred and resentment; •to atone in some
measure for their crimes, and by thus becoming objects
of compassion rather than of horror, if possible •to die in
peace and with the forgiveness of all their fellow-creatures.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-152-320.jpg)
![Compared to what they felt before the discovery, even the
thought of this, it seems, was happiness. . . .
Only the most frivolous and superficial of mankind can
be much delighted with praise that they know they don’t in
the least deserve. But undeserved reproach is often capable
of humiliating even men of more than ordinary constancy. . . .
Such a man is humbled to find that anyone should have
such a low view of his character as to suppose him capable
of being guilty of whatever it is he is accused of. Though he is
66
Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
perfectly conscious of his innocence, the very accusation of-
ten seems to throw—even in his own imagination—a shadow
of disgrace and dishonour on his character. . . . An innocent
man who is brought to the scaffold by the false accusation
of an odious crime suffers the cruelest misfortune that it is
possible for innocence to suffer. . . .
[For someone to whom this happens, Smith says, religion
offers some consolation: the only thing that can ‘strike
terror into triumphant vice’ is also the only thing that offers
‘consolation to disgraced and insulted innocence’. There
is not much consolation to be drawn from ‘the humble
philosophy that confines its views to this life’.]
[Continuing with this enormously long chapter [25 book-
pages], Smith now presents two pages of details of how
various kinds of people handle (1) unmerited applause and
(2) unmerited disapproval. Its main point is that a good
person won’t get pleasure from (1) but will get pain from (2).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-153-320.jpg)
![If he tries to shrug either of these off by telling the world
‘I didn’t do it’, he is more likely to be believed in (1) than
in (2). And there’s something else that makes unmerited
disapproval hard for a good man to take:] He knows perfectly
what he has done, but perhaps no-one can know for sure
what he himself is capable of doing. . . . He may be confident
that the unfavourable judgment of his neighbours is wrong,
but his confidence can’t often be strong enough to block his
neighbours’ judgment from making some impression upon
him. . . .
I should point out that •how much importance we at-
tach to the agreement or disagreement of other people’s
sentiments and judgments with our own is always exactly
proportional to •how unsure we are about the propriety of
our own sentiments and the accuracy of our own judgments.
A morally sensitive man may sometimes feel great uneasi-
ness at the thought that he may have yielded too much to a
certain passion—even an ‘honourable passion’, so to speak,
such as his indignation at an injury that he or a friend has
sustained. He is anxiously afraid that while meaning only
to act in a spirited and just way he may have been led by
an unduly intense emotion to do a real injury to some other
person who, though not innocent, may have been less guilty
than he at first seemed to be. In this situation the opinion
of other people comes to have the utmost importance for
him. Their approval is the most healing ointment that can be
poured into his uneasy mind; their disapproval the bitterest
and most tormenting poison. When he is perfectly satisfied
with every part of his own conduct, the judgment of other
people is often of less importance to him.
There are some noble and beautiful (1) arts in which the
degree of excellence can be determined only by a certain](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-154-320.jpg)
![nicety of taste, the decisions of which seem always to be
somewhat uncertain. There are (2) others in which success
can be rigorously demonstrated or at least strongly argued
for. Among the candidates for excellence in those different
arts, a concern for public opinion is always much greater in
(1) than in (2).
[Smith elaborates this through a couple of book-pages.
He puts poetry into class (1), and reports cases in which fine
poets have been crushed by public disapproval of their work.
Mathematics is assigned to class (2), because mathematical
results are so certain that there’s no room for wrong dissent.]
Sometimes the morals of those different classes of learned
men are somewhat affected by this great difference in how
they stand with relation to the public.
Because mathematicians and natural philosophers are
independent of public opinion, they aren’t much tempted
to form themselves into factions and cliques, whether for
the support of their own reputation or for lowering the
reputation of their rivals. They are nearly all men of the most
67
Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
likeable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony
with one another, are the friends of one another’s reputation,
and don’t enter into intrigues in order to secure the public
applause. They are pleased when their works are approved
of, but not much vexed or angry when they are neglected.
It’s not always like that with poets, or with those who](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-155-320.jpg)
![pride themselves on what is called fine writing. They are
apt to divide themselves into a sort of literary factions, with
each gang being. . . .the mortal enemy of the reputation of
every other, and employing all the mean arts of intrigue
and persuasion to get public opinion to side with the works
of its own members and against those of its enemies and
rivals. [Smith gives examples from France and England,
remarking that ‘the likeable Mr Addison didn’t think it
unworthy of his gentle and modest character’ to take the
lead in a conspiracy ‘to keep down the rising reputation of
Mr Pope’. He contrasts this with the more selfless characters
and conduct of ‘mathematicians and natural philosophers’.]
It is natural that our uncertainty concerning our own
merit, and our concern to think favorably of it, should
combine to make us •want to know the opinion of other
people regarding it and •to be more than ordinarily elevated
when that opinion is favourable (and more than ordinarily
humiliated when it is unfavourable). [Smith goes on to say
that we shouldn’t be willing to plot and scheme to get the
favourable opinion or avoid the unfavourable one. Praise
that one gets by unfair means is deprived of what mature and
decent people regard as the main value of praise—namely its
value as evidence that one is praiseworthy. He continues:]
The man who performs a praiseworthy action may also
want the praise that is due to it—perhaps even more than is
due to it. The two motivations—·to be praiseworthy and to
be praised·—are in this case blended together. Even the man
himself may not know how far his conduct was influenced by
each of them, and it’s hardly ever possible for the rest of us
to know. [What we’ll say about that, Smith says, will depend
on how much we like the man in question and perhaps on
what general view we have of human nature. He’ll return
later to the topic of ‘splenetic’ views of human nature. Then:]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-156-320.jpg)
![Very few men can be satisfied with their own private
sense that their qualities and conduct are of the kinds they
admire and think praiseworthy in other people, unless they
actually receive praise for those qualities and that conduct.
In this respect, though, men differ considerably from one
another. Some men when they are perfectly satisfied in
their own minds that they are praiseworthy seem not to care
whether they are praised; others seem to care much less
about praiseworthiness than about praise.
Unless a man avoids being actually blamed or reproached,
he can’t be completely sure—he can’t even be fairly sure—
that nothing in his conduct has been blameworthy. A wise
man may often neglect praise [i.e. not give any thought to
whether
he is being praised], even when he has best deserved it; but
in any seriously important matter he will try hard to act
in such a way as to avoid not only •blameworthiness but
also—as much as possible—every •plausible imputation of
blame. . . . To show much concern about praise, even for
praiseworthy actions, is usually a mark not of great wisdom
but of some degree of weakness; whereas in a concern to
avoid the shadow of blame or reproach there may be no
weakness but the most praiseworthy prudence. . . .
The all-wise Author of Nature has in this way taught man
to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren—to
be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct
and hurt when they disapprove of it. We could put this by
saying that God has appointed man to be the immediate
judge of mankind, this being one of the many respects in
which he has created man after his own image. . . . Each
68](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-157-320.jpg)
![such groundless acclamations might otherwise cause, by
telling us that when we accept them we make ourselves
despicable because we know that we don’t deserve them.
And on the other side, if the man without should reproach
us for actions we haven’t performed or motives that didn’t in-
fluence us, the man within can immediately correct this false
judgment and assure us that we are not proper objects of
the censure that has so unjustly been laid on us. But. . . .the
man within seems sometimes to be astonished and confused
by the noisy vigour of the man without. The violence and
loudness with which blame is sometimes poured out on us
seems to stupefy and numb our natural sense of praise-
worthiness and blameworthiness; and the judgments of the
man within, even if not absolutely altered or perverted, are so
much shaken in the steadiness and firmness of their decision
that they lose much of their natural effect of securing the
tranquillity of the mind. We hardly dare find ourselves not
guilty when all our brethren appear to condemn us loudly.
The •supposed impartial spectator of our conduct seems
fearful and hesitating when he gives his opinion in our
favour, whereas all the •real spectators. . . .are unanimous
and violent in giving their judgment against us. [Smith
calls the man within a ‘demigod’, partly mortal and partly
immortal and divine. He continues:] When the judgments of
the man within are steadily and firmly directed by the sense
of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, he seems to act
suitably to his divine birth; but when he allows himself to
be astonished and confused by the judgments of ignorant
and weak man, he reveals his connection with mortality and
seems to act in line with the human rather than the divine
part of his origin.
When this happens, the only effective consolation for a
humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still higher
tribunal, namely that of the all-seeing Judge of the world,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-159-320.jpg)
![whose eye can never be deceived and whose judgments can
never be perverted. Our man was supplied by nature with
the man within his breast, who was to act in this life as the
great guardian of his innocence and of his tranquillity; but
this man within has been disturbed and astonished ·by the
clamour of public disapproval·, so that our man’s mind has
become weak and despondent; and now the only support he
69
Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
can find is in a firm confidence in the unerring rightness of
the judgments of God’s tribunal, before which his innocence
will eventually be declared and his virtue rewarded. So our
happiness in this life often depends on the humble hope and
expectation of a life to come. This hope and expectation is
deeply rooted in human nature, which needs
•to support its lofty ideas of its own dignity,
•to brighten the dreary prospect of continually ap-
proaching •death, and
•to maintain its cheerfulness under all the heaviest
calamities to which the disorders of this life sometimes
expose it.
[Smith wrote ‘continually approaching •mortality’—obviously a
slip.]
That there is a world to come, in which. . . .every man will
be ranked with those who really are his equals in moral and
intellectual qualities. . . .is a doctrine that is in every respect
so venerable, and so comfortable to the weakness of human
nature and so flattering to its grandeur, that any virtuous](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-160-320.jpg)
![this present life. Alas! the solitary monk in his cell,
obliged to mortify the flesh [= ‘to semi-starve and inflict
physical pain on himself’] and to subject it to the spirit,
is supported by the hope of an assured reward and
by the secret support of the grace that softens the
yoke of the Lord. But can you on your death-bed
dare to represent to God the wearying daily hardships
of your employment? can you dare to ask him for
any reward?. . . . Alas! my brother, if one single day
of those sufferings were consecrated to the Lord, it
might have brought you eternal happiness. Offering
up to God one single action that was painful to nature
might have secured for you the inheritance of the
saints. And you have done all this, and in vain, for
this world!’
This comparison between •the futile mortifications of a
monastery and •the ennobling hardships and hazards of
war, this supposition that one day—one hour—employed in
•the former should in God’s eyes have more merit than a
whole life spent honourably in •the latter, is surely contrary
70
Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
to all our moral sentiments, contrary to all the principles
by which nature has taught us to regulate our contempt or
admiration. But this is the spirit that has
•reserved the Heavenly regions for monks and friars,
and for people whose conduct and conversation re-
sembled those of monks and friars,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-162-320.jpg)
![while at the same time
•condemning to Hell all the heroes, all the statesmen
and lawgivers, all the poets and philosophers of for-
mer ages; all those who have invented, improved, or
excelled in the arts that contribute to the survival,
convenience, or ornament of human life; all the great
protectors, instructors, and benefactors of mankind;
all those to whom our natural sense of praiseworthi-
ness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and most
exalted virtue.
It’s no wonder that such a strange application of this most
respectworthy doctrine should sometimes have exposed it
to contempt and derision—at least from people who didn’t
themselves have any taste for or skill in the devout and
contemplative virtues.
Chapter 3: The influences and authority of
conscience
The approval of a man’s own conscience is in some special
cases barely enough to content him; the testimony of the
supposed impartial spectator, that great inmate of the breast,
can’t always give him all the support he needs. Still, the
influence and authority of this principle [see note on page 164]
is always very great, and it’s only by consulting this inner
judge that we can ever see our own character and conduct
in its proper shape and dimensions, or make any proper
comparison between our own interests and other people’s.
We all know that to the eye of the body objects appear
great or small not so much according to their real sizes as
according to how far away they are. Well, the same is true for
what may be called the natural eye of the mind, and we
make up for the defects of both these ‘eyes’ in pretty much
the same way. From where I am now sitting, an immense](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-163-320.jpg)
![hardly aware of doing it at all; and in this case too it takes
some reflection—and even some philosophy—for a man to
be convinced regarding how little interest he would take in
his neighbour’s greatest concerns. . . .if the sense of propriety
and justice didn’t correct the otherwise natural inequality of
our sentiments.
Let us suppose that the great and populous empire of
China was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and
let us consider how a humane man in Europe—one with
no sort of connection with China—would be affected when
he heard about this dreadful calamity. I imagine that he
would first strongly express his sorrow for the misfortune
of that unhappy people, and would make many melancholy
reflections on the precariousness of human life, and the
pointlessness of all the labours of man, which could thus
be annihilated in a moment. He might also, if he were
given to this sort of thing, think about how this disaster
might affect the commerce of Europe and the trade and
business of the world in general. [This was written 17 years
before
the appearance of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.] And when
all this
fine philosophy was over, and all these humane sentiments
had been expressed, he would go about his business or his
pleasure. . . .with the same ease and tranquillity as if no such
accident had happened. The most trivial ‘disaster’ that could
befall him would disturb him more. If he was due to lose his
little finger tomorrow, he wouldn’t sleep to-night; but he will
snore contentedly over the ruin of a hundred million of his
brethren, provided he never saw them; so the destruction of
that immense multitude seems clearly to be of less concern
to him than this paltry misfortune of his own. Well, then:
Would a humane man be willing to avoid this paltry
misfortune to himself—·this loss of a little finger·—](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-165-320.jpg)
![are apt to throw, but in the light in which any other citizen
of the world would view us. . . .
[Preparing the ground for discussing this, Smith distin-
guishes private misfortunes into (a) ones that affect us by
affecting our near and dear—parents, offspring, and so on;
and (b) ones that affect us immediately and directly. There is
a great variety of possible misfortunes of either kind—pain,
sickness, approaching death, poverty, disgrace, and so on.]
(a) In misfortunes of the first kind our emotions may go
far beyond what exact propriety will accept, but they may
likewise fall short of that—and they often do. A man who
felt no more for the death or distress of his own father or
son than for the death or distress of someone else’s father or
son would strike us as being neither a good son nor a good
father. Such unnatural indifference, far from arousing our
applause, would draw our highest disapproval. But these
domestic affections ·fall into two groups for our present
purposes·: we are apt to have some of them more strongly
than is proper, and to have others less strongly than we
should. Nature in its wisdom has, in most and perhaps
all men, installed a much stronger drive towards •parental
tenderness than towards •filial respect. The continuance and
propagation of the species depend entirely on •the former,
and not at all on •the latter. The existence and survival
of the child usually depends altogether on the care of the
parents, whereas parents’ existence and survival seldom
74
Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
depend on the care of the child. That’s why Nature has](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-171-320.jpg)
![made the former affection so strong that it generally requires
not to be aroused but to be moderated. . . . But moralists
do urge us to an affectionate attention to our parents, and
to make a proper return to them in their old age for the
kindness that they showed us in our youth. In the Ten
Commandments we are commanded to honour our fathers
and mothers; and nothing is said about our love for our
children, ·because· Nature had sufficiently prepared us for
the performance of this latter duty. Men are seldom accused
of pretending to be fonder of their children than they really
are, but they have sometimes been suspected of putting
too much show into their displays of piety towards their
parents. The ostentatious sorrow of widows has, for a like
reason, been suspected of insincerity. We would respect
even excessive affections [see note on page 116] of that kind if
we believed them to be sincere; and even if we didn’t perfectly
approve, we wouldn’t severely condemn either. . . .
Although the excess of affections of this sort appears to
be blameworthy, it never appears to be odious. We blame
a parent’s excessive fondness and concern as something
that may eventually be harmful to the child, and is in
the meantime excessively inconvenient to the parent; but
we easily pardon it and never regard it with hatred and
detestation. But when a parent has •too little of this parental
affection of which most parents have •too much, that always
strikes us as especially odious. The man who seems to feel
nothing for his own children, treating them on all occasions
with undeserved severity and harshness, seems the most
detestable of all brutes. Our sense of propriety, so far from
requiring us to eradicate altogether the special sensitivity
that we naturally have for the misfortunes of our near and
dear, is always much more offended by someone’s having too
little of that sensitivity than it ever is by someone’s having
too much. When it comes to feelings and attitudes towards](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-172-320.jpg)
![one’s parents, one’s offspring, and the like, the apathy
recommended by the Stoics is never agreeable, and all the
metaphysical trick-arguments by which it is supported can
seldom achieve anything except to work on a coxcomb [here =
‘moral idiot’], making his hard unfeelingness ten times worse
than it would have been if he had been left to himself. . . .
•That moderated sensitivity to the misfortunes of others,
which doesn’t disqualify us for the performance of any
duty; •the melancholy and affectionate remembrance of our
departed friends; what ·the poet· Gray calls •‘the pang, to
secret sorrow dear’, are by no means unpleasant sensations.
Though they outwardly wear the features of pain and grief,
they are all inwardly stamped with the ennobling characters
of virtue and self-approval.
(b) When it comes to the misfortunes that affect us
immediately and directly—in our body, our fortune, or our
reputation—the sense of propriety is much more apt to be
offended by someone’s having too much sensitivity to these
than by someone’s having too little of it. There are few cases
where we can come too near to the apathy and indifference
recommended by the Stoics.
[Smith now offers a couple of pages of remarks about how
our sympathy with others’ misfortunes varies in intensity,
in tone, and in resultant behaviour, depending on whether
the misfortune in question is bodily pain, financial loss, or
loss of reputation. This material is book-ended between two
occurrences of the remark that although such sympathy is a
kind of sadness there is also something agreeable about it.
Then:]
If we examine the different shades and gradations of
weakness and self-control that we meet with in everyday life,
we’ll see that this control of our passive feelings must be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-173-320.jpg)
![acquired not from •the abstruse syllogisms of a quibbling
75
Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
dialectic but from •the great discipline that Nature has
established as a means for acquiring this and every other
virtue, namely a regard for the sentiments of the real or
supposed spectator of our conduct.
A very young child has no self-control. Whether it is
suffering fear or grief or anger, it always does its best by the
violence of its outcries to alarm the attention of its nurse
or its parents. While it remains under the custody of such
•partial protectors [= ‘protectors who are biased in its favour’],
its
anger is the first and perhaps the only passion it is taught
to moderate. In defence of their own peace of mind, the
protectors are often obliged to use noise and threatening of
their own to frighten the child into a good mood, and the
passion that incites it to attack is restrained by the passion
that teaches it to look to its own safety. When it is old
enough to go to school or to mix with its equals, the child
soon finds that they have no such indulgent •partiality. It
naturally wants to gain their favour and to avoid their hatred
or contempt—indeed, regard for its own safety teaches it
to do so—and it soon finds that the only way to do that is
to moderate not only its anger but all its other passions,
toning them down to a level that the child’s playmates and
companions are likely to be pleased with. It thus enters into
the great school of self-control, studies to be more and more
master of itself, and begins to discipline its own feelings—a
task that few people bring to completion in the course of a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-174-320.jpg)
![lifetime!
[Smith now presents a long account of how someone
who is suffering conducts himself in relation to friends and
acquaintances, depending on whether the sufferer is (i) ‘the
weakest man’, (ii) ‘a man of a little more firmness’, or (iii)
a ‘man of real constancy and firmness’. The differences
are what you might expect. Notable in the account of (i)
is Smith’s remark that this weak man tries to get more
sympathy from others by upping his expressions of pain and
sorrow, behaving ‘like a child that has not yet gone to school’.
The man in (ii) does better: he stays calm, feels the approval
that his friends and acquaintances have for his restraint,
and is thus encouraged to keep it up, silently ‘applauding
himself’. There is much more about this, but it doesn’t add
significantly to the philosophical content. Then there is the
man in (iii):]
[This paragraph down to * is almost exactly as Smith wrote it.]
The
man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just
man who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of
self-control, in the bustle and business of the world, exposed
perhaps to the violence and injustice of faction and to the
hardships and hazards of war, maintains this control of his
passive feelings on all occasions; and whether in solitude
or in society he wears nearly the same countenance and
is affected in nearly the same manner. In success and
in disappointment, in prosperity and in adversity, before
friends and before enemies, he has often had to maintain
this manliness. He has never dared to forget for one moment
the judgment that the impartial spectator would pass on his
sentiments and conduct. He has never dared to allow •the
man within the breast to be absent from his attention for
one moment. He has always been accustomed to look at](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-175-320.jpg)
![anything relating to him with the eyes of •this great inmate.
This habit has become perfectly familiar to him.* What he
has constantly done and indeed constantly needed to do is
to model—or try to model—not only what he does and how
he does it, but even his inward sentiments and feelings on
those of •this awe-inspiring and respectworthy judge. [Here
and in a few other places, the phrase ‘what he does and how he
does
it’ replaces Smith’s ‘his outward conduct and behaviour’. It is a
guess
about what he meant.] He doesn’t merely portray the sentiments
of the impartial spectator—he really adopts them. He almost
76
Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
identifies himself with—he almost becomes—that impartial
spectator, and almost never feels anything that this great
judge of his conduct doesn’t direct him to feel.
[Then a paragraph in which Smith says that a man’s
approval of himself for doing A is proportional to how hard
it was for him to do A. He continues:] A man who has had
a leg shot off and who in the next moment speaks and
acts with his usual coolness and tranquillity shows a high
degree of self-control, so he naturally feels a high degree of
self-approval. With most men to whom this happened, their
own natural view of their misfortune would force itself on
them with such a vivacity and strength of colouring that
it would entirely wipe out all thought of any other way of
looking at it. They wouldn’t feel anything—couldn’t attend](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-176-320.jpg)
![—by vain-glory of the difference between obscurity and
extensive reputation.
Someone under the influence of any of those extravagant
passions is not only miserable in his actual situation but
is often disposed to disturb the peace of society in order to
arrive at whatever it is that he so foolishly admires. [Smith
now embarks on a rather preachy page and a half of reasons
why behaviour in the service of any one of those ambitions is
almost certain to be pointless—too much chance of failure,
and too little chance of real satisfaction if one does succeed.
Then:]
It may seem •strange but I think it is •true that in the
misfortunes that can be somewhat remedied most men don’t
recover their natural and usual tranquillity as readily as
they do in misfortunes that clearly can’t be remedied. With
misfortunes of the latter kind, ·i.e. irremediable ones·, the
wise man’s sentiments and behaviour don’t differ noticeably
from those of the weak man except in what may be called
‘the paroxysm’, the first attack. In the end, Time, the great
and universal comforter, gradually soothes the weak man
till he reaches the degree of tranquillity that the wise man,
having a concern for his own dignity and manhood, assumes
at the beginning. The case of the man with the wooden leg is
an obvious example of this. In the irreparable misfortunes
occasioned by the death of children, or of friends and rela-
tives, even a wise man may for a while permit himself some
moderate degree sorrow. An affectionate but weak woman
is often on such occasions almost perfectly distracted; but
Time eventually calms even her down. . . .
Our sensitivity to the feelings of others, far from being
inconsistent with •the manliness of self-control, is the very
78](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-180-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
source of •it. The very same drive or instinct that •prompts
us to compassion for our neighbour’s sorrow in his the mis-
fortune also •prompts us in our own misfortune to restrain
the abject and miserable lamentations of our own sorrow.
The same drive or instinct that •prompts us to rejoice in
our neighbour’s joy over his prosperity and success also
•prompts us to restrain the rowdy light-heartedness of our
own joy. In both cases, the propriety of our own sentiments
and feelings seems to be exactly in proportion to the liveliness
and force with which we enter into and come to have his
sentiments and feelings.
[Smith now embarks on two not very interesting book-
pages presenting two theses about the relation between
(1) the ‘gentle virtue’ of sensitivity to the feelings of others
in their misfortunes, and
(2) the ‘great and awe-inspiring virtue’ of self-control and
moderation in the expression of one’s own feelings in
one’s own misfortunes.
[He states the theses as though they held also for the versions of
(1) and
(2) that concern joy in good fortune; but his reason for the
second of
them is confined to (1) and (2) as stated above.] One thesis is
that
‘the person best fitted by nature for acquiring (1) is also best
fitted for acquiring (2)’. The second thesis is that we don’t
often encounter anyone who has both of these virtues, for](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-181-320.jpg)
![a reason that Smith gives. Each of those virtues, he says,
requires not merely •natural fitness but also practice, and
a life in which a man has plenty of opportunity to exercise
(2) is an arduous rough-and-tumble affair, full of hardships
and reverses, in which (1) is apt to be shouldered aside. He
continues:] Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes are
the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of
(2) this virtue. But these are all masters to whom no-one
willingly puts himself to school! [Smith develops this topic at
some length, and then switches to a new train of thought:]
In solitude we’re apt to feel too strongly anything relating
to ourselves; we are apt to
•over-rate the help we have given to others, to
•over-rate injuries we have suffered, to
•be too much elated by our own good fortune, and to
•be too much dejected by our own bad fortune.
The conversation of a friend brings us into a better frame
of mind, and the conversation of a stranger does this even
more. The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal
spectator of our sentiments and conduct, often needs to be
awakened and reminded of his duty by the presence of a real
spectator; and the spectator from whom we can expect the
least sympathy and indulgence is likely to be the one who
can give us the most complete lesson in self-control.
Are you in adversity? Don’t mourn in the darkness
of solitude, don’t regulate your sorrow according to the
indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends; as soon as
you can, get out into the day-light of the world and of society.
Live with strangers who don’t know or don’t care about your
misfortune. . . .
Are you in prosperity? Don’t confine the enjoyment of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-182-320.jpg)
![rules of justice. One of the plainest and most obvious rules
of justice is this:
Innocent people should not suffer or be punished be-
cause they are somehow connected with or dependent
on the guilty (a connection that they may be unable
to avoid).
Yet in the most unjust war it is often only the sovereign
or the rulers who are guilty, their subjects being perfectly
innocent. Whenever it suits the convenience of a public
enemy, however, the goods of the peaceable citizens are
seized, their lands laid waste, their houses burnt, and they
themselves, if they dare to resist, are murdered or led into
captivity—all this in perfect conformity with the ‘laws of
nations’!
[Smith goes on to say that the moral level of conflicts
between ‘hostile factions’ within a nation is even lower than
the moral level of wars between nations. No-one doubts that
in wars between nations one ought to ‘keep faith’ with the
enemy nation, i.e. keep promises given to it, keep contracts
made with it, and so on. Whereas when factions are at
war people seriously discuss whether faith ought to be kept
with rebels, or with heretics. Smith remarks acidly that
‘rebels and heretics are unlucky people who, when things
have reached a certain level of violence, have the misfortune
to belong to the weaker party’. He continues:] In a nation
distracted by faction there are always a few, but only a
few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general
contagion. Such people have no influence on the course of
events, because the parties to the conflict won’t listen to
them. . . . All such people are held in contempt and derision,
often in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties.
A true party-man hates and despises fair-mindedness, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-184-320.jpg)
![the fact is that no •vice could disqualify him for the trade
of a party-man as effectually as that single •virtue, fair-
mindedness, would. Thus, the real, revered, and impartial
spectator is never further off than amidst the violence and
rage of contending parties. To them, it may be said, such a
spectator hardly exists anywhere in the universe. Even to
the great Judge of the universe they attribute all their own
prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as driven by
all their own vindictive and implacable passions. Of all the
corrupters of moral sentiments, faction and fanaticism have
always been by far the greatest.
[In a final pair of paragraphs Smith returns to the topic
of self-control in adversity, not adding much to what he has
already said.]
Chapter 4: The nature of self-deceit, and the origin
and use of general rules
To pervert our own judgments about the propriety of our
own conduct, it isn’t always necessary for the real impartial
spectator to be at a great distance. Even when he is present,
the violence and injustice of our own selfish passions are
80
Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules
sometimes sufficient to induce the man within the breast to
make a report very different from what the facts of the case
would authorise.
When do we examine our own conduct and try to see it
in the light in which the impartial spectator would see it?](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-185-320.jpg)
![•conduct with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator.
(This echoes what I said earlier [page 77] about how, when the
•paroxysm of distress is over, we can look objectively and
impartially at our own •situation.) But now that the action
is over, our judgments are often nothing like as important
as they were before; they can often produce nothing but
pointless regret and useless repentance, without always
securing us from similar errors in future. And even in
this after-the-action situation, our judgments on our own
conduct are seldom entirely fair-minded. ·That is because·
our opinion of our own •character depends entirely on our
judgments regarding our past •conduct. It is so disagreeable
to think ill of ourselves that we often deliberately avert our
eyes from facts that might make that judgment unfavourable.
He is a bold surgeon (they say) whose hand doesn’t tremble
when he operates on himself; and it’s an equally bold person
who doesn’t hesitate to pull off the veil of self-delusion that
hides from his view the ugly parts of his own conduct [see note
on ‘ugly’ on page 8]. Rather than having such a disagreeable
view of our own behaviour, we too often—foolishly and
weakly—try to revive the unjust passions that had misled
us; we work to awaken our old hatreds and stir up again our
almost forgotten resentments; we even act on them again,
persevering in injustice merely because we were once unjust
and are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so.
That is how biased men’s views are regarding the pro-
priety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and
after it, and how hard it is for them to see it in the light in
which any impartial spectator would see it. ·The most basic
question of moral epistemology comes into play here·. Some
81](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-187-320.jpg)
![To arrive at a moral judgment on this horrible action you
won’t apply to it a general rule prohibiting the killing of
innocent people! Obviously you would arrive instantaneously
at your detestation of this crime, before you get to any
thought about a general rule that might apply to it. If you
do eventually form such a general rule, it will be based on
82
Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules
the detestation that you felt unstoppably arising in your own
breast at the thought of this action and any other of the
same kind.
[Smith now offers two paragraphs repeating and faintly
illustrating what he has just said. Then:]
Once these general rules have been formed, once they
are universally accepted and established by the concurring
sentiments of mankind, we often appeal to them as to
standards of judgment when we are debating the degree
of praise or blame that is appropriate for certain actions of
a complicated and dubious nature. On these occasions the
rules are commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what
is just and unjust in human conduct; and this fact seems
to have misled several eminent authors into constructing
systems that seem to presuppose that mankind’s basic moral
judgments were formed in the way a law-court reaches its
decisions, namely by •first considering the general rule and
•then deciding whether the particular action in question
comes within its scope.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-190-320.jpg)
![the thought of violating such a sacred rule, and at the same
time urged to violate it by the fury of his desires. He keeps
wavering. Sometimes he resolves to keep to his principle,
and not give way to a passion that could spoil the rest of
his life with the horrors of shame and repentance; and then
a momentary calm takes possession of his breast. . . . But
immediately the passion arises anew and with fresh fury
drives him on to perform the action that he had a moment
ago resolved to abstain from. Wearied and distracted by
this continual indecision, he finally takes the last fatal and
irrecoverable step of killing his enemy, doing this from a
sort of despair; but doing it with the kind of terror and
bewilderment experienced by someone who, flying from an
enemy, throws himself over a precipice—thus making his
83
Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality
destruction more certain than it would be if he had only his
enemy to reckon with. Such are his sentiments even at the
time of acting;. . . .and then later, when his passion has been
gratified and has calmed down, he begins to see what he
has done in the light in which others are apt to see it; and
he feels the stings of remorse and repentance beginning to
agitate and torment him.
Chapter 5: The influence and authority of the
general rules of morality, and why they are rightly
regarded as the laws of the Deity
A person’s regard for those general rules of conduct is
his sense of duty, a driver [Smith writes ‘principle’; see note on
page 164] of the greatest importance in human life, and the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-192-320.jpg)
![only driver that most people have to direct their actions.
Many men behave decently, and don’t do anything very
wrong all through their lives, yet base their conduct only
on a regard for what they see to be the established rules
of behaviour. (That means that when we approve of their
conduct on the grounds that ‘The sentiment that led him to
act was a proper one’, we’re relying on sentiments that such
a person never has!) Here is an example:
A man has received great benefits from someone else,
but because of the natural coldness of his tempera-
ment he feels only a small degree of the sentiment of
gratitude. But he has been virtuously educated, so
that he’ll often have been made to notice how odious
ungrateful actions appear and how likeable grateful
ones. So, although his heart is not warmed with any
grateful affection, he will make an effort to act as
if it were, and will try to pay to his benefactor all
the regards and attentions that the liveliest gratitude
could suggest.
[Smith details some of the actions this might involves. Then:]
He can do all this without any hypocrisy or blameworthy
deceit, without any selfish intention of obtaining new favours,
and without any wish to impose on his benefactor or on the
public. It may be that these grateful-seeming actions of his
arise purely from •his reverence for the established rule of
duty, •his serious and earnest wish to behave strictly in
accordance with the law of gratitude. And again:
A wife doesn’t always feel •the tender regard for her
husband that is suitable to their married state. But
she has been virtuously educated, and will try to act
as if she did feel •it—to be careful, dutiful, faithful, and
sincere, and not to fall short in any of the attentions
that the sentiment of conjugal affection would (if she](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-193-320.jpg)
![conduct. [Smith uses ‘tenor’ several times, in a sense that the
word still
has though it isn’t now much employed. The ‘tenor’ of
someone’s conduct
is its general style or feel or tone or over-all shape.] The
worthless
fellow acts variously and accidentally, depending on whether
mood, inclination, or self-interest happens to be uppermost.
Indeed, men are subject to such variations of mood that
without this respect for general rules a man who in all
his cool hours was delicately sensitive to the propriety of
conduct might often be led to act absurdly on the most
trivial occasions, ones in which it was hardly possible to
think of any serious motive he could have for behaving in
this manner. Your friend visits you when you happen to be
in a mood that makes it disagreeable to receive him; in your
present mood his civility is apt to appear an impertinent
intrusion; and if you gave way to that way of viewing things
you would behave toward him with coldness and lack of
interest. What makes you incapable of such rudeness is just
your respect for the general rules of civility and hospitality,
which prohibit it. . . . Now consider: if without regard to these
general rules
even the duties of politeness, which are so easily
observed and which one can hardly have any serious
motive to violate,
would often be violated, what would become of
the duties of justice, truth, chastity, fidelity, which
are often hard to observe, and which there can be
many strong motives to violate?
A reasonable level of observance of these latter duties is
required for the very existence of human society, which](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-195-320.jpg)
![rules that bodies conform to in collisions are called the
‘laws of motion’. But the label ‘laws’ is much more suitable
for the general rules that our moral faculties conform to
in approving or condemning sentiments or actions. Those
86
Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality
rules are much more like laws properly so called, namely
the general rules that a sovereign lays down to direct the
conduct of his subjects. Like them, moral rules
•are rules to direct the free actions of men,
•are prescribed most surely by a lawful superior, and
•are associated with rewards and punishments.
[The middle one of those three is exactly as Smith wrote it.]
God’s
deputies within us always punish any violation of the rules
that our moral faculties lay down, by the torments of inward
shame and self-condemnation; and they always reward obedi-
ence with tranquillity of mind, contentment, self-satisfaction.
There are countless other considerations that confirm
this conclusion. ·Here is a two-premise argument for it·:
•The happiness of mankind and of all other rational
creatures seems to have been the original purpose
of the Author of nature when he brought them into
existence.
No other end seems worthy of the supreme wisdom and
divine benevolence that we necessarily ascribe to him; and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-199-320.jpg)
![is it possible that someone with these virtues should go
through his whole life without any such success? Wealth
and external honours are the proper reward for those virtues,
and they nearly always produce it. •What reward is best for
promoting the practice of truth, justice, and humaneness?
The confidence, respect, and love of those we live with.
Humaneness doesn’t want to be great; it wants to be beloved.
Truth and justice don’t rejoice in being wealthy but in being
believed and trusted, and those are rewards that those
virtues must almost always acquire. A good man may by
some extraordinary and unlucky circumstances come to be
suspected of a crime of which he is entirely incapable, and on
that account be unjustly exposed for the rest of his life to the
horror and aversion of mankind. By an accident of this kind
he may be said to lose his all, despite his integrity and justice;
just as a cautious and prudent man may be ruined by an
earthquake or a flood. Accidents of the first (unjust life-long
suspicion) kind are perhaps even rarer—more contrary to the
87
Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality
general run of events—than those of the second (earthquake
or flood); and it’s still true that the practice of truth, justice,
and humanity is an almost infallible method of acquiring
what those virtues chiefly aim at, namely the confidence
and love of those we live with. [Smith points out that an
unjust suspicion will be less likely to stick if the victim of it
is known to be in general a good man, and makes similar
remarks about the chances of someone’s getting away with a
bad action if he habitually behaves badly.]
So the general rules by which prosperity and adversity](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-201-320.jpg)
![regard to all such benevolent and social affections, it is
agreeable to see the sense of duty coming into play as a
restraint rather than as a driver, •stopping us from doing
too much rather than to •prompting us to do what we ought.
It gives us pleasure to see a father obliged to restrain his
own fondness, a friend obliged to set limits to his natural
generosity, a person who has received a benefit obliged to
restrain the naively enthusiastic gratitude arising from his
own frame of mind.
When it comes to the malevolent and unsocial passions
the contrary maxim holds. Whereas we ought
to reward from the gratitude and generosity of our
own hearts, without reluctance and without being
obliged to think about how right rewarding is,
we ought always
to punish with reluctance, more from a sense of the
rightness of punishing than from any savage disposi-
tion to get revenge.
Nothing is more graceful than the behaviour of someone who
seems to resent the greatest injuries more from a sense that
they deserve resentment, are proper objects of it, than from
himself feeling the furies of that disagreeable passion. That
is someone •who (like a judge) considers only the general
rule that settles what vengeance is due for each particular
offence; •who in acting on that rule feels less for what he has
suffered than for what the offender is going to suffer; •who,
though he is angry, remembers mercy and is disposed to
interpret the rule in the gentlest and most merciful way that
fair-minded humaneness could permit, consistently with
good sense.
I remarked at the start of I.ii.5 [page 22] that the selfish](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-209-320.jpg)
![to a precise maxim or rule; and ·when a rule does come
into it·, we should attend less to •the rule itself than to
•what it is for and •what it is based on. But that’s not how
things stand with justice. Faced with the question ‘What
does justice require me to do in this situation?’, the man
who does •least in the way of hair-splitting and who adheres
with the •most obstinate steadfastness to the general rules of
justice themselves is the •most commendable man and the
one who can •most be depended on. What the rules of justice
are for is to stop us from harming our neighbour; but it can
often be a crime to break them in cases where we could make
some sort of case for the view that this particular breach
couldn’t harm anyone. A man often becomes a villain the
moment he begins, even in his own heart, to chicane in this
manner [i.e. to engage in tricky, hair-splitting, special
pleading]. The
moment he thinks of departing from the most staunch and
positive adherence to what those unbreakable rules tell him
to do, he is no longer to be trusted, and there’s no telling how
far down the path of guilt he may go. The thief imagines that
he does nothing wrong when he steals from the rich, stealing
things that (he supposes) they can easily do without, things
that they may indeed never even know to have been stolen
from them. The adulterer imagines that he does nothing
wrong when he corrupts his friend’s wife, provided he hides
his affair from the suspicion of the husband and doesn’t
disturb the peace of the family. Once we begin to give way
to such subtleties, there is no wickedness so gross that we
couldn’t be capable of it.
We can compare •the rules of justice to the •rules of
grammar, and compare the •rules of the other virtues to
the •rules that critics lay down for achieving sublimity and
elegance in writing. One lot of rules are precise, detailed,
and indispensable. The other lot are loose, vague, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-214-320.jpg)
![Everyone agrees that the first rule of duty is to obey the will
of God. But when it comes to the specific commandments
that God’s will may impose on us, men differ widely from
one another. So this is a matter requiring the greatest
restraint and mutual toleration; and although the defence of
society requires that crimes should be punished, whatever
the motives for them were, •a good man will always punish
them reluctantly when they have clearly come from false
notions of religious duty. •He will regret and sometimes even
admire the unfortunate firmness and conscientiousness ·of
the deluded criminals· at the very time that he punishes
their crime; he won’t have against them the indignation
that he feels against other criminals. In Voltaire’s fine
tragedy Mahomet [full title: Mahomet, or Fanaticism] there is a
good presentation of what ought to be our sentiments for
crimes that come from such motives. (This is one of the most
interesting spectacles that was ever presented on any stage,
and perhaps the most instructive one.) In Voltaire’s tragedy
two innocent and virtuous young people. . . .are driven by
the strongest motives of a false religion to commit a horrible
murder, one that shocks all the principles of human nature.
A venerable old man is pointed out to them as a sacrifice
that God has explicitly demanded from them, and they are
ordered to kill him. (The old man has expressed the most
tender affection for them both; they have both felt the highest
reverence and esteem for him, although he is an open enemy
of their religion; and he is their father, though they don’t
know this—they don’t even know that they are brother and
sister.) Facing the prospect of committing this crime, they
are tortured with all the agonies that can arise from the
struggle between
•the idea of the indispensableness of religious duty
on one side and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-216-320.jpg)
![in not doing what he thinks to be his duty.] Take the case of a
bigoted Roman Catholic who is present at the massacre of
St Bartholomew, and is so overcome by compassion that
he saves some unhappy Protestants whom he thinks it his
duty to destroy. He doesn’t seem to be entitled to the high
applause that we would have given him if he had exerted that
same generosity with complete self-approval. We might be
pleased with the humaneness of his feelings, but we would
still regard him with a sort of •pity that is flatly inconsistent
with the •admiration that is owed to perfect virtue. It’s the
same case with all the other passions. We don’t dislike seeing
them lead the person to behave rightly, even when his false
notion of duty directs him to restrain them. Suppose that a
devout Quaker is struck on one cheek and instead of turning
up the other he so completely forgets his literal interpretation
of our Saviour’s precept and bestows some good discipline
on the brute who hit him. We wouldn’t find this disagreeable!
We would laugh and enjoy his spirit, liking him all the better
because of it. But we wouldn’t regard him with anything
close to the respect and esteem that would seem to be owing
to someone who on such an occasion had acted rightly from
a just sense of what was the right thing to do. No action can
properly be called virtuous unless it is accompanied with the
sentiment of self-approval.
95
Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art
Part IV: The effect of utility on the sentiment of approval
Chapter 1: The beauty that the appearance of
utility gives to all the productions of art, and the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-218-320.jpg)
![widespread influence of this type of beauty
Everyone who has thought hard about what constitutes the
nature of beauty has seen that one of its principal sources
is utility. Someone looking over a house gets pleasure
from its convenience as well as from its ·formal· regularity
[and, Smith adds with a rather obscure example, he is as
much displeased when he sees features of the house that
interfere with its function as when he sees features that are
aesthetically displeasing. Then:] The fitness of any system
or machine to produce the end for which it was intended
confers a certain rightness and beauty on the whole thing,
making it a pleasure to think about—and this is so obvious
that nobody has overlooked it.
Why is utility so pleasing? This has been answered
by Hume [whom Smith doesn’t name, but identifies through a
series
of compliments to his thought and writing]. According to him, a
thing’s utility pleases its owner by continually suggesting to
him the pleasure or convenience that it is fitted to promote.
Every time he looks at it he is reminded of this pleasure, so
that the object in question becomes a source of continual
satisfaction and enjoyment. The spectator’s sympathy leads
him to have the sentiments of the owner, making him view
the object in that same agreeable light. When we visit the
palaces of the great, we can’t help feeling the satisfaction that
we would enjoy if we were the owners of so much ingeniously
contrived accommodation. And he gives a similar account of
why the appearance of inconvenience should make an object
disagreeable to the owner and to the spectator.
But there’s another fact ·about utility and beauty· that
hasn’t previously been noticed by anyone, so far as I know.
It is this:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-219-320.jpg)
![around him, he admires the condition of the rich. [Smith
goes into details: the convenience of larger home, the ease of
riding on horseback and of having servants to do everything,
and so on; and his idea that with all these conveniences
of wealth he would be contentedly idle. Then:] He devotes
himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To get
the conveniences that these provide, he works, giving himself
in the first year—indeed in the first month—of his work more
fatigue of body and more anxiety of mind than he would have
suffered through the whole of his life from the lack of wealth.
He works to distinguish himself in some laborious profession,
labouring night and day to acquire talents superior to those
of his competitors. He then tries to bring those talents
into public view, taking every chance to get employment.
For this purpose he makes himself pleasant to everyone,
serves people whom he hates, and is deferential to people he
despises. Throughout his life he pursues the idea of a certain
artificial and elegant repose •which he may never arrive at,
•for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is always in
his power, and •which, if in old age he at last achieves it, he
will find to be in no way preferable to the humble security
and contentment that he had gave up in order to pursue
wealth and greatness. Then. . . .he will start to learn that
wealth and greatness are only trivially useful, mere trinkets,
no more fit for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind
than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys; and, also like
them, giving trouble to the person who carries them around
with him that far outweighs any advantages they can provide
him with. [Smith develops this comparison at great length.
The useful little ‘toys’, he says, may actually be as useful as a
grand house or a retinue of servants, he says, but the owner
of the ‘toys’ won’t be admired and envied as much as the
owner of the things that wealth and greatness procure. The
only real advantage of the latter is the attitude of other people
to the wealthy great man. But that (Smith continues) throws](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-222-320.jpg)
![our attention onto the admiring spectators: why do they so
much admire the condition of the wealthy man? It’s not that
97
Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art
they think he is happier than other people; the object of their
admiration is the wealthy man’s ownership of so many things
that are fitted to produce ease and happiness. Having thus
brought the wheel full circle, Smith returns to the state of
the wealthy man in old age:] In his heart he curses ambition,
and vainly pines for the ease and idleness of youth, pleasures
that are gone for ever, having been foolishly sacrificed for
something that can’t give him real satisfaction now that he
has it. That’s how things look to every wealthy man who is
led by depression or disease to attend to his own situation
and to think about why he is actually so unhappy. Power
and riches appear then to be what they actually are. . . . They
are immense structures
•which it takes a lifetime’s work to build,
•which are constantly threatening to ·collapse and·
overwhelm the person who lives in them, and
•which, while they stand, may save him from some
smaller inconveniences but can’t protect him from
any of the severer harshnesses of the season.
They keep off the summer shower (·to continue the
metaphor·) but not the winter storm. They always leave
the rich man as much—sometimes even more—exposed to
anxiety, fear, and sorrow; to diseases, danger, and death.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-223-320.jpg)
![Any of us when ill or depressed may have this view of
things, entirely depreciating the great objects of human
desire; but when we’re in better health and a better mood we
always see them in a more favourable light. When we are in
pain and sorrow our imagination seems to be confined and
cooped up within our own persons, but in times of ease and
prosperity it expands itself to everything around us. Then
we are charmed by the beauty of the accommodation that
palaces provide, and the living arrangements of the great;
and we admire how everything is fitted to promoting their
ease, anticipating their wants, gratifying their wishes, and
entertaining their most trivial desires. If we take the real
satisfaction that any of these things is capable providing,
and consider it in itself, independently of the beauty of
the arrangement that is fitted to promote it, it will always
appear to be enormously negligible and trivial. But we don’t
often look at it in this abstract and philosophical way. We
naturally run it together it in our imagination with the order,
the regular and harmonious movement, of the system or
machine. . . .that produces it. The pleasures of wealth and
greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the
imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, the
attainment of which is well worth all the toil and anxiety that
we are so apt to bestow on it. [By ‘this complex view’ Smith
means
the way of looking at the thing that runs together •the thing’s
fitness to
produce a certain result and •the pleasures of that result.]
[From here to the end of this chapter, Smith goes on at undue
length
about matters that aren’t central to his announced main topic in
the
chapter. That material won’t be much abbreviated here, because](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-224-320.jpg)
![it’s a
notable precursor of ideas that Smith was to present 17 years
later in
The Wealth of Nations, widely regarded as the first work in
theoretical
economics. We find here the phrase ‘invisible hand’, which was
made
famous by the later work.]
It’s just as well that nature deceives us in this way. This
deception is what starts men working and keeps them at
it. It is what first prompted men to cultivate the soil, to
build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to
invent and improve all the sciences and arts that make
human life noble and glorious, having entirely changed
the whole face of the globe, turning the nature’s primitive
forests into agreeable and fertile plains, and making the
trackless and barren ocean a new source of food and the
great high road of communication to the different nations
of the earth. These human labours have required the earth
to redouble her natural fertility, and to maintain a greater
98
Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art
number of inhabitants. The proud and unfeeling landlord
views his extensive fields and—without a thought for the
wants of anyone else—imaginatively consumes himself the
whole harvest that grows on them; but what of it? The](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-225-320.jpg)
![homely and common proverb The eye is larger than the belly
is exactly true of this landlord. The capacity of his stomach
bears no proportion to the vastness of his desires, and won’t
receive any more food than does the stomach of the lowest
peasant. He has to distribute the rest among
•those who elegantly prepare the little that he himself
makes use of,
•those who manage the palace in which this little is to
be consumed, and
•those who provide and service all the baubles and
trinkets that have a role in the great man’s way of life.
[Smith isn’t talking about the great man’s tweezers and nail-
clippers! He
is implying, through a metaphor, that a carriage and a grand
kitchen and
servants’ uniforms etc. are—from a serious and mature point of
view—on
a par with such ‘baubles and trinkets’.] Thus, all these people
get
•through his luxury and caprice the share of the necessities
of life that they would never have received •through his
humaneness or his justice. The produce of the soil always
maintains just about as many inhabitants as it is capable
of maintaining. All the rich do is to select from the heap the
most precious and agreeable portions. They consume little
more than the poor; and in spite of their natural selfishness
and greed, and despite the fact that
they are guided only by their own convenience, and all
they want to get from the labours of their thousands](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-226-320.jpg)
![of employees is the gratification of their own empty
and insatiable desires,
they do share with the poor the produce of all their improve-
ments [meaning: their well-cultivated land, their up-to-date
ploughs,
their state of the art milking sheds, etc.]. They are led by an
invisible hand to share out life’s necessities in just about the
same way that they would have been shared out if the earth
been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants.
And so without intending it, without knowing it, they advance
the interests of the society ·as a whole·, and provide means
for the survival of the species. When Providence divided
the earth among a few lordly masters, it didn’t forget or
abandon those who seemed to have been left out in the
distribution—these too enjoy their share of all that the earth
produces. In terms of the real happiness of human life, they
are in no respect inferior to those who seem to be so far above
them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different
ranks of life are nearly on a level; the beggar sitting in the
sun beside the highway has the security that kings fight for.
·There are also other motivations that lead to conduct
serving the public good although they don’t involve any
thought of doing such a thing·. Institutions that tend to
promote the public welfare often arise not from a wish for that
but from a love of system, a regard for the beauty of order, of
art and contrivance. [In Smith’s day any activity could be called
an
‘art’ if it involved general techniques needing skill to
implement. So clock-
making and plumbing would be ‘arts’. The arts in our narrower
sense of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-227-320.jpg)
![the word are specifically referred to on page 113 as ‘the
superior arts’
and on page 131 as ‘the liberal and ingenious arts’.] When a
patriot
makes efforts to improve any part of the nation’s public life,
his conduct doesn’t always arise from pure sympathy with
the happiness of those who are to get the benefit of it. When
a public-spirited man encourages the mending of highways,
it’s not usually from a fellow-feeling with those who earn
their living driving carts or carriages. When a legislature
establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance
the manufacture of linen or woollen garments, its conduct
seldom comes from pure sympathy with the wearer of cheap
99
Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility
or fine cloth, let alone sympathy with the manufacturer or
merchant. The perfection of policy, the extension of trade
and manufacturing, are noble and magnificent objectives.
The thought of them pleases us, and we have a concern
with anything that can tend to advance them. They are part
of the great system of government, and the wheels of the
political machine seem to turn more smoothly by means
of them. We do take pleasure in seeing the perfection of
such a beautiful and grand system, and we’re uneasy until
we can remove anything that might in any way disturb or
overload the regularity of its motions. But no constitution
of government is valued except in proportion as it tends to
promote the happiness of those who live under it. That is
its sole use and end—·it’s all it does and all it is for·. And
yet we have certain spirit of system, a certain love of art and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-228-320.jpg)
![to remove those obstructions and to put into motion that
beautiful and orderly machine. Nothing tends to promote
public spirit as much as the study of politics does—the study
of •the various systems of civil government, their advantages
and disadvantages, of •the constitution of our own country,
its situation and interests in relation to foreign nations, its
commerce, its defence, the disadvantages it struggles with,
the dangers to which it may be exposed, how to remove the
disadvantages and guard against the dangers. . . .
Chapter 2: How the characters and actions of men
are made beautiful by their appearance of utility.
Is our perception of this beauty one of the basic
sources of approval?
The characters of men, as well as the institutions of civil
government that they construct, can be fit to promote or
to disturb the happiness of individuals and of the society.
The prudent, equitable, active, resolute, and sober character
promises prosperity and satisfaction to the person himself
and to everyone connected with him. The rash, insolent,
100
Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility
slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous character points to
ruin for the individual and misfortune for everyone who
has anything to do with him. The first turn of mind has
at least all the beauty that can belong to the most perfect
machine that was ever invented for promoting the most
agreeable purpose; and the second has all the ugliness
[Smith: ‘deformity’; see note on page 8] of the most awkward
and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-230-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility
also be a reason for commending a chest of drawers!
(2) If you look into it you’ll find that our approval of a
given state of mind is seldom based primarily on its utility,
and that the sentiment of approval always has as one of its
components a sense of propriety that is quite distinct from
the perception of utility. We can see this with regard to all
the qualities that are approved of as virtuous—the ones that
are (according to me) valued as useful to ourselves, as well as
those that are valued because of their usefulness to others.
The qualities that are most useful to ourselves are (a)
superior reason and understanding, enabling us to work
out what consequences, good or bad, are likely to result
from our actions; and (b) self-control, enabling us to abstain
from present pleasure (or endure present unpleasure) in
order to get greater pleasure (or avoid greater unpleasure) at
some future time. The virtue of prudence, which is of all the
virtues the one that is most useful to the individual, consists
in the union of those two qualities—·i.e. in the combination
of •superior reason and understanding and •self-control·.
(a) Superior reason and understanding are—as I pointed
out earlier [page 8]—basically approved of as just and right
and precise, not merely as useful or advantageous. The
greatest and most admired exercises of human reason have
been in the abstruser sciences, especially the higher parts of
mathematics; but it’s not very obvious that those sciences
are useful to individuals or to the public, and to show that
they are would require a train of thought of which some
parts would be hard to grasp. So it wasn’t •their utility
that first recommended the mathematical sciences to public
admiration. •This quality wasn’t emphasized at all until](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-233-320.jpg)
![there came to be a need for some reply to the reproaches of
people who, having no taste for such sublime discoveries,
tried to dismiss them as useless.
(b) The exercise of self-control in restraining our present
appetites so as to gratify them more fully later on is approved
of not only as useful but also, equally, as right. When we act
like that the sentiments that influence our conduct seem to
coincide exactly with those of the spectator. The spectator
doesn’t feel the tug of our present appetites. To him the
pleasure that we are to enjoy next week or next year matters
just as much as the pleasure that we are to enjoy right
now. When ·our self-control lapses, and· we sacrifice the
future for the sake of the present, our conduct appears to
the spectator to be utterly wild and absurd; he can’t enter
into our motivation for behaving like that. On the other side,
when we abstain from present pleasure so as to get greater
pleasure later on, acting as if we were as concerned about
the remote object as we are about the one that presses on
the senses right now, the spectator is bound to approve of
our behaviour because our affections in this matter exactly
correspond with his. Also, he knows from experience how few
are capable of such self-control, so he looks on our conduct
with a considerable degree of wonder and admiration. That
is the source for the enormous respect that all men naturally
have for a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality,
hard work, and application, even when these are directed
solely to the project of becoming rich. [Smith now says all
this again, in only slightly different words. Then:] Without
his consciousness of this deserved approval and respect, the
agent wouldn’t be able to keep up this tenor of conduct [see
note on ‘tenor’ on page 85]. The pleasure that we’re to enjoy
ten
years hence concerns us so little in comparison with the
pleasure that we can enjoy to-day, the passion aroused by
the future pleasure is naturally so weak in comparison with](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-234-320.jpg)
![the violent emotion that the present pleasure is apt to give
rise to, that the former could never outweigh the latter unless
it was supported by the sense of propriety, the consciousness
102
Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility
that we deserve •everyone’s respect and approval if we act in
one of the two ways and •everyone’s contempt and derision
if we act in the other.
Humaneness, justice, generosity, and public spirit are
the qualities most useful to others. I have already explained
what the propriety of humaneness and justice consists in:
I showed how greatly our respect and approval of those
qualities depends on the match between the affections of the
agent and those of the spectators.
Generosity and public spirit are proper for the same
reason that justice is. Don’t confuse generosity with hu-
maneness. Those two qualities seem at first sight to be close
relatives of one another, but it isn’t always true that someone
who has one will have the other. Humaneness is the virtue
of a woman, generosity the virtue of a man. The fair sex,
who usually have much more tenderness than we males do,
seldom have as much generosity. That women rarely make
considerable donations is an observation of the civil law.
[That sentence is verbatim Smith.] Humaneness consists merely
in the spectator’s sharp fellow-feeling with the sentiments
of the persons principally concerned—his grieving for their
sufferings, resenting their injuries, and rejoicing at their good
fortune. The most humane actions don’t need self-denial or
self-control or much exercise of the sense of propriety. They](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-235-320.jpg)
![to everyone but himself his own life is a trifle compared with
that of his officer. . . . [Note with care that he is trying to act so
as to
deserve applause; this doesn’t mean that he is trying to win
applause.]
[Smith now reworks these same ideas in connection with
‘greater exertions of public spirit’. One example concerns
a soldier who risks his life in an attempt to add to ‘the
dominions of his sovereign’ some little sliver of territory
that he doesn’t care about in the least, on his own account.
Another is historical: ‘the first Brutus’ [this is centuries before
the Brutus who was Julius Caesar’s friend and assassin]
delivered his
sons up for capital punishment ‘because they had conspired
against the rising liberty of Rome’. In doing this, ‘he viewed
103
Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility
them with the eyes not of a father but of a Roman citizen’.
Smith continues:] In cases like these our admiration is
based not so much on the •utility of the action as on its
•propriety—its unexpected and therefore great, noble, and
exalted propriety. When we take into account the action’s
utility, that undoubtedly gives it a new beauty and still
further recommends it to our approval. But this beauty isn’t
much noticed except by men who reflect and theorize; it is
not the quality that first recommends such actions to the
natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind.
Notice that insofar as the sentiment of approval arises
from a perception of this beauty of utility, it doesn’t involve](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-237-320.jpg)
![Part V: The influence of custom and fashion on the
sentiments of moral approval and disapproval
Chapter 1: The influence of custom and fashion on
our notions of beauty and ugliness
In addition to the ones I have listed, there are ·two· other
considerable influences on the moral sentiments of mankind;
they are the main causes of the many irregular and discor-
dant opinions that become dominant in different ages and
nations concerning what is blameworthy or praiseworthy.
These two sources of influence are •custom and •fashion—
forces that extend their sway over our judgments concerning
beauty of every kind.
When two objects have often been seen together, the
imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from one to
the other: when one appears we’re willing to bet that the
second will follow. With no outside help they put us in mind
of one another, and our attention glides easily along them. If
we didn’t have this habit, we wouldn’t see any real beauty in
their union; but when custom has connected them together
in this way, we feel that something is wrong when they are
separated. We think that one of them is awkward [Smith’s word,
here and below] when it appears without its usual companion;
we miss something that we expected to find, and the habitual
arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment.
A suit of clothes, for example, seems to lack something if it
doesn’t have some ornament—however insignificant—that it
usually has. . . . When there is something naturally proper
in the union ·of the two items·, custom increases our sense
of it, and makes a different arrangement appear even more
disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Anything
that is clumsy or awkward will be especially disgusting to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-239-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and notions of beauty
about what customs and fashions prevailed at other times
and/or in other places, and this ignorance leads them to
downplay fashion and to think that their tastes ‘are founded
on reason and nature, not on habit’. Smith challenges
them on this, demanding to know what objective reason
can be given for the rightness of various time-honoured
features of ancient Greek temples. And fashion governs
literary judgments too. A verse-form that the French regard
as right for tragedy would strike the English as an absurd
vehicle for that kind of dramatic content. Then Smith turns
to the more interesting topic of enforced changes in fashion:]
An eminent artist will bring about a considerable change
in the established modes of any one of those arts, introducing
a new fashion of writing, music, or architecture. Just as the
dress of an agreeable man of high rank recommends itself,
and comes soon to be admired and imitated, however pecu-
liar and fantastic it is, so the excellences of an eminent mas-
ter ·in one of the creative arts· recommend his peculiarities,
and his manner becomes the fashionable style in the art that
he practises. Within the past fifty years the Italians’ taste
in music and architecture has undergone a considerable
change, resulting from imitating the peculiarities of some
eminent masters in each of those arts. [He gives examples
of Latin writers who were criticised for features of their style
that were later followed by many others, and remarks:] A
writer must have many great qualities if he is to be able to
make his very faults agreeable! The highest praise one can
give to an author is to say that he •refined the taste of a
nation; the second highest may be to say that he •corrupted
it! In our own language,. . . .the quaintness of Butler has
given place to the plainness of Swift. The rambling freedom
of Dryden, and the correct but often tedious and prosaic
languor of Addison, are no longer objects of imitation; all](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-241-320.jpg)
![long verses are now written after the manner of the vigorous
precision of Pope.
And it’s not only over the productions of the •arts that
custom and fashion hold sway. They have the same kind
of influence over our judgments regarding •natural objects.
Think about the variety of the forms that are found to be
beautiful in different species of things! The proportions
that are admired in one animal are altogether different from
the ones that are valued in another. Every class of things
has its own special conformation—one that is approved of
and has a beauty of its own—distinct from that of every
other species. That is what led Buffier to maintain that
the beauty of any object consists in the form and colour
that are centrally typical of the species to which the object
belongs, because they will be the form and colour that we
are, in our experience of that species, most accustomed to.
[Smith expounds this theory at great length, without doing
much to make it seem worth studying. Smith agrees that
our judgments about things’ beauty are much affected by
what we are used to, but he denies that that’s the whole
story:] The utility of any form, its fitness for the useful
purposes for which it was intended, obviously counts in
its favour and makes it agreeable to us, independently of
custom ·or usualness·. Certain colours are more agreeable
than others, and give more delight to the eye the first time
it ever beholds them. A smooth surface is more agreeable
than a rough one. Variety is more pleasing than a tedious
undiversified uniformity. Connected variety, in which each
new appearance seems to be introduced by what went before
it, and in which all the adjoining parts seem to have some
natural relation to one another, is more agreeable than a
disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected objects.
But. . . .I go along with Buffier’s ingenious theory to this
extent: it hardly ever happens that a particular thing’s](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-242-320.jpg)
![else; it is merely •different in strength. When custom
and fashion coincide with the natural principles of right
and wrong, they heighten the delicacy of our sentiments
[Smith’s words] and increase our loathing for everything that
approximates to evil. Someone who has been brought up
in really good company—not what is commonly called ‘good
company’—will have become used to seeing in the people
he lived with nothing but justice, modesty, humaneness,
and good order. Because of his upbringing, he will be more
shocked ·than the rest of us are· by anything that seems to
be inconsistent with the rules that those virtues of modesty
etc. prescribe. And someone who has had the misfortune
to be brought up amidst violence, licentiousness, falsehood,
and injustice may still have some sense of the impropriety
of such conduct, but he won’t have any all sense of how
dreadful it is, or of the vengeance and punishment that it
deserves. He has been familiarized with it from his infancy,
custom has made it habitual to him, and he’s apt to regard it
as ‘the way of the world’, as it is called—something that may,
or even something that should, be practised so as to stop us
from being the dupes of our own integrity [Smith’s wording].
[Smith says that a certain degree of disorder can he
liked because it is fashionable, and that fashion can lead
to people’s disliking qualities that deserve to be respected.
He cites the reign of Charles II as a time when a degree of
licentiousness was connected in people’s minds with various
virtues, and was taken to show that the licentious person
‘was a gentleman, not a puritan’. He describes with colourful
indignation the upside-down morality that arises from this
kind of fashion. Then:]
Men in different professions and states of life naturally
come to have different characters and manners, because of
differences in the kinds of objects they have been used to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-244-320.jpg)
![and the passions that they have formed. We expect each
man to behave somewhat in the way that experience has
taught us belong to his rank or profession;. . . .and we’ll be
especially pleased if he has neither too much nor too little
of the character that usually accompanies his particular
‘species’ (if I may use the word in that way). A man, we
say, should look like his trade and profession; but the
pedantry [= ‘excessive attention to correctness of details’] of
every
107
Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments
profession is disagreeable. The different periods of life have
different manners assigned to them, for the same reason. We
expect in old age the gravity and calm that its infirmities, its
long experience, and its worn-out sensibility seem to make
natural and respectworthy; and we expect to find in youth
the sensibility, gaiety and sprightly vivacity that experience
teaches us to expect from the lively impressions that objects
are apt to make on the unpractised senses of the young.
But each of those two ages can easily have too much of
its special features. The flirting levity of youth, and the
immovable insensibility of old age, are equally disagreeable.
The young (as the saying goes) are most agreeable when their
behaviour has something of the manners of the old, and the
old are most agreeable when they retain something of the
gaiety of the young. But either of them could go too far: the
extreme coldness and dull formality that are pardoned in
old age make youth ridiculous; and the levity, carelessness,
and vanity that are permitted to the young make old age
contemptible.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-245-320.jpg)
![The special character and manners that custom leads us
to associate with a given rank or profession may sometimes
have a propriety independent of custom; they are the charac-
ter and manners that we would approve of for their own sakes
if we took into consideration all the different circumstances
that naturally affect those in each ‘species’. [Smith goes on
about this, with some ‘very obvious’ reflections, such as: our
approval of someone’s passion regarding something depends
in part on what else the person’s situation involves. We don’t
blame a mother who expresses, over the death of her soldier
son, a level of grief that would be inexcusable in a general
at the head of an army, who has so much else on his plate.
We disapprove of levity or casualness in the manner of a
preacher ‘whose special occupation it is to •keep the world
in mind of the awe-inspiring after-life that awaits them, and
to •announce what may be the fatal consequences of every
deviation from the rules of duty’.]
The basis for the customary character of some other
professions is not so obvious, and our approval of it is
based entirely on habit, without being confirmed or enlivened
by any thoughts of the kind I have been discussing. For
example, custom leads us to associate the character of gaiety,
levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as of some degree of
dissipation, to the military profession. But if we thought
about what mood or tone of temper would be most suitable
to a soldier’s situation, we would be apt to conclude that
a serious and thoughtful cast of mind would be the most
appropriate for men whose lives are continually exposed
to uncommon danger. [Smith develops this thought, and
suggests that the levity of serving soldiers may be their
way of coping with their dangerous situation, ‘losing their
anxiety’ about it. He offers evidence for that hypothesis:]
Whenever an officer has no reason to think he is faced with
any uncommon danger, he is apt to lose the gaiety and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-246-320.jpg)
![‘savages and barbarians’—he mentions in particular ‘the
savages in North America’—have a value-system that is
shaped by the hardships and necessities of their situation.
One example: arranged marriages; sexual activity between
spouses conducted in secret; no expressions of affection.
Then the main example: a régime of discipline to enable any
young savage to be able to preserve calm equanimity under
threat of death and during horrible tortures (Smith gives
details). The closing passage on this theme is notable. [In it,
‘magnanimity’ means ‘courage and calmness in the face of
danger’. The
second occurrence of ‘contempt’ means what we mean by the
word, but
the first occurrence means ‘disregard’ or ‘refusal to treat as
important’.
The passage is an explosion of Smith’s rage at the thought of
savage
‘heroes’ being ill-treated by slave-traders (and their hirelings)
who are
garbage from the jails.] Smith continues:] The same contempt
for death and torture prevails in all the other savage nations.
There’s not a negro from the coast of Africa who doesn’t
in this respect have a degree of magnanimity that the soul
of his sordid master is too often hardly able to conceive of.
Fortune never used her dominance of mankind more cruelly
than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the
sweepings of the jails of Europe, to wretches who don’t have
the virtues of the countries they come from or of the ones
they go to—wretches whose levity, brutality, and baseness so
deservedly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-248-320.jpg)
![This heroic and unconquerable firmness. . . .is not re-
quired from those who are brought up to live in civilized
societies. If they complain when they are in pain, grieve
when they are in distress, allow themselves to be overcome
by love or ruffled by anger, they are easily pardoned. Such
weaknesses are not seen as affecting the essential parts of
their character. As long as they don’t do anything contrary to
justice or humaneness, they lose little reputation, even if the
serenity of their countenance or the calmness of their dis-
course and behaviour is somewhat disturbed. A humane and
polished people, who have more sensitivity to the passions
of others, can more easily sympathize with animated and
passionate behaviour, and can more easily pardon any slight
excess of it. The person principally concerned is aware of
this,. . . .and is accordingly less afraid of exposing himself to
others’ contempt by the violence of his emotions. [Smith goes
on about differences in conversational style between civilised
people and barbarians, and also about how some European
nations differ in this respect, the French and Italians being
much more lively than people with ‘duller sensibility’ such as
the English. He reports one writer who said that ‘an Italian
expresses more emotion on being sentenced to a fine of
twenty shillings than an Englishman on receiving a sentence
of death’. (Smith seems to have an ascending scale of polish
and civilisedness, and a corresponding scale of increasingly
expressive and emotional ways of talking and behaving; with
‘savages’ at the bottom of each scale, the French and Italians
at the top, and the English somewhere in between.) He
follows this up with examples from ancient Rome. Then:]
This difference gives rise to many others that are equally
essential ·as national characteristics·. A polished people,
109](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-249-320.jpg)
![greatest perversion of judgment is not in connection with the
•general style of character and behaviour (·which is what I
have been discussing·) but in connection with the propriety
or impropriety of •particular usages.
The different manners that custom teaches us to approve
of in the different professions and states of life don’t concern
things of the greatest importance. We expect truth and
justice from an old man as well as from a young, from
a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it’s only in
minor matters that we look for the distinguishing marks
of their respective characters [meaning: the characteristics that
are typical of them as old, as young, as clergyman, as officer].
Also, the
character that custom has taught us to ascribe to a given
profession may be proper, independently of custom, because
of details that we haven’t noticed. So these matters don’t
involve any large perversion of natural sentiment. What
the manners of different nations require in a character that
they think worthy of esteem are different degrees of the
same quality, ·but there’s nothing bad about that·. The
worst that it can be said to involve is that the duties of
•one virtue are sometimes extended so as to encroach a
little on the territory of •some other. The rustic hospitality
that is in fashion among the Poles may perhaps encroach a
little on economy and good order; and the frugality that is
esteemed in Holland may encroach on generosity and good-
fellowship. The hardiness demanded of savages diminishes
their humaneness; and the delicate sensitivity required in
civilized nations may sometimes destroy masculine firmness
of character. But the style of manners that obtains in any
nation is often, on the whole, the one that is most suitable to
its situation. Hardiness is the character most suitable to the
circumstances of a savage; sensitivity to the circumstances
of life in a very civilized society. So even in this area we can’t](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-251-320.jpg)
![complain that men’s moral sentiments are grossly perverted.
Thus, where custom authorises the widest departure from
the natural propriety of action is not in the general style of
conduct or behaviour, but in regard to particular practices.
110
Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments
That is where custom’s influence is often much more destruc-
tive of good morals. It can establish, as ·supposedly· lawful
and blameless, particular actions that shock the plainest
principles of right and wrong. ·I shall give just one example
of this·.
Can there be greater barbarity than to harm an infant?
Its helplessness, its innocence, its likeableness, call forth
the compassion even of an enemy; not to spare that tender
age is regarded as the most furious effort of an enraged and
cruel conqueror. Well, then, what can be the heart of a
•parent who could injure a weakness that even a •furious
enemy is afraid to violate? Yet the murder of new-born
infants was a permitted practice in almost all the states
of ·ancient· Greece, even among the polished and civilized
Athenians; and whenever the circumstances of the parent
made it inconvenient [here = ‘difficult and burdensome’] to
bring
up the child, it could be abandoned to hunger or to wild
beasts without attracting blame or censure. This practice
probably began in times of the most savage barbarism: men’s
imaginations were first made familiar with it in that earliest
period of society, and the unbroken continuity of the custom
hindered them from later seeing how abominable it is. Even](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-252-320.jpg)
![in Smith’s sense, simply because doing it requires skill in the
mastery of
techniques.]
The basic advantage of external fortune is that it enables
one to provide the necessities and conveniences of the body,
but we can’t live long in the world without noticing that the
respect of our equals, our credit and rank in the society we
live in, depend very much on how large an external fortune
we possess, or are supposed to possess. The wish to become
proper objects of this respect, to deserve and obtain this
credit and rank among our equals, may be the strongest of
all our desires; so that our anxiety to obtain the advantages
of fortune is stimulated much more by this desire than by
the desire to supply all the necessities and conveniences of
the body—a desire that is always easily satisfied.
Our rank and credit among our equals also depends
heavily on something that a virtuous man might wish to
be the sole source of them, namely our •character and
•conduct, or on the confidence, esteem, and good-will that
•these naturally arouse in the people we live with.
The care of the health, the fortune, and the rank and rep-
utation of the individual—these being the items on which his
comfort and happiness in this life are supposed principally
to depend—is regarded as the proper business of the virtue
commonly called ‘prudence’.
I have already pointed out that our suffering when we
fall from a better to a worse situation is greater than any
enjoyment we get in rising from a worse to a better. For
that reason, the first and the principal object of prudence
is security. Prudence is opposed to our exposing our health,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-255-320.jpg)
![our fortune, our rank, or our reputation to any sort of risk.
It is cautious rather than enterprising, and more concerned
to preserve the advantages that we already possess than
112
Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments
to prompt us to the acquisition of still greater advantages.
The methods of improving our fortune that it principally
recommends to us are the ones that don’t involve risk: real
knowledge and skill in our trade or profession, hard work
and persistence in the exercise of it, frugality to the point of
parsimony in all our expenses.
The prudent man always makes a serious point of actually
understanding whatever he professes to understand, not
merely trying persuade other people that he understands
it; and though his talents may not always be brilliant they
are always perfectly genuine. [Note the connection between
what
he professes to understand and his profession.] He doesn’t try to
impose on you by
the cunning tricks of an artful impostor,
the arrogant airs of a pretentious pedant, or
the confident assertions of a rash and superficial
pretender.
He doesn’t make a great show even of the abilities that he
really does have. His conversation is simple and modest,
and he dislikes all the quackish [Smith’s word] arts by which
other people so often thrust themselves into public notice
and reputation. For reputation in his profession he is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-256-320.jpg)
![naturally inclined to rely a good deal on the solidity of his
knowledge and abilities; and he doesn’t always think of trying
to please the little clubs and gangs who, in the superior arts
and sciences, set themselves up as the supreme judges
of merit, and celebrate one another’s talents and virtues
while decrying anything that can come into competition with
them. . . .
The prudent man is always sincere. He hates the thought
of exposing himself to the disgrace that comes from the
detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he isn’t
always frank and open; he never says anything that isn’t
true, but he doesn’t always think he is obliged to volunteer
the whole truth. To match his cautious way of •acting, he
is reserved in his •speech, and never forces on people his
opinions about anything or anyone.
[The prudent man is always capable of friendship, Smith
says, but his friendship (with a few chosen people) is solid
and durable rather than ardent and passionate. He doesn’t
go in for socializing, because parties and such would interfere
too much with his chosen way of life. Also:]
Though his conversation isn’t always very sprightly or
diverting, it is always perfectly inoffensive. The prudent
man hates the thought of being guilty of any petulance or
rudeness. . . . In both conduct and conversation he strictly
preserves decency and is almost religiously scrupulous in
maintaining all the established decorums and ceremonials
of society. In this respect he sets a much better example
than was set, down through the centuries, by many men
with much more splendid talents and virtues than his—from
Socrates and Aristippus down to Swift and Voltaire, and from
Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great down to Peter the
Great of Russia. These men have too often stood out because](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-257-320.jpg)
![man’s attitude to wealth. He is ‘naturally contented with
his situation’ because he lives within his income. As he
gradually becomes wealthier, he can gradually relax his
frugality, enjoying modest luxuries both for themselves and
for their contrast with his previous way of life. He doesn’t
rush, unprepared, into any new enterprises. Also:]
The prudent man isn’t willing to undertake any responsi-
bility that his duty does not impose on him. He
•doesn’t bustle in matters where he has no concern;
•doesn’t meddle in other people’s affairs;
•doesn’t set himself up as a counsellor or adviser,
pushing his advice at people who haven’t asked for it.
. . . .He is averse to taking sides in any party disputes, hates
faction, and isn’t always attentive to the voice of ambition—
even of noble and great ambition. He won’t refuse to serve
his country when clearly called on to do so, but he won’t
scheme and plot in order to force himself into such service;
he would prefer public business to be well managed by
someone else. . . .
In short, when prudence aims merely at taking care
of the individual person’s health, fortune, and rank and
reputation, though it’s regarded as a most respectworthy
and even somewhat likeable and agreeable quality, it is
never regarded as one the most endearing or ennobling of
the virtues. It commands a certain cold esteem, but seems
not to be entitled to any ardent love or admiration.
We often label as ‘prudence’ wise and judicious conduct
that is directed to greater and nobler purposes than the
care of the health, the fortune, the rank and reputation
of the individual. This is a legitimate usage. We talk of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-259-320.jpg)
![the ‘prudence’ of a great general, a great statesman, a great
legislator. In all these cases prudence is combined with many
greater and more splendid virtues—valour, extensive and
strong benevolence, a sacred regard for the rules of justice,
and all these supported by a proper degree of self-control.
For this superior ·kind of· prudence to reach the highest
degree of perfection it has to involve the art, the talent,
and the habit or disposition of acting with the most perfect
propriety in every possible situation. [Remember that for Smith
‘propriety’ means rightness in a strong moral sense.] It has to
involve
the utmost perfection of all the •intellectual and of all the
•moral virtues—the best head joined to the best heart, perfect
wisdom combined with perfect virtue. [Smith adds that this
superior public kind of virtue approximates to the character
of a ‘sage’ according to Aristotle, and that the inferior private
kind of virtue approximates to the character of a ‘sage’
according to the Epicureans.]
Mere imprudence—the mere inability to take care of
oneself—is pitied by generous and humane people. People
with less delicate feelings treat imprudence with •neglect or,
at worst, •contempt, but never with •hatred or •indignation.
Whereas the infamy and disgrace that accompany other vices
are enormously intensified when those vices are combined
with imprudence. The rogue whose skill enables him to
escape detection and punishment (though not to escape
114
Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments
strong suspicion) is too often received in the world with
a permissiveness that he doesn’t deserve. The awkward](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-260-320.jpg)
![for which no law can properly protect him, constitutes the
character of the perfectly innocent and just man. [Smith uses
‘sacred’ (often) and ‘religious’ (occasionally) with no religious
meaning, as
we have just seen him do. His topic is simply strict, scrupulous,
careful
obedience to a rule. On page 89 he said that for anyone who
thinks
that the rule is a law of God, it acquires a ‘new sacredness’.]
Whenever
someone has this character to the point of being really careful
not to harm or disturb his neighbour, the character is highly
respectworthy and even venerable for its own sake, and
is nearly always accompanied by many other virtues, with
great feeling for other people, humaneness, and benevolence.
We all understand this character well enough; it needn’t be
further explained by me. All I’m going to attempt in the
present section is to explain the basis for the order that
Nature seems to have marked out for the direction and
employment of our limited powers of beneficence—towards
individuals (Chapter 1) and towards societies (Chapter 2).
[Smith often uses ‘order’ to mean ‘organisation’ etc., but his
present topic
is the down-to-earth sense of ‘order’ that concerns who or what
comes
first, second etc. in the queue.]
It will turn out that the same unerring wisdom that
regulates every other part of Nature’s conduct also governs
the ordering of her recommendations that we attend to
potential beneficiaries. The more a particular benefaction is
needed, the more useful it can be, the stronger is Nature’s](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-263-320.jpg)
![recommendation that we make it.
Chapter 1: The order in which individuals are rec-
ommended by nature to our care and attention
Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally
recommended ·by Nature· to care for himself; and every
man is indeed in every way fitter and abler to take care
of himself than to take care of anyone else. Every man
feels •his own pleasures and his own pains more intensely
[Smith says ‘sensibly’] than •those of other people, feels •the
original sensations more intensely than •the reflected or
sympathetic images of those sensations, feels •the substance
more intensely than •the shadow.
(1) After himself, the members of his own family—his
parents, his children, his brothers and sisters—are naturally
the objects of his warmest affections. They are naturally
the persons on whose happiness or misery his conduct
must have the greatest influence. He is more accustomed
to sympathizing with them, he knows better how everything
is likely to affect them, and he can have a more precise and
definite sympathy with them than he can have with most
other people. In short, what he feels for •them is a close
approximation to what he feels for •himself.
This sympathy and the affections based on it are naturally
directed more strongly towards his children than towards his
parents, and his tenderness for the children seems generally
to be more active than his reverence and gratitude towards
his parents. In the natural state of things the child, for some
time after it comes into the world, depends for its survival
entirely on the care of the parent, whereas the parent’s
survival doesn’t naturally depend on the care of the child. In
nature’s way of looking at things, a child seems to be a more
important object than an old man; and it arouses a much](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-264-320.jpg)
![livelier and much more universal sympathy. It ought to do
so. Everything can be expected or at least hoped for from
116
Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and
attention
the child, whereas ordinarily little can be expected or hoped
for from the old man. [Smith was 36 years old when he wrote
this.]
The weakness of childhood draws the affections of ·even· the
most brutal and hard-hearted, but the infirmities of old age
are objects of contempt and aversion for everyone who isn’t
virtuous and humane. Ordinarily an old man dies without
being much regretted by anyone, but it’s not often that a
child can die without breaking someone’s heart.
The earliest friendships—the ones that are naturally
formed when the heart is most liable to that feeling—are the
friendships among brothers and sisters. While they are still
living together their being on good terms with one another
is necessary for the household’s tranquillity and happiness.
They can give more pleasure or pain to one another than
to most other people. Their situation ·as siblings living
together· makes their mutual sympathy utterly important
to their common happiness; and by the wisdom of nature
that same situation, by obliging them to accommodate to
one another, makes that sympathy more habitual and thus
more lively, sharp and definite.
[The same holds for •cousins, though less strongly, Smith
says. The friendship among siblings is enhanced if their
offspring are also on good terms, but the sympathy between](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-265-320.jpg)
![cousins is less necessary than between siblings, and ‘so it
is less habitual and therefore correspondingly weaker’. Be-
tween the •children of cousins etc. ‘the affection diminishes
as the relation grows more remote’.]
What is called ‘affection’ is really nothing but habitual
sympathy. Our concern for the objects of our ‘affections’—
our desire to promote their happiness or prevent their
misery—is either the actual feeling of that habitual sympathy
or a necessary consequences of it. Relatives are usually
placed in situations that naturally create this habitual
sympathy, so a suitable degree of affection is expected to
hold among them. We generally find that it does indeed
hold;. . . .and we’re shocked whenever we find that it doesn’t.
The established general rule says that persons related to one
another in a certain degree ought always to have mutual
affections of a certain kind, and whenever they don’t there
is the highest impropriety, and sometimes even a sort of
impiety. A parent without parental tenderness, a child devoid
of all filial reverence, appear to be monsters—objects not only
of hatred but of horror.
Sometimes the circumstances that usually produce those
‘natural affections’ happen not to have existed; but even in
those cases the general rule will often make up for that to
some extent, producing something that at least is like those
affections. A father is apt to be less attached to a child who
for some reason was separated from him in its infancy and
returns to him only as an adult. The father is apt to feel less
paternal tenderness for the child, and the child less filial
reverence for the father. When siblings are brought up in
distant countries they are apt to feel a similar lessening of
affection; but if they are dutiful and virtuous, their respect
for the general rule will often produce, again, something that
at least is like those natural affections. Even during their](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-266-320.jpg)
![general rule can at best produce only a cold and affected
civility (a faint copy of real regard), and even this is commonly
abolished by a slight offence, a tiny conflict of interests.
The education of boys at distant great schools, of young
men at distant colleges, of young ladies in distant nunneries
and boarding-schools, seems in the higher ranks of society
to have done crucial harm to domestic morals and thus to
domestic happiness, both in France and in England. Do you
want to bring up your children to be dutiful to their parents,
kind and affectionate to their brothers and sisters? Then
bring them up in your own home—make it necessary for
them to be dutiful children, kind and affectionate brothers
and sisters! From their parents’ house the children may, with
propriety and advantage, go out every day to attend public
schools; but let them continue to live at home. That way of
bringing up a child is the institution of nature; education
away from home at a boarding school is a contrivance of
man. You don’t need me to tell you which is likely to be
wiser!
[Smith’s next three paragraphs make these points: •In
‘tragedies and romances’ we meet stories about people who
are drawn to one another because they are blood-related,
though they don’t know that they are; but this never happens
in real life. •In ‘countries where the authority of law is not
alone sufficient to give perfect security to everyone’, the
different branches of a growing extended family often choose
to live close to one another; and that gives any two of them a
weakened version of the kind of connection most of us have
with members of our more immediate family. •In countries
where the authority of law is enough to protect everyone, as
families grow they spread and scatter, and the parts of them
stop mattering to one another.]
I regard natural affection (as they call it) as an effect](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-268-320.jpg)
![of the moral connection between the parent and the child
more than of the supposed physical connection. [The ‘moral
connection’ is the fact that the parent and child live together.]
·But
sometimes a belief about physical connection outweighs the
actual facts about moral connection·. A jealous husband,
despite the moral connection—despite the child’s having
been brought up in his own house—often hates the unhappy
child whom he supposes to be the offspring of his wife’s
infidelity. . . .
Among well-disposed people who need ·in their occupa-
tions· to accommodate themselves to one another there often
comes to be a friendship not unlike what holds between those
who are born to live in the same household. Colleagues in
office, partners in trade, call one another ‘brothers’, and
often feel towards one another as if they really were so. . . .
Even the trivial fact of living in the same neighbourhood
has some effect of the same kind. We respect the face of a
man whom we see every day, provided he has never offended
us. Neighbours can be convenient to one another, and they
can also be troublesome. If they are a good sort of people
118
Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and
attention
they are naturally disposed to agree. . . . So there are certain
small favours that everyone agrees are due to a neighbour in
preference to anyone who has no such connection.
This natural disposition to do our best to make our own](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-269-320.jpg)
![119
Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our
beneficence
of his beneficiaries. No benevolent man ever lost altogether
the fruits of his benevolence. If he doesn’t always gather
them from the persons from whom they ought to have come,
he nearly always gathers them, and with a tenfold increase,
from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness; and
if the great object of our ambition is to be beloved by our
brethren, the surest way of obtaining it is to show by our
conduct that we really love them.
After the persons who are recommended to our benef-
icence by (1) their connection with ourselves, by (2) their
personal qualities, or by (3) their past services, come (4)
those whom nature points out to us not for •friendship with
us but for •our benevolent attention. What picks these people
out is ·not any special intrinsic qualities that they have, but·
their special situation: they are •greatly fortunate or •greatly
unfortunate—•rich and powerful •or poor and wretched. [In
what follows, the phrases ‘the distinction of ranks’ and ‘the
peace and
order of society’ are Smith’s.]
•The distinction of ranks, the peace and order of soci-
ety, are largely based on the respect that we naturally
have for the rich and powerful.
•The relief and consolation of human misery de-
pend altogether on our compassion for the poor and
wretched.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-272-320.jpg)
![has produced in former times. . . .—its warriors, statesmen,
poets, philosophers, and writers of all kinds—we’re inclined
to view with the most partial [opposite of ‘impartial’]
admiration,
and to rank (sometimes quite wrongly) above those of all
other nations. The patriot who lays down his life for the
safety of this society—or even for its vain-glory!—appears to
do precisely the right thing. He appears to view himself in
the way the impartial spectator has to view him, as merely
one of the multitude, of no more importance than any of
the others, and as bound at all times to sacrifice and devote
himself to the safety, the service, and even the glory of the
greater number. Although this sacrifice seems to be perfectly
right and proper, we know how hard it is to make it and
how few people are capable of making it. So someone who
does sacrifice himself in this way arouses not only our entire
approval but our highest wonder and admiration; he seems
to deserve all the applause that the most heroic virtue can
deserve. On the other side, the traitor who in some special
situation imagines he can promote his own interests by
betraying the interests of his native country appears to be
of all villains the most detestable. He is disregarding the
judgment of the man within the breast, and shamefully and
basely putting himself ahead of all those with whom he has
any connection.
Our love for our own nation often disposes us to look
with malignant jealousy and envy at the prospering of any
neighbouring nation. All nations live in continual dread
and suspicion of their neighbours, because there is no inde-
pendent superior ·to whom they can appeal· to decide their
disputes, Each sovereign, not expecting much justice from
his neighbours, is inclined to treat them with as little justice
as he expects from them. There are laws of nations—rules
that independent states claim to think they are obliged to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-275-320.jpg)
![conform to in their dealings with one another—but the regard
for those laws is often little more than mere pretence. [Citing
an example from ancient Rome, Smith distinguishes •the de-
fensible wish for neighbouring nations not to have too much
power from •the coarsely primitive wish for neighbouring
nations to fail in every way. Then:] France and England may
each have some reason to fear the other’s increase of the
naval and military power, but for either of them to envy
the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the
cultivation of its lands, the advancement of its man-
ufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security
and number of its ports and harbours, its proficiency
in all the liberal arts and sciences,
is surely beneath the dignity of two such great nations. Those
are all real improvements of the world we live in. . . . They
all proper objects of national emulation, not of national
prejudice or envy. [To ‘emulate’ something is to try to copy it.]
121
Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our
beneficence
The love for our own country seems not to come from love
for mankind—and indeed sometimes seems to dispose us to
act in ways that are inconsistent with a love for mankind.
France has nearly three times the population of Great
Britain, so that within the great society of mankind France’s
prosperity should appear to be much more important than
Great Britain’s. Yet a British subject who took that view and
accordingly always preferred France’s prosperity to Great
Britain’s would not be thought a good citizen of Great Britain.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-276-320.jpg)
![We don’t love our country merely as a part of the great society
of mankind; we love it for its own sake, and independently
of any thoughts about mankind in general. The wisdom
that designed the system of human affections, as well as the
system of every other part of nature, seems to have thought
that the best way to further the interests of the great society
of mankind would be for each individual to attend primarily
to the particular portion of it that lies most within the sphere
both of his abilities and of his understanding.
National prejudices and hatreds seldom extend beyond
neighbouring nations. We may weakly and foolishly call the
French our ‘natural enemies’, and it may be that they, equally
weakly and foolishly, think the same about us. Neither they
nor we have any sort of envy for the prosperity of China or
Japan, though we can’t often employ our good-will towards
such distant countries in any way that does them much
good.
The most extensive public benevolence that can com-
monly be exercised to good effect is that of statesmen who
plan and create alliances among neighbouring or near-
neighbouring nations, for the preservation of the so-called
‘balance of power’ or of the general peace and tranquillity of
the states that are involved. Yet the statesmen who plan and
implement such treaties are seldom aiming at anything but
the interest of their respective countries; though sometimes
they are looking wider than that. [Smith suggests some
historical examples.]
Every independent state is divided into many different
orders and societies, each of which has its own particular
powers, privileges, and immunities. Every individual is
naturally more attached to his own particular order or society
than to any other. His own interests, his own vanity, the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-277-320.jpg)
![The great mass of party-members are commonly intoxicated
with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system: they have
had no experience of it, but it has been represented to them
in the most dazzling colours in which the eloquence of their
123
Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our
beneficence
leaders could paint it. [Calling it ‘ideal’, Smith means merely
that
it exists only as an idea that someone has.] Many of those
leaders
themselves, though they may at first have aimed only at
a growth of their own personal power, eventually become
dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great
reformation as the weakest and stupidest of their followers.
There are other leaders who keep their own heads free from
this fanaticism, but don’t dare to disappoint the expectation
of their followers; so they are constantly forced to act as if
they were under the common delusion, doing this in defiance
of their principles and their conscience. The violence of
the party, refusing all offers of reasonable compromise, by
requiring too much often gets nothing; and difficulties and
distresses which with a little moderation might have been
considerably removed and relieved are left with absolutely
no hope of a remedy.
A man whose public spirit is prompted only by humane-
ness and benevolence will respect the established powers
and privileges of individuals, and even more those of the
great orders and societies into which the state is divided. If
he regards some of them as somewhat abusive, he’ll settle for](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-281-320.jpg)
![being whom we wouldn’t want to be happy. . . . The idea of a
mischievous sentient being naturally provokes our hatred;
but our hostility to such a being is really an effect of our
universal benevolence. It comes from our sympathy for the
misery and resentment of the other innocent and sentient
beings whose happiness is disturbed by the malice of this
one.
This universal benevolence, however noble and generous
it may be, can’t be the source of any solid happiness for any
man who isn’t thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants
of the universe, low and high, are under the immediate
care and protection of the great, benevolent, and all-wise
Being who •directs all the movements of nature, and who •is
determined [here = ‘caused’] by his own unalterable perfections
to maintain in it always the greatest possible amount of
happiness. To ·someone who has· this universal benevolence
the mere suspicion of a fatherless world must be the saddest
of all thoughts, involving the thought that all the unknown
regions of infinite and incomprehensible space may be filled
with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness. All
the splendour of the highest prosperity can’t lighten the
gloom that this dreadful idea must necessarily inflict on
imagination; just as, in a wise and virtuous man, all the
sorrow of the most terrible adversity can’t ever dry up the
joy that necessarily arises from the habitual and thorough
conviction of the truth of the contrary system, ·i.e. the truth
of theism·.
The wise and virtuous man is always willing for his own
private interest to be sacrificed to the public interest of his
own particular order or society. He is always willing, too, for
the interests of this order or society to be sacrificed to the
greater interests of the state of which it is a subordinate part.
So he should be equally willing for all those inferior interests](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-284-320.jpg)
![to be sacrificed to the greater interests of the universe—of the
great society of all sentient and thinking beings whose imme-
diate administrator and director is God himself. If he really
does believe that this benevolent and all-wise Being can’t
allow any partial evil that isn’t necessary for the universal
good, he must regard all the misfortunes that may happen to
himself, his friends, his society, or country as necessary for
the prosperity of the universe. This involves believing that
not only should he patiently put up with them but also that
his attitude should be: ‘If I had known all the connections
and dependences of things, I would have sincerely and
devoutly wanted all those misfortunes to happen.’
This noble-minded acceptance of the will of the great
Director of the universe doesn’t seem to be beyond the reach
of human nature. Good soldiers who both love and trust
their general often march with more alacrity and gaiety •to a
forlorn station from which they don’t expect to return than
they would •to one that didn’t involve difficulty or danger.
[Smith contrasts these as •‘the noblest thing a man can
do’ and •‘the dullness of ordinary duty’ respectively; and he
125
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
likens the former of them to what a convinced theist is called
upon to do:] No conductor of an army can deserve more
unlimited trust. . . .than the great Conductor of the universe.
In the greatest disasters a wise man ought to think that
he himself, his friends and his countrymen have only been
ordered to the forlorn station of the universe; that they
wouldn’t have been so ordered if it hadn’t been necessary
for the good of the whole; and that it’s their duty not only](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-285-320.jpg)
![gant fear and furious anger are often hard to restrain, even
for a moment. As for the love of ease and the others in
(2), it’s always easy to restrain those for a short period of
time; but through their continual urgings they often mislead
us into weaknesses that we later have much reason to be
ashamed of. We could say that the (1) passions •drive us
from our duty, whereas the (2) passions •seduce us from it.
The ancient moralists that I have referred to used the labels
‘fortitude’, ‘manliness’, and ‘strength of mind’ for control
over the passions in group (1); and ‘temperance’, ‘decency’,
‘modesty’, and ‘moderation’ for control over the ones in group
(2).
Control of each of those sets of passions has a beauty
that comes from its utility—from its enabling us always to
act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and of
proper benevolence. But it also has an ·intrinsic· beauty of
its own, and seems to deserve a certain degree of esteem
and admiration for its own sake, because of the qualities
of the exertion involved in such self-control—its strength
and greatness with passions in group (1), and its uniformity,
evenness and unflinching steadiness in group (2).
A man who keeps his tranquillity unaltered at a time
when he is in danger, or being tortured, or nearing death,
and doesn’t allow a word or gesture to escape him that
doesn’t perfectly match the feelings of the most uninvolved
spectator, inevitably commands a high degree of admiration
from us. [Smith elaborates on this, mentioning great men
of the remote past (Socrates) and of the more recent past
(Sir Thomas More) who went to their deaths in a calm and
dignified manner, and whose great posthumous reputation
has derived from this. We even have a certain admiration for
a truly wicked man who deserves to be sent to the gallows, if
he goes there ‘with decency and firmness’.]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-288-320.jpg)
![War is the great school both for acquiring and for exer-
cising this sort of magnanimity. Death is called the ‘king’ of
terrors; and a man who has conquered his fear of death isn’t
likely to be thrown off-balance by the approach of any other
natural evil. In war, men become familiar with death, and
this cures them of the superstitious horror with which death
is viewed by weak and inexperienced. They consider it merely
as the loss of life, and as an object of aversion only to the
extent that life happens to be an object of desire. Also, they
learn from experience that many seemingly great dangers are
not as great as they appear, and that with courage, energy
and presence of mind they often have a good chance of
extricating themselves with honour from situations where
at first they could see no hope. [Smith elaborates on our
admiration for the calmly bold warrior, even one who is
fighting on the wrong side in a wicked war.]
Control over anger often seems to be just as generous [see
note on page 11] and noble as control over fear. Many of the
most admired examples of ancient and modern eloquence
have been proper expressions of righteous indignation. The
speeches of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedonia, and
Cicero’s speeches against Catiline, derive all their beauty
from the noble propriety with which indignation is expressed
in them. And this just indignation is simply anger restrained
and properly damped down to something that the impartial
127
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
spectator can enter into. The blustering and noisy passion
that goes beyond this is always odious and offensive, and it](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-289-320.jpg)
![•never allowing the benevolence of our temperament to
be damped or discouraged by malignity and ingrati-
tude on the part of some beneficiaries,
is the character of the most exalted wisdom and virtue.
Self-control is not only itself a great virtue, but it seems
to be the source of most of the glow of all the other virtues.
Control over one’s fear and over one’s anger are always
great and noble powers; and when they’re directed by justice
and benevolence they increase the splendour of those other
virtues as well as being great virtues themselves. But when
they are directed by other motives they can be (though
still great and respectworthy) excessively dangerous. [Calm
self-control in the deceitful pursuit of really bad objectives
has sometimes been admired by people with good judgment,
Smith says; and he cites examples, ancient and modern.
Then:] This character of dark and deep dissimulation occurs
most commonly in times of great public disorder, in the
violence of faction and civil war. When the law has become
largely powerless, when perfect innocence can’t guarantee
safety, a concern for self-defence obliges most men to re-
sort to dexterity, to skill, and to apparent agreement with
whatever party happens to be uppermost at the moment.
This false character is also often accompanied by cool and
determined courage, which is needed because being detected
in such a deception often leads to death. . . .
Control over one’s less violent and turbulent passions
seems less open to being abused for any pernicious purpose.
Temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation are always
likeable, and can seldom be directed to any bad end. It is
from the unremitting steadiness of those gentler exercises
of self-control that the likeable virtue of •chastity and the
respectworthy virtues of •industry and •frugality derive all](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-291-320.jpg)
![the person who has them; and
(2) the passions that the spectator is least disposed to
sympathize with, and that have a correspondingly low
point of propriety, are the ones that feel disagreeable
to the person who has them.
I haven’t found a single exception to this general rule. A few
examples will sufficiently explain it while also demonstrating
its truth. [Smith’s ‘few examples’ and his comments on them
fill the
remaining thirty book-pages of this section. The present version
will
reduce the length considerably,]
It’s possible for someone to be •too much disposed to
have the affections that tend to unite men in society—
humaneness, kindness, natural affection, friendship, esteem.
[Notice that in that sentence Smith uses ‘affections’ in the
broad sense
and ‘affection’ in the narrow one—see note on page 6.] But
even this
•excess makes the person interesting to everybody [=, roughly,
‘gives us all a concern for him, puts us all on his side, sort of’].
We
blame him for it, but we still regard it with compassion and
even with kindness, and never with dislike. We’re sorry
rather than angry about it. To the person himself, having
such excessive affections is often not only agreeable but
delicious. On some occasions, especially when directed
towards unworthy objects (as it too often is), it exposes him
to much real and heartfelt distress. Even then, though, a
well-disposed person will regard him with intense pity, and
will be highly indignant with those who despise him as weak](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-293-320.jpg)
![on good nature, on a dislike for confrontation and for bustle
and pleading, and sometimes also on a sort of ill-judged
magnanimity. [This last basis for poor-spiritedness, Smith
says, involves the person’s having a dismissive attitude to
the advantages that he is passing up, and fancying that he’ll
be able to keep up this attitude indefinitely. He is apt to be
wrong in this belief, and to end up with ‘a most malignant
envy’ and hatred for the success of the others.]
One is more likely to offend by •being too sensitive to
personal danger and distress than by •not being sensitive
enough to these. (This is similar to being too sensitive or not
sensitive enough to personal provocation.) No character is
more contemptible than that of a coward; no character is
more admired than that of the man who faces death bravely,
maintaining his tranquillity and presence of mind amidst the
most dreadful dangers. [Smith develops this line of thought,
mainly repeating things he has said earlier.]
But although our sensitivity to our own injuries and
misfortunes is usually •too strong, it can be •too weak. A
man who feels little for his own misfortunes will always feel
less for those of other people, and be less disposed to relieve
them. [And so on, as Smith develops the general theme that
a proper care for the welfare of others requires a proper care
for one’s own interests. The most striking thing here is the
description of the internalized impartial spectator as ‘the
great inmate, the great demi-god within the breast’.]
[Then a paragraph about a moral risk involved in having
too fine a sensitivity to personal injury, danger and distress.
It’s possible to have this and yet behave well, Smith says,
because this extreme sensitivity can be controlled by ‘the
authority of the judge within the breast’. But this may be
too fatiguing for the inner judge, giving him ‘too much to do’.
In such a case, Smith says, there will be a constant inner](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-295-320.jpg)
![conflict between (for example) cowardice and conscience,
depriving the person of ‘internal tranquillity and happiness’.
He continues:] A wise man whom Nature has endowed with
this too-fine sensitivity, and whose too-lively feelings haven’t
been sufficiently blunted and hardened by early education
and proper exercise, will do whatever he decently can to avoid
situations for which he isn’t perfectly fitted. . . . A certain
boldness, a certain firmness of nerves and hardiness of con-
stitution, whether natural or acquired, are undoubtedly the
best preparatives for all the great exercises of self-control. . . .
It is also possible to have too much, or to have too little,
sensitivity to the pleasures, amusements and enjoyments of
human life. Having too much seems less disagreeable than
having too little. A •strong propensity for joy is certainly more
pleasing—to the person himself and to the spectator—than a
•dull numbness towards objects of amusement and diversion.
We are charmed with the gaiety of youth, and even with the
playfulness of childhood, but we soon grow weary of the
flat and tasteless solemnity that too often accompanies old
age. It can happen that a great propensity for joy etc. isn’t
restrained by a sense of propriety—is unsuitable to the time
or the place, or to the age or the situation of the person—so
that in giving way to it the person is neglecting his interests
or his duty; and when that happens, the propensity is rightly
blamed as excessive, and as harmful both to the individual
and to the society. But in most of these cases the chief fault
is not so much the strength of the propensity for joy as the
130
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
weakness of the sense of propriety and duty. . . .](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-296-320.jpg)
![[The twenty-odd book-pages that Smith has ahead of him in this
section are entirely devoted to ‘self-estimation’—thinking too
highly of
oneself, not thinking highly enough of oneself, or getting it
right.]
One’s estimate of oneself may be too high, and it may be
too low. It is so agreeable to think highly of ourselves, and
so disagreeable to take a low view of ourselves, that for the
person himself some degree of over-rating must be much
less disagreeable than any degree of under-rating. But it
may be thought that things must appear quite differently to
the impartial spectator, who must always find under-rating
less disagreeable than over-rating. . . .
In estimating our own merit, judging our own character
and conduct, there are two different standards to which we
naturally compare them. (1) One is the idea of exact propriety
and perfection, so far as each of us can comprehend that
idea. (2) The other is ·the idea of· a certain approximation
to exact propriety and perfection—specifically, the degree of
perfection etc. that is commonly achieved in the world, the
degree that most of our friends and companions, and most
of our rivals and competitors, may have actually arrived
at. We don’t often—I’m inclined to think we don’t ever—try
to judge ourselves without paying some attention to both
these standards. But different men distribute their attention
between them differently; so indeed does one man at different
times.
So far as our attention is directed towards (1) the first
standard, ·even· the wisest and best of us can see nothing
but weakness and imperfection in his own character and
conduct, finding no reason for arrogance and presumption,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-297-320.jpg)
![and plenty of reason for humility, regret and repentance.
So far as our attention is directed towards (2) the second
standard, we may be affected in either way, feeling ourselves
to be really above the standard to which we are comparing
ourselves, or really below it.
The wise and virtuous man directs his attention mainly
to (1) the first standard, the idea of exact propriety and
perfection. There exists in every man’s mind an idea of
this kind, gradually formed from his observations on the
character and conduct both of himself and of other people.
It is slowly and steadily under construction by the great
demigod within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of
conduct. [Smith writes about how the wise and virtuous man
constantly measures himself against this standard, trying
to get closer to it in his own character and conduct. But
never fully succeeding, because, Smith says, ‘he is imitating
the work of a divine artist, which can never be equalled’.
He may cheer himself up by comparing himself with (2) the
second standard, ‘but he is necessarily much more humbled
by (1) one comparison than he ever can be elevated by (2)
the other’. And he won’t let the results of (2) the second
comparison lead him to behave arrogantly or dismissively
towards other people.]
In all the liberal and ingenious arts [see note on page 99]—
painting, poetry, music, eloquence, philosophy—the great
artist always feels the real imperfection of his own best works,
and is more aware than anyone else is of how far short they
fall of the •ideal perfection of which he has formed some
conception. He does what he can to imitate that ideal, but
he despairs of ever equalling it. Only the inferior artist is
ever perfectly satisfied with his own works. He has little
conception of •ideal perfection, and doesn’t think about it
much. What he mostly compares his works with are the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-298-320.jpg)
![works of other artists, perhaps less good artists than he is.
[Smith decorates this point with an anecdote: a great French
poet said that no great man is ever completely satisfied with
his own works, and an inferior poet replied that he was
always completely satisfied with his! Smith then goes on
131
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
to say that the situation of an artist in relation to his work
is not after all a good model of the situation of a good man
in relation to his whole life. He handles this point in terms
not of (1) as a standard by which to evaluate one’s work or
one’s life but rather of it as a standard by which to make
one’s works or to live one’s life:] But to support and finish
off (if I may put it that way) the conduct of a whole life to
some resemblance to this ideal perfection is surely much
more difficult than to work up to an equal resemblance any
of the productions of any of the ingenious arts. The artist
sits down to his work undisturbed, at leisure, in the full
possession and recollection of all his skill, experience, and
knowledge. The wise man must support the propriety of his
own conduct in health and in sickness, in success and in
disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy indolence
as well as in that of the most awakened attention. The most
sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and distress
must never surprise him. The injustice of other people must
never provoke him to injustice. The violence of faction must
never confound him. All the hardships and hazards of war
must never either dishearten or appal him.
[The next topic is the person who, when he judges himself
by (2) the second standard—the one set by how well the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-299-320.jpg)
![general run of people are performing—rightly thinks that he
is ‘very much above it’. If this person doesn’t attend carefully
to (1) the ideal standard (and most such people don’t), he
will become arrogant and inappropriately self-admiring, and
will often persuade the gullible multitude to take him at
his (over-)valuation. This creates for him a kind of ‘noisy
fame’ that may stay with him down the centuries. It may
be—Smith allows—that a high-achieving person needed this
self-overestimation—both to embolden him to embark on his
ventures and to get others to join and support him in them.
But if he becomes (by worldly standards) extremely success-
ful while still having this unduly high opinion of himself,
he may be betrayed into ‘a vanity that approaches almost
to insanity and folly’. Smith cites the ancient examples of
Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Intelligent as Caesar
was, he says, he liked being said to have descended from
the goddess Venus; and he was guilty of various instances
of ‘an almost childish vanity’, which may have helped to
motivate his assassins. Then:] The religion and manners of
modern times don’t encourage our great men to think they
are gods or even prophets. But the combination of success
and popularity has led many of the greatest of them to credit
themselves with far more importance and far more ability
than they really possess; and this has sometimes pushed
them into rash and sometimes ruinous adventures. [The only
exception to this in modern times, Smith says, is the great
Duke of Marlborough, an enormously successful general
who was never undermined by immodesty.]
In the humble projects of private life as well as in the
ambitious and proud pursuit of high rank and high office,
great ability and success at the outset often encourage people
to tackle projects that are bound to lead to bankruptcy and
ruin in the end.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-300-320.jpg)
![[Smith now embarks on four book-pages of reflection
about how self-overestimation figures in the lives and repu-
tations of notably able people who are guilty of it. He repeats
at length that it can be an aid to success but can also be
a trap, leading the person to ruin himself in one way or
another; and he describes in glowing terms the situation of
an able person who is truly modest. He speculates on the
interplay, in a great man’s reputation, between knowledge
of his real successes and inflated beliefs about how great he
was—e.g. what would Caesar’s reputation be now if he had
lost the battle of Pharsalia? He describes in some detail the
disgusting moral depths to which a great man—Alexander
132
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
the Great—descended because of the weight of his grossly
exaggerated idea of who he was. And he also describes
a further upshot:] The humble, admiring, and flattering
friends whom Alexander left in power and authority at his
death divided his empire among themselves, and after having
thus robbed his family and kindred of their inheritance, put
to death every single surviving member of the family, male
and female, one by one.
[The next paragraph leads Smith into one special depart-
ment of the self-overestimation topic, a department that
will be his topic through the remaining ten book-pages of
the section:] Faced with the excessive self-estimation of the
splendid people in whom we observe a notable superior-
ity above (2) the common level of mankind, we don’t just
•pardon it but often •thoroughly enter into it and sympathize
with it. We call such people ‘spirited’, ‘magnanimous’, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-301-320.jpg)
![‘high-minded’—labels that all convey a considerable degree
of praise and admiration. But we can’t enter into and
sympathize with •the excessive self-estimation of people in
whom we don’t see any such distinguished superiority. We’re
disgusted and revolted by •it, and we find it hard to forgive
and hard to put up with! We call it ‘pride’, a word that
•usually conveys a considerable degree of blame, or ‘vanity’,
a word that •always does so. [This version will use those two
words
exactly as Smith does, not getting into questions about whether
what
they meant to him is exactly what they mean to us. (Hume in
Treatise II
treats them as synonyms.)]
Pride and vanity are alike in some ways, because each is
a variety of self-overestimation; but in many respects they
are different.
The proud man is sincere: he really is thoroughly con-
vinced of his own superiority, though it’s not always easy
to see what this conviction is based on. He wants you to
view him in just the way he views himself when he looks
at himself from your viewpoint. All he demands from you
(he thinks) is justice. If you seem not to respect him as he
respects himself, he is offended rather than humiliated, and
feels the kind of indignant resentment he would feel if you
had harmed him in some way. (·He would feel humiliated
only if he had a tentative high opinion of himself and was
looking to you to confirm him in it·.) Even then, he doesn’t
condescend to explain his reasons for his own conviction of
his worth. He is too proud to make an effort to win your
esteem. He even acts as though he despises it, and tries to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-302-320.jpg)
![his inferiors, his flatterers, and his dependants. He seldom
visits his superiors; and when he does, it’s not because he
will get any real satisfaction from such a visit, but rather
to show that he is entitled to keep such people company.
As Lord Clarendon says about the Earl of Arundel: he
sometimes went to court because that’s the only place where
he could he could find a greater man than himself, and he
seldom went to court because it’s a place where he found a
greater man than himself!
The vain man is different. He seeks the company of
his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it. He
seems to think that their splendour reflects a splendour
onto those who are often in their company. He haunts
the courts of kings and the receptions of ministers, and
puts on the manner of someone who is •a candidate for
fortune and promotion, when really he has the much more
precious happiness, if he knew how to enjoy it, of not being
•one! [Smith adds details about how the vain man treats
his superiors, ending with:] . . . often flattery, though mostly
pleasant flattery delivered with a light touch, and seldom the
gross and overdone flattery of a parasite. The proud man,
on the other hand, never flatters, and is often hardly civil to
anybody.
Notwithstanding the falsity of its basis, however, vanity
is usually a sprightly, cheerful, and often good-natured
passion. Pride is always grave, sullen, and severe. Even
the falsehoods of the vain man are innocent falsehoods,
meant to raise himself, not to lower other people. The proud
man (let’s be fair) doesn’t often go as low as falsehood; but
when he does, his falsehoods are far from innocent. They
are all trouble-making, and meant to lower other people.
He is full of indignation against people who are accorded
134](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-305-320.jpg)
![to be too contented with himself to try for self-improvement,
unlike the vain man, who would like to have the qualities
and talents that people admire. A vain young man shouldn’t
be discouraged from trying to become something worthy of
admiration; and his vanity—which is really just his trying to
get admiration too soon—should be treated with forbearance.
(iii) Pride and vanity often go together in one man, and Smith
explains why this is natural:] It is natural that a man who
thinks more highly of himself than he deserves should want
other people to think still more highly of him; and that a
man who wants other people to think more highly of him
than he thinks of himself should also think more highly of
himself than he deserves.
[On page 129 Smith introduced the ‘point of propriety’ for this
or that
passion, and discussed ’too much’ and ‘too little’ for various
passions.
When on page 131 he turned to self-estimation, this led him into
two
topics—•different standards for self-estimation, and •pride and
vanity—
that mostly breathed the air of ‘too high’. Now at last he is
going to
discuss the ‘too low’ side of self-estimation.]
Men whose merit is considerably above the common level
sometimes under-rate themselves. Such a person is often
pleasant to be with, in private: his companions are at ease in
the society of such a perfectly modest and unassuming man.
But those companions, though they are fond of him, are
likely not to have much respect; and the warmth of their fond-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-307-320.jpg)
![distinction
between those two.] Examine idiots carefully and you’ll find
that many of them have faculties of understanding that
are quite as strong as those of many people who, though
acknowledged to be dull and stupid, are not classified as
‘idiots’ by anyone. Many idiots who have had no more than
ordinary education have learned to •read, •write, and •do
sums tolerably well. And many persons who were never
classified as ‘idiots’ and who received careful education have
never been able to acquire a reasonable level in any one of
•those three accomplishments—not even when, later on in
life, they have had spirit enough to try to learn what their
early education hadn’t taught them. ·They have escaped
being classed as ‘idiots’ because· an instinct of pride has
led them •to set themselves on a level with their equals
in age and situation, and—with courage and firmness—•to
maintain their proper station among their companions. By
an opposite instinct, the idiot feels himself to be below every
company into which you can introduce him. Ill-treatment
(which is extremely likely to come his way) can throw him
into violent fits of rage and fury. But no good usage, no
kindness or patience, can ever raise him to converse with you
as your equal. If you can bring him into conversation with
you at all, you’ll often find his answers •relevant enough and
even •sensible; but they will always be marked by his strong
sense of his own great inferiority. He seems to shrink back
from your look and conversation, and to feel—seeing himself
from your viewpoint—that despite your apparent kindness
to him you can’t help considering him as immensely below
you. (a) Some idiots—perhaps most idiots—seem really to be
immensely below the rest of us, mainly or entirely because
of a certain numbness or sluggishness in their faculties of
the understanding. But there are (b) other idiots whose
faculties of understanding don’t appear to be more sluggish](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-309-320.jpg)
![saw it but in the much milder and fairer light in which
his companion naturally views it.
This man doesn’t just restrain his anger; he to some extent
subdues it. The passion becomes really less than it was
before, and less capable of arousing him to the violent and
bloody revenge that he may at first have thought of inflicting.
When any passion is restrained by the sense of propriety
it will be somewhat moderated and subdued. But when
a passion is restrained only by prudential considerations
of some sort, it is often inflamed by the restraint, and
sometimes. . . .it bursts out with tenfold fury and violence in
some context where nobody is thinking about the matter and
the outburst is merely absurd.
[The remaining three paragraphs of the section are mainly
repetitions of things said earlier.]
138
Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
Part VII: Systems of moral philosophy
Section 1: The questions that ought to be examined in a theory
of moral sentiments
If we examine the most famous and remarkable of the various
theories that have been given regarding the nature and origin
of our moral sentiments, we’ll find that almost all of them
coincide with some part of the account I have been giving;
and that if everything that I have said is fully taken into
account, we’ll be able to explain what the view or aspect
of nature was that led each particular author to form his](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-314-320.jpg)
![(i) The first is the judging faculty, which settles not only
what are the proper means for achieving any end but also
what ends are fit to be pursued and how they should be
ordered on the scale of value. Plato rightly called this faculty
‘reason’, and thought it should be the governing mechanism
of the whole. He was clearly taking ‘reason’ to cover not only
the faculty for judging regarding truth and falsehood, but
also the faculty by which we judge whether our desires and
affections are proper or improper.
Plato put the different passions and appetites that are the
natural though sometimes rebellious subjects of this ruling
force into two classes or orders. (ii) Passions based on pride
and resentment, i.e. on what the scholastics call ‘the irascible
part’ of the soul: ambition, animosity, love of honour and
fear of shame, desire for victory, superiority, and revenge. In
short, all the passions that lead us to speak metaphorically of
people as having ‘spirit’ or ‘natural fire’. [Let ‘irascible’ be
defined
here by how it is used here. Outside the Platonic context it
means ‘angry’
or ‘irritable’.] (iii) Passions based on the love of pleasure, i.e.
on
what the scholastics call ‘the concupiscible part’ of the soul:
all the appetites of the body, the love of ease and security,
and of all sensual gratifications. [The only use for
‘concupiscible’
is this Platonic one. It is pronounced con-kew-pissible.]
140
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-318-320.jpg)
![that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit who is
connected with us if, though we do him no harm, we don’t
exert ourselves to serve him and to place him in the situation
in which the impartial spectator would be pleased to see
141
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
propriety
him. [Smith reports on names that have been given to the
kinds of justice corresponding to the two senses by Aristotle
and the Scholastics and by Hugo Grotius, the pioneering
theorist of international law. Then he introduces a third
sense of ‘justice’ which he thinks exists in all languages. It
is a sense in which any mistake in morals or valuation can
be described as not doing justice to something-or-other. He
concludes:] This third sense is evidently what Plato took
justice to be, which is why he holds that justice includes
within itself the perfection of every sort of virtue.
That, then, is Plato’s account of the nature of virtue, or of
the mental temperament that is the proper object of praise
and approval. He says that virtue is the state of mind in
which every faculty stays within its proper sphere without
encroaching on the territory of any other, and does its proper
work with exactly the degree of strength and vigour that
belongs to it. This is obviously just what I have been saying
about the propriety of conduct.
(2) According to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics II.5 and
III.6) virtue consists in being habitually central, evenly
balanced, non-extreme, according to right reason. [Smith:
‘consists in the habit of mediocrity according’ etc.] In his view](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-321-320.jpg)
![every
particular virtue lies in a kind of middle between two op-
posite vices—one offending by being too much affected by
something and the other offending by being too little affected
by it. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the
middle between the opposite vices of •cowardice and of •wild
rashness, each of which offends through being •too much or
•too little affected by fearful things. The virtue of frugality
lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, each of which
involves •too little or •too much attention to the objects of
self-interest. Similarly, magnanimity lies in the middle
between arrogance and pusillanimity [see note on page 6], each
of which involves a •too extravagant or •too weak sentiment
of one’s own worth and dignity. I need hardly point out that
this account of virtue also corresponds pretty exactly with
what I have already said about the propriety and impropriety
of conduct.
Actually, according to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics II.1-
4), virtue consists not so much in those moderate and right
affections as in the habit of this moderation. To understand
this you have to know that •virtue can be considered as
a quality of an •action or of a •person. Considered as the
quality of an •action, it consists in the reasonable moderate-
ness of the affection from which the action comes, whether
or not this disposition is habitual to the person (Aristotle
agreed with this). Considered as the quality of a •person, it
consists in the habit of this reasonable moderateness, i.e.
in its having become the customary and usual disposition
of that person’s mind. Thus, an action that comes from a
passing fit of generosity is undoubtedly a generous action,
but the man who performs it may not be a generous person
because this may be the only generous thing he ever did.
The motive and disposition of heart from which this action
came may have been right and proper; but this satisfactory](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-322-320.jpg)
![frame of mind seems to have come from a passing whim
rather than from anything steady or permanent in the man’s
character, so it can’t reflect any great honour on him. . . .
If a single action was sufficient to qualify the person who
performed it as virtuous, the most worthless of mankind
could claim to have all the virtues, because there is no
man who hasn’t occasionally acted with prudence, justice,
temperance, and fortitude! But though single good actions
don’t reflect much praise on the person who performs them,
a single vicious action performed by someone whose conduct
is usually proper greatly diminishes and sometimes destroys
altogether our opinion of his virtue. A single action of this
kind shows well enough that his habits are not perfect, and
142
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
propriety
that he can’t be depended on as we might have thought he
could, judging by his usual behaviour.
When Aristotle made virtue consist in practical habits
(Magna Moralia I.1), he was probably saying this against
Plato’s thesis that just sentiments and reasonable judgments
concerning what is fit to be done or to be avoided are all that
is needed for the most perfect virtue. [In the next sentence,
‘science’ is used in its early modern sense of ‘rigorously
disciplined,
deductively = “demonstratively” established and organized body
of knowl-
edge’.] Virtue, according to Plato, might be considered as a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-323-320.jpg)
![‘In what sense are some things said to be •according
to our nature, and others to be •contrary to it? It
is in the sense in which we consider ourselves as
separated and detached from everything else. ·Here is
an analogue of the point I am making·:
When you consider your right foot as separated and
detached, you can say that it’s according to the nature
of the foot to be always clean. But if you consider it as
a ·functioning· foot and not as detached from the rest
of the body, it’s fitting for it sometimes to trample in
the dirt, sometimes to tread on thorns, perhaps even
to be amputated for the sake of the whole body; and if
those things can’t happen to it, it is no longer a foot.
Now, apply that to how we think about ourselves.
What are you? A man. If you consider yourself as
separated and detached ·from the rest of the universe·,
it is according to your nature to live to old age, and to
be rich and healthy. But if you consider yourself as a
man and as a part of a whole ·universe·, the needs of
that universe may make it fitting for you sometimes
to be sick, sometimes to suffer the inconvenience of
a sea voyage, sometimes to be in want—and perhaps
eventually to die before your time. Why, then, do
you complain? Don’t you know that by this kind
of complaint you stop being a man?, just as the
insistence on the foot’s cleanliness stops it from being
a foot?’
[Smith devotes a long further paragraph to a more detailed
statement of the Stoic’s view that whatever happens to him
is a matter for rejoicing because it must be what God wanted
to happen. In a paragraph after that, he makes the point
that on this Stoic view there is almost no basis for a good
man to prefer any course of events to any other. Continuing:]
The propriety or impropriety of his projects might be of great](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-327-320.jpg)
![consequence to him, but their success or failure couldn’t
matter to him at all. If he preferred some outcomes to others,
if he chose some states of affairs x and rejected others y, it
144
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
propriety
was not because he regarded x as in any way intrinsically
better than y, or thought that x would make him happier
than y would; it would be simply because the propriety
of action, the rule that the Gods had given him for the
direction of his conduct, required him to choose x and reject
y. All his affections were absorbed and swallowed up in two
great affections; (a) for the discharge of his own duty, and
(b) for the greatest possible happiness of all rational and
sentient beings. For (b) he relied with perfect confidence on
the wisdom and power of the great Superintendent of the
universe. His only anxiety was about satisfying affection
(a)—not about the outcome but about the propriety of his
own endeavours. . . .
[Now Smith offers three book-pages of development of the
idea that for a good Stoic—one whose passions are under
control and whose only concern is to act rightly—it will
be ‘easy’ to do the right thing in all situations: whether
in prosperity or in adversity, all he has to do is to thank
Jupiter for having treated him in the way He did. Smith
speaks (on the Stoic’s behalf) of the ‘exalted delight’ a good
man has in facing hard times and never acting wrongly. He
moves smoothly on from this to a paragraph leading to a
long discussion of suicide:]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-328-320.jpg)
![The Stoics seem to have regarded human life as a game
of great skill in which there was also an element of chance
(or what the man in the street takes to be chance). In such
games the stake is commonly a trifle, and the whole pleasure
of the game arises from playing well, fairly, and skillfully. If
in such a game a good player has bad luck and happens
to lose, he should be cheerful about this, not seriously sad.
He has made no mistakes, has done nothing that he ought
to be ashamed of; and he has enjoyed the whole pleasure
of the game. And on the other hand if by chance a bad
player happens to win, that success can’t give him much
satisfaction. He is humiliated by the memory of all the
mistakes he has made. Even during the play he is cut
off from much of the pleasure that the game can give by
his constant doubts—unpleasant frightened doubts—about
whether his plays are going to succeed, and his repeated
embarrassment at seeing that he has played badly. The Stoic
view is that human life, with all the advantages that can
possibly accompany it, should be seen as a mere two-penny
stake—something too insignificant to warrant any anxious
concern. . . .
The Stoics said that human life itself, as well as every
good or bad thing that can accompany it, can properly be
chosen and can properly be rejected, depending on the
circumstances. If your actual situation involves more circum-
stances that are agreeable to nature [Smith’s phrase] than ones
that are contrary to it—more circumstances that are objects
of choice than of rejection—then •life is the proper object of
your choice; if you are to behave rightly, you should remain
in •it. But if your actual situation involves, with no likelihood
of improvement, more circumstances that are contrary to
nature than ones agreeable to it—more circumstances that
are objects of rejection than of choice—then if you are wise
you’ll see •life itself as an object of rejection. You won’t](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-329-320.jpg)
![the superintending Power has managed things in such a
way that our condition in life is, on the whole, something it
is right to reject rather than to choose, then the great rule
of conduct that he has given us requires us to leave our
life. That is when we might be said to hear the awful and
benevolent voice of that divine Being calling on us to do so.
That’s why the Stoics thought that it might be the duty
of a wise man to move out of life though he was perfectly
happy, and the duty of a weak man to remain in it though
he was inevitably miserable. [Smith’s explanation of this can
be put more briefly than he does. The wise man’s life might
be going badly enough to be ‘a proper object of rejection’
although he was wise enough to be perfectly happy because
the universe was unrolling as it should; the weak man’s life
might be going well enough to make it wrong for him to reject
it, although he wasn’t smart enough to avail himself of his
opportunities and was therefore unhappy with a life that
was mainly going well for him. Smith supports this with a
reference to Cicero’s De Finibus III.]
[Then two book-pages on the historical background of
the Stoic doctrine. Stoicism flourished, Smith says, at
a time when the Greek city-states were at war with one
another; the war was extraordinarily cruel and destructive,
and most of the states were too small to offer their citizens
much security. In this context, Stoicism provided Greek
‘patriots and heroes’ with something that could support
them if they eventually had to face slavery, torture, or death.
Smith compares this with the ‘death-song’ that an ‘American
savage’ prepared in advance as something he could defiantly
sing while being tortured to death. The philosophies of
Plato and Aristotle also offered ‘a death-song that the Greek
patriots and heroes might use on the proper occasions’, but
Smith says that ‘the Stoics had prepared by far the most
animated and spirited song’. Writing about the ancient Greek](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-331-320.jpg)
![philosophers generally, and not just the Stoics, Smith says
memorably:] The few fragments that have come down to
us of what the ancient philosophers had written on these
subjects constitute one of the most instructive remains of
antiquity, and also one of the most interesting. The spirit
and manliness of their doctrines make a wonderful contrast
with the desponding, plaintive, and whining tone of some
modern systems. . . .
[Smith remarks at length that suicide ‘seems never to
have been common among the Greeks’ and that it ‘appears
to have been much more prevalent among the proud Romans
than it ever was among the lively, ingenious, and accommo-
dating Greeks’. He discusses some individual Greek cases,
and questions the reliability of the reports. In the time of the
Roman emperors, he says, ‘this method of dying seems to
have been for a long time perfectly fashionable’—an exercise
of vanity and exhibitionism!]
The push towards suicide, the impulse that offers to
teach us that the violent action of taking one’s own life
146
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
propriety
ought sometimes to be applauded and approved, seems to
be purely something that philosophy has produced. When
Nature is sound and healthy she never seems to prompt us
to suicide. It’s true that there is a species of melancholy
(a disease to which human nature. . . .is unhappily subject)
that seems to be accompanied with what one might call
an irresistible desire for self-destruction. This disease has](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-332-320.jpg)
![just as
a man who is only an inch below the surface of the
water can’t breathe any more than someone who is a
hundred yards down,
so also
148
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
propriety
a man who hasn’t completely subdued all his private,
partial, and selfish passions, who has an earnest
desire for anything other than universal happiness,
who hasn’t completely emerged from that abyss of
misery and disorder that he has been in because of
his anxiety for the satisfaction of those private, partial,
and selfish passions, can’t breathe the free air of
liberty and independence, can’t enjoy the security and
happiness of the wise man, any more than someone
who is enormously far from that situation. [Here and in
what follows, ‘partial’ means ‘not impartial’, or ‘biased’.]
Just as all the actions of the wise man are perfect, equally
perfect, so all the actions of the man who hasn’t arrived
at this supreme wisdom are faulty, and, according to some
of the Stoics, equally faulty. One truth can’t be more true
than another, and one falsehood can’t be more false than
another; and similarly one honourable action can’t be more
honourable than another, nor can one shameful action be
more shameful than another. . . . A man who has killed a
cock improperly and without a sufficient reason is morally](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-337-320.jpg)
![on a par with a man who has murdered his father.
The first of those two paradoxes seems bad enough,
but the second is obviously too absurd to deserve seri-
ous consideration. It’s so absurd, indeed, that one sus-
pects that it must have been somewhat misunderstood or
misrepresented. I can’t believe that men such as Zeno
or Cleanthes—men whose eloquence was said to be both
simple and very uplifting—could be the authors of these
two paradoxes of Stoicism, or of most of the others. The
others are in general mere impertinent quibbles, which do
so little honour to Stoicism that I shall say no more about
them. I’m inclined to attribute them to Chrysippus. He was
indeed a disciple and follower of Zeno and Cleanthes; but
from what we know of him he seems to have been a mere
argumentative pedant, with no taste or elegance of any kind.
He may have been the first who put Stoicism into the form
of a scholastic or technical system of artificial definitions,
divisions, and subdivisions; which may be one the most
effective ways of extinguishing whatever good sense there is
in a moral or metaphysical doctrine! It is easy to believe that
such a man could have construed too literally some of the
lively expressions that his masters used in describing the
happiness of the man of perfect virtue and the unhappiness
of whoever fell short of that character.
[Smith says that the Stoics in general seem to have
allowed that there are different degrees of wrongness of
behaviour, and he reports some technical terms that were
used in this connection by Cicero and Seneca. None of this
is needed for what comes next. Having said that the main
lines of the moral philosophies of Plato and of Aristotle are
in line with his own views, Smith now implies that Stoicism
is not. But he doesn’t put it like that. Rather, he says:]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-338-320.jpg)
![individual, according to his actual level of sensitivity, and all
the reasonings of Stoicism can’t stop that. However, the judg-
ments of the man within the breast might be considerably
affected by those reasonings, and that great inmate might be
taught by them to attempt to overawe all our private, partial,
and selfish affections into a more or less perfect tranquillity.
Directing the judgments of this inmate is the great purpose
of all systems of morality. There’s no doubt that the Stoic
philosophy had great influence on the character and conduct
of its followers; and though it might sometimes have incited
them to unnecessary violence, its general tendency was to
stir them up to perform actions of heroic magnanimity and
extensive benevolence.
(4) [This follows the treatment of (3) Stoicism which began on
page 143.] Besides these ancient systems there are some
modern ones according to which virtue consists in propriety,
i.e. in the suitableness of •the affection from which we act to
•the cause or object that arouses it. Clark’s system places
virtue in
150
Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with
prudence
•acting according to the relations of things, i.e. in
•regulating our conduct according to whether a pro-
posed action would fit, or be congruous with, certain
things or certain relations;
Wollaston’s system places virtue in
•acting according to the truth of things, according to
their proper nature and essence, i.e. •treating them](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-341-320.jpg)
![prudence
to be really obvious—and not in need of proof—that bodily
pain and pleasure are always natural objects of desire and
aversion, and that they are the only ultimate objects of
those passions. According to him, anything else that is
either desired or avoided is so because of its tendency to
produce one or other of those sensations. •The tendency to
procure pleasure makes power and riches desirable, as the
contrary tendency to produce pain makes poverty an object
of aversion. •Honour and reputation are valued because the
esteem and love of those we live with are a great help in
getting us pleasure and defending us from pain. •Disgrace
and notoriety are to be avoided because the hatred, contempt
and resentment of those we lived with destroys all security
and lays us wide open to the greatest bodily evils.
[The next two pages expound the views of Epicurus, and that’s
all
they do. Smith resumes speaking for himself in the paragraph
starting
‘Such is the doctrine of Epicurus. . . ’ on page 153.]
All the pleasures and pains of the •mind are ultimately
derived from those of the •body. The mind is happy when
it thinks of the past pleasures of the body and hopes for
more to come; and it is miserable when it thinks of pains
that the body has endured, and dreads the same or greater
thereafter.
But the pleasures and pains of the mind, though ulti-
mately derived from those of the body, are vastly greater
than their originals. The body feels only the sensation of the
•present instant, whereas the mind also feels the •past by
memory and the •future by anticipation, and consequently](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-344-320.jpg)
![to me as an option; it would put an end to all sensation,
whether of pain or of pleasure, and can’t be regarded as an
evil. When we exist, death doesn’t; and when death exists,
we don’t; so death can’t matter to us.
If the actual sensation of positive pain is, in itself, •so
little to be feared, the sensation of pleasure is •still less to
152
Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with
prudence
be desired. The sensation of pleasure is naturally much
less forceful [Smith: ‘pungent’] than that of pain; so if pain can
take so little from the happiness of a well-disposed mind,
pleasure could add hardly anything to it. When the body
is free from pain and the mind from fear and anxiety, the
added sensation of bodily pleasure can’t matter much; it
might diversify someone’s mental content but can’t properly
be said to increase the happiness of his situation.
Thus, the most perfect state of human nature, the most
complete happiness that man is capable of enjoying, is bodily
ease and security or tranquillity of mind. To obtain this great
end of natural desire is the sole object of all the virtues,
which are desirable not on their own account but because
of their tendency to bring about this situation ·of ease and
tranquillity·.
Take the case of prudence. It is the source and energiser
of all the virtues, but it isn’t desirable on its own account.
That careful and laborious and circumspect state of mind—
always on the watch for even the most distant consequences](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-346-320.jpg)
![important point—the soberest and most judicious. [Hutcheson
died, aged 52, a dozen years before Smith wrote this.]
155
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with
benevolence
Many aspects of human nature support the idea that
virtue consists in benevolence. I have pointed out that proper
benevolence
•is the most graceful and agreeable of all the affections,
that
•it is recommended to us by a double sympathy, that
•because it necessarily tends to do good, it is a proper
object of gratitude and reward,
and that for all these reasons
•it appears to our natural sentiments to have a higher
merit than any other virtue.
I have also remarked that even the excesses [Smith writes
‘weaknesses’; evidently a slip] of benevolence are not
disagreeable
to us, whereas those of every other passion are always
extremely disgusting. Everyone loathes excessive malice,
excessive selfishness, and excessive resentment; but the
most excessive indulgence even of partial friendship is not
so offensive. . . .
Just as benevolence gives to the actions it produces
a beauty that is superior to all others, so the lack](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-353-320.jpg)
![of benevolence—and even more the contrary inclination,
malevolence—gives to all its manifestations in behaviour
a special ugliness all of its own. Pernicious actions are often
punishable simply because they show a lack of sufficient
attention to the happiness of our neighbour.
Besides all this, Hutcheson observed that when an action
that was supposed to have come from benevolent affections
turns out to have had some other motive, our sense of
the merit of this action is lessened in proportion to how
much influence this motive is believed to have had over the
action. (Hutcheson, Inquiry Concerning Virtue, sections 1
and 2 [thus Smith’s reference; actually, that’s the title of a work
by
Shaftesbury; Smith presumably meant to refer to Hutcheson’s
Inquiry
into the original of our idea of Virtue].) If an action supposed to
come from •gratitude turns out to have arisen from •an
expectation of some new favour, or if an action supposed
to have come from •public spirit turns out to have been
motivated by a •hope for reward-money, such a discovery
will entirely destroy all notion of merit or praiseworthiness in
either of these actions. Thus, the mixture of any selfish
motive. . . .lessens or abolishes the merit that the action
would otherwise have had, and Hutcheson thought that
this made it obvious that virtue must consist in pure and
disinterested benevolence alone.
And when an action that is commonly supposed to come
from a selfish motive turns out to have arisen from a benev-
olent one, that greatly enhances our sense of the action’s
merit. . . . This fact seemed to Hutcheson to be a further
confirmation of his thesis that benevolence is the only thing
that can make any action virtuous.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-354-320.jpg)
![And finally he thought that the correctness of his account
of virtue is shown by the fact that in all the disputes of
casuists [= ‘theorists of applied ethics’] concerning the
rectitude
of conduct, the public good is the standard to which they
constantly refer, thereby all accepting that whatever tends
to promote the happiness of mankind is right and laudable
and virtuous, and whatever tends to go against it is wrong,
blameworthy, and vicious. In debates about passive obe-
dience and the right of resistance, the sole disagreement
among men of sense concerns the answer to this:
When privileges are invaded, which response is likely
to bring the greater evils—universal submission or
temporary insurrection?
As for this question:
Would the upshot that tended most to the happiness
of mankind be the morally good one?
—nobody, Hutcheson said, even bothered to ask it!
156
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with
benevolence
Since benevolence is the only motive that can make an
action virtuous, the greater the benevolence that an action
shows the greater is the praise that it deserves.
The actions that aim at the happiness of a great commu-
nity, because they show a more enlarged benevolence than](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-355-320.jpg)
![do actions aiming only at the happiness of a smaller system,
are correspondingly more virtuous. So the most virtuous
of all affections is the one that embraces as its object the
happiness of all thinking beings; and the least virtuous of
the affections that could be called ‘virtuous’ at all is the
one that aims no further than at the happiness of some one
individual—a son, a brother, a friend. [See note about
‘affection’
on page 116.]
The perfection of virtue, ·Hutcheson held·, consists in
•directing all our actions to promote the greatest possi-
ble good,
•submitting all inferior affections to the desire for the
general happiness of mankind,
•regarding oneself as merely one of the many, whose
prosperity is to be pursued no further than is consis-
tent with the prosperity of the whole.
Self-love can never be virtuous in any degree or in any direc-
tion, ·Hutcheson said·. When it obstructs the general good,
it is vicious. When its only effect is to make the individual
take care of his own happiness, it is merely innocent—not
deserving of praise or blame. A benevolent action is especially
virtuous if it is performed in defiance of some strong motive
from self-interest, because that demonstrate the strength
and vigour of that person’s benevolent drive.
Hutcheson was so far from allowing self-love ever to be a
motive of virtuous actions that, according to him, the merit
of a benevolent action is lessened if the person wanted the
pleasure of self-approval, the comfortable applause of his
own conscience. He saw this as a selfish motive which, so](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-356-320.jpg)
![this proper degree.
Chapter 4: Licentious systems
All the systems I have presented assume that there is a real
and essential distinction between vice and virtue, whatever
these qualities may consist in. There is a real and essential
difference between (1) the propriety and impropriety of any
affection, between (3) benevolence and any other motive for
action, between (2) real prudence and shortsighted folly or
precipitate rashness. And all of them contribute to encourag-
ing praiseworthy dispositions and discouraging blameworthy
ones.
[Smith now gives the three a paragraph each in which
the system in question is criticised for not getting the moral
balance exactly right. This repeats things he has said already,
and is given here just to set the scene for what will come in
the next paragraph but one.]
Despite these defects, the general tendency of each of
those three systems is to encourage the best and most
laudable habits of the human mind; and it would be a good
thing for society if mankind in general (or even just the few
who claim to live according to some philosophical rule) were
to regulate their conduct by the precepts of any one of the
three. We may learn from each of them something that is
both valuable and peculiar. [Smith goes into details about
this, in praise of each of the three, with a special emphasis
on Epicurus. Then:]
There is, however, another system that seems to remove
entirely the distinction between vice and virtue, so that
its tendency is wholly pernicious; I mean the system of
Mandeville, ·presented in his book The Fable of the Bees; or
Private Vices, Public Benefits·. [Mandeville died 26 years](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-361-320.jpg)
![before the
present work was published.] Although this author’s opinions
are
in almost every respect erroneous, some aspects of human
nature, when looked at in a certain way, seem at first sight
to favour them. When they are described and exaggerated
by Mandeville’s lively and humorous though coarse and
rustic eloquence, they give his doctrines an air of truth and
probability that is apt to impose on the unskillful.
Mandeville regards anything done from a sense of propri-
ety, from a concern for what is commendable and praisewor-
thy, as being done from a love of praise and commendation—
or in his words ‘done from vanity’. Man, he observes,
is naturally much more interested in his own happiness
than in anyone else’s, and it is impossible for him ever to
prefer—really, in his heart—someone else’s prosperity to
his own. Whenever he appears to do so, we can be sure
that he is deceiving us, and acting from the same selfish
motives as he does at all other times. One of the strongest of
his selfish passions is vanity—he is always easily flattered
and greatly delighted with the applause of those around
159
Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems
him. When he appears to sacrifice his own interests to
those of his companions, he knows that his conduct will
be highly agreeable to their self-love and that they won’t
fail to express their satisfaction by giving him extravagant
praises. He thinks that the pleasure he’ll get from this
outweighs the interest that he abandons in order to get it.
So •his conduct on this occasion is really just as selfish, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-362-320.jpg)
![•comes across as ‘important’ although he isn’t, or
•gets himself congratulated on adventures that in fact
he didn’t have, or
•claims to be the author of something he didn’t write;
that person really is vain in the proper sense of the word.
Also:] (3) Someone is rightly said to be guilty of vanity if
he •isn’t contented with the silent sentiments of esteem
and approval, •is fonder of noisy acclamations than of the
sentiments themselves, •is never satisfied except when his
own praises are ringing in his ears, •tries really hard to get
external marks of respect, •is fond of titles, of compliments,
of being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in
public places with the appearance of deference and attention.
This trivial passion is entirely different from either of the
other two; it’s a passion of the lowest and least of mankind,
just as (1) and (2) are passions of the noblest and greatest.
But though these three passions—(1) the desire to make
ourselves proper objects of honour and esteem, i.e. to become
honourable and estimable, (2) the desire to acquire honour
and esteem by really deserving those sentiments, and (3) the
trivial desire for praise no matter how or why it comes—are
widely different; though two are always approved of while
the third never fails to be despised; there is a certain remote
affinity among them; and that is what the humorous and
entertaining eloquence of this lively author has exaggerated
and used to deceive his readers. There is an affinity between
(3) vanity and (2) the love of true glory, in that both these
passions aim at getting esteem and approval. But they are
different in this—(2) is a just, reasonable, and equitable
passion, while (3) is unjust, absurd, and ridiculous. The
160](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-364-320.jpg)
![Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems
man who wants to be esteemed for something that really
is estimable wants only what he is justly entitled to—you
would be wronging him by refusing it. Whereas a man who
wants esteem on any other terms is asking for something
that he has no just claim to. [Smith adds details about ways
in which the (3) person is sure to behave badly. Then:]
There is also an affinity between (1) the desire to become
honourable and estimable and (2) the desire for honour
and esteem, between the love of virtue and the love of true
glory. They are alike in both aiming at being honourable
and noble, and also in a respect in which (2) the love of true
glory resembles (3) what is properly called vanity—namely
having some reference to the sentiments of others. The
man of the greatest magnanimity who (1) desires virtue for
its own sake and cares least about what mankind actually
think of him is still delighted with thoughts of what they
should think, with an awareness that though he may be
neither honoured nor applauded he is still a proper object of
honour and applause. . . . But there is still a great difference
between (1) and (2). . . . The man (1) who acts solely from
a concern for what is right and fit to be done, a concern
for what is a proper object of esteem and approval even if
these sentiments are never bestowed on him, acts from the
most sublime and godlike motive that human nature is even
capable of conceiving. In contrast with that, the man (2) who
doesn’t just want to •deserve approval but is also anxious
to •get it, though he too is praiseworthy in the main, has
motives with a greater mixture of human infirmity in them.
He risks being humiliated by the ignorance and injustice
of mankind, and his happiness is vulnerable to the envy of
his rivals and the folly of the public. The happiness of (1)
the other is altogether secure and independent of fortune,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-365-320.jpg)
![notice it and want to have a name for it; the chosen name
in English being ‘lust’. When someone has this desire in a
161
Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems
degree that doesn’t upset onlookers, they may completely
overlook it, and if they do want to talk about it they give
it a name that expresses the fact of its being kept down to
a moderate level, the name being ‘chastity’. Smith’s other
example is the love of pleasure, and the words ‘luxury’ for an
extreme degree of this passion and ‘temperance’ for the fact
that someone’s love of pleasure is suitably bounded. [That
was true of ‘luxury’ in his day, though not in ours.]
Mandeville’s trick
has been to assume that ‘he is temperate’ means that he has
no love of pleasure, and that ‘he is chaste’ means that he
has no love of sex; and he claims to uncover the scandalous
fact that supposedly temperate people do have some love of
pleasure, and that supposedly chaste ones have some love of
sex. By proceeding in this way, Smith continues:] Mandeville
imagines that he has entirely demolished the reality of the
virtues of temperance and chastity. . . . But those virtues
don’t require that one be entirely numb to the objects of
the passions they try govern. They aim only at keeping the
violence of those passions below the level at which they might
harm the individual or disturb or offend society.
The great fallacy of Mandeville’s book is its representing
any passion that is
•vicious when it occurs with a certain intensity and
aims in a certain direction](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-367-320.jpg)
![Such is the system of Mandeville, which ·was published
45 years ago and· once made so much noise in the world. It
may not have given rise to more vice than there would have
been without it; but it did at least encourage vice that arose
from other causes to appear more boldly and to proclaim
the corruptness of its motives with a bold openness that had
never been heard of before.
This system. . . .could never have imposed on so many
people, or given rise to such a general alarm among the
friends of better principles, if it hadn’t in some respects
bordered on the truth. ·I am not saying that no theory can
get widespread acceptance unless it is close to the truth·.
162
Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems
A theory in natural philosophy [here = ‘science’] may seem
plausible and be for a long time generally accepted, without
having any basis in nature or any sort of resemblance to the
truth. Descartes’s ‘vortices’ were regarded by a ingenious
nation, ·the French·, for nearly a century as a satisfactory
account of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet it
has been demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction that these
supposed causes of those wonderful effects not only don’t
actually exist but are utterly impossible, and that if they
did exist they couldn’t produce the effects that Descartes
ascribed to them. But it’s not like that with systems of moral
philosophy. An author claiming to account for the origin of
our moral sentiments can’t deceive us so grossly, or depart
so far from all resemblance to the truth ·as did the Cartesian](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-369-320.jpg)
![certain actions or affections produce in us. So there they are,
the three different sources that have been assigned for the
principle [see note below] of approval: (1) self-love, (2) reason,
(3) sentiment.
Before I go on to describe those different systems, I
should remark that finding the right answer to this question,
though it’s very important for moral theory, has no practical
significance. The question about the nature of virtue is
bound to have some influence on our notions of right and
wrong in many particular cases, but the question about the
principle of approval can’t possibly have any such effect. It’s
163
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems tracing approval back to
self-love
only from philosophical curiosity that we try to discover what
the inner contrivance or mechanism is from which those
different notions or sentiments arise. [In the early modern
period,
the word ‘principle’ was sometimes used with the meaning we
have for
it, in which a principle is a proposition with a special status; but
it was
much more often used to mean ‘source’ or ‘cause’ or ‘drive’—
something
entirely non-propositional that brings about some event or state
of affairs.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-371-320.jpg)
![In the present version ‘principle’ is usually replaced by one of
those other
words when it has been used in this early-modern sense—e.g. in
the
heading of the present Section, where ‘principle’ has been
replaced by
‘source’. We have just met an agreeably clear bit of evidence of
how the
land lies: after saying that his topic is a question about the
principle of
approval, Smith goes straight on to say that it’s an inquiry into
the inner
contrivance or mechanism from which approval arises.]
Chapter 1: Systems that trace the source of
approval back to self-love
Those who explain approval as arising from self-love don’t
all account for it in the same manner, and all their different
systems contain a good deal of confusion and imprecision.
According to Hobbes and many of his followers—such as
Pufendorf and Mandeville—man is driven to take refuge in
society not by any natural love for his own kind but because
without the help of others he is incapable of surviving with
ease or safety. According to this theory, society becomes
necessary for a man, and anything that favours the support
and welfare of •society he regards as having an indirect
tendency to promote •his own interests; and anything that
is likely to disturb or destroy •society he regards as to some
extent harmful or pernicious to •himself. Virtue is the great
support of society, and vice its great disturber. That is why
virtue is agreeable to every man and vice is offensive to him;](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-372-320.jpg)
![existence of civil government depends on people’s obeying
the supreme magistrate [here = ‘the ruler’]. The moment he
loses his authority all government is at an end. So, Hobbes
concludes, because ·a desire for· self-preservation teaches
men to applaud whatever tends to promote the welfare of
society and to blame whatever is likely to harm it, that same
desire ought to teach them to applaud all instances of obedi-
ence to the civil magistrate and to blame all disobedience and
rebellion—it •ought to, and it •will if they think and speak
consistently. Thus, the ideas of laudable and blameworthy
ought coincide with the ideas of obedient and disobedient;
so the laws of the civil magistrate ought to be regarded as
the sole ultimate standards of what is just and unjust, right
and wrong.
It was Hobbes’s announced intention, in publishing these
notions, to bring men’s consciences immediately under the
civil powers—not the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence
and ambition he regarded as the principal source of the
disorders of society (he had been taught to think this by
the example of his own times, ·which covered the entire
Cromwellian revolution against Charles I·). This made his
doctrine especially offensive to theologians, who accordingly
vented their indignation against him with great ferocity and
bitterness. It was also offensive to all sound moralists
because it supposed that there is no natural distinction
between •right and •wrong, that •these could be changed,
being dependent on what the civil magistrate chooses to
command. So Hobbes’s account of things was attacked from
all directions, and with all sorts of weapons, by sober reason
as well as by furious declamation.
In order to refute this odious doctrine it was necessary to
prove that in advance of any law or man-made institutions
the ·human· mind was naturally endowed with a faculty by](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-377-320.jpg)
![of approval
mind hadn’t yet been carefully examined and distinguished
from one another. [This could refer to Hume’s work; he
published
his Treatise and both Enquiries in the 28 years between the
publication
of that work of Cudworth’s and Smith’s writing of the present
work.
(Cudworth’s book was first published 43 years after his death.)]
When
this controversy with ·the views of· Hobbes was being carried
on with such warmth and keenness, no-one had thought
of any other faculty from which such moral ideas could be
supposed to arise. And so at that time it was widely accepted
that the essences of virtue and vice consist not in conformity
or disagreement of human actions with •the law of a superior,
but in their conformity or disagreement with •reason, which
thereby came to be regarded as the original source and driver
of approval and disapproval.
That virtue consists in conformity to reason is true in
some respects, and reason can rightly considered as in some
sense the source and driver of approval and disapproval,
and of all solid judgments about right and wrong. It is
by reason that we discover the general rules of justice by
which we ought to regulate our actions; and it is by reason
that we form the more vague and indeterminate ideas of
what is prudent, or decent, or generous or noble, which we
carry around with us, doing our best to model the tenor
of our conduct on them [see note on ‘tenor’ on page 85]. Like
all general maxims, the general maxims of morality are
based on experience and induction. We observe in a variety
of particular cases what pleases or displeases our moral](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-379-320.jpg)
![case necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice equally
certainly displeases the mind, then what reconciles us to
virtue and alienates us from vice can’t be reason; it has to
be immediate sense and feeling. [Smith now offers a short
paragraph in which he seems to lose track of what he wanted
to say. Its main point is to liken distinguishing virtue from
vice to distinguishing pleasure from pain.]
167
Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making sentiment the
source of approval
But because reason can in a certain sense be regarded as
the source of •approval and disapproval, •these sentiments
were carelessly regarded as basically flowing from the opera-
tions of reason; and that went on for a long time. Hutcheson
had the merit of being the first who distinguished with any
degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions may
be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are
founded on immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations
of the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and I think
so unanswerably, that any remaining controversy about the
subject must be due either to inattention to what Hutcheson
wrote or to a superstitious attachment to certain forms of
expression. . . .
Chapter 3: Systems that make sentiment the
source of approval
Systems that make sentiment the source of approval can be
divided into two classes.
(1) According to some writers, our approvals express a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-381-320.jpg)
![sentiment of a special kind; we have a particular power
of perception that the mind employs when it encounters
certain actions or affections. Some of them have an agreeable
effect on this faculty, and they are given the labels ‘right’,
‘praiseworthy’, and ‘virtuous’. Others have a disagreeable
effect on the faculty, and are labelled ‘wrong’, ‘blameworthy’,
and ‘vicious’. These writers regard this sentiment as being of
a special nature distinct from every other, and as the effect
of a particular power of perception—·as distinct from any of
the others as the sense of sight is distinct from the sense
of hearing·—so they give it a name of its own and call it a
‘moral sense’.
(2) According to others, we can account for the business
of approving without having to suppose any new power of
perception that has never been heard of before. They think
that Nature acts here—as everywhere else—with the strictest
economy, producing a multitude of effects from a single
cause; and that all the effects ascribed to this peculiar faculty
of ‘moral sense’ can be explained in terms of sympathy, a
power that we obviously do have and that has always been
known and noticed. [In the last paragraph of this chapter Smith
briefly deals with (2); the rest of the chapter is all about (1).]
Hutcheson was at great pains to show that the approval
is not driven by self-love. [Smith refers to Hutcheson’s Inquiry
concerning Virtue; for what he probably meant, see note on
page 156.]
He demonstrated too that it couldn’t arise from any operation
of reason. The only remaining possibility, he thought, was
that approval is an exercise of a faculty of a special kind that
Nature has given to the human mind purely so as to produce
this one particular and important effect. With self-love and
reason ruled out, it didn’t occur to him that the desired
explanation might come from some other known faculty of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-382-320.jpg)
![(1) Whatever variations any specific kind of emotion may
undergo, it still preserves the general features that mark it off
as being of that kind; and these general features are always
more striking and noticeable than any variation which it
may undergo in particular cases. For example: anger is
an emotion of a specific kind, so that its general features
always stand out more clearly than all the variations it
undergoes in particular cases. Anger against a •man differs
somewhat from anger against a •woman, which differs from
anger against a •child. In each of those cases the general
passion of anger appears in a different version because of
the particular character of its object; you’ll easily see this if
you attend ·to what goes on in you when you are angry·. But
what predominate in all these cases are the general features
of the passion. To distinguish these you don’t need any
precise observation, whereas a delicate attention is needed if
one is to discover their variations; everyone is aware of the
general features, while hardly anyone notices the variations.
Well, then, if approval and disapproval were emotions of a
particular kind distinct from every other kind—in the way
gratitude and resentment are—we would expect that each
of them in all the variations it undergoes would still retain
the general features that mark it off as an emotion of that
particular kind, clear, plain, and easily distinguishable. But
that isn’t what happens. Attend to what you really feel on
different occasions when you approve of something. You’ll
find that your emotion in one case is often totally different
from [Smith’s phrase] what it is in another, and that you can’t
find any features that those particular emotional episodes
have in common. Your approval of a •tender, delicate, and
humane sentiment ·in someone else· is quite different from
your approval of sentiment that strikes you as •great, daring,
170](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-387-320.jpg)
![approvals and disapprove of improper approvals?
only one answer can possibly be given. It is this: When
•you approve ·or disapprove· of •his conduct, your frame of
mind coincides with •mine; and so I approve of your approval
·or disapproval· and consider it as to some extent morally
good. And when •your approval ·or disapproval· creates
a mis-match between your frame of mind and my own, I
disapprove of •it and consider it as to some extent morally
evil. So it must be granted that at least in this one ·kind
of· case, ·where A (dis)approves of B’s (dis)approval of C·,
what constitutes A’s moral (dis)approval is the coincidence
or opposition between A’s sentiments and B’s. And if that’s
what (dis)approval amounts to in this one ·kind of· case,
why shouldn’t it be what it amounts to in every other? Why
imagine a new power of perception to account for those
sentiments?
Any account of approval that makes it depend on a special
sentiment distinct from every other is open to the following
objection: It is strange that this sentiment, which Providence
undoubtedly intended to be the governing force in human
nature, should have been overlooked to such an extent that
it doesn’t have a name in any language! The phrase ‘moral
sense’ is a recent invention and can’t yet be considered as
part of the English tongue. It was only a few years ago that
the word ‘approbation’ [= ‘approval’] was appropriated to mean
something of this kind. In propriety of language we approve
of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, the form of a
building, the design of a machine, the flavor of a dish of meat.
The word ‘conscience’ doesn’t immediately stand for any
moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience
does presuppose the existence of •some such faculty, and
the word used properly signifies our awareness that we have
acted agreeably or contrary to •its directions. When love,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-389-320.jpg)
![hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment—and so many
other passions that are all supposed to be governed by force
of (dis)approval—have made themselves considerable enough
to get labels, isn’t it surprising that the sovereign of them
all should have been so little noticed that no-one apart from
a few philosophers has thought it worthwhile to give it a
name?. . . .
171
Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said
about the practical rules of morality
[Picking up now from paragraph (2) on page 168:] There’s
another
system that tries to account for the origin of our moral
sentiments in sympathy, but not in the way that I have been
trying to establish. I have already given some account of it
in Part IV above. This is a system that places virtue in utility,
and explains the pleasure with which the spectator surveys
the utility of any quality in terms of •sympathy with the
happiness of those who get the benefit of it. This is different
from the •sympathy by which we enter into the motives of
the benefactor and from the •sympathy by which we go along
with the gratitude of the beneficiaries. The causal story
here is like the story of what happens when we approve of
a well-designed machine. But no machine can be an object
of either of those two last mentioned sympathies—sympathy
with motives and sympathy with gratitude.
Section 4: What different authors have said about the practical
rules of morality](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-390-320.jpg)
![toc
I noted in Part III above [page 93] that the rules of justice
are the only rules of morality that are precise and detailed;
that the rules of all the other virtues are loose, vague, and
indeterminate. And I likened the rules of justice to rules
of grammar, and those of the other virtues to rules that
critics lay down for the achievement of what is sublime and
elegant in composition, presenting us with a general idea of
the perfection we ought to aim at rather than giving us any
certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.
Because the different rules of morality can differ so much
in their degrees of precision, authors wanting to collect and
digest them into systems have gone about this in two differ-
ent ways. (1) One set has followed through the whole loose
method that they were naturally directed to by considering
any one species of virtues. (2) The other set has universally
tried to introduce into their precepts the kind of precision
that only some of them are capable of. (1) have written like
critics, (2) like grammarians.
(1) The first group include all the ancient moralists, and
others. They have contented themselves with describing
the different vices and virtues in a general manner, and
with pointing out the ugliness and misery of one disposition
and the propriety and happiness of the other; they haven’t
pretended to lay down many precise rules that are to hold
good in all particular cases, with no exceptions. What they
have done are two things. (a) They have tried to say, as
precisely as language will allow,
•what the sentiment of the heart is on which each
specific kind of virtue is founded—what sort of in-
ternal feeling or emotion constitutes the essence of
friendship, of humaneness, of generosity, of justice, of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-391-320.jpg)
![ners. Their liveliness stirs up our natural love of virtue, and
increases our hatred of vice; by the rightness and delicacy
of their observations they can help to correct. . . .our natural
sentiments concerning the propriety of conduct,. . . .helping
us to get our behaviour more exactly right, by standards
that we might not have thought of without such instruction.
This treatment of the rules of morality is the science that is
properly called ‘Ethics’—a science that •can’t be done with
great precision (it’s like criticism in that respect) but that •is
nevertheless highly useful and agreeable. It is more open
than any other science to using the ornaments of eloquence,
through which it gives even the smallest rules of duty a
new importance. Its precepts, thus adorned, can produce
noble and lasting impressions on young people, getting them
while they are young enough to be flexible. . . . Anything that
precept and exhortation [= roughly ‘commanding and pleading’]
can
do to spur us to the practice of virtue is done by this science
delivered in this way. [That completes (1), started on page 172.]
173
Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said
about the practical rules of morality
(2) The second set of moralists •don’t content themselves
with characterizing in this general manner the tenor of
conduct that they want to recommend to us, but •work
to lay down exact and precise rules to govern every detail of
our behaviour. This group includes:
(a) All the casuists [= ‘applied-ethics theorists’] of the middle
and latter ages of the Christian church, as well as](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-394-320.jpg)
![It can happen that a good man ought to think himself
bound by a sacred and conscientious respect for the general
rules of justice to do something that it would be utterly
unjust to extort from him, or for any judge or arbiter to
impose on him by force. A trite example: a traveller is obliged
by his fear of death to promise a certain sum of money to
a highwayman. Should a promise that is in this manner
extorted by unjust force be regarded as obligatory? That
question has been much debated.
If we take it merely as a question of jurisprudence, the
answer is obvious: it would be absurd to suppose that the
highwayman can be entitled to use force to constrain the
traveller to keep his promise. Extorting the promise was a
crime that deserved severe punishment, and extorting the
promise-keeping would only be adding a second crime to the
first. . . . It would be a ridiculous absurdity to suppose that a
judge ought to enforce the keeping of such promises, or that
the magistrate [here = ‘the legal system’] ought to allow actions
at law concerning them. So if we consider this question as a
question in jurisprudence, the answer is easy.
But if we understand it rather as a question in casuistry,
it isn’t so easily answered. Consider a good man who
has a conscientious regard for the sacred rule of justice
commanding that all serious promises be kept: will he think
himself obliged to keep his promise to the highwayman?
There really is a question about this. Everyone will agree
that
•this good man isn’t obliged to care about the disap-
pointment of the wretch who brought him into this
situation, that
174](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-396-320.jpg)
![all cases without exception. A man who is quite frank and
easy in making promises of this kind, and who violates them
quite casually, is not someone we would choose as a friend
and companion. A gentleman who promised a highwayman
five pounds and didn’t pay would incur some blame. But if
the promised sum was very large, it might be more doubtful
what was the right thing to do. Suppose that keeping the
promise would entirely ruin the family of the promiser, or
that the sum was large enough be sufficient for promoting
the most useful purposes, then it would seem to be in some
measure criminal, or at least extremely improper, to put it
into such worthless hands merely for the sake of a punctilio
[= ‘a nit-picking point in morals’]. A man who beggared
himself,
or one who threw away a hundred thousand pounds (even
if he could afford that vast sum) so as to keep his word to
a thief would appear to the common sense of mankind to
be utterly absurd and extravagant. Such profusion would
seem inconsistent with his duty—with what he owed both
to himself and to others. . . . But it’s obviously impossible to
lay down any precise rule saying how much respect should
be had for such a promise, or what the greatest sum is that
could be owing because of it. This would vary according to
—the characters of the persons,
—their circumstances,
—the solemnity of the promise, and
—what in detail happened in the hold-up on the highway.
·Regarding that last item·: If the promiser had been treated
with a great deal of the sort of elaborate politeness that is
sometimes to be met with in really bad people, the promise
would seem to have more force than it would otherwise have
had. It may be said in general that](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-398-320.jpg)
![of chastity in the fair sex, a virtue of which (for the same
reasons) we are excessively protective; and our sentiments
concerning female chastity are not more delicate than our
sentiments concerning the breaking of promises. A breach
of chastity dishonours the woman irretrievably. No details
of the case. . . .can excuse it; no sorrow or repentance can
atone for it. We are so hard to satisfy in this respect that
even a rape dishonours ·the victim·: in our imagination the
innocence of her mind can’t wash out the pollution of her
body. It is just like that with breaking one’s word when
it has been solemnly pledged, even if it was to the most
worthless of mankind. Fidelity [here = ‘promise-keeping’] is
such
a necessary virtue that we see it as being in general due even
to those to whom nothing else is due, and whom we think
it lawful to kill and destroy. The culprit may plead that he
promised only in order to save his life, and that he broke
his promise because keeping it would be inconsistent with
some other respectworthy duty; these facts may alleviate his
dishonour but they can’t entirely wipe it out. He appears
to have been guilty of an action that has some degree of
shame inseparably connected with it in the imaginations of
men, He has broken a promise that he had solemnly said
he would keep; and his character, if not irretrievably stained
and polluted, at least has affixed to it a ridicule that it will be
difficult to get rid of entirely. No man who had gone through
an adventure of this kind would be fond of telling the story!
This example may serve to show how casuistry differs
from jurisprudence, even when both are dealing with the
obligations of the general rules of justice.
But though this difference is real and essential, though
those two sciences have quite different purposes, the same-
ness of their subject-matter has made them alike—so much](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-400-320.jpg)
![in. The shame they suffer from this acknowledgment is fully
compensated for by the lessening of their uneasiness that
nearly always comes from the sympathy of their confidant,
·the confessor·. They get relief from the discovery that they
are not entirely unworthy of respect; and that however their
past conduct may be censured, their present disposition is
approved of and may be sufficient to make up for the past, or
at least to bring them some degree of esteem from their friend,
·the confessor·. In those times of superstition a numerous
and skillfully contriving clergy insinuated themselves into the
confidence of almost every private family. [Smith continues
at some length describing the priests as cunningly working
themselves into the position of accepted moral authorities.
Then:] To qualify themselves as confessors thus became a
necessary part of the study of churchmen and divines; and
that led them to collect what are called ‘cases of conscience’,
difficult and delicate situations where it is hard to decide
what is the right thing to do. Such collections, they imagined,
might be useful to the directors of consciences and to those
who were to be directed; and that is how books of casuistry
were started.
The casuists mainly dealt with moral duties of which it is
true that
•they can at least to some extent be covered by general
rules, and
•the violation of them is naturally followed by some
degree of remorse and some fear of punishment.
The institution that gave rise to their works—·namely,
confession·—was designed soothe the terrors of conscience
that come with the infringement of such duties. But one can
fall short in some virtues without any severe moral worries
of this kind; no-one applies to his confessor for absolution](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-402-320.jpg)
![because he didn’t do the most generous, the most friendly,
or the most magnanimous thing that could possibly have
been done in his circumstances. The rule that is violated
in failures of this kind is usually not determinate, and—a
second point—is generally of such a kind that although one
might be entitled to honour and reward for obeying it, one
isn’t exposed to positive blame, censure, or punishment if
one violates it. The exercise of virtues of that kind seems
to have been regarded by the casuists as a sort of work
of supererogation, which couldn’t be strictly demanded
and which therefore didn’t have to be discussed by them.
[‘Supererogation’ is still a standard English word, if not a very
common
one. A supererogatory act is one that goes beyond the call of
duty, one
that it is praiseworthy to perform and not blameworthy to not-
perform.]
The breaches of moral duty that did come before the
tribunal of the confessor, and on that account came within
the s cope of the casuists, were chiefly of three kinds.
(1) Breaches of the rules of justice. These rules are all
explicit, firm, and definite, and violating them naturally
brings an •awareness of deserving and a •fear of suffering
punishment from both God and man.
(2) Breaches of the rules of chastity. In all the grosser
instances these are real breaches of the rules of justice, and
no-one can be guilty of them without doing unpardonable
harm to someone else. In lesser instances, where the
breaches amount only to violations of the exact rules of
conduct that ought to be observed in relations between
the two sexes, they aren’t violations of the rules of justice.
Still, they are generally violations of a pretty plain rule, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-403-320.jpg)
![attempts to get to know him, •the strengths and dangers
of being temperamentally reserved and secretive, and •the
upsettingness of learning that one has innocently passed
along a falsehood. He works a few mentions of the casuists
into all this, and eventually returns to them as his main
topic, with a quick recapitulation:]
So the chief topics of the writings of the casuists were
these:
(1) the conscientious respect that should be paid to the
rules of justice; how far we ought to respect the life
and property of our neighbour; the duty of restitution;
(2) the laws of chastity and modesty, and what consti-
tuted the ‘sins of concupiscence’, as they called them
[= ‘sins involving an immoderate desire for worldly things’];
(3) the rules of veracity, and the obligation of oaths,
promises, and contracts of all kinds.
The casuists in their works tried to take things that only
179
Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said
about the practical rules of morality
•feeling and sentiment can judge of, and to direct them by
•precise rules—tried and failed! How could one ascertain by
rules
•the exact point at which in any given case a delicate
sense of justice begins to turn into a trivial and weak](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-408-320.jpg)
![subjects that don’t admit of it was almost certain to betray
them into those dangerous errors; and at the same time it
made their works dry and disagreeable, full of abstruse and
metaphysical distinctions, but unable to arouse in the heart
any of those emotions that it is the principal use of books of
morality to arouse.
[In preparation for this paragraph, recall that Smith has
identified
three kinds of writings on morality, to which he gives the labels
‘ethics’,
‘casuistry’ and ‘jurisprudence’.] The two useful parts of moral
philosophy, therefore, are Ethics and Jurisprudence; Casu-
istry ought to be rejected altogether. •The ancient moralists
appear to have judged much better ·than did the mediaeval
and modern casuists·. When •they treated those same
subjects they didn’t make a parade of minute exactness,
but settled for describing in a general way the sentiments
on which justice, modesty, and veracity are founded, and
the ordinary ways of acting to which those virtues would
commonly prompt us.
[Some ancient philosophers did produce what looks like
casuistry, Smith admits; he mentions Book 3 of Cicero’s
Offices. But he says that they weren’t attempting any sort
of completeness, and were only illustrating situations where
there is a question as to whether the ordinary rules of duty
should be adhered to.]
Every system of man-made law can be seen as a more or
less imperfect attempt at a system of natural jurisprudence,
or at an enumeration of the particular rules of justice.
Because the violation of •justice is something men will never
submit to from one another, the public magistrate [see note
on page 44] has to use the power of the commonwealth to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-410-320.jpg)
![enforce the practice of this •virtue. If this were not done,
civil society would become a scene of bloodshed and disorder,
180
Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said
about the practical rules of morality
with every man getting his own private revenge whenever he
fancied he had been harmed. To prevent the confusion that
would come with every man’s •seeking justice for himself,
the magistrate in any government that has acquired any
considerable authority undertakes to •provide justice for
everyone, and promises to hear and to redress every com-
plaint of injury. In all well-governed states, as well as judges
being appointed to settle the controversies of individuals,
rules are laid down to regulate the decisions of those judges;
and these rules are generally intended to coincide with the
rules of natural justice. Not that they actually always do
so. •It sometimes happens that the man-made laws of a
country are wrenched away from what natural justice would
prescribe—sometimes by the so-called ‘constitution’ of the
state, i.e. the interests of the government; and sometimes
by the interests of particular groups of men who tyrannize
the government. •In some countries, the crudeness and
barbarism of the people prevent the natural sentiments of
justice from reaching the accuracy and precision that they
naturally attain to in more civilized nations. Their laws are,
like their manners, gross and crude and undistinguishing
[Smith’s word]. •In other countries where the people are
civilized enough to sustain a disciplined regular system of
jurisprudence, no such system becomes established because
the unfortunate structure of their legal system blocks it.
•In no country do the decisions of man-made law coincide,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-411-320.jpg)
![emerged as a discipline.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Jeremy Bentham
Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved
[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose
material that has been added, but can be read as
though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and
also indenting of passages that are not quotations,
are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a
thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the
omission of a brief passage that seems to present more
difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported
between brackets in normal-sized type.—The numbering of
paragraphs in small bold type is Bentham’s.—The
First Edition of this work was privately printed in 1780 and first
published in 1789. The present version is based
on ‘A New Edition, corrected by the Author’ [but not changed
much], published in 1823.
First launched:
Contents
Preface (1789) 1
Chapter 1: The Principle of Utility 6
Chapter 2: Principles opposing the Principle of Utility 10](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-432-320.jpg)
![Preface (1789)
[Bentham wrote this Preface in the third person, ‘the author’
and
‘he’, throughout.] The following pages were printed as long ago
as 1780. My aim in writing them was not as extensive as
the aim announced by the present title. It was merely to
introduce a plan of a penal code in terminis, which was follow
them in the same volume.
I had completed the body of the work according to my
views as they then were, and was investigating some flaws
I had discovered, when I found myself unexpectedly entan-
gled in an unsuspected corner of the metaphysical maze.
I had to suspend the work, temporarily I at first thought;
suspension brought on coolness, and coolness—aided by
other causes—ripened into disgust.
Imperfections pervading the whole thing had already been
pointed out by severe and discerning friends, and I had to
agree that they were right. The inordinate length of some of
the chapters, the apparent uselessness of others, and the
dry and metaphysical tone of the whole, made me fear that
if the work were published in its present form it would have
too little chance of being read and thus of being useful.
But though in this way the idea of completing the present
work slid insensibly aside, the considerations that had led
me to engage in it still remained. I still pursued every opening
that promised to throw the light I needed; and I explored
several topics connected with the original one; with the result
that in one way or another my researches have embraced
nearly the whole field of legislation.
Several causes have worked together to bring to light
under this new title a work that under its original one had](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-440-320.jpg)
![seemed irrevocably doomed to oblivion. In the course of eight
years I produced materials for various works corresponding
to the different branches of legislation, and some I nearly
reduced to form [= ‘had nearly ready to publish’]; and in every
one
of them the principles exhibited in the present work had been
found so necessary that I had to •transcribe them piecemeal
or •exhibit them somewhere where they could be referred to
in the lump. The former course would have involved far too
many repetitions, so I chose the latter.
The question was then whether to publish the materials
in the form in which they were already printed, or to work
them up into a new form. The latter had all along been my
wish, and it is what I would certainly have done if I had
had time and had been a fast enough worker. But strong
reasons concur with the irksomeness of the task in putting
its completion immeasurably far into the future.
Furthermore, however strongly I might have wanted to
suppress the present work, it is no longer altogether in my
power to do so. In the course of such a long interval—·nine
years sine the initial printing·—copies of the work have come
into various hands, from some of which they have been
transferred, by deaths and other events, into the hands of
other people whom I don’t know. Considerable extracts of it
have even been published, with my name honestly attached
to them but without my being consulted or even knowing
that this was happening.
To complete this excuse for offering to the public a work
pervaded by blemishes that haven’t escaped even my biased
eye, perhaps I should add that the censure so justly applied
to the •form of the work wasn’t applied to its •content.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-441-320.jpg)
![In sending it out into the world with all its imperfections
on its head, I think it may be helpful to readers—I don’t ex-
pect there to be many—to be told briefly what the main ways
1
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface
(1789)
are in which it doesn’t square with my maturer views. . . .
An introduction to a work on the totality of any science
[see Glossary] ought •to deal with everything that concerns
every particular branch of that science, or at least more than
one of them, and ought •not to deal with anything else. Given
its present title, this work fails in both ways to conform to
that rule.
As an introduction to the principles of morals it ought to
have contained, in addition to its analysis of
the extensive ideas signified by the terms ‘pleasure’,
‘pain’, ‘motive’, and ‘disposition’,
a similar analysis of the
equally extensive though much less determinate ideas
annexed to the terms ‘emotion’, ‘passion’, ‘appetite’,
‘virtue’, ‘vice’, and some others, including the names
of the particular virtues and vices.
But I think that the only true groundwork for the explaining
the latter set of terms has been laid by the explanation of
the former; and if I am right about that then the completion
of such a dictionary (so to call it) would be little more than a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-442-320.jpg)
![mechanical operation.
Again, as an introduction to the principles of legislation
in general, the work ought to have included topics related
exclusively to the civil branch of the law, rather than ones
relating more particularly to the penal branch; because the
latter is merely a means of achieving the ends aimed at by
the former. so the chapters on punishment ought to have
had less weight than—or at least to have been preceded
by—a set of propositions that I have come to see as providing
a standard for the operations of government in creating and
distributing proprietary and other civil rights. I’m talking
about certain axioms of what we may call mental pathology,
expressing the ways in which •the feelings of the people
concerned are related to •the various classes of incidents
that the operations of government either call for or produce.1
Also, the discussion of the classification of offences,
and everything else pertaining to offences, ought to have
preceded the treatment of punishment; because the idea of
punishment presupposes the idea of offence. . . .
Lastly, I now think that the analytical discussions of the
classification of offences should be transferred to a separate
treatise in which the system of legislation is considered
solely in respect of its form—i.e. in respect of its method
[see Glossary] and terminology.
In these respects the work falls short of my ideas of what
should be presented in a work with the title ‘Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation’. But I don’t know
of any title that would be less unsuitable. The work’s actual
contents would not have been indicated as well by a title
corresponding to the more limited plan that I had in writing
it, namely as an introduction to a penal code.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-443-320.jpg)
![discovery of the principles developed in that little treatise.
In the preface to an anonymous tract published back in
1776 [Fragment on Government] I had hinted at the usefulness
of a natural classification of offences by presenting a test
for distinguishing genuine offences from spurious ones. The
case of usury is just one instance of the truth of that hint. A
note on page 123 below shows how the opinions developed
in ‘Defence of Usury’ owed their origin to the difficulty I
experienced when trying to find a place in my classification
for that imaginary offence. To readers who would like help
in wading through an analysis of such enormous length, I
would almost recommend beginning with subsection 4 on
pages 138–140.
One good at least can result from the present publication,
namely that the more I have trespassed on the reader’s
patience on this occasion, the less need I will have to do
so later on; so that this book may do for my later works
the service that books of pure mathematics do for books
that combine mathematics with natural philosophy [= ‘natural
science’]. The narrower the present work’s circle of readers.
the larger may be the number of those to whom my later
works are accessible. I may in this respect be in the condition
of the philosophers of antiquity who are said to have held
two bodies of doctrine, a popular and an occult [= ‘hidden’]
one; but with this difference that in my case the occult and
the popular will (I hope) be found to be as consistent as
those of the ancients were contradictory; and that in my
work whatever occultness there is has been the pure result
of sad necessity and not choice.
Having referred to different arrangements that have been
suggested by my more extensive and maturer views, I think
it may be useful for me to give a brief account of their
nature; without such explanation, my occasional references](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-445-320.jpg)
![to unpublished works might create perplexity and mistakes.
Here, then, are the titles of the works by the publication of
which my present plans would be completed. I give them
in the order that seems to me best fitted for understanding;
it’s the order they would have if the whole assemblage
were to come out at once; but the order in which they will
eventually appear will probably be affected by extraneous
considerations.
Principles of legislation in matters of. . .
(1) . . . civil law, more distinctively called ‘private distribu-
tive law’.
(2) . . . penal law.
(3) . . . procedure, with a unified treatment of the criminal
and civil branches, between which no line can be drawn that
isn’t •very indistinct and •continually liable to shift.
(4) . . . reward.
(5) . . . public distributive law, more concisely and famil-
iarly called ‘constitutional law’.
(6) . . . political tactics; the art of maintaining order in the
proceedings of political assemblies so as to direct them to
the goal they were created for. . . .
(7) . . . relations between nation and nation, or—to use a
new though not inexpressive label—in matters of ‘interna-
tional law’.
(8) . . . finance.
(9) . . . political economy [= economics].
(10) Plan of a body of law, complete in all its branches,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-446-320.jpg)
![3
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface
(1789)
considered in respect of its form (i.e. its method and ter-
minology); including a view of the origin and connection of
the ideas expressed by the short list of terms the exposition
of which contains everything that properly falls within the
scope of universal jurisprudence.1
The principles listed above are to be used to prepare the
way for the body of law itself, presented in explicit detail. For
this to be complete with reference to any political state it
must consequently be calculated for the meridian [meaning?],
and adapted to the circumstances of some one such state in
particular.
If I had had unlimited time and every other condition
necessary, I would have wanted to postpone the publication
of each part until the whole thing was complete. The ten
parts exhibit what appear to me to be the dictates of utility
in every line; and what they are for is to provide reasons
for the corresponding provisions contained in the body of
law itself; so the exact truth of the ten parts can’t be
precisely ascertained until the provisions they are meant
to apply to are themselves settled in explicit detail. But
the infirmity of human nature makes all plans precarious,
and the more so the more extensive they are; and I have
already made considerable advances in several branches of
the theory without having made corresponding advances in
the practical applications; so I think it more than probable
that the materials won’t be published in what is theoretically](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-447-320.jpg)
![the best order. This irregularity will inevitably lead to a
multitude of imperfections that might have been avoided
if the formulating of •the body of law in explicit detail had
kept pace with the development of •the principles, so that
each part had been adjusted and corrected by the other.
But I am not much swayed by this drawback because I
suspect that it has more to do with my vanity than with the
instruction of the public; any amendments in the detail of
the principles that might be suggested by the fixed wording
of the corresponding legal provisions can easily be made in
a corrected edition of the principles after the publication of
the law.
In the course of this work references will be found •to
the plan of a penal code to which the work was meant as an
introduction and •to other branches of the above-mentioned
general plan—not always under the titles they have been
given here. Giving you this warning is all I can do to save
you from the perplexity of looking out for things that don’t
yet exist. . . . [This refers to, among other things, occurrences
of the
phrase ‘the body of the work’ on pages 96, 120 and 139.]
I have referred to some unspecified difficulties as the
causes of the present work’s publication delay and its unfin-
ished state. Ashamed of this defeat and unable to cover it
up, I can’t refuse myself the benefit of such an apology as a
slight sketch of those difficulties may provide.
They arose from my attempt to solve the questions that
will be found at the conclusion of this volume; Wherein
consists the identity and completeness of a law? What is the
distinction. . . .between a penal and a civil law? And between
the penal and other branches of the law?](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-448-320.jpg)
![of such treatment, as are those of the understanding. Of
these two branches of that recondite art [see Glossary] Aristotle
saw only the latter, and succeeding logicians following in the
steps of their great founder have followed him in this. Yet
of these two branches it is the logic of the will that is more
important; because the operations of the understanding
wouldn’t matter if they didn’t direct the operations of the
will.
The science of law, considered in respect of its form, is the
most considerable branch—the most important application—
of this logic of the will. The relation of
(a) the logic of the will to the art of legislation
is the same as the relation of
(b) the science of anatomy to the art of medicine;
except that in (b) the artist works on the subject of anatomy
whereas in (a) the artist works with the subject of the logic
of the will. And the body politic is as much in danger from a
lack of knowledge of the one science as the natural human
body is from ignorance in the other. One example, among
a thousand that might be adduced in proof of this, can be
seen in the note that ends this volume [page 157].
Such then were the difficulties, such the preliminaries;
•an unexampled work to achieve, and then •a new science to
create—a new branch to add to one of the most abstruse of
sciences.
Yet more; even a perfectly complete a body of proposed
law would be comparatively useless and uninstructive unless
it were explained and justified—in every detail—by a contin-
ual running commentary of reasons. These reasons must
be organised into a hierarchy with the top level taken by](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-450-320.jpg)
![extensive and leading reasons of the sort called ‘principles’;
this is needed so that the comparative value of reasons that
point in opposite directions may be estimated, and the joint
force of reasons that point in the same direction may be
felt. So there has to be not one system but two parallel and
connected systems—one of legislative provisions, the other
of political reasons, each giving correction and support to
the other.
Are enterprises like these achievable? I do not know.
I only know that they have been started and that some
progress has been made in all of them. I venture to add that
if they are achievable it won’t be by anyone to whom the
fatigue of attending to discussions as arid as those in this
book would either appear useless or feel intolerable. I am not
the first to say, but I repeat it boldly, that truths that form the
basis of political and moral science [see Glossary] can only be
discovered by investigations that are as severe as—and vastly
more intricate and extensive than—mathematical ones. Their
terminology is familiar, which may suggest that the subject-
matter is easy; but that is quite wrong. Truths in general
have been called stubborn things, and the truths I am talking
about here are stubborn in their own way. •They can’t be
forced into detached and general propositions that have
no exceptions and need no explanations. •They refuse to
5
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The
Principle of Utility
compress themselves into epigrams. •They recoil from the
tongue and the pen of the declaimer. •They don’t flourish in
the same soil as sentiment [see Glossary]. •They grow among](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-451-320.jpg)
![thorns, and can’t be plucked (like daisies) by infants as they
run. Labour, the inevitable lot of humanity, is nowhere more
inevitable than along this path. . . . There is no easy road to
legislative science, any more than to mathematical science.
[The present version of this work aims to make its content more
easily
accessible, at the cost of losing much of the colour and energy
of Ben-
tham’s writing. A good example of this trade-off starts at the
ellipsis
immediately above, where Bentham wrote; ‘In vain would an
Alexander
bespeak a peculiar road for royal vanity, or a Ptolemy, a
smoother one,
for royal indolence. There is no King’s Road, no Stadtholder’s
Gate, to
legislative, any more than to mathematic science.’]
Chapter 1: The Principle of Utility
1. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. They alone point out
what we ought to do and determine what we shall do; the
standard of right and wrong, and the chain of causes and
effects, are both fastened to their throne. They govern us
in all we do, all we say, all we think; every effort we can
make to throw off our subjection ·to pain and pleasure· will
only serve to demonstrate and confirm it. A man may claim
to reject their rule but in reality he will remain subject to
it. The principle of utility1 recognises this subjection, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-452-320.jpg)
![makes it the basis of a system that aims to have the edifice of
happiness built by the hands of reason and of law. Systems
that try to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in
caprice [see Glossary] instead of reason, in darkness instead
of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation! It is not by
such means that moral science is to be improved.
2. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present
work, so I should start by giving an explicit and determinate
account of what it is. By ‘the principle2 of utility’ is meant
1 [Note added in 1822.] This label has recently been joined or
replaced by the greatest happiness principle. This is an
abbreviated version of
The principle stating that the greatest happiness of all those
whose interests are involved is the right and proper—and the
only right and
proper and universally desirable—end of human action; of
human action in every situation, and in particular in the
situation of functionaries
exercising the powers of Government.
The word ‘utility’ doesn’t point to the ideas of pleasure and
pain as clearly as ‘happiness’ does; nor does it lead us to the
thought of how many
interests are affected, though this number contributes more than
any other factor to the formation of the standard here in
question, namely the
only standard of right and wrong by which the propriety of
human conduct in every situation can properly be tested. This
lack of a clear enough
connection between •the ideas of happiness and pleasure on the
one hand and the •idea of utility on the other has sometimes](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-453-320.jpg)
![operated all too
efficiently as a bar to the acceptance. . . .of this principle.
2 The word ‘principle’ [he suggests Latin roots for the word] is
a term of very vague and very extensive signification; it is
applied to anything that is conceived
to be a foundation or beginning of a series of operations; in
some cases physical operations, but in the present case mental
ones. The principle I am
discussing may be taken for an act of the mind; a sentiment; a
sentiment of approval; a sentiment that when applied to an
action approves of its
utility, taking that to be the quality of it by which the measure
of approval or disapproval of it ought to be governed.
6
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The
Principle of Utility
the principle that approves or disapproves of every
action according to the tendency it appears to have
to increase or lessen—i.e. to promote or oppose—the
happiness of the person or group whose interest is in
question.
I say ‘of every action’, not only of private individuals but also
of governments.
3. By ‘utility’ is meant the property of something whereby
it tends •to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or
happiness (all equivalent in the present case) or (this being
the same thing) •to prevent the happening of mischief [see
Glossary], pain, evil [see Glossary], or unhappiness to the party
whose interest is considered. If that party is the community](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-454-320.jpg)
![in general, then the happiness of the community; if it’s a
particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.
4. ‘The interest of the community’ is one of the most general
expressions in the terminology of morals; no wonder its
meaning is often lost! When it has a meaning, it is this. The
community is a fictitious body composed of the individuals
who are thought of as being as it were its members [see
Glossary]. Then what is the interest of the community? It is
the sum of the interests of the members who compose it.
5. It is pointless to talk of the interest of the community
without understanding what the interest of the individual
is.1 A thing is said to ‘promote the interest’ (or be ‘for the
interest’) of an individual when it tends to increase the sum
total of his pleasures or (the same thing) to lessen the sum
total of his pains.
6–7. An action then may be said to conform to the principle
of utility. . . .when its tendency to increase the happiness of
the community is greater than any tendency it has to lessen
it. And the same holds for measures of government, which
are merely one kind of action performed by one or more
particular persons.
8. When someone thinks that an action (especially a measure
of government) conforms to the principle of utility, he may
find it convenient for purposes of discourse to •imagine a
kind of law or dictate of utility and to •speak of the action in
question as conforming to such a law or dictate.
9. A man may be said to be a ‘partisan’ of the principle
of utility when his approval or disapproval of any action
(or governmental measure) is fixed by and proportional to
the tendency he thinks it has to increase or to lessen the
community’s happiness. . . .
10. Of an action that conforms to the principle of utility one](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-455-320.jpg)
![may always say that
•it ought to be done,
or at least that
•it is not something that ought not to be done.
One may say also that
•it is right that it should be done; it is a right action;
or at least that
•it is not wrong that it should be done; it is not a wrong
action.
When thus interpreted, the words ‘ought’ and ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ and others of that sort have a meaning; otherwise
they have none.
11. Has the rightness of this principle ever been formally
contested?
next sentence: It should seem that it had, by those who have
not known what they have been meaning.
1 ‘Interest’ is one of those words that can’t be defined in the
ordinary way because it isn’t a species of some wider genus.
[Unlike (for example) ‘square’ falls
under the genus ‘rectangle’ and can be defined through that and
the differentia ‘equilateral’.]
7
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The
Principle of Utility](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-456-320.jpg)
![perhaps meaning: It seems to have been contested, by people
who didn’t understand what they were contesting.
Is it susceptible of any direct proof? It seems not, because
something that is used to prove everything else can’t itself
be proved; a chain of proofs must start somewhere. To give
such a proof is as impossible as it is needless.
12. Not that there has ever been anyone, however stupid or
perverse, who hasn’t often and perhaps usually deferred to
the principle of utility. [The next sentence if exactly what
Bentham
wrote.] By the natural constitution of the human frame, on
most occasions of their lives men in general embrace this
principle, without thinking of it; if not for the ordering of
their own actions, yet for the trying of their own actions, as
well as of those of other men. Yet there may not have been
many, even of the most intelligent, who have been disposed
to embrace the principle just as it stands and without reserve.
There aren’t many, indeed, who haven’t sometimes quarrelled
with it, either •because they didn’t always understand how
to apply it, or •because of some prejudice that they were
afraid to examine or couldn’t bear to give up. Such is the
stuff that man is made of: in principle and in practice, on the
right path or a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities
is consistency.
13. When a man tries to combat the principle of utility, his
reasons are drawn—without his being aware of it—from that
very principle itself.1 If his arguments prove anything, it isn’t
that the principle is wrong but that he is applying it wrongly.
Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must
first find out another earth to stand on.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-457-320.jpg)
![14. To disprove it by arguments is impossible; but from the
causes I have mentioned, or from some confused or partial
view of it, a man may come to be disposed not to like it.
Where this is the case, if he thinks it’s worth the trouble
to settle his opinions on such a subject, let him take the
following steps, and he may eventually come to be reconciled
with the principle of utility.
(1) Let him decide whether he wants to discard this
principle altogether; if so, let him consider what all his
reasonings (especially in politics) can amount to?
(2) If he does want to discard the principle, let him decide
whether he wants to judge and act without any principle, or
is there some other principle he would judge and act by?
1 I have heard it described as ‘a dangerous principle’,
something that on certain occasions it is ‘dangerous to consult’.
This amounts to saying that it
is not consonant to utility to consult utility—i.e. that it is not
consulting it, to consult it.
Addition by Bentham in 1822 .
Not long after the publication of my ‘Fragment on Government’
(1776), in which the principle of utility was brought to view as
an all-comprehensive
and all-commanding principle, one person who said something
to that effect was Alexander Wedderburn, at that time Attorney
General [and Bentham
lists his later positions and titles]. He said it in the hearing of
someone who passed it on to me. So far from being self-
contradictory, the remark
was shrewd and perfectly true. . . . A principle that lays down,
as the only right and justifiable end of government, the greatest
happiness of the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-458-320.jpg)
![. . . or •by being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes not,
as with the principle of sympathy and antipathy.
3. By ‘the principle of asceticism’ I mean the principle that
is like the principle of utility in approving or disapproving of
any action according to its apparent tendency to increase or
lessen the happiness of the party [see Glossary] whose interest
is in question; but in an inverse manner, approving of actions
insofar as they tend to lessen his ·or their· happiness and
disapproving of them insofar as they tend to increase it.
4. It is evident that anyone who rejects any particle of
pleasure, as such, from whatever source, is to that extent
a partisan of the principle of asceticism. It is only on that
principle, and not from the principle of utility, that the most
abominable pleasure that the vilest malefactor ever got from
his crime should be rejected if it stood alone. In fact it never
does stand alone: it is inevitably followed by so much pain
(or—the same thing—such a high probability of a certain
amount of pain) that the pleasure is as nothing by compari-
son. This is the only real reason (a perfectly sufficient one)
for making the crime a ground for punishment.
5. The principle of asceticism appears to have been embraced
by two classes of men of very different characters whose
reasons for embracing it have been correspondingly different.
10
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
They are](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-463-320.jpg)
![moralists, who seem to be driven by hope, i.e. the
prospect of pleasure; the hope that philosophic pride
feeds on, the hope of honour and reputation at the
hands of men; and
religionists, who seem to be driven by fear, i.e. the
prospect of pain; the fear that is the offspring of
superstitious fancy, the fear of future punishment
at the hands of an angry and revengeful deity.
In the religionists’ case I highlight fear, because of the
invisible future •fear is more powerful than •hope. These
details characterise the two parties among the partisans of
the principle of asceticism; the parties and their reasons are
different, the principle is the same.
6. But the religious party seem to have carried it further than
the philosophical party; they have acted more consistently
and less wisely. The philosophical party have scarcely gone
further than to •reject pleasure; the religious party have
often gone so far as to make it a matter of merit and of duty
to •seek pain. The philosophical party have hardly gone
beyond making pain a matter of indifference. They have said
that it is not an evil but they haven’t said that it is a good.
They haven’t even rejected all pleasure in the lump [Bentham’s
phrase]. They have discarded only what they have called the
gross ·pleasures·, i.e. organical [here = ‘animal’] pleasures or
ones that are easily traced back to those; and they have
even cherished and magnified refined pleasure. But they
haven’t called it ‘pleasure’: to cleanse it from the filth of
its impure original, it had to have a different name; it was
to be called ‘the honourable’, ‘the glorious’, ‘the reputable’,
‘the becoming’, the honestum, the decorum—anything but
‘pleasure’.
7. Those are the two sources of the doctrines that have](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-464-320.jpg)
![continually put traces of this principle into the sentiments
[see Glossary] of the bulk of mankind; some from the philo-
sophical, some from the religious, some from both. Men
of education more frequently get it from the philosophical
side, as more suited to the elevation of their sentiments;
the vulgar [see Glossary] more frequently get it from the su-
perstitious side, as more suited to the narrowness of their
intellect, not expanded by knowledge, and to the abjectness
of their condition, continually open to the attacks of fear.
[In that sentence, of course, ‘superstitious’ is Bentham’s stand-
in for
‘religious’.] But the traces derived from the two sources would
naturally intermingle, so that that a man wouldn’t always
know which of them influenced him more; and they would
often serve to corroborate and enliven one another. This
conformity created a kind of alliance between parties that
are otherwise so dissimilar; and disposed them to unite
sometimes against their common enemy, the partisan of the
principle of utility, whom they joined in branding with the
odious name ‘epicurean’.
8. The principle of asceticism, however, however warmly its
partisans may have embraced is as a rule of private conduct,
seems not to have been carried far when applied to the busi-
ness of government. In a few instances it has been carried
a little way by the philosophical party—witness the regimen
of ancient Sparta. Though that may be seen as •a measure
of security and •a (hasty and perverse) application of the
principle of utility. There have been hardly any instances of
much duration by the religious: the various monastic orders,
and the societies of the Quakers, Dumplers [a religious sect
in Pennsylvania], Moravians, and other religionists have been
free societies, whose regimen no man has been subjected
to without his consent. Whatever merit a man may have
thought there would be in making himself miserable, it seems](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-465-320.jpg)
![11
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
never to have occurred to them that it may be a merit, let
alone a duty, to make others miserable; although it would
seem that if a certain quantity of misery were desirable
it wouldn’t matter much whether it were brought by each
man on himself or by one man on another. It is true that
among the religionists a great deal of misery was produced
in some men by the instrumentality of others, because of
other doctrines and practices that had the same source as
the principle of asceticism; witness the holy wars, and the
religious persecutions. But the passion for producing misery
in these cases was based on special reasons; the exercise
of it was confined to persons of certain kinds—they were
tormented not as •men but as •heretics and infidels. To have
inflicted the same miseries on their fellow believers. . . .would
have been as blameworthy in the eyes of these religionists
as in the eyes of a partisan of the principle of utility. For a
man to give himself a certain number of lashes was indeed
meritorious (·they thought·), but to give the same number
of lashes to another man without his consent would have
been a sin. We read of saints who, for the good of their souls
and the mortification of their bodies, have voluntarily let
themselves be a prey to vermin; but though many people of
this kind have ruled nations we don’t read of any who have
deliberately made laws aimed at stocking the body politic
with ·such vermin as· highwaymen, burglars or arsonists.
•If at any time they have allowed the nation to be preyed on
by swarms of idle pensioners or useless placemen [= ‘holders
of soft, easy government jobs’], it has been through negligence
and stupidity rather than any settled plan for oppressing](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-466-320.jpg)
![11. Among principles opposed to the principle of utility,
the one that seems these days to have most influence in
matters of government is what may be called ‘the principle
of sympathy and antipathy’. . . [to be picked up at page 15]
12
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
·STAR T OF LONG FOOTNOTE·
It ought to have been given the broader title ‘principle of
caprice’ [see Glossary]. Where it applies to the choice of
actions
to be marked out for injunction or prohibition, for reward or
punishment (in short, marked out as subjects for obligations
to be imposed), it may indeed properly be called the ‘principle
of sympathy and antipathy’, as it is in the main text. But
this is not such a good name for it when occupied in the
choice of the events that are to serve as sources of title
with respect to rights; where the actions prohibited (the
•obligations) and allowed (the •rights) are already fixed, and
the only question is: under what circumstances is a man
to be •subjected to one or •invested with the other?. . . . In
this case it may more appropriate to call it ‘the fantastic
principle’ [= ‘principle of imagination’]. Sympathy and
antipathy
are states of feeling; but decisions about entitlements to
rights—especially property rights—on grounds unconnected
with utility has often been the work not of the feelings but of
the imagination.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-468-320.jpg)
![Lord Coke, defending an article of English common law
allowing uncles to succeed in certain cases in preference to
fathers, produced a sort of ponderosity [= ‘heaviness’] that he
had discovered in rights, disqualifying them from ascending
in a straight line! It wasn’t that he loved uncles or hated
fathers. The analogy ·with weight·, such as it was, was what
his imagination presented him with instead of a reason; and
once feeling is out of the way, imagination is the only guide
for a mind that doesn’t observe the standard of utility or
doesn’t know the art [see Glossary] of consulting it.
When some ingenious grammarian invented the propo-
sition Delegatus non potest delegare [Latin; ‘No delegated
powers
can be further delegated’] to serve as a rule of law, surely it
wasn’t that he •was hostile to delegates of the second order,
or •took pleasure in the thought of the ruin that might
befall the affairs of a traveller whose chosen manager at
home has somehow been made unable to serve ·and isn’t
allowed to appoint a substitute·. Rather, it was that the
incongruity of giving the same law to objects as different as
active and passive are, was not to be surmounted, and that
-atus (·passive·) chimes, as well as it contrasts, with -are
(·active·).
When that inexorable maxim (whose range is no more
to be defined than the date of its birth and the name of its
father are to be found) was imported from England for the
government of Bengal, and the whole fabric of the judiciary
was crushed by the thunders of retroactive justice, it surely
wasn’t because
the prospect of blameless magistrates perishing in
prison gave enjoyment to the unoffended authors of
their misery;](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-469-320.jpg)
![but because
the music of the maxim—·Delegatus non potest dele-
gare·—absorbed the whole imagination and drowned
the cries of humanity along with the dictates of com-
mon sense.
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, says another maxim, as full of
extravagance as it is of harmony. Let heaven go to wreck as
long as justice is done; and what is the ruin of kingdoms
compared to the wreck of heaven?
[With another example, Bentham develops his idea that
certain Latin sentences have a ‘music’ of that appeals to
the imagination of lawyers who aren’t thinking hard. He
continues:] If this were looked into thoroughly, it would
be found that the goddess of harmony has exercised more
influence, however latent, over the dispensations of Themis
[a mythical Greek Titaness, symbolising divine order, law, and
custom]
than her most diligent biographers or even her most pas-
sionate devotees, seem to have been aware of. Everyone
13
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
knows how she (the goddess of harmony) used the services of
Orpheus to collect the sons of men beneath the shadow of the
sceptre; but it seems that men haven’t yet learned—despite
continual experience of it—with what successful diligence
she has laboured to guide it [=? ’law’] in its course. Everyone
knows that measured numbers [= rhythmical lines of poetry’]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-470-320.jpg)
![were the language of law in its infancy, but no-one seems to
have noticed powerfully they have governed it in its maturer
age. In English jurisprudence in particular, the connection
between law and music, though much less perceived than in
Spartan legislation, is not perhaps less real or less close. The
formal music of the Church, though not of the same kind as
the music of the theatre, is not less musical; music that hard-
ens the heart is not less musical than what softens it; the
sostenutos are as long, the cadences as sonorous; and these
·musical events· are governed by rules which, though not
yet promulgated, are quite determinate. Search indictments,
pleadings, proceedings in chancery, conveyances; whatever
sins against truth or common sense you find, you won’t find
any against the laws of harmony. The Anglican liturgy. . . .
doesn’t have more of it than is commonly to be found in
an English act of parliament. Dignity, simplicity, brevity,
precision, intelligibility, possibility of being remembered or
even understood—all that gives way to harmony. . . .
To return to the principle of sympathy and antipathy—a
name that I preferred at first to ‘principle of caprice’, on
account of its impartiality. It is actually too narrow, for
the reasons I have given; but I chose it because I hadn’t
at that time surveyed •the civil branch of law except where
I had found it inseparably involved in •the penal branch.
When we come to the former we’ll see the fantastic principle
looming at least as large there as the principle of sympathy
and antipathy does in the latter.
In the days of Lord Coke, the light of utility can scarcely
be said to have shone on the face of •common law. A
faint ray of it under the name argumentum ab inconvenienti
[= ‘argument from inconvenience’] is to be found in a list of
about
twenty topics exhibited by that great lawyer as the equal](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-471-320.jpg)
![leaders of •that all-perfect system, but its appearance in that
way in that context is a sure proof of neglect. . . . It stands
neither in the front nor in the rear, nor in any post of honour;
but huddled in towards the middle without the smallest mark
of preference. Nor is this Latin ‘inconvenience’ by any means
the same as the English one. It is distinguished from mis-
chief [see Glossary]; and because the vulgar take it to be less
bad than mischief the learned present it as something worse.
‘The law prefers a mischief to an inconvenience’, says an
admired maxim, and the more admired because—as nothing
is expressed by it—it is supposed to be well understood.
Not that there is any declared opposition, let alone a
constant one, between the prescriptions of utility and the
operations of the common law; such constancy we have seen
to be too much even for ascetic fervour. From time to time
instinct would unavoidably betray them into the paths of
reason; instinct which, however it may be cramped, can
never be killed by education. The cobwebs spun out of the
materials brought together by ‘the competition of opposite
analogies’ must always have been warped by the silent
attraction of the rational principle (like needle to magnet),
without the conscience coming into it.
[An 1822 addition to this note savagely criticises Eng-
land’s conduct in India, replacing ‘the bad system of Ma-
hometan and other native law’ by the ‘still more harmful
system of English judge-made law’; with some English
oppressors making fortunes at the expense of ‘a hundred
million plundered and oppressed Hindus and Mahometans’.]
·END OF LONG NOTE·
14](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-472-320.jpg)
![Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
[picking up from page 12] . . . By ‘the principle of sympathy
and
antipathy’ I mean the principle that approves or disapproves
of certain actions not •because of their tending to increase or
lessen the happiness of the party whose interest is involved,
but merely •because a man finds himself disposed to approve
or disapprove of them, taking that approval or disapproval as
a sufficient reason for itself and denying any need to look for
an independent reason. That’s how it works in the general
department of morals; and in the particular department of
politics it uses the degree of the disapproval as a measure of
•how severe punishment should be and of •what should be
the grounds for punishment.
12. Obviously this is a ‘principle’ in name rather than in
reality. It is not so much a positive principle as a term
employed to signify the negation of all principle. What one
expects to find in a principle is something that points out
some external consideration that will support and guide
the internal sentiments of approval and disapproval; this
expectation is not well fulfilled by a proposition that does
neither more nor less than hold up each of those sentiments
as a ground and standard for itself.
13. The partisans of this ‘principle’ say the following [to
the end of this paragraph and perhaps on into 14]. In looking
over
the catalogue of human actions to determine that are to be
marked with the seal of disapproval, you need only consult
your own feelings: anything that you find yourself inclined
to condemn is wrong for that very reason. For the same
reason it is also fit for punishment; it makes no difference](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-473-320.jpg)
![these sentiments are so many chapters and sections of the
law of nature.
Instead of ‘law of nature’ you have sometimes ‘law of
reason’, ‘right reason’, ‘natural justice’, ‘natural equity’, ‘good
order’. Any of them will do equally well. The last of them
is most used in politics. It and the two just before it are
much more tolerable than the others, because they don’t
explicitly claim to be anything more than phrases; they don’t
strongly insist on being seen as positive standards, and seem
content to be taken as merely ways of saying that the thing
in question conforms to the proper standard, whatever that
may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say
‘utility’; that is clearer because it refers more explicitly to
pain and pleasure.
We have one philosopher [William Wollaston] who says that
there’s no harm in anything in the world but in telling a lie;
and that if, for example, you murder your father this is a way
of saying that he isn’t your father. When this philosopher
sees anything that he doesn’t like, he of course says that it
is a particular way of telling a lie. It is saying that the act
ought to be done, or may be done, when in truth it ought not
to be done.
The fairest and most open of them all is the sort of man
who says: ‘I am one of the elect [= “the chosen”]; God himself
takes care to tell the elect what is right, doing this with such
good effect that however much they struggle they can’t help
not only knowing it but doing it. So if you want to know what
is right and what is wrong, come to me.’
The principle of antipathy is often at work when such-and-
such acts are condemned as being ‘unnatural’; the practice
of exposing children [i.e. leaving unwanted children to starve or](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-476-320.jpg)
![to
die from the weather or predators], established among the
Greeks
and Romans, is said to have been an unnatural practice.
When ‘unnatural’ means anything, it means ‘infrequent’;
but that is irrelevant to the present question because the
frequency of such acts ·of child-exposure· is perhaps the
greatest complaint against them. So in the present context
it means nothing—I mean nothing concerning the act itself.
All it can do is to express the speaker’s disposition to be
angry at the thought of child exposure. Whether his anger is
appropriate is a question that can be answered rightly only
on the principle of utility. . . .
The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and
arguing (which we have seen to be one way, worded dif-
ferently) is that they serve as a cloak and pretence and
support for despotism. Perhaps not a despotism in practice,
but a despotism in disposition, which will be all too apt
to show itself in practice when the opportunity turns up.
The consequence is that a man whose intentions may well
be of the purest kind becomes a torment to himself or his
fellow-creatures. If his cast of mind is melancholy, he sits in
16
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
silent grief bewailing others’ blindness and depravity; if it is
angry, he declaims with fury and virulence against all who
differ from him, fanning the coals of fanaticism and branding
as corrupt and insincere everyone who doesn’t think, or
profess to think, as he does.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-477-320.jpg)
![turn serious. Each sees the other as an enemy and, if laws
permit, as a criminal.1
17. But the principle of sympathy and antipathy also some-
times errs by being too lenient. A near and perceptible
mischief generates antipathy. A remote and imperceptible
mischief, though not less real, has no effect. Instances of
this will occur in their proper places in the course of this
work.
18. You may be surprised that in all this I haven’t mentioned
the theological principle, i.e. the principle that professes to
look to the will of God for the standard of right and wrong .
But this is not in fact a distinct principle. It is never anything
but one or other of the three before-mentioned principles
presenting itself in another form. The ‘will of God’ that is
referred to here cannot be his revealed will, as contained in
the sacred writings; for that is a system that nobody ever
thinks of invoking at this time of day [= ‘at this stage in
history’]
for the details of •political administration; and even to apply
1 King James I of England conceived a violent antipathy against
Arians, two of whom he burnt. He hadn’t much difficulty in
procuring this gratification
for himself: the notions of the times were favourable to it. He
wrote a furious book against Vorstius, for being an Arminian,
·that being the most
he could do· because Vorstius was at a distance. He also wrote a
furious book called A Counterblast to Tobacco against the use
of that drug, which
Sir Walter Raleigh had recently introduced ·into England·. If
the notions of the times had co-operated with him, he would
have burnt Anabaptists
and smokers of tobacco in the same fire. However he had the
satisfaction of putting Raleigh to death afterwards, though for](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-481-320.jpg)
![another crime. [Arians,
Armenians, and Anabaptists held theological views that other
Christians regarded as heretical.]
Disputes about the comparative excellence of French and Italian
music have generated very serious quarrels in Paris. One of the
parties would
not have been sorry (D’Alembert reports) to have brought
government into the quarrel. . . . (This is one of the ways in
which the human race is
distinguished—not much indeed to its advantage—from the
lower animals.) Long before that, a similar and equally fierce
dispute had been kindled
at London about the comparative merits of two composers who
were there; and in London these days riots between the
approvers and disapprovers
of a new play are not infrequent. The ground of quarrel between
the Big-endians and the Little-endians in the fable [i.e. in
Gulliver’s Travels; two nations
at war over the right way to eat an egg] was not more frivolous
than many that have laid empires desolate. In Russia, it is said,
there was a time when
thousands of persons lost their lives in a quarrel, in which the
government had taken part, about how many fingers to use in
making the sign of the
cross. . . .
18
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2:
Opposing Principles
it to the details of •private conduct, the most eminent divines
of all persuasions agree that it first needs a great deal of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-482-320.jpg)
![19
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 3:
Sources of Pain and Pleasure
i.e. other motives, may be the reasons why such-and-such
an act has been done, i.e. the reasons or causes of its being
done; but only utility can be the reason why it could or
should have been done. Antipathy or resentment requires
always to be regulated, to prevent its doing mischief; to be
regulated by what? always by the principle of utility. The
principle of utility neither requires nor admits of any another
regulator than itself.
Chapter 3: The Four Sanctions or Sources of Pain and Pleasure
1. It has been shown that the happiness of the individuals
of whom a community is composed, i.e. their pleasures and
their security, is the only goal that the legislator ought to
have in view; and insofar as legislation affects how individu-
als behave, the legislator should aim to have their behaviour
conform to this same standard. But there is nothing by
which a man can ultimately be made to do something,
whatever its goal is, except pain or pleasure. Having taken
a general view of these two grand objects (namely pleasure
and—what comes to the same thing—immunity from pain) in
their role as final causes [= ‘goals to be aimed at’], we now
have
to take a view of pleasure and pain in their role as efficient
causes or means.
2. Pleasure and pain can flow from four sources:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-485-320.jpg)
![•the physical,
•the political,
•the moral and
•the religious.
Because the pleasures and pains belonging to each of them
can give a binding force to any law or rule of conduct, they
can all be called ‘sanctions’.1
3. Pleasure or pain that occurs in the present life in the
ordinary course of nature, not purposely modified by the will
of any human being or of any superior invisible being, can
be said to come from or to belong to the physical sanction.
4. Pleasure or pain that comes from a particular person or
set of persons in the community who. . . .have been chosen
for the particular purpose of dispensing it by the will of the
sovereign or supreme ruling power in the state, it can be
said to come from the political sanction.
5. Pleasure or pain that comes to a person from persons
in the community who happen to be connected with him in
some way, according to each man’s spontaneous disposition
and not according to any settled or agreed rule, it can be said
to issue from the moral sanction or ‘popular sanction’. . . .
1 Sanctio in Latin meant •the act of binding and, by a common
grammatical transition, •anything that serves to bind a man; to
wit, to the observance of
such-and-such a mode of conduct. According to the Latin
grammarian Servius, the word’s meaning is derived by rather a
far-fetched process. . . .from
the word sanguis, blood [and he gives the derivation, which we
don’t need].](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-486-320.jpg)
![A sanction, then, is a source of obligatory powers or motives.
That is, a source of pains and pleasures, which are the only
things that can operate
as motives by being connected with specific kinds of conduct.
See chapter 10.
20
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 3:
Sources of Pain and Pleasure
6. Pleasure or pain that comes immediately from the hand
of a superior invisible being, either in the present life or in a
future one, may be said to come from the religious sanction.
7. Pleasures or pains from the physical, political, or moral
sanctions must all be expected to be experienced, if ever, in
the present life; those from the religious sanction may be
expected to be experienced either in the present life or in a
future one.
8. Those that can be experienced in the present life must of
course be pleasures and pains of kinds that human nature
is capable of having in the present life. . . .; and each of these
sources can produce all the pleasures or pains that human
nature is capable of having in the present life. There are
no intrinsic differences between •the pleasures and pains
coming from any one of the sanctions and •those that come
from the others; they differ only in the circumstances that
accompany their production. [The rest of this paragraph
states abstractly the very same things that 9 gives with a
little more detail.]
9. A man loses his goods or his life in a fire. If this happened](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-487-320.jpg)
![‘by accident’, as we say, it was a calamity; if by reason of
his own imprudence (e.g. he neglected to put out his candle)
it may be called a punishment of the physical sanction; if
it happened by the sentence of the political magistrate [see
Glossary], it may be called a punishment belonging to the
political sanction (i.e. what is commonly called, simply, a
punishment); if because his neighbour didn’t help because he
didn’t like his moral character, it may be called a punishment
of the moral sanction; if it comes from •an immediate act of
God’s displeasure on account of some sin he has committed,
or from •any distraction of mind caused by the dread of such
displeasure, it may be called a punishment of the religious
sanction.1
10. The religious sanction promises pleasures and pains in
a future life; what these are like we cannot know, as they
don’t lie open to our observation. During the present life they
are only something to expect; and whether our expectation
comes from natural religion or revelation, the particular kind
of pleasure or pain, if it is different from all those that do lie
open to our observation, is something we can have no idea of.
The best ideas we can get of such pains and pleasures are
altogether silent about their quality. In what other respects
our ideas of them may have content will be considered in
later. (See chapter 13, 2, note.)
11. The physical sanction is entirely the groundwork of
the political and moral sanctions, and also of the religious
sanction insofar as it concerns the present life. It is included
in each of those other three; it can operate (i.e. any of the
pains or pleasures belonging to it can operate) independently
of them; but none of them can operate except by means of it.
In short, the powers of nature can operate of themselves; but
neither the magistrate nor men in general can operate except
through the powers of nature, and the same is supposed to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-488-320.jpg)
![hold for God’s effects on us in our present life.
12. Finding a common name for these four things that are
so alike in their nature seemed useful in two ways. (a) It is
convenient to have a name for certain pleasures and pains
for which no other equally descriptive name seems to be
available. (ii) It is useful for displaying the efficacy of certain
moral [see Glossary] forces whose influence is apt not to be
sufficiently attended to. Does the political sanction influence
the conduct of mankind? The moral and religious sanctions
1 A suffering that a man is thought to be inflicted on him by the
immediate act of God is ofen called ‘a judgment’, which is short
for ‘a suffering inflicted
on him in consequence of a special judgment formed by the
Deity and a decision based on it’.
21
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 4:
Measuring Pleasure and Pain
do so too. In every inch of his career the operations of the
political magistrate are liable to be aided or impeded by these
two foreign powers, who are sure to be either his rivals or
his allies. If he leaves them out of his calculations he will
almost certainly find himself mistaken in the result. . . . So
he ought to have them continually before his eyes, under
a name [‘sanction’] that exhibits the relation they have to his
own purposes and designs.
Chapter 4: Measuring Pleasure and Pain](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-489-320.jpg)
![the side of pleasure, that is the over-all good tendency
of the act with respect to the interests of that person;
if on the side of pain, its over-all bad tendency.
(6) Repeat the above process with respect to each person
whose interests appear to be concerned; and then sum the
results. If this balance is on the side of pleasure, that is the
over-all good tendency of the act with respect to the interests
of the community; if on the side of pain, its over-all bad
tendency.
6. It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly
pursued before every moral judgment or every legislative or
judicial operation. But it can be always kept in view; and
the nearer the process actually pursued on these occasions
come to it, the nearer they will come to exactness.
7. This process is applicable to pleasure and pain in whatever
form they appear, and by whatever name they are labelled:
to pleasure, whether it be called ‘good’ (that is properly the
cause or instrument of pleasure) or profit (that is distant
pleasure, or the cause or instrument of distant pleasure) or
‘convenience’ or ‘advantage’, ‘benefit’, ‘emolument’, ‘happi-
ness’, and so forth; to pain, whether it is called ‘evil’ (that
corresponds to ‘good’) or ‘mischief’ or ‘inconvenience’ or
‘disadvantage’ or ‘loss’ or ‘unhappiness’, and so forth. [In
that sentence, both ‘evil’ [See glossary] and ‘good’ are nouns.]
8. This is not a novel and unjustified theory, any more than
it is a useless one. What it presents is nothing but what
perfectly fits the practice of mankind whenever they have a
clear view of their own interest. What makes (for instance) an
article of property, an estate in land, valuable? The pleasures
of all kinds that it enables a man to produce, and (the same
thing) the pains of all kinds that it enables him to avert. But](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-492-320.jpg)
![everyone takes the value of such an article of property to rise
or fall according to •how long a man has it, •how certain it is
that he will get it, and •how long it will be before he gets it if
indeed he does. The intensity of the pleasures he may derive
from it is never thought of, because that depends on how
he in particular chooses to use it, which can’t be estimated
till the particular pleasures he may derive from it or the
particular pains he may exclude by means of it are brought
to view. For the same reason, he doesn’t think, either, of the
fecundity or purity of those pleasures.
So much for pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappi-
ness, in general. I shall now consider the various particular
kinds of pain and pleasure.
23
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The
Kinds of Pleasure and Pain
Chapter 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain
1. Having presented what is common to all sorts of pleasures
and pains, I now present separately the various sorts of
pains and pleasures. Pains and pleasures may be called
by one general word, interesting [see Glossary] perceptions.
Interesting perceptions are either simple or complex. The
complex perceptions are those that can be resolved into
various simpler ones; simple perceptions are those that
can’t. A complex interesting perception can be composed
of •pleasures alone, •pains alone, or •a combination of one
or more pleasures and one or more pains.What determines
a lot [see Glossary] of pleasure, for example, to be regarded
as one complex pleasure rather than several simple ones is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-493-320.jpg)
![the nature of its cause. Whatever pleasures are excited [see
Glossary] all at once by the action of a single cause are apt to
be regarded as constituting only a single pleasure.
2. The simple pleasures of which human nature is suscepti-
ble seem to be the pleasures of
(1) sense
(2) wealth
(3) skill
(4) friendship
(5) a good reputation
(6) power
(7) piety
(8) benevolence
(9) malevolence
(10) memory
(11) imagination
(12) expectation
(13) association
(14) relief.
3. The simple pains seem to be the pains of
(i) privation
(ii) the senses
(iii) awkwardness
(iv) enmity
(v) a bad reputation
(vi) memory
(vii benevolence
(viii) malevolence
(ix) memory
(x) imagination
(xi) expectation
(xii) association1](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-494-320.jpg)
![4. (1) The pleasures of sense seem to be as follows:
(a) The pleasures of the taste or palate, including plea-
sures from satisfying hunger and thirst.
(b) The pleasure of intoxication.
(c) The pleasures of smelling.
(d) The pleasures of touch.
(e) The simple pleasures of the ear, independent of asso-
ciation [i.e. setting aside pleasures that heard speech may give
because of what it means].
1 This is what seemed to be a complete list of the various
simple pleasures and pains of which human nature is
susceptible; whenever a man
feels pleasure or pain, it is either something on the list or is
resolvable into ones that are. You might have liked to see an
analytical view of the
subject,. . . .demonstrating the list to be complete. It is in fact
the outcome of such an analysis, but I thought it better to omit
this as being of too
metaphysical a cast, and not strictly within the limits of the
present work’s design.
24
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The
Kinds of Pleasure and Pain
(f) The simple pleasures of the eye, independent of asso-
ciation.
(g) The pleasure of the sexual sense.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-495-320.jpg)
![called the pleasures of ‘good repute’, of ‘honour’, or of ‘the
moral sanction’.
8. (6) The pleasures of power are those that accompany a
man’s conviction that he is in a condition to get people to
give him the benefit of their services because they hope to
get some service, or fear getting some disservice, from him.
9. (7) The pleasures of piety are those that accompany a
man’s conviction that he is acquiring, or already has, the
good will of the supreme being, and thus is well placed ti
enjoying pleasures to be received by God’s special appoint-
ment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may also
be called the pleasures of ‘religion’, of ‘a religious disposition’,
or of ‘the religious sanction’.
10. 8 The pleasures of benevolence are those that result
from the view of pleasures supposed to be had by the beings
who may be the objects of benevolence, namely the sensitive
beings we are acquainted with. These are commonly taken
to include •the supreme being, •human beings, and •other
animals. These may also be called the pleasures of ‘good
will’, of ‘sympathy’, or of ‘the benevolent or social affections’
[see Glossary].
11. 9 The pleasures of malevolence are those that result
from the view of pain supposed to be suffered by the beings
who may become the objects of malevolence, namely •human
beings and •other animals. These may also be called the
pleasures of ‘ill-will’, of the irascible appetite [= ‘of anger’], of
1 There are also pleasures of novelty, excited by the appearance
of new ideas; these are pleasures of the imagination.
2 For instance, the pleasure of being able to gratify the sense of
hearing by singing or playing a musical instrument. This](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-497-320.jpg)
![19. •Where the enjoyment has been looked for with a degree
of expectation approaching assurance, and that expectation
is suddenly wiped out, the resultant pain is called a pain of
‘disappointment’.
20. A pain of privation is called a pain of ‘regret’ •when it is
based on the memory of a pleasure that was once enjoyed
and appears not likely to be enjoyed again; and •when it
is based on the idea of a pleasure that was never actually
enjoyed but is thought of as something that might have
been enjoyed if such-and-such a contingency had happened,
which in fact it didn’t. [The former of those two uses ‘regret’ in
a
sense that the word has since lost, a sense in which ‘I regret my
youth’
means that I miss my youth, I’m sad about no longer being
young.]
26
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The
Kinds of Pleasure and Pain
21. (ii) The pains of the senses seem to be the following
nine: •The pains of hunger and thirst, i.e. the disagreeable
sensations produced by the lack of suitable substances
in the alimentary canal. •The pains of the taste, i.e. the
disagreeable sensations produced by applying various sub-
stances to the palate and other upper parts of the alimentary
canal. •The pains of the organ of smell, i.e. the disagree-
able sensations produced when the effluvia [= ‘microscopic
particles’] of various substances come into contact with that
organ. •The pains of touch, i.e. the disagreeable sensations](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-500-320.jpg)
![produced by the application of various substances to the
skin. •The simple pains of hearing, i.e. the disagreeable
sensations excited in the organ of that sense by various
kinds of sounds, independently of association. •The simple
pains of the sight, i.e. the disagreeable sensations (if there
are any) that may be excited in the organ of that sense by
visible images, independently of association. •The pains
resulting from excessive heat or cold, unless these relate to
touch.1 •The pains of disease, i.e. the acute and uneasy [see
Glossary] sensations resulting from the various diseases and
indispositions that human nature is open to. •The pain of
exertion, i.e. the uneasy sensation that is apt to accompany
any intense effort of mind or body.
22. (iii) 2 The pains of awkwardness are those that some-
times result from •the unsuccessful attempt to make use of
particular instruments of enjoyment or security, or from the
difficulty a man experiences in using them.
23. (iv) The pains of enmity are those pains that may
accompany a man’s conviction that he is obnoxious [see
Glossary] to the ill-will of some particular person or persons
(being ‘on ill terms with’ him or them, as we say), and is
therefore obnoxious to pains of some kind that he or they
may cause.
24. (v) The pains of a bad reputation are those that accom-
pany a man’s conviction that is he is, or is likely to become,
obnoxious to the ill-will of the world around him. They can
also called the pains of ‘ill-repute’, of ‘dishonour’, or of ‘the
moral sanction’.3
25. (vi) The pains of piety are those that accompany a
man’s conviction that he obnoxious to the displeasure of •the
supreme being; and in consequence obnoxious to certain](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-501-320.jpg)
![pains to be inflicted by •his special decrees, either in this
1 The pleasure of the sexual sense [Bentham’s phrase] seems to
have no corresponding positive pain [see Glossary]—only a pain
of privation, or a mental
pain, the pain of unsatisfied desire. If any positive bodily pain
results from the lack of such indulgence [Bentham’s phrase], it
counts as a pain of
disease.
2 There seem to be no positive pains corresponding to the
pleasures of power. The pains that a man may feel from the lack
or loss of power—insofar as
far as power is distinguished from all other sources of
pleasure—seem to be merely pains of privation. The pleasures
of novelty have no positive pains
corresponding to them. The pain that a man experiences when
he doesn’t know what to do with himself—the pain that in
French is called ennui—is
a pain of privation, a pain resulting from the absence not only
of the pleasures of novelty but of all kinds of pleasure
whatsoever.—The pleasures of
wealth also have no positive pains corresponding to them; the
only pains opposed to them are pains of privation. positive
pains resulting from the
lack of wealth belong in some other class of positive pains,
principally those of the senses. From the lack of food, for
instance, result the pains of
hunger; from the lack of clothing, the pains of cold; and so
forth.
3 Bentham has a footnote distinguishing two cases: •I think that
my ill-name will lead people to be less helpful than they would
otherwise have been,
so I suffer a pain of privation; •I think that my ill-name will
lead people to be outright harmful to me, so I suffer a positive](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-502-320.jpg)
![pain. He concludes:] The
pain of privation and the positive pain in this case run one into
another indistinguishably.
27
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The
Kinds of Pleasure and Pain
life or in a life to come. These can also be called the pains
of ‘religion’, of a ‘religious disposition’, or of the ‘religious
sanction’. When the man’s belief is seen as well-grounded,
these pains are commonly called ‘religious terrors’; when it
is seen as ill-grounded, ‘superstitious terrors’.1
26. (vii) The pains of benevolence are those that result
from the view of pains supposed to be endured by other
beings. These may also be called the pains of ‘good will’, of
‘sympathy’, or of ‘the benevolent or social affections’.
27. (viii) The pains of malevolence are pains resulting from
the view of pleasures supposed to be enjoyed by beings who
are objects of a man’s displeasure. These may also be called
the pains of ‘ill-will’, of ‘antipathy’, or of ‘the malevolent or
unsocial affections’.
28. (ix) The pains of the memory can be grounded on any one
of the above kinds—pains of privation as well as of positive
pains. These correspond exactly to the pleasures of the
memory.
29. (x) The pains of the imagination can also be grounded
on any one of the above kinds, whether pains of privation or
positive pains; in other respects they correspond exactly to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-503-320.jpg)
![It would be interesting and somewhat useful to exhibit
a catalogue of the various complex pleasures and pains,
analysing them into the simple ones of which they are com-
posed. This would take up too much space to be admitted
here, but a short specimen, for the purpose of illustration,
can hardly be dispensed with.
1 A footnote here runs exactly parallel to the immediately
preceding footnote. You can easily work it out for yourself.
2 All pains other than these can be called pains of ‘sufferance.
3 This lets us distinguish the pleasures and pains of •amity more
clearly from those of •benevolence; and the pleasures and pains
•of enmity from
those of •malevolence. The pleasures and pains of amity and
enmity are self-regarding; those of benevolence and
malevolence are extra-regarding.
28
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
The pleasures taken in at the eye and ear are generally
very complex. The pleasures of a country scene, for instance,
often consists of the following pleasures among others:
Pleasures of the senses: •The simple pleasures of sight,
excited [see Glossary] by the perception of agreeable colours
and forms, green fields, waving foliage, glistening water,
and the like. •The simple pleasures of the ear, excited by
the perceptions of the chirping of birds, the murmuring](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-505-320.jpg)
![of waters, the rustling of the wind among the trees. •The
pleasures of smell, excited by taking in the fragrance of
flowers, of new-mown hay, or other vegetable substances
in the first stages of fermentation. •The agreeable inward
sensation produced by a brisk circulation of the blood, and
the ventilation of it in the lungs by air that is purer than is
often breathed in towns.
Pleasures of the imagination produced by association:
•The idea of the affluence resulting from the possession
of the objects one sees, and of the happiness arising from it.
•The idea of the innocence and happiness of the birds, sheep,
cattle, dogs, and other gentle or domestic animals. •The idea
of the constant flow of health that all these creatures are
supposed to enjoy—a notion that is apt to result from the
occasional flow of health enjoyed by the spectator. •The idea
of gratitude, excited by contemplating the all-powerful and
beneficent being who is looked up to as the author of these
blessings.—These last four are all to some extent pleasures
of sympathy.
Depriving a man of this group of pleasures is one of the
evils apt to result from imprisonment, whether produced by
illegal violence, or as legal punishment.
Chapter 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility
1. Pain and pleasure are produced in men’s minds by the
action of certain causes. But the quantity of pleasure and
pain does not vary uniformly with the quantity of force
exerted by its cause. The truth of this doesn’t rests on any
metaphysical nicety [see Glossary] in the meanings of ‘cause’,
‘quantity’ and ‘force’; it will be equally true however such a
force is measured.
2. How disposed is this man to feel such-and-such a
quantity of pleasure or pain when acted on by a cause with](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-506-320.jpg)
![such-and-such a force? The answer to that question gives
the degree or quantum of his sensibility [see Glossary]. We can
speak of the degree of his sensibility with reference •to all
the causes that act on him during a given period or •to one
particular cause or one sort of cause.
3. People vary in which causes produce this or that degree
of pleasure or pain in them. A given person’s pattern of
feeling-strength in relation to cause-force may be called the
quality or ‘bias’ of his sensibility. One man, for instance,
may be most affected by the pleasures of taste, another by
those of the ear. And when a single cause creates in everyone
two pains or pleasures, people can vary (though there’s less
of this) in which of the two is uppermost. It can happen,
for instance, that the same injury causes the same over-all
quantity of grief and resentment in x as in y, but x feels more
grief than resentment while y feels more resentment than
grief.
29
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
4. Any incident that serves as a cause of pleasure or pain
may be called an ‘exciting cause’ [see Glossary]; if of pleasure,
a
‘pleasurable’ cause; if of pain, a ‘painful’ or ‘afflictive’ cause.1
5. The quantity of pleasure or pain that a man is liable to
experience from a given exciting cause will depend not only
on that cause but also on some other circumstances—we
can call these ‘circumstances influencing sensibility’.2](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-507-320.jpg)
![(26) Age.
(27) Rank.
(28) Education [see Glossary].
(29) Climate.
(30) Lineage.
(31) Government.
(32) Religious profession
·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE·
An analytical view of all these circumstances will be given in
46 at the end of the chapter. It had to be delayed until then
because it couldn’t have been well understood until some of
them had been explained.
1 Three things that are intimately connected: •the exciting
cause, •the pleasure or pain produced by it, and •the intention
produced by such pleasure
or pain in the character of a motive. I fear that I haven’t always
been able to keep these sufficiently distinct. Having given you
this warning, I hope
that there won’t be much confusion if such mistakes do turn up.
2 Thus, in physical bodies, the momentum of a ball put in
motion by impulse will be influenced—increased or lessened—
by the circumstance of gravity.
When a ship is put in motion by the wind, its momentum and
direction will be influenced by the attraction of gravity, by the
motion and resistance
of the water, and by several other circumstances.
30
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-509-320.jpg)
![To •search out the vast variety of exciting or moderating
causes that can influence the degree or bias of a man’s
sensibility, to •define the boundaries of each, to •disentangle
them from one another, and to •lay the effect of each of them
clearly before the reader’s eye—all this constitutes one of
the most difficult tasks in moral [see Glossary] physiology. To
do this well would require examples. To provide a sufficient
collection of such examples would be a work of great labour
as well as nicety; history and biography would need to be
ransacked; a vast course of reading would be needed. Such
a process would. . . .be so enormous that this single chapter
would have swelled into a considerable volume. Invented
cases can sometimes make the general points tolerably
intelligible, but they can’t make it palatable. So here, as
so often elsewhere, I must confine myself to dry and general
instruction, while realising that illustrations would have
doubled the power of the instruction. The subject is so
difficult and so new that I’ll think I have succeeded pretty
well if, without claiming to exhaust it, I can mark out the
principal points of view and put things in order in a way that
will help the researches of more fortunate inquirers.
The great difficulty lies in the nature of words that are not
(like ‘pain’ and ‘pleasure’) •names of homogeneous real enti-
ties, but •names of fictitious entities that have no common
genus and therefore must be picked up here and there as
they happen to occur. It would take a vast and roundabout
chain of investigation to bring them under any exhaustive
plan of arrangement.
·END OF LONG FOOTNOTE·
7. (1) Health is the absence of disease, and thus the absence
of all the kinds of pain that are symptoms of disease. A man](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-510-320.jpg)
![may be said to be in a state of ‘health’ when he is not
conscious of any uneasy [see Glossary] sensations anywhere in
his body.1 Health affects general sensibility: a man suffering
from a bodily indisposition—a man in a state of ill-health—is
less sensible to the influence of any pleasurable cause, and
more so to that of any afflictive one, than if he were well.
8.(2) Although strength is causally closely linked with health,
the two are perfectly distinguishable. A man will indeed
generally be stronger in a good state of health than he will
be in a bad one; but one man in a bad state of health may
be stronger than another who is in good health. Weakness
commonly comes with disease; but a man’s radical frame
of body [= ‘basic physical constitution’] may make him weak
all
his life long without having any disease. Health, as I have
observed, is principally a negative circumstance; strength a
positive one. The degree of a man’s strength can be measured
with tolerable accuracy.2
1 This negative account of health may seem inadequate to the
degree of health where the whole body is filled with a kind of
feeling—a ‘flow of spirits’, as
it is called—that could properly be called a positive pleasure.
But without experiencing any such pleasurable feeling, if a man
experiences no painful
one he may be said to be in health.
2 The most accurate measure of a man’s strength seems to come
from the weight he can lift with his hands in a given attitude.
This admittedly relates
immediately only to his arms; but these are •the organs of
strength that are used most, •the ones whose strength
corresponds most exactly with the
person’s bodily strength generally, and •the ones whose
quantum of strength is most easily measured. . . .—‘Weakness’](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-511-320.jpg)
![is a negative term, implying
the absence of strength. It is also a relative term: calling
someone ‘weak’ is implicitly comparing him with others. When
a man is so weak that it is
painful for him to go through the motions of the ordinary
functions of life—to get up, to walk, to dress himself, and so
forth—that is counted as being
in ill-health.
31
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
9. (3) Hardiness is closely connected with strength, but dis-
tinguishable from it. Hardiness is the absence of irritability
[see Glossary]. There is
•irritability that is a disposition to undergo more or
less pain on the application of a mechanical cause
such as whipping or other procedures by which simple
afflictive punishments are inflicted; and
•irritability that is a disposition •to contract disease
more or less easily on the application of anything that
acts on the body through its physiological properties,
as when damp air produces fevers, colds, or other
inflammatory diseases; or •to experience immediate
uneasiness, as in the feelings caused by the surround-
ing air’s being too hot or too cold.
Hardiness, even in the sense in which it is opposed to the
action of mechanical causes, can be distinguished from
strength. The external indications of strength are](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-512-320.jpg)
![the abundance and firmness of the muscular fibres;
those of hardiness, in this sense, are
the firmness of the muscular fibres, and the thick
hardness of the skin.
Strength is more particularly the gift of nature; hardiness
the gift of education. Someone brought up as a gentleman
may be stronger than a common sailor, but the sailor may
be the hardier of the two.
10. (2) By ‘bodily imperfection’ we understand the condition
a person is in if he is •distinguished by some noticeable
deformity, or lacks some part or faculty that persons of the
same sex and age generally have; for instance, someone who
has a hare-lip, is deaf, or has lost a hand. Like ill-health,
bodily imperfection tends in general to lessen the effect of
any pleasurable circumstance and to increase the effect of
any afflictive one. But there is great variety in the effects of
this circumstance, i.e. in the ways in which a man can suffer
in his personal appearance, and in his bodily organs and
faculties. These differences will be taken notice of in their
proper places.
11. (5) So much for circumstances relating to the condition
of the body; we come now to those relating to the condition
of the mind. . . . Let us start with the quantity and quality of
knowledge possessed by the person in question, i.e. of the
ideas that he actually has in store, ready to call to mind
when needed. I’m talking about ideas that are in some way
of an interesting [see Glossary] nature, i.e. that could affect his
happiness or that of other men. When these ideas are many,
and of importance, a man is said to be a man of knowledge;
when they are few or not of importance, he is said to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-513-320.jpg)
![ignorant.
12. (6) By ‘ strength of intellectual powers’ I understand the
degree of ease with which a man calls to mind •ideas that
he has already aggregated to his stock of knowledge and
•any other ideas that he comes to want to place there. The
words ‘parts’ and ‘talents’ commonly come in here. We can
include under this heading the qualities of •readiness of
apprehension, •accuracy and tenacity of memory, •strength
of attention, •clearness of discernment, •amplitude of com-
prehension, and •vividness and rapidity of imagination. . . .
13. (7) [Bentham’s account of ‘firmness of mind’ and its
opposite ‘irritability of mind’ involves his notion of the ‘value’
of an exciting cause—see 2 on page 22. Two contributors to
a cause’s value are •its size and •its nearness in time; and a
man shows firmness of mind to the extent that he attaches
more weight to the former than to the latter. Bentham
purports to illustrate this, in a footnote, with something that
is surely an example of something quite different, namely the
firmness of sticking to a decision one has made—a man who
has been ‘determined by the prospect of some inconvenience
32
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
not to disclose a fact’, and stays firm in this decision even
when he is tortured on the rack. For this to illustrate what it
is meant to illustrate, the future ‘inconvenience’ would have
to be in some relevant sense bigger than the present agony
on the rack.]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-514-320.jpg)
![Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
and pain from their unhappiness. Its strength is given by
ratio of •the pleasure or pain he feels on their account and
•the pleasure or pain he thinks they feel for themselves.
21. (15) Sympathetic bias has to do with which parties are
the objects of a man’s sympathy, and the acts or other
circumstances of those persons that his sympathy is excited
by. These parties may be
•certain individuals
•any subordinate class of individuals
•the whole nation
•human kind in general
•the whole sensitive creation.
The more numerous these objects of his sympathy are, the
more enlarged his sympathy may be said to be.
22. (16, 17) Antipathetic sensibility and antipathetic biases
are just the reverse of sympathetic sensibility and sympa-
thetic biases. Antipathetic sensibility is a man’s propensity
to derive pain from the happiness of other sensitive beings,
and pleasure from their unhappiness.
23. (18) The circumstance of insanity of mind corresponds
to that of bodily imperfection. But there can’t be as many
varieties of it because as far as we can see the soul [here =
‘the mind’] is one indivisible thing, not distinguishable into
parts as the body is. I’m not including the lesser degrees
of imperfection that a mind may be susceptible of, because](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-517-320.jpg)
![they seem to fall under the already-mentioned headings of
ignorance, weakness of mind, irritability, or unsteadiness—
or under others that are reducible to those. My topic here is
the extraordinary kinds and degrees of mental imperfection
that are in any context as conspicuous and as unquestion-
able as lameness or blindness in the body. They seem to
operate partly by •inducing an extraordinary degree of the
imperfections mentioned above and partly by directing the
inclinations in extraordinary and preposterous directions.
24. (19) Under the heading of a man’s ‘habitual occupations’
I am including both the ones he pursues for the sake of profit
and those he pursues for the sake of present pleasure. . . .
[Bentham goes on to say that the ‘profit’ topic will come up
in the next paragraph; that it is distressing to be blocked,
by punishment or some other cause, from one’s habitual
occupations; and that your habitual occupations are not the
same as the bent of your inclinations—you might be much
inclined to go in for some activity that is never possible for
you.]
25. (20) Under the heading of ‘pecuniary circumstances’ I
mean to bring to view the ratio between a man’s means and
his wants—the sum total of all his means and the sum total
of all his wants. A man’s means depend on three things:
(a) his property—everything that he has in store indepen-
dently of his labour;
(b) the profit of his labour, whether physical or mental or
both;
(c) his connections in the way of support—i.e. the pe-
cuniary help that he is well placed to receive from
any persons (e.g. parents, patrons, relatives) whom](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-518-320.jpg)
![he has reason to expect to contribute gratis to his
maintenance.
It seems obvious that this list is complete. Anything that a
man uses he must have either (a) of his own or from other
people, and if from other people then either (c) gratis or (b) for
a price. His wants seem to depend on
(a) his habits of expense: a man’s desires are largely
governed by his habits; in many cases a desire (and
consequently the pain of privation connected with it)
wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for previous enjoy-
ment.
34
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
(b) his connections in the way of burden—meaning what-
ever expense he has reason to think he is bound
to incur in the support of those who are warranted
(by law or the customs of the world) in looking to
him for assistance; such as children, poor relations,
pensioned servants, other dependents.
(c) any present casual [here = ‘non-recurring’] demand he
may have: there are occasions when a given sum will
be worth infinitely more to a man than the same sum
would at another time; e.g. when he needs money •to
pay for extraordinary medical assistance or •to carry
on a law-suit on which his all depends or •to pay for
transport to a distant country where a job is waiting
for him. . . .](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-519-320.jpg)
![be conceived, differing considerably in their mental frame;
and vice versa.1
31. [Bentham says here that changes in a man’s mind are
not solely due to ‘external occurrences’, from which he seems
to infer that they aren’t purely changes in the body. He adds
that how a man develops depends partly on ‘nature’ and
partly on ‘education’, from which he infers (surely invalidly!)
that frame of body and frame of mind are distinct from one
another.]
32. Distinct though they are, it’s clear that at no time
in a man’s active life can they either of them make their
appearance by themselves. They merely constitute the latent
groundwork that the other circumstances—·the ones in the
(1)–(22) list·—have to work on; whatever influence the original
frames of body and mind have is so modified and covered
over (as it were) by those other circumstances that it is never
separately detectable. The effects of the one influence are
indistinguishably blended with those of the other.
1 Those who maintain that the mind and the body are one
substance may object that all we have here is a verbal
distinction, and that therefore there’s
no such thing as a frame of mind distinct from the frame of
body. But even if we grant the premise, for argument’s sake, we
can challenge the
inference to the conclusion. Even if the mind is only a part of
the body, it is very different in kind from the other parts of the
body.—No part of a
man’s bodily frame can alter considerably without the
alteration’s being immediately indicated in ways the senses can
pick up. A man’s frame of
mind can alter very considerably while his frame of body
remains the same to all appearance, i.e. in all the ways that
might become known to other
men.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-523-320.jpg)
![36
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
[That last sentence is verbatim from Bentham. This puzzling
paragraph
seems to go as follows: What seemed to be shaping up to be the
thesis
that neither of these two shows up
by itself, rather than in harness with the other
becomes instead the thesis that the pair of them don’t show up
by themselves, rather than in harness with other factors.
But then in that interplay between •these two and •the others,
the
influences of the two run together. In short, ‘Distinct though
they are,
the effects of one are indistinguishably blended with those of
the other.’]
33. The emotions of the body are rightly regarded as probable
indications of the emotional state of the mind, but they are
pretty far from conclusive. A man may exhibit the exterior
appearances of grief without grieving anything like as much
as he appears to, and perhaps without really grieving at
all. Oliver Cromwell, whose conduct indicated a more than
ordinarily callous heart, was remarkably profuse in tears.
Many men can command the outer appearances of sensibility
with very little real feeling.1](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-524-320.jpg)
![34. The remaining items may be called ‘secondary’ influenc-
ing circumstances—secondary, that is, to the ones already
mentioned. They do influence the quantum or bias of a man’s
sensibility [= ‘the strength or direction of his feelings’], but
only by
means of the primary ones. In these events, it’s the primary
ones that do the business, while the secondary ones are
most open to observation; so the secondary ones are most
talked about, which is why I have to discuss them. But their
influence can be explained only through the primary ones,
whereas the influence of the primary ones will be apparent
enough without any mention of the secondary ones.
35. (25) Among the basic facts about the bodily frame that
appear to influence the quantum and bias of sensibility, the
most obvious and conspicuous are those that constitute
the sex. The female sex appears in general to have more
sensibility than the male sex does. The female’s health is
more delicate than the male’s; she is commonly lower on the
scale of
•strength and hardiness of body,
•quantity and quality of knowledge,
•strength of intellectual powers, and
•firmness of mind.
Moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibility
are commonly stronger in her than in the male. The quality
of her knowledge and the direction of her inclinations are
commonly different in many respects. Her moral biases are
also in certain respects remarkably different: for example,
chastity, modesty, and delicacy are prized more than courage
in a woman; courage is prized more than any of those
qualities in a man. The religious biases in the two sexes](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-525-320.jpg)
![•connections implying burden: a man of a certain rank
will frequently have dependents in addition to those
whose dependency is the result of natural relation-
ship.
As for health, strength, and hardiness, if rank has any
influence on these it is only in a remote way chiefly by its
influence on habitual occupations.
38
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6:
Circumstances influencing Sensibility
38. (28) The influence of education is still more extensive.
Education [see Glossary] stands on a somewhat different foot-
ing from age, sex, and rank. Although the influence of these
three comes mainly if not entirely through the medium of
certain of the primary circumstances I have mentioned, each
of them has a separate existence in itself. This is not the
case with education: all there is to education is one or more
of those primary circumstances. Education may be divided
into physical and mental, the education of the body and
that of the mind. Mental education divides into intellectual
and moral, the culture of the understanding and the culture
of the affections. [In that sentence, ‘culture’ refers to •a process
of
helping something to grow. But in the rest of this paragraph
Bentham is
thinking of a man’s education primarily as educatedness, •the
upshot of
a process.] The education a man receives comes partly from
others, partly from himself. By ‘education’, then, what is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-529-320.jpg)
![under which a man has been most accustomed to live.
This operates principally through the medium of education;
the magistrate [see Glossary] operating as a tutor to all the
members of the state by the direction he gives to their
hopes and fears. Indeed under a solicitous and attentive
government an ordinary teacher—indeed, even a parent—is
only a deputy (as it were) to the magistrate, whose controlling
influence. . . .stays with a man to his life’s end. The effects
of the magistrate’s special power are seen more particularly
in its influence over the quantum and bias of men’s moral,
religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibilities. Under
a well-constituted government, and even under a badly con-
stituted government that is well administered, men’s moral
sensibility is commonly stronger, and their moral biases
more in conformity with the dictates of utility; their religious
sensibility is often weaker, but their religious biases conform
better to the dictates of utility; their sympathetic affections
are more enlarged, directed more to the whole community
than to the magistrate, and more to the magistrate than to
small parties or to individuals; their antipathetic sensibilities
are less violent because •more obedient to well-directed
moral biases and •less apt to be excited by ill-directed
religious ones; their antipathetic biases conform better to
well-directed moral ones, and are correspondingly more
apt to be grounded on enlarged and sympathetic affections
[see Glossary] than on narrow and self-regarding ones, and
accordingly are over-all more in conformity with the dictates
of utility.
42. (32) Finally we come to a man’s religious profession—the
religious fraternity of which he is a member. This operates
mainly through •religious sensibility and •religious biases;
but it also operates, as a fairly conclusive indication, with re-
spect to several other circumstances. With some of them the
indication comes mainly through •the two just mentioned—](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-532-320.jpg)
![and then, by inter-relating the two lists, to form a detailed
estimate of the influence of each circumstance on the effect
of each kind and degree of punishment.
There are two procedures either of which might be fol-
lowed in drawing up this estimate. (i) One is to start with
the name of the circumstance, and under it to represent the
different influences it exerts over the effects of the various
modes of punishment. (ii) The other is to start with the name
of the punishment, and under it to represent the different
influences that are exerted over its effects by the various
circumstances. [Bentham says that (ii) is ‘by far the most
useful and commodious’ of the two: the legislator thinks
first about the punishment, and defines it as he thinks fit;
and then he has to relate this to facts about circumstances
that are in no way under his control. He concludes:] But on
neither procedure can any such estimate be delivered here.1
46. It may be of use to give some sort of analytic view of
the circumstances I have listed, making it easier to see if
anything that should have been there has been omitted, and
also showing how those that are on the list differ and agree.
In the first place, they may be distinguished into primary
(those that operate immediately of themselves) and
•secondary: those that operate only through the pri-
mary ones: sex, age, station in life, education, climate,
lineage, government, and religious profession.
Everything not on that list is primary. The primary circum-
stances divide into those that are innate (namely, radical
frame of body and radical frame of mind) and
•those that are adventitious, ·i.e. that come to the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-537-320.jpg)
![person during the course of his life.·
The adventitious circumstances divide into
•those that are exterior to him: involving •things he is
concerned with (his pecuniary circumstances)1 and
1 [In a footnote Bentham says that he has ‘actually drawn up
such an estimate’ though an incomplete one based on procedure
(i), and that he plans to
take this further in ‘another work’; and refers us to the footnote
to paragraph 3 on page 103. Then a further note:] Some of these
circumstances give
particular labels to the persons they relate to: from bodily
imperfections persons are denominated ‘deaf’, ‘dumb’, ‘blind’,
and so forth: from insanity,
‘idiots’ and ‘maniacs’; from age, ‘infants’. For all these classes
of persons particular provision is made in the legal code. . . .
1 The causes on which a man’s pecuniary circumstances depend
don’t all belong to the same class. The absolute quantum of a
man’s property does
indeed belong to the same class as his pecuniary circumstances
in general; so does the profit he makes from the occupation by
which he earns his
living. But that occupation itself concerns his own person, and
comes under the same heading as his habitual pastimes, as do
also his habits of
expense. [And Bentham then re-classifies some other
contributors to pecuniary circumstances.
42
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human
Actions in General](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-538-320.jpg)
![I mean ‘consequences that are material’ [see Glossary]. The
number and variety of consequences of any act must be
infinite; but only the material ones are worth attending to.
Now, the consequences of an act that a legislator can regard
as material or important are those that consist of pain or
pleasure or produce pain or pleasure. . . .
4. In thinking about the consequences of an act we have
to take into account not only •the ones that would have
ensued from the act even if there had been no intention but
also •the ones that depend on connections between those
and the intention. We shall see later that the connection
between the intention and certain consequences is a means
of producing other consequences. In this lies the difference
between rational agency and irrational.
5. What a person intends to be the consequences of an act
depends on two things:
•the state of the will or intention with respect to the
act itself;
•the state of the understanding, or perceptive faculties,
with regard to the circumstances that do (or may
appear to) accompany the act.
The perceptive faculty can be in any one of three states
regarding these circumstances:
•consciousness, when the person’s beliefs about the
circumstances are true and don’t omit anything;
•unconsciousness, when there are some circumstances
43](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-540-320.jpg)
![45
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human
Actions in General
to matter is the motion or rest of a single atom of matter;
one that is •indivisible with regard to motion is the motion
of a body from one single atom of space to its immediate
neighbour. [Notice that this paragraph concerns events
generally, not
merely the ones that would ordinarily be called ‘acts’.]
Sixth, acts can be divided into simple and complex.
Simple acts include striking, leaning, drinking; a complex
act consists of many very different simple acts that derive a
sort of unity from their relation to some common goal—e.g.
giving a dinner, maintaining a child, exhibiting a triumph,
bearing arms, holding a court, and so forth.
20. Questions sometimes arise in particular cases:
•Did this involve one act or many? and
•If more than one act, where did one act end and the
next begin?
It is now evident that •these questions can often be answered
with equal propriety in opposite ways; and that •when they
can be answered in only one way, the answer will depend on
the nature of the occasion and on why the question is being
asked. A man is wounded in two fingers at one stroke—is it
one wound or several? A man is beaten at noon and again at
12:08—is it one beating or several? You beat one man and
immediately go on to beat another—is this one beating or
several? In any of these cases the answer might be ‘One’ for
some purposes and ‘Several’ for others. I give these examples](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-546-320.jpg)
![so as to alert you to the ambiguity of language, so that
you won’t harass yourself with unsolvable doubts or harass
others with interminable disputes.
21. So much for acts considered in themselves; we now
come to the circumstances they can be accompanied by.
These have to be taken into the account if anything is to be
determined regarding the consequences; without knowing
the circumstances we can’t know whether an act is beneficial
or harmful or neither. In some circumstances killing a man
may be a beneficial act; in others putting food before him
may be a pernicious one.
22. The circumstances of an act are. . . what? Any objects
whatsoever.1 Take any act whatsoever, there is nothing in
the nature of things that excludes any imaginable object
from being a circumstance to it. Any given object can be a
circumstance to any other.
23. I have already divided an act’s consequences into mate-
rial [see Glossary] and immaterial. Its circumstances can be
divided in the same way. Now, ‘material’ is a relative term:
•applied to an act’s consequences it relates to pain and
pleasure;
•applied to the circumstances, it relates to the conse-
quences.
A circumstance can be said to be ‘material’ when it has
a visible causal relation to the consequences; ‘immaterial’
when it doesn’t.
24. The consequences of an act are events [see Glossary]. A
circumstance can be causally related to an event in any one
of four ways:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-547-320.jpg)
![include the situation and conversations of the people around
Buckingham, because they also contributed to the event by
preventing Buckingham from putting himself on his guard
on the first appearance of the intruder.
1 This classification may be illustrated by animal generation.
Production: father → son. Derivation: son → father. Collateral
connection: siblings.
Conjunct influence: marriage and copulation. [Bentham
sketches another illustration which he might have used but
decided not to because] while
it made the subject a little clearer to one man out of a hundred,
it might—like the mathematical formulae we see sometimes
employed for that
purpose—make it more obscure and formidable for the other
ninety-nine.
2 The more remote a connection of this sort is, of course, the
more obscure. It will often happen that a connection the idea of
which would at first sight
seen extravagant and absurd is made highly probable—indeed
indisputable—merely by putting in a few intermediate
circumstances. At Rome in 390
BC a goose starts cackling; in 1610 AD a king of France is
murdered. Considering these two events on their own, what can
appear more extravagant
than the notion that one should have had any influence in
producing the other? Fill up the gap, bring to mind a few
intermediate circumstances, and
nothing can appear more probable. The cackling of geese when
the Gauls were creeping up on the Capitol saved the Roman
commonwealth; if it had
not survived and gained ascendancy over most of the nations of
Europe, France included, it wouldn’t have been humanly
possible for the Christian
religion to establish itself as it did in France. Even if Henry IV](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-550-320.jpg)
![‘involuntary’ is sometimes used in opposition to ‘intentional’ or
to ‘unconstrained’, but not in opposition to ‘spontaneous’. It
might be useful to confine
the meaning of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to one very narrow
case, which I’ll mention in the next note.
2 [Bentham has a footnote here going into further details that
might be thought trivial. The first stage of a positive act
consists in motion, which has
three aspects to which correspond three intentions: did he intend
to move his whole arm or only his fore-arm? to move it in that
direction? to move
it as fast as that? This fine-tuning might sometimes be relevant
to proceedings in a criminal trial, Bentham says, and might also,
‘in the hands of an
expert metaphysician’, play a part in ‘an exhaustive analysis of
the possible varieties of mechanical inventions’.]
49
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 8:
Intentionality
7. Third. An incident that is directly intentional may be so
either •ultimately or only •mediately.
•Ultimately intentional: it stands last of all exterior events
in the aforesaid chain of motives; so that the agent would
have aimed to produce it even if there were no prospect of
its producing anything else in its turn.
•Only mediately intentional: when the prospect of producing
some other incident forms a subsequent link in the same
chain; so that the agent would not have been motivate to aim
at the former if he hadn’t expected it to produce the latter.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-555-320.jpg)
![Intentionality
the king in both those limbs at the same time. In this case
the king’s being shot in the leg was intentional, and was
so conjunctively with another incident that did not happen,
namely his being shot in the hand. [Bentham then adds (vii)-
(ix) three variations on this hand/leg scenario, illustrating
concepts presented in paragraphs 9 and 10 above.]
12. An act may be unintentional in any stage of it, though
intentional in the preceding stage. . . . (See paragraph 14
on page 46.) But if it was unintentional in the last stage,
its being or not being intentional in any preceding stage
is immaterial with respect to the consequences. The only
point with respect to which it is material is the proof ·about
what he intended·. In most cases the more stages the act
is unintentional in, the more apparent it is that it was
unintentional with respect to the last stage. If a man,
intending to strike you on the cheek, strikes you in the
eye and puts it out, it will probably be hard for him to prove
that he didn’t intend to strike you in the eye. It will probably
be easier if he didn’t intend to strike you at all, or didn’t
intend to strike anything .
13. We often hear men speak of a ‘good intention’, of a
‘bad intention’; and the goodness or badness of a man’s
intention is a circumstance on which great stress is generally
laid. It is indeed of considerable importance when properly
understood, but these phrases are utterly ambiguous and
obscure. Nothing can be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’, strictly
speaking, unless it is so •in itself, which is the case only with
pain or pleasure, or •because of its effects, which is the case
only with things that cause or prevent pain or pleasure. But
in a figurative and less proper way of speaking a thing may
be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ •in consideration of its cause. Now,
the effects of an intention to do such-and-such an act are
what I have been calling its ‘consequences’; and the causes](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-558-320.jpg)
![of an intention are called ‘motives’. So a man’s intention on
any occasion can be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because of the act’s
consequences or because of his motives. . . . The goodness or
badness of the consequences depends on the circumstances,
and these are not objects of the man’s intention. A man
intends the act, and by his intention produces the act; but
he doesn’t intend the circumstances, and just because they
are circumstances of his act he doesn’t produce them. (He
may have produced some of them by previous intentions
and acts, but in this present act he takes them as he finds
them.) Acts and their consequences are objects of the will
as well as of the understanding; circumstances as such are
objects of the understanding only. [Why ‘circumstances, as
such’?
Because a circumstance might have been an object of the will in
its role
as a consequence of an earlier act.] All our man can do with
these,
as such, is to know or not to know them, i.e. to be conscious
of them or not conscious of them. Thus, what is to be
said about the goodness or badness of a man’s intention as
resulting from the consequences of his act comes under the
heading of Consciousness (chapter 9), and what is to be said
about of the goodness or badness his intention as resulting
from his motive comes under the heading of Motives (chapter
6).
51
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 9:
Consciousness
Chapter 9: Consciousness](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-559-320.jpg)
![act may be called ‘rash’ when the case is thought to be such
that an ordinarily prudent and ordinarily benevolent person
would •have attended to and thought about the imagined
circumstance sufficiently to realise that it was nonexistent,
improbable or immaterial, and would thus •have been led to
prevent the harmful incident from taking place.
13. In ordinary discourse, when a man does something
whose consequences turn out to be harmful, it is often said
that his intention was good or bad. While this is said about
the intention, what is usually at work here is a supposition
about the nature of the motive. Although the act turns
out to be harmful, it said to be done with a good intention
when it is supposed to arise from a motive which is looked
on as a good motive, and with a bad intention when it is
supposed to arise from a motive that is looked on as a bad
motive. But the nature of the consequences intended [by
53
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 9:
Consciousness
which Bentham must mean ‘the nature of the intention’] is
perfectly
distinguishable from the nature of the motive that gave birth
to the intention, though they are intimately connected. The
intention counts as being a good one if
the consequences of the act would have been ben-
eficial if they had turned out to be what the agent
thought them likely to be.
So the intention might properly be called a good one even if](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-564-320.jpg)
![•its consequences turned out to be harmful and •the motive
that gave birth to it was what is called a bad one. And in the
same way the intention may be bad even if •its consequences
turned out to be good and •the motive that gave birth to it
was a good one. [This is the first time in the work that Bentham
has
spoken of something as being a good motive rather than as
being ‘looked
on as a good motive’.]
14. [This paragraph deplores at great length people’s ten-
dency to say ‘intention’ when they mean ‘motive’.]
15. An example will make this clear. [Here ‘this’ refers to
the penultimate sentence of 13. above.] Out of malice a man
prosecutes you for a crime of which he wrongly believes
you to be guilty. The consequences of his conduct are
harmful to you (shame and anxiety at least, and the evil
of the punishment if you are convicted), and not beneficial to
anyone. The man’s motive was also what is called a bad one:
for malice will be allowed by everybody to be a bad motive.
But if the consequences of his conduct had turned out to
be what he believed them likely to be, they would have been
good; because they would have included the punishment of
a criminal, which is a benefit to everyone who could become
a victim of a similar crime. . . . I’ll say more about motives in
the next chapter.
16. An intention that isn’t bad may be called ‘innocent’ even
if it isn’t outright good. Accordingly, even if the consequences
have turned out to be harmful, and whatever the motive may
have been, the intention may be called innocent if the agent
•didn’t know about one of the circumstances on which
the harmfulness of the consequences depended; or](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-565-320.jpg)
![•wrongly thought that some circumstance would serve
to prevent or to outweigh the mischief.
17. A few words for the purpose of applying what has been
said to the Roman law. [Bentham here presents more than a
few words on the proper use of various Latin words that were
sometimes used by lawyers. We can safely spare ourselves
all this.]
18. The definitions and distinctions that I have presented
·in this chapter· are not only of •theoretical significance;
they can be widely and constantly •used in moral discourse
as well as in legislative practice. The degree and bias of a
man’s intention, ·and· the absence or presence of conscious-
ness or mis-supposal on his part, go a long way towards
•settling whether the consequences of his act are good or
bad, and for this and other reasons towards •creating a great
demand for punishment (see chapter 13). The presence of
intention regarding consequence Co, and of consciousness
with regard to circumstance Ci, of the act, will constitute
essential ingredients in the composition of this or that
offence; and consciousness regarding other circumstances
will contribute to an offence’s gravity. And nearly always the
absence of intention regarding certain consequences and the
absence of consciousness, or the presence of mis-supposal,
regarding certain circumstances, will constitute grounds of
extenuation.
54
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-566-320.jpg)
![Chapter 10: Motives
1. Different senses of ‘motive’
1. It is an acknowledged truth that every kind of act—and
therefore every kind of offence—is apt to have a different
character and lead to different effects according to the nature
of the motive that gives birth to it. So we need to look into
the various motives by which human conduct is liable to be
influenced.
2. In the broadest sense that the word is ever given with
reference to a thinking being, a motive is
anything that can contribute to give birth to, or even
to prevent, any kind of action.
Now an action of a thinking being is the act either of the
body or only of the mind; and an act of the mind is an act
either of the intellectual faculty or of the will. [Bentham
then mentions motives leading to ‘acts of the intellectual
faculty’ that stay within the understanding and have no
influence on the will. Those motives have nothing to do with
the production of pleasure or pain; they are irrelevant to our
present purposes; and Bentham sets them aside.]
3. The only motives we have any concern with are ones that
are of the right kind to act on the will. By a motive in this
sense of the word, then, is to be understood
anything whatsoever which, by influencing the will of
a sensitive being, is supposed to serve as a means of
determining him to act, or voluntarily to forbear to
act, on any occasion.1
[The indented passage is verbatim from Bentham.] Motives of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-567-320.jpg)
![this
sort, in contradistinction to the former, may be called practi-
cal motives, or motives applying to practice.
4. Owing to the poverty and unsettled state of language,
‘motive’ is used indiscriminately to denote two kinds of
objects which have to be distinguished if the subject is to
be better understood. Sometimes it is used to denote any of
those really existing incidents from which the act in question
is supposed to arise; in these uses the word has what may
be called its ‘literal’ or ‘unfigurative’ sense. At other times
it is used to denote a certain fictitious entity, a passion,
an affection of the mind, an ideal [see Glossary] being which,
on the occurrence of any such ·really existing· incident, is
considered as operating on the mind and prompting it to
take the course that the influence of the incident is impelling
it towards. Motives of this class are avarice, indolence,
benevolence, and so forth, as we’ll see in more detail further
on. This latter may be called the ‘figurative’ sense of ‘motive’.
5. The real incidents to which the name ‘motive’ is given
are of two kinds. •The internal perception of an individual
lot [see Glossary] of pleasure or pain, the expectation of which
is thought likely to determine you to act in such-and-such
a manner—e.g. the pleasure of acquiring a certain sum of
money, or the pain of exerting yourself on a certain occasion.
•Any external event the happening of which is regarded as
tending to bring about the experience of such pleasure or
pain—e.g. the coming up of a winning lottery ticket owned
1 When the effect or tendency of a motive is to determine a man
to forbear to act, it may seem improper to use the term ‘motive’,
since strictly speaking
‘motive’ means ‘something that disposes an object to move’.
But we have no acceptable alternative to that improper term. By
way of justification, or
at least apology, for this popular use of ‘motive’ I point out that
even forbearance to act, or the negation of motion (i.e. of bodily](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-568-320.jpg)
![motion), when it is
voluntary, presupposes an act of the will that is as much a
positive act, as much a case of motion, as any other act of a
thinking substance.
55
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
by you, or the breaking out of a fire in the house you are in,
making it necessary for you to get out.
6. Two other senses of the term ‘motive’ need also to be
distinguished. ‘Motive’ refers necessarily to action: it is a
pleasure, pain, or other episode that prompts ·the person·
to action. In one sense of the word, then, a motive must be
previous to such an event [here = ‘such an action’]. But a man
can’t be governed by a motive unless he looks beyond the
event that is called his action, looking to its consequences; it
is only in this way that the idea of pleasure, pain, or any other
event can give birth to it. So he must always look to some
event later than the act he is contemplating performing—an
event that doesn’t yet exist. . . . Now, because it is always
hard and usually unnecessary to distinguish two objects as
intimately connected as
(a) the later possible object that is thus looked forward
to, and
(b) the present existing object or event that takes place
when a man looks forward to (a) the other,
they are both spoken of as ‘motive’. To distinguish them we](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-569-320.jpg)
![may call (a) a motive in prospect and (b) as a motive in esse [=
‘a now-existent motive’; but see the footnote to 7]; and each of
these
has exterior as well as internal versions. Consider this case:
A fire breaks out in your neighbour’s house; you are
afraid of its extending to your own house; you are
afraid that if you stay in it you will be burnt; so you
run out of it.
Your running out of the house is the act; the other items are
all motives to it.
•The fire’s breaking out in your neighbour’s house
is an external motive, and a motive in esse;
•the idea or belief of the probability of the fire’s extend-
ing to your own house,
•the idea or belief of your being burnt if you stay
indoors, and
•the pain you feel at the thought of such a catastrophe,
are all internal events, but still in esse;
•the fire’s actually extending to your own house, and
•your being actually burnt by it,
are external motives in prospect;
•the pain you would feel at seeing your house burning,
•the pain you would feel while you were burning,
are internal motives in prospect. These last may in the
upshot come to be in esse, but then of course they will cease
to act as motives.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-570-320.jpg)
![7. Of all these motives that jointly produce the action, the
one that stand nearest to it is the internal motive in esse
that consists in the expectation of the internal motive in
prospect—the pain or uneasiness you feel at the thought
of being burnt.1 All other motives are more or less remote.
The motives in prospect are remote in proportion as their
expected time of happening is more distant from—and thus
later than—the time of the act, and the motives in esse are
remote in proportion as their time of happening is more
distant from—and thus earlier than—the time of the act.
·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE·
Under the term esse we must include •past as well as
•present existence. They are equally real, in comparison with
what is still in the future. Language is seriously deficient in
not enabling us to distinguish
1 In a footnote Bentham says that it may be hard to separate
•the expectation from •the pain that accompanies it, and that it
isn’t important to do so.
Similarly with ‘the other kinds of motives’: sometimes we need
to consider them separately, but] it will often be scarcely
practicable and not always
material to avoid confounding them, as they always have been
confounded up to now.
56
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
•existence as opposed to unreality
precisely from](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-571-320.jpg)
![•present existence as opposed to past.
The English word ‘existence’ and esse (adopted by lawyers
from Latin) have the inconvenience of appearing to confine
the existence in question to some single period considered
as being present.
·END OF FOOTNOTE·
8. As I remarked earlier, we have no concern here with
motives whose influence does not reach beyond the under-
standing. So if we have any concern with any objects that
are spoken of as motives with reference to the understanding
[Bentham’s phrase], it can only be with ones which through the
medium of •the understanding influence •the will. That is
the only way in which something can in a practical sense act
as a motive on the strength of its influence on the sentiment
of belief. . . . When we talk of giving reasons, we are often
pointing to motives such as these. Your neighbour’s house
is on fire; I observe to you •that at the lower part of your
neighbour’s house is some wood-work that joins onto yours,
•that the flames have caught this wood-work, and so forth.
I’m saying this in order to dispose you to believe, as I do,
that if you stay in your house much longer you will be burnt.
In doing this, I suggest motives to your understanding; and
these motives, by their tendency to cause or strengthen a
pain that operates on you as an internal motive in esse,
combine to act as motives on the will.
2. No motives constantly good or constantly bad
9. In all this chain of motives, the principal or original link
seems to be the last internal motive in prospect; it is to this
that •the other motives in prospect owe their materiality
and •the action owes its existence. [Bentham actually wrote
‘and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-572-320.jpg)
![the immediately acting motive owes its existence’; but this
passage falls
to pieces unless he meant ‘the action’. The phrase ‘immediately
acting’
doesn’t occur anywhere else in this work.] This motive in
prospect is
always some pleasure (which the act is expected to produce
or continue) or some pain (which the act is expected to
prevent or discontinue). A motive is substantially nothing
more than pleasure or pain, operating in a certain manner.
10. Now, pleasure is in itself a good; indeed it’s the only good
if we set aside immunity from pain; and pain is in itself an
evil, and without exception the only evil; or else ‘good’ and
‘evil’ have no meaning! And this is equally true of every sort of
pain, and of every sort of pleasure. So it follows—immediately
and incontestably—that there is no such thing as a sort of
motive that is in itself a bad one. Let a man’s motive be
ill-will, malice, envy, cruelty—it is still a kind of pleasure
that is his motive, the pleasure he takes at the thought of
the pain that he sees or expects to see his adversary undergo.
Even this wretched pleasure, taken by itself, is good. It may
be faint; it may be short; it must be impure; but while it
lasts, and before bad consequences arrive, it’s as good as
any other pleasure that isn’t more intense.
11. Yet actions are commonly said to come from good or
bad motives—always meaning internal motives. This way of
speaking is far from accurate, and because it is apt to occur
in connection with almost every kind of offence, we need to
settle its precise meaning and observe how far it squares
with the truth of things.
12. With regard to anything that isn’t itself either pain or](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-573-320.jpg)
![pleasure: if it is good, that is because it tends to produce
pleasure or avert pain; if it is bad, that is because it tends
to produce pain or avert pleasure. This holds for everything,
including motives. Now the fact is that from one and the
57
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
same individual motive, and from every kind of motive, there
may come some good actions, some bad ones, and others
that are indifferent [see Glossary]. I will now show this with
respect to all the different kinds of motives, as determined
by the various kinds of pleasures and pains.
13. This analysis will be found to be difficult, largely because
of a certain perversity of structure that prevails more or
less throughout all languages. . . . To speak of motives we
must call them by their names, but it is rare to meet with a
motive whose name expresses only that and nothing more.
Along with the motive’s name, a proposition is tacitly involved
imputing to it a certain quality; and in many cases the quality
will appear to include that very goodness or badness that we
are here inquiring into. The name of the motive is a word
that is employed—as they commonly say—only
•‘in a good sense’: meaning that it conjoins the idea of
the motive with an idea of approval—i.e. of pleasure
or satisfaction that the name-user has at the thought
of such a motive; or
•‘in a bad sense’: meaning that it conjoins the idea
of the motive with an idea of disapproval—i.e. of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-574-320.jpg)
![this case his motive can scarcely be looked on as either good
or bad. . . . But in both cases his motive is the same: it is
neither more nor less than the motive corresponding to the
pleasures of the palate.1
16. To the pleasures of the sexual sense corresponds the
motive which in a neutral sense may be called ‘sexual desire’.
In a bad sense it is spoken of as ‘lasciviousness’ and given a
variety of other names of reproof. It has no name used in a
good sense.2
•A man rapes a virgin. His motive is confidently labelled
as ‘lust’, ‘lasciviousness’, or the like, and is universally
regarded as a bad one. •The same man, at another time,
exercises the rights of marriage with his wife. In this case
the motive may be regarded as a good one, or at least as
indifferent [see Glossary], and people would hesitate to call
it ‘lust’ etc. Yet it may be that in both cases the motive is
precisely the same, namely sexual desire.
17. The other pleasures of sense are of too little consequence
to have given separate names to the corresponding motives.
18. Corresponding to the pleasures of curiosity is the motive
also called ‘curiosity’, and could instead be called ‘the love
of novelty’, or ‘the love of experiment’; and on particular
occasions it may be called ‘sport’ or ‘play’.
•A boy, wanting to do something interesting, reads an
improving book; the motive may be regarded as a good one,
and certainly not a bad one. •He sets his top spinning; the
motive is regarded as at any rate not a bad one. •He sets
loose a mad ox among a crowd; his motive may now be
described as ‘abominable’. Yet in all three cases the motive](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-579-320.jpg)
![may be the very same—namely curiosity.
19. Corresponding to the pleasures of wealth is the sort of
motive that can be labelled in a neutral sense as ‘pecuniary
interest’; in a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘avarice’,
‘covetousness’, ‘rapacity’, or ‘lucre’ [see Glossary]; in other
cases ‘niggardliness’; in a good sense—but only in particular
cases—‘economy’ and ‘frugality; and in some cases the word
‘industry’ may be applied to it. In some particular cases
it is called ‘parsimony’, this being a sense that is nearly
indifferent but leaning towards the bad side.
•For money you gratify a man’s hatred, by putting his
adversary to death. •For money you plough his field for him.
In the first case your motive is called ‘lucre’, and is regarded
as corrupt and abominable; in the second case, for lack
of a proper label it is called ‘industry’, and is regarded as
innocent and perhaps downright meritorious. Yet the motive
is in both cases precisely the same—pecuniary interest.
20. The pleasures of skill are not sufficiently distinct or
important to have given any name to the corresponding
motive.
21. To the pleasures of friendship corresponds a motive
which in a neutral sense may be called ‘the desire to ingrati-
ate oneself’. In a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘servility’;
1 It won’t be worthwhile in every case to give an example in
which the action would be indifferent: if good as well as bad
actions can come from the
same motive, it is easy to conceive that indifferent ones can
come from it also.
2 ‘Love’ sometimes includes this idea ·in its meaning·; but it
can’t serve the purpose of picking it out separately, because it](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-580-320.jpg)
![reflection, who disapprove of the power of this motive on this
occasion (without always seeing that it’s a motive that they
approve of in other instances) deem it an abominable motive;
and because the multitude, who are the manufacturers of
language [Bentham’s phrase], haven’t provided a simple name
for it, they will call it ‘love of false glory’ or ‘love of false
ambition’ or the like. Yet in all four cases the motive is the
same—the love of reputation.
23. Corresponding to the pleasures of power is the motive
that can neutrally be called ‘the love of power’; those who
disapprove of it sometimes call it ‘the lust for power’. It
has no name in a good sense. In some cases this motive
is run together with the love of reputation under the single
label ‘ambition’. This is not surprising, given •how intimately
the two motives are connected in many cases: it commonly
happens that something giving one sort of pleasure gives the
other sort at the same time (e.g. government positions which
are at once posts of honour and places of trust); and given
•that reputation is the road to power.
•If in order to gain a place in administration you poison
the man who occupies it, or •if for the same reason you
propose a useful plan for the advancement of the public
welfare, your motive is the same in both cases. Yet in the
first case it is regarded as criminal and abominable; in the
second case allowable and even praiseworthy.
24. Corresponding to the pleasures and pains of the religious
sanction is a motive that has, strictly speaking, no perfectly
62
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-585-320.jpg)
![26. Corresponding to the pleasures of malevolence or
antipathy there is a motive which in a neutral sense is called
‘antipathy’ or ‘displeasure’; and in particular cases ‘dislike’,
‘aversion’, ‘abhorrence’, and ‘indignation’; in a sense that is
neutral or perhaps leaning a little to the bad side, ‘ill-will’;
and in particular cases ‘anger’, ‘wrath’, and ‘enmity’. In a
bad sense it is called, in different cases, ‘wrath’, ‘spleen’,
‘ill-humour’, ‘hatred’, ‘malice’, ‘rancour’, ‘rage’, ‘fury’, ‘cru-
elty’, ‘tyranny’, ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’, ‘revenge’, ‘misanthropy’,
and by other names that it’s hardly worthwhile to try to
collect.1 Like ‘good will’, ‘ill will’ is used with adjectives that
express the persons who are the objects of the affection [see
Glossary]—‘party enmity’, ‘party rage’, and so forth. There
seems to be no single good-sense name for this motive. In
compound expressions it can be spoken of in a good sense,
by prefixing adjectives such as ‘just’ and ‘praiseworthy’ to
words that are used in a neutral or nearly neutral sense.
•You rob a man; he prosecutes you, and gets you pun-
ished; out of resentment you attack him and hang him with
your own hands. In this case your motive will universally be
regarded as detestable, and will be called ‘malice’, ‘cruelty’,
‘revenge’, and so forth. •A man has stolen a little money
from you; out of resentment you prosecute him, and get him
hanged by course of law. In this case people will probably
be a little divided in their opinions about your motive; your
friends will regard it as praiseworthy, and will call it ‘just
resentment’ or ‘praiseworthy resentment’; your enemies may
be disposed to regard it as blameworthy and to call it ‘cruelty’,
‘malice’, ‘revenge’, and so forth; and to counter this your
friends may try to change the motive, calling it ‘public spirit’.
•A man has murdered your father; out of resentment you
prosecute him and get him put to death in course of law. In
this case everyone will regard your motive as praiseworthy,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-589-320.jpg)
![and will (again) call it ‘just resentment’ or ‘praiseworthy
resentment’; and your friends, wanting to display the more
1 Here as elsewhere you may note that many of the names of
motives are also names of passions, appetites, and affections—
fictitious entities that are
contrived only by considering pleasures or pains from some
particular point of view. Some of them are also names of moral
qualities. This branch
of nomenclature is remarkably tangled: to unravel it completely
would take a whole volume, not a syllable of which would
belong properly to the
present design.
64
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
amiable principle [see Glossary] from which the malevolent one
that was your immediate motive arose, will want to keep the
latter out of sight, speaking only of the former, under some
such name as ‘filial piety’. Yet in all these cases the motive
is the same—it is the motive of ill-will.
27. The motive which in a neutral sense is called ‘self-
preservation’—the desire to preserve oneself from some
threatened pain or evil—corresponds to •the various sorts of
pains (or at least to those that are thought of as very intense),
and to •death, which seems to us to bring the end all the
pleasures and to all the pains that we are acquainted with.
In many instances the desire for pleasure merges indistin-
guishably with the sense of pain. So self-preservation, where
the degree of the corresponding pain is slight, will be hard](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-590-320.jpg)
![Motives
they are true but empty. If you want to do mankind a real
service, show them the cases in which sexual desire merits
the name of ‘lust’, displeasure that of ‘cruelty’ and pecuniary
interest that of ‘avarice’.
31. If it were necessary to classify motives as good, bad, and
indifferent, this might be done on the basis of the nature of
their most usual effects. That would yield this:
•Good motives:
good will
love of reputation
desire for friendship
religion
•Bad motives:
displeasure
•Neutral or indifferent motives:
physical desire
pecuniary interest
love of power
self-preservation, understood as including •the
fear of the pains of the senses, •the love of ease,
and •the love of life.
32. [Bentham says that this classification must be imperfect,
and may well be wrong. We can’t possibly know that the
four motives listed as ‘good’ have always led to more good
than bad. As for those listed as ‘neutral or indifferent’, we
can’t know that the good and bad in their consequences
‘have exactly balanced each other’. He continues, more
interestingly, with positive reasons for scepticism about this:]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-595-320.jpg)
![. . . according to the tendency which they appear to have to
unite, or disunite, his interests and theirs. On this basis they
can be distinguished into social, unsocial, and self-regarding.
[Bentham now produces a list of these; it exactly matches
the list in 31, with ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘neutral or indifferent’ re-
placed by ‘social’, ‘unsocial’ and ‘self-regarding’ respectively.]
67
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
35. If it were useful to subdivide further the motives that
I have called ‘social’, we could mark off •good will as the
only one that is purely social, while the other three can be
grouped together as semi-social, because the social tendency
is much more constant and unequivocal in good will than
in any of the other three, which are in fact self-regarding as
well as social.
4. Order of pre-eminence among motives
36. Of all these sorts of motives, good will is the one whose
dictates are in general the surest of coinciding with those
of the principle of utility. For the dictates of utility are
just the dictates of the most extensive and enlightened—i.e.
well-advised—benevolence. The dictates of the other motives
may conform to those of utility, or conflict with them, as it
may happen.
37. In saying this I am supposing that in the case in
question the dictates of benevolence are not contradicted
by those of a more extensive—i.e. enlarged—benevolence.
When (a) the dictates of benevolence with regard to the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-597-320.jpg)
![terms of how close their dictates are to those of benevolence
and thus to
those of utility.]
40. Given the infinite diversity of religions, it’s hard to
know what general account to give of them or how to rank
the associated motive. The word ‘religion’ turns people’s
thoughts first to the religion they themselves profess. This is
a great source of miscalculation, tending to rank this sort of
motive higher than it deserves. The dictates of religion would
always coincide with those of utility if it were the case that
•the Being who is the object of religion is supposed by
everyone to be as benevolent as he is supposed to be
wise and powerful; and
•people’s notions of his benevolence are as correct as
their notions of his wisdom and his power.
Unfortunately, though, neither of these is the case. He
is universally supposed to be all-powerful; for what does
anyone mean by ‘the Deity’ except ‘the Being, whatever he
is, who does everything’? And as for knowledge,
the rest of the sentence: by the same rule that he should
know one thing he should know another.
perhaps meaning: the reasons for crediting God with some
knowledge are reasons for thinking that he knows everything.
69
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-601-320.jpg)
![utility, applied to certain particular cases. Justice, then, is
simply an imaginary instrument employed to advance the
purposes of benevolence on
certain occasions and by certain means. . . .
70
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
Motives
comes from social considerations (you are displeased with
him because of how he has affected some other party whom
you care about). The paragraph ends:] Obviously, a motive
that is in itself unsocial can come from a social origin and
have a social tendency; and how social it is will probably
depend how large the class is of persons whose interests
you support. Displeasure that is vented against a man on
account of mischief he is supposed to have done to the public
may be more social in its effects than any good will that is
confined to an individual (see 37 above).
5. Conflict among motives
43. When a man is thinking about how to act, he is frequently
acted on at the same time by different motives driving him
in opposite directions—e.g. one disposing him to do x and
another disposing him not to do x. A motive that tends
to dispose him to do x may be called an ‘impelling’ motive;
one that tends to dispose him not to do x may be called
a ‘restraining’ motive. But these labels can of course be
switched, depending on whether x is positive or negative.
(See 8 on page 45.)
44. I have shown that any sort of motive can give birth to any](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-604-320.jpg)
![to attempt Coligny’s life in any way, but to remain at
peace with him;
•by the dictates of private benevolence (supposing the
command to be unjustifiable), he was enjoined not to
meddle with Coligny in any way.
Among this confusion of conflicting dictates, Crillon seems to
have given the preference in the first place to the dictates of
honour, and in the next place to the dictates of benevolence.
He would have fought, if his offer had been accepted; it
wasn’t, so he remained at peace.
Here a multitude of questions might arise. If the dictates
of the political sanction told him to obey the sovereign’s
command, what kind of motives for this did they provide him
with? Well, the self-regarding kind anyway, because it was
71
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11:
Human Dispositions in General
in the power of the sovereign to punish him for disobedience
or reward him for obedience. Did they provide him with the
motive of religion? Yes, if he thought it was God’s pleasure
that he should obey; No, if he didn’t. Did they provide him
with the motive of the love of reputation? Yes, if he thought
that the world [= ‘society at large’] would expect and require
him
to obey; No, if he didn’t. Did they provide him with the motive
of benevolence? Yes, if he thought that the community would
on the whole be the better for his obeying; No, if he didn’t.
Was the king’s command legal? This is a mere question of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-606-320.jpg)
![‘beneficent’ or ‘meritorious’ on the one hand and ‘pernicious’
or ‘harmful’ on the other. Nothing much needs to be said
here about the strand in a man’s disposition the effects of
which concern only himself in the first instance. When it is
bad, it’s for the moralist rather than the legislator to reform
it; and it isn’t susceptible of the various modifications that
make so much difference to the effects of the other ·strand
in a man’s disposition·. . . .
3. A man, then, is said to have a harmful disposition when he
is presumed to be more apt to perform or intend to perform
acts that are apparently of a pernicious tendency than in
ones that are apparently of a beneficial tendency; and to
have a meritorious or beneficent disposition in the opposite
case. It makes no difference to any of this what his motives
are.
4. I say ‘when he is presumed to be etc.’, because we are
looking at one single action with one set of circumstances.
The degree of uniformity that experience has shown to be
observable in a single person’s different actions makes it
natural and reasonable for us to infer from our observation
of a single act the probable existence (past or future) of a
number of acts of a similar nature. Under such circum-
stances, what the motive proves to be in one instance is
what the disposition is presumed to be in others.
5. I say ‘apparently harmful’, meaning that the act appears
to him to have that tendency. From the mere event [see
Glossary], independently of what it seemed to him likely to
be, nothing can be inferred about the goodness or badness
of his disposition. If to him it appears likely to be harmful,
then even if in the upshot it turns out to be innocent or even
beneficial, that makes no difference to the case for presuming
his disposition to be bad; and if to him it appears likely to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-609-320.jpg)
![beneficial or innocent, then even if in the upshot it turns out
to be pernicious, there’s no less reason on that account for
presuming his disposition to be a good one. [Bentham wrote ‘no
more reason’; obviously a slip.] And here we see the importance
of the circumstances of intentionality (see chapter 8), con-
sciousness, unconsciousness, and mis-supposal (for those
three see chapter 9).
6. The truth of these positions depends on two others that are
sufficiently verified by experience. One is that in the ordinary
course of things the consequences of actions commonly turn
out to conform to intentions. A man who sets up a butcher’s
shop and sells beef, when he intends to knock down an ox
usually does knock down an ox, though by some unlucky
accident he may miss his blow and knock down a man; he
who sets up a grocer’s shop and sells sugar, when he intends
to sell sugar he usually does sell sugar, though by some
unlucky accident he may chance to sell arsenic in place of it.
1 It might also be called ‘virtuous’ or ‘vicious’, but those terms
are unsuitable here because of how much good or bad repute
they are associated with.
The drawback of this is that ‘vicious’ is apt to come down too
hard on a disposition that is ill-constituted only with respect to
the person whose
disposition it is—involving him in a degree of ignominy that
should be reserved for dispositions that are mischievous with
regard to others. . . . To
exalt small evils to a level with great ones is the way to
diminish the share of attention that ought to be paid to great
ones.
73](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-610-320.jpg)
![be regarded as a good one.
15. Another case will appear more difficult to decide than
either. [This case is historical as regards François Ravaillac,
who
murdered Henry IV of France, but the stories about his son are
fictions
invented for purposes of discussion.] Ravaillac assassinated one
of the best and wisest of sovereigns, at a time when a
good and wise sovereign. . . .was particularly precious to the
inhabitants of a populous and extensive empire. He is taken
and condemned to the most excruciating tortures. His son,
who is convinced that he is a sincere penitent and that if he
were free mankind would have nothing more to fear from him,
enables him to escape. Is this a sign of a good disposition in
the son, or of a bad one? Some people may answer: ‘Of a bad
one, because •the nation has an interest in the sufferings
of such a criminal as an example to others, and •the future
good behaviour of such a criminal is more than anyone can
be entitled to be sure of.’
16. Well then, change the case: Ravaillac, the son, doesn’t
facilitate his father’s escape but settles for conveying poison
to him, so that through an easier death he may escape
his torments. The decision may now be more difficult.
Granted that the act is a wrong one, and certainly ought
to be punished; but is the disposition it shows a bad one?
Because the young man breaks the law in this one instance,
is it probable that if left alone he would break the laws in
ordinary instances, for the satisfaction of any inordinate
desires of his own? Most men would probably answer No.
17. (v) Where the tendency of the act is good, and the motive
is a semi-social one, namely the love of reputation, the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-614-320.jpg)
![disposition indicated is a good one.
In a time of scarcity, a baker aims to get the esteem of
the neighbourhood by distributing bread gratis among the
working poor. . . . Let’s stipulate that it’s uncertain whether
he had any real feeling for the sufferings of those he has
relieved. Even then, his disposition can’t with any pretence of
reason be called other than good and beneficent. Anyone who
denies this must be in the grip of some very idle prejudice.1
1 The bulk of mankind, always ready to depreciate the character
of their neighbours in order to exalt their own, will refer a
·good· motive to the class
of bad ones if they can find a still better one to which the act
might have owed its birth. Each man—
•conscious that his own motives are not of the best class, or
convinced that if they are he won’t get credit for this from
others; and
•afraid of being taken for a dupe, and anxious to show how
insightful he is
—takes care first •to attribute each other person’s conduct to
the least praiseworthy of the motives that can account for it; and
then •when he has
gone as far he can down that path and cannot drive down the
individual motive to any lower class he changes his battery
[military jargon = ‘points
his cannons in a different direction’] and attacks the very class
itself. Every time the love of reputation comes up, he will give
it a bad name such as
‘ostentation’, ‘vanity’, or ‘vainglory’. . . .
75](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-615-320.jpg)
![towards other men come very close to coinciding with the
dictates of utility. Religion’s dictates respecting a man’s
conduct towards himself seem in most European nations to
savour a good deal of the ascetic principle; but obedience to
such mistaken dictates doesn’t point to any disposition that
76
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11:
Human Dispositions in General
is likely to break out into acts of pernicious tendency with
respect to others. It very rarely happens that the dictates of
religion lead a man to acts that are pernicious in respect to
others; except for acts of persecution, or impolitic measures
on the part of government, where the law itself is either the
principal agent or an accomplice in the mischief. Ravaillac
was driven by no other motive than this when he gave his
country one of the most fatal stabs that a country ever
received from a single hand; but fortunately Ravaillacs are
rare! But there have been more of them in France than in any
other country during the same period; and it’s noteworthy
that it is always this motive ·of religion· that has produced
them. When they do appear, nobody but the likes of them
will say that the disposition they manifest is a good one.
It seems hardly deniable that they are the worse for their
notions of religion; and that if they had been left to the sole
guidance of benevolence and the love of reputation, without
any religion at all, it would have been ever so much better
for mankind. One may say nearly the same thing about the
people who, without any particular obligation, have actively
applied laws made for the punishment of those who have
the misfortune to differ from the magistrate [see Glossary]
in matters of religion, and even more about the legislator](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-618-320.jpg)
![himself who has given them the power to do this. If Louis XIV
had had no religion, France would not have lost 800,000 of
its most valuable subjects. This applies also to the authors
of the so-called ‘holy wars’, whether waged against persons
called ‘infidels’ or persons branded with the still more odious
name ‘heretics’. . . . It should be noted. . . .that in almost
all the countries of Europe, instances of this, though once
abundantly frequent, have for some time ceased. In certain
countries, the disposition to persecute at home when the
opportunity presents itself is not yet at an end: if there’s no
actual persecution, it is only because there are no heretics;
and if there are no heretics, it is only because there are
no thinkers. [Bentham builds into that sentence the remark that
the
disposition to persecute heresy tends to restrain heresy, ‘which
is one
part of the mischiefs of persecution’.]
24. (ix) Where the tendency of the act is good and the motive
is the unsocial one of ill-will, the motive seems not to point in
either direction: there is no indication of a good disposition,
nor any of a bad one.
You have detected a baker in selling short weight, and
you prosecute him for cheating. You don’t do this
•for the sake of gain, because there’s nothing you can
get by it; or
•out of public spirit; or
•for the sake of reputation, because there’s no reputa-
tion you can get by it; or
•in order to please the Deity.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-619-320.jpg)
![Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11:
Human Dispositions in General
36. Some motives, however, seem more apt to act in this
role than others; especially now that the law has set up
everywhere artificial tutelary motives of its own creation, to
oppose the force of the principal seducing motives. [Bentham
means of course only that the law creates the situations in which
the
motives come into play.] They seem to be of two basic kinds:
•the love of ease—a motive put into action by the
prospect of the trouble it may require to overcome
physical difficulties that accompany the offence;
•self-preservation, as opposed to the dangers the agent
may be exposed to in committing the offence.
37. These dangers may be either
•of a purely physical nature or
•results of moral agency, i.e. of the conduct of people
who can be expected to object to the act if they come
to know about it.
But moral agency requires knowledge regarding the circum-
stances that will have the effect of external motives in giving
birth to the act in question. And when such knowledge
regarding the commission of an objectionable act is acquired
by persons who may be disposed to make the agent suffer
for it, this is called detection, and the agent is said to be
detected. So the dangers that can threaten an offender from
this direction all depend on the event his being detected; and
they can be grouped under the heading danger of detection.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-625-320.jpg)
![danger would be about the same either way.
Rule 2. The apparent harmfulness of the act being given,
a man’s disposition is the more depraved the slighter the
temptation is by which he has been overcome.
It shows a more depraved and dangerous disposition if
one man kills another •for mere sport (as Muley Mahomet,
Emperor of Morocco, is said to have killed many) than if he
killed him •for revenge (as Sylla and Marius killed thousands),
or •for self-preservation (as Augustus killed many), or even
•for money (as that same Emperor is said to have killed some).
And the effects of each depravity on that part of the public
that knows about it is also proportional: from Augustus
some persons had to fear under some circumstances; from
Muley Mahomet every man had to fear at all times.
Rule 3. The apparent harmfulness of the act being given,
the evidence it provides of the depravity of the offender’s
disposition is less conclusive, the stronger the temptation
that has overcome him.
If a poor man who is near to death from starvation steals
a loaf of bread, this is a less explicit [Bentham’s word] sign of
depravity than if a rich man committed a theft for the same
amount. Notice that this rule speaks only of the strength
of the evidence of depravity in the two cases; it doesn’t say
81
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11:
Human Dispositions in General
that the poor man is less depraved than the rich one. Given
what we have been told about the poor man’s theft, he might
have gone ahead with it even if the temptation not been so](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-629-320.jpg)
![strong. In this case, the alleviating circumstance ·of strong
temptation· is only a matter of presumption; in the rule-three
case, the aggravating circumstance ·of weak temptation· is a
matter of certainty.
Rule 4. Where the motive is of the unsocial kind—the
apparent harmfulness of the act and the strength of the
temptation being given—the depravity is proportional to the
degree of deliberation with which it is accompanied [= ‘to how
much thought the offender gave to the question of whether to
act in that
way’].
In every man, however depraved his disposition is, it’s
the social motives that regulate and determine the general
tenor of his life whenever the self-regarding motives aren’t
engaged. If the unsocial motives are put into action, it is only
in particular circumstances, and on particular occasions,
when the gentle but constant force of the social motives
has been subdued for a while. So the general and standing
bias of every man’s nature is towards the side favoured by
the social motives; so that the force of the social motives
tends continually to extinguish the force of the unsocial
ones (compare: in natural bodies the force of friction tending
to extinguish the force generated by impulse). Thus, time,
which wears away the force of the unsocial motives, adds
to that of the social ones; so the longer a man continues
on a given occasion under the dominion of the unsocial
motives, the more convincing is the evidence this gives of his
unreceptiveness to the force of the social ones.
Thus, if a man beats his antagonist on the spot, in
consequence of a sudden quarrel, this doesn’t show as bad
a disposition as a man who lays a deliberate plan for beating
his antagonist, and beats him accordingly, and not nearly
as bad as the disposition of a man who has his antagonist](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-630-320.jpg)
![in his power for a long times and beats him at intervals, and
at his leisure.
43. The depravity of disposition indicated by an act is a
material [see Glossary] consideration in several respects. Any
mark of extraordinary depravity, by adding to the terror
already inspired by the crime and by holding up the offender
as a person from whom there may be more mischief to
be feared in future, adds in •one way to the demand for
punishment. By indicating a general lack of receptiveness
on the part of the offender it may also add in •another way
to the demand for punishment. The offender’s disposition
is important in this context because when the severity of
punishment is being decided the principle of sympathy and
antipathy is apt to look at nothing else. A man who punishes
because he hates, and for no other reason, when he doesn’t
find anything odious in the disposition he doesn’t want to
punish at all; and when he does want to, he doesn’t favour
carrying the punishment further than his hatred carries
him. [The next sentence is exactly as Bentham wrote it.] Hence
the
aversion we find so frequently expressed against the maxim
that the punishment must rise with the strength of the
temptation; a maxim the contrary of which, as we shall see,
would be as cruel to offenders themselves as it would be
subversive of the purposes of punishment.
82
Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 12: A
harmful Act’s Consequences
Chapter 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-631-320.jpg)
![1. Forms in which the mischief of an act may show
itself
1. Up to here I have been speaking of the items on which the
consequences or tendency of an act can depend:
•the bare act itself,
•the circumstances in which it was, or was supposed
to have been, performed,
•what the agent knew or believed about such circum-
stances,
•what he intended in performing the act,
•what motives gave birth to those intentions, and
•what disposition is indicated by the connection
between his intentions and his motives.
I now come to speak of the consequences or tendency them-
selves, an item that forms the concluding link in all this
chain of causes and effects, and is the sole source of the
materiality of the whole [= ‘the sole reason why all this
matters’].
My only immediate concern here is with the part of this
tendency that is harmful, so I shall confine myself to that.
2. The tendency of an act is harmful when its actual
or probable consequences are harmful; and the harmful
consequences of an act whose tendency is harmful can be
thought of as constituting one aggregate item that we could
call the mischief of the act.
3. This mischief can often be divided into two shares or
parcels—the primary mischief and the secondary mischief,
as we might call them. We can label as ‘primary’ the share
of the mischief that is suffered by an identifiable individ-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/thetheoryofmoralsentimentsadamsmithcopyrightjo-230121144938-c5e8f909/85/The-Theory-of-Moral-SentimentsAdam-SmithCopyright-Jo-docx-632-320.jpg)
The Theory of Moral SentimentsAdam SmithCopyright © Jo.docx
- 1. The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.—In Adam Smith’s day a ‘sentiment’ could be anything on a spectrum with feelings at one end and opinions at the other. This work of his is strongly tilted in the ‘feeling’ direction [see especially the chapter starting on page 168), but throughout the present version the word ‘sentiment’ will be left untouched. First launched: July 2008 Contents Part I: The Propriety of Action 1 Section 1: The Sense of Propriety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1: Sympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 2: The pleasure of mutual sympathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Chapter 3: How we judge the propriety of other men’s affections by their concord or dissonance with our own . . 6 Chapter 4: The same subject continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Chapter 5: The likeable virtues and the respectworthy virtues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Section 2: The degrees of the different passions that are consistent with propriety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Chapter 1: The passions that originate in the body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Smith on Moral Sentiments Chapter 2: The passions that originate in a particular turn or habit of the imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Chapter 3: The unsocial passions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Chapter 4: The social passions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Chapter 5: The selfish passions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Section 3: How prosperity and adversity affect our judgments about the rightness of actions; and why it is easier to win our approval in prosperity than in adversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Chapter 1: The intensity-difference between joy and sympathy with joy is less than the intensity-difference between sorrow and sympathy with sorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
- 3. Chapter 2: The origin of ambition, and differences of rank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Chapter 3: The corruption of our moral sentiments that comes from this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect the downtrodden and poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Part II: Merit and demerit: the objects of reward and punishment 36 Section 1: The sense of merit and demerit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Chapter 1: Whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude (resentment) appears to deserve reward (punishment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Chapter 2: The proper objects of gratitude and resentment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Chapter 3: Where there’s no approval of the benefactor’s conduct, there’s not much sympathy with the beneficiary’s gratitude; and where there’s no disapproval of the motives of the person who does someone harm, there’s absolutely no sympathy with the victim’s resentment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Chapter 4: Recapitulation of the preceding chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Chapter 5: Analysing the sense of merit and demerit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Section 2: Justice and beneficence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Chapter I: Comparing those two virtues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Chapter 2: The sense of justice, of remorse, and of the consciousness of merit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter 3: The utility of this constitution of nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Section 3: The influence of luck on mankind’s sentiments regarding the merit or demerit of actions . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Chapter 1: The causes of this influence of luck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Chapter 2: The extent of this influence of luck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Smith on Moral Sentiments Chapter 3: The purpose of this irregularity of sentiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Part III: Moral judgments on ourselves; the sense of duty 62 Chapter 1: The principle of self-approval and self-disapproval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Chapter 2: The love of praise and of praiseworthiness; the dread of blame and of blameworthiness . . . . 64 Chapter 3: The influences and authority of conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Chapter 4: The nature of self-deceit, and the origin and use of general rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Chapter 5: The influence and authority of the general rules of morality, and why they are rightly
- 5. regarded as the laws of the Deity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Chapter 6: When should the sense of duty be the sole driver of our conduct? and when should it co-operate with other motives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Part IV: The effect of utility on the sentiment of approval 96 Chapter 1: The beauty that the appearance of utility gives to all the productions of art, and the widespread influence of this type of beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Chapter 2: How the characters and actions of men are made beautiful by their appearance of utility. Is our perception of this beauty one of the basic sources of approval? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Part V: The moral influence of custom and fashion 105 Chapter 1: The influence of custom and fashion on our notions of beauty and ugliness . . . . . . . . . . 105 Chapter 2: The influence of custom and fashion on moral sentiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Part VI: The character of virtue 112 Section 1: Prudence, i.e. the character of the individual in its bearing on his own happiness . . . . . . 112 Section 2: The character of the individual in its bearing on the happiness of other people . . . . . . . 115
- 6. Chapter 1: The order in which individuals are recommended by nature to our care and attention . . . . 116 Chapter 2: The order in which societies are recommended by nature to our beneficence . . . . . . . . . . 120 Chapter 3: Universal benevolence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Section 3: Self-control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Smith on Moral Sentiments Part VII: Systems of moral philosophy 139 Section 1: The questions that ought to be examined in a theory of moral sentiments . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Section 2: The different accounts that have been given of the nature of virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Chapter 1: Systems that make virtue consist in propriety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Chapter 2: A system that makes virtue consist in prudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Chapter 3: Systems that make virtue consist in benevolence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Chapter 4: Licentious systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Section 3: The different systems that have been formed concerning the source of approval . . . . . . 163 Chapter 1: Systems that trace the source of approval back to self-love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
- 7. Chapter 2: Systems that make reason the source of approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Chapter 3: Systems that make sentiment the source of approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Section 4: What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sympathy Part I: The Propriety of Action Section 1: The Sense of Propriety Chapter 1: Sympathy No matter how selfish you think man is, it’s obvious that there are some principles [here = ‘drives’, ‘sources of energy’; see note on page 164] in his nature that give him an interest in the welfare of others, and make their happiness necessary to him, even if he gets nothing from it but the pleasure of seeing it. That’s what is involved in pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we see it or are made to think about it in a vivid way. The sorrow of others often makes us sad—that’s an obvious matter of fact that doesn’t need to be argued for by giving examples. This sentiment, like all the other basic passions of human nature, is not confined to virtuous and humane people, though they may feel it more intensely than others do. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened criminal, has something of it. We have ·of course· no immediate experience of what other men feel; so the only way we can get an idea of what someone else is feeling is by thinking about what we would
- 8. feel if we were in his situation. . . . Our imagination comes into this, but only by representing to us the feelings we would have if etc. We see or think about a man being tortured on the rack; we think of ourselves enduring all the same torments, entering into his body (so to speak) and becoming in a way the same person as he is. In this manner we form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something that somewhat resembles them, though it is less intense. When his agonies are brought home to us in this way, when we have adopted them and made them our own, they start to affect us and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. Just as being in pain or distress of any kind arouses the most excessive sorrow, so conceiving or imagining being in pain or distress arouses some degree of the same emotion, the degree being large or small depending on how lively or dull the conception is. [Notice Smith’s talk of ‘bringing home to us’ someone’s emotional state; he often uses that turn of phrase to express the idea of imaginatively putting oneself in someone else’s position.] So my thesis is that our fellow-feeling for the misery of others comes from our imaginatively changing places with the sufferer, thereby coming to •conceive what he feels or even to •feel what he feels. If this doesn’t seem to you obvious enough, just as it stands, there is plenty of empirical evidence for it. When we see someone poised to smash a stick down on the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and pull back our own leg or arm; and when the stick connects, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it along with the sufferer. When a crowd are gazing at a dancer on a slack rope, they naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel they
- 9. would have to do if they were up on the rope where he is. . . . Men notice that when they look at sore eyes they often feel soreness in their own eyes. . . . It’s not only in situations of pain or sorrow that this fellow-feeling of ours is evoked. When someone has any passion about any object, the thought of his situation cre- ates an analogous emotion in the breast of every attentive spectator. [In Smith’s day it was normal to use ‘the breast’ to mean something like ‘the emotional part or aspect of the person’. It will be 1 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sympathy retained sometimes in this version, always with that meaning.] Our joy over the deliverance of the heroes of tragedy or romance is as sincere as our grief for their distress. . . . We enter into their gratitude towards the faithful friends who stayed with them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against the perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. [The phrase ‘go along with’, though it sounds late modern, is Smith’s; he uses it about 30 times in this work.] In every passion of which the mind of man is capable, the emotions of the bystander always correspond to what he imagines must be the feelings of the sufferer, which he does by bringing the case home to himself, ·i.e. imagining being himself in the sufferer’s situation·.
- 10. ‘Pity’ and ‘compassion’ are labels for our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. ‘Sympathy’, though its meaning may originally have been the same, can now fairly properly be used to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever. [Since Smith’s time, ‘sympathy’ has moved back to what he says was its original meaning: we don’t say ‘She had great sympathy for his joy’. In the present version the word will be retained; his broadened meaning for it needs to be remembered.] We sometimes see sympathy arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person: the passions sometimes seem to be passed from one man to another instantaneously, without the second man’s having any knowledge of what aroused them in the first man. When grief or joy, for example, are strongly expressed in someone’s look and gestures, they immediately affect the spectator with some degree of a similar painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is a cheerful object to everyone who sees it, and a sorrowful face is a melancholy one. But this doesn’t hold for every passion. There are some passions the expressions of which arouse no sort of sym- pathy; they serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them, before we know what gave rise to them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against •him than against •his enemies. Because we don’t know what provoked him, we can’t bring his case home to ourselves, imaginatively putting ourselves in his position. But we can put ourselves in the position of those with whom he is angry; we can see what violence they may be exposed to
- 11. from such an enraged adversary. So we readily sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately inclined to side with them against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger. ·There’s a very general point underlying the difference between our reaction to someone else’s grief or joy and our reaction to someone’s rage·. The mere appearances of grief or joy inspire us with some level of a similar emotion, because they suggest to us the general idea of some good or bad fortune that has come to the person in whom we observe them; and with grief and joy this is sufficient to have some little influence on us. Grief and joy don’t have effects that go beyond •the person who has the grief or joy; expressions of those passions don’t suggest to us—in the way that expressions of resentment do—the idea of some other person for whom we are concerned and whose interests are opposite to •his. So the general idea of good or bad fortune creates some concern for the person who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation arouses no sympathy with the anger of the man who has been provoked. It seems that nature teaches us •to be more averse to entering into this passion and •to be inclined to take sides against it until we are informed of its cause. Even our sympathy with someone else’s grief or joy is incomplete until we know the cause of his state. General lamentations that express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer don’t cause in us any •actual strongly-felt sympathy; 2 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sympathy
- 12. what they do is to make us want to inquire into the person’s situation, and to make us •disposed to sympathize with him. The first question we ask is ‘What has happened?’ Until this is answered, our fellow-feeling is not very considerable. We do feel unhappy, ·but that is from sources different from sympathy; it is· because of the vague idea we have of his misfortune, and still more from our torturing ourselves with guesses about what the source of his misery may be. So the main source of sympathy is not the view of the other person’s passion but rather the situation that arouses the passion. Sometimes we feel for someone else a pas- sion that he ·doesn’t have and· apparently isn’t capable of having; because that passion arises in •our breast just from •imagining ourselves as being in his situation, though it doesn’t arise in •his breast from •really being in that situation. When we blush for someone’s impudence and rudeness, though he seems to have no sense of how badly he is behaving, that is because we can’t help feeling how utterly embarrassed we would be if we had behaved in such an absurd manner. Of all the calamities to which mankind can be subject, the loss of reason appears to be by far the most dreadful, in the mind of anyone who has the least spark of humanity. We behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper pity than any other. But the poor wretch who is in that condition may laugh and sing, having no sense of his own misery. The anguish that the rest of us feel at the sight of such a person can’t be a reflection of any sentiment that he has. The spectator’s compassion must arise purely from the thought of what he himself would feel if he were reduced to that same unhappy condition while also (this may well be impossible) regarding it with his present reason and judgment.
- 13. What are the pangs of a mother when she hears the moanings of her infant who can’t express what it feels during the agony of disease? In her idea of what it suffers, she brings together •her child’s real helplessness, •her own consciousness of that helplessness, and •her own terrors for the unknown consequences of the child’s illness, and out of all these she forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. [The phrase ‘for her own sorrow’ is Smith’s, as is ‘for our own misery’ in the next paragraph.] But the infant feels only the unpleasantness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future, the infant is perfectly secure. Its lack of thoughtfulness and of foresight gives it an antidote against •fear and •anxiety—those great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will in vain try to defend the child when it grows up to be a man. We sympathize even with the dead. Ignoring what is of real importance in their situation, namely the awe-inspiring question of what future is in store for them ·in the after-life·, we are mainly affected by factors that strike our senses but can’t have any influence on their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and worms; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be quite soon obliterated from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relatives. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered such dreadful calamity! The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems to be doubly due to them now,
- 14. when they are in danger of being forgotten by everyone; and in paying vain honours to their memory we are trying, for our own misery, artificially to keep alive our sad remembrance 3 Smith on Moral Sentiments Pleasure of mutual sympathy of their misfortune. The fact that our sympathy can’t bring them any consolation seems to add to their calamity; and our own sense of their misery is sharpened by the thought that anything we can do ·for them· is unavailing, and that the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, which alleviate every other kind of distress, can’t bring them any comfort. But it is absolutely certain that the welfare of the dead isn’t affected by any of this; the profound security of their repose can’t be disturbed by the thought of any of these things. The idea of the dreary and endless melancholy that our imagination naturally ascribes to their condition is purely a result of putting together •the change that they have undergone, •our own consciousness of that change, •our putting ourselves in their situation—inserting our living souls into their dead bodies (so to speak), and conceiving what our emotions would be in that situation. It is just •this illusion of the imagination that makes the thought of our own dissolution so terrible to us. It’s because of •it that the thought of circumstances that undoubtedly can’t give us pain when we are dead makes us miserable while we are alive. That is the source of one of the most important action-drivers in human nature, namely the dread
- 15. of death, which is the great poison to happiness but the great restraint on the injustice of mankind; it afflicts and humiliates the individual, while guarding and protecting society. Chapter 2: The pleasure of mutual sympathy Whatever the cause of sympathy may be, and however it may be aroused, nothing pleases us more than to observe in others a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast, and nothing shocks us more than the seeming absence of such fellow-feeling. Those who are fond of deriving all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love think they can explain this pleasure and this pain consistently with their own principles. Their explanation goes like this: Man is conscious of his own weakness, and of his need for the assistance of others; so he rejoices when he sees that they do adopt his own passions, because this assures him of that assistance; and he grieves when he sees that they don’t, because that assures him of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often on such minor issues, that it seems evident that neither of them can come from any such self-interested consideration. A man is cast down when, after having tried to be amusing, he looks around and sees that no-one else laughs at his jokes; and when his jokes do succeed, he gets great pleasure from the amusement of the people he is with, and regards this match between their sentiments and his own as the greatest applause. ·It’s not plausible to suggest that what’s going on here is rapid calculation about whether he will be helped in times of need·.
- 16. [Smith’s next paragraph is not unclear but is very com- pressed. What follows here is a more fully spelled-out statement of its content. Our immediate topic is (let’s say) the pleasure I get from seeing that my companions are enjoying my jokes. Smith has been expounding this explanation of the pleasure: (1) I enjoy the jokes, and I want others to sympathize with my frame of mind by enjoying them too; and I suffer disappointment if this doesn’t happen. This, Smith holds, is an instance of the natural universal hu- man desire for others to show sympathy. In our present paragraph he mentions a different possible explanation: 4 Smith on Moral Sentiments Pleasure of mutual sympathy (2) I enjoy the jokes; if others also enjoy them, then by sympathetically taking in their pleasure I increase my own; and if they don’t enjoy them, I suffer from the absence of a hoped-for extra pleasure. This has nothing to do with a desire to be sympathised with; it is simply an instance of sympathy. This may be a part of the story, Smith says, but isn’t all of it. Now let him take over:] When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer enjoy reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration that it naturally arouses in him but can no longer arouse in us; we consider the ideas that it presents in the light in which they appear to him rather than in the light in which
- 17. they appear to ourselves, and we enjoy by sympathy his enjoyment that thus enlivens our own. If he seemed not to be entertained by the book, we would be annoyed and could no longer take pleasure in reading it to him. It’s like that with our attempts to amuse others. The company’s merriment no doubt enlivens our own, and their silence no doubt disappoints us. But though this may contribute both to the pleasure we get from success and the pain we feel if we fail, it is far from being the only cause of either the pleasure or the pain; it can’t account for the pleasure we get when our sentiments are matched by the sentiments of others, or the pain that comes from a failure of such a match. [The main thing Smith says about why that’s not the whole story is that it can’t be any of the grief or pain side of the story.] I hope my friends will feel sad when I am sad, but not because I want their feelings to reflect back on me and increase my sadness! I do want their sympathy; if they show that they sympathize, this alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation that it is capable of receiving at that time. ·The pattern here is that of (1) and not (2)·. So it’s important to notice ·that the grief and pain side is more important to us than the joy side·. We’re more concerned to communicate to our friends our disagreeable passions than our agreeable ones; and it’s in connection with the disagreeable passions that we get more satisfaction from their sympathy and are more upset when they don’t sympathize. When an unfortunate person finds others to whom he can communicate the cause of his sorrow, how does this bring him relief? Their sympathy seems to unload some of his burden of distress; it’s not wrong to say that they
- 18. share it with him. . . . Yet by recounting his misfortunes he to some extent renews his grief. They awaken in his memory the remembrance of the circumstances that brought about his affliction. His tears accordingly flow faster than before, and he is apt to abandon himself to all the weakness of sorrow. But he takes pleasure in all this, and can be seen to be relieved by it, because the sweetness of their sympathy more than compensates for the bitterness of his sorrow—the sorrow that he had thus enlivened and renewed in order to arouse this sympathy. The cruelest insult that can be offered to the unfortunate is to appear to make light of their calamities. To seem not to be affected with the joy of our companions is mere •impoliteness; but not to have a serious expression when they tell us their afflictions is real and gross •inhumanity. Love is an agreeable passion, resentment a disagreeable one; and accordingly we’re not half so anxious that our friends should adopt our friendships as that they should enter into our resentments. We can forgive them for seeming not to be much affected when some favour comes our way, but we lose all patience if they seem not to care about injuries that have been done to us; and we aren’t half as angry with them for not entering into our gratitude as for 5 Smith on Moral Sentiments Judging others’ affections not sympathizing with our resentment. They can easily avoid being friends to our friends, but can hardly avoid being enemies to those with whom we are at odds. We may sometimes make a gesture towards an awkward quarrel with them if they are at enmity with any of our friends, but
- 19. we don’t usually outright resent this; whereas we seriously quarrel with them if they live in friendship with any of our enemies. The agreeable passions of love and joy can satisfy and support the heart without any supplementary pleasure, but the bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy. Just as the person who is primarily concerned in any event is pleased with our sympathy and hurt by the lack of it, so also we seem to be pleased when we can sym- pathize with him and upset when we can’t. We run not only to congratulate the successful but also to condole with the afflicted; and the •pleasure we get from contact with someone with whom we can entirely sympathize in all the passions of his heart seems to do more than compensate for the •painfulness of the sorrow that our knowledge of his situation gives us. When we find that we can’t sympathize with a friend’s sorrow, that spares us sympathetic pain; but there’s no pleasure in that. If we hear someone loudly lamenting his misfortunes, and find that when we bring his case home to ourselves it has no such violent effect on us, we are shocked at his grief; and because we can’t enter into it we call it pusillanimity and weakness. [English still contains ‘pusillanimous’, from Latin meaning ‘small mind’; here it means something like ‘weak-spirited, lacking in gumption’.] And on the other side, if we see someone being too happy or too much elevated (we think) over some little piece of good fortune, this irritates us. . . . We are even annoyed if our companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it deserves—i.e. longer than we feel that we could laugh at it. Chapter 3: How we judge the propriety of other men’s affections by their concord or dissonance with our own
- 20. [•Smith uses ‘affection’ about 200 times, usually in a meaning that sprawls across feelings and mental attitudes of all kinds; on page 117 and a few other places it express the idea of someone’s being ‘affection- ate’ in our sense. There is no satisfactory way to sort this out; you’ll have to be guided by the context of each use. As for the cognate verb: when Smith writes of our being ‘differently affected’ by something he means that it causes us to have different ‘affections’ in the very broad sense. •In Smith’s day ‘propriety’ meant ‘correctness’, ‘rightness’; it was a very general term to cover one side of the right/wrong line. It won’t be replaced by anything else in this version; but remember that it does not mean here what it tends to mean today, namely ‘conformity to conventional standards of behaviour’. •Smith often uses ‘concord’ as a musical metaphor, to express the idea of a satisfactory match between
- 21. your sentiments and mine, in contrast to a discord or ‘dissonance’. We’ll see in due course that he uses musical metaphors a lot. e.g. on page 10 where we find ‘flatten’ ([). ‘sharpness’ (]), ‘tone’, ‘harmony’, and ‘concord’ in one short sentence.] When someone’s passions are in perfect concord with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they necessarily strike the spectator as being just and proper, and suitable to their •objects; and if on the other hand the spectator finds that when he brings the case home to himself those passions don’t coincide with what he feels, they necessarily appear to him unjust and improper, and unsuitable to the •causes that arouse them. Expressing approval of someone’s passions as suitable to their •objects is the same thing as saying that we entirely sympathize with them; and disapproving them as not suitable to their •objects is the same thing as saying that we don’t entirely sympathize with them. [Smith does not distinguish a passion’s ‘object’ from its ‘cause’.] The man who resents the injuries that have been done to me, and 6 Smith on Moral Sentiments Judging others’ affections sees that I resent them precisely as he does, necessarily approves of my resentment. . . . He who admires a picture
- 22. or poem in the way I do must surely admit the justness of my admiration. He who laughs along with me at a joke can’t very well deny the propriety of my laughter. And on the other hand, someone who in such cases either feels no emotion such as I feel, or feels none that have a level of intensity anywhere near to mine, can’t avoid disapproving my sentiments because of their dissonance with his own. . . . If my grief exceeds what his most tender compassion can go along with, if my admiration is either too high or too low to fit with his, if I laugh heartily when he only smiles, or I only smile when he laughs heartily—in all these cases, as soon as he moves from considering the object to seeing how I am affected by it, I must incur some degree of his disapproval depending on how much disproportion there is between his sentiments and mine. On all occasions his own sentiments are the standards and measures by which he judges mine. Approving of another man’s opinions—adopting those opinions—they are the same thing! If the arguments that convince you convince me too, I necessarily approve of your conviction; and if they don’t, I necessarily disapprove of it. . . . Everyone accepts that approving or disapproving of the opinions of others is observing the agreement or disagreement of those opinions with our own. Well, this is equally the case with regard to our approval or disapproval of the sentiments or passions of others. [Smith mentions a class of counter-examples. •I see that the joke is funny and that I would ordinarily laugh at it, but right now I’m not in the mood for jokes. •Someone is pointed out to me on the street as grieving for the recent death of his father; I can’t share in his grief, because I don’t know him or his father; but I don’t doubt that if I were fully informed of all the details of his situation I would fully and sincerely sympathize with him. Smith continues:] The basis
- 23. for my approval of his sorrow is my consciousness of this conditional sympathy, although the actual sympathy doesn’t take place. . . . The sentiment or affection of the heart that leads to some action can be considered in two different relations: (1) in relation to the cause that arouses it, or the motive that gives rise to it; (2) in relation to the end that it proposes, or the effect that it tends to produce. [Smith builds into this one-sentence paragraph a striking clause saying that the ‘whole virtue or vice’ of the action ‘must ultimately depend’ on the sentiment or affection of the heart that leads to it. And in the next paragraph he says it again:] The propriety or impropriety. . . .of the consequent action consists in the suitableness or unsuitableness, the propor- tion or disproportion, that the affection seems to bear to the cause or object that arouses it. The merit or demerit of the action, the qualities by which it is entitled to reward or deserving of punishment, consists in the beneficial or harmful nature of the effects that the affection aims at or tends to produce. In recent years philosophers have focussed on the •behavioural upshots of affections, to the neglect of an affec- tion’s relation to the •cause that arouses it. But in everyday life when we judge someone’s conduct and the sentiments that directed it we constantly consider them under both these aspects. When we blame someone’s excesses of love, of grief, of resentment, we consider not only the ruinous effects that they tend to produce but also the slightness of their causes. ‘The merit of his favourite’, we say, ‘is not so great, his misfortune is not so dreadful, his provocation is not so extraordinary, as to justify such violent passion. We would have approved or at least indulged the violence of his
- 24. emotion if its cause had been anything like proportional to 7 Smith on Moral Sentiments The same continued it.’ When in this way we judge any affection to be or not be proportional to the cause that arouses it, we are judging by the corresponding affection in ourselves when we bring the case home to our own breast—what other criterion could we possibly use?. . . . A man uses each of his faculties as the standard by which he judges the same faculty in someone else. I judge your sight by my sight, your ear by my ear, your reason by my reason, your resentment by my resentment, your love by my love. I don’t have—I can’t have—any other way of judging them. Chapter 4: The same subject continued There are two different classes of cases in which we judge the propriety or impropriety of someone else’s sentiments by their correspondence or disagreement with our own. (1) In one class, the objects that arouse the sentiments are considered without any special relation to ourselves or to the person whose sentiments we are judging. (2) In the other, those objects ·or causes· are considered as specially affecting one or other of us. (1) With regard to objects that are considered without any special relation either to ourselves or to the person whose
- 25. sentiments we are judging: wherever his sentiments entirely correspond with our own, we credit him with having taste and good judgment. The beauty of a plain, the greatness of a mountain, the ornaments of a building, the expression of a picture, the composition of a speech, the conduct of a third person, the proportions of different quantities and numbers, the various appearances that the great machine of the universe is perpetually exhibiting, with their secret causes —all the general subjects of science and taste are what we and the other person regard as having no special relation to either of us. We both look at them from the same point of view, and we can produce the most perfect harmony of sentiments and affections without any help from sympathy or the imaginary switch of situations from which sympathy arises. If despite this our affections are often different, this is either because •our different habits of life lead us to give different degrees of attention to the various parts of those complex objects, or •we differ in the natural acuteness of the mental faculties to which the objects are addressed. When our companion’s sentiments coincide with our own over things like this—things that are obvious and easy, things that everyone would respond to in the same way—we do of course approve of his sentiments, but they don’t entitle him to praise or admiration. But when they don’t just coincide with our own but lead and direct our own; when in forming them he appears to have attended to many things that we had overlooked, and to have made
- 26. them responsive to all the various details of their objects; we not only approve of his sentiments but wonder and are surprised at their uncommon and unexpected acuteness and comprehensiveness. In this case he appears to deserve a high degree of •admiration and •applause. For approval heightened by wonder and surprise constitutes the sentiment that is properly called •‘admiration’, the natural expression of it being •applause. [In this next sentence and in many further places, ‘ugliness’ replaces Smith’s ‘deformity’, and similarly with ‘ugly’ and ‘deformed’. That clearly is what he means by ‘deformed’ and ‘de- formity’; like some other writers of his time he seems to have preferred 8 Smith on Moral Sentiments The same continued those two words over ‘ugly’ and ‘ugliness’, which occur only once each in this entire work.] The verdict of the man who judges that exquisite beauty is preferable to gross ugliness, or that twice two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by us all but surely we won’t much admire it. What arouses our admiration, and seems to deserve our applause is •the acute and delicate discernment of the man of taste, who distinguishes the tiny barely perceptible differences of beauty and ugliness; and
- 27. •the comprehensive accuracy of the experienced math- ematician, who easily unravels the most intricate and puzzling proportions. In short, the greater part of the praise we give to what are called ‘the intellectual virtues’ goes to the great leader in science and taste, the man who directs and leads our own sentiments, and fills us with astonished wonder and surprise by the extent and superior soundness of his talents. You may think that what first recommend those talents to us is their utility; and no doubt the thought of their utility does give them a new value, once we get around to it. But at the start we approve of another man’s judgment not as •useful but as •right, precise, agreeable to truth and reality; and it’s obvious that we attribute those qualities to his judgment simply because it agrees with our own. In the same way, taste is initially approved of not as •useful but as •just, delicate, and precisely suited to its object. The thought that such qualities as these are useful is clearly an after-thought, not what first recommends them to our approval. [We are about to meet the word ‘injury’. Its meaning in Smith’s day was in one way •broader and in another •narrower than its meaning today. •It wasn’t even slightly restricted to physical injury; it covered every kind of harm, though only when •the harm was caused by a person.] (2) With regard to objects that affect in some special way either ourselves or the person whose sentiments we are judging, it’s •harder to preserve this matching of senti-
- 28. ments and also •vastly more important to do so. ·Harder·: When I suffer some misfortune or am done some injury, my companion doesn’t naturally take the same view of this as I do. It affects me much more nearly. He and I don’t see it from the same vantage-point, as we do a picture, a poem, or a scientific theory, so we are apt to be differently affected by it. ·More important·: A lack of correspondence of our sentiments with regard to objects that don’t concern either me or my companion is easier for me to take than such a lack with regard to something that concerns me as much as the misfortune that I have encountered or the injury that has been done to me. There’s not much danger that you and I will quarrel over a picture, a poem, or even a scientific theory that I admire and you despise. Neither of us can reasonably care very much about them. They ought all of them to be matters of little significance to us both, so that although our opinions may be opposite we may still have friendly feelings towards one another. But it’s quite otherwise with regard to objects by which one of us is especially affected. Though your judgments in matters of theory or your sentiments in matters of taste are quite opposite to mine, I can easily overlook this opposition; and if I’m not temperamentally angry and quarrelsome I may still enjoy conversation with you, even on those very subjects. But if you have no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have met with, or none that bears any proportion to the grief that is consuming me, or if you have no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or none that bears any proportion to the resentment that is taking me over, the two of us can’t talk together about this subject. We become intolerable to one another. . . . You are bewildered by my violence and passion, 9
- 29. Smith on Moral Sentiments The same continued and I am enraged by your cold lack of feeling. In any such case, what is needed for there to be some correspondence of sentiments between the spectator and his companion is for the spectator to try his hardest to put himself in the other man’s situation and to bring home to himself every little detail of distress that could possibly have occurred to the sufferer. He must adopt the situation of his companion with all its tiniest details, and try to make as perfect as possible the imaginary change of situation on which his sympathy is based. Even after all this, the spectator’s emotions won’t be as violent as the sufferer’s. Although people are naturally sympathetic, they never respond to what has happened to an- other person with the level of passion that naturally animates that person himself. [A couple of dozen times Smith refers to the latter as ‘the person principally concerned’. This will usually be replaced by the shorter ‘the sufferer’, a label that Smith also uses quite often.] The imaginary change of situation on which their sympathy is based is only momentary. The thought of their own safety, the thought that they aren’t really the sufferers, continually pushes into their minds; and though this doesn’t prevent them from having a passion somewhat analogous to what the sufferer feels, it does prevent them from coming anywhere near to matching the level of intensity of his passion. The sufferer is aware of this, while passionately wanting a more complete sympathy. He longs for the relief that he can only get from the perfect concord of the spectators’ affections with his own. . . . But his only chance of getting this is to lower his
- 30. passion to a level at which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten (if I may put it this way) the sharpness of his passion’s natural tone so as to bring it into harmony and concord with the emotions of the people he is with. What they feel will always be in some respects different from what he feels. Compassion can never be exactly the same as original sorrow, because the sympathizer’s secret awareness that he is only imagining being in the sufferer’s position doesn’t just lower the degree ·of intensity· of his sympathetic sentiment but also makes it somewhat different in kind. Still, it’s clear that these two sentiments correspond with one another well enough for the harmony of society. They won’t ever be unisons, but they can be concords, and this is all that is wanted or required. In order to produce this concord, nature teaches the spectators to take on the situation of the sufferer, and teaches the sufferer to go some way in taking on the situation of the spectators. Just as they are continually placing them- selves in his situation and thereby experiencing emotions similar to his, so he is as constantly placing himself in their situation and thereby experiencing some degree of the coolness that he’s aware they will have regarding his fortune. They constantly think about what they would feel if they actually were the sufferers, and he is constantly led to imagine how he would be affected if he were one of the spectators. . . . The effect of this is to lower the violence of his passion, especially when he is in their presence and under their observation. A result of this is that the mind is rarely so disturbed that the company of a friend won’t restore it to some degree of tranquillity. The breast is somewhat calmed and composed the moment we come into our friend’s presence. . . . We expect less sympathy from an ordinary acquaintance than
- 31. from a friend; we can’t share with the acquaintance all the little details that we can unfold to a friend; so when we are with the acquaintance we calm down and try to fix our thoughts on the general outlines of our situation that he is willing to consider. We expect still less sympathy from a gathering of strangers, so in their presence we calm down even further, trying—as we always do—to bring down 10 Smith on Moral Sentiments Likeable and respectworthy virtues our passion to a pitch that the people we are with may be expected to go along with. We don’t just seem to calm down. If we are at all masters of ourselves, the presence of a mere acquaintance really will compose us more than that of a friend; and the presence of a gathering of strangers will compose us even more. So, at any time when the mind has lost its tranquillity, the best cures are •society and •conversation. They are also the best preservatives of the balanced and happy frame of mind that is so necessary for self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Scholarly recluses who are apt to sit at home brooding over either grief or resentment, though they may have more humaneness, more generosity, and a more delicate sense of honour, seldom possess the evenness of temperament that is so common among men of the world. Chapter 5: The likeable virtues and the respectworthy virtues We have here two different efforts—(1) the spectator’s effort to enter into the sentiments of the sufferer, and (2) the
- 32. sufferer’s efforts to bring his emotions down to a level where the spectator can go along with them. These are the bases for two different sets of virtues. (1) One is the basis for the soft, gentle, likeable virtues, the virtues of openness to others and indulgent humaneness. (2) The other is the source of the great, awe-inspiring and respectworthy virtues, the virtues of self-denial and self-control—i.e. the command of our passions that subjects all the movements of our nature to the requirements of our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct. [Smith’s words are ‘amiable’ and ‘respectable’, but their present meanings— especially of ‘respectable’—would make them too distracting. Regarding ‘propriety’: remind yourself of the note on page 116.] (1) Someone whose sympathetic heart seems to echo all the sentiments of those he is in contact with, who grieves for their calamities, resents their injuries, and rejoices at their good fortune—how likeable he seems to be! When we bring home to ourselves the situation of his companions, we enter into their gratitude and feel what consolation they must get from the tender sympathy of such an affectionate friend. As for someone whose hard and stubborn heart feels for no-one but himself, and who has no sense of the happiness or misery of others—how disagreeable he seems to be! Here again we enter into the pain that his presence must give to everyone who has anything to do with him, and especially to those with whom we are most apt to sympathize, the unfortunate and the injured. (2) Now consider someone who, in his own case, exerts the togetherness and self-control that constitute the dignity of every passion, bringing it down to what others can enter
- 33. into—what noble propriety and grace do we feel in his con- duct! We’re disgusted with the clamorous grief that bluntly calls on our compassion with sighs and tears and begging lamentations. But we reverence the reserved, silent, majestic sorrow that reveals itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant yet touching coolness of the whole behaviour. It imposes the same silence on us. We regard it with respectful attention, and keep a cautious watch on our own behaviour lest we should do anything to disturb the over-all tranquillity that it takes such an effort to maintain. On the other side, there is nothing more detestable than the insolence and brutality of the anger of someone who indulges its fury without check or restraint. [We are about to meet the word ‘generous’, used—as it often is by Smith—in a sense that it doesn’t often have today: ‘noble-minded, magnanimous, free from meanness or prejudice’.] But we admire the noble and generous 11 Smith on Moral Sentiments Likeable and respectworthy virtues resentment that •governs its pursuit of ·the author of· great injuries not by the rage that such injuries are apt to arouse in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation that they naturally call forth in the breast of an impartial spectator; that •allows no word or gesture to escape it that wouldn’t be dictated by this more equitable sentiment [i.e. by the feelings of an impartial spectator]; that •never, even in thought, attempts
- 34. any greater vengeance or wants to inflict any greater pun- ishment than what every person who isn’t directly involved would be happy to see inflicted. ·Putting those two sets of virtues together· we get the result that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfish affections and indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature. It is only through this that men can have the harmony of sentiments and passions that constitutes their whole grace and propriety. The great law of Christianity is Love your neighbour as you love yourself; and the great precept of nature is Love yourself only as you love your neighbour —or, what comes to the same thing, as your neighbour is capable of loving you. Just as taste and good judgment, when considered as qualities that deserve praise and admiration, are supposed to imply an uncommon delicacy of sentiment and acuteness of understanding, so the virtues of sensitivity and self-control are thought of as consisting in uncommon degrees of those qualities. The likeable virtue of humaneness requires, surely, a level of sensitivity far higher than is possessed by crude ordinary people. The great and exalted virtue of magnanimity undoubtedly demands a much higher degree of self-control than the weakest of mortals could exert. Just as the com- mon level of intellect doesn’t involve any notable talents, so the common level of moral qualities doesn’t involve any virtues. Virtue is excellence—something uncommonly great and beautiful, rising far above what is vulgar and ordinary. The likeable virtues consist in a degree of sensitivity that surprises us by its exquisite and unexpected delicacy and
- 35. tenderness. The awe-inspiring and respectworthy virtues consist in a degree of self-control that astonishes us by its amazing superiority over the most ungovernable passions of human nature. We here encounter the considerable difference between •virtue and mere •propriety; between the qualities and ac- tions that deserve to be •admired and celebrated, and the qualities that merely deserve to be •approved of. To act with the most perfect propriety often requires no more than the common and ordinary degree of sensitivity or self-control that even the most worthless of mankind have, and sometimes not even that is needed. To give a humdrum example: in ordinary circumstances if you are hungry it is perfectly right and proper for you to eat, and everyone would agree about that; but no-one would call your eating virtuous! ·Thus, there can be perfect propriety without virtue. And there can also be virtue without perfect propriety·. Actions that fall short of perfect propriety often have a good deal of virtue in them, because they are nearer to perfection than could well be expected in a context where perfection of conduct would be extremely difficult to attain; this is often the case in situations calling for the greatest efforts of self-control. Some situations put so much pressure on human nature that none of us, imperfect creatures that we are, is capable of the degree of self-control that is ·called for. I mean: the degree that is needed· to silence the voice of human weakness, or reduce the violence of the passions to a level where the impartial spectator can entirely share them. In such a case, though the sufferer’s behaviour falls short of the most perfect propriety, it may deserve some applause 12
- 36. Smith on Moral Sentiments The passions that originate in the body and even qualify as (in a certain sense) ‘virtuous’, because it shows an effort of high-mindedness and magnanimity that most men are not capable of. . . . In cases of this kind, when we are settling how much blame or applause an action deserves, we often use two different standards. (1) One standard is the idea of complete propriety and perfection, which in these difficult situations no human conduct could ever achieve. . . . (2) The other stan- dard is the idea of the nearness to this complete perfection that the actions of most men commonly achieve. Whatever goes beyond this seems to deserve applause, and whatever falls short of it to deserve blame. [Smith adds a paragraph about a similar double standard in judging works of art that ‘address themselves to the imag- ination’: •the idea of complete but not humanly attainable perfection that the critic has in his mind, and •the idea of how near to complete perfection most works of art get.] Section 2: The degrees of the different passions that are consistent with propriety Introduction For a passion aroused by an object that is specially related to oneself, the proper level of intensity—the level at which the spectator can go along with it—is clearly somewhere in the middle [Smith: ‘. . . must lie in a certain mediocrity’]. If the passion is too high, or too low, the spectator can’t enter into it. Grief and resentment for private misfortunes and injuries
- 37. can easily be too high, and in most people they are. They aren’t often too low, but this can happen. We call too-high passion ‘weakness’ and ‘fury’, and we call too-low passion ‘stupidity’, ‘insensibility’, and ‘lack of spirit’. We can’t enter into either of them, and are astonished and confused to see them. This middling level that is needed for propriety is different for different passions. It is high for some, low for others. (1) There are some passions that it is indecent to •express very strongly, even when it is acknowledged that we can’t avoid •feeling them in the highest degree. (2) And there are others of which the strongest •expressions are often ·so proper as to count as· extremely graceful, even though the passions themselves aren’t necessarily •felt so strongly. The (1) passions are the ones with which, for certain reasons, there is little or no sympathy; the (2) passions are those with which, for other reasons, there is the greatest sympathy. And if we consider the whole range of passions that human nature is capable of, we’ll find that they are regarded as decent (or indecent) exactly in proportion as mankind are more (or less) disposed to sympathize with them. Chapter 1: The passions that originate in the body (1) It is indecent to express any strong degree of •the passions that arise from a certain situation or disposition of one’s body, because the people one is with aren’t in that bodily state and so can’t be expected to sympathize with •them. Violent hunger, for example, though on many occasions it’s 13
- 38. Smith on Moral Sentiments The passions that originate in the body not only natural but unavoidable, is always indecent, and to eat voraciously is universally regarded as a piece of ill manners. Still, there is some level of sympathy even with hunger. It is agreeable to see our companions eat with a •good appetite; any expression of •loathing for the food one has tasted is offensive. A healthy man’s normal bodily state makes his stomach easily keep time (forgive the coarseness!) with •one and not with •the other. We can sympathize with the distress of excessive hunger when we read the description of a siege or sea-voyage. Imagining ourselves in the situation of the sufferers, we can easily conceive the •grief, fear and consternation that must necessarily distract them. We ourselves feel some degree of •those passions, and therefore sympathize with them; but reading the description doesn’t make us hungry, so it’s not strictly accurate to say that we sympathize with their hunger. It’s the same with the passion by which Nature unites the sexes. Though it is naturally the most furious of all the passions, strong expressions of it are always indecent, even between persons who are totally allowed, by human and divine laws, to indulge this passion together. Still, there seems to be some degree of sympathy even with this passion. It is not proper to talk to a woman as we would to a man; it is expected that their company should inspire us with more gaiety, more pleasantry, and more attention; and an entire insensibility to the fair sex makes a man somewhat contemptible even to men. [This paragraph seems to run together •sympathy with my female companion’s sexual feelings with •sensitivity to the fact that my companion is female. This oddity is present in the
- 39. original; it’s not an artifact of this version.] We have such an aversion for all the appetites that origi- nate in the body that we find all strong expressions of them loathsome and disagreeable. Some ancient philosophers held that these are the passions that we share with the lower animals, so that they are beneath our dignity because they have no connection with the characteristic qualities of human nature. But there are many other passions that we have in common with the lower animals—e.g. resentment, natural affection, even gratitude—that don’t strike us as animal-like. The real cause of the special disgust we have for the body’s appetites when we see them in other men is that we can’t enter into them, ·can’t sympathize with them·. To the person who has such a passion, as soon as it is gratified the object that aroused it ceases to be agreeable; even its presence often becomes offensive to him; he looks in vain for the charm that swept him away the moment before, and he can’t now enter into his own passion any more than anyone else can. After we have dined, we order the table to be cleared; and we would treat in the same manner the objects of the most ardent and passionate desires if they were the objects only of passions that originate in the body. The virtue of temperance, properly so-called, is the com- mand of the body’s appetites. •Prudence involves keeping those appetites within the limits required by •a concern for one’s health and fortune. But •temperance keeps them within the limits required by •grace, propriety, delicacy, and modesty. (2) It’s for that same reason that it always seems unmanly and unbecoming to cry out with bodily pain, however in- tolerable it is. Yet there is a good deal of sympathy even
- 40. with bodily pain. I remarked earlier that if I see a truncheon about to come down on someone else’s arm, I naturally shrink and draw back my own arm; and when the blow falls I feel it in some measure, and I am hurt by it as well as the sufferer. But my hurt is very slight, so that if he makes a violent outcry I will despise him because I can’t go along with him. That’s how it is with all the passions that originate in the body; they arouse ·in the spectator· either no sympathy 14 Smith on Moral Sentiments The passions that originate in the body at all or such a low level of sympathy that it is altogether disproportionate to the violence of what the sufferer feels. It is quite otherwise with passions that originate in the imagination. The state of my •body can’t be much affected by changes that are brought about in my companion’s body; but my •imagination is more pliable, and (so to speak) more readily takes on the shape and lay-out of the imaginations of people I have contact with. That’s why a disappointment in love or ambition will evoke more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil. Those passions arise purely from the imagination. The person who has lost his whole fortune, if he is in good health, feels nothing in his body. What he suffers comes entirely from his imagination, which represents to him the rapid approach of the loss of his dignity, neglect by his friends, contempt from his enemies, dependency, poverty and misery; and we sympathize with him more strongly on account of this misfortune ·than we do for any physical pain he is suffering· because it’s easier for our imaginations to mould themselves on his imagination than for our bodies to
- 41. mould themselves on his body. The loss of a leg may generally be regarded as a more real calamity than the loss of a mistress. Yet it would be a ridiculous ·dramatic· tragedy of which the ·central· catastrophe was to concern the loss of a leg; whereas a misfortune of the other kind, however trivial it may appear to be, has given occasion to many a fine tragic drama. Nothing is as quickly forgotten as pain. The moment it is gone the whole agony of it is over, and the thought of it can no longer give us any sort of disturbance. After the pain is over, we ourselves can’t enter into the anxiety and anguish that we had during it. An unguarded word from a friend will cause a more durable unhappiness—the agony it creates is by no means over once the word has gone. What at first disturbs us is not the object of the senses (·the sound of the word·) but the idea of the imagination (·the meaning of the word·); and just because it is an idea, the thought of it continues to fret and ruffle the imagination until time and other episodes in some measure erase it from our memory, . Pain never evokes any lively sympathy unless danger comes with it. We sympathize with sufferer’s fear but not with his agony. Fear is a passion derived entirely from the imagination, which represents not what we really now feel but what we may suffer later on. (It represents this in an uncertain and fluctuating way, but that only makes it worse.) The gout or the tooth-ache, though intensely painful, arouse little sympathy; more dangerous diseases, even when accompanied by little pain, arouse sympathy in the highest degree. Some people faint and grow sick at the sight of a surgical operation; the bodily pain caused by tearing the flesh seems
- 42. to arouse the most excessive sympathy in them. We do conceive in a much more lively and distinct manner the pain that comes from an external cause than pain coming from an internal disorder. I can hardly form an idea of my neighbour’s agonies when he is tortured by gout or a gallstone; but I have the clearest conception of what he must suffer from an incision, a wound, or a fracture. But the main reason why such objects produce such violent effects on us ·as spectators· is that we aren’t used to them. Someone who has seen a dozen dissections and as many amputations will from then on see all operations of this kind with great calmness and often with no feeling at all for the sufferer. . . . Some of the Greek tragedies try to arouse compassion by representing the agonies of bodily pain. Philoctetes cries out and faints from the extremity of his sufferings. Hippolytus and Hercules are both introduced as dying from the severest tortures—ones that seem to have been more than even the fortitude of Hercules could bear. But in all these cases, 15 Smith on Moral Sentiments Passions that originate in the imagination what concerns us is not the pain but other features of the situation. What affects us is not Philoctetes’s sore foot but his solitude, which diffuses over that charming tragedy the romantic wildness that is so agreeable to the imagination. The agonies of Hercules and Hippolytus are interesting only because we foresee that death will result from them. If those heroes recovered, we would think the representation of their sufferings to have been perfectly ridiculous. . . . These attempts to arouse compassion by the representation of
- 43. bodily pain may be regarded as among the Greek theatre’s greatest failures of good manners. The propriety of constancy and patience in enduring bodily pain is based on the fact that we feel little sympathy with such pain. The man who under the severest tortures allows no weakness to escape him, who doesn’t utter a groan or give way to any passion that we ·spectators· don’t entirely enter into, commands our highest admiration. His firmness enables him to keep time with our indifference and insensibility. We admire and entirely go along with the magnanimous effort that he makes for this purpose. We •approve of his behaviour, and our experience of the common weakness of human nature makes us •surprised by it, and we wonder what enabled him to act so as to deserve approval. Approval, mixed with an enlivening input of wonder and surprise, constitutes the sentiment that is properly called ‘admiration’, of which applause—I repeat—is the natural expression. Chapter 2: The passions that originate in a particular turn or habit of the imagination Even some of the passions derived from the imagination get little sympathy, although they may be acknowledged to be perfectly natural. I’m talking about passions that originate in a special turn or habit that the imagination has acquired. The imaginations of people in general, not having acquired that particular turn, can’t enter into these passions. The passions in question, though they may be allowed to be almost unavoidable in some part of life, are always somewhat ridiculous. An example is the strong attachment that naturally grows up between two persons of different sexes who have long fixed their thoughts on one another. Because our imagination hasn’t run in the same
- 44. channel as the lover’s, we can’t enter into the eagerness of his emotions. •If our friend has been injured, we readily sympathize with his resentment and grow angry with the person with whom he is angry. •If he has received a benefit, we readily enter into his gratitude and have a high sense of the merit of his benefactor. But •if he is in love, even though we may think his passion is just as reasonable as any of that kind, we don’t think ourselves bound to develop a passion of the same kind and for the same person that he is in love with. To everyone but the lover himself his passion seems entirely disproportionate to the value of its object; and love, though it is •pardoned. . . .because we know it is natural, is always •laughed at because we can’t enter into it. All serious and strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person; and a lover isn’t good company to anyone else except his mistress. He himself is aware of this, and during his periods of being in his sober senses he tries to treat his own passion with mockery and ridicule. That is the only style in which we care to •hear of it, because it’s the only style in which we ourselves are disposed to •talk of it. We grow weary of the solemn, pedantic, long-winded lovers of Cowley and of Petrarch, who go on and on exaggerating the violence of their attachments; but the gaiety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are always agreeable. 16 Smith on Moral Sentiments Passions that originate in the imagination But though we feel no proper sympathy with an attach- ment of this kind, though we never get close to imagining ourselves as in love with that particular person, ·we aren’t entirely cut off from the lover’s situation·. We have ourselves
- 45. fallen in love in that way, or are disposed to do so; and that lets us readily enter into the high hopes of happiness that the lover expects from his love’s gratification, as well as into the intense distress that he fears from its disappointment. It concerns us not as a passion but as a situation that gives rise to other passions that concern us—to hope, fear, and distress of every kind. (Similarly, when we read about a sea voyage, our concern is not with the hunger but with the distress that the hunger causes.) Without properly entering into the lover’s attachment, we readily go along with the expectations of romantic happiness that he gets from it. We feel how natural it is for the mind, at a time when it is lazily relaxed and fatigued with the violence of desire, to long for serenity and quiet, to hope to find them in the gratification of the passion that distracts it, and to form for itself the idea of a life of pastoral tranquillity and retirement of the sort that the elegant, tender, and passionate ·Latin poet· Tibullus takes so much pleasure in describing—a life like the one the ·ancient· poets describe in the Fortunate Islands, a life of friendship, liberty, and repose; free from labour, from care, and from all the turbulent passions that accompany them. Even scenes of this kind engage us most when they are depicted as •hoped for rather than •actually enjoyed. The grossness of the passion that is mixed in with love and is perhaps its foundation disappears when its gratification is far off and at a distance; but when it is described as what is immediately possessed it makes the whole description offensive. For this reason [he means: because of the grossness of lust] we are less drawn into the lover’s happy passion than we are to the fearful and the melancholy ·aspects of it·.
- 46. We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and agreeable hopes, and thus enter into all the anxiety, concern, and distress of the lover. [Smith now has a paragraph applying this line of thought to the presentation of romantic love ‘in some modern tragedies and romances’. Then:] The reserve that the laws of society impose on the female sex with regard to this weakness [i.e. with regard to romantic love] makes it especially stressful for them; and for just that reason we are more deeply concerned with their part in a love situation. We are charmed with the •love of Phaedra as it is expressed in Racine’s Phèdre, despite all the extravagance and guilt that come with it. That very extravagance and guilt are part of what recommends •it to us. Her fear, shame, remorse, horror, despair, become thereby more natural and engaging. All the secondary passions (if I may be allowed to call them that) that arise from the situation of love become necessarily more furious and violent, and it’s only with these secondary passions that we can properly be said to sympathize. However, of all the passions that are so extravagantly disproportionate to the value of their objects, love is the only one that appears to have anything in it that is either graceful or agreeable. (None of the others do, even to the weakest minds!) ·It has three things going for it·: •Although it may be ridiculous, it isn’t naturally odi- ous. •Although its consequences are often fatal and dreadful its intentions are seldom bad. •Although there is little propriety in the passion itself,
- 47. there’s a good deal of propriety in some of the passions that always accompany it. 17 Smith on Moral Sentiments The unsocial passions There is in love a strong mixture of humaneness, gen- erosity, kindness, friendship, esteem. And these are the passions that we are most disposed to sympathize with, even when we’re aware that they are somewhat excessive. The sympathy that we feel with them makes the passion that they accompany less disagreeable and supports it in our imagination, despite all the vices that commonly go along with it: always eventual ruin and infamy for the woman; and for the man—though he is supposed to come off more lightly—it usually causes inability to work, neglect of duty, disregard of ·lost· reputation. [In the original, as in this version, Smith doesn’t signal where he is switching from romantic love generally to what he is evidently thinking of here—consummated romantic love between two people who are not married to one another.] Despite all this, the degree of sensibility and generosity that is supposed to accompany such love makes it something that some people are vain about—they like to appear to be capable of a feeling that would do them no honour if they really did have it. It’s for this kind of reason that a certain reserve is necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, our own professions. We can’t expect our companions to be
- 48. as interested in these topics as we are. And it’s because of a lack of this reserve that one half of mankind make bad company for the other half. A philosopher is good company only to another philosopher; the member of a club is good company only to his own little knot of companions. Chapter 3: The unsocial passions There is another set of passions which, though derived from the imagination, have to be scaled down if we are to be able to enter into them or regard them as graceful or becoming; I mean scaled down to a much lower level than undisciplined nature gives them. These are •hatred and •resentment, with all their varieties. With all such passions our sympathy is divided between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them. The interests of these two are directly opposite. What our sympathy with the person who feels the passion would prompt us to •wish for is something that our fellow-feeling with the other person would lead us to •fear. Because they are both human we are concerned for both, and our fear for what one may suffer damps our resentment for what the other has suffered. So our sympathy with the man who has received the provocation has to fall short of the passion that naturally animates him, not only for the general reason that all sympathetic passions are inferior to the original ones, but also for the special reason that in this case we also have an opposite sympathy towards someone else. That is why resentment, more than almost any other passion, can’t become graceful and agreeable unless it is humbled and brought down below the pitch to which it would naturally rise. Any human being has a strong sense of the injuries that are done to anyone else; the villain in a tragedy or romance is as much an object of our indignation as the hero is an object
- 49. of our sympathy and affection. We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello; and we delight as much in Iago’s punishment as we grieve over Othello’s distress. But although we have such a strong fellow-feeling with the injuries that are done to our brethren, it’s not always the case that our resentment grows if the sufferer’s grows. ·On the contrary·, the •greater his patience, mildness, and humaneness, the •greater our resentment against the person who injured him—provided that his patience etc. doesn’t seem to show that he is afraid or that he lacks spirit. The likeableness of the sufferer’s character intensifies our sense of the atrocity of the injury. However, those passions are regarded as necessary ele- ments in human nature. A person becomes contemptible if 18 Smith on Moral Sentiments The unsocial passions he tamely sits still and submits to insults without trying to repel or revenge them. We can’t enter into his indifference and insensibility. We regard his behaviour as mean-spirited, and are really provoked by it, just as much as we are by the insolence of his adversary. Even the mob are enraged to see any man submit patiently to insults and bullying. They want to see this insolence resented by the person who suffers from it. They angrily cry to him to defend or revenge himself. If his indignation eventually bubbles up, they heartily applaud, and sympathize with it. It enlivens their own indignation against his enemy, whom they rejoice to see him attack in his turn; and provided his revenge is not immoderate, they are as really gratified by it as they would be if the injury had been done to themselves.
- 50. •Those passions are useful to the individual, because they make it dangerous to insult or injure him; and, as I’ll show later, •they are useful to the public as guardians of justice and of the equality of its administration; and yet •they have in themselves something disagreeable that makes it natural for us to dislike seeing them in other people. Suppose that we are in company, and someone insults me; if I express anger that goes beyond merely indicating that I noted the insult, that is regarded not only as an insult to him but also as a rudeness to the whole company. Respect for them ought to have restrained me from giving way to such a rowdy and offensive emotion. It’s the •remote effects of these passions that are agreeable; the •immediate effects are mischief to the person against whom they are directed [Smith’s phrase]. But what makes an object—·a passion or anything else·—agreeable or disagreeable to the imagination is its •immediate effect, not its •remote ones. A prison is certainly more useful to the public than a palace; and someone who establishes a prison is generally directed by a much sounder spirit of patriotism than someone who builds a palace. But the immediate effect of a prison—namely, the confinement of the wretches shut up in it—is disagreeable; and the imagination either doesn’t bother to trace out the remote consequences, or sees them from too great a distance to be much affected by them. So a prison will always be a disagreeable object; and the fitter it is for its intended purpose the more disagreeable it will be. A palace, on the other hand, will always be agreeable; and yet its remote effects may often be thoroughly bad for the public—e.g. pro- moting luxury, and setting an example of the dissolution of manners. [In Smith’s day, ‘luxury’ stood for very excessive indulgence in physical comforts; see note on page 162.]. . . . Paintings or models of the instruments of music or of agriculture make a common
- 51. and an agreeable ornament of our halls and dining-rooms. A display of that kind composed of the instruments of surgery—dissecting and amputation-knives, saws for cutting the bones, trepanning instruments, etc.—would be absurd and shocking. Yet instruments of surgery are always more finely polished, and usually more exactly adapted to their intended purpose, than instruments of agriculture. And their •remote effect—the health of the patient—is agreeable. But because their •immediate effect is pain and suffering, the sight of them always displeases us. [Smith adds that swords and such are liked, associated with courage etc., and even wanted as fashion accessories. It’s true that their immediate effects are pain and suffering, but only for ‘our enemies, with whom we have no sympathy’. He continues:] It is the same with the qualities of the mind. The ancient stoics held that because the world was governed by the all-ruling providence of a wise, powerful, and good God, every single event ought to be regarded as a necessary part of the plan of the universe, and as tending to promote the general order and happiness of the whole; so that men’s vices and follies were as necessary a part of this plan as their wisdom or 19 Smith on Moral Sentiments The unsocial passions their virtue. . . . No theory of this sort, however, no matter how deeply it might be rooted in the mind, could lessen our natural abhorrence for vice, whose immediate effects are so destructive and whose remote ones are too distant to be traced by the imagination. It’s the same with hatred and resentment. Their immedi- ate effects are so disagreeable that even when the sufferer is
- 52. absolutely entitled to them there’s still something about them that disgusts us. That’s why these are the only passions that we aren’t inclined to sympathize with until we learn about the cause that arouses them. ·In contrast with that·, the plaintive •voice of misery, when heard at a distance, won’t let us be indifferent about the person from whom it comes; as soon as we hear •it we are concerned about his fortune, and if •it continues it almost forces us to rush to his assistance. The sight of a smiling face elevates even a brooding person into a cheerful and airy mood that disposes him to sympathize with the joy it expresses; and he feels his heart, which just then had been shrunk and depressed by thought and care, instantly expanded and elated. [Smith goes on at colourful length about the different effect on us of expressions of hatred and resentment. He concludes:] Grief powerfully •engages and attracts us to the person who is grieving; and hatred and resentment, while we are ignorant of their cause, equally powerfully •disgust and detach us from the person who has them. It seems to have been Nature’s intention that the rougher and more dislikeable emotions that drive men apart should be less easily and more rarely passed on from man to man. When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in a mood that disposes us to have them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us ·not with anger but· with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all naturally musical passions. Their natural tones are all soft, clear, and melodious; and they naturally express themselves in phrases that are separated by regular pauses, which makes it easy to adapt them to them to the words of a song. In contrast with this, the voice of anger and of all the passions like it is harsh and discordant. Its phrases are all irregular, some long and others short, and not marked off by regular pauses. So it is
- 53. hard for music to imitate any of those passions; and music that does so isn’t the most agreeable. There would be no impropriety in making a complete concert out of imitations of the social and agreeable passions. It would be a strange entertainment that consisted of nothing but imitations of hatred and resentment! Those passions are as disagreeable to the person who feels them as they are to the spectator. •Hatred and •anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind. In the very feel of them there is something harsh, jarring, and convulsive, something that tears and distracts the breast and is altogether destructive of the calmness of mind that is so necessary to happiness and is best promoted by the contrary passions of •gratitude and •love. What generous and humane people are most apt to regret ·when they are injured· is not the value of what they lose by the perfidy and ingratitude of those they live with. Whatever they may have lost, they can generally be happy without it. What disturbs them most is the idea of perfidy and ingratitude exercised towards themselves; and they regard the discordant and disagreeable passions that this arouses as constituting the chief part of the injury that they suffer. What does it take for the gratification of resentment to be completely agreeable, and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathize with our revenge? Well, the first thing is that the provocation must be such that if we didn’t somewhat resent it we would be making ourselves contemptible and 20 Smith on Moral Sentiments The social passions
- 54. exposing ourselves to perpetual insults. Smaller offences are always better neglected; and there’s nothing more despicable than the quarrelsome temperament that takes fire under the slightest provocation. ·Secondly·, we should resent more from a sense of the propriety of resentment—·i.e.· from a sense that mankind expect and require it of us—than because we feel in ourselves the furies of that disagreeable passion. With the passion of resentment—more than any other of which the human mind is capable—we ought to ask ourselves sceptically ‘Is it all right for me to feel this?’, letting our indulgence in it be subject to careful consultation with our natural sense of propriety, i.e. to diligent consideration of what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator. The only motive that can ennoble the expressions of this disagreeable passion is magnanimity, i.e. a concern to maintain our own rank and dignity in society. This motive must characterize our whole style and deportment. These must be plain, open, and direct; determined but not domi- neering, and elevated without insolence; not only free from petulance and low abusiveness, but generous, fair-minded, and full of all proper regard even for the person who has offended us. [In that sentence ‘fair-minded’ replaces Smith’s ‘candid’. He always uses it with that meaning, which is quite remote from what it means today.] In short, it must appear from our whole manner—without our laboriously making a special point of it—that our passion hasn’t extinguished our humaneness, and that if we answer the call to get revenge we do so with reluctance, from necessity, and in consequence of great and repeated provocations. When resentment is guarded and qualified in this manner it can even count as generous [see note on page 11] and noble. Chapter 4: The social passions
- 55. I have just been discussing a set of passions that are on most occasions ungraceful and disagreeable, being made so ·in large measure· by the •divided sympathy that they evoke. Now we come to an opposite set of passions—ones that are nearly always especially agreeable and becoming, being made so by the •redoubled sympathy that they evoke. Generosity, humaneness, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem—all the social and benevolent affections—when ex- pressed in someone’s face or behaviour, even towards people who aren’t specially connected with ourselves, please us on almost every occasion. The impartial spectator’s sympathy with the person x who feels those passions exactly coincides with his concern for the person y who is the object of them. Just by being a man, the spectator is obliged to have a concern for y’s happiness, and this concern enlivens his fellow-feeling with x’s sentiments, which also aim at y’s happiness. So we always have the strongest disposition to sympathize with the benevolent affections. They strike us as in every respect agreeable. We enter into the satisfaction of the person who feels them and of the person who is the object of them. Just as being an object of hatred and indignation gives more pain than all the evil that a brave man can fear from his enemies, so also for a person with fine and sensitive feelings, the aware- ness that he is loved brings a satisfaction that does more for his happiness than any ·practical· advantage he can expect to derive from being loved. The most detestable character is that of the person who takes pleasure in sowing dissension among friends, turning their most tender love into mortal hatred. But what makes this so
- 56. 21 Smith on Moral Sentiments The selfish passions atrocious? Is it that it deprives them of the trivial good turns they might have expected from one another if friendship had continued? ·Of course not·! It’s the fact that it deprives them of that friendship itself, robbing them of each other’s affections, from which both derived so much satisfaction; disturbing the harmony of their hearts and ending the happy relations that had previously held between them. •These affections, that harmony, these inter-relations, are felt—not only by tender and delicate people but also by the roughest ordinary folk—to be more important for happiness than all the little services that could be expected to flow from •them. The sentiment of love is in itself agreeable to the person who feels it. It soothes and calms his breast, and seems. . . .to promote the healthy state of his constitution; and it is made still more delightful by his awareness of the gratitude and satisfaction that his love must arouse in the person who is the object of it. Their mutual regard makes them happy with one another, and this mutual regard, added to sympathy, makes them agreeable to everyone else. Take the case of a family where mutual love and esteem hold sway throughout; where the parents and children are com- panions for one another, with no differences except what come from the children’s respectful affection and the parents’ kind indulgence; where freedom and fondness, mutual teasing and mutual kindness, show that the brothers are not divided by any opposition of their interests, or the sisters by any rivalry for
- 57. parental favour; and where everything presents us with the idea of peace, cheerfulness, harmony, and contentment. What pleasure we get from seeing a family like that! Then consider being a visitor to a household in which jarring contention sets half of the members against the other half; where, along with the surface appearance of smoothness and good tem- per, suspicious looks and sudden flashes of passion reveal the mutual jealousies that burn within them, ready at any moment to burst out through all the restraints that the presence of visitors imposes. What an unpleasant experience that is! The likeable passions, even when they are clearly exces- sive, are never regarded with aversion. There’s something agreeable even in the excess of friendship and humaneness. The too tender mother, the too indulgent father, the too generous and affectionate friend, may be looked on with a sort of pity, though there’s love mixed in with it; and they can never be regarded with hatred and aversion, or even with contempt, except by the most brutal and worthless of mankind. When we blame them for the extravagance of their attachment, we always do it with concern, with sympathy and kindness. [Smith goes on to say that our only regret regarding any extreme case of the social passions is ‘that it is unfit for the world because the world is unworthy of it’, so that the person in question is too open to abuse and ingratitude that he doesn’t deserve and couldn’t easily bear. He contrasts this with our much more robust disapproval of extreme hatred and resentment.]
- 58. Chapter 5: The selfish passions Besides those two opposite sets of passions, the social and the unsocial, there’s a third that occupies a sort of middle place between them: it’s a kind of passion that is never as graceful as the social passions sometimes are, or as odious as the unsocial passions sometimes are. This third set of passions consists of grief and joy that people have on account of their own private good or bad fortune. Even when excessive, these passions are never as disagreeable as 22 Smith on Moral Sentiments The selfish passions excessive resentment, •because no opposing sympathy can ever make us want to oppose them, and even when they are most suitable to their objects, these passions are never as agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence, because •no double sympathy can ever make us want to support them. There’s this difference between grief and joy: we are generally most disposed to sympathize with small joys and great sorrows. A man who by some sudden stroke of luck is instantly raised into a condition of life far above what he had formerly lived in can be sure that the congratulations of his best friends aren’t all perfectly sincere. An upstart—even if he is of the greatest merit—is generally disagreeable to us, and a sentiment of envy commonly prevents us from heartily
- 59. sympathizing with his joy. If he has any judgment he is aware of this, ·and conducts himself accordingly·. Instead of appearing to be elated with his good fortune, he does his best to smother his joy, and keep down the mental lift he is getting, naturally, from his new circumstances. He dresses as plainly as ever, and displays the same modesty of behaviour that was suitable to him in his former station. He redoubles his attention to his old friends, and tries more than ever to be humble, attentive, and obliging. And this is the behaviour that we most approve of in someone in his situation—apparently because we look to him to have more •sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness than we have •sympathy with his happiness! He hardly ever succeeds in all this. We suspect the sincerity of his humility, and he grows weary of this constraint. Before long, he leaves all his old friends behind him, except perhaps some of the poorest of them, who are willing to lower themselves to the level of becoming his dependents. And he doesn’t always acquire new friends; the pride of his new acquaintances is as much offended at finding him their equal as the pride of his old ones had been offended by his becoming their superior; and he’ll have to put up the most obstinate and persevering ·show of· modesty to atone for either offence. He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked by the sullen and suspicious pride of his old friends to treat them with neglect, by the saucy contempt of his new acquaintances to treat them with petulance, until eventually he forms a habit of insolence, and isn’t respected by anyone. If the chief part of human happiness comes from the consciousness of being beloved, as I think it does, these sudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness. The happiest man is one who advances more gradually to greatness, whose every step upwards is widely predicted before he reaches it, so that when his success comes it can’t arouse extravagant •joy in himself, and can’t reasonably create •jealousy in those he
- 60. overtakes or •envy in those he leaves behind. We are more apt to sympathize with smaller joys flowing from less imposing causes. It is decent to be humble amidst great prosperity; but we can hardly overdo our expressions of satisfaction in all the little occurrences of common life—the company we had yesterday evening, the entertainment that was provided for us, what was said and what was done, all the little incidents of the present conversation, and all the trivial nothings that fill up the void of human life. Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always based on a special liking for all the little pleasures that everyday events provide. We readily sympathize with it; it inspires us with the same joy, and makes every trifle present to us the same agreeable aspect that it presents to the person endowed with this happy disposition. That is why youth, the time of gaiety, so easily engages our affections. The propensity for joy that seems. . . .to sparkle from the eyes of 23 Smith on Moral Sentiments The selfish passions youth and beauty—even in a person of the same sex—raises even elderly people to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget their infirmities for a while, and give themselves over to agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been strangers, but which return to their breast when the presence of so much happiness calls them back—like old acquaintances from whom they are sorry to have ever been parted, and whom they embrace all the more heartily because of this long separation. [Several occurrences of ‘teasing’ that we are about to meet—
- 61. like one on page 22—are replacements for Smith’s ‘raillery’, which means something like ‘lighted-hearted unaggressive mockery’.] It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexations arouse no sympathy, but deep affliction calls forth the greatest. The man who is made uneasy by every little disagreeable incident. . . .will seldom meet with much sympathy. [Smith builds into that sentence sketches of eight such trivial incidents.] Joy is a pleasant emotion, and we gladly give ourselves over to it on the slightest occasion. So we readily sympathize with it in others except when we are prejudiced by envy. But grief is painful, and the mind naturally resists and recoils from it—and that includes resisting being grieved by one’s own misfortunes. We try either not to be grieved at all, or to shake our grief off as soon as it comes over us. It’s true that our aversion to grief won’t always stop us from grieving over trifling troubles that we meet, but it constantly prevents us from sympathizing with the grief that others have because of similar trivial causes. ·How can there be that difference?· It’s because our •sympathetic passions are always easier to resist than our •original ones. Also, human nature includes a malice that not only •prevents all sympathy with little unhappinesses but •makes them somewhat amusing. Hence the delight we all take in teasing, and in the small vexation that we observe in our companion when he is pushed, and urged, and teased on all sides. [Smith adds details about how such matters are managed in society. A ‘man who lives in the world’, he says, stays in tune with his social surroundings by teasing himself regarding trivial calamities [Smith calls them ‘frivolous calamities’] that befall him.] On the other side, our sympathy with deep distress is
- 62. strong and sincere. You don’t need me to give examples. We weep even at the representation of a tragedy on the stage. So if you are labouring under some notable calamity, if through some extraordinary misfortune you have fallen into poverty, disease, disgrace or ·major· disappointment, you can generally depend on the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and on their kindest assistance too as far as their interests and honour will permit; and that holds even if the trouble was partly your own fault. But if your misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have merely been a little blocked in your ambition, if you have only been jilted by your mistress, or are only hen-pecked by your wife, you can reckon on being teased by everyone you know! 24 Smith on Moral Sentiments Joy/sympathy and sorrow/sympathy Section 3: How prosperity and adversity affect our judgments about the rightness of actions; and why it is easier to win our approval in prosperity than in adversity Chapter 1: The intensity-difference between joy and sympathy with joy is less than the intensity-difference between sorrow and sympathy with sorrow Our sympathy with sorrow has been more taken notice of than our sympathy with joy, though it’s no more real than that. The word ‘sympathy’, in its most strict and basic meaning, denotes our fellow-feeling with the sufferings of others, not with their enjoyments. . . . Our sympathy with sorrow is in some sense more uni- versal than our sympathy with joy. Even when sorrow is
- 63. excessive, we may still have some fellow-feeling with it. What we feel then doesn’t amount to the complete sympathy, the perfect harmony and matching of sentiments, that consti- tutes approval. We don’t weep and exclaim and lament with the sufferer. We’re conscious of his weakness and of the extravagance of his passion, and yet we often have a definite feeling of concern on his account. But if we don’t entirely enter into and go along with a person’s joy, we have no sort of regard or fellow-feeling for it. We have contempt and indignation for the man who dances about with an intemperate and senseless joy that we can’t accompany him in. It’s also relevant that pain, whether of mind or body, is a more forceful [Smith: ‘pungent’] sensation than pleasure; and our sympathy with pain, though it falls well short of what is naturally felt by the sufferer, is usually a more lively and distinct perception than our sympathy with pleasure, despite the fact that our sympathy with pleasure often comes close to the natural vivacity of the original passion. Over and above all this, we often struggle to keep down our sympathy with the sorrow of others. When we aren’t in the presence of the sufferer we try for our own sakes to suppress it as much as we can. We don’t always succeed, ·because· the opposition that we put up to sympathetic sorrow and the reluctance with which we give in to it force us to be more explicitly aware of it. In contrast, we never have occasion to put up such opposition to our sympathy with joy. Whenever there’s any envy in the case, we don’t feel the slightest propensity towards joy; but if there’s no envy we give way to joy without any reluctance. When we are envious we are always ashamed of being so, which is why we often say that we sympathize with someone’s joy (and perhaps even wish we could do so) when we are really
- 64. disqualified from doing so by that disagreeable sentiment, envy. We are glad about our neighbour’s good fortune, we say, when in our hearts we may be really sorry. We often feel sympathy with sorrow when we would prefer not to; and we often don’t sympathize with joy when we would be glad to do so. Given all these facts, it is natural to be led to the conclusion that our propensity to sympathize with sorrow must be very strong, and our inclination to sympathize with joy very weak. Despite this snap judgment, however, I venture to say that when no envy is involved our propensity to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow; and that our fellow-feeling for the agreeable emotion comes much closer to the liveliness of what is naturally felt by rejoicing person than our fellow-feeling for someone’s sorrow comes to his own sorrow. We somewhat indulge excessive grief that we can’t entirely 25 Smith on Moral Sentiments Joy/sympathy and sorrow/sympathy go along with. We know what an enormous effort it takes for the sufferer to bring his emotion down to a level of complete harmony with what the spectator feels. So if he fails in that, it’s easy for us to pardon him. But we have no such indulgence for intemperate joy, because we have no sense that any such vast effort is needed to bring that down to what we ·spectators· can entirely enter into. The man who can command his sorrow under the greatest calamities seems worthy of the highest admiration; but someone who can master his joy in the fullness of prosperity seems hardly to
- 65. deserve any praise. The gap between •what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned and •what the spectator can entirely go along with is much wider with sorrow than with joy; and we’re aware of that. If a man has good health, is out of debt, and has a clear conscience, what can he added to his happiness? All increases of fortune for such a man can properly be said to be superfluous, and if he is much elated by them that must be an effect of the most frivolous levity. Yet •this situation may well be called the natural and ordinary state of mankind. Despite the present misery and depravity of the world, so rightly lamented, •this really is the state of the majority of men. So we get the result: most men can’t find any great difficulty in raising themselves ·sympathetically· to the level of joy that someone else has through having come into this happy state. But though little can be added to this state (·of good health, freedom from debt, and possession of a clear con- science·), much can be taken from it. There’s only a trivial gap between this condition and the highest pitch of human prosperity, but between it and the lowest depth of misery the distance is immense. Thus, adversity depresses the sufferer’s mind much further below its natural state than prosperity can raise it above that state. So the spectator must •find it much harder to sympathize entirely with his sorrow, keeping perfect time with it, than to enter thoroughly into his joy, and must •depart much further from his own natural and ordinary state of mind in the one case than in the other. That’s why our sympathy with sorrow, despite being a more forceful sensation than our sympathy with joy, always falls further short than the latter does of the intensity of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
- 66. Sympathy with joy is a pleasure, and as long as envy doesn’t oppose it our heart is glad to abandon itself to the highest transports of that delightful sentiment. But it is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter into that with reluctance. When we are watching a dramatic tragedy, we struggle as long as we can against the sympathetic sorrow that the entertainment inspires, and eventually give way to it only when we can no longer avoid it. And even then we try to cover our concern from those we are with; if we shed any tears we carefully conceal them, for fear that the others, not entering into this excessive tenderness themselves, might regard it as effeminacy and weakness. . . . Why should we be more ashamed to weep than to laugh when we are in company? We may often have as much reason to weep as to laugh, but we always feel that the spectators are more likely to go along with us in the agreeable emotion than in the painful one. . . . How hearty are the acclamations of the mob, who are never envious of their superiors, at a triumphal parade! And how sedate and moderate, usually, is their grief at an execution! Our sorrow at a funeral generally amounts to nothing but a pretended gravity, but our happiness at a christening or a marriage is always from the heart, with no pretence. On all such joyous occasions our satisfaction is often as lively as that of the persons principally concerned, though perhaps not as durable. [Smith adds details about 26 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank our physical appearance during such bouts of sympathetic
- 67. pleasure.] Whereas when we condole with our friends in their afflic- tions, how little we feel in comparison with what they feel! [Smith adds details, including the remark that our relative lack of real sympathy may produce guilt, which makes us] work ourselves up into an artificial sympathy;. . . .but as soon as we have left the room this vanishes and is gone for ever. It seems that when Nature loaded us with our own sorrows, she thought that they were enough, and therefore didn’t command us to take any share other people’s sorrows except for what is necessary to prompt us to help them. [There follow two long rapturous paragraphs in praise of ‘magnanimity amidst great distress’, with poetic praise for the serene suicides of Cato and Socrates. Then:] In contrast with this, anyone who is sunk in sorrow and dejection because of some calamity that has befallen him always appears somewhat mean and despicable. We can’t bring ourselves to feel for him what he feels for himself, even though we might feel it for ourselves if we were in his situation. So perhaps it is unjust of us to despise him, if any sentiment can regarded as unjust when nature compels us to have it. There’s never anything agreeable about the weakness of sorrow, except when it arises from what we feel for others more than from what we feel for ourselves. A son whose kindly and respectworthy father has died may give way to sorrow without much blame. His sorrow is mainly based on a sort of sympathy with his departed parent, and we readily enter into this humane emotion. But if he were to indulge the same weakness on account of a misfortune that affected only himself, we would no longer be patient with him. If he were reduced to beggary and ruin, if he were exposed to the most dreadful dangers, indeed if he were led out to a public execution and there shed one single tear on the scaffold,
- 68. he would disgrace himself for ever in the minds of all the gallant and generous part of mankind. [Re ‘generous’, see note on page 11.] Their compassion for him would be strong and sincere; but because it would still fall short of his excessive weakness they would not pardon his thus exposing himself in the eyes of the world. His behaviour would affect them with shame rather than with sorrow; and the dishonour that he had thus [i.e. by weeping on the scaffold] brought on himself would appear to them the most lamentable circumstance in his misfortune. . . . Chapter 2: The origin of ambition, and differences of rank It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow that we parade our riches and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so humiliating as having to expose our distress to the public view, and to feel that although our situation is there for everyone to see, no-one feels for us a half of what we feel. Indeed, this concern for the sentiments of everyone else is the main reason why we pursue riches and avoid poverty. Consider: what is the purpose of all the toil and bustle of this world? What is the purpose of avarice and ambition, of the pursuit of wealth, power, and pre-eminence? Is it to supply the necessities of nature? The wages of the poorest labourer can supply them: his means afford him food and clothing, and the comfort of a house and of a family. If we strictly examined his personal budget we would find that he spends a great part of his income on conveniences that can be regarded as luxuries. . . . Why, then, are we so concerned to avoid being in his situation, and why should those who have grown up in the higher ranks of life regard it as worse than death to be reduced to live—even without his labour—on the same simple
- 69. 27 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank food as he eats, to dwell under the same lowly roof, and to be dressed in the same humble clothes? Do they imagine that their stomach is better or their sleep sounder in a palace than in a cottage? The contrary of this has often been pointed out, and anyway it is so obvious that everyone would know it even if no-one had pointed it out! Well, then, what is the source of that emulation—·that trying-to-copy·—that runs through all the different ranks of men? What advantages do we expect from that great purpose of human life that we call ‘bettering our condition’? The only advantages we can aim to derive from it are being noticed, attended to, regarded with sympathy, acceptance, and approval. It is the vanity—not the ease or the pleasure—that draws us. But vanity is always based on our thinking we are the object of attention and approval. The rich man glories in his riches because he feels that •they naturally attract the world’s attention to him, and that •mankind are disposed to go along with him in all the agreeable emotions that the advantages of his situation so readily inspire in him. At the thought of this his heart seems to swell within him, and he is fonder of his wealth on this account than for all the other advantages it brings him. The poor man, on the other hand, is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that either •it places him out of everyone’s sight or •if people do take any notice of him it’s with almost no fellow-feeling for the misery and distress that he suffers. He is humiliated on both accounts. Being disapproved of is entirely different from being overlooked, ·but being overlooked is essentially tied to not being approved of·: the obscurity of the overlooked poor man also shuts out the daylight of honour and approval;
- 70. so that his feeling of not being taken notice of necessarily damps the most agreeable hope and disappoints the most ardent desire of human nature, ·namely, the desire for the approval of one’s fellow-men·. The poor man comes and goes unheeded, and is no more noticed in the middle of a crowd than he is when shut up in his own hovel. The humble cares and earnest work that occupy people in his situation don’t entertain the dissipated and the cheerful. They avert their eyes from him, or if his distress is so extreme that they have to look at him, it’s only to keep themselves at a distance from such a disagreeable object. Those who are fortunate and proud are amazed that human wretchedness should dare to present itself before them, having the insolence to disturb the serenity of their happiness with the loathsome view of its misery. The man of rank and distinction, on the other hand, is observed by all the world. Everyone is eager to look at him, and to have, if only through sympathy, the joy and exultation that his circumstances naturally inspire in him. The public care about what he does—about his every word, every gesture. In a large assembly he is the person everyone looks at, waiting for him to start and direct their passions; and if his behaviour isn’t altogether absurd, every moment gives him an opportunity to interest mankind, and to make himself an object of the observation and fellow-feeling of everyone around him. This •attention imposes restraints on him—greatness always brings a certain loss of liberty—and yet •it makes greatness an object of envy, and everyone thinks that it compensates for all the toil and anxiety involved in the pursuit of it, and (even more significant) all the leisure, ease, and carefree security that are lost for ever by the acquisition of greatness. When we consider the condition of the great in the delusive colours in which the imagination is apt to paint it, it seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and
- 71. happy state. It is exactly the state that we in our daydreams had sketched out to ourselves as the ultimate object of all our desires. That gives us a special sympathy with the satisfaction of those who are in that state. We favour all 28 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank their inclinations, and support all their wishes. What a pity it would be (we think) if anything were to spoil and corrupt such an agreeable situation! We could even wish them to be immortal; and it seems hard to us that death should at last put an end to such perfect enjoyment. . . . Great King, live for ever! is the Asian compliment that we would readily offer them if experience didn’t teach us its absurdity. [In the original, as well as in this version, the preceding sentence has the first occurrence of ‘king’ in this work.] Every calamity that befalls them, every injury that is done them, arouses in the breast of the spectator ten times more compassion and resentment than he would have felt if the same things had happened to other men. The only proper subjects for tragedy are the misfortunes of kings. In this respect they resemble the misfortunes of lovers. Those two situations are the ones that chiefly interest us in the theatre; because, in spite of everything that reason and experience can tell us to the contrary, the prejudices of the imagination attach to these two states a happiness superior to any other. To disturb or to put an end to such perfect enjoyment seems to be the most atrocious of all injuries. . . . All the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than
- 72. the death of Charles I. A stranger to human nature who saw •men’s indifference to the misery of their inferiors and •the regret and indignation they feel for the misfortunes of those above them might well think that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible, for persons of higher rank than for those lower down in the scale. Mankind’s disposition to go along with all the passions of the rich and the powerful is the basis for the ordering of society into different ranks. Our fawning deference to our superiors comes from our admiration for the advantages of their situation more often than it comes from any individual’s expecting benefit from their good-will. Their benefits can extend to only a few, but their fortunes are a matter of concern to almost everyone. We’re eager to help them to complete a system of happiness that comes so near to perfection; and we want to serve them for their own sake, without any reward but the honour of obliging them. Nor is our deference to the wishes of people of high rank primarily based on a concern for the usefulness of •such submission, a concern for the social order that is best supported by •it. Even when the order of society seems to require that we should oppose the high-ranking people, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. Consider the doctrine that kings are the servants of the people, who are to be obeyed, resisted, deposed, or punished as the public convenience may require; —that is the doctrine of reason and philosophy, but it isn’t the doctrine of Nature! Nature would teach us to submit to kings for their own sake, to tremble and bow down before their high station, to regard their smile as a sufficient reward for any services, and to dread their displeasure—even if no other
- 73. evil were to follow from it—as the severest of all humiliations. To treat them in any way as men, to reason and argue with them on ordinary occasions, requires a strength of character that few men have. . . . The strongest motives—the most furious •passions of fear, hatred, and resentment—are hardly enough to outweigh this natural disposition to respect them. For the bulk of the people to be willing to oppose a king with violence, or to want to see him punished or deposed, he’ll have to have aroused in them—innocently or not—the highest degree of all •those passions. Even when the people have been brought this far, they are still apt to relent at any moment; they easily relapse into their habitual deference towards someone they have been accustomed to look on as 29 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank their natural superior. They can’t bear seeing their monarch humiliated. Resentment gives way to compassion; they forget all past provocations, their old drives towards loyalty start up again, and they run to re-establish the ruined authority of their old masters with the same violence with which they had opposed it. The death ·by beheading· of Charles I ( ·after the civil war of the 1640s·) brought about the restoration of the royal family. Compassion for James II when he was seized by the populace in making his escape on ship-board nearly prevented the revolution ·of 1688·, and did slow it down. Do the great seem unaware of how easily they can get the admiration of the public? or do they seem to think that, for them as for anyone else, their rank must have been purchased either by sweat or by blood? If the young
- 74. nobleman is instructed in how to support the dignity of his rank, and to make himself worthy of the superiority over his fellow-citizens that he has acquired through the virtue of his ancestors, what accomplishments is he told to acquire for this purpose? Is he to make himself worthy of his rank by knowledge, hard work, patience, self-denial, or any other kind of virtue? Because his least move is noticed, he acquires a habit of care over every detail of ordinary behaviour, and tries to perform all those small duties with the most exact propriety. Being conscious of how much he is observed, and of how much people are disposed to allow him to have whatever he wants, he acts—even in utterly ordinary situations—with the freedom and loftiness that are naturally inspired by the thought of how the populace view him. Everything about his conduct marks an elegant and graceful sense of his own superiority—something that those who are born lower down the social scale can hardly ever achieve. These are the arts [here = ‘the devices’ or even ‘the tricks’] by which he proposes to make mankind more easily submit to his authority and govern their inclinations according to his wishes; and in this he usually succeeds. . . . During most of his reign Louis XIV ·of France· was widely regarded as the most perfect model of a great prince. What were the talents and virtues by which he acquired this great reputation? The scrupulous and inflexible rightness—the danger and difficulty—the tireless energy—of everything he did? His broad knowledge, his exquisite judgment, his heroic valour? It was none of these. What he did have was the status of the most powerful prince in Europe, which gave him the highest rank among kings; and then, says his historian. . . [and Smith gives a long quotation about Louis XIV’s grand and imposing personal manner, his fine voice, his handsomeness, and so on. Then:] These trivial accomplishments—supported by his rank and no doubt by a degree of other talents and
- 75. virtues, though not an outstanding degree—established this prince in the esteem of his own age and later generations’ respect for his memory. Compared with this kingly manner, no other virtue appeared to have any merit. . . . But a man of lower rank can’t hope to distinguish himself in any such way as that. Polish [Smith’s word is ‘politeness’] is so much a virtue of the great that it won’t bring much honour to anyone else. The fool who imitates their manner, pretending to be eminent by the extreme properness of his ordinary behaviour, is rewarded with a double share of contempt for his •folly and •presumption. [Smith goes on a bit about the absurdity of pretentious behaviour in ordinary low-ranked people. Then:] The behaviour of a private man ought to be marked by perfect modesty and plainness, along with as much casualness as is consistent with the respect due to the people he is with. If he hopes ever to distinguish himself, it will have to be by more important virtues. He’ll have to acquire dependents to match the dependents of the great; and because his only access to funds from which to support 30 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank them will be through the labour of his body and the activity of his mind, he’ll have to cultivate these. So he’ll need to acquire superior knowledge in his profession, and to work unusually hard in the exercise of it. He must be patient in labour, resolute in danger, and firm in distress. He’ll have bring these talents into public view by the difficulty and importance of his undertakings, by the good judgment and the severe and unrelenting application with which he
- 76. pursues them. His behaviour in all ordinary circumstances must be marked by honesty and prudence, generosity and frankness; and he must give priority to activities in which it requires the greatest talents and virtues to act properly, but in which the greatest applause goes to those who can acquit themselves with honour. ·Consider these two portraits·: (1) When the man of spirit and ambition is depressed by his situation, how impatiently he looks around for some great opportunity to distinguish himself! He won’t turn down anything that can provide him with this. He even looks forward with satisfaction to the prospect of foreign war, or civil war ·in his own country·; with secret delight he sees—through all the confusion and bloodshed that wars bring—the probability of getting into some of those wished-for occasions in which he can attract the attention and admiration of mankind. (2) The man of rank and distinction, •whose whole glory consists in the propriety of his ordinary behaviour, •who is contented with the humble renown that this can bring him, and •who has no talents to acquire any other ·distinction·, is unwilling to risk embarrassing himself in any activity that might turn out to be difficult or distressing. To cut a fine figure at a ball is his great triumph, and to succeed in a romantic intrigue is his highest exploit. He hates all public confusions, not •because he loves mankind (the great never look on their inferiors as fellow-men) and not •because he lacks courage (for he usually doesn’t), but •because he is aware that he doesn’t have any of the virtues that are required in such situations, and that the public attention will certainly be drawn away from him towards by others. He may be willing to
- 77. expose himself to some small danger, or to conduct a military campaign when that happens to be the fashion. But he shudders with horror at the thought of any situation that would demand the continual and long exertion of patience, industry, strength, and application of thought. Those virtues are hardly ever to be found in men who are born to high ranks. That is why in all governments—even in monarchies—the highest administrative positions are generally occupied, and the detailed administrative work done, by men who were brought up in the middle and lower social ranks, who have advanced through their own hard work and abilities, although they are loaded with the jealousy and opposed by the resentment of all those who were born their superiors. The great—·those with the very highest social rank·—at first regard these administrators as negligible, then they come to envy them, and eventually they are contented to knuckle under to them in the same abjectly low manner that they want the rest of mankind to adopt towards themselves. It’s the loss of this easy command over the affections of mankind that makes the fall from greatness so unbearable. [Smith gives a rather full account of one example, the family of the defeated king of Macedon who were led in triumph through Rome. The crowd, he reports, were deeply moved by the sight of the children, but were contemptuous of the king because he had chosen to stay alive and endure this disgrace. 31 Smith on Moral Sentiments Ambition, rank
- 78. The disgrace, Smith says sharply, was to spend the rest of his life in comfort and safety, on a generous pension. What he had lost was ‘the admiring mob of fools, flatterers, and dependents who had formerly been accustomed to attend to everything he did’.] ‘Love’, says Rochefoucauld, ‘is often followed by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever followed by love.’ Once the pas- sion of ambition has taken possession of the breast, it won’t allow any rival or any successor. To those who have been accustomed to having or even hoping for public admiration, all other pleasures sicken and die. Some fallen statesmen have tried to become happier by working to overcome their ambition, and to despise the honours that they could no longer have; but how few have been able to succeed! Most of them have spent their time in listless and insipid laziness, •angry at the thought of their own insignificance, •unable to take an interest in the occupations of private life, •enjoying nothing but talk about their former greatness, •satisfied in no activity except pointless attempts to recover that. Are you sincerely determined never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? Here is one way to keep to that virtuous resolution, and it may be the only one: Never enter the place from which so few have been able to return, never come within the circle of ambition, and never compare yourself with those masters of the earth who have already occupied the attention of half of mankind before you. [Smith’s next paragraph starts with some rather obscure remarks about people’s attitude to ‘place’, which he distin- guishes from ‘rank’. He continues:] But no-one despises rank, distinction, pre-eminence, unless he is either vastly •better than the human average or vastly •worse, i.e. unless he is either
- 79. •so confirmed in wisdom and real philosophy that he is convinced that as long as the propriety of his conduct entitles him to approval it doesn’t matter much whether people notice him or approve of him, or else •so habituated to the idea of his own low condition, so sunk in slothful and sottish indifference, that he has entirely forgotten the desire. . . .for superiority. What gives to prosperity all its dazzling splendour is the prospect of being a natural object of the joyous congratu- lations and sympathetic attention of mankind; and, corre- spondingly, what makes the gloom of adversity so horribly dark is the feeling that our misfortunes are objects (not of the fellow-feeling, but) of the contempt and aversion of our brethren. It’s because of this that the most dreadful calamities aren’t always the ones that it is hardest to bear. It is often more humiliating to appear in public under small disasters than under great misfortunes. The small ones arouse no sympathy, whereas the great calamities evoke a lively compassion. Although in the latter case the spectators’ sympathetic feelings aren’t as lively as the anguish of the sufferer, the gap between sufferer and spectator is smaller in those cases than in the case of small misfortunes, so that the spectator’s imperfect fellow-feeling does give the sufferer some help in bearing his misery. It would be more humil- iating for a gentleman to appear at a social event covered with filth and rags than to appear with blood and wounds. The latter situation would draw people’s pity, whereas the other would make them laugh. The judge who orders a criminal to be set in the pillory dishonours him more than if he had condemned him to the scaffold. [Smith adds some remarks about (dis)honour, apparently connecting it with the (un)likelihood of attracting pity. Then:] That’s why persons
- 80. of high rank are never subjected to lesser punishments: the law often takes their life, but it almost always respects their 32 Smith on Moral Sentiments Admiring the rich etc. honour. To flog such a person or to set him in the pillory, on account of any crime whatever, is a brutality of which no European government is capable—except Russia’s. A brave man isn’t made contemptible by being brought to the scaffold; he is, by being set in the pillory. His behaviour on the scaffold may gain him universal esteem and admiration, whereas nothing he can do in the pillory can make him agreeable. The sympathy of the spectators supports him on the scaffold, saving him from the most unbearable of all sentiments, namely the shameful sense that his misery is felt by no-one but himself. There is no sympathy for the man in the pillory; or if there is any it’s not sympathy with •his pain, which is a trifle, but sympathy with •his awareness of not getting any sympathy because of his pain. Those who pity him blush and hang down their heads for him. He droops in the same way, and feels himself irrecoverably degraded by the punishment, though not by the crime. In contrast with this, the man who dies with resolution is naturally regarded with esteem and approval by spectators who have their heads up, and he keeps his head up too; and if the crime doesn’t deprive him of the respect of others, the punishment never will. He has no suspicion that his situation is an object of contempt or derision to anyone, and he is entitled to assume the air not only of perfect calmness but of triumph and exultation. . . .
- 81. Chapter 3: The corruption of our moral sentiments that comes from this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect the downtrodden and poor This disposition to admire—and almost to worship—the rich and the powerful, and to despise or at least neglect persons of poor and mean condition, is (on one hand) necessary to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, and (on the other) the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Moralists all down the centuries have complained that wealth and greatness are often given the respect and admiration that only wisdom and virtue should receive, and that poverty and weakness are quite wrongly treated with the contempt that should be reserved for vice and folly. We want to be respected and to be worthy of respect. We’re afraid of being contemned and of being contemptible. But as we move into the world we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the only objects of respect, and that vice and folly aren’t the only objects of contempt. We often see the world’s respectful attentions directed more strongly towards the rich and great than towards the wise and virtuous. We often see the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. For us to further our great ambition to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, two different roads are presented to us, each leading to the desired goal: (1) the acquisition of wealth and greatness, and (2) the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue. Two different characters are presented for us to try to achieve: (1) proud ambition and ostentatious greed, and (2) humble modesty and fairness of conduct. Two different pictures are held out to us as models on which we can try to shape our own character and behaviour: (1) one
- 82. 33 Smith on Moral Sentiments Admiring the rich etc. is gaudy and glittering in its colouring, (2) the other is more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline; (1) one forces itself on the notice of every wandering eye, (2) the other doesn’t attract much attention from anyone but the most studious and careful observer. (1) The admirers and worshippers of wealth and greatness are the great mob of mankind (and how odd it seems that most of them aren’t in this camp because they hope to get anything out of it). (2) The real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue are mostly wise and virtuous themselves; they’re a select group, but not a large one, I’m afraid. The two •objects of respect produce two •kinds of respect; it’s not hard to tell them apart, and yet they have a great deal in common, so that inattentive observers are apt to mistake the one for the other, i.e. to observe a case of respect for wealth and greatness and to mistake it for a case of respect for wisdom and virtue. Almost everyone respects the rich and great more than the poor and the humble. [Smith starts that sentence with ‘In equal degrees of merit. . . ’, which suggests that his point might be: If a rich man is morally on a par with a poor one, nearly everyone will give the rich one more respect. But the rest of the paragraph doesn’t suggest any concern with moral equality across differences of rank.] With
- 83. most men the presumption and vanity of the rich are much more admired than the real and solid merit of the poor. It is hardly agreeable to good morals, indeed it seems like an abuse of language, to say ‘Mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect.’ But we have to admit that wealth and greatness so constantly get respect that they can be considered as in some ways the natural objects of it. The status of someone who is wealthy and great can be completely degraded by vice and folly, but it takes an enormous intensity of vice and folly to do this. The extravagance of a man of fashion is looked on with much less contempt and aversion than that of a man lower down the social scale. One breach of the rules of temperance and propriety by a poor man is commonly more resented than the constant and open disregard of those rules ever is in a rich man. In the middling and lower stations of life, the road to virtue is happily pretty much the same as the road to fortune, in most cases; I’m talking here about the kind of fortune that men in such ·lower· stations can reasonably expect to acquire. In all the middling and lower professions, it’s nearly always possible to succeed through real and solid professional abilities combined with prudent, just, firm, and temperate conduct. And sometimes abilities will bring suc- cess even when the conduct is far from correct. But habitual imprudence will always cloud and sometimes submerge the most splendid professional abilities, and so can injustice, weakness, and extravagance. ·That’s one consideration that tends to keep· men who are in the lower or middling stations of life ·behaving properly. And there are two others: •Such
- 84. men· can never be great enough to be above the law, and that inevitably overawes them into some sort of respect for the rules of justice, or at least the more important of them. •And the success of such people nearly always depends on the favour and good opinion of their neighbours and equals, and that can seldom be had unless their conduct is tolerably regular [i.e. pretty much in accordance with the rules]. So the good old proverb that honesty is the best policy holds true here; and we can generally expect a considerable degree of virtue in such situations, which are (fortunately for the good morals of society!) the situations that the vast majority of mankind are in. In the upper stations of life the case is not, unfortunately, always like that. In the courts of princes and in the drawing- rooms of the great, success and advancement depend not 34 Smith on Moral Sentiments Admiring the rich etc. on the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals but on the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud superiors; and flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities. In such societies the ability to please is valued above the ability to serve. In times of peace a prince or great man wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to imagine •that he has almost no need for service from anyone, or •that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The trivial accomplishments of. . . .a man of fashion are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awe-inspiring virtues—the
- 85. ones that can equip a man for the council, the senate, or the battlefield—are regarded with the utmost contempt and derision by the insolent and insignificant flatterers who commonly loom largest in such corrupted societies. When the duke of Sully was called on by Louis XIII to give his advice in a great emergency, he noticed the courtiers giggling to one another about his unfashionable appearance. ‘Whenever your majesty’s father’, said the old warrior and statesman, ‘did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to leave the room.’ It’s because of our disposition to admire and therefore to imitate the rich and the great that they are able to set fash- ions—in dress, language, deportment. Even their vices and follies are fashionable, and most men are proud to imitate and resemble them in the very qualities that dishonour and degrade them. [Some people, Smith says, act as though they had •the vices and follies of the rich and great, wanting to be admired for this, even when they don’t approve of •them and perhaps don’t even have •them. ‘There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue.’ He is sharply critical of the not-very-rich man who tries to pass himself off as rich without thinking about the fact that if he really adopts the way of life of a rich man he will soon reduce himself ‘to beggary’. Then:] To attain to this envied situation the candidates for fortune too often abandon the path of virtue, which un- fortunately sometimes goes in the exact opposite direction from the path to wealth, status, fame. The ambitious man comforts himself with the thought that in the splendid situation that he is aiming at he’ll have so many ways to draw the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be able to act with such superior propriety and grace that the glow of his future conduct will entirely cover or erase the foulness
- 86. of the steps by which he got there. In many governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the law [that clause is verbatim Smith]; and if they can attain the object of their ambition they have no fear of being indicted for anything they did to get there. So they often try to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness—not only by fraud and falsehood (the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and plotting), but also sometimes by committing the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war. They fail more often than they succeed, and usually gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment that their crimes deserve. And even when they do attain that wished-for greatness, they find nothing like the happiness that they had expected to enjoy in it. What the ambitious man is really after is not ease or pleasure but always some kind of honour (though often an honour that he doesn’t understand well); and the honour of his exalted station seems to him and to other people to be polluted and defiled by the baseness of his way of achieving it. [Smith continues with a colourful account of the ambitious man who reaches the top by disgusting means, tries every trick to get •others and •himself to forget how he got there, and fails in •both attempts. ’He is still secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse.’] 35 Smith on Moral Sentiments Reward and punishment Part II: Merit and demerit: the objects of reward and punishment Section 1: The sense of merit and demerit
- 87. Introduction The actions and conduct of mankind can be brought within range of approval/disapproval in two different ways: one is through their being proper or improper, decent or graceless, ·right or wrong·; the other is through their having merit or demerit, the qualities of deserving reward and of deserving punishment. I have already remarked that the sentiment or affection of the heart [Smith’s phrase; see note on page 116 about ‘affection’] from which an action comes, and on which its whole virtue or vice depends, can be considered under two different aspects or in two different relations: (1) It can be considered in relation to the cause or object that arouses it. The affection’s (un)suitableness or (dis)proportion to the cause or object that arouses it is what determines the (im)propriety, ·the rightness or wrongness·, of the consequent action. (2) It can be considered in relation to the end at which it aims or the effect that it is likely to produce. The affection’s tendency to produce beneficial or harmful effects is what determines the merit or demerit, the good or ill desert, of the action to which it gives rise. In Part I of this work I have explained what our sense of (1) the propriety or impropriety of actions consists in. I now start to consider what (2) the good or ill desert of actions consists in. Chapter 1: Whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude (resentment) appears to deserve reward (pun- ishment)
- 88. [Smith’s first paragraph repeats, at greater length but with no more content, the proposition that is the chapter-title. Then:] The sentiment that most immediately and directly prompts us to reward ·someone· is gratitude, and what most immediately and directly prompts us to punish ·someone· is resentment. So it’s bound to be the case that any action that appears to be a proper and approved object of gratitude will seem to us to deserve reward, and any action that appears to be a proper and approved object of resentment will seem to us to deserve punishment. Rewarding is recompensing or repaying, returning good for good received. Punishing is also recompensing or repay- ing, though in a different manner; it is returning evil for evil that has been done. Gratitude and resentment are not the only passions that interest us in the happiness or misery of other people; but they are the ones that most directly arouse us to cause such happiness or misery. If habitual approval of someone gives us love and esteem for him, we are of course pleased that he should have good fortune, and so we’re willing to lend a hand to promote that. But our •love for him is fully satisfied if his good fortune comes about without help from us. All this passion wants is to see him happy, without regard for who is 36 Smith on Moral Sentiments Gratitude and resentment the author of his prosperity. But •gratitude can’t be satisfied
- 89. in this way. If someone to whom we owe many obligations is made happy without our assistance, though this pleases our love it doesn’t satisfy our gratitude. Until we have repaid him, till we ourselves have been contributed to promoting his happiness, we feel ourselves still loaded with the debt that his past services have laid upon us. Similarly, if habitual disapproval of someone makes us hate and dislike him, that will often lead us to take a mali- cious pleasure in his misfortune. But although •dislike and hatred harden us against all sympathy, and sometimes even dispose us to rejoice at the person’s distress, if no resentment is involved—if neither we nor our friends have received any great personal provocation—•these passions wouldn’t naturally lead us to want to be instrumental in causing such distress. Even if there was no risk of punishment for having a hand in it, we would rather that his distress should happen by some other means. To someone dominated by violent hatred, it might be agreeable to hear that the person he loathes and detests has been killed in an accident. But if he has the least spark of justice (which he might have, though violent hatred isn’t favourable to virtue), he would be tremendously upset to have been the •unintentional cause of the accident; and immeasurably more shocked by the thought of having •voluntarily contributed to it. . . . But it’s not like that with resentment. If someone who has done us some great injury—murdered our father or our brother, for example—dies of a fever soon afterwards, or is executed for some other crime, this might soothe our hatred but it wouldn’t fully gratify our resentment. What our resentment makes us want is not merely for •him to be punished, but also for •him to be punished by us,
- 90. and for •him to be punished for the particular injury that he did to us. Resentment can’t be fully satisfied unless the offender is not only made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for the particular wrong we have suffered from him. He must be made to repent and be sorry for that particular action. And the natural gratification of this passion tends automatically to produce all the political ends of punishment—the correction of the criminal, and the example to the public (who, through fear of such punishment, will be scared off from being guilty of a similar offence). So gratitude and resentment are the sentiments that most immediately and directly prompt us to reward and to punish; that is why anyone who seems to us to be the proper and approved object of gratitude also seems to us to deserve reward, and anyone who seems to us to be the proper and approved object of resentment also seems to us to deserve punishment.. Chapter 2: The proper objects of gratitude and resent- ment All it can mean to say that someone is ‘the proper and approved object of gratitude (or resentment)’ is that he is an object of gratitude (or resentment) that naturally seems proper and is approved of. And what does it mean to say that a given instance of gratitude or resentment ‘seems proper and is approved of’? The same as it means to say this about any other human passion, namely that the heart of every impartial spectator entirely sympathizes with the passion in question, i.e. that every unbiased bystander entirely enters into the passion and goes along with it. Therefore, a person appears to deserve reward if he is the
- 91. natural object of someone’s gratitude, this being an instance 37 Smith on Moral Sentiments Gratitude and resentment of gratitude that every human heart is disposed to beat time to [Smith’s phrase], and thereby applaud. And a person appears to deserve punishment if he is the natural object of someone’s resentment, this being an instance of resentment that the breast of every reasonable man is ready to adopt and sympathize with. It is surely right to say that an action appears to deserve reward if everyone who knows of it will want it to be rewarded, and appears to deserve punishment if everyone who hears of it is angry about it and for that reason is happy to see it punished. ·I shall now put flesh on these two lots of bones·. [The words ‘benefactor’ and ‘beneficiary’ will be used quite a lot in this version, though Smith doesn’t use ‘benefactor’ so much and never uses ‘beneficiary’. The aim is brevity—sparing us Smith’s ‘the person who receives the benefit’ and ‘the person who bestows the benefit’.] (1) Just as we sympathize with the joy of our companions when they prosper, so also we join with them in their contented and satisfied attitude to whatever is the cause of their good fortune. We •enter into the love and affection that they have for that cause, and •begin to love it too. We
- 92. would be sorry for their sakes if it were destroyed, or even if it were placed too far away from them, out of the reach of their care and protection, even if that distance wouldn’t deprive them of anything except the pleasure of seeing it. And this holds in a quite special way if the cause of our brethren’s happiness is another person. When we see one man being assisted, protected, and relieved by another, our sympathy with the joy of the beneficiary serves to enliven our fellow-feeling with his gratitude towards his benefactor. We look on the benefactor in the way we imagine the beneficiary must look on him; the benefactor seems to stand before us in the most attractive and amiable light. So we find it easy to sympathize with the beneficiary’s grateful affection for the person to whom he has been so much obliged; and that leads us to applaud the good things that he is disposed to do in return for the good that has been done for him. As we entirely enter into the affection that produces these return-benefits, they necessarily seem to be in every way proper and suitable to their object. (2) In the same way that we sympathize with the sorrow of our fellow-creature when we see his distress, we enter into his abhorrence and aversion towards whatever has caused it. As our heart adopts •his grief and beats time to it, so it is filled with the spirit by which he tries to drive away or destroy the cause of •it. The slack and passive fellow-feeling with which we accompany him in •his sufferings gives way to the more vigorous and active sentiment with which we go along with him in his effort either to repel •them or to gratify his aversion to whatever it was that caused •them. This is especially the case when the cause of his sufferings is a human person. When we see one man oppressed or injured by another, our sympathy with the distress of the sufferer animates our fellow-feeling with his resentment against the offender. We rejoice to see him hit back at his adversary, and
- 93. are eager and ready to help him whenever he exerts himself •in self-defence or even (within limits) •in getting revenge. If the sufferer dies in the quarrel, we sympathize not only with the real resentment of his friends and relatives but also with the resentment that we imagine to be felt by the dead man, who in fact can no longer feel that or any other human sentiment. . . . The sympathetic tears that we shed for the immense and irretrievable loss that we imagine him to have sustained seems like only a small part of the duty we owe him. The injury he has suffered demands, we think, a principal part of our attention. We feel the resentment that we imagine he. . . .would feel if his cold and lifeless body retained any awareness of what happens on earth. His blood, we think, calls aloud for vengeance. . . . The horrors that 38 Smith on Moral Sentiments Analysing the sense of merit and demerit are supposed to haunt the bed of the murderer, the ghosts that (superstition imagines) rise from their graves to demand vengeance on those who cut their lives short, all arise from this natural sympathy with the imaginary resentment of the murdered person. At least with this most dreadful of all crimes, nature has in this way stamped on the human heart, in the strongest and most indelible characters, an immediate and instinctive approval of the sacred and necessary law of retaliation, this being something that comes into play before any thoughts about the utility of punishment. Chapter 3: Where there’s no approval of the bene- factor’s conduct, there’s not much sympathy with the beneficiary’s gratitude; and where there’s no
- 94. disapproval of the motives of the person who does someone harm, there’s absolutely no sympathy with the victim’s resentment [The first paragraph of this chapter repeats, without signifi- cant additions, what is said in the chapter’s heading. Then:] (1) When we can’t sympathize with the affections of the benefactor, when there seems to be no propriety in his reasons for acting as he did, we’re less disposed to enter into the gratitude of the beneficiary. A very small return seems enough to reward the foolish and profuse generosity that confers great benefits for trivial reasons—e.g. giving a man an estate merely because he has the same personal name and family name as the giver. . . . In a case like that, our contempt for the folly of the benefactor hinders us from thoroughly entering into the gratitude of the beneficiary; the benefactor seems unworthy of it. . . . Monarchs who have heaped wealth, power, and honours onto their favourites haven’t often aroused the degree of attachment to their persons that has often been experienced by those who were less lavish in handing out favours. The good-natured but unwise lavishness of James I of Great Britain doesn’t seem to have brought him anyone’s personal loyalty; despite his social and harmless disposition, he appears to have lived and died without a friend. Whereas the whole gentry and nobility of England risked their lives and fortunes in the cause of his more frugal and discriminating son, ·Charles I·, despite the coldness and distant severity of his ordinary behaviour. (2) When one person suffers at the hands of another, and the agent’s conduct appears to have been entirely directed by motives and affections that we thoroughly enter into and approve of, we can’t have any sort of sympathy with the sufferer’s resentment, no matter how great the harm
- 95. that has been done to him. When two people quarrel, if we sympathize with and entirely adopt the resentment of one of them, we can’t possibly enter into the other’s. Our sympathy with the person whose motives we go along with, and whom we therefore look on as in the right, is bound to harden us against all fellow-feeling with the other ·party to the quarrel·, whom we necessarily regard as being in the wrong. Whatever he has suffered, while it is no more than what we ourselves would have wanted him to suffer, no more than what our own sympathetic indignation would have prompted us to inflict on him, it can’t either displease or provoke us. When an inhuman murderer is brought to the scaffold, though we have some compassion for his misery we can’t have any sort of fellow-feeling with any resentment that he is absurd enough to express any against his prosecutor or his judge. The natural outcome of their just indignation is indeed most fatal and ruinous to him; but we can’t be displeased with the consequences of a sentiment that we feel that we cannot avoid adopting when we bring the case home to ourselves. 39 Smith on Moral Sentiments Analysing the sense of merit and demerit Chapter 4: Recapitulation of the preceding chap- ters [This short chapter is what its title says it is, and no more.] Chapter 5: Analysing the sense of merit and demerit (1) So it comes down to this: When one person x acts upon another person y (if I may put it like that; ·I mean when x
- 96. acts in some way that has consequences affecting y·), our sense of the propriety of x’s conduct arises from what I’ll call a •direct sympathy with x’s affections and motives; and our sense of the merit of x’s conduct arises from what I’ll call an •indirect sympathy with y’s gratitude. [Strictly speaking, there is nothing indirect about the latter sympathy; what is indirect is that sympathy’s relationship to x.] On this account,. . . .the sense of merit seems to be a compound sentiment, made up of two distinct emotions—a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the benefactor and an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of his beneficiaries. [Smith now offers a fairly long paragraph applying this account to our emotions as we read works of history. This doesn’t add anything to the account, except for the remark that ‘we are shocked beyond all measure if beneficiaries seem by their conduct to have little sense of the obligations conferred on them’.] (2) In the same way that our sense of the impropriety of the conduct of a person x arises from our lack of sympathy for (or even an outright antipathy to) x’s affections and motives, so also our sense of its demerit arises from what I’ll again call an indirect sympathy with the person y who has suffered from x’s conduct. So it seems that the sense of demerit is like the sense of merit in being a compounded sentiment, made up of two distinct emotions; a direct antipathy to x’s sentiments and an indirect sympathy with y’s resentment. [Again Smith applies this to the varying emotional states
- 97. of a reader of history. This colourful account reaches a climax here:] Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight we get from hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation we feel when it escapes this due retaliation, in short our whole sense and feeling of what that conduct deserves—of the propriety and fitness of inflicting evil on the person who is guilty of it and making him grieve in his turn—arises from the sympathetic indig- nation that naturally boils up in the breast of the spectator whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the situation of the sufferer. [The rest of this chapter was originally a long footnote.] I have attributed our natural •sense of the ill desert of human actions to our sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer; and many people—perhaps most—will see this as a degradation of •that sentiment. Resentment is commonly regarded as so odious they they’ll tend to think it impossible that something as praiseworthy as the sense of the ill desert of vice should be in any way based on it. They may be more willing to admit that our sense of the merit of good actions is based on our sympathy with the gratitude of the beneficiaries, because gratitude—along with all the other benevolent passions—is regarded as a likeable motive that can’t detract from the value of whatever is based on it. ·But that immediately puts them in a difficulty, because· gratitude and resentment are obviously in every respect counterparts to one another; if our sense of merit arises from a sympathy with the one, our sense of demerit can hardly not come from a fellow-feeling with the other. And here is another point. Resentment at the level at 40
- 98. Smith on Moral Sentiments Analysing the sense of merit and demerit which we too often see it is indeed just about the most odious of all the passions, but it isn’t disapproved of when it doesn’t fly so high and is brought right down to the level of the spec- tator’s sympathetic indignation. When we bystanders feel that the sufferer’s resentment doesn’t in any way go beyond our own, when no word or gesture escapes him that indicates an emotion more violent than what we can keep time to, and when he never aims at inflicting any punishment beyond what we would rejoice to see inflicted. . . ., it is impossible that we won’t entirely approve of his sentiments. Our own emotion in this case is bound to strike us as clearly justifying his. And as we learn from experience how incapable most people are of this moderation, and how great an effort it would take them to bring the rough undisciplined impulse of resentment down to this suitable level, we can’t help having a considerable degree of esteem and admiration for anyone who manages to do so. When the sufferer’s animosity exceeds (as it nearly always does) anything that we can go along with, we can’t enter into it and so, inevitably, we disapprove of it. [Smith says that our disapproval of excessive resentment is greater than our disapproval of any other excess of passion, amounts of excess being equal. Then:] That is why revenge, the excess of resentment, appears to be the most detestable of all the passions and is an object of everyone’s horror and indignation. And because excessive instances of this passion outnumber moderate ones a hundred to one, we’re much inclined to regard it as odious and detestable right across the board. (Depraved as we are, Nature hasn’t built into us any drive or motive that is wholly evil in every way, i.e. that can’t be properly praised and approved of whatever its intensity level and direction of aim.) On some occasions we
- 99. have a sense that this usually-too-strong passion is too weak. [Smith elaborates that along the lines of page 21 above.] The writers ·in the Old Testament· wouldn’t have talked so often or so strongly of God’s wrath and anger if they had regarded every degree of those passions as vicious and evil, even in so weak and imperfect a creature as man. Please bear in mind that this inquiry is about a matter not of •right but of •fact. We’re concerned here with principles ·or criteria· to guide approval of the punishment of bad actions; the topic isn’t the principles on the basis of which a perfect being would arrive at such approvals but rather the ones by which weak and imperfect men actually do arrive at them. It’s obvious that the principles I have mentioned have a great effect on a man’s sentiments; and it seems wisely ordered that they should do so. The very existence of society requires that undeserved and unprovoked malice should be restrained by proper punishments, and thus that inflicting those punishments should be regarded as a proper and laudable action. And men are naturally endowed with a desire for •the welfare and preservation of society; but the Author of nature hasn’t left it to men to use their reason to work out what kinds and levels of punishment are right for •this purpose; rather, he has endowed men with an immediate and instinctive approval of just precisely the kind and level of punishment that is most proper to attain •it. The arrangement that nature has made here is like what it has done in many other contexts. With regard to all the specially important purposes—the ones that we might call nature’s favourites—she has endowed mankind not only with an appetite for the end that she proposes, but also with an appetite for the only means by which this end can be brought about. (I mean: an appetite for them for their own sakes, independently of any thought about what they might lead to.)
- 100. Thus self-preservation and the propagation of the species seem to be the great ends that Nature has proposed in the formation of all animals; and men are endowed with a desire for those ends, and an aversion to the contrary. . . . But it 41 Smith on Moral Sentiments Comparing those two virtues hasn’t been left to the slow and uncertain conclusions of our reason to discover how to bring those ends about. Nature has directed us to most of them by basic immediate instincts: hunger, thirst, sexual passion, the love of pleasure, the fear of pain. We seek all these for their own sakes, and not because they are conducive to survival and the propagation of our species; but they are conducive to them, and they are what the great Director of nature intended as a means to them. [The enormous footnote concludes with an extremely difficult, confusing, and probably confused paragraph about a certain ‘difference between the approval of propriety and the approval of merit’.] Section 2: Justice and beneficence Chapter I: Comparing those two virtues The only actions that seem to require reward are ones that
- 101. •tend to do good and •come from proper motives, because they’re the only ones that are approved objects of gratitude, i.e. that arouse the sympathetic gratitude of the spectator. The only actions that seem to seem to deserve pun- ishment are ones that •tend to do harm and •come from improper motives, because they’re the only ones that are approved objects of resentment, i.e. arouse the sympathetic resentment of the spectator. Beneficence is always free, it can’t be extorted by force, and merely not giving doesn’t expose one to punishment, because the mere lack of beneficence doesn’t tend to produce real positive evil. It may disappoint someone who had rea- sonably expected some benefit, and on that account it may justly arouse dislike and disapproval; but it can’t provoke any resentment that mankind will go along with. The man who doesn’t recompense his benefactor when he has it in his power to do so, and when his benefactor needs his help, is no doubt guilty of black ingratitude. No impartial spectator will have any fellow-feeling with the selfishness of his motives, and he is the proper object of the highest disapproval. But still he does no positive harm to anyone. [Smith presumably means ‘he doesn’t positively do harm’.] He merely doesn’t do the good that in propriety he ought to have done. He is an object of •hatred, a passion naturally aroused by impropriety of sentiment and behaviour. but not of •resentment, a passion that is properly aroused only by actions that tend to do real positive harm to some particular persons. So this person’s lack of gratitude can’t be punished. To oblige him by force to do what gratitude should lead him to do, and what every impartial spectator would approve of him for doing, would be even more improper than his neglecting to do it. His benefactor would dishonour himself if he tried by violence to
- 102. force him into gratitude, and it would be mere meddling for any third person to intervene unless he was the superior of one of the other two [‘superior’ here means ‘employer or commanding officer or. . . ’]. But of all the duties of beneficence, those that 42 Smith on Moral Sentiments Comparing those two virtues are recommended by gratitude come closest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation—·i.e. come closest to the status of ‘You deserve to be punished if you don’t’·. What we are prompted to do by friendship, by generosity, by charity, meeting with universal approval when we do so, is even more free than the duties of gratitude, even further from being extortable by force. We have the phrase ‘a debt of gratitude’; we do not speak of ‘a debt of charity’ or ‘. . . of generosity’ or even ‘. . . of friendship’ except when the friendship relation has bases for gratitude mixed in with it. It seems that nature gave us resentment for our own defence and only for that. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence. It prompts us to beat off harm that others are trying to do to us, and to retaliate for harm already done, so that •the offender may be caused to be sorry for what he did, and so that •others, through fear of similar punishment, may be frightened off from similar offences. So resentment must be reserved for these purposes; the spectator will never go along with it when it is exerted for any other purpose. And the mere lack of the beneficent virtues doesn’t (and doesn’t try to) do any harm from which we can have occasion to defend ourselves.
- 103. But there’s another virtue the observance of •which is not left to the freedom of our own wills, •which may be extorted by force, and •the violation of which exposes the agent to resentment and thus to punishment. This virtue is justice; the violation of justice is injury; it does real positive harm to some particular persons, from motives that are naturally disapproved of. So it is a proper object of resentment, and of the natural consequence of resentment, namely punishment. Mankind go along with and approve of the violence employed to avenge the harm that is done by injustice, and to an even greater extent they go along with and approve of the violence that is used •to prevent and beat off the injury and •to restrain the offender from harming his neighbours. Someone who is thinking of committing an injustice is aware of this, and feels that force may properly be used, both by his intended victim and by others, either to stop him from committing his crime or to punish him when he has committed it. This is the basis for the remarkable distinction between •justice and •all the other social virtues that was recently emphasized by an author of great and original genius, namely: We feel ourselves to be under a stricter obligation to act according to •justice than to act in ways that fit with •friendship, •charity, or •generosity. Whether we perform these last three virtues seems to be left somewhat to our own choice; but we feel somehow that we are in a special way tied, bound, and obliged to conform to justice ·in our conduct·. We feel that force may, with the utmost propriety and with the approval of all mankind, be used to make us conform to justice, but not to follow the precepts of the other social virtues. But we must always carefully distinguish •what is only
- 104. blamable or a proper object of disapproval from •what may be either punished or prevented by force. Something seems blamable if it falls short of the ordinary degree of proper beneficence that experience teaches us to expect of everybody; and something seems praiseworthy if it goes beyond that degree of beneficence. Conduct that is at the ordinary degree of beneficence seems neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy. Someone who behaves towards his son, his father, his brother, in a manner that is neither better nor worse than the conduct of most men, seems properly to deserve neither praise nor blame. . . . But even the most ordinary degree of kindness or benef- icence can’t, among equals, be extorted by force. Among 43 Smith on Moral Sentiments Comparing those two virtues equals each individual is—•naturally, and •independently of the institution of civil government—regarded as having a right to defend himself from injuries and to exact a certain degree of punishment for injuries that have been done to him. Every generous spectator not only •approves of his conduct when he does this, but •enters so far into his sentiments that he is often willing to help him in this. . . . But when •a father falls short of the ordinary degree of parental affection towards a son, or •a son’s attitude to his father seems to lack the filial reverence that might be expected, or •brothers are without the usual degree of brotherly
- 105. affection, or •a man shuts out compassion and refuses to relieve the misery of his fellow-creatures though he could easily do so —in all these cases, though everyone blames the conduct, no-one imagines that those who might have reason to expect more kindness have any right to extort it by force. The sufferer can only complain, and the spectator can’t interfere except advising and persuading. In all such cases it would be thought the highest degree of insolence and presumption for equals to use force against one another. A superior may sometimes require people under his jurisdiction to behave, in this respect, with a certain degree of propriety towards one another; and no-one will find fault with his doing this. The laws of all civilized nations •oblige parents to support their children, and ·adult· children to support their ·aged· parents, and •impose on men many other duties of beneficence. [The phrase ‘the civil magistrate’, which we are about to meet, referred to any official whose job is to apply and enforce the laws; but Smith and some other writers extended it to cover also anyone who makes the civil laws.] The civil magistrate is entrusted with the power not only of •preserving the public peace by restraining injustice, but also of •promoting the prosperity of the commonwealth by establishing good discipline and discouraging every sort of vice and impropriety. So it is all right for him to prescribe rules that don’t just prohibit citizens from harming one another but also command that
- 106. they help one another to a certain degree. If the sovereign commands the citizens to do A, from then on not-doing-A is disobedience and is not only blameworthy but punishable. That holds even if before the sovereign’s command there had been no blame attached to not-doing-A, and it holds more strongly still if not-doing-A had been highly blameworthy even before the sovereign commanded the doing of A. Of all the duties of a law-giver, however, this may be the one that needs the greatest delicacy and caution to perform with propriety and judgment. To neglect it altogether exposes the commonwealth to many gross disorders and shocking crimes, and to push it too far is destructive of all liberty, security, and justice. Though the lack of beneficence doesn’t seem to deserve punishment among equals, the greater efforts of that virtue do appear to deserve the highest reward. By producing the greatest good they become natural and approved objects of the liveliest gratitude. On the other hand, a man’s •breach of justice exposes him to punishment, whereas his •observing the rules of that virtue hardly seem to deserve any reward. There is certainly a propriety in behaving justly, so that such conduct deserves all the approval that is due to propriety. But because it does no real positive good it isn’t entitled to much gratitude. If the best we can say of someone is that he doesn’t violate the persons or estates or reputations of his neighbours, he surely doesn’t have much positive merit. But he does fulfill all the rules of justice, strictly so-called, and does everything that his equals can properly •force him to do or •punish him for not doing. We can often fulfill all the 44 Smith on Moral Sentiments Remorse and its opposite
- 107. rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing! As you treat others, so they will treat you; and retaliation seems to be the great law that Nature dictates to us. We think of beneficence and generosity as being owed to those who are themselves generous and beneficent. As for those who never open up their hearts to the feelings of humanity, we think that they should be correspondingly •shut out from the affections of all their fellow-creatures and •allowed to live in the midst of society as though in a great desert where there’s nobody to care for them. . . . Someone who violates the laws of justice ought to be made to feel for himself the evil that he has done to someone else; and because he can’t be •restrained by his brethren’s sufferings, he ought to be •over-awed by the fear of his own! The man who is merely innocent—observing the laws of justice with regard to others, abstaining from harming his neighbours, but doing no more than that—can deserve only that his neighbours should respect his innocence in return, and that the same laws should be scrupulously observed with regard to him. Chapter 2: The sense of justice, of remorse, and of the consciousness of merit The only proper motive for harming our neighbour—the only incitement to do evil to someone else that mankind will go along with—is just indignation for evil that the other person has done to us. To disturb his happiness merely because it stands in the way of our own, to take from him what is of real use to him merely because it may be of equal or of more use to us, or in this way to act on the natural preference that every man has for his own happiness above that of other people, is something that no impartial spectator can go along with. There’s no doubt that nature gives to each man the primary responsibility for his own care; and it’s fit and right
- 108. that this should be so, because each man is better able to take care of himself than anyone else is. It follows from this that each man is much more deeply concerned •with whatever is immediately connected with himself than •with what has to do with anyone else. Hearing about the death of someone with whom we have no particular connection will probably give us less concern—will do less in the way of putting us off our food or disturbing our sleep—than would a very insignificant disaster that has befallen ourselves. But although the ruin of our neighbour may affect us much less than a small misfortune of our own, we mustn’t ruin him in order to prevent that small misfortune—or even to prevent our own ruin. In all cases like this we must see ourselves not in the light in which we naturally appear to •ourselves but rather in the light in which we naturally appear to •others. . . . Though each man’s happiness may matter to him more than the happiness of the rest of the world, to every other person it doesn’t matter any more than anyone else’s. So although it may be true that every individual, in his own breast, naturally prefers himself to all mankind, he won’t dare to look mankind in the face and declare that he acts according to this principle. He feels that they can never go along with him in this preference, and that however natural it may be to him it must always appear excessive and extravagant to them. When he views himself in the light in which he’s aware that others will view him, he sees that to them he’s merely one of the multitude and in no way better than any of the others. If he wants to act in such a way that an impartial spectator can may enter into the motives of his conduct—that being what he wants most of all—he must now and always humble the arrogance of his self-love, bringing it down to something that other men can go along with. They will accept his self-love far enough to allow him to care about his own happiness more than anyone
- 109. 45 Smith on Moral Sentiments Remorse and its opposite else’s—to care about it more and to work more intently on its behalf. When they place themselves in his situation, they’ll readily go along with him to that extent. In the race for wealth, honours, and promotions he may run as hard as he can, straining every nerve and muscle in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should jostle or trip any of them, the allowance of the spectators is entirely at an end—that is a violation of fair play that they can’t allow. . . . They now sympathize with the natural resentment of the person who was shouldered aside or tripped, and the offender becomes an object of their hatred and indignation. He is aware of this, and feels that those sentiments are ready to burst out from all sides against him. The greater and more irreparable the evil that is done, the greater is •the resentment of the sufferer, •the sympathetic indignation of the spectator, and •the sense of guilt in the agent. Death is the greatest evil that one man can inflict on an- other, and it arouses the highest degree of resentment in those who are immediately connected with the person who has been killed. Thus, of all the crimes that affect only individuals murder is the most atrocious—in the sight of mankind, and in the sight of the murderer. Being •deprived of something that we now possess is a greater evil than being •disappointed in some expectation of receiving a certain good. That is why theft and robbery (which take our possessions)
- 110. are greater crimes than breach of contract (which merely disappoints our expectations). So the most sacred laws of justice—the ones the violation of which seems to call loudest for vengeance and punishment—are the laws that guard our neighbour’s •life and person; next in line come those that guard his •property and possessions; and lastly those that guard what are called his •personal rights, or what is due to him from the promises of others. If someone who violates the more sacred laws of justice ever thinks about the sentiments that mankind must have regarding him, he has to feel all the agonies of shame, horror, and consternation. When his passion—·i.e. the passion that caused him to act so badly in the first place·—is gratified, and he starts to think coolly about his past conduct, he can’t enter into ·or sympathize with· any of the motives that influenced it. They now appear as detestable to him as they always did to other people. By sympathizing with the hatred and abhorrence that other men must have towards him, he now to some extent hates and abhors himself. The situation of the person who has suffered from his injustice now draws pity from him. He is grieved at the thought of it, and regrets •the unhappy effects of his conduct, feeling that •they have made him the proper object of mankind’s resentment and in- dignation of mankind, and of the vengeance and punishment that naturally flow from such resentment. . . . His fellow- creatures’ memory of his crimes shuts out from their hearts all fellow-feeling with him; the sentiments that they do have regarding him are just what he is most afraid of. Everything seems hostile; he would like to escape to some inhospitable desert where he would never have to confront any human creature, never have to read in mankind’s countenance the condemnation of his crimes. But solitude is even more dreadful than society. His own thoughts can present him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate, and disastrous,
- 111. the miserable expectation of incomprehensible misery and ruin. The horror of solitude drives him back into society, and he returns—bewildered, ashamed, and terrified—into the presence of mankind, in order to beg for some little protection from the those very judges who he knows have already unanimously condemned him! Such is the nature of the sentiment of remorse, properly so-called; it is the most 46 Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution dreadful sentiment that human beings are capable of. It is compounded out of •shame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct; •grief for the effects of it; •pity for those who have suffered through it; and, because of the justly provoked resentment of all rational creatures, •the dread and terror of punishment. The opposite behaviour naturally inspires the opposite sentiment. Take the case of a man who has performed a generous action, not as a frivolous whim but from proper motives. When he looks forward to those whom he has served, he feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude and, by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approval of all mankind. And when he looks back to •the motive from which he acted, viewing it in the light in which the unbiased spectator will survey it, he still enters into •it and, by sympathy with the approval of this supposed impartial judge, he applauds himself. In both these points of view, ·forward and backward·, his own conduct appears to him every way agreeable. The thought of it fills his mind with cheerfulness, serenity, and composure. He is in friendship and harmony with all mankind, and looks on his
- 112. fellow-creatures with confidence and benevolent satisfaction, knowing that he has made himself worthy of their most favourable regards. The combination of all these sentiments constitute the consciousness of merit, i.e. the consciousness of deserving to be rewarded. Chapter 3: The utility of this constitution of nature That is how man, who can’t survive except in society, was equipped by nature for the situation for which he was made. Each member of the human society needs help from the others, and is vulnerable to harm from them. When the needed help is given and returned from love, gratitude, friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. Its different members are all bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection. . . . But even if the needed help is not given from such generous and disinterested motives, even if the different members of the society don’t have love and affection for one another, the society won’t necessarily fall apart, though it will be less happy and agreeable. Society can stay alive among different men, as it can among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection. Even if no-one has any obligations or debts of gratitude to anyone else, society can still be held together by a trade [Smith says ‘mercenary exchange’] in benefits, on the basis of agreed valuation for each benefit. What society can’t do is to survive among those who are constantly ready to harm and injure one another. The mo- ment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and hostility kick in, all society’s bands are snapped and its different members are (so to speak) dissipated and scattered around by the violence and opposition of their discordant
- 113. affections [see page 116 note on ‘affection’]. (If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstain from robbing and murdering one another.) So beneficence is less essential than justice is to the existence of society; a lack of beneficence will make a society uncomfortable, but the prevalence of injustice will utterly destroy it. That is why Nature, while urging mankind to acts of beneficence by the pleasing awareness of deserved reward, hasn’t thought it necessary to guard and enforce beneficent conduct by the terrors of deserved punishment in case it should be neglected. Beneficence is an ornament that makes the building more beautiful, not the foundation that holds it up; so it’s good that it should be •recommended, but it doesn’t have to be •imposed. In contrast with that, justice 47 Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution is the main pillar that holds up the entire building. If it is removed, the whole of human society— the great, the immense structure whose creation and support seems to have been Nature’s special care, her cherished project —must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce the maintenance of justice, therefore, Nature has implanted in mankind the awareness of guilt, the terrors of deserved punishment that come with its violation, as the great safe- guards of human society, to protect the weak, curb the violent, and punish the guilty. Although men are naturally
- 114. sympathetic, •they feel so little for anyone with whom they have no special connection, compared with what they feel for themselves, •the misery of someone who is merely their fellow- creature matters so little to them in comparison with even a small convenience of their own, and •they have it so much in their power to harm their fellow-creature and may have so many temptations to do so, that if this fear-of-punishment mechanism didn’t go to work within them in the fellow-creature’s defence, aweing them into a respect for his innocence, they would like wild beasts be ready at all times to attack him, and a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of lions. All through the universe we see means delicately adjusted to the ends they are intended to produce. In the mechanism of a plant or animal body we admire how everything is con- trived for advancing the two great purposes of nature—•the support of the individual and •the propagation of the species. But in everything like this we still distinguish the cause of the various motions and structures from their purpose. [Smith calls this distinguishing their ‘efficient cause’ from their ‘final cause’.] The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood,. . . .and so on are all operations that are necessary for the great purposes of animal life. But we don’t try to explain them in terms of those purposes in the way one might explain them in terms of their efficient causes. We don’t imagine that the blood circulates or the food digests of its own accord,
- 115. intending to achieve the purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of a watch are admirably adjusted to the purpose for which it was made, telling the time. All their various motions work together in the most precise way to produce this effect. If they wanted and intended to tell the time, they couldn’t do it better! But we attribute that desire and intention not to the wheels but to the watch-maker, and we know that what makes them move is a spring, which doesn’t intend to produce its effect any more than they do. ·This is standard stuff·: When we are explaining the operations of bodies, we always in this way distinguish the cause from the purpose [‘the efficient from the final cause’]. Yet when we are explaining the operations of minds, we are apt to run these two different things together. When natural forces lead us to pursue purposes that a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we’re apt to think of that enlightened reason as though it were the efficient cause of the sentiments and actions by which we pursue our purpose. . . . On a superficial view, this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects that we credit it with, and the system of human nature seems to be simpler and more agreeable when all its different operations are in this way explained in terms of a single cause, ·namely reason·. As society •cannot survive unless the laws of justice are mainly observed, and as social interactions •cannot take place among men who don’t generally abstain from injuring one another; it has been thought that our awareness of this •necessity is what led us to approve of the enforcement of 48 Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution
- 116. the laws of justice by the punishment of those who violated them. Here in more detail is how this line of thought goes: Man has a natural love for society, and wants the union of mankind to be preserved for its own sake, independently of whether he himself would get any benefit from it. The orderly and flourishing state of society is agreeable to him, and he loves the thought of it. He dislikes social disorder and confusion, and is upset by anything that tends to produce it. He does also realize that his own welfare is connected with the prosperity of society, and that its preservation is needed for his happiness and perhaps for his survival. So he has every reason to hate anything that can tend to destroy society, and is willing to use every possible means to hinder such a hated and dreadful event. Injustice necessarily tends to destroy society. So every appearance of injustice alarms him, and he rushes to stop the progress of anything that would quickly put an end to all that is dear to him if it were allowed to continue unchecked. If he can’t restrain it by gentle and fair means he must beat it down by force and violence—he must somehow put a stop to its further progress. That is why he often approves of the enforcement of the laws of justice through the punishment of those who violate them—even their capital punishment, which removes the disturber of the public peace from the world, and terrifies others by the example it sets. That’s what people commonly say about our approval of the punishment of injustice. And there is truth in it: we often have occasion to confirm our natural sense of the propriety and fitness of punishment by thinking about how necessary it is for preserving the order of society. When
- 117. •the guilty man is about to suffer the retaliation that mankind’s natural indignation declares to be due to his crimes, and •the insolence of his injustice is broken and humbled by his terror of the approaching punishment, and •he is no longer someone to be feared, and for generous and humane people begins to be someone to be pitied, the thought of what he is about to suffer extinguishes people’s resentment towards him—resentment arising from the sufferings of his victims. They are disposed to pardon and forgive him, and to save him from the punishment that they had in their cool hours regarded as the proper retribution for such crimes. So here they look for help to considerations of the general interests of society. They counterbalance the impulse of this weak and partial humaneness by the dictates of a humanity that is more comprehensive. They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, and they counter the emotions of compassion that they feel for a particular person by a broader compassion that they feel for mankind. Sometimes too we find it appropriate to use the ‘It’s necessary for the support of society’ defence ·not merely of punishment for injustice but also· of the propriety of observing the general rules of justice in the first place. We often hear the young and the restless ridiculing the most sacred rules of morality, and proclaiming the most abominable maxims of conduct—sometimes because they have become morally rotten but more often because of the emptiness of their hearts. Our indignation rises, and we are eager to refute and expose such detestable principles. Now, what initially inflames us against these principles is their
- 118. intrinsic detestableness. [Smith then presents in a rather tangled form two lines of thought involving the claims that the principles in question (a) are natural and proper objects of hatred and 49 Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution detestation, (b) are ones that we hate and detest, (c) ought to be condemned. Defending (c) purely on the basis of (b) wouldn’t appear to be conclusive (Smith says we think). It might be better to base (c) on (b) if that were based on (a). But the fact is that when we are confronted by people who reject the basic principles of justice, it’s not going to do any good to talk about actual or legitimate hatred and detestation because, Smith continues:] when we are asked ‘Why shouldn’t we do A?’ the very question seems to show that doing A doesn’t appear to the questioner to be ·in itself· a natural and proper object of hatred. So we must show him that A ought to be done for the sake of something else. And that is what starts us looking around for other arguments, and then what we come up with first is the disorder and confusion of society that would result from everyone’s behaving unjustly. We seldom fail, therefore, to insist on this topic. But although it’s usually obvious that the welfare of society is put at risk by •licentious practices, that thought is seldom what first arouses us against •them. All men, even the most stupid and unthinking ones, loathe fraud, perfidy,
- 119. and injustice, and are delighted to see them punished. But although it is obvious that justice is necessary for the existence of society, that’s something that few men have ever thought about. ·I am contending that· what basically puts us in favour of the punishment of crimes against individuals is not our concern for the preservation of society. There are many obvious reasons for this. (1) Our concern for the fortune and happiness of •individuals doesn’t ordinarily arise from our concern for the fortune and happiness of •society. This thought— ‘I am concerned for the destruction of that man, because he is a member or part of society,’ when said by someone who really cares about society as a whole, is as silly as this— ‘I am concerned for the loss of a single guinea, because it is a part of a thousand guineas’ when said by someone who really cares about a thousand guineas. In neither case does our concern for the individuals arise from our concern for the multitude; in each case our concern for the multitude is composed out of the particu- lar concerns that we feel for the different individuals that make it up. When someone steals money from me, what motivates my prosecution of him is not a concern for the preservation of my whole fortune, but rather my concern for the particular sum that was stolen; and, similarly, when one man is harmed or destroyed, what motivates our demand that the perpetrator be punished is not our concern for the general interest of society, but rather our concern for that one individual person who has been harmed. [Smith goes on to distinguish this concern-for-the-individual from
- 120. the delicately detailed concern that we might have for an individual friend, lover, mentor or the like. All we have here is a concern for someone because he is our fellow-creature. How we feel about him personally doesn’t come into it; or anyway it shouldn’t, though Smith admits that it is likely to do so, damping down our resentment of someone who has unjustly harmed a nasty victim.] Sometimes indeed we both punish and approve of punish- ment purely on the grounds of the general interests of society, interests that we think can’t be secured without the punish- ment in question. All the punishments inflicted for breaches of. . . .military discipline are examples of this. Such crimes don’t immediately or directly harm any particular person; but it is thought that their remote consequences will or might included great harm to society. A sentinel who falls asleep 50 Smith on Moral Sentiments Utility of this constitution on his watch suffers death by the laws of war, because such carelessness might endanger the whole army. This severity may often seem to be necessary, and therefore to be just and proper. . . . Yet this punishment, however necessary it may be, always appears to be excessively severe—a punishment so great for a crime seemingly so small. . . . A humane person must gather his thoughts, make an effort, and exert his whole firmness and resolution before he can bring himself either to inflict such a punishment or to go along with its being inflicted by others. This is different from his view of just punishment of an ungrateful murderer or parricide, where his heart vigorously—even joyfully—applauds the just retaliation that seems right for such detestable crimes. . . .
- 121. The very different sentiments with which the spectator views those different punishments shows that his approvals in the two cases are not based on the same principles. The spectator looks on the sentinel as an unfortunate victim, who indeed ought to be devoted to the safety of numbers, but whom still in his heart he would be glad to save; and he is only sorry that the interest of the many should oppose his being let off. But if the murderer escaped punishment, this would arouse the spectator’s highest indignation, and he would call on God to avenge in another world the crime that mankind had wrongly neglected to punish on earth. ·A propos of that last point·: Notice that we’re so far from imagining that injustice ought to be punished in this life merely in the interests of social order that can’t otherwise be maintained, that •Nature teaches us to hope, and •religion (we suppose) authorises us to expect, that it will be punished even in a life to come. One might say that our sense of its ill desert pursues it beyond the grave, though the example of its punishment there can’t serve to deter the rest of mankind—who don’t see it, and don’t know it—from being guilty of similar conduct here. But we think that the God’s justice requires that he should hereafter avenge the injuries of the widow and the fatherless, who are so often harmed with impunity in this life. . . . 51 Smith on Moral Sentiments Causes of the influence of luck Section 3: The influence of luck on mankind’s sentiments regarding the merit or demerit of actions
- 122. Whatever praise or blame can be due to any action must be based on (1) the intention or affection of the heart from which the action comes, (2) the external action or movement of the body which this affection causes, or (3) the good or bad consequences that actually come from it. These three constitute the whole nature and circumstances of the action, and must be the basis for any quality that belongs to it. It is abundantly evident that (2) and (3) can’t be a basis for any praise or blame, and no-one has ever said that they could. The (2) external action or movement of the body is often the same in the most innocent and in the most blameworthy actions. •Shooting a bird, •shooting a man—these are the same external movement, pulling the trigger of a gun. And (3) the consequences that actually happen to come from an action are as irrelevant to praise and blame as is the external movement of the body—even more irrelevant if that is possible! The consequences of the action depend not on the agent but on luck [Smith’s word, here and throughout, is ‘fortune’], so they can’t be the proper basis for any sentiment of which the agent’s character and conduct are the objects. The only consequences for which he is accountable, or by which he can deserve either approval or disapproval of any kind, are ones that were in some way intended, or ·if not outright intended, then· at least show some agreeable or dis- agreeable quality in the intention from which the agent acted. So there we have it: any judgment of the action’s rightness
- 123. or wrongness, its beneficence or harmfulness of design, any praise or blame for it, any approval or disapproval, is just only if it is based on the intention or affection of the heart from which the action arose. Everyone agrees with this thesis when it is stated, as here, in abstract and general terms; its obvious rightness is acknowledged by all the world, with no dissenting voice among all mankind. Everyone accepts that the accidental, unintended and unforeseen consequences of an action, how- ever good they are, don’t make the action a suitable object of gratitude if the intention or affection was malevolent; and however bad they are, they don’t make the action a suitable object of resentment if the intention or affection was good. But however sure we are about this, stated in the ab- stract, when we get down to particular cases our sentiments concerning the merit or demerit of an action are in fact greatly affected—in one direction or the other—by what actual consequences happened to come from it. We all accept the rule that actual consequences are irrelevant to an action’s moral status, and yet it hardly ever happens that our ·moral· sentiments are entirely regulated by it. This is an irregularity of sentiment that everyone feels, hardly anyone is sufficiently aware of, and nobody is willing to acknowledge. I now proceed to explain it, ·in three chapters, in which· I shall discuss (1) the cause of this irregularity, (2) the extent of its influence, and (3) the end purpose that ·God·, the Author of nature, seems to have intended by it. 52
- 124. Smith on Moral Sentiments Causes of the influence of luck Chapter 1: The causes of this influence of luck All causes of pain and pleasure—all of them—seem to im- mediately arouse gratitude and resentment in all animals. Those passions are aroused by inanimate as well as by animate objects. We are briefly angry even with the stone that hurts us; a child beats it, a dog barks at it, a bad-tempered man is apt to curse it. A moment’s thought corrects this sentiment, making us realize that something that has no feeling is a very improper object of revenge! But when great harm has been done by an inanimate object, that object becomes disagreeable to us ever after, and we take pleasure in burning or destroying it. That is how we would treat something that had accidentally been the cause of the death of a friend, and we would often think ourselves guilty of a sort of inhumanity if we didn’t vent this absurd sort of vengeance on it. In the same way we have a sort of gratitude for inanimate objects that have caused great pleasure or frequent pleasure. The sailor escapes from a shipwreck with the help of a plank; if as soon as he gets back to land he uses the plank as firewood, he will strike us as being guilty of an unnatural action. We would have expected him to preserve the plank with care and affection, as a monument that was dear to him. After years of using a snuff-box, a pen-knife, and a walking-stick, a man grows fond of them and feels something like a real love and affection for them. If he breaks or loses them, he is upset out of all proportion to the value of the damage. The house that we have long lived in, and the tree whose green shade we have long enjoyed, are both looked
- 125. on with a sort of respect that such benefactors seem to be owed. The decay of the house or the death of the tree affects us with a kind of melancholy, even though it doesn’t bring any loss to us. . . . But for something to be a proper object of gratitude or resentment it must not only •cause pleasure or pain but must also •be capable of feeling them. If it doesn’t have this capacity, there’s no way for gratitude or resentment to be satisfied in relation to it. Having been aroused by the causes of pleasure and pain, those passions can be satisfied only by retaliating those sensations on what caused them; and there’s no point in trying to do that with an object that isn’t sentient. So animals are less improper objects of gratitude and resentment than inanimate objects. The dog that bites, the ox that gores, are both of them punished. If an animal causes someone’s death, neither that person’s relatives or the public in general will be satisfied unless the animal is put to death in its turn; not merely for •the security of the living, but also to some extent to •revenge the injury of the dead. On the other hand, animals that have been remarkably serviceable to their masters become objects of a lively gratitude. . . . But. . . .animals are still far from being complete and perfect objects of gratitude or resentment. What gratitude wants most is not only •to make the benefactor feel pleasure in his turn, but •to make him aware that he is being rewarded for his past conduct, to make him pleased with that conduct, and to convince him that the person he helped was worth helping. What charms us most about our benefactor is the match between his sentiments and ours concerning the worth of our own character and the respect that is due to us. We are delighted to find someone who values us as we value ourselves, and picks us out from the rest of mankind in somewhat the way in which we pick out ourselves! One of
- 126. our main purposes in rewarding him is to maintain in him these agreeable and flattering sentiments (though the best of us won’t pursue this with the further purpose of getting new favours from the benefactor). And this is the reason 53 Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence for something that I pointed out earlier, namely that when we can’t enter into the motives of our benefactor, when his conduct and character appear unworthy of our approval, our gratitude for his services to us—however great they have been—is significantly lessened. We are less flattered by his picking us out for special favour; and keeping the respect of such a weak or worthless patron seems not to be something worth pursuing for its own sake. On the other hand, the chief purpose of resentment is not merely to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, but to make him aware that he is feeling pain because of his past conduct, to make him repent of that conduct, and to make him feel that the person he injured didn’t deserve to be treated in that manner. What chiefly enrages us against the man who injures or insults us is his writing us off as insignificant, his unreasonable preference for himself over us, and the absurd self-love that apparently leads him to imagine that other people may be sacrificed at any time for his convenience or at his whim. The glaring impropriety of this conduct, the gross insolence and injustice that it seems to involve, often shock and exasperate us more than all the harm that we have suffered. To bring him back to a better sense of what is due to other people, to make him aware of what he owes us and of the wrong that he has done to us,
- 127. is often the main purpose of our revenge, which is always incomplete when it can’t accomplish this. . . . Thus, before anything can be a complete and proper object of either gratitude or resentment it must possess three different qualifications. (1) It must be the cause of pleasure in one case, of pain in the other. (2) It must be capable of feeling those sensations. (3) It must not merely have produced those sensations but must have done so from design—a design that is approved of in one case and disapproved of in the other. It’s (1) that makes an object capable of arousing gratitude and resentment; it’s because of (2) that these passions can in some way be satisfied; and (3) is not only needed for the gratitude or resentment to be complete, but also provides an extra cause of those passions because of the special and intense pleasure or pain that it involves. The sole arousing cause of gratitude is something that gives pleasure; so that even when a person’s intentions are utterly proper and beneficent, if he has failed actually to produce the good that he intended, less gratitude seems to be due to him because one of the arousing causes is lacking. And the sole arousing cause of resentment is something that gives pain; so that even when a person’s intentions are utterly improper and malevolent, if he has failed actually to produce the evil that he intended, less resentment seems to be due to him because one of the arousing causes is lacking. [Smith really does move from ‘the sole cause’ to ‘one of the causes’, a move that he needs for his conclusion about ‘less’ gratitude or resentment rather than none.] On the other hand, even when a person’s intentions don’t have any laudable degree of
- 128. benevolence, if his actions happen to produce great good, because one of the arousing causes has occurred some gratitude is apt to arise towards him—a shadow of merit seems to fall on him. And when a person’s intentions don’t have any blameworthy degree of malice, if his actions should happen to produce great evil, because one of the arousing causes has occurred some resentment is apt to arise towards him—a shadow of demerit seems to fall on him. And, as the consequences of actions are entirely under the dominance of luck [remember that Smith’s word throughout is ‘fortune’], what I have been describing is the source of luck’s influence on the sentiments of mankind regarding merit and demerit. 54 Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence Chapter 2: The extent of this influence of luck The effect of this influence of luck is (1) to lessen our sense of the merit or demerit of actions that arose from praisewor- thy or blameworthy intentions but failed to produce their intended effects; and (2) to increase our sense of the merit or demerit of actions, beyond what is due to the motives or affections that they come from, when they accidentally give rise to either extraordinary pleasure or extraordinary pain. ·This chapter will be devoted to discussions of these two effects·. (1) To repeat the point: however proper and beneficent (or improper and malevolent) a person’s intentions in acting are, if the intended effect doesn’t happen his merit seems imperfect (or his demerit seems incomplete). This irregularity
- 129. of sentiment is felt not only •by those who are immediately affected by the consequences of the action in question but also to some extent even •by the impartial spectator. ·In discussing this matter, I shall start with failed •good intentions and then turn to failed •bad ones·. (1a). . . .It is often said that we are equally obliged to •a man who has tried to help us and to •one who actually did so. That’s the speech that we regularly make after every unsuccessful attempt of this kind; but like all other fine speeches it mustn’t be taken too strictly. The sentiments that a generous-minded man has for the friend who fails ·to help him· may often be nearly the same as what he feels for the one who succeeds; and the more generous he is the nearer his sentiments will come to that level. [For ‘generous’ see note on page 11.] A truly generous-minded man will get more pleasure from—and be more grateful for—•the love and respect he gets from people he thinks to be worthy of respect than for all the •advantages he can ever expect to flow from that love and respect. So when he loses those advantages he seems to be losing only a trifle that is hardly worth thinking about. But still he does lose something, so that his pleasure and gratitude are not perfectly complete. Therefore, as between the friend who fails and the friend who succeeds, other things being equal, the noblest and best mind will have some little difference of affection in favour of the one who succeeds. Indeed, people are so unjust about this that even when the intended benefit is procured, they are apt to think that less gratitude is due to the benefactor if he wasn’t the sole producer of the benefit. . . . Even the merit of talents and abilities that some accident has prevented from producing their effects seems somewhat imperfect, even to people who are fully convinced that the person does have the capacity to produce those effects.
- 130. [Smith gives the example of a general whose battle plans were excellent but who is robbed of victory by political interference from his own side:] Although he might deserve all the approval that is due to a great military plan, he still lacks the actual merit of having performed a great action. . . . It angers an architect when his plans are either not carried out at all, or carried out with so many alterations that the effect of the building is spoiled. The only thing that depends on the architect is the plan; and good judges can see his genius being revealed in that as completely as in the actual building. But even to those who know most about such things a •plan doesn’t give the same pleasure as does a •noble and magnificent building. . . . There may be many men of whom we believe ‘He is more talented than Caesar and Alexander; placed in the situations they were in, he would perform still greater feats’. But in the mean time, however, we don’t view such a man with the wonder and admiration with which those two heroes have been regarded in all ages and nations. The calm judgments of the mind may approve of him more, but the mind isn’t dazzled and 55 Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence carried away by the splendour of great actions. . . . (1b) Just as the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good seems to ungrateful mankind to be lessened if the attempt fails, so also does the demerit of an unsuccessful attempt to do evil. The plan to commit a crime, however clearly it is proved to exist, is hardly ever punished with the same severity as the actual commission of the crime. The only exception to this may be the crime of treason.
- 131. Because that crime immediately affects the existence of the government itself, the government is naturally more touchy about it than about any other. When the sovereign punishes •other crimes, he is acting on the resentment that he feels through sympathy with the victims of the crimes. But when he punishes •treason, he is acting on his own resentment of harm done to himself. So that here he is judging in his own cause, which makes him apt to be more violent and bloody in his punishments than the impartial spectator can approve of. Also, when treason is involved, it takes less to trigger the sovereign’s resentment, which doesn’t always wait for the committing of the crime or even for the attempt to commit it. A treasonable conspiracy, though nothing has been done or even attempted as a result of it—indeed a mere treasonable conversation—is in many countries punished in the same way as the actual commission of treason. With any other crime, the mere design—with no attempt to carry it through—is seldom punished at all, and is never punished severely. This may be said: ‘A criminal •design doesn’t necessarily involve the same degree of depravity as a criminal •action, and therefore shouldn’t be subjected to the same punish- ment. We are capable of •deciding, and even of taking steps towards performing, many things that—when it comes to the point—we feel ourselves entirely inca- pable of •doing.’ But this line of thought doesn’t apply when the design has been carried through to the last attempt. Yet there is hardly any country where the man who fires a pistol at his enemy but misses him is punished with death. . . . But mankind’s resentment against the crime of murder is so intense, and their fear of the man who shows himself capable of committing it is so great, that the mere attempt to commit it ought in all countries to be a capital offence. The
- 132. attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always punished lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all. The thief whose hand has been caught in his neighbour’s pocket before he had taken anything out of it is punished only with the disgrace of being exposed as a thief; if he’d had time to steal a handkerchief, he would have been put to death. The burglar who has been found setting a ladder to his neighbour’s window but hasn’t gone through the window is not exposed to capital punishment. The attempt to ravish a woman is not punished as a rape. The attempt to seduce a married woman is not punished at all, though ·successful· seduction is punished severely. Our resentment against someone who tried and failed to commit a crime is seldom strong enough to lead us to punishment in the way we would have thought proper if he had succeeded. In the failure case, our joy at being spared the actual crime alleviates •our sense of the atrocity of his conduct; in the success case, the grief of our misfortune increases •it. Yet his real demerit is undoubtedly the same in both cases, since his intentions were equally criminal; and there is in this respect, therefore, an irregularity in the sentiments of all men, and a consequent relaxation of discipline in the laws of, I believe, all nations the most civilized as well as the most barbarous. [The ‘irregularity’ Smith speaks of is just the phenomenon of our accepting a general rule—Latin regula—and then having sentiments that don’t conform to it. We’ll meet the term again.]. . . . 56 Smith on Moral Sentiments Extent of luck’s influence
- 133. [Smith next writes about the fundamentally decent person who somehow gets involved in planning a crime, and is prevented from succeeding by some accident. He must think that this was a lucky rescue, saving him from spending ‘the rest of his life in horror, remorse, and repentance’. He knows that his heart is as guilty as it would have been if he had succeeded, but his failure to commit the crime eases his conscience so that he ‘considers himself as less deserving of punishment and resentment’ than he would have been if he has succeeded.] (2) The second effect of this influence of luck is to increase our sense of the merit (or demerit) of actions beyond what is due to the motives or feelings that produce them, when they happen to cause extraordinary pleasure (or pain). . . . For example, a messenger who brings bad news is disagreeable to us, whereas we feel a sort of gratitude to the man who brings us good news. For a moment we regard them as the authors of our good fortune (in one case) and of our bad fortune (in the other), looking at them rather as though they had really brought about the events that they only report to us. [Smith goes into some details about this, concluding thus:] King Tigranes of Armenia struck off the head of the man who brought him the first account of the approach of a formidable enemy. To punish the bringer of bad news in this way seems barbarous and inhuman; but rewarding the messenger bringing good news is not disagreeable to us—we think it suitable to the generosity of kings. Why do we make this distinction when if there’s no fault in the one there’s no merit in the other? It is because any sort of reason seems sufficient to authorize the expressing of the social and benevolent affections, whereas it requires the most solid and substantial reasons to make us sympathetic to the expression of unsocial and malevolent ones.
- 134. . . . .There is a class of exceptions to this general rule that no-one should be punished for conduct that wasn’t based on malicious and unjust intentions. When someone’s negligence has caused unintended harm to someone else, we generally enter into the sufferer’s resentment far enough to approve of his punishing the offender far more than his offence would have appeared to deserve if no such unlucky consequence had followed from it. There is a level of negligence that would appear to deserve some punishment even if it didn’t harm anyone, Suppose someone threw a large stone over a wall into a public street, without warning anyone and without considering where it was likely to fall. He would undoubtedly deserve some punishment. A really precise penal law would punish this absurd action even if it did no harm. The person who is guilty of it shows that he insolently regards the happiness and safety of others as negligible. There is real injustice in his conduct. He recklessly exposes his neighbour to a risk that no man in his senses would choose to expose himself to, and evidently lacks the sense of what is due to his fellow-creatures that is the basis of justice and of society. Gross negligence therefore is said in the law to be almost equal to malicious design. When such carelessness happens to have bad consequences, the guilty person is often punished as if he had really intended those consequences; and his conduct, which was really only •thoughtless and insolent and deserving of some punishment, is considered as •atrocious and as liable to the severest punishment. If the stone-throwing action that I have mentioned should acci- dentally kill a man, the laws of many countries—particularly by the old law of Scotland—will condemn the stone-thrower to death. This is no doubt too severe, but it’s not altogether inconsistent with our natural sentiments. Our just indigna- tion against the folly and inhumanity of the man’s conduct
- 135. 57 Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity is intensified by our sympathy with the unfortunate sufferer. But nothing would appear more shocking to our natural sense of fairness than to bring a man to the scaffold merely for having thrown a stone carelessly into the street without harming any body. The folly and inhumanity of his conduct would be the same in this case ·as in the case where a passer-by is killed by the stone·, but our sentiments would be different. Thinking about this difference can show us how much the indignation of the spectator is apt to be worked up by the actual consequences of the action. In cases of this kind. I think, there is a great degree of severity in the laws of almost all nations. . . . There’s another degree of negligence that doesn’t involve in it any sort of injustice. The person who is guilty of it treats his neighbours as he treats himself, means no harm to anyone, and is far from having an insolent disregard for the safety and happiness of others. But he isn’t as careful and circumspect in his conduct as he ought to be, and for that reason he deserves some kind of blame and censure, but no sort of punishment. However, if by a negligence of this kind he causes harm to another person, the laws of every country (I believe) will require him to pay compensation. No doubt this is a real punishment, and no-one would have thought of inflicting it on him if it hadn’t been for the unlucky accident that his conduct caused; yet this decision of the law is approved of by the natural sentiments of all mankind. Nothing, we think, can be more just than that one man should not suffer through someone else’s carelessness, and that the damage caused by culpable negligence should be
- 136. paid for by the person who was guilty of it. [Smith now gives us a whole page about a still lower level of negligence, which consists in not acting with ‘the most anxious timidity and circumspection’, i.e. with a kind of caution that would be a fault, not a virtue—a fault because life can’t satisfactorily be lived with that much concern for possible bad consequences. If one person hurts another through this kind of ‘negligence’, it is usual and natural for him to apologize and express his concern for the suf- ferer’s welfare, and (if he is a decent person) he will offer compensation for the damage he has done and do what he can to soothe the resentment that the sufferer is likely to feel. Smith continues:] To make no apology, to offer no atonement, is regarded ·by us all· as the highest brutality. Yet why should he apologize more than anyone else? Why should he, since he was as innocent as any other bystander, be thus singled out from among all mankind to make up for someone else’s bad luck? This task wouldn’t have been imposed on him if it weren’t for the fact that the impartial spectator feels some indulgence for what may be regarded as the unjust resentment of the sufferer. [Here and in one other place, Smith speaks of ‘animal resentment’, evidently meaning ‘resentment that is natural but not defensible through any acceptable general moral principles’.] Chapter 3: The purpose of this irregularity of senti- ments That is how the good or bad consequences of an action affect the sentiments both of the agent and of others; so
- 137. that is how luck [‘fortune’], which governs the world, has influence in the area where we should be least willing to allow it any, and partly directs the sentiments of mankind regarding the character and conduct both of themselves and of others. Everyone judges by the outcome, and not by the design—that has been the complaint down through the ages, and is the great discouragement of virtue. Everyone agrees to the •general maxim that because the outcome doesn’t depend on the agent it oughtn’t to influence our sentiments 58 Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity regarding the merit or propriety of his conduct. But our sentiments in •particular cases almost never exactly conform to what this reasonable maxim would require. The happy or unprosperous outcome of any action not only •is apt to give us a good or bad opinion of the prudence with which it was conducted, but nearly always also •sparks our gratitude or resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the design. But when Nature planted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, she seems to have intended—as she always does—the happiness and perfection of our species. If the only causes of our •resentment were the harmfulness of the design and the malevolence of the affection, we would feel all the furies of •that passion against anyone whom we suspected of having such designs or affections, even if they had never broken out into any action. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions, would become objects of punishment; and if the indignation of mankind ran as high against them as against actions—if the baseness of a •thought that didn’t lead to any action seemed to us all to call as loudly for
- 138. vengeance as the baseness of the •action—every court of law would become a real inquisition. There would be no safety for the most innocent and cautious conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs, might still be suspected. . . .and would expose the person to punishment and resentment just as bad actions do. So the Author of nature has seen to it that the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment are actions—actions that either •produce actual evil or •try to produce it and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it. According to cool reason, human actions derive their whole merit or demerit from •sentiments, designs, affections; but ·God·, the great Judge of hearts has placed •these outside the scope of every human jurisdiction, reserving them to be considered in his own unerring tribunal. This salutary and useful irregularity in human sentiments regarding merit or demerit, which at first sight appears so absurd and indefensible, is the basis for the necessary rule of justice that men in this life are liable to punishment only for their actions and not for their designs and intentions. In fact, when we look carefully into any part of nature we find this sort of evidence of the providential care of its Author—we can admire the wisdom and goodness of God even in the weakness and folly of man. Here’s another irregularity of sentiments that has some utility: the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do something good appears to be imperfect; and the merit of mere good inclinations and kind wishes is even more so. Man was made for action—to exercise his faculties to promote changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others in ways that seem most favourable to the happiness of all. He mustn’t be satisfied with slack benevolence, or see himself as the friend of mankind because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world! The purpose of his existence is to produce certain states of affairs; Nature wants him to call
- 139. forth the whole vigour of his soul and to strain every nerve to produce them; so she has taught him that neither he nor anyone else can whole-heartedly applaud or be fully satisfied with his conduct unless he actually produces them. . . . The man who hasn’t performed a single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and manner express the justest, the noblest, and most generous sentiments, isn’t entitled to demand any high reward even if his inutility is purely due to his having had no opportunity to serve. . . . We can still ask him: ‘What have you done? What actual service can you point to that entitles you to such a large reward? We respect you and love you, but we don’t owe you anything.’ It would take •the most divine benevolence to reward the virtue that has been useless only because there has been no opportunity to serve, giving it the honours and preferments that it may 59 Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity be said to deserve but wasn’t entitled to insist on. On the other hand, to punish mere affections of the heart where no crime has been committed is •insolent and barbarous tyranny. The benevolent affections seem to deserve most praise when they are acted on quickly (rather than being delayed until it becomes almost a crime not to act on them!); whereas it’s almost impossible for a malevolent affection to be too tardy, too slow, or deliberate in being acted on. It is important that the evil that is done without design should be regarded as a misfortune to the doer as well as to the sufferer. By having that attitude, man is taught to reverence the happiness of his brethren, to tremble lest he should unknowingly do anything that can harm them, and
- 140. to fear the animal resentment that he feels is ready to burst out against him if he should unintentionally be the unhappy instrument of their calamity. ·Here is a kind of model or metaphor for the point I want to make·: In the ancient heathen religion, holy ground that had been consecrated to some god was not to be walked on except on solemn and necessary occasions. Someone who violated this, even if he did it in igno- rance, became piacular from that moment, and until proper atonement was made he was vulnerable to the vengeance of the powerful and invisible being for whom that ground had been set apart. [To be ‘piacular’ is to be in a state in which one needs to make atonement, to expiate, for something one has done.] Now compare that with this: By the wisdom of Nature the happiness of every innocent man is made holy, consecrated, hedged round against the approach of every other man; not to be wantonly walked on, and not even to be in any way violated, even ignorantly and unintentionally, without requiring some expiation, some atonement in proportion to the magnitude of the unintended violation. A humane man who accidentally and with absolutely no blameworthy negligence has been the cause of the death of another man feels that he is •piacular, though not •guilty. During his whole life he regards this accident as one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the family of the slain man is poor and he himself is fairly well off, he immediately takes them under his protection. . . .and
- 141. thinks them entitled to every degree of favour and kindness. If they are wealthier than he is, he tries by every submission, by every expression of sorrow, by giving them any service that he can devise and they will accept, to atone for what has happened and to placate as much as possible their resentment for the great though unintended offence that he has given them. (Their resentment is certainly most unjust, but it is also natural.) [Smith adds a paragraph about the role of this aspect of the human condition—‘this fallacious sense of guilt’—in theatrical drama. Of Oedipus and Jocasta he says that they are both ‘in the highest degree piacular’ though neither is ‘in the smallest degree guilty’.] Despite all these seeming irregularities of sentiment, if a man has the bad luck to cause evils that he didn’t intend, or to fail in producing good that he did intend, Nature hasn’t left his innocence with no consolation or his virtue with no reward. What the man does is to get help from that just and equitable maxim: Outcomes that didn’t depend on our conduct ought not to lessen the respect that is due to us. He summons up his whole magnanimity and firmness of soul, and works to regard himself not in the light in which he does at present appear, but in the light 60 Smith on Moral Sentiments The purpose of this irregularity •in which he ought to appear, •in which he would have appeared if his generous plans had met with success, and
- 142. •in which he would be appearing now, despite the plans’ failure, if mankind’s sentiments were entirely just and fair, or even entirely consistent with them- selves. The more just and humane part of mankind entirely go along with this effort he is making to support himself in his own opinion. They exert their whole generosity of mind to correct in themselves this irregularity of human nature, and try to regard his unlucky good intention in the light in which, if it had been successful, they would have been naturally disposed to consider it, without any such moral effort. 61 Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-(dis)approval Part III: The basis for our judgments about our own feelings and behaviour; the sense of duty Chapter 1: The principle of self-approval and self- disapproval Up to here I have chiefly considered the origin and foundation of our judgments concerning the sentiments and conduct of others. I now turn to the origin of our judgments concerning our own sentiments and conduct. The principle by which we naturally either approve or disapprove of our own conduct seems to be exactly the one by which we make such judgments about the conduct of other people. We approve (or disapprove) of another man’s conduct according to whether, when we bring his case home to ourselves, we feel that we can (or cannot)
- 143. entirely sympathize with the sentiments and motives that directed it. And in the same way we approve (or disapprove) of our own conduct according to whether, when we adopt the situation of a spectator, viewing our conduct with his eyes (so to speak) and from his standpoint, we feel that we can (or cannot) entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives that influenced it. The only way we can survey our own •sentiments and motives, and the only way we can form any judgment about them, is to remove ourselves (so to speak) from our own natural station and try to view •them as from a certain distance; and our only way of doing that is by trying to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. Thus, any judgment we form about our own conduct tacitly refers to what others •do judge concerning them, •would judge concerning them if certain conditions were satisfied, or •ought to judge concerning them. We try to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it. If when we place ourselves in his situation we thoroughly enter into all the passions and motives that influenced it, we approve of it by sympathy with the approval of this supposed fair judge. If otherwise, we enter into his disapproval, and condemn the conduct. ·I’ll restate the ‘approval’ side of this story in different terms, just to make sure that it’s clear to you. My judgment that my conduct is morally proper involves two exercises of sympathy: (1) the imagined spectator’s sympathy with my actual motives and feelings, which leads to his having such feelings; then (2) my sympathy with those feelings of the spectator’s. So I can enter into the mind-set that led me to act as I did by entering into an imagined
- 144. mind-set that enters into the actual mind-set that led me to act·. If it were possible for a human creature to grow to adulthood without any communication with other humans, he couldn’t have thoughts about •his own character, about the propriety or demerit of •his own sentiments and conduct, about •the beauty or ugliness of his own mind, any more than he could think about •the beauty or ugliness of his own face. These are all things that he can’t easily see and naturally doesn’t look at, and he isn’t equipped with any mirror that 62 Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-(dis)approval can present them to his view. But now bring him into society, and he immediately has the mirror that he lacked before. It is placed in the faces and behaviour of those he lives with, which always signal when those people enter into his sentiments and when they disapprove of them; and that is what gives him his first view of the propriety and impropriety of his own passions, the beauty and ugliness of his own mind. ·I have been talking about how hard it would be for a solitary man to think about his own motives and conduct, but as well as being hard it would be uninteresting for him to do so·. If a man had been from his birth a stranger to society, his whole attention would be focussed on the objects of his passions, the external bodies that either pleased or harmed him. As for those passions themselves. . . ., although they would be more immediately present to him than anything else, he would hardly ever think about them. The idea of them couldn’t interest him enough to call on his attentive consideration. The thought of his •joy couldn’t cause any
- 145. new joy, or the idea of his •sorrow any new sorrow, although thoughts about the causes of •those passions might often arouse both. But then, bring him into society and all his own passions will immediately become the causes of new passions. He will observe that mankind approve of some of them, and this will elate him; and that they are disgusted by others, which will cast him down. His desires and aversions, his joys and sorrows, will now often cause new desires and new aversions, new joys and new sorrows; so they will now interest him deeply, and often call on his most attentive consideration. [In this paragraph, the notion of what will ‘interest’ the man may be partly the notion of what will be in his interests.] [Smith now compares that with our thoughts about our own physical beauty or ugliness, summing up thus:] It’s obvious that we are concerned about our own beauty and ugliness only because of its effect on others. If we had no connection with society, we would be altogether indifferent about both. In the same way our first moral criticisms are directed at the characters and conduct of other people; and we are all conscious of how each of these affects us. But we soon learn that other people are equally frank about our own character and conduct. We become concerned to know how far we deserve their censure or applause. . . . So we start to examine our own passions and conduct, and to think about how these must appear to them by thinking about how they would appear to us if we were in the situation of the others. We suppose ourselves to be the spectators of our own behaviour, and try to imagine what effect our conduct would have on us when seen in this light. That’s the only mirror in which we can, with the eyes of other people, have some kind of view of the propriety of our own conduct. . . .
- 146. Whenever I try to examine my own conduct—whenever I try to pass sentence on it, and either approve or condemn it—it’s obvious •that I divide myself into two persons (so to speak), and •that in my role as examiner and judge I represent a different character [Smith’s exact phrase] from that of myself as the person whose conduct is examined and judged. One is the spectator, whose sentiments concerning •my own conduct I try to enter into by placing myself in his situation and considering how •it would appear to me when seen from that particular point of view. The other is the agent, the person whom I properly call ‘myself’, the person about whose conduct I as spectator was trying to form some opinion. The first is the judge, the second the person judged. But the judge can’t be in every respect the same as the person judged of, any more than a cause can be in every respect the same as the effect. To be likeable and to be praiseworthy—i.e. to deserve love and to deserve reward—are the great characters [Smith’s 63 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame word] of virtue; and to be odious and punishable are the great characters of vice. But all these characters immediately bring in the sentiments of others. Virtue is said to be likeable or praiseworthy not •because it is an object of its own love or gratitude but •because it arouses those sentiments in other men. The inward tranquillity and self-satisfaction that naturally accompany virtue are caused by the awareness of being an object of such favourable regards, just as the inner torment that naturally accompanies vice results from the
- 147. suspicion that one is viewed with disfavour. What can be a greater happiness than to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What can be a greater misery than to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated? Chapter 2: The love of praise and of praiseworthi- ness; the dread of blame and of blameworthiness Man naturally desire, not only to be loved but to be lovely, i.e. to be a natural and proper object of love. He naturally fears not only to be hated but to be hateful, i.e. a natural and proper object of hatred. [That used to be the only standard meaning of ‘hateful’; is still is standard except in the USA where a ‘hateful’ person is one who is full of hate.] He wants not only praise but praiseworthiness, i.e. to be a natural and proper object of praise, whether or not anyone actually praises him. He fears not only blame but blameworthiness, i.e. to be a natural and proper object of blame, whether or not anyone actually blames him. The love of praiseworthiness is emphatically not derived solely from the love of praise. Those two drives resemble one another, are connected, and often blend with one another, but they are in many respects distinct and independent of one another. The love and admiration that we naturally have for those whose character and conduct we approve of necessarily lead us to want to become, ourselves, objects of such agreeable sentiments, and to be as likeable and admirable as those whom we love and admire the most. Our intense desire to excel is based on our admiration of the excellence of others.
- 148. And we aren’t satisfied with being merely admired for quali- ties that get other people to be •admired; we have to at least believe that we are admirable for qualities that make other people •admirable. But to satisfy this desire we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct, trying to view them with other peoples’ eyes, or as other people are likely to view them. If our character and conduct when seen in this light appear to us as we wish, we are happy and contented. But this happiness and contentment are greatly confirmed if we find that other people, when they view our character and conduct with the actual eyes that we were only imagining ourselves viewing them with, see them in precisely the way we had imagined ourselves seeing them. This approval from other people necessarily confirms our own self-approval. Their praise necessarily strengthens our own sense of our praiseworthiness. In this case, far from the love of praiseworthiness being derived solely from the love of praise, the love of praise seems to a large extent to be derived from the love of praiseworthiness. The most sincere praise can’t give us much pleasure when it can’t be regarded as evidence that we are praiseworthy. It won’t satisfy us to have esteem and admiration bestowed on us through some kind of ignorance or mistake. . . . The man who applauds us either for actions that we didn’t perform or for motives that had no influence on our conduct is really ap- plauding not us but someone else. We can get no satisfaction from that. That kind of praise should be more humiliating than any blame, and should perpetually bring to our minds the most humbling of all reflections, namely the thought of 64 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame
- 149. what we •ought to be but •are not. . . . To be pleased with such groundless applause is a proof of the most superficial levity and weakness. It is what is properly called ‘vanity’, and is the basis for the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, namely the vices of affectation and common lying. [Smith scornfully presents two examples: a fool who tries to attract admiration by telling lying stories about adventures he has come through, and the self-important idiot who parades himself as someone with ‘rank and distinction’ that he knows he doesn’t have. Smith continues with an acute psychological account of such people:] They look on themselves not in •the light in which they know they ought to appear to their companions, but in •the light in which they believe their companions actually look on them. Their superficial weakness and trivial folly prevent them from ever looking into themselves, seeing themselves in the way (their consciences must tell them) that everyone would see them if the real truth were known. Matching the fact that ignorant and groundless praise can give no solid joy, no satisfaction that will bear serious examination, is the fact that it is often really comforting to reflect that although no praise has been actually bestowed on us, our conduct has deserved praise, having entirely conformed to the measures and rules by which praise and approval are naturally and commonly bestowed. We are pleased not only with praise but also with having acted in a praiseworthy way. We are pleased to think that we have made ourselves natural objects of approval, even if no approval has ever actually been bestowed on us; just as we are humiliated by the thought that we have deserved the blame of those we live with, even if we have never been
- 150. actually blamed. The man who is aware of having behaved in exactly the ways that experience tells him are generally agreeable reflects with satisfaction on the propriety of •his own behaviour. When he views •it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he thoroughly enters into all the motives that influenced it. He looks back on every part of it with pleasure and approval, and even if mankind are never acquainted with what he has done, he looks at himself not as they do regard him but as they would regard him if they were better informed. . . . Men have voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after death a renown that they could no longer enjoy. While they still lived they imaginatively anticipated the fame that was in future times to be bestowed on them. The applause that they were never to hear rang in their ears; and the thoughts of the admiration whose effects they were never to feel •played about their hearts, •banished from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears, and •led them to perform actions that seem almost beyond the reach of human nature. But in point of reality there is surely no great difference between •the approval that won’t be given until we can no longer enjoy it and •the approval that won’t ever be given but would be if the world ever came to understand properly the facts about how we have behaved. If the former often produces such violent effects, it’s not surprising that the other should always be highly regarded. When Nature formed man for society, she endowed him with (1) a basic desire to please his brethren and a basic aversion to offending them. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable regard and pain in their unfavourable regard. She made their approval most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake, and their disapproval most humiliating and most offensive.
- 151. But this alone wouldn’t have equipped him for the society for which he was made. So Nature endowed him not only with a desire to be approved of but also with (2) a desire to 65 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame be something that ought to be approved of, or a desire to be what he himself approves of in other men. Desire (1) could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society; to be concerned about really being fit, he needed desire (2). . . . In every well-formed mind desire (2) seems to be the stronger of the two. Only the weakest and most superficial of mankind can be much delighted with praise that they themselves know to be altogether unmerited. [Smith goes on at some length about the attitude of ‘a wise man’, to whom what matters above all is to deserve approval, whether or not he actually gets it from anyone.] To want praise when none is due—or even to accept praise when it is not due—can only be the effect of the most contemptible vanity. To want it when it is really due is to want merely that a most essential act of justice should be done to us. The love of just fame or true glory, even for its own sake and independently of any advantage one might get from it, is not unworthy even of a wise man. But such a man sometimes neglects and even despises fame of that kind; and he is most likely to do so when he is absolutely confident of the perfect propriety of every part of his own conduct. When this is so, his self-approval doesn’t need to be confirmed by the approval of other men. It is sufficient on its own, and he is contented with it. This self-approval is the principal object (if not indeed the only one) about which he can or ought to
- 152. be concerned. The love of it is the love of virtue. Just as the love and admiration that we naturally have for some others dispose us to want to become ourselves the proper objects of such agreeable sentiments, so also the hatred and contempt that we equally naturally have for some others dispose us, perhaps even more strongly, to dread the very thought of resembling them in any respect. And here again what we fear is less the thought of being hated and despised than the thought of being hateful and despicable. . . . The man who has broken through all the measures of conduct that could make him agreeable to mankind may have the most perfect assurance that what he has done will for ever be concealed from every human eye; but that won’t do him any good. When he looks back on his behaviour and views with the eyes of an impartial spectator, he finds that he can’t enter into any of the motives that influenced it. He. . . .feels a high degree of the shame that he would be exposed to if his actions were ever to be generally known. . . . And if what he has been guilty of is not merely wrong actions that would be objects of simple disapproval, but an enormous crime that would arouse detestation and resentment, he can never think of it. . . .without feeling all the agony of horror and remorse. [Smith adds colourful detail about the ‘natural pangs of an affrighted conscience’ that can’t be allayed by convincing oneself that there is no God. He says that some terrible criminals have confessed to their crimes when they were not under suspicion. He continues with this theme:] They hoped by their death •to reconcile themselves, at least in their own imagination, to the natural sentiments of mankind; •to be able to consider themselves as less worthy of hatred and resentment; •to atone in some measure for their crimes, and by thus becoming objects of compassion rather than of horror, if possible •to die in peace and with the forgiveness of all their fellow-creatures.
- 153. Compared to what they felt before the discovery, even the thought of this, it seems, was happiness. . . . Only the most frivolous and superficial of mankind can be much delighted with praise that they know they don’t in the least deserve. But undeserved reproach is often capable of humiliating even men of more than ordinary constancy. . . . Such a man is humbled to find that anyone should have such a low view of his character as to suppose him capable of being guilty of whatever it is he is accused of. Though he is 66 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame perfectly conscious of his innocence, the very accusation of- ten seems to throw—even in his own imagination—a shadow of disgrace and dishonour on his character. . . . An innocent man who is brought to the scaffold by the false accusation of an odious crime suffers the cruelest misfortune that it is possible for innocence to suffer. . . . [For someone to whom this happens, Smith says, religion offers some consolation: the only thing that can ‘strike terror into triumphant vice’ is also the only thing that offers ‘consolation to disgraced and insulted innocence’. There is not much consolation to be drawn from ‘the humble philosophy that confines its views to this life’.] [Continuing with this enormously long chapter [25 book- pages], Smith now presents two pages of details of how various kinds of people handle (1) unmerited applause and (2) unmerited disapproval. Its main point is that a good person won’t get pleasure from (1) but will get pain from (2).
- 154. If he tries to shrug either of these off by telling the world ‘I didn’t do it’, he is more likely to be believed in (1) than in (2). And there’s something else that makes unmerited disapproval hard for a good man to take:] He knows perfectly what he has done, but perhaps no-one can know for sure what he himself is capable of doing. . . . He may be confident that the unfavourable judgment of his neighbours is wrong, but his confidence can’t often be strong enough to block his neighbours’ judgment from making some impression upon him. . . . I should point out that •how much importance we at- tach to the agreement or disagreement of other people’s sentiments and judgments with our own is always exactly proportional to •how unsure we are about the propriety of our own sentiments and the accuracy of our own judgments. A morally sensitive man may sometimes feel great uneasi- ness at the thought that he may have yielded too much to a certain passion—even an ‘honourable passion’, so to speak, such as his indignation at an injury that he or a friend has sustained. He is anxiously afraid that while meaning only to act in a spirited and just way he may have been led by an unduly intense emotion to do a real injury to some other person who, though not innocent, may have been less guilty than he at first seemed to be. In this situation the opinion of other people comes to have the utmost importance for him. Their approval is the most healing ointment that can be poured into his uneasy mind; their disapproval the bitterest and most tormenting poison. When he is perfectly satisfied with every part of his own conduct, the judgment of other people is often of less importance to him. There are some noble and beautiful (1) arts in which the degree of excellence can be determined only by a certain
- 155. nicety of taste, the decisions of which seem always to be somewhat uncertain. There are (2) others in which success can be rigorously demonstrated or at least strongly argued for. Among the candidates for excellence in those different arts, a concern for public opinion is always much greater in (1) than in (2). [Smith elaborates this through a couple of book-pages. He puts poetry into class (1), and reports cases in which fine poets have been crushed by public disapproval of their work. Mathematics is assigned to class (2), because mathematical results are so certain that there’s no room for wrong dissent.] Sometimes the morals of those different classes of learned men are somewhat affected by this great difference in how they stand with relation to the public. Because mathematicians and natural philosophers are independent of public opinion, they aren’t much tempted to form themselves into factions and cliques, whether for the support of their own reputation or for lowering the reputation of their rivals. They are nearly all men of the most 67 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame likeable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony with one another, are the friends of one another’s reputation, and don’t enter into intrigues in order to secure the public applause. They are pleased when their works are approved of, but not much vexed or angry when they are neglected. It’s not always like that with poets, or with those who
- 156. pride themselves on what is called fine writing. They are apt to divide themselves into a sort of literary factions, with each gang being. . . .the mortal enemy of the reputation of every other, and employing all the mean arts of intrigue and persuasion to get public opinion to side with the works of its own members and against those of its enemies and rivals. [Smith gives examples from France and England, remarking that ‘the likeable Mr Addison didn’t think it unworthy of his gentle and modest character’ to take the lead in a conspiracy ‘to keep down the rising reputation of Mr Pope’. He contrasts this with the more selfless characters and conduct of ‘mathematicians and natural philosophers’.] It is natural that our uncertainty concerning our own merit, and our concern to think favorably of it, should combine to make us •want to know the opinion of other people regarding it and •to be more than ordinarily elevated when that opinion is favourable (and more than ordinarily humiliated when it is unfavourable). [Smith goes on to say that we shouldn’t be willing to plot and scheme to get the favourable opinion or avoid the unfavourable one. Praise that one gets by unfair means is deprived of what mature and decent people regard as the main value of praise—namely its value as evidence that one is praiseworthy. He continues:] The man who performs a praiseworthy action may also want the praise that is due to it—perhaps even more than is due to it. The two motivations—·to be praiseworthy and to be praised·—are in this case blended together. Even the man himself may not know how far his conduct was influenced by each of them, and it’s hardly ever possible for the rest of us to know. [What we’ll say about that, Smith says, will depend on how much we like the man in question and perhaps on what general view we have of human nature. He’ll return later to the topic of ‘splenetic’ views of human nature. Then:]
- 157. Very few men can be satisfied with their own private sense that their qualities and conduct are of the kinds they admire and think praiseworthy in other people, unless they actually receive praise for those qualities and that conduct. In this respect, though, men differ considerably from one another. Some men when they are perfectly satisfied in their own minds that they are praiseworthy seem not to care whether they are praised; others seem to care much less about praiseworthiness than about praise. Unless a man avoids being actually blamed or reproached, he can’t be completely sure—he can’t even be fairly sure— that nothing in his conduct has been blameworthy. A wise man may often neglect praise [i.e. not give any thought to whether he is being praised], even when he has best deserved it; but in any seriously important matter he will try hard to act in such a way as to avoid not only •blameworthiness but also—as much as possible—every •plausible imputation of blame. . . . To show much concern about praise, even for praiseworthy actions, is usually a mark not of great wisdom but of some degree of weakness; whereas in a concern to avoid the shadow of blame or reproach there may be no weakness but the most praiseworthy prudence. . . . The all-wise Author of Nature has in this way taught man to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren—to be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct and hurt when they disapprove of it. We could put this by saying that God has appointed man to be the immediate judge of mankind, this being one of the many respects in which he has created man after his own image. . . . Each 68
- 158. Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame man is taught by nature to acknowledge the power and jurisdiction that has thus been conferred on his fellow-men, to be more or less humbled and humiliated when he has drawn their censure, and to be more or less elated when he has obtained their applause. But although men have in this way been appointed as the immediate judges of mankind, they are judges only in a lower court. Any sentence that they pass, ·i.e. any sentence of the man without·, can be appealed to a much higher court, namely to the tribunal of their own consciences, the supposed impartial and well-informed spectator, the man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their conduct. The jurisdictions of those two tribunals are based on prin- ciples that are in reality different and distinct, though in some respects they are alike. . . . The jurisdiction of the man without is wholly based on the desire for actual praise, and aversion to actual blame. That of the man within is wholly based on the desire for praiseworthiness and aversion to blameworthiness, i.e. the desire to have the qualities and perform the ac- tions that we love and admire in other people, and the fear of having the qualities and performing the actions that we hate and despise in other people. If the man without should applaud us for actions we haven’t performed or motives that didn’t influence us, the man within can immediately humble the pride and elation that
- 159. such groundless acclamations might otherwise cause, by telling us that when we accept them we make ourselves despicable because we know that we don’t deserve them. And on the other side, if the man without should reproach us for actions we haven’t performed or motives that didn’t in- fluence us, the man within can immediately correct this false judgment and assure us that we are not proper objects of the censure that has so unjustly been laid on us. But. . . .the man within seems sometimes to be astonished and confused by the noisy vigour of the man without. The violence and loudness with which blame is sometimes poured out on us seems to stupefy and numb our natural sense of praise- worthiness and blameworthiness; and the judgments of the man within, even if not absolutely altered or perverted, are so much shaken in the steadiness and firmness of their decision that they lose much of their natural effect of securing the tranquillity of the mind. We hardly dare find ourselves not guilty when all our brethren appear to condemn us loudly. The •supposed impartial spectator of our conduct seems fearful and hesitating when he gives his opinion in our favour, whereas all the •real spectators. . . .are unanimous and violent in giving their judgment against us. [Smith calls the man within a ‘demigod’, partly mortal and partly immortal and divine. He continues:] When the judgments of the man within are steadily and firmly directed by the sense of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, he seems to act suitably to his divine birth; but when he allows himself to be astonished and confused by the judgments of ignorant and weak man, he reveals his connection with mortality and seems to act in line with the human rather than the divine part of his origin. When this happens, the only effective consolation for a humbled and afflicted man lies in an appeal to a still higher tribunal, namely that of the all-seeing Judge of the world,
- 160. whose eye can never be deceived and whose judgments can never be perverted. Our man was supplied by nature with the man within his breast, who was to act in this life as the great guardian of his innocence and of his tranquillity; but this man within has been disturbed and astonished ·by the clamour of public disapproval·, so that our man’s mind has become weak and despondent; and now the only support he 69 Smith on Moral Sentiments Love of praise, dread of blame can find is in a firm confidence in the unerring rightness of the judgments of God’s tribunal, before which his innocence will eventually be declared and his virtue rewarded. So our happiness in this life often depends on the humble hope and expectation of a life to come. This hope and expectation is deeply rooted in human nature, which needs •to support its lofty ideas of its own dignity, •to brighten the dreary prospect of continually ap- proaching •death, and •to maintain its cheerfulness under all the heaviest calamities to which the disorders of this life sometimes expose it. [Smith wrote ‘continually approaching •mortality’—obviously a slip.] That there is a world to come, in which. . . .every man will be ranked with those who really are his equals in moral and intellectual qualities. . . .is a doctrine that is in every respect so venerable, and so comfortable to the weakness of human nature and so flattering to its grandeur, that any virtuous
- 161. man who has the misfortune to doubt it can’t help earnestly wishing to believe it. It wouldn’t have been exposed to the derision of the scoffers if it weren’t for the fact that some of its most zealous supporters have described the distribution of rewards and punishments to be made in that world to come in a way that has too often been in direct opposition to all our moral sentiments. A complaint that we have all heard from many a venerable but discontented old officer is that •an assiduous courtier is often more favoured than a faithful and active servant, that •attending and applauding are often shorter and surer roads to promotion than merit or service, and that •a ‘campaign’ ·of hanging around as a courtier at the court of· Versailles or St James’s is often worth two ·military· campaigns in Germany or Flanders. But what is considered as the greatest reproach even to the weakness of earthly sovereigns has been ascribed to divine perfection as an act of justice! The duties of devotion—the public and private worship of God—have been represented, even by able and virtuous men, as the only virtues that can either entitle us to reward or exempt us from punishment in the life to come. . . . The philosophically inclined Bishop Massillon, in a ceremony of blessing the flags of a military regiment of Catinat, said this to the officers: ‘The most deplorable thing in your situation, gentle- men, is that in a hard and painful life in which your duties sometimes go beyond the rigour and severity of the most austere cloisters, your sufferings won’t help you in the life to come or—in many cases—in
- 162. this present life. Alas! the solitary monk in his cell, obliged to mortify the flesh [= ‘to semi-starve and inflict physical pain on himself’] and to subject it to the spirit, is supported by the hope of an assured reward and by the secret support of the grace that softens the yoke of the Lord. But can you on your death-bed dare to represent to God the wearying daily hardships of your employment? can you dare to ask him for any reward?. . . . Alas! my brother, if one single day of those sufferings were consecrated to the Lord, it might have brought you eternal happiness. Offering up to God one single action that was painful to nature might have secured for you the inheritance of the saints. And you have done all this, and in vain, for this world!’ This comparison between •the futile mortifications of a monastery and •the ennobling hardships and hazards of war, this supposition that one day—one hour—employed in •the former should in God’s eyes have more merit than a whole life spent honourably in •the latter, is surely contrary 70 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience to all our moral sentiments, contrary to all the principles by which nature has taught us to regulate our contempt or admiration. But this is the spirit that has •reserved the Heavenly regions for monks and friars, and for people whose conduct and conversation re- sembled those of monks and friars,
- 163. while at the same time •condemning to Hell all the heroes, all the statesmen and lawgivers, all the poets and philosophers of for- mer ages; all those who have invented, improved, or excelled in the arts that contribute to the survival, convenience, or ornament of human life; all the great protectors, instructors, and benefactors of mankind; all those to whom our natural sense of praiseworthi- ness forces us to ascribe the highest merit and most exalted virtue. It’s no wonder that such a strange application of this most respectworthy doctrine should sometimes have exposed it to contempt and derision—at least from people who didn’t themselves have any taste for or skill in the devout and contemplative virtues. Chapter 3: The influences and authority of conscience The approval of a man’s own conscience is in some special cases barely enough to content him; the testimony of the supposed impartial spectator, that great inmate of the breast, can’t always give him all the support he needs. Still, the influence and authority of this principle [see note on page 164] is always very great, and it’s only by consulting this inner judge that we can ever see our own character and conduct in its proper shape and dimensions, or make any proper comparison between our own interests and other people’s. We all know that to the eye of the body objects appear great or small not so much according to their real sizes as according to how far away they are. Well, the same is true for what may be called the natural eye of the mind, and we make up for the defects of both these ‘eyes’ in pretty much the same way. From where I am now sitting, an immense
- 164. landscape of lawns, woods, and distant mountains seems to have barely the width of the little window that I write by. . . . My only way of soundly comparing those mountains etc. with the little objects in my study is to transport myself in imagination to a different viewpoint from which I can see both at nearly equal distances. . . . Habit and experience have taught me to do this so easily and smoothly that I am hardly aware of doing it at all; and it takes some knowledge of optics for a man to be thoroughly convinced of how small those distant objects would appear to the eye if the imagination didn’t, knowing what their real sizes are, puff them up. In the same way, to the selfish and basic passions of human nature the loss or gain of a very small interest of our own appears to be vastly more important than the greatest concern of someone else with whom we have no particular connection—arousing a more passionate joy or sorrow, a more ardent desire or aversion. As long as the other person’s interests are surveyed from this viewpoint, they can never be put into the balance with our own, can never hold us back from doing whatever favours our interests, however ruinous to his. To make a proper comparison between his interests and ours, we must change our position. We must view both lots of interests not from our own place or from his, and not with our own eyes or with his, but from the place and with the eyes of a third person who has no particular connection with either of us, and who judges impartially between us. Here, too, habit and experience have taught us to do this so easily and smoothly that we are 71 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience
- 165. hardly aware of doing it at all; and in this case too it takes some reflection—and even some philosophy—for a man to be convinced regarding how little interest he would take in his neighbour’s greatest concerns. . . .if the sense of propriety and justice didn’t correct the otherwise natural inequality of our sentiments. Let us suppose that the great and populous empire of China was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a humane man in Europe—one with no sort of connection with China—would be affected when he heard about this dreadful calamity. I imagine that he would first strongly express his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, and would make many melancholy reflections on the precariousness of human life, and the pointlessness of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He might also, if he were given to this sort of thing, think about how this disaster might affect the commerce of Europe and the trade and business of the world in general. [This was written 17 years before the appearance of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.] And when all this fine philosophy was over, and all these humane sentiments had been expressed, he would go about his business or his pleasure. . . .with the same ease and tranquillity as if no such accident had happened. The most trivial ‘disaster’ that could befall him would disturb him more. If he was due to lose his little finger tomorrow, he wouldn’t sleep to-night; but he will snore contentedly over the ruin of a hundred million of his brethren, provided he never saw them; so the destruction of that immense multitude seems clearly to be of less concern to him than this paltry misfortune of his own. Well, then: Would a humane man be willing to avoid this paltry misfortune to himself—·this loss of a little finger·—
- 166. by sacrificing the lives of a hundred million of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature jumps back with horror at the thought. The world in its greatest depravity and corruption never produced a villain who could think of behaving in such a way. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and selfish, how does it happen that our active drives are often so generous and so noble? Given that we’re always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves than by whatever concerns other people, what is it that prompts generous people always (and mean people sometimes) to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It’s not •the soft power of humaneness, •that feeble spark of benevolence that Nature has kindled in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting •the strongest impulses of self-love. What comes into play in these cases is a stronger power, a more forcible motive. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act in some way that will affect the happiness of others, calls to us with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions! What he tells us is that •we are only one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other, and that •when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others we become proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and cursing. It’s only from him that we learn the real littleness of our- selves and of whatever relates to ourselves; and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator. It is he who shows us
- 167. •the propriety of generosity and the ugliness of injus- tice, •the propriety of forgoing our own greatest interests in favour of the still greater interests of others, and 72 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience •the ugliness of doing the smallest injury to someone else in order to get the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbour, the love of mankind, that often prompts us to practice those divine virtues. What usually comes into play on such occasions 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. When the happiness or misery of others depends in any way on how we behave, we dare not follow self-love’s hint and prefer the interest of one to that of many. ·If we start to move in that direction·, the man within immediately tells us •that we are valuing ourselves too much and other people too little, and •that by doing this we make ourselves the proper object of other people’s contempt and indignation. And this sentiment isn’t confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed on every reasonably good soldier, who feels that his companions would despise him if they thought him capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating to risk—or even to throw away—his life when the good of the service required it.
- 168. If I could bring myself a large benefit by doing you a small harm, is it all right for me to prefer myself over you to that extent? No! The poor man mustn’t defraud or steal from the rich, even if the benefit the acquisition would bring him would be much larger than the harm it would do to the rich man. ·If a poor man starts to plan such a theft·, the man within immediately tells him that he is no better than his neighbour, and that by this unjust preference ·for himself over the rich man· he makes himself a proper object •of the contempt and indignation of mankind and •of the punishment that their contempt and indignation will naturally dispose them to inflict. Punishment? Yes!—for having violated one of the sacred rules that must be mainly observed if human society is to continue in security and peace. Any ordinarily honest man will dread •the inward disgrace of such an action, stamping an indelible stain on his own mind, more than •the greatest external calamity that could possibly befall him. . . . When the happiness or misery of others in no way de- pends on our conduct, when our interests are altogether separated and detached from theirs so that there’s neither connection nor competition between them, we don’t always think it so necessary to restrain •our natural and perhaps improper anxiety about our own affairs, or •our natural and perhaps equally improper indifference about those of other men. The most ordinary education teaches us to act on all important occasions with some sort of impartiality between ourselves and others, and even the ordinary commerce of the world is capable of adjusting our active drives so that they conform to some degree of propriety. But a highly developed and refined education has been said to be needed to correct the inequalities of our passive feelings. For this purpose, it has been claimed, we must resort to philosophical
- 169. investigations that are extremely severe and extremely deep. Two different sets of philosophers have tried to teach us this hardest of all the lessons of morality. (1) Some have worked to increase our sensitivity to the interests of others; they want us to feel for others as we naturally feel for ourselves. (2) The other group have worked to lessen our awareness of our own interests; they want us to feel for ourselves as we naturally feel for others. It may be that both have carried their doctrines a good distance beyond the just standard of nature and propriety. (1) The first group are the whining and melancholy moral- ists who are perpetually reproaching us for being happy when so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard 73 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience as impious the natural joy of prosperity that doesn’t think of the many wretches who are labouring under all sorts of calamities—poverty, disease, horrors of death, the insults and oppression of their enemies. In their opinion, commiseration for miseries that we never saw and never heard of, but that we can be sure are at all times infesting large numbers of our fellow-creatures, ought to damp the pleasures of people who are fortunate, and to make a certain melancholy dejection habitual
- 170. to all men. ·There are three things wrong with this·. •This extreme sympathy with misfortunes that we know nothing about seems altogether absurd and unreasonable. Taking the world as a whole, for each man who suffers pain or misery there are twenty in prosperity and joy, or at least in tolerable circumstances. Surely no reason can be given why we should weep with the one rather than rejoice with the twenty. •Also, this artificial commiseration is not only absurd but seems altogether impossible for us. Those who act as though this was their frame of mind usually have nothing but a certain artificial and sentimental sadness that makes their faces and conversation irrelevantly dismal and disagreeable without reaching their heart. •And, lastly, even if this disposition of mind could be achieved it would be perfectly useless, serving merely to make miserable the person who had it. . . . All men, however distant, are no doubt entitled to our good wishes, and our good wishes we naturally give them. But if they should be unfortunate, it’s no part of our duty to give ourselves any anxiety about that. . . . (2) The moralists who try to correct the natural inequality of our passive feelings by making us less sensitive to what specially concerns ourselves include all the ancient sects of philosophers and especially the ancient Stoics. According to them a man ought to regard himself not as something separated and detached but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature. He ought at all times to be willing that his own little interests should be sacrificed to the interests of this great community. Whatever concerns him personally ought to affect him no more than whatever concerns any other equally important part of this immense system—·e.g. any other one person·. We should view ourselves not in the light that our own selfish passions
- 171. are apt to throw, but in the light in which any other citizen of the world would view us. . . . [Preparing the ground for discussing this, Smith distin- guishes private misfortunes into (a) ones that affect us by affecting our near and dear—parents, offspring, and so on; and (b) ones that affect us immediately and directly. There is a great variety of possible misfortunes of either kind—pain, sickness, approaching death, poverty, disgrace, and so on.] (a) In misfortunes of the first kind our emotions may go far beyond what exact propriety will accept, but they may likewise fall short of that—and they often do. A man who felt no more for the death or distress of his own father or son than for the death or distress of someone else’s father or son would strike us as being neither a good son nor a good father. Such unnatural indifference, far from arousing our applause, would draw our highest disapproval. But these domestic affections ·fall into two groups for our present purposes·: we are apt to have some of them more strongly than is proper, and to have others less strongly than we should. Nature in its wisdom has, in most and perhaps all men, installed a much stronger drive towards •parental tenderness than towards •filial respect. The continuance and propagation of the species depend entirely on •the former, and not at all on •the latter. The existence and survival of the child usually depends altogether on the care of the parents, whereas parents’ existence and survival seldom 74 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience depend on the care of the child. That’s why Nature has
- 172. made the former affection so strong that it generally requires not to be aroused but to be moderated. . . . But moralists do urge us to an affectionate attention to our parents, and to make a proper return to them in their old age for the kindness that they showed us in our youth. In the Ten Commandments we are commanded to honour our fathers and mothers; and nothing is said about our love for our children, ·because· Nature had sufficiently prepared us for the performance of this latter duty. Men are seldom accused of pretending to be fonder of their children than they really are, but they have sometimes been suspected of putting too much show into their displays of piety towards their parents. The ostentatious sorrow of widows has, for a like reason, been suspected of insincerity. We would respect even excessive affections [see note on page 116] of that kind if we believed them to be sincere; and even if we didn’t perfectly approve, we wouldn’t severely condemn either. . . . Although the excess of affections of this sort appears to be blameworthy, it never appears to be odious. We blame a parent’s excessive fondness and concern as something that may eventually be harmful to the child, and is in the meantime excessively inconvenient to the parent; but we easily pardon it and never regard it with hatred and detestation. But when a parent has •too little of this parental affection of which most parents have •too much, that always strikes us as especially odious. The man who seems to feel nothing for his own children, treating them on all occasions with undeserved severity and harshness, seems the most detestable of all brutes. Our sense of propriety, so far from requiring us to eradicate altogether the special sensitivity that we naturally have for the misfortunes of our near and dear, is always much more offended by someone’s having too little of that sensitivity than it ever is by someone’s having too much. When it comes to feelings and attitudes towards
- 173. one’s parents, one’s offspring, and the like, the apathy recommended by the Stoics is never agreeable, and all the metaphysical trick-arguments by which it is supported can seldom achieve anything except to work on a coxcomb [here = ‘moral idiot’], making his hard unfeelingness ten times worse than it would have been if he had been left to himself. . . . •That moderated sensitivity to the misfortunes of others, which doesn’t disqualify us for the performance of any duty; •the melancholy and affectionate remembrance of our departed friends; what ·the poet· Gray calls •‘the pang, to secret sorrow dear’, are by no means unpleasant sensations. Though they outwardly wear the features of pain and grief, they are all inwardly stamped with the ennobling characters of virtue and self-approval. (b) When it comes to the misfortunes that affect us immediately and directly—in our body, our fortune, or our reputation—the sense of propriety is much more apt to be offended by someone’s having too much sensitivity to these than by someone’s having too little of it. There are few cases where we can come too near to the apathy and indifference recommended by the Stoics. [Smith now offers a couple of pages of remarks about how our sympathy with others’ misfortunes varies in intensity, in tone, and in resultant behaviour, depending on whether the misfortune in question is bodily pain, financial loss, or loss of reputation. This material is book-ended between two occurrences of the remark that although such sympathy is a kind of sadness there is also something agreeable about it. Then:] If we examine the different shades and gradations of weakness and self-control that we meet with in everyday life, we’ll see that this control of our passive feelings must be
- 174. acquired not from •the abstruse syllogisms of a quibbling 75 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience dialectic but from •the great discipline that Nature has established as a means for acquiring this and every other virtue, namely a regard for the sentiments of the real or supposed spectator of our conduct. A very young child has no self-control. Whether it is suffering fear or grief or anger, it always does its best by the violence of its outcries to alarm the attention of its nurse or its parents. While it remains under the custody of such •partial protectors [= ‘protectors who are biased in its favour’], its anger is the first and perhaps the only passion it is taught to moderate. In defence of their own peace of mind, the protectors are often obliged to use noise and threatening of their own to frighten the child into a good mood, and the passion that incites it to attack is restrained by the passion that teaches it to look to its own safety. When it is old enough to go to school or to mix with its equals, the child soon finds that they have no such indulgent •partiality. It naturally wants to gain their favour and to avoid their hatred or contempt—indeed, regard for its own safety teaches it to do so—and it soon finds that the only way to do that is to moderate not only its anger but all its other passions, toning them down to a level that the child’s playmates and companions are likely to be pleased with. It thus enters into the great school of self-control, studies to be more and more master of itself, and begins to discipline its own feelings—a task that few people bring to completion in the course of a
- 175. lifetime! [Smith now presents a long account of how someone who is suffering conducts himself in relation to friends and acquaintances, depending on whether the sufferer is (i) ‘the weakest man’, (ii) ‘a man of a little more firmness’, or (iii) a ‘man of real constancy and firmness’. The differences are what you might expect. Notable in the account of (i) is Smith’s remark that this weak man tries to get more sympathy from others by upping his expressions of pain and sorrow, behaving ‘like a child that has not yet gone to school’. The man in (ii) does better: he stays calm, feels the approval that his friends and acquaintances have for his restraint, and is thus encouraged to keep it up, silently ‘applauding himself’. There is much more about this, but it doesn’t add significantly to the philosophical content. Then there is the man in (iii):] [This paragraph down to * is almost exactly as Smith wrote it.] The man of real constancy and firmness, the wise and just man who has been thoroughly bred in the great school of self-control, in the bustle and business of the world, exposed perhaps to the violence and injustice of faction and to the hardships and hazards of war, maintains this control of his passive feelings on all occasions; and whether in solitude or in society he wears nearly the same countenance and is affected in nearly the same manner. In success and in disappointment, in prosperity and in adversity, before friends and before enemies, he has often had to maintain this manliness. He has never dared to forget for one moment the judgment that the impartial spectator would pass on his sentiments and conduct. He has never dared to allow •the man within the breast to be absent from his attention for one moment. He has always been accustomed to look at
- 176. anything relating to him with the eyes of •this great inmate. This habit has become perfectly familiar to him.* What he has constantly done and indeed constantly needed to do is to model—or try to model—not only what he does and how he does it, but even his inward sentiments and feelings on those of •this awe-inspiring and respectworthy judge. [Here and in a few other places, the phrase ‘what he does and how he does it’ replaces Smith’s ‘his outward conduct and behaviour’. It is a guess about what he meant.] He doesn’t merely portray the sentiments of the impartial spectator—he really adopts them. He almost 76 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience identifies himself with—he almost becomes—that impartial spectator, and almost never feels anything that this great judge of his conduct doesn’t direct him to feel. [Then a paragraph in which Smith says that a man’s approval of himself for doing A is proportional to how hard it was for him to do A. He continues:] A man who has had a leg shot off and who in the next moment speaks and acts with his usual coolness and tranquillity shows a high degree of self-control, so he naturally feels a high degree of self-approval. With most men to whom this happened, their own natural view of their misfortune would force itself on them with such a vivacity and strength of colouring that it would entirely wipe out all thought of any other way of looking at it. They wouldn’t feel anything—couldn’t attend
- 177. to anything—except their own pain and fear; they would entirely disregard not only the judgment of the ideal man within the breast but also that of any real spectators who happened to be present. Given that a man behaves well in face of misfortune, how well he counts as behaving depends on how great the misfortune is; and Nature’s reward for good behaviour under misfortune is exactly proportioned to how good the behaviour is. The more self-control that is needed for us to conquer our natural sensibility—·which includes our natural inclination to whine and complain·—the greater are our pleasure and pride in achieving the conquest. And this pleasure and pride ·over having won a moral victory· are so great that no-one who has them can be altogether unhappy. Misery and wretchedness can’t enter the breast in which complete self-satisfaction dwells. The Stoics say that a wise man who has his leg shot off will be as happy as he would have been if this hadn’t happened; that may be going too far, but we do have to agree that the man’s complete enjoyment of his own self-applause will greatly alleviate •his sense of his own sufferings, even if it doesn’t altogether extinguish •it. In such paroxysms of distress, ·even· the wisest and firmest man presumably won’t be able to stay calm without a considerable and even a painful exertion. He is hard-pressed by his natural feeling of his own distress, (1) his natural view of his own situation, and will need a great effort to fix his attention on (2) the view that the impartial spectator has of his situation. Both views present themselves to him at the same time. His sense of honour, his regard for his own dignity, directs him to fix his whole attention on (2), while his natural—untaught and undisciplined—feelings are continually calling it away to (1). On this occasion he doesn’t perfectly identify himself with the ideal man within
- 178. the breast; he doesn’t himself become the impartial spectator of his own conduct. The two views both exist in his mind sep- arate and distinct from one another, directing his behaviour in different directions. When he follows (2) the view that honour and dignity point out to him, •Nature gives him some reward—the enjoyment of his own complete self-approval and of the applause of every honest and impartial spectator. But this isn’t enough to compensate completely for the real sufferings that he undergoes through Nature’s unalterable laws. (And it’s good that it doesn’t! If it did completely make up for them, his self-interest would give him no motive for avoiding such events as the loss of a leg, which would lessen his utility both to himself and to society. . . .) So he does suffer. In the agony of the paroxysm he maintains the manhood of his countenance and the steadiness of his judgment, but it requires his utmost and most fatiguing exertions to do so. By the constitution of human nature, however, agony can never be permanent; and if our man survives the paroxysm he soon arrives at an easy enjoyment of his ordinary tran- quillity. There’s no doubt that a man with a wooden leg is 77 Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience burdened with a considerable inconvenience, and foresees that he’ll have this for the rest of his life. But he soon comes to view it in exactly the way every impartial spectator views it—as an inconvenience under which he can enjoy all the ordinary pleasures both of solitude and of society. He soon identifies himself with the ideal man within the breast, becoming himself the impartial spectator of his own situation.
- 179. He no longer weeps, laments, or grieves over it as a weak man might do in the beginning. The view of the impartial spectator becomes so perfectly habitual to him that without putting any effort or exertion into this he never thinks of surveying his misfortune in any other way. The never-failing certainty with which all men eventually adjust themselves to fit whatever becomes their permanent situation may lead us to think that the Stoics were nearly right, to this extent: Between one permanent situation and another there is, with regard to real happiness, no essential differ- ence. Or if there is, it’s a difference that suffices •to support a preference for some of them, but only a simple preference, not an earnest or anxious desire; and •to support a simple rejection of others, but not an earnest or anxious aversion. Happiness consists in tranquillity and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can be no enjoyment; and where there is perfect tranquillity almost anything can be amusing. But in every permanent situation where there’s no expectation of change, the mind of every man returns, sooner or later, to its natural and usual state of tranquillity. In prosperity it eventually falls back to that state; in adversity it eventually rises up to it. . . . The great source of the misery and the disorders of human life seems to be men’s over-rating of the difference between one permanent situation and another—the over-rating —by avarice of the difference between poverty and riches, —by ambition of the difference between a private and a public station,
- 180. —by vain-glory of the difference between obscurity and extensive reputation. Someone under the influence of any of those extravagant passions is not only miserable in his actual situation but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society in order to arrive at whatever it is that he so foolishly admires. [Smith now embarks on a rather preachy page and a half of reasons why behaviour in the service of any one of those ambitions is almost certain to be pointless—too much chance of failure, and too little chance of real satisfaction if one does succeed. Then:] It may seem •strange but I think it is •true that in the misfortunes that can be somewhat remedied most men don’t recover their natural and usual tranquillity as readily as they do in misfortunes that clearly can’t be remedied. With misfortunes of the latter kind, ·i.e. irremediable ones·, the wise man’s sentiments and behaviour don’t differ noticeably from those of the weak man except in what may be called ‘the paroxysm’, the first attack. In the end, Time, the great and universal comforter, gradually soothes the weak man till he reaches the degree of tranquillity that the wise man, having a concern for his own dignity and manhood, assumes at the beginning. The case of the man with the wooden leg is an obvious example of this. In the irreparable misfortunes occasioned by the death of children, or of friends and rela- tives, even a wise man may for a while permit himself some moderate degree sorrow. An affectionate but weak woman is often on such occasions almost perfectly distracted; but Time eventually calms even her down. . . . Our sensitivity to the feelings of others, far from being inconsistent with •the manliness of self-control, is the very 78
- 181. Smith on Moral Sentiments Authority of conscience source of •it. The very same drive or instinct that •prompts us to compassion for our neighbour’s sorrow in his the mis- fortune also •prompts us in our own misfortune to restrain the abject and miserable lamentations of our own sorrow. The same drive or instinct that •prompts us to rejoice in our neighbour’s joy over his prosperity and success also •prompts us to restrain the rowdy light-heartedness of our own joy. In both cases, the propriety of our own sentiments and feelings seems to be exactly in proportion to the liveliness and force with which we enter into and come to have his sentiments and feelings. [Smith now embarks on two not very interesting book- pages presenting two theses about the relation between (1) the ‘gentle virtue’ of sensitivity to the feelings of others in their misfortunes, and (2) the ‘great and awe-inspiring virtue’ of self-control and moderation in the expression of one’s own feelings in one’s own misfortunes. [He states the theses as though they held also for the versions of (1) and (2) that concern joy in good fortune; but his reason for the second of them is confined to (1) and (2) as stated above.] One thesis is that ‘the person best fitted by nature for acquiring (1) is also best fitted for acquiring (2)’. The second thesis is that we don’t often encounter anyone who has both of these virtues, for
- 182. a reason that Smith gives. Each of those virtues, he says, requires not merely •natural fitness but also practice, and a life in which a man has plenty of opportunity to exercise (2) is an arduous rough-and-tumble affair, full of hardships and reverses, in which (1) is apt to be shouldered aside. He continues:] Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of (2) this virtue. But these are all masters to whom no-one willingly puts himself to school! [Smith develops this topic at some length, and then switches to a new train of thought:] In solitude we’re apt to feel too strongly anything relating to ourselves; we are apt to •over-rate the help we have given to others, to •over-rate injuries we have suffered, to •be too much elated by our own good fortune, and to •be too much dejected by our own bad fortune. The conversation of a friend brings us into a better frame of mind, and the conversation of a stranger does this even more. The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, often needs to be awakened and reminded of his duty by the presence of a real spectator; and the spectator from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence is likely to be the one who can give us the most complete lesson in self-control. Are you in adversity? Don’t mourn in the darkness of solitude, don’t regulate your sorrow according to the indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends; as soon as you can, get out into the day-light of the world and of society. Live with strangers who don’t know or don’t care about your misfortune. . . . Are you in prosperity? Don’t confine the enjoyment of
- 183. your good fortune to your own household, to the company of your own friends and (perhaps) of your flatterers, of the company of people who hope to mend their fortunes by build- ing on yours; spend time with people who are independent of you, and value you only for your character and conduct rather than for your fortune. . . . The propriety of our moral sentiments is never so apt to be corrupted as when an indulgent and partial spectator is right here while the nearest unbiased and impartial one is a long way off. The only unbiased and impartial spectators of the conduct of independent nations towards one another are neutral nations. But they are so far away as to be almost out of 79 Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules sight. When two nations are at odds with one another, a citizen in either of them pays little regard to the sentiments that foreign nations may have regarding his conduct. All he wants is to have the approval of his fellow-citizens; and as they are all driven by the same hostile passions that drive him, his best way of pleasing them is to enrage and offend their enemies. So the partial spectator is here, the impartial one far away. That is why in war and negotiation the laws of justice are seldom observed: truth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded; treaties are violated; and if a violation brings some advantage, it brings almost no dishonour on the violator. . . . In war, not only are the so-called ‘laws of nations’ often violated. . . .but most of those ‘laws’ themselves are laid down with little regard for the plainest and most obvious
- 184. rules of justice. One of the plainest and most obvious rules of justice is this: Innocent people should not suffer or be punished be- cause they are somehow connected with or dependent on the guilty (a connection that they may be unable to avoid). Yet in the most unjust war it is often only the sovereign or the rulers who are guilty, their subjects being perfectly innocent. Whenever it suits the convenience of a public enemy, however, the goods of the peaceable citizens are seized, their lands laid waste, their houses burnt, and they themselves, if they dare to resist, are murdered or led into captivity—all this in perfect conformity with the ‘laws of nations’! [Smith goes on to say that the moral level of conflicts between ‘hostile factions’ within a nation is even lower than the moral level of wars between nations. No-one doubts that in wars between nations one ought to ‘keep faith’ with the enemy nation, i.e. keep promises given to it, keep contracts made with it, and so on. Whereas when factions are at war people seriously discuss whether faith ought to be kept with rebels, or with heretics. Smith remarks acidly that ‘rebels and heretics are unlucky people who, when things have reached a certain level of violence, have the misfortune to belong to the weaker party’. He continues:] In a nation distracted by faction there are always a few, but only a few, who preserve their judgment untainted by the general contagion. Such people have no influence on the course of events, because the parties to the conflict won’t listen to them. . . . All such people are held in contempt and derision, often in detestation, by the furious zealots of both parties. A true party-man hates and despises fair-mindedness, and
- 185. the fact is that no •vice could disqualify him for the trade of a party-man as effectually as that single •virtue, fair- mindedness, would. Thus, the real, revered, and impartial spectator is never further off than amidst the violence and rage of contending parties. To them, it may be said, such a spectator hardly exists anywhere in the universe. Even to the great Judge of the universe they attribute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as driven by all their own vindictive and implacable passions. Of all the corrupters of moral sentiments, faction and fanaticism have always been by far the greatest. [In a final pair of paragraphs Smith returns to the topic of self-control in adversity, not adding much to what he has already said.] Chapter 4: The nature of self-deceit, and the origin and use of general rules To pervert our own judgments about the propriety of our own conduct, it isn’t always necessary for the real impartial spectator to be at a great distance. Even when he is present, the violence and injustice of our own selfish passions are 80 Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules sometimes sufficient to induce the man within the breast to make a report very different from what the facts of the case would authorise. When do we examine our own conduct and try to see it in the light in which the impartial spectator would see it?
- 186. (1) When we are about to act. (2) After we have acted. Our views are apt to be biased in both cases; but they are apt to be most biased when it is of most importance that they should be balanced and fair. (1) When we are about to act, the eagerness of passion seldom allows us to consider what we are doing with the fair-mindedness of an unbiased person. The violent emotions that are agitating us then serve to discolour our views of things, even when we are trying to place ourselves in the situation of the impartial spectator and to see objects that concern us in the light in which they will naturally appear to him. The fury of our own passions constantly calls us back to our own viewpoint, from which everything appears magnified and misrepresented by self-love. As for how those objects would appear to someone else, the view that he would have of them, we get only flickering little glimpses that vanish in a moment—and aren’t entirely right even while they last! We can’t even for that moment rid ourselves of all the heat and eagerness with which our particular situation inspires us, or consider what we are about to do with the complete impartiality of a fair-minded judge. As Malebranche says, •the passions all seem reasonable and proportioned to their objects for as long as we continue to feel •them. (2) When the action is over and the passions that prompted it have subsided, we can enter more coolly into the sentiments of •the unbiased spectator. What concerned us before ·we acted· now matters to us almost as little as it always did to •him, and we can now examine our own conduct as honestly and impartially as he does. The man of today is no longer agitated by the same passions that distracted the man of yesterday; and when the •paroxysm of emotion is thoroughly over, we can identify ourselves with the ideal man within the breast, and look at our own
- 187. •conduct with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator. (This echoes what I said earlier [page 77] about how, when the •paroxysm of distress is over, we can look objectively and impartially at our own •situation.) But now that the action is over, our judgments are often nothing like as important as they were before; they can often produce nothing but pointless regret and useless repentance, without always securing us from similar errors in future. And even in this after-the-action situation, our judgments on our own conduct are seldom entirely fair-minded. ·That is because· our opinion of our own •character depends entirely on our judgments regarding our past •conduct. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves that we often deliberately avert our eyes from facts that might make that judgment unfavourable. He is a bold surgeon (they say) whose hand doesn’t tremble when he operates on himself; and it’s an equally bold person who doesn’t hesitate to pull off the veil of self-delusion that hides from his view the ugly parts of his own conduct [see note on ‘ugly’ on page 8]. Rather than having such a disagreeable view of our own behaviour, we too often—foolishly and weakly—try to revive the unjust passions that had misled us; we work to awaken our old hatreds and stir up again our almost forgotten resentments; we even act on them again, persevering in injustice merely because we were once unjust and are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so. That is how biased men’s views are regarding the pro- priety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and after it, and how hard it is for them to see it in the light in which any impartial spectator would see it. ·The most basic question of moral epistemology comes into play here·. Some 81
- 188. Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules theorists hold that men judge their own conduct through a special faculty, a ‘moral sense’, a special power of ·moral· perception that picks out the beauty or ugliness of passions and affections. But if that were right, men’s own passions would be more immediately exposed to the view of •this faculty, and •it would judge them with more accuracy than it judged the passions of other men, which •it could view only from a distance. This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all the facts, we couldn’t endure the sight unless we immediately set about reforming ourselves. But Nature hasn’t left us with absolutely no remedy for this important weakness—she hasn’t abandoned us entirely to the delusions of self-love. Our continual observations of the conduct of others lead us unconsciously to construct general rules about what is fit and proper to do or to avoid. Some of their actions shock all our natural sentiments. We hear everyone around expressing the same detestation of them, which confirms and even increases our natural sense of the actions’ ugliness. We’re satisfied that we are viewing them in the proper light when we see other people viewing them in the same light. We resolve never to be guilty of such actions, and never to do anything that would in this way make us objects of universal disapproval. In this natural way we lay down for ourselves a general rule that all such actions are to be avoided because they tend to make us odious, contemptible, or punishable—i.e. objects of the sentiments for which we have the greatest dread and aversion. On the other side, other actions call forth our approval, and we hear everyone around us express the same favourable opinion
- 189. about them. Everyone is eager to honour and reward them; they arouse all the sentiments for which we have by nature the strongest desire—the love, the gratitude, the admiration of mankind. We come to want to act in those ways, and thus naturally lay down for ourselves a rule of another kind, that we should always be on the watch for opportunities to act in this way. That is how the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately based on experience of what our moral faculties—our natural sense of merit and propriety—approve or disapprove of in particular instances. What happens is not this: (a) When we approve (or condemn) particular actions, that is always because on examination those actions appear to be agreeable to (or inconsistent with) a certain general rule. The real order is the opposite of that, namely: (b) We find from experience that all actions of a certain kind. . . .are approved of or disapproved of, and on that basis we form a general rule against all such actions. ·As an aid to seeing how wrong and unreal (a) is, as a general account of how our particular moral judgments relate to our general moral rules, suppose the following·: You see an inhuman murder, committed out of greed, envy, or misplaced resentment. The victim is someone who had loved and trusted the murderer. You saw the last agonies of the dying person, and heard him with his expiring breath complain more of the treachery and ingratitude of his false friend than of the violence that had been done to him.
- 190. To arrive at a moral judgment on this horrible action you won’t apply to it a general rule prohibiting the killing of innocent people! Obviously you would arrive instantaneously at your detestation of this crime, before you get to any thought about a general rule that might apply to it. If you do eventually form such a general rule, it will be based on 82 Smith on Moral Sentiments Self-deceit, general rules the detestation that you felt unstoppably arising in your own breast at the thought of this action and any other of the same kind. [Smith now offers two paragraphs repeating and faintly illustrating what he has just said. Then:] Once these general rules have been formed, once they are universally accepted and established by the concurring sentiments of mankind, we often appeal to them as to standards of judgment when we are debating the degree of praise or blame that is appropriate for certain actions of a complicated and dubious nature. On these occasions the rules are commonly cited as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust in human conduct; and this fact seems to have misled several eminent authors into constructing systems that seem to presuppose that mankind’s basic moral judgments were formed in the way a law-court reaches its decisions, namely by •first considering the general rule and •then deciding whether the particular action in question comes within its scope.
- 191. When someone is wondering what it is fit and proper for him to do at a particular moment, his self-love may give him a wrong answer; and in this situation he can be greatly helped by general rules of conduct that have been fixed in his mind by habitual reflection. A man who is furiously resentful of what someone has done to him might, if he listened to the dictates of his resentment, regard his enemy’s death as a small compensation for •the wrong he thinks has been done to him—though it may in fact be merely •a slight provocation. But what he has seen of the conduct of others has taught him how horrible all such bloody revenges appear ·to people in general·. Unless he has been brought up in a very strange way, he has imposed on himself an inviolable rule telling him never to act in that way. This rule preserves its authority over him, making him incapable of being guilty of such a violent act. If this had been the first time he ever considered such an action, the fury of his resentment might have led him to think that killing his enemy was quite just and proper, something that every impartial spectator would approve of. But his reverence for the rule that past experience has impressed on him holds back the onward rush of his passion. . . . If he does allow himself to be carried by his passion to the point where he will violate this rule, he still can’t entirely throw off the awe and respect with which he has been accustomed to regard it. At the very time of acting, at the moment when passion reaches it highest pitch, he hesitates and trembles at the thought of what he is about to do; he is secretly aware that he is breaking a rule which in all his cool hours he has resolved never to break, which he has never seen broken by others without the highest disapproval ·from himself and from people in general·, and the breaking of which will (he expects) soon render him an object of the same disagreeable sentiments. Before he can make the last fatal decision, he is tormented with all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty, terrified at
- 192. the thought of violating such a sacred rule, and at the same time urged to violate it by the fury of his desires. He keeps wavering. Sometimes he resolves to keep to his principle, and not give way to a passion that could spoil the rest of his life with the horrors of shame and repentance; and then a momentary calm takes possession of his breast. . . . But immediately the passion arises anew and with fresh fury drives him on to perform the action that he had a moment ago resolved to abstain from. Wearied and distracted by this continual indecision, he finally takes the last fatal and irrecoverable step of killing his enemy, doing this from a sort of despair; but doing it with the kind of terror and bewilderment experienced by someone who, flying from an enemy, throws himself over a precipice—thus making his 83 Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality destruction more certain than it would be if he had only his enemy to reckon with. Such are his sentiments even at the time of acting;. . . .and then later, when his passion has been gratified and has calmed down, he begins to see what he has done in the light in which others are apt to see it; and he feels the stings of remorse and repentance beginning to agitate and torment him. Chapter 5: The influence and authority of the general rules of morality, and why they are rightly regarded as the laws of the Deity A person’s regard for those general rules of conduct is his sense of duty, a driver [Smith writes ‘principle’; see note on page 164] of the greatest importance in human life, and the
- 193. only driver that most people have to direct their actions. Many men behave decently, and don’t do anything very wrong all through their lives, yet base their conduct only on a regard for what they see to be the established rules of behaviour. (That means that when we approve of their conduct on the grounds that ‘The sentiment that led him to act was a proper one’, we’re relying on sentiments that such a person never has!) Here is an example: A man has received great benefits from someone else, but because of the natural coldness of his tempera- ment he feels only a small degree of the sentiment of gratitude. But he has been virtuously educated, so that he’ll often have been made to notice how odious ungrateful actions appear and how likeable grateful ones. So, although his heart is not warmed with any grateful affection, he will make an effort to act as if it were, and will try to pay to his benefactor all the regards and attentions that the liveliest gratitude could suggest. [Smith details some of the actions this might involves. Then:] He can do all this without any hypocrisy or blameworthy deceit, without any selfish intention of obtaining new favours, and without any wish to impose on his benefactor or on the public. It may be that these grateful-seeming actions of his arise purely from •his reverence for the established rule of duty, •his serious and earnest wish to behave strictly in accordance with the law of gratitude. And again: A wife doesn’t always feel •the tender regard for her husband that is suitable to their married state. But she has been virtuously educated, and will try to act as if she did feel •it—to be careful, dutiful, faithful, and sincere, and not to fall short in any of the attentions that the sentiment of conjugal affection would (if she
- 194. had it) prompt her to perform. Neither of these people—the friend and the wife—is the best of his or her kind. Both of them have the most se- rious and earnest desire to fulfill every part of their duty, but they will fail in many subtle details of conduct, miss many opportunities of obliging, which they wouldn’t have overlooked if they had had the sentiment that is proper to their situation. Still, without being the very best of their kinds they are perhaps second-best; and if respect for the general rules of conduct has been strongly impressed on them, neither of them will fail in any essential part of their duty. Only people with perfect characters can adjust their sentiments and behaviour so that they stay exactly in tune with the smallest differences in their situation, acting on all occasions with the most delicate and accurate propriety. The coarse clay of which most of us are made can’t be brought to such perfection. But almost any man can, by discipline, education, and example, be so impressed with a respect for general rules that he will act on almost every occasion with tolerable decency, and through the whole of his life avoid 84 Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality doing anything considerably blameworthy. Without •this sacred regard for general rules, no-one’s conduct can be much depended on. •It is what constitutes the most essential difference between a man of principle and honour and a worthless fellow. The man of principle keeps steadily and resolutely to his maxims on all occasions, preserving through the whole of his life one even tenor of
- 195. conduct. [Smith uses ‘tenor’ several times, in a sense that the word still has though it isn’t now much employed. The ‘tenor’ of someone’s conduct is its general style or feel or tone or over-all shape.] The worthless fellow acts variously and accidentally, depending on whether mood, inclination, or self-interest happens to be uppermost. Indeed, men are subject to such variations of mood that without this respect for general rules a man who in all his cool hours was delicately sensitive to the propriety of conduct might often be led to act absurdly on the most trivial occasions, ones in which it was hardly possible to think of any serious motive he could have for behaving in this manner. Your friend visits you when you happen to be in a mood that makes it disagreeable to receive him; in your present mood his civility is apt to appear an impertinent intrusion; and if you gave way to that way of viewing things you would behave toward him with coldness and lack of interest. What makes you incapable of such rudeness is just your respect for the general rules of civility and hospitality, which prohibit it. . . . Now consider: if without regard to these general rules even the duties of politeness, which are so easily observed and which one can hardly have any serious motive to violate, would often be violated, what would become of the duties of justice, truth, chastity, fidelity, which are often hard to observe, and which there can be many strong motives to violate? A reasonable level of observance of these latter duties is required for the very existence of human society, which
- 196. would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct. This reverence is still further enhanced by the belief—first impressed by nature, later confirmed by reasoning and philosophy—that those important rules of morality are the commands and laws of the Deity, who will eventually reward those who obey them and punish those who don’t. Imprinted by nature: Men are naturally led to ascribe all their own sentiments and passions to whatever mysterious beings happen to be the objects of religious fear in their country. They attribute their own sentiments and passions to the gods because they can’t conceive of any others. The unknown intelligences that they imagine but don’t see must have some sort of resemblance to intelligences of which they have experience. During the ignorance and darkness of pagan superstition, mankind seem to have formed the ideas of their divinities so crudely that they ascribed to them, indis- criminately, all the passions of human nature, including the ones that do the least honour to our species—lust, hunger, greed, envy, revenge. So they were bound also to attribute to those beings (for whose excellence they still had the highest admiration) the sentiments and qualities that are the great ornaments of humanity, seeming to raise it to a resemblance of divine perfection—the love of virtue and beneficence, and the hatred of vice and injustice. A man who was harmed by someone else called on Jupiter to be witness of the wrong that had been done to him, and he couldn’t doubt that Jupiter would behold it with the same indignation that fills ·even· the meanest human being who sees injustice being committed. The man who had harmed him felt himself to be a proper object of the detestation and resentment of mankind; 85
- 197. Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality and his natural fears led him to impute the same sentiments to those awe-inspiring ·divine· beings whose presence he couldn’t avoid and whose power he couldn’t resist. These natural hopes and fears and suspicions were propagated by sympathy, and confirmed by education; and the gods were universally represented as, and believed to be, the rewarders of humaneness and mercy and the avengers of treachery and injustice. And so it came about that religion, even in its crudest form, gave support to the rules of morality long before the age of disciplined reasoning and philosophy. It was important for the happiness of mankind that the terrors of religion should in this way enforce the natural sense of duty—too important for nature to let it depend on the slowness and uncertainty of philosophical researches. Confirmed by reasoning and philosophy: When these researches did take place, they confirmed the basic work that nature had done. Whatever we believe about the basis for our moral faculties—•certain work by reason, •a basic instinct called a ‘moral sense’ or •some other source in our nature—it can’t be doubted that those faculties were given to us for the direction of our conduct in this life. They bring with them the most obvious badges of this authority, signifying that they were set up within us •to be the supreme deciders in all our actions, •to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites, and •to judge how far each of them should be indulged or restrained. Some writers have claimed that our moral faculties are in this respect on a level with the other faculties and appetites of our nature, having no more right to restrain these others than the others have to restrain them; but this is completely wrong. No other faculty
- 198. or source of action passes judgment on any other. Love doesn’t judge regarding resentment, nor does resentment judge regarding love. Those two passions may be opposite to one another, but can’t properly be said to ‘approve’ or ‘disapprove’ of one another. Whereas the moral faculties which are my present topic have as their special role the bestowing of censure or applause on all the other drives in our nature. They may be considered as a sort of sense, of which those drives are the objects. Every sense is supreme over its own objects. There is no appeal from the eye with regard to the beauty of colours, or from the ear with regard to the harmony of sounds, or from the sense of taste with regard to the agreeableness of flavours. Each of those senses is the final judge of its own objects. Whatever gratifies the sense of taste is sweet, whatever pleases the eye is beautiful, whatever soothes the ear is harmonious. The very essence of each of those qualities consists in its fitness to please the sense to which it is addressed. Well, the role of our moral faculties is, in the same way, to decide when the ear ought to be soothed, when the eye ought to be indulged, when the sense of taste ought to be gratified, when and to what extent any other drive in our nature ought to be indulged or restrained. Whatever is agreeable to our moral faculties is fit, right, and proper to be done; whatever is disagreeable to them is wrong, unfit, and improper. The sentiments that they approve of are graceful and appropriate, the ones they disapprove of are ungraceful and inappropriate. The whole meaning of the words ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘fit’, ‘improper’, ‘graceful’, ‘inappropriate’ etc. has to do only with what pleases or displeases those faculties. Since these faculties were plainly intended to be the gov- erning drives in human nature, the rules that they prescribe should be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, passed on to us by the deputies that he has set up within us. All general rules are commonly called ‘laws’—e.g. the general
- 199. rules that bodies conform to in collisions are called the ‘laws of motion’. But the label ‘laws’ is much more suitable for the general rules that our moral faculties conform to in approving or condemning sentiments or actions. Those 86 Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality rules are much more like laws properly so called, namely the general rules that a sovereign lays down to direct the conduct of his subjects. Like them, moral rules •are rules to direct the free actions of men, •are prescribed most surely by a lawful superior, and •are associated with rewards and punishments. [The middle one of those three is exactly as Smith wrote it.] God’s deputies within us always punish any violation of the rules that our moral faculties lay down, by the torments of inward shame and self-condemnation; and they always reward obedi- ence with tranquillity of mind, contentment, self-satisfaction. There are countless other considerations that confirm this conclusion. ·Here is a two-premise argument for it·: •The happiness of mankind and of all other rational creatures seems to have been the original purpose of the Author of nature when he brought them into existence. No other end seems worthy of the supreme wisdom and divine benevolence that we necessarily ascribe to him; and
- 200. this opinion that we are led to by abstract thought about his infinite perfections is further confirmed when we consider the works of nature, which all seem to be intended to promote happiness and guard against misery. •In acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue the most efficient means for promoting the happiness of mankind. Therefore: •When we act in accordance with the dictates of our moral faculties, we are in a sense co-operating with the Deity and advancing as far as we can the plan of Providence. And, by a comparable argument, when we defy the dictates of our moral faculties we seem to obstruct somewhat the scheme that the Author of nature has established for the happiness and perfection of the world, and to declare our- selves to be in some measure the enemies of God. So we are naturally encouraged to hope for his extraordinary favour and reward in the one case, and to fear his vengeance and punishment in the other. There are many other reasons. . . .tending to confirm and teach the same salutary doctrine. Consider the general rules by which external prosperity and adversity are commonly distributed in this life. If you do, you’ll find—despite the disorder that everything seems to be in—that even here in this world every virtue naturally gets its proper reward, the one that is most fit to encourage and promote it; and it’s only when there’s a very unusual combination of factors that virtuous behaviour goes entirely unrewarded. •What reward is best for encouraging hard work, prudence, and reasonable caution? Success in every sort of business. And
- 201. is it possible that someone with these virtues should go through his whole life without any such success? Wealth and external honours are the proper reward for those virtues, and they nearly always produce it. •What reward is best for promoting the practice of truth, justice, and humaneness? The confidence, respect, and love of those we live with. Humaneness doesn’t want to be great; it wants to be beloved. Truth and justice don’t rejoice in being wealthy but in being believed and trusted, and those are rewards that those virtues must almost always acquire. A good man may by some extraordinary and unlucky circumstances come to be suspected of a crime of which he is entirely incapable, and on that account be unjustly exposed for the rest of his life to the horror and aversion of mankind. By an accident of this kind he may be said to lose his all, despite his integrity and justice; just as a cautious and prudent man may be ruined by an earthquake or a flood. Accidents of the first (unjust life-long suspicion) kind are perhaps even rarer—more contrary to the 87 Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality general run of events—than those of the second (earthquake or flood); and it’s still true that the practice of truth, justice, and humanity is an almost infallible method of acquiring what those virtues chiefly aim at, namely the confidence and love of those we live with. [Smith points out that an unjust suspicion will be less likely to stick if the victim of it is known to be in general a good man, and makes similar remarks about the chances of someone’s getting away with a bad action if he habitually behaves badly.] So the general rules by which prosperity and adversity
- 202. are commonly distributed, when considered in this cool and philosophical light, appear to be perfectly suited to the situation of mankind in this life; but they are by no means suited to some of our natural sentiments. •We have so much natural love and admiration for some virtues that we would like them to be rewarded with all sorts of honours and rewards, including ones that we know to be proper rewards for other qualities that don’t always accompany the virtues in question. Magnanimity, generosity, and justice command so much admiration that we want to see them crowned with wealth, power, honours of every kind, these rewards being the natural consequences of prudence, hard work, and persistence—qualities that don’t necessarily accompany magnanimity etc. •And we loathe some vices so much that we would like to heap onto them every sort of disgrace and disaster, including ones that are the natural consequences of different qualities. Fraud, falsehood, brutality, and violence arouse in every human breast such scorn and hatred that our indignation flares up when we see them possess advan- tages that they may in some sense be said to have merited by the diligence and hard work with which they are sometimes attended. The hard-working knave cultivates the soil; the lazy good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to reap the harvest? which of them should starve, and which should live in plenty? The natural course of things decides this in favour of the knave; the natural sentiments of mankind decide in favour of the man of virtue. We judge that the good qualities of the knave are greatly overpaid by the advantages that they tend to bring him, and that the omissions of the good man are much too severely punished by the distress that they naturally bring on him. And human laws, which are
- 203. consequences of human sentiments, take the life and the estate of the hard-working and careful •traitor, and provide extraordinary rewards for the fidelity and public spirit of the imprudent and careless •good citizen. ·I have stated this in terms of •Nature versus •human sentiments, but of course those sentiments are themselves parts of Nature·. So what is happening here is that man is directed by •Nature to correct somewhat the distribution of things that •she herself would otherwise have made. The rules she prompts him to follow for this purpose are different from the ones that she herself observes. She bestows on every virtue (and every vice) the precise reward (or punishment) that is best fitted to encourage (or restrain) it. That is all she aims to do; she doesn’t attend to the different degrees of merit (or demerit) that actions seem to have when viewed from the standpoint of human sentiments and passions. Man, on the other hand, attends only to this; he would like every virtue (or vice) to be rewarded (or punished) to a degree that exactly matches the degree of love and esteem (or contempt and abhorrence) that he himself has for it. The rules that Nature follows are fit for her, and those that man follows are fit for him; but both are calculated to promote the same great end, the order of the world and the perfection and happiness of human nature. In his work of altering the distribution of things that nat- ural events would make if they were left to themselves, man 88 Smith on Moral Sentiments General rules of morality is like the gods of the poets: he is perpetually intervening by extraordinary means in favour of virtue and in opposition to vice, trying to turn away the arrow aimed at the head of the
- 204. righteous and to accelerate the sword of destruction lifted up against the wicked. But he can’t make the fortune of either the righteous or the wicked perfectly suitable to his own sentiments and wishes. •The natural course of events can’t be entirely controlled by man’s weak endeavours; the current is too rapid and too strong for him to stop it; and though the ·natural· rules that direct •it seem to have been established for the wisest and best purposes, they sometimes produce effects that shock all man’s natural sentiments. These rules: •A large body of men will prevail over a small one, •Those who launch a project with forethought and all necessary preparation will prevail over those who oppose them without any forethought or preparation; ·are special cases of the more general rule, which is my present topic·, •No end can be achieved except by means that Nature has established for achieving it. This rule seems to be not only necessary and unavoidable in itself, but even useful for getting men to pay attention and get to work. But when as a result of this rule violence and trickery prevail over sincerity and justice, what indignation it arouses in the breast of every human spectator! What sorrow and compassion for the sufferings of the innocent, and what furious resentment against the success of the oppressor! We are equally •grieved and •enraged at the wrong that is done, but we often find that we have no power to set it right. When this happens—when we despair of finding any force on earth that can check the triumph of injustice—we naturally appeal to heaven, in the hope that in the after-life the great Author of our nature •will himself carry out the things that we have tried to carry out in this life under prompting by
- 205. the principles that he has given us for the direction of our conduct; •will complete the plan that he has taught us to begin; and •will treat each person according to the works he has performed in this world. And so we are led to believe in a future state not only by the weaknesses of human nature and its hopes and fears, but also by the noblest and best action-drivers that it has—the love of virtue and hatred of vice and injustice. . . . When the general rules that determine the merit and demerit of actions come in this way to be regarded as the •laws of an all-powerful Being who watches over our conduct and who will in a life to come reward the observance of •them and punish the breach of •them, this endows them with a new sacredness. Nobody who believes that there is a Deity can doubt that the supreme rule of our conduct ought to be respect for the will of the Deity. The very thought of disobedience seems to have the most shocking wrongness built into it. How pointless and absurd it would be for man to oppose or neglect the commands laid on him by ·God’s· infinite wisdom and infinite power. How unnatural, how impiously ungrateful, not to reverence the laws that were prescribed to him by the infinite goodness of his Creator, even if there weren’t to be any punishment for violating them. The sense of propriety is also backed by the strongest motives of self-interest. The idea that. . . .we are always acting under the eye of God, always exposed to the punishments of that great avenger of injustice, is a motive capable of restraining the most headstrong passions in anyone who has constantly thought about divine punishment and thus become familiar with the idea of it. That is how religion reinforces the natural sense of duty; and it’s the reason why mankind are generally disposed to trust the honesty of those who seem deeply impressed with religious sentiments. . . . Mankind assume that the religious
- 206. 89 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty man is influenced as everyone else is by •a concern for the propriety of action, •a concern for reputation, and •a desire for the applause of his own breast as well as for the applause of others, but they think that the religious man is subject to another restraint as well, and never knowingly does anything that he wouldn’t do in the presence of ·God·, that great superior who will eventually reward or punish him according to his deeds. . . . People undoubtedly judge rightly on this matter, and are right to place a double confidence in the rightness of the religious man’s behaviour in any context where the first duty that religion requires is to fulfill all the obligations of morality. But this extra confidence of theirs is not justified in any context where •the natural principles of religion are corrupted by the quarrelsome and partisan zeal of some worthless clique or sect, or where •men are taught to regard trivial ceremonies as more immediate duties of religion than acts of justice and beneficence, and to imagine that by sacrifices and ceremonies and pointless begging they can bargain with the Deity for ·permission to engage in· fraud, perfidy, and violence! Chapter 6: When should the sense of duty be the sole driver of our conduct? and when should it co-operate with other motives? Religion provides such strong motives for the practice of
- 207. virtue, and guards us by such powerful restraints from the temptations of vice, that many writers have thought that religious principles are the sole praiseworthy motives for action. Their view has been this: We ought not to reward from •gratitude or punish from •resentment; and we ought not to protect the helpless- ness of our children, or support the infirmities of our parents, from •natural affection. We should cleanse our breasts of all affections for particular objects, replacing them by one great affection, namely the love of God, the desire •to make ourselves agreeable to him and •to direct every detail of our conduct according to his will. We ought not to be grateful from gratitude, charitable from humaneness, public-spirited from the love of our country, or generous and just from the love of mankind. The sole driver and motive of our conduct in performing all those duties ought to be a sense that God has commanded us to perform them. I shan’t stop now to examine this position in detail, and will only remark that it’s surprising to find it accepted by any sect who claim to belong to a religion in which, after the first precept, •to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength, has as its second precept •to love our neighbour as we love ourselves—because we love ourselves, surely, for our own sakes and not merely because we are commanded to do so! Christianity doesn’t teach that the sense of duty should be the only driver of our conduct, but only that it should be the dominant one, which is also said by philosophy and indeed by common sense. Still, questions can arise about what distinguishes •cases where our actions ought to arise chiefly or entirely from a sense of duty or regard to general rules from •cases where some other sentiment or affection ought to join in and have
- 208. a principal influence. This distinction (which perhaps can’t be made very pre- cise) depends on two things: (1) the natural agreeableness or ugliness of the sentiment or affection that would prompt us to act without any regard for general rules; and (2) the precision and exactness, or the looseness and imprecision, of the general rules themselves. 90 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty (1) I repeat, how far our actions ought to arise from a given affection rather than being based entirely on regard for a general rule depends on the natural agreeableness or ugliness of the affection itself. All the graceful and admired actions to which the benevo- lent affections would prompt us ought to be based as much on the passions themselves as on any concern with general rules of conduct. A benefactor will think he has been poorly repaid if the beneficiary, in acknowledging the help he has been given, is acting merely from a cold sense of duty, with no affection towards the benefactor personally. A husband is dissatisfied with the most obedient wife when he imagines that her conduct is driven by nothing except her regard for what the marriage relation requires. A parent whose son, though not failing in any part of filial duty, isn’t acting from the affectionate reverence that would be so appropriate, can fairly complain of his indifference. And a son couldn’t be quite satisfied with a parent who, while performing all the duties of his ·parental· situation, has none of the fatherly fondness that might have been expected from him. With
- 209. regard to all such benevolent and social affections, it is agreeable to see the sense of duty coming into play as a restraint rather than as a driver, •stopping us from doing too much rather than to •prompting us to do what we ought. It gives us pleasure to see a father obliged to restrain his own fondness, a friend obliged to set limits to his natural generosity, a person who has received a benefit obliged to restrain the naively enthusiastic gratitude arising from his own frame of mind. When it comes to the malevolent and unsocial passions the contrary maxim holds. Whereas we ought to reward from the gratitude and generosity of our own hearts, without reluctance and without being obliged to think about how right rewarding is, we ought always to punish with reluctance, more from a sense of the rightness of punishing than from any savage disposi- tion to get revenge. Nothing is more graceful than the behaviour of someone who seems to resent the greatest injuries more from a sense that they deserve resentment, are proper objects of it, than from himself feeling the furies of that disagreeable passion. That is someone •who (like a judge) considers only the general rule that settles what vengeance is due for each particular offence; •who in acting on that rule feels less for what he has suffered than for what the offender is going to suffer; •who, though he is angry, remembers mercy and is disposed to interpret the rule in the gentlest and most merciful way that fair-minded humaneness could permit, consistently with good sense. I remarked at the start of I.ii.5 [page 22] that the selfish
- 210. passions occupy a sort of middle place, between the social affections and the unsocial ones. They’re in the middle in our present context also. In all small and ordinary cases the pursuit of objects of individual self-interest ought to flow from a regard for the general rules that prescribe such conduct, rather than from any passion for the objects themselves. Even the most ordinary tradesman would be lowered in the opinion of his neighbours if he earnestly plotted to gain or to save a shilling. However poor he is, he shouldn’t let his conduct express any attention to any such small matters for the sake of the things themselves. His situation may require him to be severely economical and carefully exact about money, but each particular exercise of that economy and care must come not so much from •a concern for that particular saving or gain as from •respect for the general rule that rigorously commands such a tenor of conduct. His parsimony today mustn’t come from a desire 91 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty for the particular threepence that he will save by it; and his attendance in his shop mustn’t come from a passion for the particular tenpence he will acquire by it. Rather, both of these ought to come purely from a regard for the general rule, which prescribes with unrelenting severity this plan of conduct to every tradesman. That is how the character of a •miser differs from the character of a •person who works hard and is careful with money. •One is anxious about small matters for their own sake; •the other attends to them only in consequence of the scheme of life that he has laid down to himself.
- 211. It is quite otherwise with regard to the more extraordi- nary and important objects of self-interest. A person who doesn’t pursue these with some earnestness for their own sake appears mean-spirited. We would despise a prince who wasn’t anxious about conquering or defending a province. We would have little respect for a private gentleman who didn’t make an effort to gain an estate or a considerable position in government, when he could get them without doing anything mean or wrong. A member of parliament who shows no keenness about getting re-elected is abandoned by his friends as altogether unworthy of their support. Even a tradesman is thought a poor-spirited fellow among his neighbours if he doesn’t bestir himself to get a special job or some uncommon advantage. This spirit and keenness constitutes the difference between an enterprising man and a dully regular one. . . . (2) I also repeat: how far our actions ought to arise from a given affection rather than being based entirely on regard for a general rule will depend partly on what the relevant general rule is like—where it comes on the scale from •precise and exact through to •loose and imprecise. The general rules of most of the virtues—the rules that fix how we are to behave in matters of prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, friendship—are in many respects loose and imprecise, admitting of so many exceptions and needing so many riders and qualifications that it’s hardly possible to regulate our conduct entirely in terms of them. Because the common proverbial maxims of •prudence are based on everyone’s experience, they are perhaps the best general rules that can be given about •it. But it would be obvious and ridiculous pedantry to make a show of strictly and literally abiding by them. Of the virtues I have just listed, gratitude may be the one whose rules are the most precise and admit
- 212. of the fewest exceptions. Thus: As soon as we can, we should give to our benefactor something that is at least as valuable as what he has given us —that seems to be a pretty plain rule, and one that admits of hardly any exceptions. But look into this rule just a little and you’ll see that it is extremely loose and imprecise, and admits of ten thousand exceptions. If your benefactor attended you in your sickness, ought you to attend him in his? or can you fulfill the obligation of gratitude by repaying him in some other way? If you ought to attend him, for how long ought you to do so? For the same time that he attended you, or longer, and how much longer? If your friend lent you money in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his? How much ought you to lend him? When ought you to lend it to him? Now, or tomorrow, or next month? And for how long a time? Obviously no general rule can be laid down that will give a precise answer to any of these questions. The difference between his character and yours, between his circumstances and yours, may be such that this could be the case: He lends you money, for which you are perfectly grateful; you refuse to lend him a halfpenny; and you are quite right to do so; 92 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty or this: He lends you money; you are willing to lend or even to
- 213. give him ten times as much as he lent you; and this shows you to be guilty of the blackest ingratitude, not having fulfilled the hundredth part of your obligation to him. Yet the general rules governing the duties of gratitude—which may be the most sacred of all the duties that the beneficent virtues prescribe to us—are the most precise. The rules setting out the actions required by friendship, humaneness, hospitality, generosity, are even more vague and indetermi- nate. But there is one virtue whose general rules determine with the greatest exactness every action that it requires. This virtue is justice. The rules of justice are enormously precise, and don’t allow for any exceptions or modifications other than ones that can be ascertained as precisely as the rules themselves (in fact most of them follow from the same principles as the rules of justice do). If I owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that I should pay him precisely ten pounds, either at the time agreed on or when he demands it. What I ought to perform, how much I ought to perform, when and where I ought to perform it, the whole nature and circumstances of the action prescribed, are all precisely fixed and determined. It may be clumsy and pedantic to make a show of too strictly keeping to the common rules of prudence or generosity, but no pedantry is involved in holding firmly to the rules of justice. Quite the contrary! The most sacred respect is due to them; and the actions that justice requires are most properly performed when the chief motive for performing them is a reverential and religious respect for the general rules that require them. In the exercise of any of the other virtues, our conduct should be directed by a certain idea of rightness, a certain taste for a particular tenor of conduct, rather than by obedience
- 214. to a precise maxim or rule; and ·when a rule does come into it·, we should attend less to •the rule itself than to •what it is for and •what it is based on. But that’s not how things stand with justice. Faced with the question ‘What does justice require me to do in this situation?’, the man who does •least in the way of hair-splitting and who adheres with the •most obstinate steadfastness to the general rules of justice themselves is the •most commendable man and the one who can •most be depended on. What the rules of justice are for is to stop us from harming our neighbour; but it can often be a crime to break them in cases where we could make some sort of case for the view that this particular breach couldn’t harm anyone. A man often becomes a villain the moment he begins, even in his own heart, to chicane in this manner [i.e. to engage in tricky, hair-splitting, special pleading]. The moment he thinks of departing from the most staunch and positive adherence to what those unbreakable rules tell him to do, he is no longer to be trusted, and there’s no telling how far down the path of guilt he may go. The thief imagines that he does nothing wrong when he steals from the rich, stealing things that (he supposes) they can easily do without, things that they may indeed never even know to have been stolen from them. The adulterer imagines that he does nothing wrong when he corrupts his friend’s wife, provided he hides his affair from the suspicion of the husband and doesn’t disturb the peace of the family. Once we begin to give way to such subtleties, there is no wickedness so gross that we couldn’t be capable of it. We can compare •the rules of justice to the •rules of grammar, and compare the •rules of the other virtues to the •rules that critics lay down for achieving sublimity and elegance in writing. One lot of rules are precise, detailed, and indispensable. The other lot are loose, vague, and
- 215. 93 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty indeterminate, and give us only a general idea of the perfec- tion we ought to aim at, rather than giving us any certain and infallible directions for achieving it. . . . It can happen that we seriously and earnestly want to act so as to deserve approval, but mistake the proper rules of conduct and are thus misled by the very principle that ought to direct us. ·Although our conduct here is in a way conscientious·, it’s no use expecting people entirely to approve of our behaviour. They can’t enter into the absurd idea of duty that influenced us, or go along with any of the actions that followed from it. But there is something respectworthy in the character and behaviour of someone who is in this way betrayed into vice by a wrong sense of duty, or by what is called ‘an erroneous conscience’. However bad the upshot of his mistake, generous and humane people will view him more with pity than with hatred or resentment. They will lament the weakness of human nature, which exposes us to such unfortunate delusions even while we are •sincerely working to achieve perfection and •trying to act in accordance with the best principle that can possibly direct us. What causes such gross perversions of our natural sentiments? The culprit is nearly always some false notion of religion. ·There is a reason for that·: the source of the greatest authority of the rules of duty is the only one that can distort our ideas of them to any considerable extent. In all other cases common sense is sufficient to direct us to something that is not far from the most exact rightness of conduct; and as long as we earnestly want to do well, our behaviour will always be praiseworthy on the whole.
- 216. Everyone agrees that the first rule of duty is to obey the will of God. But when it comes to the specific commandments that God’s will may impose on us, men differ widely from one another. So this is a matter requiring the greatest restraint and mutual toleration; and although the defence of society requires that crimes should be punished, whatever the motives for them were, •a good man will always punish them reluctantly when they have clearly come from false notions of religious duty. •He will regret and sometimes even admire the unfortunate firmness and conscientiousness ·of the deluded criminals· at the very time that he punishes their crime; he won’t have against them the indignation that he feels against other criminals. In Voltaire’s fine tragedy Mahomet [full title: Mahomet, or Fanaticism] there is a good presentation of what ought to be our sentiments for crimes that come from such motives. (This is one of the most interesting spectacles that was ever presented on any stage, and perhaps the most instructive one.) In Voltaire’s tragedy two innocent and virtuous young people. . . .are driven by the strongest motives of a false religion to commit a horrible murder, one that shocks all the principles of human nature. A venerable old man is pointed out to them as a sacrifice that God has explicitly demanded from them, and they are ordered to kill him. (The old man has expressed the most tender affection for them both; they have both felt the highest reverence and esteem for him, although he is an open enemy of their religion; and he is their father, though they don’t know this—they don’t even know that they are brother and sister.) Facing the prospect of committing this crime, they are tortured with all the agonies that can arise from the struggle between •the idea of the indispensableness of religious duty on one side and
- 217. •compassion, gratitude, reverence for the age, and love for the humanity and virtue of the person they are going to destroy on the other. But the sense of duty eventually prevails over all the likeable weaknesses of human nature. They carry out the crime that was demanded of them, then immediately 94 Smith on Moral Sentiments Sense of duty learn their error and the fraud that had deceived them, and are driven wild with horror, remorse, and resentment. The way we do feel towards this unhappy pair is how we ought to feel for anyone who is in this manner misled by religion—provided we are sure that it really is religion that misleads him, and not the pretence of it that has been used to cover some of the worst human passions. Just as a person may act wrongly by following a wrong sense of duty, so nature may lead him to act rightly in opposition to such a wrong sense. When this happens, we can’t be unpleased to see the victory go to the motive that we think ought to prevail, though the person himself is so misguided as to think otherwise. But because his conduct is an effect of weakness and not of principle, we are far from giving it our complete approval. [Smith wrote ‘so weak as to think otherwise’, but this was surely a slip. The phrase ‘an effect of weakness’ is all right; it can refer to the person’s ‘weakness’
- 218. in not doing what he thinks to be his duty.] Take the case of a bigoted Roman Catholic who is present at the massacre of St Bartholomew, and is so overcome by compassion that he saves some unhappy Protestants whom he thinks it his duty to destroy. He doesn’t seem to be entitled to the high applause that we would have given him if he had exerted that same generosity with complete self-approval. We might be pleased with the humaneness of his feelings, but we would still regard him with a sort of •pity that is flatly inconsistent with the •admiration that is owed to perfect virtue. It’s the same case with all the other passions. We don’t dislike seeing them lead the person to behave rightly, even when his false notion of duty directs him to restrain them. Suppose that a devout Quaker is struck on one cheek and instead of turning up the other he so completely forgets his literal interpretation of our Saviour’s precept and bestows some good discipline on the brute who hit him. We wouldn’t find this disagreeable! We would laugh and enjoy his spirit, liking him all the better because of it. But we wouldn’t regard him with anything close to the respect and esteem that would seem to be owing to someone who on such an occasion had acted rightly from a just sense of what was the right thing to do. No action can properly be called virtuous unless it is accompanied with the sentiment of self-approval. 95 Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art Part IV: The effect of utility on the sentiment of approval Chapter 1: The beauty that the appearance of utility gives to all the productions of art, and the
- 219. widespread influence of this type of beauty Everyone who has thought hard about what constitutes the nature of beauty has seen that one of its principal sources is utility. Someone looking over a house gets pleasure from its convenience as well as from its ·formal· regularity [and, Smith adds with a rather obscure example, he is as much displeased when he sees features of the house that interfere with its function as when he sees features that are aesthetically displeasing. Then:] The fitness of any system or machine to produce the end for which it was intended confers a certain rightness and beauty on the whole thing, making it a pleasure to think about—and this is so obvious that nobody has overlooked it. Why is utility so pleasing? This has been answered by Hume [whom Smith doesn’t name, but identifies through a series of compliments to his thought and writing]. According to him, a thing’s utility pleases its owner by continually suggesting to him the pleasure or convenience that it is fitted to promote. Every time he looks at it he is reminded of this pleasure, so that the object in question becomes a source of continual satisfaction and enjoyment. The spectator’s sympathy leads him to have the sentiments of the owner, making him view the object in that same agreeable light. When we visit the palaces of the great, we can’t help feeling the satisfaction that we would enjoy if we were the owners of so much ingeniously contrived accommodation. And he gives a similar account of why the appearance of inconvenience should make an object disagreeable to the owner and to the spectator. But there’s another fact ·about utility and beauty· that hasn’t previously been noticed by anyone, so far as I know. It is this:
- 220. An artifact’s being skillfully designed so as to be suitable for some purpose is often valued more than is the purpose itself; exact adjustment of the means for attaining some convenience or pleasure is often valued more highly than the convenience or pleasure itself, though they would seem to be the sole source of the artifact’s merit. Although this phenomenon hasn’t been noticed before, it is quite common, and can be observed in a thousand instances, both in the most trivial and in the most important concerns of human life. A man comes into his chamber and finds the chairs all standing in the middle of the room; he is angry with his servant; and rather than see the chairs stay there he takes the trouble himself to put them all in their proper places with their backs to the wall. The whole propriety of this new state of affairs comes from its greater convenience in leaving the floor free and disengaged. To get this convenience he gives himself more trouble than he could have suffered from the lack of it; because he could easily have sat down on one of the chairs, which is probably what he does when his work is finished. So it seems that what he wanted was not so much •this convenience as •an arrangement of things that promotes it. Yet this convenience is what ultimately recommends that arrangement, giving it all its propriety and beauty. Another example: A watch that loses two minutes a day is despised by its owner, who cares about watches. He sells 96
- 221. Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art it for a couple of guineas and spends fifty guineas on a new watch that won’t lose more than thirty seconds a week. Now, the only use of watches is to tell us what the time is, to save us from missing an appointment or suffering some other inconvenience through not knowing the time; but the person who is so choosy about his watch won’t always be found to be more scrupulously punctual than other men, or more anxiously concerned for any other reason to know precisely what time of day it is. What interests him is not so much •the acquiring of this piece of knowledge as •the perfection of the machine that enables him to acquire it. It’s common for people to ruin themselves by spending money on trinkets that are useful in some trivial way. What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much •the use they make of their little machines as •the machines’ fitness to be used. Their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences; they have new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number ·of ‘useful’ gad- gets·. They walk around about loaded with a multitude of baubles,. . . .some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be well done without. The whole use that is made of them is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden! And it’s not only with regard to such trivial objects that our conduct is influenced by this motive—·this liking for things because of what they could do, without much interest in having them actual do those things·. It is often the secret motive of very serious and important pursuits in both private and public life. Consider the case of a poor man’s son whom heaven in its anger has infected with ambition. When he begins to look
- 222. around him, he admires the condition of the rich. [Smith goes into details: the convenience of larger home, the ease of riding on horseback and of having servants to do everything, and so on; and his idea that with all these conveniences of wealth he would be contentedly idle. Then:] He devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To get the conveniences that these provide, he works, giving himself in the first year—indeed in the first month—of his work more fatigue of body and more anxiety of mind than he would have suffered through the whole of his life from the lack of wealth. He works to distinguish himself in some laborious profession, labouring night and day to acquire talents superior to those of his competitors. He then tries to bring those talents into public view, taking every chance to get employment. For this purpose he makes himself pleasant to everyone, serves people whom he hates, and is deferential to people he despises. Throughout his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose •which he may never arrive at, •for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is always in his power, and •which, if in old age he at last achieves it, he will find to be in no way preferable to the humble security and contentment that he had gave up in order to pursue wealth and greatness. Then. . . .he will start to learn that wealth and greatness are only trivially useful, mere trinkets, no more fit for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys; and, also like them, giving trouble to the person who carries them around with him that far outweighs any advantages they can provide him with. [Smith develops this comparison at great length. The useful little ‘toys’, he says, may actually be as useful as a grand house or a retinue of servants, he says, but the owner of the ‘toys’ won’t be admired and envied as much as the owner of the things that wealth and greatness procure. The only real advantage of the latter is the attitude of other people to the wealthy great man. But that (Smith continues) throws
- 223. our attention onto the admiring spectators: why do they so much admire the condition of the wealthy man? It’s not that 97 Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art they think he is happier than other people; the object of their admiration is the wealthy man’s ownership of so many things that are fitted to produce ease and happiness. Having thus brought the wheel full circle, Smith returns to the state of the wealthy man in old age:] In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly pines for the ease and idleness of youth, pleasures that are gone for ever, having been foolishly sacrificed for something that can’t give him real satisfaction now that he has it. That’s how things look to every wealthy man who is led by depression or disease to attend to his own situation and to think about why he is actually so unhappy. Power and riches appear then to be what they actually are. . . . They are immense structures •which it takes a lifetime’s work to build, •which are constantly threatening to ·collapse and· overwhelm the person who lives in them, and •which, while they stand, may save him from some smaller inconveniences but can’t protect him from any of the severer harshnesses of the season. They keep off the summer shower (·to continue the metaphor·) but not the winter storm. They always leave the rich man as much—sometimes even more—exposed to anxiety, fear, and sorrow; to diseases, danger, and death.
- 224. Any of us when ill or depressed may have this view of things, entirely depreciating the great objects of human desire; but when we’re in better health and a better mood we always see them in a more favourable light. When we are in pain and sorrow our imagination seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, but in times of ease and prosperity it expands itself to everything around us. Then we are charmed by the beauty of the accommodation that palaces provide, and the living arrangements of the great; and we admire how everything is fitted to promoting their ease, anticipating their wants, gratifying their wishes, and entertaining their most trivial desires. If we take the real satisfaction that any of these things is capable providing, and consider it in itself, independently of the beauty of the arrangement that is fitted to promote it, it will always appear to be enormously negligible and trivial. But we don’t often look at it in this abstract and philosophical way. We naturally run it together it in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement, of the system or machine. . . .that produces it. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, the attainment of which is well worth all the toil and anxiety that we are so apt to bestow on it. [By ‘this complex view’ Smith means the way of looking at the thing that runs together •the thing’s fitness to produce a certain result and •the pleasures of that result.] [From here to the end of this chapter, Smith goes on at undue length about matters that aren’t central to his announced main topic in the chapter. That material won’t be much abbreviated here, because
- 225. it’s a notable precursor of ideas that Smith was to present 17 years later in The Wealth of Nations, widely regarded as the first work in theoretical economics. We find here the phrase ‘invisible hand’, which was made famous by the later work.] It’s just as well that nature deceives us in this way. This deception is what starts men working and keeps them at it. It is what first prompted men to cultivate the soil, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts that make human life noble and glorious, having entirely changed the whole face of the globe, turning the nature’s primitive forests into agreeable and fertile plains, and making the trackless and barren ocean a new source of food and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth. These human labours have required the earth to redouble her natural fertility, and to maintain a greater 98 Smith on Moral Sentiments The beauty of works of art number of inhabitants. The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields and—without a thought for the wants of anyone else—imaginatively consumes himself the whole harvest that grows on them; but what of it? The
- 226. homely and common proverb The eye is larger than the belly is exactly true of this landlord. The capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the vastness of his desires, and won’t receive any more food than does the stomach of the lowest peasant. He has to distribute the rest among •those who elegantly prepare the little that he himself makes use of, •those who manage the palace in which this little is to be consumed, and •those who provide and service all the baubles and trinkets that have a role in the great man’s way of life. [Smith isn’t talking about the great man’s tweezers and nail- clippers! He is implying, through a metaphor, that a carriage and a grand kitchen and servants’ uniforms etc. are—from a serious and mature point of view—on a par with such ‘baubles and trinkets’.] Thus, all these people get •through his luxury and caprice the share of the necessities of life that they would never have received •through his humaneness or his justice. The produce of the soil always maintains just about as many inhabitants as it is capable of maintaining. All the rich do is to select from the heap the most precious and agreeable portions. They consume little more than the poor; and in spite of their natural selfishness and greed, and despite the fact that they are guided only by their own convenience, and all they want to get from the labours of their thousands
- 227. of employees is the gratification of their own empty and insatiable desires, they do share with the poor the produce of all their improve- ments [meaning: their well-cultivated land, their up-to-date ploughs, their state of the art milking sheds, etc.]. They are led by an invisible hand to share out life’s necessities in just about the same way that they would have been shared out if the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants. And so without intending it, without knowing it, they advance the interests of the society ·as a whole·, and provide means for the survival of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it didn’t forget or abandon those who seemed to have been left out in the distribution—these too enjoy their share of all that the earth produces. In terms of the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who seem to be so far above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly on a level; the beggar sitting in the sun beside the highway has the security that kings fight for. ·There are also other motivations that lead to conduct serving the public good although they don’t involve any thought of doing such a thing·. Institutions that tend to promote the public welfare often arise not from a wish for that but from a love of system, a regard for the beauty of order, of art and contrivance. [In Smith’s day any activity could be called an ‘art’ if it involved general techniques needing skill to implement. So clock- making and plumbing would be ‘arts’. The arts in our narrower sense of
- 228. the word are specifically referred to on page 113 as ‘the superior arts’ and on page 131 as ‘the liberal and ingenious arts’.] When a patriot makes efforts to improve any part of the nation’s public life, his conduct doesn’t always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to get the benefit of it. When a public-spirited man encourages the mending of highways, it’s not usually from a fellow-feeling with those who earn their living driving carts or carriages. When a legislature establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance the manufacture of linen or woollen garments, its conduct seldom comes from pure sympathy with the wearer of cheap 99 Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility or fine cloth, let alone sympathy with the manufacturer or merchant. The perfection of policy, the extension of trade and manufacturing, are noble and magnificent objectives. The thought of them pleases us, and we have a concern with anything that can tend to advance them. They are part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to turn more smoothly by means of them. We do take pleasure in seeing the perfection of such a beautiful and grand system, and we’re uneasy until we can remove anything that might in any way disturb or overload the regularity of its motions. But no constitution of government is valued except in proportion as it tends to promote the happiness of those who live under it. That is its sole use and end—·it’s all it does and all it is for·. And yet we have certain spirit of system, a certain love of art and
- 229. contrivance, that leads us sometimes to seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures not so much from •any immediate sense of what they either suffer or enjoy as from •a desire to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly ·political· system. Some public-spirited men have shown themselves to be in other respects not very sensitive to the feelings of humaneness. And there have been men of the greatest humaneness who seem to have been entirely devoid of public spirit. You’ll probably find in the circle of your acquaintance instances both these kinds. . . . If you want to implant public virtue in the breast of someone who seems not to care about his country’s interests, it will often be no use telling him about the advantages people get from living in a well-governed state—that they are better housed, better clothed, better fed. These considerations make no great impression on many people. You’ll have a better chance of persuading your man if you describe the great system of public policy that procures these advantages, if you explain the inter-connections of its various parts, the subordination of some of them to others, and the subservience of all of them to the happiness of the society; if you show •how this system might be introduced into his own country, •what is obstructing it from existing there at present, •how those obstructions might be removed, and all the wheels of the machine of government be made to move with more harmony and smoothness, without grating on one another or retarding one another’s motions. It’s hardly possible that someone should listen to all that without feeling some degree of public spirit coming to life within him. He will, at least for the moment, feel some desire
- 230. to remove those obstructions and to put into motion that beautiful and orderly machine. Nothing tends to promote public spirit as much as the study of politics does—the study of •the various systems of civil government, their advantages and disadvantages, of •the constitution of our own country, its situation and interests in relation to foreign nations, its commerce, its defence, the disadvantages it struggles with, the dangers to which it may be exposed, how to remove the disadvantages and guard against the dangers. . . . Chapter 2: How the characters and actions of men are made beautiful by their appearance of utility. Is our perception of this beauty one of the basic sources of approval? The characters of men, as well as the institutions of civil government that they construct, can be fit to promote or to disturb the happiness of individuals and of the society. The prudent, equitable, active, resolute, and sober character promises prosperity and satisfaction to the person himself and to everyone connected with him. The rash, insolent, 100 Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility slothful, effeminate, and voluptuous character points to ruin for the individual and misfortune for everyone who has anything to do with him. The first turn of mind has at least all the beauty that can belong to the most perfect machine that was ever invented for promoting the most agreeable purpose; and the second has all the ugliness [Smith: ‘deformity’; see note on page 8] of the most awkward and
- 231. clumsy contraption. What other •institution of government could have as much tendency to promote the happiness of mankind as •the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? What government is is merely an imperfect remedy for the shortage of wisdom and virtue. So any beauty that a civil government can have because of its utility must in a much higher degree be a beauty of wisdom and virtue. And on the other side, no public policy can be as ruinous and destructive as the vices of ·individual· men. When bad government has terrible consequences, the way it does so—always—is by not sufficiently guarding against the mischiefs arising from human wickedness. This beauty and ugliness that characters seem to derive from their usefulness or inconvenience are apt to make their greatest impression on people who are thinking about the actions and conduct of mankind in an abstract and philosophical way. When a philosopher sets out to examine why humaneness is approved of, or why cruelty condemned, he doesn’t always form a clear and distinct conception of any one particular action either of cruelty or of humaneness; he is likely to be contented with the vague and indeterminate idea that the general names of those qualities suggest to him. But the propriety or impropriety, the merit or demerit, of actions stands out clearly only in particular instances. It’s only when particular examples are given that we get a clear idea of the concord or disagreement between our own affections and those of the agent, or feel a social gratitude towards him in one case and a sympathetic resentment in the other. When we think about virtue and vice in an abstract and general manner, the qualities by which they arouse these various sentiments seem to a large extent to disappear, and the sentiments themselves become less obvious and noticeable. Instead, the good effects of virtue and the disastrous consequences of vice seem then to rise
- 232. up, to stand out, to distinguish themselves from all the other qualities of virtue and vice. The same able and enjoyable author who first explained why utility pleases us—·David Hume·—has been so struck with this view of things that he has reduced all our approval of virtue to a perception of the kind of beauty that results from the appearance of utility. He says that •the only qualities of the mind that are approved of as virtuous are ones that are useful or agreeable either to the person himself or to other people; and •the only qualities that are disapproved of as vicious are ones that have the opposite tendency. If you look into this carefully you’ll find, I think, that this is entirely correct. That’s apparently because Nature has neatly adjusted our sentiments of approval and disapproval to ·fit· the convenience of the individual and of the society. But I maintain that our view of this utility or harmfulness isn’t the first source, or the principal source, of our approval and disapproval. These sentiments ·of approval or disapproval· are no doubt enriched and enlivened by our perception of the beauty or ugliness that results from this utility or harmfulness; but they are basically and essentially different from this perception. Here are two reasons for saying this. (1) It seems impossible that our approval of virtue should be a sentiment of the same kind as we have when we approve of a convenient and well-designed building; or that we should have no reason for praising a man except one that would 101
- 233. Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility also be a reason for commending a chest of drawers! (2) If you look into it you’ll find that our approval of a given state of mind is seldom based primarily on its utility, and that the sentiment of approval always has as one of its components a sense of propriety that is quite distinct from the perception of utility. We can see this with regard to all the qualities that are approved of as virtuous—the ones that are (according to me) valued as useful to ourselves, as well as those that are valued because of their usefulness to others. The qualities that are most useful to ourselves are (a) superior reason and understanding, enabling us to work out what consequences, good or bad, are likely to result from our actions; and (b) self-control, enabling us to abstain from present pleasure (or endure present unpleasure) in order to get greater pleasure (or avoid greater unpleasure) at some future time. The virtue of prudence, which is of all the virtues the one that is most useful to the individual, consists in the union of those two qualities—·i.e. in the combination of •superior reason and understanding and •self-control·. (a) Superior reason and understanding are—as I pointed out earlier [page 8]—basically approved of as just and right and precise, not merely as useful or advantageous. The greatest and most admired exercises of human reason have been in the abstruser sciences, especially the higher parts of mathematics; but it’s not very obvious that those sciences are useful to individuals or to the public, and to show that they are would require a train of thought of which some parts would be hard to grasp. So it wasn’t •their utility that first recommended the mathematical sciences to public admiration. •This quality wasn’t emphasized at all until
- 234. there came to be a need for some reply to the reproaches of people who, having no taste for such sublime discoveries, tried to dismiss them as useless. (b) The exercise of self-control in restraining our present appetites so as to gratify them more fully later on is approved of not only as useful but also, equally, as right. When we act like that the sentiments that influence our conduct seem to coincide exactly with those of the spectator. The spectator doesn’t feel the tug of our present appetites. To him the pleasure that we are to enjoy next week or next year matters just as much as the pleasure that we are to enjoy right now. When ·our self-control lapses, and· we sacrifice the future for the sake of the present, our conduct appears to the spectator to be utterly wild and absurd; he can’t enter into our motivation for behaving like that. On the other side, when we abstain from present pleasure so as to get greater pleasure later on, acting as if we were as concerned about the remote object as we are about the one that presses on the senses right now, the spectator is bound to approve of our behaviour because our affections in this matter exactly correspond with his. Also, he knows from experience how few are capable of such self-control, so he looks on our conduct with a considerable degree of wonder and admiration. That is the source for the enormous respect that all men naturally have for a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, hard work, and application, even when these are directed solely to the project of becoming rich. [Smith now says all this again, in only slightly different words. Then:] Without his consciousness of this deserved approval and respect, the agent wouldn’t be able to keep up this tenor of conduct [see note on ‘tenor’ on page 85]. The pleasure that we’re to enjoy ten years hence concerns us so little in comparison with the pleasure that we can enjoy to-day, the passion aroused by the future pleasure is naturally so weak in comparison with
- 235. the violent emotion that the present pleasure is apt to give rise to, that the former could never outweigh the latter unless it was supported by the sense of propriety, the consciousness 102 Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility that we deserve •everyone’s respect and approval if we act in one of the two ways and •everyone’s contempt and derision if we act in the other. Humaneness, justice, generosity, and public spirit are the qualities most useful to others. I have already explained what the propriety of humaneness and justice consists in: I showed how greatly our respect and approval of those qualities depends on the match between the affections of the agent and those of the spectators. Generosity and public spirit are proper for the same reason that justice is. Don’t confuse generosity with hu- maneness. Those two qualities seem at first sight to be close relatives of one another, but it isn’t always true that someone who has one will have the other. Humaneness is the virtue of a woman, generosity the virtue of a man. The fair sex, who usually have much more tenderness than we males do, seldom have as much generosity. That women rarely make considerable donations is an observation of the civil law. [That sentence is verbatim Smith.] Humaneness consists merely in the spectator’s sharp fellow-feeling with the sentiments of the persons principally concerned—his grieving for their sufferings, resenting their injuries, and rejoicing at their good fortune. The most humane actions don’t need self-denial or self-control or much exercise of the sense of propriety. They
- 236. consist only in doing what this sharp sympathy would, on its own, prompt us to do. But generosity is different. Whenever we are generous it is because in some respect we put some other person ahead of ourselves, sacrificing some great and important interest of our own to an equal interest of a friend or of a superior. When someone x gives up his claim to a governmental position that was the great object of his ambition, because he thinks that someone else y is better entitled to it, or when someone x risks his own life in defence of the life of his friend y, because he judges y’s life to be more important than his own, he isn’t acting from humaneness, feeling y’s concerns more sharply than he feels his own. He considers those conflicting interests not in the light in which they naturally appear to •him but in the light in which they appear to •others. All the bystanders can rightly have a greater concern for y’s success or preservation than for x’s, but that can’t be x’s position. So when he sacrifices his own interests to those of y, he is accommodating himself to the sentiments of the spectator, making an effort of magnanimity to act in accordance with what he thinks must naturally be the view of the matter that any third person has. When a soldier gives up his life in order to defend that of his officer, it may be that the death of that officer, if it happened without this soldier’s being at fault, wouldn’t have affected the soldier much, causing him less sorrow than a quite small disaster to himself—·e.g. his loss of a finger·—would cause. ·So his act of self-sacrifice isn’t to be understood in terms of the relative value of lives·. He is trying to act so as to deserve applause, giving the impartial spectator a role in the guidance of his conduct; he feels that
- 237. to everyone but himself his own life is a trifle compared with that of his officer. . . . [Note with care that he is trying to act so as to deserve applause; this doesn’t mean that he is trying to win applause.] [Smith now reworks these same ideas in connection with ‘greater exertions of public spirit’. One example concerns a soldier who risks his life in an attempt to add to ‘the dominions of his sovereign’ some little sliver of territory that he doesn’t care about in the least, on his own account. Another is historical: ‘the first Brutus’ [this is centuries before the Brutus who was Julius Caesar’s friend and assassin] delivered his sons up for capital punishment ‘because they had conspired against the rising liberty of Rome’. In doing this, ‘he viewed 103 Smith on Moral Sentiments Beauty and utility them with the eyes not of a father but of a Roman citizen’. Smith continues:] In cases like these our admiration is based not so much on the •utility of the action as on its •propriety—its unexpected and therefore great, noble, and exalted propriety. When we take into account the action’s utility, that undoubtedly gives it a new beauty and still further recommends it to our approval. But this beauty isn’t much noticed except by men who reflect and theorize; it is not the quality that first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind. Notice that insofar as the sentiment of approval arises from a perception of this beauty of utility, it doesn’t involve
- 238. any reference to the sentiments of anyone else. Suppose it were possible that a person should grow up to manhood without any communication with society, ·and consider what his attitudes to his own conduct could be·. His own actions might be agreeable or disagreeable to him on account of their tendency to his happiness or disadvantage. He might perceive beauty of this kind in prudence, temperance, and good conduct (and ugliness in the opposite behaviour); he might view his own temperament and character with the sort of satisfaction we get from a well-contrived machine (or distaste and dissatisfaction from an awkward and clumsy contrivance). These perceptions of his, however, would be merely matters of taste. They would be weak and delicate, like the perceptions whose correctness is the basis for taste properly so-called; and someone in this solitary and miser- able condition probably wouldn’t pay much attention to them. Even if they did occur to him, they wouldn’t affect him before he was connected to society in the way they would affect him after, and because of, the making of that connection. He wouldn’t be cast down with inward shame at the thought of this ugliness; nor would he be elated with secret triumph by the consciousness of the contrary beauty. He wouldn’t exult from the notion of deserving reward in the one case, or tremble from the suspicion of deserving punishment in the other. All such sentiments presuppose the idea of some other being who is the natural judge of the person that feels them; and it’s only by sympathy with the decisions of that judge of his conduct that he can experience either the triumph of self-applause or the shame of self-condemnation. 104 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and notions of beauty
- 239. Part V: The influence of custom and fashion on the sentiments of moral approval and disapproval Chapter 1: The influence of custom and fashion on our notions of beauty and ugliness In addition to the ones I have listed, there are ·two· other considerable influences on the moral sentiments of mankind; they are the main causes of the many irregular and discor- dant opinions that become dominant in different ages and nations concerning what is blameworthy or praiseworthy. These two sources of influence are •custom and •fashion— forces that extend their sway over our judgments concerning beauty of every kind. When two objects have often been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from one to the other: when one appears we’re willing to bet that the second will follow. With no outside help they put us in mind of one another, and our attention glides easily along them. If we didn’t have this habit, we wouldn’t see any real beauty in their union; but when custom has connected them together in this way, we feel that something is wrong when they are separated. We think that one of them is awkward [Smith’s word, here and below] when it appears without its usual companion; we miss something that we expected to find, and the habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems to lack something if it doesn’t have some ornament—however insignificant—that it usually has. . . . When there is something naturally proper in the union ·of the two items·, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement appear even more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Anything that is clumsy or awkward will be especially disgusting to
- 240. people who have been accustomed to seeing things ·that were made or chosen or arranged· in good taste. When a conjunction of items is improper, we’ll have less sense of its impropriety—perhaps even no sense of it—if it’s something to which we have become accustomed. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. . . . Fashion is different from custom—or, rather, it’s a partic- ular species of it. Something that everybody wears can’t be called fashion. The word applies to what is worn by people who are of a high rank or exceptional character. The graceful, easy, commanding manners of the great, when joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their clothing, make the style they adopt seem graceful. As long as they continue to use this style, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something genteel and magnificent, so that we come to see the style itself as genteel and magnificent, even if there’s nothing special about it considered in itself. As soon as the higher ranks in society drop it, the style loses all the grace it seemed to possess before, and instead seems to have something of the meanness and awkwardness of the inferior ranks of people who now use it. [The remaining seven book-pages of this chapter contain a sober discussion of fashions in the arts. Everyone agrees that custom and fashion rule in matters of clothing and furniture; but they also have great influence over people’s tastes in music, poetry, and architecture. Some of those fashions last a long time, because the objects they concern are very durable—e.g. buildings, poems. Most people know little 105
- 241. Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and notions of beauty about what customs and fashions prevailed at other times and/or in other places, and this ignorance leads them to downplay fashion and to think that their tastes ‘are founded on reason and nature, not on habit’. Smith challenges them on this, demanding to know what objective reason can be given for the rightness of various time-honoured features of ancient Greek temples. And fashion governs literary judgments too. A verse-form that the French regard as right for tragedy would strike the English as an absurd vehicle for that kind of dramatic content. Then Smith turns to the more interesting topic of enforced changes in fashion:] An eminent artist will bring about a considerable change in the established modes of any one of those arts, introducing a new fashion of writing, music, or architecture. Just as the dress of an agreeable man of high rank recommends itself, and comes soon to be admired and imitated, however pecu- liar and fantastic it is, so the excellences of an eminent mas- ter ·in one of the creative arts· recommend his peculiarities, and his manner becomes the fashionable style in the art that he practises. Within the past fifty years the Italians’ taste in music and architecture has undergone a considerable change, resulting from imitating the peculiarities of some eminent masters in each of those arts. [He gives examples of Latin writers who were criticised for features of their style that were later followed by many others, and remarks:] A writer must have many great qualities if he is to be able to make his very faults agreeable! The highest praise one can give to an author is to say that he •refined the taste of a nation; the second highest may be to say that he •corrupted it! In our own language,. . . .the quaintness of Butler has given place to the plainness of Swift. The rambling freedom of Dryden, and the correct but often tedious and prosaic languor of Addison, are no longer objects of imitation; all
- 242. long verses are now written after the manner of the vigorous precision of Pope. And it’s not only over the productions of the •arts that custom and fashion hold sway. They have the same kind of influence over our judgments regarding •natural objects. Think about the variety of the forms that are found to be beautiful in different species of things! The proportions that are admired in one animal are altogether different from the ones that are valued in another. Every class of things has its own special conformation—one that is approved of and has a beauty of its own—distinct from that of every other species. That is what led Buffier to maintain that the beauty of any object consists in the form and colour that are centrally typical of the species to which the object belongs, because they will be the form and colour that we are, in our experience of that species, most accustomed to. [Smith expounds this theory at great length, without doing much to make it seem worth studying. Smith agrees that our judgments about things’ beauty are much affected by what we are used to, but he denies that that’s the whole story:] The utility of any form, its fitness for the useful purposes for which it was intended, obviously counts in its favour and makes it agreeable to us, independently of custom ·or usualness·. Certain colours are more agreeable than others, and give more delight to the eye the first time it ever beholds them. A smooth surface is more agreeable than a rough one. Variety is more pleasing than a tedious undiversified uniformity. Connected variety, in which each new appearance seems to be introduced by what went before it, and in which all the adjoining parts seem to have some natural relation to one another, is more agreeable than a disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected objects. But. . . .I go along with Buffier’s ingenious theory to this extent: it hardly ever happens that a particular thing’s
- 243. external form is so beautiful that it gives pleasure although 106 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments it is quite contrary to custom and unlike anything we have been used to in that species of things; or so ugly as to be disagreeable although custom uniformly supports it and gets us used to seeing it in every single individual of the kind. Chapter 2: The influence of custom and fashion on moral sentiments Our sentiments concerning every kind of beauty are so much influenced by •custom and fashion that •those forces are bound to have some influence on our sentiments concerning the beauty of conduct. But their influence in this domain seems to be much less than it is everywhere else. It may be that custom can reconcile us to any form of external objects, however absurd and fantastical; but no custom will ever reconcile us to the characters and conduct of a Nero or a Claudius—one will always be an object of dread and hatred, the other of scorn and derision. The mechanisms of the imagination, on which our sense of beauty depends, are delicately fine-tuned and can easily be altered by habit and education; but our sentiments of moral approval and disapproval are based on the strongest and most vigorous passions of human nature; and though they may be some- what warped ·by custom and fashion·, they can’t be entirely perverted. However, the influence of custom and fashion on moral sentiments is •similar in kind to their influence everywhere
- 244. else; it is merely •different in strength. When custom and fashion coincide with the natural principles of right and wrong, they heighten the delicacy of our sentiments [Smith’s words] and increase our loathing for everything that approximates to evil. Someone who has been brought up in really good company—not what is commonly called ‘good company’—will have become used to seeing in the people he lived with nothing but justice, modesty, humaneness, and good order. Because of his upbringing, he will be more shocked ·than the rest of us are· by anything that seems to be inconsistent with the rules that those virtues of modesty etc. prescribe. And someone who has had the misfortune to be brought up amidst violence, licentiousness, falsehood, and injustice may still have some sense of the impropriety of such conduct, but he won’t have any all sense of how dreadful it is, or of the vengeance and punishment that it deserves. He has been familiarized with it from his infancy, custom has made it habitual to him, and he’s apt to regard it as ‘the way of the world’, as it is called—something that may, or even something that should, be practised so as to stop us from being the dupes of our own integrity [Smith’s wording]. [Smith says that a certain degree of disorder can he liked because it is fashionable, and that fashion can lead to people’s disliking qualities that deserve to be respected. He cites the reign of Charles II as a time when a degree of licentiousness was connected in people’s minds with various virtues, and was taken to show that the licentious person ‘was a gentleman, not a puritan’. He describes with colourful indignation the upside-down morality that arises from this kind of fashion. Then:] Men in different professions and states of life naturally come to have different characters and manners, because of differences in the kinds of objects they have been used to
- 245. and the passions that they have formed. We expect each man to behave somewhat in the way that experience has taught us belong to his rank or profession;. . . .and we’ll be especially pleased if he has neither too much nor too little of the character that usually accompanies his particular ‘species’ (if I may use the word in that way). A man, we say, should look like his trade and profession; but the pedantry [= ‘excessive attention to correctness of details’] of every 107 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments profession is disagreeable. The different periods of life have different manners assigned to them, for the same reason. We expect in old age the gravity and calm that its infirmities, its long experience, and its worn-out sensibility seem to make natural and respectworthy; and we expect to find in youth the sensibility, gaiety and sprightly vivacity that experience teaches us to expect from the lively impressions that objects are apt to make on the unpractised senses of the young. But each of those two ages can easily have too much of its special features. The flirting levity of youth, and the immovable insensibility of old age, are equally disagreeable. The young (as the saying goes) are most agreeable when their behaviour has something of the manners of the old, and the old are most agreeable when they retain something of the gaiety of the young. But either of them could go too far: the extreme coldness and dull formality that are pardoned in old age make youth ridiculous; and the levity, carelessness, and vanity that are permitted to the young make old age contemptible.
- 246. The special character and manners that custom leads us to associate with a given rank or profession may sometimes have a propriety independent of custom; they are the charac- ter and manners that we would approve of for their own sakes if we took into consideration all the different circumstances that naturally affect those in each ‘species’. [Smith goes on about this, with some ‘very obvious’ reflections, such as: our approval of someone’s passion regarding something depends in part on what else the person’s situation involves. We don’t blame a mother who expresses, over the death of her soldier son, a level of grief that would be inexcusable in a general at the head of an army, who has so much else on his plate. We disapprove of levity or casualness in the manner of a preacher ‘whose special occupation it is to •keep the world in mind of the awe-inspiring after-life that awaits them, and to •announce what may be the fatal consequences of every deviation from the rules of duty’.] The basis for the customary character of some other professions is not so obvious, and our approval of it is based entirely on habit, without being confirmed or enlivened by any thoughts of the kind I have been discussing. For example, custom leads us to associate the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as of some degree of dissipation, to the military profession. But if we thought about what mood or tone of temper would be most suitable to a soldier’s situation, we would be apt to conclude that a serious and thoughtful cast of mind would be the most appropriate for men whose lives are continually exposed to uncommon danger. [Smith develops this thought, and suggests that the levity of serving soldiers may be their way of coping with their dangerous situation, ‘losing their anxiety’ about it. He offers evidence for that hypothesis:] Whenever an officer has no reason to think he is faced with any uncommon danger, he is apt to lose the gaiety and
- 247. dissipated thoughtlessness of his character. The captain of a city guard is usually as sober, careful, and penny-pinching as the rest of his fellow-citizens!. . . . The different situations of different times and countries are apt to give different characters to the general run of people who live in them; and their sentiments regarding what degree of this or that quality is either blameworthy or praiseworthy vary according to the degree that is usually blamed or praised in their own country at their own time. A degree of politeness that would be regarded as rude and barbaric at the court of France might be highly esteemed in Russia—unless it was condemned there as effeminate! The degree of order and frugality that would be regarded in a Polish nobleman as •excessive parsimony would be regarded as •extravagance in a citizen of Amsterdam. . . . 108 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments Among civilized nations, the virtues that are based on humaneness are cultivated more than the ones based on self- denial and the command of the passions. Among rude and barbarous nations it is quite otherwise: in them the virtues of self-denial are more cultivated than those of humaneness. The general security and happiness that prevail at times of civic-mindedness and highly developed society don’t call for contempt of danger, or patience in enduring labour, hunger, and pain. Because poverty can easily be avoided, disregard for it almost ceases to be a virtue. . . . Among savages and barbarians it is quite otherwise. [Smith now launches on three harrowing pages about how
- 248. ‘savages and barbarians’—he mentions in particular ‘the savages in North America’—have a value-system that is shaped by the hardships and necessities of their situation. One example: arranged marriages; sexual activity between spouses conducted in secret; no expressions of affection. Then the main example: a régime of discipline to enable any young savage to be able to preserve calm equanimity under threat of death and during horrible tortures (Smith gives details). The closing passage on this theme is notable. [In it, ‘magnanimity’ means ‘courage and calmness in the face of danger’. The second occurrence of ‘contempt’ means what we mean by the word, but the first occurrence means ‘disregard’ or ‘refusal to treat as important’. The passage is an explosion of Smith’s rage at the thought of savage ‘heroes’ being ill-treated by slave-traders (and their hirelings) who are garbage from the jails.] Smith continues:] The same contempt for death and torture prevails in all the other savage nations. There’s not a negro from the coast of Africa who doesn’t in this respect have a degree of magnanimity that the soul of his sordid master is too often hardly able to conceive of. Fortune never used her dominance of mankind more cruelly than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the sweepings of the jails of Europe, to wretches who don’t have the virtues of the countries they come from or of the ones they go to—wretches whose levity, brutality, and baseness so deservedly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.
- 249. This heroic and unconquerable firmness. . . .is not re- quired from those who are brought up to live in civilized societies. If they complain when they are in pain, grieve when they are in distress, allow themselves to be overcome by love or ruffled by anger, they are easily pardoned. Such weaknesses are not seen as affecting the essential parts of their character. As long as they don’t do anything contrary to justice or humaneness, they lose little reputation, even if the serenity of their countenance or the calmness of their dis- course and behaviour is somewhat disturbed. A humane and polished people, who have more sensitivity to the passions of others, can more easily sympathize with animated and passionate behaviour, and can more easily pardon any slight excess of it. The person principally concerned is aware of this,. . . .and is accordingly less afraid of exposing himself to others’ contempt by the violence of his emotions. [Smith goes on about differences in conversational style between civilised people and barbarians, and also about how some European nations differ in this respect, the French and Italians being much more lively than people with ‘duller sensibility’ such as the English. He reports one writer who said that ‘an Italian expresses more emotion on being sentenced to a fine of twenty shillings than an Englishman on receiving a sentence of death’. (Smith seems to have an ascending scale of polish and civilisedness, and a corresponding scale of increasingly expressive and emotional ways of talking and behaving; with ‘savages’ at the bottom of each scale, the French and Italians at the top, and the English somewhere in between.) He follows this up with examples from ancient Rome. Then:] This difference gives rise to many others that are equally essential ·as national characteristics·. A polished people, 109
- 250. Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments being accustomed to giving way somewhat to their natural feelings, become frank, open, and sincere. Whereas barbar- ians, being obliged to smother and conceal the appearance of every passion, inevitably acquire the habits of falsehood and pretence. Everyone who has had any dealings with savage nations—whether in Asia, Africa, or America—has found them equally impenetrable, finding that when they want to conceal the truth there’s no way of getting it out of them. They can’t be tricked by artful questions, and not even tor- ture can get them to tell anything that they don’t want to tell. But the passions of a savage, though never expressed by any outward emotional display and always hidden in the person’s breast, rise to the highest pitch of fury. Though the savage seldom shows any symptoms of anger, his vengeance—when he gets to it—is always bloody and dreadful. The least insult drives him to despair. His countenance and discourse remain sober and calm, expressing nothing but the most perfect tranquillity of mind; but his actions are often furious and violent. Among the North-Americans it is not uncommon for girls to drown themselves after receiving only a slight reprimand from their mothers, doing this without expressing any passion or indeed saying anything except ‘You shall no longer have a daughter’. In civilized nations the passions of men are not usually so furious or so desperate. They are often noisy, but are seldom very harmful; and they seem often to have no purpose except to convince the spectator that they are in the right to be so much moved, thereby getting his sympathy and approval. All these effects of custom and fashion on the moral sentiments of mankind are minor in comparison to some of their other effects. Where custom and fashion produce the
- 251. greatest perversion of judgment is not in connection with the •general style of character and behaviour (·which is what I have been discussing·) but in connection with the propriety or impropriety of •particular usages. The different manners that custom teaches us to approve of in the different professions and states of life don’t concern things of the greatest importance. We expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a young, from a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it’s only in minor matters that we look for the distinguishing marks of their respective characters [meaning: the characteristics that are typical of them as old, as young, as clergyman, as officer]. Also, the character that custom has taught us to ascribe to a given profession may be proper, independently of custom, because of details that we haven’t noticed. So these matters don’t involve any large perversion of natural sentiment. What the manners of different nations require in a character that they think worthy of esteem are different degrees of the same quality, ·but there’s nothing bad about that·. The worst that it can be said to involve is that the duties of •one virtue are sometimes extended so as to encroach a little on the territory of •some other. The rustic hospitality that is in fashion among the Poles may perhaps encroach a little on economy and good order; and the frugality that is esteemed in Holland may encroach on generosity and good- fellowship. The hardiness demanded of savages diminishes their humaneness; and the delicate sensitivity required in civilized nations may sometimes destroy masculine firmness of character. But the style of manners that obtains in any nation is often, on the whole, the one that is most suitable to its situation. Hardiness is the character most suitable to the circumstances of a savage; sensitivity to the circumstances of life in a very civilized society. So even in this area we can’t
- 252. complain that men’s moral sentiments are grossly perverted. Thus, where custom authorises the widest departure from the natural propriety of action is not in the general style of conduct or behaviour, but in regard to particular practices. 110 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments That is where custom’s influence is often much more destruc- tive of good morals. It can establish, as ·supposedly· lawful and blameless, particular actions that shock the plainest principles of right and wrong. ·I shall give just one example of this·. Can there be greater barbarity than to harm an infant? Its helplessness, its innocence, its likeableness, call forth the compassion even of an enemy; not to spare that tender age is regarded as the most furious effort of an enraged and cruel conqueror. Well, then, what can be the heart of a •parent who could injure a weakness that even a •furious enemy is afraid to violate? Yet the murder of new-born infants was a permitted practice in almost all the states of ·ancient· Greece, even among the polished and civilized Athenians; and whenever the circumstances of the parent made it inconvenient [here = ‘difficult and burdensome’] to bring up the child, it could be abandoned to hunger or to wild beasts without attracting blame or censure. This practice probably began in times of the most savage barbarism: men’s imaginations were first made familiar with it in that earliest period of society, and the unbroken continuity of the custom hindered them from later seeing how abominable it is. Even
- 253. today we find that this practice prevails among all savage nations; and in that roughest and lowest state of society it is undoubtedly more excusable than in any other. A savage can have such a lack of food that it isn’t possible for him to support both himself and his child; so it’s not surprising that in this case he abandons it. . . . In the latter ages of ·ancient· Greece, however, the same thing—·leaving babies out in the wilds, to starve or be eaten by wild animals·—was permitted on the grounds of minor interest or convenience which could by no means excuse it. Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorised the practice that it was tolerated not only •by the loose maxims of the world but even •by the doctrines of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and precise. . . . Aristotle talks of it as though he thought that the authorities ought often to encourage it. The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and—despite all the love of mankind that seems to animate all his writings—he never expresses disapproval of this practice. When custom can give sanction to such a dreadful violation of humanity, we can well imagine that hardly any particular practice is so gross that custom couldn’t authorise it. We constantly hear men saying ‘It’s commonly done’, apparently thinking that this a sufficient excuse for something that is in itself the most unjust and unreasonable conduct. There’s an obvious reason why custom never perverts our sentiments with regard to •the general style and character of behaviour in the same degree as it does with regard to •the propriety or unlawfulness of particular practices. It’s that there never can be any such custom! No society could survive for a moment if in it the usual strain of men’s behaviour was of a piece with the horrible practice I have been discussing. 111
- 254. Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments Part VI: The character of virtue When we consider the character of any individual, we naturally view it under two different aspects: •as it may affect his own happiness (the topic of Section 1) and •as it may affect that of other people (the topic of Section 2). Section 1: Prudence, i.e. the character of the individual in its bearing on his own happiness What Nature first recommends to the care of every indi- vidual, it seems, is the preservation and healthful state of his body. The appetites of hunger and thirst, the agreeable or disagreeable sensations of pleasure and pain, of heat and cold, etc. can be considered as lessons given by Nature in her own voice, telling him what he ought to choose for this purpose and what he ought to avoid. The first lessons he learns from those who care for him in his childhood are mostly aimed the same way: their main purpose is to teach him how to keep out of harm’s way. As he grows up, he soon learns that some care and foresight are needed if he is to satisfy those natural appetites, to procure pleasure and avoid pain, to procure agreeable temperatures and avoid disagreeable heat and cold. The art of preserving and increasing what is called his external fortune consists in the proper direction of this care and foresight. [To increase one’s ‘external fortune’ is to become more prosperous (in money, property, land etc.). There is an ‘art’ of doing this,
- 255. in Smith’s sense, simply because doing it requires skill in the mastery of techniques.] The basic advantage of external fortune is that it enables one to provide the necessities and conveniences of the body, but we can’t live long in the world without noticing that the respect of our equals, our credit and rank in the society we live in, depend very much on how large an external fortune we possess, or are supposed to possess. The wish to become proper objects of this respect, to deserve and obtain this credit and rank among our equals, may be the strongest of all our desires; so that our anxiety to obtain the advantages of fortune is stimulated much more by this desire than by the desire to supply all the necessities and conveniences of the body—a desire that is always easily satisfied. Our rank and credit among our equals also depends heavily on something that a virtuous man might wish to be the sole source of them, namely our •character and •conduct, or on the confidence, esteem, and good-will that •these naturally arouse in the people we live with. The care of the health, the fortune, and the rank and rep- utation of the individual—these being the items on which his comfort and happiness in this life are supposed principally to depend—is regarded as the proper business of the virtue commonly called ‘prudence’. I have already pointed out that our suffering when we fall from a better to a worse situation is greater than any enjoyment we get in rising from a worse to a better. For that reason, the first and the principal object of prudence is security. Prudence is opposed to our exposing our health,
- 256. our fortune, our rank, or our reputation to any sort of risk. It is cautious rather than enterprising, and more concerned to preserve the advantages that we already possess than 112 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments to prompt us to the acquisition of still greater advantages. The methods of improving our fortune that it principally recommends to us are the ones that don’t involve risk: real knowledge and skill in our trade or profession, hard work and persistence in the exercise of it, frugality to the point of parsimony in all our expenses. The prudent man always makes a serious point of actually understanding whatever he professes to understand, not merely trying persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be brilliant they are always perfectly genuine. [Note the connection between what he professes to understand and his profession.] He doesn’t try to impose on you by the cunning tricks of an artful impostor, the arrogant airs of a pretentious pedant, or the confident assertions of a rash and superficial pretender. He doesn’t make a great show even of the abilities that he really does have. His conversation is simple and modest, and he dislikes all the quackish [Smith’s word] arts by which other people so often thrust themselves into public notice and reputation. For reputation in his profession he is
- 257. naturally inclined to rely a good deal on the solidity of his knowledge and abilities; and he doesn’t always think of trying to please the little clubs and gangs who, in the superior arts and sciences, set themselves up as the supreme judges of merit, and celebrate one another’s talents and virtues while decrying anything that can come into competition with them. . . . The prudent man is always sincere. He hates the thought of exposing himself to the disgrace that comes from the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he isn’t always frank and open; he never says anything that isn’t true, but he doesn’t always think he is obliged to volunteer the whole truth. To match his cautious way of •acting, he is reserved in his •speech, and never forces on people his opinions about anything or anyone. [The prudent man is always capable of friendship, Smith says, but his friendship (with a few chosen people) is solid and durable rather than ardent and passionate. He doesn’t go in for socializing, because parties and such would interfere too much with his chosen way of life. Also:] Though his conversation isn’t always very sprightly or diverting, it is always perfectly inoffensive. The prudent man hates the thought of being guilty of any petulance or rudeness. . . . In both conduct and conversation he strictly preserves decency and is almost religiously scrupulous in maintaining all the established decorums and ceremonials of society. In this respect he sets a much better example than was set, down through the centuries, by many men with much more splendid talents and virtues than his—from Socrates and Aristippus down to Swift and Voltaire, and from Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great down to Peter the Great of Russia. These men have too often stood out because
- 258. of their improper and even insolent contempt for all the ordinary decorums of life and conversation, setting a most pernicious example to anyone wanting to resemble them— followers who too often content themselves with imitating their follies, without even trying to attain their perfections. The prudent man keeps at his work, and is always frugal, thereby sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probable expectation of greater ease and enjoyment later on and for a longer time; and in this con- duct he is always supported and rewarded by the complete approval of the impartial spectator, and of that spectator’s representative, the man within the breast. The impartial spectator doesn’t feel himself worn out by the present work of the people whose conduct he surveys; nor does he feel 113 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments himself pulled by the loud and persistent demands of their present appetites. To him the •present situation ·of those people· is nearly the same as •their likely future situation. He sees •them from nearly the same distance and is affected by them in nearly in the same manner. But he knows that to the people principally concerned—·the ones whose present and future situations are in question·—they’re far from being the same, and naturally affect them differently. So he can’t help approving—even applauding—the proper exercise of self-control that enables them to act as if their present and their future situation affected •them in nearly the same way that they affect •him. [Smith now has a paragraph concerning the prudent
- 259. man’s attitude to wealth. He is ‘naturally contented with his situation’ because he lives within his income. As he gradually becomes wealthier, he can gradually relax his frugality, enjoying modest luxuries both for themselves and for their contrast with his previous way of life. He doesn’t rush, unprepared, into any new enterprises. Also:] The prudent man isn’t willing to undertake any responsi- bility that his duty does not impose on him. He •doesn’t bustle in matters where he has no concern; •doesn’t meddle in other people’s affairs; •doesn’t set himself up as a counsellor or adviser, pushing his advice at people who haven’t asked for it. . . . .He is averse to taking sides in any party disputes, hates faction, and isn’t always attentive to the voice of ambition— even of noble and great ambition. He won’t refuse to serve his country when clearly called on to do so, but he won’t scheme and plot in order to force himself into such service; he would prefer public business to be well managed by someone else. . . . In short, when prudence aims merely at taking care of the individual person’s health, fortune, and rank and reputation, though it’s regarded as a most respectworthy and even somewhat likeable and agreeable quality, it is never regarded as one the most endearing or ennobling of the virtues. It commands a certain cold esteem, but seems not to be entitled to any ardent love or admiration. We often label as ‘prudence’ wise and judicious conduct that is directed to greater and nobler purposes than the care of the health, the fortune, the rank and reputation of the individual. This is a legitimate usage. We talk of
- 260. the ‘prudence’ of a great general, a great statesman, a great legislator. In all these cases prudence is combined with many greater and more splendid virtues—valour, extensive and strong benevolence, a sacred regard for the rules of justice, and all these supported by a proper degree of self-control. For this superior ·kind of· prudence to reach the highest degree of perfection it has to involve the art, the talent, and the habit or disposition of acting with the most perfect propriety in every possible situation. [Remember that for Smith ‘propriety’ means rightness in a strong moral sense.] It has to involve the utmost perfection of all the •intellectual and of all the •moral virtues—the best head joined to the best heart, perfect wisdom combined with perfect virtue. [Smith adds that this superior public kind of virtue approximates to the character of a ‘sage’ according to Aristotle, and that the inferior private kind of virtue approximates to the character of a ‘sage’ according to the Epicureans.] Mere imprudence—the mere inability to take care of oneself—is pitied by generous and humane people. People with less delicate feelings treat imprudence with •neglect or, at worst, •contempt, but never with •hatred or •indignation. Whereas the infamy and disgrace that accompany other vices are enormously intensified when those vices are combined with imprudence. The rogue whose skill enables him to escape detection and punishment (though not to escape 114 Smith on Moral Sentiments Custom and moral sentiments strong suspicion) is too often received in the world with a permissiveness that he doesn’t deserve. The awkward
- 261. and foolish rogue whose lack of skill leads to his being convicted and punished is an object of universal hatred, contempt, and derision. In countries where great crimes often go unpunished, really atrocious actions become almost familiar, and stop impressing the people with the kind of horror that everyone feels in countries where the adminis- tration of justice is properly carried out. The injustice is the same in both countries, but the level of imprudence may be different. In countries of the latter kind—·the ones with good justice systems·—great crimes are obviously great follies. In countries of the other kind they aren’t always seen in that way. In Italy, during most of the sixteenth century, assassinations and murders. . . .seem to have been almost familiar among the upper classes. Cesare Borgia invited four of the little princes in his neighbourhood—all with little kingdoms and their own little armies—to a friendly conference in Senigaglia; and as soon as they arrived there he put them all to death. Although this dreadful action wasn’t approved of, even in that age of crimes, it doesn’t seem to have contributed much to the discredit of the perpetrator, and contributed nothing towards his ruin. . . . The violence and injustice of •great conquerors are often regarded with foolish wonder and admiration; the violence and injustice of •minor thieves, robbers, and murderers are always regarded with contempt, hatred and even horror. . . . The injustice of the •former is certainly at least as great as that of the •latter, but their folly and imprudence are nowhere near as great. A wicked and worthless man who is clever and skillful often goes through the world with much more credit than he deserves. A wicked and worthless fool always appears to be the most hateful, as well as the most contemptible, of mortals. Just as prudence combined with other virtues constitutes the noblest of all characters, imprudence combined with other vices constitutes the vilest.
- 262. Section 2: The character of the individual in its bearing on the happiness of other people Introduction The character of any individual can affect the happiness of other people only through its disposition either to harm them or to benefit them. The •only motive that the impartial spectator can justify for our harming or in any way disturbing the happiness of our neighbour is •proper resentment for injustice attempted or actually committed. To harm someone from any other motive is itself a violation of the laws of justice—the sort of thing that should be restrained or punished by force. The wisdom of every state or commonwealth does its best to use the force of the society to restrain its subjects from harming or disturbing one another’s happiness. The rules it establishes for this purpose constitute the civil and criminal law of that state or country. The principles on which those rules are—or ought to be—based are the subject of one particular science, by far the •most important of all the sciences though until now perhaps the •least cultivated. I 115 Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and attention am talking about the science of natural jurisprudence. My present topic doesn’t require me to go into this in any detail. A sacred and religious regard not to harm or disturb our neighbour’s happiness in any way, even over something
- 263. for which no law can properly protect him, constitutes the character of the perfectly innocent and just man. [Smith uses ‘sacred’ (often) and ‘religious’ (occasionally) with no religious meaning, as we have just seen him do. His topic is simply strict, scrupulous, careful obedience to a rule. On page 89 he said that for anyone who thinks that the rule is a law of God, it acquires a ‘new sacredness’.] Whenever someone has this character to the point of being really careful not to harm or disturb his neighbour, the character is highly respectworthy and even venerable for its own sake, and is nearly always accompanied by many other virtues, with great feeling for other people, humaneness, and benevolence. We all understand this character well enough; it needn’t be further explained by me. All I’m going to attempt in the present section is to explain the basis for the order that Nature seems to have marked out for the direction and employment of our limited powers of beneficence—towards individuals (Chapter 1) and towards societies (Chapter 2). [Smith often uses ‘order’ to mean ‘organisation’ etc., but his present topic is the down-to-earth sense of ‘order’ that concerns who or what comes first, second etc. in the queue.] It will turn out that the same unerring wisdom that regulates every other part of Nature’s conduct also governs the ordering of her recommendations that we attend to potential beneficiaries. The more a particular benefaction is needed, the more useful it can be, the stronger is Nature’s
- 264. recommendation that we make it. Chapter 1: The order in which individuals are rec- ommended by nature to our care and attention Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended ·by Nature· to care for himself; and every man is indeed in every way fitter and abler to take care of himself than to take care of anyone else. Every man feels •his own pleasures and his own pains more intensely [Smith says ‘sensibly’] than •those of other people, feels •the original sensations more intensely than •the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations, feels •the substance more intensely than •the shadow. (1) After himself, the members of his own family—his parents, his children, his brothers and sisters—are naturally the objects of his warmest affections. They are naturally the persons on whose happiness or misery his conduct must have the greatest influence. He is more accustomed to sympathizing with them, he knows better how everything is likely to affect them, and he can have a more precise and definite sympathy with them than he can have with most other people. In short, what he feels for •them is a close approximation to what he feels for •himself. This sympathy and the affections based on it are naturally directed more strongly towards his children than towards his parents, and his tenderness for the children seems generally to be more active than his reverence and gratitude towards his parents. In the natural state of things the child, for some time after it comes into the world, depends for its survival entirely on the care of the parent, whereas the parent’s survival doesn’t naturally depend on the care of the child. In nature’s way of looking at things, a child seems to be a more important object than an old man; and it arouses a much
- 265. livelier and much more universal sympathy. It ought to do so. Everything can be expected or at least hoped for from 116 Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and attention the child, whereas ordinarily little can be expected or hoped for from the old man. [Smith was 36 years old when he wrote this.] The weakness of childhood draws the affections of ·even· the most brutal and hard-hearted, but the infirmities of old age are objects of contempt and aversion for everyone who isn’t virtuous and humane. Ordinarily an old man dies without being much regretted by anyone, but it’s not often that a child can die without breaking someone’s heart. The earliest friendships—the ones that are naturally formed when the heart is most liable to that feeling—are the friendships among brothers and sisters. While they are still living together their being on good terms with one another is necessary for the household’s tranquillity and happiness. They can give more pleasure or pain to one another than to most other people. Their situation ·as siblings living together· makes their mutual sympathy utterly important to their common happiness; and by the wisdom of nature that same situation, by obliging them to accommodate to one another, makes that sympathy more habitual and thus more lively, sharp and definite. [The same holds for •cousins, though less strongly, Smith says. The friendship among siblings is enhanced if their offspring are also on good terms, but the sympathy between
- 266. cousins is less necessary than between siblings, and ‘so it is less habitual and therefore correspondingly weaker’. Be- tween the •children of cousins etc. ‘the affection diminishes as the relation grows more remote’.] What is called ‘affection’ is really nothing but habitual sympathy. Our concern for the objects of our ‘affections’— our desire to promote their happiness or prevent their misery—is either the actual feeling of that habitual sympathy or a necessary consequences of it. Relatives are usually placed in situations that naturally create this habitual sympathy, so a suitable degree of affection is expected to hold among them. We generally find that it does indeed hold;. . . .and we’re shocked whenever we find that it doesn’t. The established general rule says that persons related to one another in a certain degree ought always to have mutual affections of a certain kind, and whenever they don’t there is the highest impropriety, and sometimes even a sort of impiety. A parent without parental tenderness, a child devoid of all filial reverence, appear to be monsters—objects not only of hatred but of horror. Sometimes the circumstances that usually produce those ‘natural affections’ happen not to have existed; but even in those cases the general rule will often make up for that to some extent, producing something that at least is like those affections. A father is apt to be less attached to a child who for some reason was separated from him in its infancy and returns to him only as an adult. The father is apt to feel less paternal tenderness for the child, and the child less filial reverence for the father. When siblings are brought up in distant countries they are apt to feel a similar lessening of affection; but if they are dutiful and virtuous, their respect for the general rule will often produce, again, something that at least is like those natural affections. Even during their
- 267. separation, the father and the child, the brothers and the sisters, are by no means indifferent to one another. They consider one another as persons to and from whom certain affections are due, and they hope some day to be in a position to enjoy the friendship that ought naturally to have taken place among such close relatives. Until they meet, the absent son or brother is often the favourite son or brother. He has never offended, or he offended so long ago that the offence is forgotten—a childish prank not worth remembering. . . . When they meet, it is often with a strong disposition to have the habitual sympathy that constitutes family affection—so strong that they’re apt •to imagine they actually have that 117 Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and attention sympathy and •to behave to one another as if they had. But I’m afraid that in many cases time and experience undeceive them. On coming to know one another better, they often turn out to have habits, moods, and inclinations that are different from what the others expected; and they can’t easily adjust to these because of the lack of the habitual sympathy that is the basis and driving force of ‘family affection’ properly so-called. . . . Anyway, it is only with dutiful and virtuous people that the general rule has even this slender authority. People who are dissipated, profligate or vain will disregard the rule entirely. They will be so far from respecting it that they’ll seldom talk of it except with indecent derision; and an early and long separation of this kind always completely estranges them from one another. With such persons, respect for the
- 268. general rule can at best produce only a cold and affected civility (a faint copy of real regard), and even this is commonly abolished by a slight offence, a tiny conflict of interests. The education of boys at distant great schools, of young men at distant colleges, of young ladies in distant nunneries and boarding-schools, seems in the higher ranks of society to have done crucial harm to domestic morals and thus to domestic happiness, both in France and in England. Do you want to bring up your children to be dutiful to their parents, kind and affectionate to their brothers and sisters? Then bring them up in your own home—make it necessary for them to be dutiful children, kind and affectionate brothers and sisters! From their parents’ house the children may, with propriety and advantage, go out every day to attend public schools; but let them continue to live at home. That way of bringing up a child is the institution of nature; education away from home at a boarding school is a contrivance of man. You don’t need me to tell you which is likely to be wiser! [Smith’s next three paragraphs make these points: •In ‘tragedies and romances’ we meet stories about people who are drawn to one another because they are blood-related, though they don’t know that they are; but this never happens in real life. •In ‘countries where the authority of law is not alone sufficient to give perfect security to everyone’, the different branches of a growing extended family often choose to live close to one another; and that gives any two of them a weakened version of the kind of connection most of us have with members of our more immediate family. •In countries where the authority of law is enough to protect everyone, as families grow they spread and scatter, and the parts of them stop mattering to one another.] I regard natural affection (as they call it) as an effect
- 269. of the moral connection between the parent and the child more than of the supposed physical connection. [The ‘moral connection’ is the fact that the parent and child live together.] ·But sometimes a belief about physical connection outweighs the actual facts about moral connection·. A jealous husband, despite the moral connection—despite the child’s having been brought up in his own house—often hates the unhappy child whom he supposes to be the offspring of his wife’s infidelity. . . . Among well-disposed people who need ·in their occupa- tions· to accommodate themselves to one another there often comes to be a friendship not unlike what holds between those who are born to live in the same household. Colleagues in office, partners in trade, call one another ‘brothers’, and often feel towards one another as if they really were so. . . . Even the trivial fact of living in the same neighbourhood has some effect of the same kind. We respect the face of a man whom we see every day, provided he has never offended us. Neighbours can be convenient to one another, and they can also be troublesome. If they are a good sort of people 118 Smith on Moral Sentiments Who should have our care and attention they are naturally disposed to agree. . . . So there are certain small favours that everyone agrees are due to a neighbour in preference to anyone who has no such connection. This natural disposition to do our best to make our own
- 270. sentiments, principles, and feelings fit with the sentiments etc. that we see fixed and rooted in persons whom we are obliged to live and converse with is the cause of the contagious effects of both good and bad company. A man who associates chiefly with the wise and the virtuous, though he may not become either wise or virtuous himself, can’t help acquiring at least a certain respect for wisdom and virtue; and one who associates chiefly with profligate and dissolute people, though he may not become profligate and dissolute himself, must soon at least lose all his original loathing of profligacy and dissoluteness. This same disposition may contribute something to the similarity of family characters that we often see transmitted through several generations; but the family character seems not to come only from the moral connection but also in part from the physical connection—which is of course the sole cause of the family face. (2) But by far the most respectworthy of all attachments to an individual is the one that is wholly based on respect and approval of what he does and how he does it, confirmed by much experience and long acquaintance. The sympathy that underlies such friendships isn’t •constrained—it isn’t a sympathy that has been assumed and made habitual for the sake of convenience and getting along together. It is a •natural sympathy that comes from an involuntary feeling that the persons we choose as friends are natural and proper objects of respect and approval. Such friendship is possible only between men of virtue. Only they can feel the entire confidence in one another’s conduct that gives them a guarantee that they will never offend or be offended by one another. Vice is always capricious; it’s only virtue that is regular and orderly. The attachment that is based on the love of virtue is the •happiest of all attachments as well as the most •permanent and secure. Such friendships needn’t
- 271. be confined to a single person; they can safely include all the wise and virtuous people whose wisdom and virtue we can wholly depend on because we have seen them from close up for a long period of time. Those who want to confine friendship to two persons seem to be confusing •the wise security of friendship with •the jealousy and folly of love. The hasty and foolish intimacies of young people are often based on •some slight similarity of character, quite unconnected with good conduct, on •a taste for the same studies, the same amusements, the same diversions, or on •their sharing some special opinion that isn’t widely held. These intimacies that begin from a whim and are ended by another whim, however agreeable they may appear while they last, come nowhere near to deserving the sacred and venerable name of ‘friendship’. (3) Of all the persons whom nature points out for our spe- cial beneficence, however, there are none to whom it seems more properly directed than those who have already been our benefactors. Nature, which formed men for a mutual kindness that is necessary for their happiness, makes every man the special object of the kindness of people to whom he himself has been kind. Even when the beneficiaries’ gratitude doesn’t correspond to what their benefactor has done for them, the sense of his merit—the sympathetic gratitude of the impartial spectator—will always correspond to it. And sometimes the general sense of someone’s merit can be increased by people’s indignation over the ingratitude
- 272. 119 Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our beneficence of his beneficiaries. No benevolent man ever lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence. If he doesn’t always gather them from the persons from whom they ought to have come, he nearly always gathers them, and with a tenfold increase, from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness; and if the great object of our ambition is to be beloved by our brethren, the surest way of obtaining it is to show by our conduct that we really love them. After the persons who are recommended to our benef- icence by (1) their connection with ourselves, by (2) their personal qualities, or by (3) their past services, come (4) those whom nature points out to us not for •friendship with us but for •our benevolent attention. What picks these people out is ·not any special intrinsic qualities that they have, but· their special situation: they are •greatly fortunate or •greatly unfortunate—•rich and powerful •or poor and wretched. [In what follows, the phrases ‘the distinction of ranks’ and ‘the peace and order of society’ are Smith’s.] •The distinction of ranks, the peace and order of soci- ety, are largely based on the respect that we naturally have for the rich and powerful. •The relief and consolation of human misery de- pend altogether on our compassion for the poor and wretched.
- 273. The peace and order of society is more important than even the relief of the miserable. So our respect for the great is most apt to offend by going too far, while our fellow-feeling for the miserable is more apt to offend by not going far enough. Moralists urge us to exhibit charity and compassion, and warn us against the fascination of greatness. It’s true that this fascination ·can easily be overdone·: it is so powerful that (4) the rich and great are too often preferred to (2) the wise and virtuous. Nature has wisely judged that •plain and obvious differences of birth and fortune provide a more stable basis for the distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, than would the •invisible and often uncertain differences of wisdom and virtue. The undiscriminating eyes of the great mob of mankind can see the differences of birth and fortune well enough, whereas difference of wisdom and virtue—well, even those who are wise and virtuous sometimes have trouble distinguishing them! In the order of all these recommendations, the benevolent wisdom of nature is equally evident. . . . Those different beneficent feelings sometimes pull in different directions, and we don’t—perhaps we can’t—have any precise rules to settle which way we should go in a given case. When should (2) friendship give way to (3) gratitude, or gratitude to friendship? When should (1) the strongest of all natural affections give way to a regard for (4) the safety of superiors on whose safety the welfare of the whole society depends, and when can that choice go the other way without impropriety? Such questions must be left altogether to the decision of the man within the breast, the supposed impartial spectator, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. If we place ourselves completely in his situation, if we really view ourselves with his eyes, and listen with diligent and reverential attention to what he suggests to us, his voice will never deceive us. We shan’t need any applied-ethics rules to
- 274. direct our conduct. . . . Chapter 2: The order in which societies are recom- mended by nature to our beneficence The motivational forces that direct the order in which •individuals are ·naturally· recommended to our beneficence also direct the order in which •societies are recommended to it. The ones that we find it natural to attend to first are those that are or may be of most importance ·to us·. 120 Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our beneficence •The state in which we have been born and brought up, and under the protection of which we continue to live, is ordinarily the biggest society on whose happiness (or misery) our good (or bad) conduct can have much influence. So fittingly •it’s the one that nature most strongly recommends to us. Not only we ourselves but all the people we care about most—our children, our parents, our relatives, our friends, our benefactors, all those whom we naturally love and revere the most—are usually included within •it, and their prosperity and safety depend to some extent on its prosperity and safety. So nature makes it dear to us not only through all our selfish feelings but also through all our private benevolent feelings. On account of our own connection with it, its prosperity and glory seem to reflect some sort of honour on ourselves. When we compare our society with others of the same kind, we are proud of its superiority and are somewhat humiliated if it seems to be in any way below them. All the illustrious characters that it
- 275. has produced in former times. . . .—its warriors, statesmen, poets, philosophers, and writers of all kinds—we’re inclined to view with the most partial [opposite of ‘impartial’] admiration, and to rank (sometimes quite wrongly) above those of all other nations. The patriot who lays down his life for the safety of this society—or even for its vain-glory!—appears to do precisely the right thing. He appears to view himself in the way the impartial spectator has to view him, as merely one of the multitude, of no more importance than any of the others, and as bound at all times to sacrifice and devote himself to the safety, the service, and even the glory of the greater number. Although this sacrifice seems to be perfectly right and proper, we know how hard it is to make it and how few people are capable of making it. So someone who does sacrifice himself in this way arouses not only our entire approval but our highest wonder and admiration; he seems to deserve all the applause that the most heroic virtue can deserve. On the other side, the traitor who in some special situation imagines he can promote his own interests by betraying the interests of his native country appears to be of all villains the most detestable. He is disregarding the judgment of the man within the breast, and shamefully and basely putting himself ahead of all those with whom he has any connection. Our love for our own nation often disposes us to look with malignant jealousy and envy at the prospering of any neighbouring nation. All nations live in continual dread and suspicion of their neighbours, because there is no inde- pendent superior ·to whom they can appeal· to decide their disputes, Each sovereign, not expecting much justice from his neighbours, is inclined to treat them with as little justice as he expects from them. There are laws of nations—rules that independent states claim to think they are obliged to
- 276. conform to in their dealings with one another—but the regard for those laws is often little more than mere pretence. [Citing an example from ancient Rome, Smith distinguishes •the de- fensible wish for neighbouring nations not to have too much power from •the coarsely primitive wish for neighbouring nations to fail in every way. Then:] France and England may each have some reason to fear the other’s increase of the naval and military power, but for either of them to envy the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its lands, the advancement of its man- ufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its ports and harbours, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences, is surely beneath the dignity of two such great nations. Those are all real improvements of the world we live in. . . . They all proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice or envy. [To ‘emulate’ something is to try to copy it.] 121 Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our beneficence The love for our own country seems not to come from love for mankind—and indeed sometimes seems to dispose us to act in ways that are inconsistent with a love for mankind. France has nearly three times the population of Great Britain, so that within the great society of mankind France’s prosperity should appear to be much more important than Great Britain’s. Yet a British subject who took that view and accordingly always preferred France’s prosperity to Great Britain’s would not be thought a good citizen of Great Britain.
- 277. We don’t love our country merely as a part of the great society of mankind; we love it for its own sake, and independently of any thoughts about mankind in general. The wisdom that designed the system of human affections, as well as the system of every other part of nature, seems to have thought that the best way to further the interests of the great society of mankind would be for each individual to attend primarily to the particular portion of it that lies most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his understanding. National prejudices and hatreds seldom extend beyond neighbouring nations. We may weakly and foolishly call the French our ‘natural enemies’, and it may be that they, equally weakly and foolishly, think the same about us. Neither they nor we have any sort of envy for the prosperity of China or Japan, though we can’t often employ our good-will towards such distant countries in any way that does them much good. The most extensive public benevolence that can com- monly be exercised to good effect is that of statesmen who plan and create alliances among neighbouring or near- neighbouring nations, for the preservation of the so-called ‘balance of power’ or of the general peace and tranquillity of the states that are involved. Yet the statesmen who plan and implement such treaties are seldom aiming at anything but the interest of their respective countries; though sometimes they are looking wider than that. [Smith suggests some historical examples.] Every independent state is divided into many different orders and societies, each of which has its own particular powers, privileges, and immunities. Every individual is naturally more attached to his own particular order or society than to any other. His own interests, his own vanity, the
- 278. interests and vanity of many of his friends and companions, commonly have a lot to do with this: he is ambitious to extend this group’s privileges and immunities, and is zealous to defend them against the encroachments of every other order or society. What is called the constitution of any particular state depends on how that state is divided into the different orders and societies that make it up, and on how powers, privileges, and immunities have been distributed among them. The stability of a state’s constitution depends on the ability of each of its particular orders or societies to maintain its own powers, privileges, and immunities against the encroachments of all the others. A particular constitution inevitably undergoes some change whenever the rank and condition of any of its subordinate parts goes up or down. All those different orders and societies depend on the state to which ·they belong, because it’s to the state that· they owe their security and protection. Even the most biased member of any one of them will agree to this—i.e. will agree that his order or society is subordinate to the state, and dependent for its existence on the prosperity and preservation of the state as a whole. But it may be hard to convince such a person that the prosperity and preservation of the state requires any lessening of the powers etc. of his own particular order or society. This bias is sometimes unjust, but that doesn’t mean that it is useless. It holds back the spirit of innovation, tending to preserve the established 122 Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our
- 279. beneficence balance among the different orders and societies into which the state is divided. While it sometimes appears to obstruct some political changes that may be fashionable and popular at the time, it really helps to make the whole system stable and permanent. The love of our country ordinarily seems to have two motivational drivers: (1) a certain respect and reverence for the constitution or form of government that is actually estab- lished; and (2) an earnest desire to make our fellow-citizens as safe, respectworthy, and happy as we can. Someone who isn’t disposed (1) to respect the laws and to obey the lawful authorities •is not a citizen; and someone who doesn’t want to (2) do everything he possibly can to promote the welfare of the whole society of his fellow-citizens •is not a good citizen. In times of peace those two motivations generally co- incide and lead to the same conduct. It seems obvious that the best way of maintaining the safe, respectworthy, and happy situation of our fellow-citizens is to support the established government—when we see that this government does maintain them in that situation. But in times of public discontent, faction, and disorder those two motivations can pull in different directions, and even a wise man may be inclined to think that the present government appears plainly unable to maintain public tranquillity and that some change should be made in its constitution or form. In such cases, however, it often needs the highest effort of political wisdom for a real patriot to decide whether to (1) support and try to re-establish the authority of the old system or rather (2) to go along with the more daring but often dangerous spirit of innovation. Foreign war and civil faction provide the most splendid
- 280. opportunities for the display of public spirit. The hero who serves his country successfully in foreign war satisfies the wishes of the whole nation, which makes him an object of universal gratitude and admiration. In times of civil discord, the leaders of the opposing parties may be admired by half their fellow-citizens but are likely to be cursed by the other half. Their characters and the merit of their respective services often seem more doubtful, which is why the glory that is acquired through foreign war is almost always purer and more splendid than any that can be acquired through civil faction. Yet the leader of the successful party ·in a factional dispute·, if he has enough authority to prevail on his own friends to act with moderation (and often he doesn’t!), may be able to serve his country in a much more essential and important way than the greatest victories and the most extensive conquests ·in foreign wars·. . . . Amidst the turbulence and disorder of faction, •a certain spirit of system is apt to mix itself with •the public spirit that is based on the love of humanity, on a real fellow-feeling with the difficulties and distresses to which some of our fellow- citizens are exposed. This spirit of system commonly goes in the same direction as that gentler public spirit, pumping energy into it and often inflaming it even to the madness of fanaticism. Nearly always the leaders of the discontented party display some plausible plan of reformation which, they claim, will not only remove the difficulties and relieve the distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent anything like them from ever occurring again. To this end they propose to rebuild the constitution, altering some of the most essential parts of a system of government under which the subjects of a great empire may have enjoyed peace, security, and even glory through a period of several centuries.
- 281. The great mass of party-members are commonly intoxicated with the imaginary beauty of this ideal system: they have had no experience of it, but it has been represented to them in the most dazzling colours in which the eloquence of their 123 Smith on Moral Sentiments Which societies should receive our beneficence leaders could paint it. [Calling it ‘ideal’, Smith means merely that it exists only as an idea that someone has.] Many of those leaders themselves, though they may at first have aimed only at a growth of their own personal power, eventually become dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great reformation as the weakest and stupidest of their followers. There are other leaders who keep their own heads free from this fanaticism, but don’t dare to disappoint the expectation of their followers; so they are constantly forced to act as if they were under the common delusion, doing this in defiance of their principles and their conscience. The violence of the party, refusing all offers of reasonable compromise, by requiring too much often gets nothing; and difficulties and distresses which with a little moderation might have been considerably removed and relieved are left with absolutely no hope of a remedy. A man whose public spirit is prompted only by humane- ness and benevolence will respect the established powers and privileges of individuals, and even more those of the great orders and societies into which the state is divided. If he regards some of them as somewhat abusive, he’ll settle for
- 282. •moderating things that he often can’t •annihilate without great violence. . . . He will do his best to •accommodate public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people, and to •remedy any inconveniences that flow from the lack of regulations that the people are unwilling to submit to. When he can’t establish the right, he won’t be too proud to ameliorate the wrong. Like Solon, when he can’t establish the best system of laws he will try to establish the best that the people can bear. The man of system is nothing like that. He is apt to be sure of his own wisdom, and is often so in love with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government that he can’t allow the slightest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in detail, paying no attention to the great interests or the strong prejudices that may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the members of a great society as easily as a hand arranges the pieces on a chess-board! He forgets that the chessmen’s only source of motion is what the hand impresses on them, whereas in the great chess-board of human society every single piece has its own ·private· source of motion, quite different from anything that the legislature might choose to impress on it. If •those two sources coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is likely to be happy and successful. If •they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably and the society will be in the highest degree of disorder all the time. The views of a statesman need, no doubt, to be guided by some •general idea of the perfect state of policy and law—perhaps even a •systematic idea of these. But to insist on establishing everything that that idea may seem to require, and on establishing it all at once and in spite
- 283. of all opposition, must often be the highest degree of arro- gance. The statesman who does that is holding up his own judgment as the supreme standard of right and wrong. He imagines himself to be the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and thinks that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him and not he to them. That is why of all political theorists sovereign princes are by far the most dangerous! This arrogance ·that I have just described· is perfectly familiar to them. They have no doubt as to the immense superiority of their own judgment. So when such imperial and royal reformers are graciously willing to give thought to the humdrum topic of the constitution of the country they have to govern, the worst things they see in it are obstructions that the country sometimes sets up against 124 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence the carrying out of their own will. They. . . .consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for the state. So the great object of their ‘reformation’ is to remove those obstructions, to reduce the authority of the nobility, to take away the privileges of cities and provinces, and to bring it about that the greatest individuals and the greatest orders of the state are as incapable of opposing their commands as the weakest and most insignificant. Chapter 3: Universal benevolence Although our effective help can’t often be extended to any society wider than that of our own country, our good-will isn’t hemmed in by any boundary—it can embrace the universe. We can’t form any idea of an innocent and sentient
- 284. being whom we wouldn’t want to be happy. . . . The idea of a mischievous sentient being naturally provokes our hatred; but our hostility to such a being is really an effect of our universal benevolence. It comes from our sympathy for the misery and resentment of the other innocent and sentient beings whose happiness is disturbed by the malice of this one. This universal benevolence, however noble and generous it may be, can’t be the source of any solid happiness for any man who isn’t thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants of the universe, low and high, are under the immediate care and protection of the great, benevolent, and all-wise Being who •directs all the movements of nature, and who •is determined [here = ‘caused’] by his own unalterable perfections to maintain in it always the greatest possible amount of happiness. To ·someone who has· this universal benevolence the mere suspicion of a fatherless world must be the saddest of all thoughts, involving the thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness. All the splendour of the highest prosperity can’t lighten the gloom that this dreadful idea must necessarily inflict on imagination; just as, in a wise and virtuous man, all the sorrow of the most terrible adversity can’t ever dry up the joy that necessarily arises from the habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary system, ·i.e. the truth of theism·. The wise and virtuous man is always willing for his own private interest to be sacrificed to the public interest of his own particular order or society. He is always willing, too, for the interests of this order or society to be sacrificed to the greater interests of the state of which it is a subordinate part. So he should be equally willing for all those inferior interests
- 285. to be sacrificed to the greater interests of the universe—of the great society of all sentient and thinking beings whose imme- diate administrator and director is God himself. If he really does believe that this benevolent and all-wise Being can’t allow any partial evil that isn’t necessary for the universal good, he must regard all the misfortunes that may happen to himself, his friends, his society, or country as necessary for the prosperity of the universe. This involves believing that not only should he patiently put up with them but also that his attitude should be: ‘If I had known all the connections and dependences of things, I would have sincerely and devoutly wanted all those misfortunes to happen.’ This noble-minded acceptance of the will of the great Director of the universe doesn’t seem to be beyond the reach of human nature. Good soldiers who both love and trust their general often march with more alacrity and gaiety •to a forlorn station from which they don’t expect to return than they would •to one that didn’t involve difficulty or danger. [Smith contrasts these as •‘the noblest thing a man can do’ and •‘the dullness of ordinary duty’ respectively; and he 125 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence likens the former of them to what a convinced theist is called upon to do:] No conductor of an army can deserve more unlimited trust. . . .than the great Conductor of the universe. In the greatest disasters a wise man ought to think that he himself, his friends and his countrymen have only been ordered to the forlorn station of the universe; that they wouldn’t have been so ordered if it hadn’t been necessary for the good of the whole; and that it’s their duty not only
- 286. to accept this order humbly but to try to embrace it with alacrity and joy. Surely a wise man should be capable of doing what a good soldier is at all times ready to do. The idea of the divine Being whose benevolence and wisdom have from all eternity directed the immense machine of the universe so as to produce at every moment the greatest possible amount of happiness is the most sublime thought human beings can have. Every other thought necessarily appears mean in comparison with it. We usually have the highest veneration for anyone whom we believe to be principally occupied with this sublime thought; even if his life is altogether contemplative, we often regard him with a higher kind of religious respect than we have for the most active and useful servant of the com- monwealth. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which are mainly devoted to this subject, may have contributed more to the general admiration of his character than everything he did in the course of his just, merciful, and beneficent reign ·as emperor of Rome·. Still, the administration of the great system of the universe—the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sentient beings—is God’s business, not man’s. Man is assigned a role that is much humbler but also much more suitable to the limited nature of his powers and his intellect—namely the care of his own happiness and of the happiness of his family, his friends, his country. A man can’t be excused for neglecting this humbler task on the grounds that he is busy contemplating the more sublime one! Marcus Aurelius was accused, perhaps wrongly, of doing this. It was said that while he was busy with philosophical speculations and thoughts about the welfare of the universe
- 287. he neglected the welfare of the Roman empire. The most sublime theory-building of the contemplative philosopher can hardly compensate for the neglect of the smallest active duty. Section 3: Self-control A man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, strict justice, and proper benevolence may be said to be perfectly virtuous. But a complete knowledge of those rules won’t, unaided, enable him to act in this manner. His own passions ·play a role in this, and they· are apt to mislead him—sometimes •driving him to violate all the rules that in his sober and cool hours he approves of, and sometimes •seducing him into doing this. The most perfect knowledge won’t always enable him to do his duty if it isn’t supported by the most perfect self-control. 126 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence Some of the best ancient moralists seem to have divided passions into two classes: (1) those that can’t be restrained, even for a moment, by a considerable exertion of self-control; and (2) those that it’s easy to restrain for a short period of time, although over the course of a lifetime they are apt to lead us far astray through their continual quiet urgings. (1) The first class consists of •fear and •anger and some other passions that are mixed or connected with those two. (2) The second class contains love of ease, of pleasure, of applause, and of many other selfish satisfactions. Extrava-
- 288. gant fear and furious anger are often hard to restrain, even for a moment. As for the love of ease and the others in (2), it’s always easy to restrain those for a short period of time; but through their continual urgings they often mislead us into weaknesses that we later have much reason to be ashamed of. We could say that the (1) passions •drive us from our duty, whereas the (2) passions •seduce us from it. The ancient moralists that I have referred to used the labels ‘fortitude’, ‘manliness’, and ‘strength of mind’ for control over the passions in group (1); and ‘temperance’, ‘decency’, ‘modesty’, and ‘moderation’ for control over the ones in group (2). Control of each of those sets of passions has a beauty that comes from its utility—from its enabling us always to act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and of proper benevolence. But it also has an ·intrinsic· beauty of its own, and seems to deserve a certain degree of esteem and admiration for its own sake, because of the qualities of the exertion involved in such self-control—its strength and greatness with passions in group (1), and its uniformity, evenness and unflinching steadiness in group (2). A man who keeps his tranquillity unaltered at a time when he is in danger, or being tortured, or nearing death, and doesn’t allow a word or gesture to escape him that doesn’t perfectly match the feelings of the most uninvolved spectator, inevitably commands a high degree of admiration from us. [Smith elaborates on this, mentioning great men of the remote past (Socrates) and of the more recent past (Sir Thomas More) who went to their deaths in a calm and dignified manner, and whose great posthumous reputation has derived from this. We even have a certain admiration for a truly wicked man who deserves to be sent to the gallows, if he goes there ‘with decency and firmness’.]
- 289. War is the great school both for acquiring and for exer- cising this sort of magnanimity. Death is called the ‘king’ of terrors; and a man who has conquered his fear of death isn’t likely to be thrown off-balance by the approach of any other natural evil. In war, men become familiar with death, and this cures them of the superstitious horror with which death is viewed by weak and inexperienced. They consider it merely as the loss of life, and as an object of aversion only to the extent that life happens to be an object of desire. Also, they learn from experience that many seemingly great dangers are not as great as they appear, and that with courage, energy and presence of mind they often have a good chance of extricating themselves with honour from situations where at first they could see no hope. [Smith elaborates on our admiration for the calmly bold warrior, even one who is fighting on the wrong side in a wicked war.] Control over anger often seems to be just as generous [see note on page 11] and noble as control over fear. Many of the most admired examples of ancient and modern eloquence have been proper expressions of righteous indignation. The speeches of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedonia, and Cicero’s speeches against Catiline, derive all their beauty from the noble propriety with which indignation is expressed in them. And this just indignation is simply anger restrained and properly damped down to something that the impartial 127 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence spectator can enter into. The blustering and noisy passion that goes beyond this is always odious and offensive, and it
- 290. draws us in not on the side of the angry man but on the side of the man he is angry with. The nobleness of pardoning often seems better than even the most perfect propriety of resenting. When •the offending party has properly acknowledged what he did, or even without that when •the public interest requires that mortal enemies should unite to carry out some important duty, the man who sets aside all animosity and acts with con- fidence and cordiality towards the person who has most grievously offended him seems to be entitled to our highest admiration. But the command of anger doesn’t always appear in such splendid colours. Fear is contrary to anger, and is often the motive that restrains it; and in such cases the lowness of the motive takes away the nobleness of the restraint. Anger prompts us to attack, and giving way to it seems sometimes to show a sort of courage and superiority to fear. People sometimes take pride in having acted on their anger; no-one takes pride in having acted out of fear!. . . . Acting according to the dictates of prudence, justice, and proper beneficence seems to have no great merit when there’s no temptation to do otherwise. But •acting with cool deliberation in the midst of the great- est dangers and difficulties, •observing religiously the sacred rules of justice, in spite of being tempted by self-interest and provoked by great injuries to violate them; and
- 291. •never allowing the benevolence of our temperament to be damped or discouraged by malignity and ingrati- tude on the part of some beneficiaries, is the character of the most exalted wisdom and virtue. Self-control is not only itself a great virtue, but it seems to be the source of most of the glow of all the other virtues. Control over one’s fear and over one’s anger are always great and noble powers; and when they’re directed by justice and benevolence they increase the splendour of those other virtues as well as being great virtues themselves. But when they are directed by other motives they can be (though still great and respectworthy) excessively dangerous. [Calm self-control in the deceitful pursuit of really bad objectives has sometimes been admired by people with good judgment, Smith says; and he cites examples, ancient and modern. Then:] This character of dark and deep dissimulation occurs most commonly in times of great public disorder, in the violence of faction and civil war. When the law has become largely powerless, when perfect innocence can’t guarantee safety, a concern for self-defence obliges most men to re- sort to dexterity, to skill, and to apparent agreement with whatever party happens to be uppermost at the moment. This false character is also often accompanied by cool and determined courage, which is needed because being detected in such a deception often leads to death. . . . Control over one’s less violent and turbulent passions seems less open to being abused for any pernicious purpose. Temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation are always likeable, and can seldom be directed to any bad end. It is from the unremitting steadiness of those gentler exercises of self-control that the likeable virtue of •chastity and the respectworthy virtues of •industry and •frugality derive all
- 292. the sober shine that they have. The conduct of everyone who is content to walk in the humble paths of private and peaceable life has a beauty and grace that are less •dazzling but not always less •pleasing than the beauty and grace of the more splendid actions of the hero, the statesman, or the legislator. 128 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence After what I have already said in different parts of this work concerning the nature of self-control, I don’t think I need to go into any more detail concerning those virtues. All I’ll say now is that the intensity-scale’s •point of propriety, the •degree of a passion that the impartial spectator approves of, is differently placed for different passions. (1) Of some passions it’s better to have too much than to have too little, an excess being less disagreeable than a shortage; and in such passions the point of propriety seems to stand high—i.e. nearer to ‘too much’ than to ‘too little’. (2) With other passions a shortage is less disagreeable than an excess; and their point of propriety seems to stand low—i.e. nearer to ‘too little’ than to ‘too much’. The (1) passions are the ones the spectator is most disposed to sympathize with, the (2) the ones he is least likely to sympathize with. Also, the (1) passions are the ones that feel good to the person who has the passion, and the (2) passions are the ones that feel bad to the person who has them. So out of this we get a general rule: (1) The passions that the spectator is most disposed to sympathize with, and that have a correspondingly high point of propriety, are the ones that feel good to
- 293. the person who has them; and (2) the passions that the spectator is least disposed to sympathize with, and that have a correspondingly low point of propriety, are the ones that feel disagreeable to the person who has them. I haven’t found a single exception to this general rule. A few examples will sufficiently explain it while also demonstrating its truth. [Smith’s ‘few examples’ and his comments on them fill the remaining thirty book-pages of this section. The present version will reduce the length considerably,] It’s possible for someone to be •too much disposed to have the affections that tend to unite men in society— humaneness, kindness, natural affection, friendship, esteem. [Notice that in that sentence Smith uses ‘affections’ in the broad sense and ‘affection’ in the narrow one—see note on page 6.] But even this •excess makes the person interesting to everybody [=, roughly, ‘gives us all a concern for him, puts us all on his side, sort of’]. We blame him for it, but we still regard it with compassion and even with kindness, and never with dislike. We’re sorry rather than angry about it. To the person himself, having such excessive affections is often not only agreeable but delicious. On some occasions, especially when directed towards unworthy objects (as it too often is), it exposes him to much real and heartfelt distress. Even then, though, a well-disposed person will regard him with intense pity, and will be highly indignant with those who despise him as weak
- 294. and imprudent. As for having •too little disposition to have such feelings—what we call ‘hardness of heart’—it makes a man insensitive to the feelings and distresses of other people, while also making them insensitive to his. This excludes him from the friendship of all the world, cutting him off from the best and most comfortable of all social enjoyments. As for the disposition to have the affections that drive men away from one another, tending to break the bands of human society (so to speak)—i.e. the disposition to anger, hatred, envy, malice, revenge—one is more apt to offend by having too much of this disposition than by having too little. Having too much of it makes a man wretched and miserable in his own mind, and draws down on him the hatred, and sometimes even the horror, of other people. It’s not often that anyone is complained of for having too little of this disposition, but there is such a thing as having too little of it. The lack of proper indignation is a most essential defect in the manly character, and it often makes a man incapable of protecting himself or his friends from insult and injustice. The odious and detestable passion of envy consists in a 129 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence misdirected excess of a certain motivational drive, and it’s possible to have too little of that drive. Envy is the passion that views with malignant dislike the greater success of people who are really entitled to all the success they have had. A man who in matters of consequence tamely allows other people who are not entitled to any such success to rise above him or get before him is rightly condemned as poor-spirited. This weakness is commonly based on laziness, sometimes
- 295. on good nature, on a dislike for confrontation and for bustle and pleading, and sometimes also on a sort of ill-judged magnanimity. [This last basis for poor-spiritedness, Smith says, involves the person’s having a dismissive attitude to the advantages that he is passing up, and fancying that he’ll be able to keep up this attitude indefinitely. He is apt to be wrong in this belief, and to end up with ‘a most malignant envy’ and hatred for the success of the others.] One is more likely to offend by •being too sensitive to personal danger and distress than by •not being sensitive enough to these. (This is similar to being too sensitive or not sensitive enough to personal provocation.) No character is more contemptible than that of a coward; no character is more admired than that of the man who faces death bravely, maintaining his tranquillity and presence of mind amidst the most dreadful dangers. [Smith develops this line of thought, mainly repeating things he has said earlier.] But although our sensitivity to our own injuries and misfortunes is usually •too strong, it can be •too weak. A man who feels little for his own misfortunes will always feel less for those of other people, and be less disposed to relieve them. [And so on, as Smith develops the general theme that a proper care for the welfare of others requires a proper care for one’s own interests. The most striking thing here is the description of the internalized impartial spectator as ‘the great inmate, the great demi-god within the breast’.] [Then a paragraph about a moral risk involved in having too fine a sensitivity to personal injury, danger and distress. It’s possible to have this and yet behave well, Smith says, because this extreme sensitivity can be controlled by ‘the authority of the judge within the breast’. But this may be too fatiguing for the inner judge, giving him ‘too much to do’. In such a case, Smith says, there will be a constant inner
- 296. conflict between (for example) cowardice and conscience, depriving the person of ‘internal tranquillity and happiness’. He continues:] A wise man whom Nature has endowed with this too-fine sensitivity, and whose too-lively feelings haven’t been sufficiently blunted and hardened by early education and proper exercise, will do whatever he decently can to avoid situations for which he isn’t perfectly fitted. . . . A certain boldness, a certain firmness of nerves and hardiness of con- stitution, whether natural or acquired, are undoubtedly the best preparatives for all the great exercises of self-control. . . . It is also possible to have too much, or to have too little, sensitivity to the pleasures, amusements and enjoyments of human life. Having too much seems less disagreeable than having too little. A •strong propensity for joy is certainly more pleasing—to the person himself and to the spectator—than a •dull numbness towards objects of amusement and diversion. We are charmed with the gaiety of youth, and even with the playfulness of childhood, but we soon grow weary of the flat and tasteless solemnity that too often accompanies old age. It can happen that a great propensity for joy etc. isn’t restrained by a sense of propriety—is unsuitable to the time or the place, or to the age or the situation of the person—so that in giving way to it the person is neglecting his interests or his duty; and when that happens, the propensity is rightly blamed as excessive, and as harmful both to the individual and to the society. But in most of these cases the chief fault is not so much the strength of the propensity for joy as the 130 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence weakness of the sense of propriety and duty. . . .
- 297. [The twenty-odd book-pages that Smith has ahead of him in this section are entirely devoted to ‘self-estimation’—thinking too highly of oneself, not thinking highly enough of oneself, or getting it right.] One’s estimate of oneself may be too high, and it may be too low. It is so agreeable to think highly of ourselves, and so disagreeable to take a low view of ourselves, that for the person himself some degree of over-rating must be much less disagreeable than any degree of under-rating. But it may be thought that things must appear quite differently to the impartial spectator, who must always find under-rating less disagreeable than over-rating. . . . In estimating our own merit, judging our own character and conduct, there are two different standards to which we naturally compare them. (1) One is the idea of exact propriety and perfection, so far as each of us can comprehend that idea. (2) The other is ·the idea of· a certain approximation to exact propriety and perfection—specifically, the degree of perfection etc. that is commonly achieved in the world, the degree that most of our friends and companions, and most of our rivals and competitors, may have actually arrived at. We don’t often—I’m inclined to think we don’t ever—try to judge ourselves without paying some attention to both these standards. But different men distribute their attention between them differently; so indeed does one man at different times. So far as our attention is directed towards (1) the first standard, ·even· the wisest and best of us can see nothing but weakness and imperfection in his own character and conduct, finding no reason for arrogance and presumption,
- 298. and plenty of reason for humility, regret and repentance. So far as our attention is directed towards (2) the second standard, we may be affected in either way, feeling ourselves to be really above the standard to which we are comparing ourselves, or really below it. The wise and virtuous man directs his attention mainly to (1) the first standard, the idea of exact propriety and perfection. There exists in every man’s mind an idea of this kind, gradually formed from his observations on the character and conduct both of himself and of other people. It is slowly and steadily under construction by the great demigod within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct. [Smith writes about how the wise and virtuous man constantly measures himself against this standard, trying to get closer to it in his own character and conduct. But never fully succeeding, because, Smith says, ‘he is imitating the work of a divine artist, which can never be equalled’. He may cheer himself up by comparing himself with (2) the second standard, ‘but he is necessarily much more humbled by (1) one comparison than he ever can be elevated by (2) the other’. And he won’t let the results of (2) the second comparison lead him to behave arrogantly or dismissively towards other people.] In all the liberal and ingenious arts [see note on page 99]— painting, poetry, music, eloquence, philosophy—the great artist always feels the real imperfection of his own best works, and is more aware than anyone else is of how far short they fall of the •ideal perfection of which he has formed some conception. He does what he can to imitate that ideal, but he despairs of ever equalling it. Only the inferior artist is ever perfectly satisfied with his own works. He has little conception of •ideal perfection, and doesn’t think about it much. What he mostly compares his works with are the
- 299. works of other artists, perhaps less good artists than he is. [Smith decorates this point with an anecdote: a great French poet said that no great man is ever completely satisfied with his own works, and an inferior poet replied that he was always completely satisfied with his! Smith then goes on 131 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence to say that the situation of an artist in relation to his work is not after all a good model of the situation of a good man in relation to his whole life. He handles this point in terms not of (1) as a standard by which to evaluate one’s work or one’s life but rather of it as a standard by which to make one’s works or to live one’s life:] But to support and finish off (if I may put it that way) the conduct of a whole life to some resemblance to this ideal perfection is surely much more difficult than to work up to an equal resemblance any of the productions of any of the ingenious arts. The artist sits down to his work undisturbed, at leisure, in the full possession and recollection of all his skill, experience, and knowledge. The wise man must support the propriety of his own conduct in health and in sickness, in success and in disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy indolence as well as in that of the most awakened attention. The most sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and distress must never surprise him. The injustice of other people must never provoke him to injustice. The violence of faction must never confound him. All the hardships and hazards of war must never either dishearten or appal him. [The next topic is the person who, when he judges himself by (2) the second standard—the one set by how well the
- 300. general run of people are performing—rightly thinks that he is ‘very much above it’. If this person doesn’t attend carefully to (1) the ideal standard (and most such people don’t), he will become arrogant and inappropriately self-admiring, and will often persuade the gullible multitude to take him at his (over-)valuation. This creates for him a kind of ‘noisy fame’ that may stay with him down the centuries. It may be—Smith allows—that a high-achieving person needed this self-overestimation—both to embolden him to embark on his ventures and to get others to join and support him in them. But if he becomes (by worldly standards) extremely success- ful while still having this unduly high opinion of himself, he may be betrayed into ‘a vanity that approaches almost to insanity and folly’. Smith cites the ancient examples of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Intelligent as Caesar was, he says, he liked being said to have descended from the goddess Venus; and he was guilty of various instances of ‘an almost childish vanity’, which may have helped to motivate his assassins. Then:] The religion and manners of modern times don’t encourage our great men to think they are gods or even prophets. But the combination of success and popularity has led many of the greatest of them to credit themselves with far more importance and far more ability than they really possess; and this has sometimes pushed them into rash and sometimes ruinous adventures. [The only exception to this in modern times, Smith says, is the great Duke of Marlborough, an enormously successful general who was never undermined by immodesty.] In the humble projects of private life as well as in the ambitious and proud pursuit of high rank and high office, great ability and success at the outset often encourage people to tackle projects that are bound to lead to bankruptcy and ruin in the end.
- 301. [Smith now embarks on four book-pages of reflection about how self-overestimation figures in the lives and repu- tations of notably able people who are guilty of it. He repeats at length that it can be an aid to success but can also be a trap, leading the person to ruin himself in one way or another; and he describes in glowing terms the situation of an able person who is truly modest. He speculates on the interplay, in a great man’s reputation, between knowledge of his real successes and inflated beliefs about how great he was—e.g. what would Caesar’s reputation be now if he had lost the battle of Pharsalia? He describes in some detail the disgusting moral depths to which a great man—Alexander 132 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence the Great—descended because of the weight of his grossly exaggerated idea of who he was. And he also describes a further upshot:] The humble, admiring, and flattering friends whom Alexander left in power and authority at his death divided his empire among themselves, and after having thus robbed his family and kindred of their inheritance, put to death every single surviving member of the family, male and female, one by one. [The next paragraph leads Smith into one special depart- ment of the self-overestimation topic, a department that will be his topic through the remaining ten book-pages of the section:] Faced with the excessive self-estimation of the splendid people in whom we observe a notable superior- ity above (2) the common level of mankind, we don’t just •pardon it but often •thoroughly enter into it and sympathize with it. We call such people ‘spirited’, ‘magnanimous’, and
- 302. ‘high-minded’—labels that all convey a considerable degree of praise and admiration. But we can’t enter into and sympathize with •the excessive self-estimation of people in whom we don’t see any such distinguished superiority. We’re disgusted and revolted by •it, and we find it hard to forgive and hard to put up with! We call it ‘pride’, a word that •usually conveys a considerable degree of blame, or ‘vanity’, a word that •always does so. [This version will use those two words exactly as Smith does, not getting into questions about whether what they meant to him is exactly what they mean to us. (Hume in Treatise II treats them as synonyms.)] Pride and vanity are alike in some ways, because each is a variety of self-overestimation; but in many respects they are different. The proud man is sincere: he really is thoroughly con- vinced of his own superiority, though it’s not always easy to see what this conviction is based on. He wants you to view him in just the way he views himself when he looks at himself from your viewpoint. All he demands from you (he thinks) is justice. If you seem not to respect him as he respects himself, he is offended rather than humiliated, and feels the kind of indignant resentment he would feel if you had harmed him in some way. (·He would feel humiliated only if he had a tentative high opinion of himself and was looking to you to confirm him in it·.) Even then, he doesn’t condescend to explain his reasons for his own conviction of his worth. He is too proud to make an effort to win your esteem. He even acts as though he despises it, and tries to
- 303. keep his end up by making you aware not of how high he is but of how low you are. He seems to want not so much to arouse your esteem for him as to grind down your esteem for yourself. The vain man is not sincere: he usually isn’t convinced, in his heart of hearts, that he really has the superiority that he wants you to ascribe to him. He wants you to view him in much more splendid colours than those in which he can view himself when he places himself in your situation and supposes you to know everything that he knows. So when it seems that you view him in different colours, perhaps in his proper colours, he is humiliated rather than offended. He takes every opportunity to display the grounds for his claim to the character that he wants you to ascribe to him; he does this by ostentatious and unnecessary parades of the good qualities and accomplishments that he does possess in some tolerable degree, and sometimes even by false claims to good qualities that he doesn’t have, or that he does have but only in such a low degree that he might as well be said not to have them at all. Far from despising your esteem, he anxiously and busily courts it. Far from wishing to grind down your self-estimation, he is happy to accept it, in the hope that you will accept his own in return. He flatters in order to be flattered. He works on pleasing people; and he 133 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence tries to bribe you into a good opinion of him by politeness and acceptance, and sometimes even by giving real and essential help—though often in an unnecessarily showy manner.
- 304. The vain man sees the respect that is paid to rank and fortune, and wants to usurp this respect as well as respect for talents and virtues. So his dress, his art collection, his carriage and horses, his way of living all announce a higher rank and a greater fortune than he really has; and in order to support this foolish deception for a few years early in his life, he often reduces himself to poverty and distress later on. . . . Of all the illusions of vanity this may be the most common. Obscure strangers visiting foreign countries, or paying a brief visit to the capital of their own country, often try to practise it; and although this is foolish and most unworthy of a man of sense, it isn’t quite as foolish in these cases as it is on most other occasions. If their visit is short, they may escape any disgraceful detection; and after they have given full play to their vanity for a few months or a few years, they can return home and start living frugally so as to recover from the extravagant spending during the visit. A proud man is seldom guilty of this folly. His sense of his own dignity makes him careful not to become anyone’s dependent; and if his fortune isn’t large he will—while wanting to be decent—be carefully frugal and careful in all his expenses. He is offended by the vain man’s ostentatious extravagance, which may out-spend his own. It provokes his indignation as an insolent assumption of a rank to which the vain man isn’t entitled, and he never talks about it without loading it with the harshest and severest reproaches. The proud man doesn’t always feel at his ease in the company of his equals, let alone his superiors. He can’t give up •his lofty claims, and the faces and conversation of such company awe him so much that he doesn’t dare to display •them. He resorts to humbler company, for which he has little respect, and which he wouldn’t willingly choose and doesn’t find in the least agreeable—I mean the company of
- 305. his inferiors, his flatterers, and his dependants. He seldom visits his superiors; and when he does, it’s not because he will get any real satisfaction from such a visit, but rather to show that he is entitled to keep such people company. As Lord Clarendon says about the Earl of Arundel: he sometimes went to court because that’s the only place where he could he could find a greater man than himself, and he seldom went to court because it’s a place where he found a greater man than himself! The vain man is different. He seeks the company of his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it. He seems to think that their splendour reflects a splendour onto those who are often in their company. He haunts the courts of kings and the receptions of ministers, and puts on the manner of someone who is •a candidate for fortune and promotion, when really he has the much more precious happiness, if he knew how to enjoy it, of not being •one! [Smith adds details about how the vain man treats his superiors, ending with:] . . . often flattery, though mostly pleasant flattery delivered with a light touch, and seldom the gross and overdone flattery of a parasite. The proud man, on the other hand, never flatters, and is often hardly civil to anybody. Notwithstanding the falsity of its basis, however, vanity is usually a sprightly, cheerful, and often good-natured passion. Pride is always grave, sullen, and severe. Even the falsehoods of the vain man are innocent falsehoods, meant to raise himself, not to lower other people. The proud man (let’s be fair) doesn’t often go as low as falsehood; but when he does, his falsehoods are far from innocent. They are all trouble-making, and meant to lower other people. He is full of indignation against people who are accorded 134
- 306. Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence a superiority that he thinks they don’t deserve; and this makes him energetic in saying what he can to undermine the supposed basis for their superiority, and to pass on, uncritically, stories that discredit them. The worst falsehoods of vanity are all so-called ‘white lies’; when pride sinks to the level of falsehoods, they are falsehoods of the opposite colour! Our dislike of pride and vanity generally inclines us to rank •below rather than above the common level the people we think of as proud or vain. I think we are usually wrong about this, and that the proud man and the vain one are often and perhaps usually a good deal •above the common level, though nowhere near as much above it as the proud man thinks he is or as the vain man wants you to think he is. . . . Pride is often accompanied by many •respectworthy virtues—truthfulness, integrity, a high sense of honour, cordial and steady friendship, unshakable firmness and resolution. Vanity is often accompanied by many •likeable virtues—humaneness, politeness, a desire to be helpful in all little matters, and sometimes real generosity in great matters. . . . In the last century, the French were accused of vanity by their rivals and enemies, while the Spanish were accused of pride; and foreign nations were inclined to regard the French as more likeable and the Spanish as more respectworthy. [Smith’s next three points can be reported briefly. (i) The word ‘vain’ is never used approvingly; ‘proud’ is sometimes used as a term of praise, though when that happens ‘pride is being confused with magnanimity’. (ii) A proud man is likely
- 307. to be too contented with himself to try for self-improvement, unlike the vain man, who would like to have the qualities and talents that people admire. A vain young man shouldn’t be discouraged from trying to become something worthy of admiration; and his vanity—which is really just his trying to get admiration too soon—should be treated with forbearance. (iii) Pride and vanity often go together in one man, and Smith explains why this is natural:] It is natural that a man who thinks more highly of himself than he deserves should want other people to think still more highly of him; and that a man who wants other people to think more highly of him than he thinks of himself should also think more highly of himself than he deserves. [On page 129 Smith introduced the ‘point of propriety’ for this or that passion, and discussed ’too much’ and ‘too little’ for various passions. When on page 131 he turned to self-estimation, this led him into two topics—•different standards for self-estimation, and •pride and vanity— that mostly breathed the air of ‘too high’. Now at last he is going to discuss the ‘too low’ side of self-estimation.] Men whose merit is considerably above the common level sometimes under-rate themselves. Such a person is often pleasant to be with, in private: his companions are at ease in the society of such a perfectly modest and unassuming man. But those companions, though they are fond of him, are likely not to have much respect; and the warmth of their fond-
- 308. ness usually won’t be enough to make up for the coolness of their respect. That won’t apply if the companions have more discernment and more generosity than people usually have. Men of ordinary discernment never rate a person higher than he appears to rate himself. ‘Even he seems unsure whether he is perfectly fit for the post we are considering him for’, they say, and they immediately appoint some impudent blockhead who has no doubt about his qualifications. And even discerning people, if they are mean-minded, will take advantage of his simplicity and impertinently set themselves up as superior to him although they are nothing of the sort. His good nature may enable him to put up with this for some time, but he’ll grow tired of it eventually. That is apt to happen when it is too late, i.e. when the rank 135 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence that he ought to have had is lost irrecoverably, having been stolen—through his failure to push his own merits—by some more pushy but less meritorious companion. . . . Such a man, too unassuming and unambitious in his younger years, is often insignificant, complaining, and discontented in his old age. The unfortunate folk whom nature has formed a good deal below the common level seem sometimes to rate themselves as even further below it than they really are. This humil- ity appears sometimes to sink them into idiotism. [Smith could mean ‘sink them into behaving like idiots’ or ‘sink them into being idiots’. The ensuing discussion implies a challenge to the very
- 309. distinction between those two.] Examine idiots carefully and you’ll find that many of them have faculties of understanding that are quite as strong as those of many people who, though acknowledged to be dull and stupid, are not classified as ‘idiots’ by anyone. Many idiots who have had no more than ordinary education have learned to •read, •write, and •do sums tolerably well. And many persons who were never classified as ‘idiots’ and who received careful education have never been able to acquire a reasonable level in any one of •those three accomplishments—not even when, later on in life, they have had spirit enough to try to learn what their early education hadn’t taught them. ·They have escaped being classed as ‘idiots’ because· an instinct of pride has led them •to set themselves on a level with their equals in age and situation, and—with courage and firmness—•to maintain their proper station among their companions. By an opposite instinct, the idiot feels himself to be below every company into which you can introduce him. Ill-treatment (which is extremely likely to come his way) can throw him into violent fits of rage and fury. But no good usage, no kindness or patience, can ever raise him to converse with you as your equal. If you can bring him into conversation with you at all, you’ll often find his answers •relevant enough and even •sensible; but they will always be marked by his strong sense of his own great inferiority. He seems to shrink back from your look and conversation, and to feel—seeing himself from your viewpoint—that despite your apparent kindness to him you can’t help considering him as immensely below you. (a) Some idiots—perhaps most idiots—seem really to be immensely below the rest of us, mainly or entirely because of a certain numbness or sluggishness in their faculties of the understanding. But there are (b) other idiots whose faculties of understanding don’t appear to be more sluggish
- 310. or numb than in (c) many people who are not regarded as idiots. ·Then what is the difference between the (b) group and the (c) group? It’s that· the instinct of pride that is needed if they are to maintain themselves on a level with their brethren seems to be totally lacking in the (b) group and not in the (c) group. So it seems that the degree of self-estimation that con- tributes most to the happiness and contentment of the person himself seems also to be the degree that is most agreeable to the impartial spectator. The man who values himself as he ought and no more than he ought is nearly always valued by other people at the level that he thinks is right. He wants no more than is due to him, and he settles for that with complete satisfaction. The proud man and the vain man, on the other hand, are constantly dissatisfied. One is tormented with indignation at the high ranking that other people get (wrongly, he thinks). The other is in continual fear of the shame that he predicts he would suffer if his deceit were discovered. Take the special case of a vain man who makes extravagant claims about him- self although he really does have a fine mind and splendid abilities and virtues and is also favoured by good luck. His claims will be accepted by the multitude, whose applause 136 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence he doesn’t care about much; but they won’t be accepted by the wise people whose approval is just what he is most anxious to get. He feels that they see through his deceptions and suspects that they despise him for them; and he may
- 311. well suffer the cruel misfortune of becoming. . . .a furious and vindictive enemy of the very people whose friendship he would have most enjoyed. Though our dislike for the proud and the vain often inclines us to rank them rather below than above their real level, we seldom venture to treat them badly unless we are provoked by some particular and personal impertinence. In common cases we find it more comfortable to accept their folly and adjust ourselves to it as best we can. But with the man who under-rates himself the situation is different: we usually do to him all the injustice that he does to himself, and often much more (unless we are more discerning and more generous than most people are). As well as being more unhappy in his own feelings than either the proud or the vain man is, he is much more open ·than they are· to every sort of ill-treatment by other people. It is almost always better to be •a little too proud than to be •in any respect too humble. In the sentiment of self-estimation, some degree of excess seems—to the person himself and to the impartial spectator—to be less disagreeable than any degree of defect. In this respect, therefore, self-estimation is like every other emotion, passion, and habit: the degree that is most agreeable to the impartial spectator is likewise most agree- able to the person himself. . . . Conclusion of Part VI Concern for our own happiness recommends to us the virtue of (1) prudence; concern for the happiness of other people recommends to us the virtues of (2) justice, which restrains us from harming their happiness, and (3) beneficence, which prompts us to promote it. Quite apart from any considera- tions about the sentiments of other people—facts about what those sentiments
- 312. are, or ought to be, or would be if such-and-such were the case —(1) prudence is basically recommended to us by our self- ish affections, and (2) justice and (3) benevolence by our benevolent ones. But a regard for the sentiments of other people enters the picture after the basis is laid, serving to enforce and to direct the practice of all those virtues. Anyone who has for many years walked steadily and uniformly in the paths of prudence, justice, and proper beneficence has been primarily guided in his conduct by a concern for the sentiments of •the imagined impartial spectator, •the great inmate of the breast, •the great judge and arbiter of conduct. If in the course of the day we have in any way swerved from the rules that •he prescribes to us, if we have (1) gone too far or not far enough in our frugality, (2) in any way harmed the interests or happiness of our neighbour (through passion or by mistake), or (3) neglected a clear and proper opportunity to do something for those interests and that happiness, it is this inmate of the breast who, in the evening, challenges us concerning those omissions and violations, and his re- proaches often make us blush inwardly for our folly and inattention to our own happiness and for our still greater indifference and inattention to the happiness of other people. 137 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence
- 313. But though the virtues of (1) prudence, (2) justice, and (3) beneficence can at different times be recommended to us almost equally by two different sources (·our feelings and those of the impartial spectator·), the virtues of (4) self-control are in most cases recommended to us almost entirely by one source—our sense of propriety, our regard for the sentiments of the imagined impartial spectator. Without the restraint that this imposes, every passion would usually rush headlong to its own gratification. . . . No facts about time or place would restrain vanity from loud and impertinent showing off, or restrain voluptuousness from open, indecent, and scandalous indulgence. In nearly every case, the only thing that overawes all those mutinous and turbulent pas- sions, toning them down into something that the impartial spectator can enter into and sympathize with, is a concern for what the sentiments of other people are, or ought to be, or would be if such-and-such were the case. It’s true that sometimes those passions are restrained not so much by •a sense of their impropriety as by •a prudential consideration of the bad consequences that might follow from letting them have their way. In these cases the passions are restrained but aren’t always subdued, and they often remain lurking in the breast with all their original fury. The man whose anger is restrained by fear doesn’t always get rid of his anger, but only delays acting on it until it is safer for him to do so. Contrast that with the following case: A man tells someone else about the harm that has been done to him, and immediately feels the fury of his passion being cooled and calmed down through sympathy with the more moderate sentiments of his companion. He adopts those more moderate senti- ments for himself, coming to view the harm not in the black and atrocious colours in which he had originally
- 314. saw it but in the much milder and fairer light in which his companion naturally views it. This man doesn’t just restrain his anger; he to some extent subdues it. The passion becomes really less than it was before, and less capable of arousing him to the violent and bloody revenge that he may at first have thought of inflicting. When any passion is restrained by the sense of propriety it will be somewhat moderated and subdued. But when a passion is restrained only by prudential considerations of some sort, it is often inflamed by the restraint, and sometimes. . . .it bursts out with tenfold fury and violence in some context where nobody is thinking about the matter and the outburst is merely absurd. [The remaining three paragraphs of the section are mainly repetitions of things said earlier.] 138 Smith on Moral Sentiments Universal benevolence Part VII: Systems of moral philosophy Section 1: The questions that ought to be examined in a theory of moral sentiments If we examine the most famous and remarkable of the various theories that have been given regarding the nature and origin of our moral sentiments, we’ll find that almost all of them coincide with some part of the account I have been giving; and that if everything that I have said is fully taken into account, we’ll be able to explain what the view or aspect of nature was that led each particular author to form his
- 315. particular system. It may be that every system of morality that ever had any reputation in the world has ultimately come from one or other of the sources that I have been trying to unfold. Because all those systems are in this way based on natural principles, they are all to some extent right. But because many of them are based on a partial and imperfect view of nature, many of them are in some respects wrong. In discussing the sources of morals we have to consider two questions: (1) What does virtue consist in? That is, what kind of temperament and tenor of conduct is it that consti- tutes the excellent and praiseworthy character, the character that is the natural object of esteem, honour, and approval? (2) By what power or faculty in the mind is this character—whatever it may be—recommended. to us? That is, how does it come about that the mind prefers one tenor of conduct to another, calling one ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’, regarding one as an object of approval, honour and reward, and the other as an object of blame, censure and punishment? We are addressing (1) when we consider whether virtue consists in •benevolence, as Hutcheson imagines; or in •acting in a way that is suitable to the different relations we stand in, as Clarke supposes; or in •the wise and prudent pursuit of our own real and solid happiness, as others have thought. We are addressing (2) when we consider whether the virtu- ous character—whatever it consists in—is recommended to us •by self-love, which makes us perceive that this character
- 316. in ourselves and in others tends most to promote our own private interests; or •by reason, which points out to us the difference right and wrong behaviour in the same way that it points out the difference between truth and falsehood; or •by a special power of perception called a ‘moral sense’, which this virtuous character gratifies and pleases while the contrary character disgusts and displeases it; or •by some other drive in human nature, for example some form of sympathy or the like. I’ll address (1) in the next section, and (2) in section 3. Section 2: The different accounts that have been given of the nature of virtue 139 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety The different accounts that have been given of the nature of virtue, i.e. of what temper of mind makes a character excellent and praiseworthy, can be put into three classes. (1) According to some accounts, the virtuous temper of mind doesn’t consist in any one kind of affection but in the proper controlling and directing of all our affections, which may be either virtuous or vicious according to the objects they pursue and the level of intensity with which they pursue them. According to these authors, virtue consists in propriety. (2) According to others, virtue consists in the judicious pursuit of our own private interest and happiness, or in the proper controlling and directing of the selfish affections that
- 317. aim solely at this end. In the opinion of these authors, virtue consists in prudence. (3) Yet another set of authors make virtue consist only in the affections that aim at the happiness of others, not in the ones that aim at our own happiness. According to them, the only motive that can stamp the character of virtue on any action is disinterested benevolence. It’s clear that the character of virtue must either •be ascribed to all and any our affections when properly con- trolled and directed, or •be confined to some one class of them. The big classification of our affections is into selfish and benevolent. It follows, then, that if the character of virtue can’t be ascribed to all and any affections when properly controlled and directed, it must be confined either to •affections that aim directly at our own private happiness or •affections that aim directly at the happiness of others. Thus, if virtue doesn’t consist in (1) propriety, it must consist either in (2) prudence or in (3) benevolence. It is hardly possible to imagine any account of the nature of virtue other than these three. I shall try to show later on how all the other accounts that seem different from any of these are basically equivalent to some one or other of them. Chapter 1: Systems that make virtue consist in propriety According to Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, virtue consists in the propriety of conduct, or in the suitableness of the affection from which we act to the object that arouses it. (1) In Plato’s system (see Republic Book 4) the soul is treated as something like a little state or republic, composed of three different faculties or orders.
- 318. (i) The first is the judging faculty, which settles not only what are the proper means for achieving any end but also what ends are fit to be pursued and how they should be ordered on the scale of value. Plato rightly called this faculty ‘reason’, and thought it should be the governing mechanism of the whole. He was clearly taking ‘reason’ to cover not only the faculty for judging regarding truth and falsehood, but also the faculty by which we judge whether our desires and affections are proper or improper. Plato put the different passions and appetites that are the natural though sometimes rebellious subjects of this ruling force into two classes or orders. (ii) Passions based on pride and resentment, i.e. on what the scholastics call ‘the irascible part’ of the soul: ambition, animosity, love of honour and fear of shame, desire for victory, superiority, and revenge. In short, all the passions that lead us to speak metaphorically of people as having ‘spirit’ or ‘natural fire’. [Let ‘irascible’ be defined here by how it is used here. Outside the Platonic context it means ‘angry’ or ‘irritable’.] (iii) Passions based on the love of pleasure, i.e. on what the scholastics call ‘the concupiscible part’ of the soul: all the appetites of the body, the love of ease and security, and of all sensual gratifications. [The only use for ‘concupiscible’ is this Platonic one. It is pronounced con-kew-pissible.] 140 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with
- 319. propriety When we interrupt a plan of conduct that (i) reason prescribes—a plan that we had in our cool hours selected as the most proper one for us to follow—it is nearly always because we are being prompted by one or other of those two different sets of passions, either (ii) by ungovernable ambition and resentment, or (iii) by the nagging demands of present ease and pleasure. But though these two classes of passions are so apt to mislead us, they are still regarded as necessary parts of human nature—(ii) to defend us against injuries, to assert our rank and dignity in the world, to make us aim at what is noble and honourable, and to make us notice others who act in the same manner; (iii) to provide for the support and necessities of the body. According to Plato the essential virtue of prudence in- volves the strength, acuteness, and perfection of (i) the governing force, ·reason·. Prudence, he said, consists in a correct and clear discernment, with the help of general and scientific ideas, of the ends that are proper to pursue and of the means that are proper for achieving them. When (ii) the first set of passions—those of the irascible part of the soul—are strong and firm enough to be able, under the direction of reason, to despise all dangers in the pursuit of what is honourable and noble, that (·said Plato·) constitutes the virtue of fortitude and magnanimity. These passions, according to this system, are more generous and noble than (iii) the others. It was thought that they are often reason’s helpers, checking and restraining the inferior animal appetites. We’re often angry at ourselves, objects of our own resentment and indignation, when the love of pleasure prompts to do something that we disapprove of; and when this happens (·Plato held·) (ii) the irascible part of our nature is being called in to assist (i) the rational part
- 320. against (iii) the concupiscible part. When those three parts of our nature are in perfect harmony with one another, when neither the (ii) irascible nor the (iii) concupiscible passions ever aim at any gratification that (i) reason doesn’t approve of, and when reason never commands anything that these two wouldn’t be willing to perform anyway, this. . . .perfect and complete harmony of soul constitute the virtue whose Greek name is usually translated by ‘temperance’, though a better name for it might be ‘good temperament’, or ‘sobriety and moderation of mind’. Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues is what you have (according to Plato) when each of those three faculties of the mind confines itself to its proper work without trying to encroach on that of any other, when reason directs and passion obeys, and when each passion performs its proper duty and exerts itself towards its proper end easily and without reluctance, and with the degree of force and energy that is appropriate for the value of what is being pursued. . . . The Greek word that expresses ‘justice’ has several mean- ings; and I believe that the same is true for the corresponding word in every other language; so those various meanings must be naturally linked in some way. •In one sense we are said to do justice to our neighbour when we don’t directly harm him or his estate or his reputation. This is the justice that I discussed earlier, the observance of which can be extorted by force, and the violation of which exposes one to punishment. •In another sense we are said to do justice to our neighbour only if we have for him all the love, respect, and esteem that his character, his situation, and his connection with ourselves make it proper for us to feel, and only if we act accordingly. It’s in this sense
- 321. that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit who is connected with us if, though we do him no harm, we don’t exert ourselves to serve him and to place him in the situation in which the impartial spectator would be pleased to see 141 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety him. [Smith reports on names that have been given to the kinds of justice corresponding to the two senses by Aristotle and the Scholastics and by Hugo Grotius, the pioneering theorist of international law. Then he introduces a third sense of ‘justice’ which he thinks exists in all languages. It is a sense in which any mistake in morals or valuation can be described as not doing justice to something-or-other. He concludes:] This third sense is evidently what Plato took justice to be, which is why he holds that justice includes within itself the perfection of every sort of virtue. That, then, is Plato’s account of the nature of virtue, or of the mental temperament that is the proper object of praise and approval. He says that virtue is the state of mind in which every faculty stays within its proper sphere without encroaching on the territory of any other, and does its proper work with exactly the degree of strength and vigour that belongs to it. This is obviously just what I have been saying about the propriety of conduct. (2) According to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics II.5 and III.6) virtue consists in being habitually central, evenly balanced, non-extreme, according to right reason. [Smith: ‘consists in the habit of mediocrity according’ etc.] In his view
- 322. every particular virtue lies in a kind of middle between two op- posite vices—one offending by being too much affected by something and the other offending by being too little affected by it. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the middle between the opposite vices of •cowardice and of •wild rashness, each of which offends through being •too much or •too little affected by fearful things. The virtue of frugality lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, each of which involves •too little or •too much attention to the objects of self-interest. Similarly, magnanimity lies in the middle between arrogance and pusillanimity [see note on page 6], each of which involves a •too extravagant or •too weak sentiment of one’s own worth and dignity. I need hardly point out that this account of virtue also corresponds pretty exactly with what I have already said about the propriety and impropriety of conduct. Actually, according to Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics II.1- 4), virtue consists not so much in those moderate and right affections as in the habit of this moderation. To understand this you have to know that •virtue can be considered as a quality of an •action or of a •person. Considered as the quality of an •action, it consists in the reasonable moderate- ness of the affection from which the action comes, whether or not this disposition is habitual to the person (Aristotle agreed with this). Considered as the quality of a •person, it consists in the habit of this reasonable moderateness, i.e. in its having become the customary and usual disposition of that person’s mind. Thus, an action that comes from a passing fit of generosity is undoubtedly a generous action, but the man who performs it may not be a generous person because this may be the only generous thing he ever did. The motive and disposition of heart from which this action came may have been right and proper; but this satisfactory
- 323. frame of mind seems to have come from a passing whim rather than from anything steady or permanent in the man’s character, so it can’t reflect any great honour on him. . . . If a single action was sufficient to qualify the person who performed it as virtuous, the most worthless of mankind could claim to have all the virtues, because there is no man who hasn’t occasionally acted with prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude! But though single good actions don’t reflect much praise on the person who performs them, a single vicious action performed by someone whose conduct is usually proper greatly diminishes and sometimes destroys altogether our opinion of his virtue. A single action of this kind shows well enough that his habits are not perfect, and 142 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety that he can’t be depended on as we might have thought he could, judging by his usual behaviour. When Aristotle made virtue consist in practical habits (Magna Moralia I.1), he was probably saying this against Plato’s thesis that just sentiments and reasonable judgments concerning what is fit to be done or to be avoided are all that is needed for the most perfect virtue. [In the next sentence, ‘science’ is used in its early modern sense of ‘rigorously disciplined, deductively = “demonstratively” established and organized body of knowl- edge’.] Virtue, according to Plato, might be considered as a
- 324. kind of science; and he thought that anyone will act rightly if he can see clearly and demonstratively what is right and what is wrong. Passion might make us act contrary to doubtful and uncertain opinions but not contrary to plain and evident judgments. Aristotle disagreed; he held that no conviction of the understanding can get the better of ingrained habits, and that good morals arise not from knowledge but from action. (3) According to Zeno, the founder of the Stoic doctrine, every animal is recommended by nature to its own care and is endowed with a drive of self-love so that it can try to survive and to keep itself as healthy as it possibly can. (See Cicero, De Finibus III; Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.) The self-love of man takes in •his body and all its organs and •his mind and all its faculties and powers; it wants the preservation and maintenance of all of these in their best and most perfect condition. Whatever tends to support •this state of affairs is pointed out to him by nature as fit to be chosen; and whatever tends to destroy •it is pointed out as fit to be rejected. Thus health, strength, agility and ease of body, as well as physical conveniences that could promote these— wealth, power, honours, the respect and esteem of those we live with —are naturally pointed out to us as eligible, i.e. as things that it is better to have than to lack. And on the other side, sickness, infirmity, awkwardness of movement, bodily pain as well as all the physical inconveniences that tend to bring these on—
- 325. poverty, lack of authority, the contempt or hatred of those we live with —are similarly pointed out to us as things to be shunned and avoided. Within each of these two contrasting classes of states there are value orderings. Thus, health seems clearly preferable to strength, and strength to agility; reputation to power, and power to riches. And in the second class of states, sickness is worse than awkwardness of movement, disgrace is worse than poverty, and poverty is worse than lack of power. Virtue and the propriety of conduct consist making our choices in ways that conform to these natural value-orderings. . . . Up to here, the Stoic idea of propriety and virtue is not different from that of Aristotle and the ancient Aristotelians. ·The next paragraph is a statement of the Stoics’ views, not of mine·. Among the basic items that nature has recommended to us as eligible is the prosperity of our family, of our relatives, of our friends, of our country, of mankind, and of the universe in general. Nature has also taught us that because the prosperity of •two is preferable to the prosperity of •one, the prosperity of •many or of •all must be infinitely more preferable still. Each of us is only one; so when our prosperity was inconsistent with that of the whole or of any considerable part of the whole, we ought to choose to give way to what is so vastly preferable. All the events in this world are directed by the providence of a wise, powerful, and good God; so we can be sure that whatever happens tends 143
- 326. Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety to the prosperity and perfection of the whole. So if we are ever poor, sick, or in any other distress, we should first of all do our best—as far as justice and our duty to others will allow—to rescue ourselves from this disagreeable state of affairs. But if that turns out to be impossible, we ought to rest satisfied that the order and perfection of the universe requires that we should in the meantime continue in this situation. And because the prosperity of the whole should appear even to us as preferable to such an insignificant a part as ourselves, we should at each moment like the state we are in, whatever it is—that’s what is needed if we are to maintain the complete propriety of sentiment and conduct that constitutes the perfection of our nature. Of course if an opportunity to escape ·from our poverty, sickness, or whatever· presents itself, it’s our duty to take it. In that case, it will be evident that the order of the universe no longer requires us to continue in that state, and the great Director of the world has plainly called on us to leave it, by clearly pointing out how to do it. Similarly with the adversity of our relatives, our friends, our country. If we can, without violating any more sacred obligation, •prevent or •put an end to their calamity, it is undoubtedly our duty to do so. The propriety of action, i.e. the rule that Jupiter has given us for the direction of our conduct, evidently requires this of us. But if it’s entirely out of our power to do •either, we ought to regard this outcome as the most fortunate that could possibly have happened; because we can be sure that it tends most to the prosperity and order of the whole, which was what we ourselves will most desire if we are wise and equitable. . . . Epictetus wrote this:
- 327. ‘In what sense are some things said to be •according to our nature, and others to be •contrary to it? It is in the sense in which we consider ourselves as separated and detached from everything else. ·Here is an analogue of the point I am making·: When you consider your right foot as separated and detached, you can say that it’s according to the nature of the foot to be always clean. But if you consider it as a ·functioning· foot and not as detached from the rest of the body, it’s fitting for it sometimes to trample in the dirt, sometimes to tread on thorns, perhaps even to be amputated for the sake of the whole body; and if those things can’t happen to it, it is no longer a foot. Now, apply that to how we think about ourselves. What are you? A man. If you consider yourself as separated and detached ·from the rest of the universe·, it is according to your nature to live to old age, and to be rich and healthy. But if you consider yourself as a man and as a part of a whole ·universe·, the needs of that universe may make it fitting for you sometimes to be sick, sometimes to suffer the inconvenience of a sea voyage, sometimes to be in want—and perhaps eventually to die before your time. Why, then, do you complain? Don’t you know that by this kind of complaint you stop being a man?, just as the insistence on the foot’s cleanliness stops it from being a foot?’ [Smith devotes a long further paragraph to a more detailed statement of the Stoic’s view that whatever happens to him is a matter for rejoicing because it must be what God wanted to happen. In a paragraph after that, he makes the point that on this Stoic view there is almost no basis for a good man to prefer any course of events to any other. Continuing:] The propriety or impropriety of his projects might be of great
- 328. consequence to him, but their success or failure couldn’t matter to him at all. If he preferred some outcomes to others, if he chose some states of affairs x and rejected others y, it 144 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety was not because he regarded x as in any way intrinsically better than y, or thought that x would make him happier than y would; it would be simply because the propriety of action, the rule that the Gods had given him for the direction of his conduct, required him to choose x and reject y. All his affections were absorbed and swallowed up in two great affections; (a) for the discharge of his own duty, and (b) for the greatest possible happiness of all rational and sentient beings. For (b) he relied with perfect confidence on the wisdom and power of the great Superintendent of the universe. His only anxiety was about satisfying affection (a)—not about the outcome but about the propriety of his own endeavours. . . . [Now Smith offers three book-pages of development of the idea that for a good Stoic—one whose passions are under control and whose only concern is to act rightly—it will be ‘easy’ to do the right thing in all situations: whether in prosperity or in adversity, all he has to do is to thank Jupiter for having treated him in the way He did. Smith speaks (on the Stoic’s behalf) of the ‘exalted delight’ a good man has in facing hard times and never acting wrongly. He moves smoothly on from this to a paragraph leading to a long discussion of suicide:]
- 329. The Stoics seem to have regarded human life as a game of great skill in which there was also an element of chance (or what the man in the street takes to be chance). In such games the stake is commonly a trifle, and the whole pleasure of the game arises from playing well, fairly, and skillfully. If in such a game a good player has bad luck and happens to lose, he should be cheerful about this, not seriously sad. He has made no mistakes, has done nothing that he ought to be ashamed of; and he has enjoyed the whole pleasure of the game. And on the other hand if by chance a bad player happens to win, that success can’t give him much satisfaction. He is humiliated by the memory of all the mistakes he has made. Even during the play he is cut off from much of the pleasure that the game can give by his constant doubts—unpleasant frightened doubts—about whether his plays are going to succeed, and his repeated embarrassment at seeing that he has played badly. The Stoic view is that human life, with all the advantages that can possibly accompany it, should be seen as a mere two-penny stake—something too insignificant to warrant any anxious concern. . . . The Stoics said that human life itself, as well as every good or bad thing that can accompany it, can properly be chosen and can properly be rejected, depending on the circumstances. If your actual situation involves more circum- stances that are agreeable to nature [Smith’s phrase] than ones that are contrary to it—more circumstances that are objects of choice than of rejection—then •life is the proper object of your choice; if you are to behave rightly, you should remain in •it. But if your actual situation involves, with no likelihood of improvement, more circumstances that are contrary to nature than ones agreeable to it—more circumstances that are objects of rejection than of choice—then if you are wise you’ll see •life itself as an object of rejection. You won’t
- 330. merely be free to move out of •it; the propriety of conduct, the rule the Gods have given you for the direction of your conduct, require you to do so. . . . If your situation is on the whole disagreeable,. . . .said the Stoics, by all means get out of it. But do this without, repining, murmuring or complaining. Stay calm, contented, rejoicing, thanking the gods •who have generously opened the safe and quiet harbour of death, always ready to let us in out of the stormy ocean of human life; •who have prepared this. . . .great asylum. . . .that is beyond the reach of human rage and injustice, and is large enough to contain all those who want to retire to it and all 145 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety those who don’t—an asylum that deprives everyone of every pretence of complaining, or even of imagining that there can be evils in human life apart from ones that a man may suffer through his own folly and weakness. The Stoics, in the few fragments of their philosophy that have come down to us, sometimes seem to imply that it would be all right for someone to end his life just because it had displeased him in some minor way. . . . But that is misleading: they really held that the question ‘Shall I leave my life, or remain in it?’ is important, and has to be seriously deliberated. We ought never to leave our life (they held) until we are clearly called on to do so by the superintending Power that gave us our life in the first place. But they thought one might be called on to do so before one had reached old age and the end of the normal span of human life. Whenever
- 331. the superintending Power has managed things in such a way that our condition in life is, on the whole, something it is right to reject rather than to choose, then the great rule of conduct that he has given us requires us to leave our life. That is when we might be said to hear the awful and benevolent voice of that divine Being calling on us to do so. That’s why the Stoics thought that it might be the duty of a wise man to move out of life though he was perfectly happy, and the duty of a weak man to remain in it though he was inevitably miserable. [Smith’s explanation of this can be put more briefly than he does. The wise man’s life might be going badly enough to be ‘a proper object of rejection’ although he was wise enough to be perfectly happy because the universe was unrolling as it should; the weak man’s life might be going well enough to make it wrong for him to reject it, although he wasn’t smart enough to avail himself of his opportunities and was therefore unhappy with a life that was mainly going well for him. Smith supports this with a reference to Cicero’s De Finibus III.] [Then two book-pages on the historical background of the Stoic doctrine. Stoicism flourished, Smith says, at a time when the Greek city-states were at war with one another; the war was extraordinarily cruel and destructive, and most of the states were too small to offer their citizens much security. In this context, Stoicism provided Greek ‘patriots and heroes’ with something that could support them if they eventually had to face slavery, torture, or death. Smith compares this with the ‘death-song’ that an ‘American savage’ prepared in advance as something he could defiantly sing while being tortured to death. The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle also offered ‘a death-song that the Greek patriots and heroes might use on the proper occasions’, but Smith says that ‘the Stoics had prepared by far the most animated and spirited song’. Writing about the ancient Greek
- 332. philosophers generally, and not just the Stoics, Smith says memorably:] The few fragments that have come down to us of what the ancient philosophers had written on these subjects constitute one of the most instructive remains of antiquity, and also one of the most interesting. The spirit and manliness of their doctrines make a wonderful contrast with the desponding, plaintive, and whining tone of some modern systems. . . . [Smith remarks at length that suicide ‘seems never to have been common among the Greeks’ and that it ‘appears to have been much more prevalent among the proud Romans than it ever was among the lively, ingenious, and accommo- dating Greeks’. He discusses some individual Greek cases, and questions the reliability of the reports. In the time of the Roman emperors, he says, ‘this method of dying seems to have been for a long time perfectly fashionable’—an exercise of vanity and exhibitionism!] The push towards suicide, the impulse that offers to teach us that the violent action of taking one’s own life 146 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety ought sometimes to be applauded and approved, seems to be purely something that philosophy has produced. When Nature is sound and healthy she never seems to prompt us to suicide. It’s true that there is a species of melancholy (a disease to which human nature. . . .is unhappily subject) that seems to be accompanied with what one might call an irresistible desire for self-destruction. This disease has
- 333. often driven its wretched victims to this fatal extreme—often when their external circumstances were highly prosperous, and sometimes in defiance of serious and deeply ingrained sentiments of religion. People who perish in this miserable way are proper objects not of censure but of pity. To try to punish them, when they are beyond the reach of all human punishment, is as unjust as it is absurd. . . . Nature, when sound and healthy, prompts us to •avoid distress on all occasions, and on many occasions to •defend ourselves against it, even at the risk—or indeed the certainty—of dying in the attempt. But when we haven’t been able to defend ourselves from distress but haven’t died trying, no natural impulse—no regard for the approval of the imagined impartial spectator, i.e. for the judgment of the man within the breast—seems to call on us to escape from distress by destroying ourselves. When we are driven to decide on suicide, what drives us is only our awareness of our own weakness, of our own inability to bear the calamity in a properly manly and firm manner. . . . The two doctrines on which the entire fabric of Stoical morality is based are these: (i) disregard for ·the difference between· life and death, and (ii) complete submission to the order of Providence, com- plete contentment with every outcome that the current of human affairs could possibly cast up. The independent and spirited (though often harsh) Epictetus can be seen as the great apostle of (i), and the mild, humane, benevolent Antoninus is the great apostle of (ii). (i) After a life with many vicissitudes, Epictetus was
- 334. banished from Rome and Athens, and lived in exile knowing that at any moment he could receive a death sentence from the tyrannical emperor who had banished him. His way of preserving his tranquillity was to develop in his mind a strong sense that human life is insignificant. ·In his writings· he never exults so much (and so his eloquence is never so animated) as when he is representing the futility and nothingness of all life’s pleasures and all its pains. (ii) The good-natured Emperor ·Antoninus· (known in philosophy as Marcus Aurelius) was the absolute ruler of the whole civilized world, and certainly had no special reason to complain about the share of good things the world had given him. But he delights in expressing his contentment with the ordinary course of things, pointing out beauties even in things where ordinary observers are not apt to see any. There is a propriety and even an engaging grace, he observes, in old age as well as in youth; and the weakness and decrepitude of age are as suitable to nature as is youth’s bloom and vigour. And it’s just as proper for old age to end in death as it is for childhood to end in youth and for youth to end in manhood. In another place he writes this: ‘A physician may order some man to ride on horse- back, or to have cold baths, or to walk barefooted; and we ought to see Nature, the great director and physi- cian of the universe, as ordering that some man shall have a disease, or have a limb amputated, or suffer the loss of a child. From the prescriptions of ordinary physicians the patient swallows many a bitter dose of medicine, and undergoes many painful operations, gladly submitting to all this in the hope—and that’s all it is: hope—that health may be the result. Well, the 147
- 335. Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety patient can in the same way hope that the harshest prescriptions of the great Physician of nature will in the same way contribute to his own health, his own final prosperity and happiness; and he can be quite sure that they don’t merely •contribute but •are indispensably necessary to the health, prosperity and happiness of the universe, to the furtherance and advancement of Jupiter’s great plan. If they weren’t, the universe would never have produced them; its all-wise Architect and Director wouldn’t have allowed them to happen. The parts of the universe are exactly fitted together, and all contribute to composing one immense and connected system; so every part, even the most insignificant parts, of the sequence of events is an essential part of that great chain of causes and effects that never began and will never end—a part that is necessary not only for the universe’s prosperity but also for its very survival. Anyone who doesn’t cordially embrace whatever happens to him, is sorry that it has happened to him, wishes that it hadn’t happened to him, is someone who wants as far as he can to stop the motion of the universe, to break that great series of events through which the universal system is continued and preserved, and for some little convenience of his own to disorder and discompose the whole machine of the world. . . .’ From these high-minded doctrines the Stoics, or at least some of them, tried to deduce all the rest of their paradox- ical philosophy. ·I shall call attention to just two of their paradoxical doctrines·.
- 336. A: The wise Stoic tries to enter into the views of the great Superintendent of the universe, and to see things in the light in which that divine Being sees them. But to this great Superintendent all the different events that the course of his providence may bring forth—from the smallest to the greatest, e.g. from the bursting of a bubble to the bursting of a world, are •equally parts of the great chain that he has predestined from all eternity, are •equally the effects of the same unerring wisdom, of the same universal and boundless benevolence. So all those different events must be on a par for the Stoic wise man too. One little department within those events has been assigned to him, and he has some little management and direction of them. In this department he tries to act as properly as he can, and to conduct himself according to the orders that (he thinks) he has been given. But he has no anxious or passionate concern over the success or failure of his own most faithful endeavours. Regarding the little system that has been to some extent committed to his care, it means nothing to him whether it has the highest prosperity or is totally destroyed. If that outcome—•prosperity or •destruction—had depended on him, he would have chosen •one and rejected •the other. But it doesn’t depend on him; so he trusts to a wisdom greater than his, and is satisfied that the outcome, whatever it may be, is the one he would have devoutly wished for if he had known all the facts about how things are interconnected. Whatever he does under the influence and direction of those principles is equally perfect; snapping his fingers is as meritorious, as worthy of praise and admiration, as laying down his life in the service of his country. . . . B: Just as those who arrive at this state of perfection are equally happy, so all those who fall short of it by any amount, however small, are equally miserable. In the Stoics’ view,
- 337. just as a man who is only an inch below the surface of the water can’t breathe any more than someone who is a hundred yards down, so also 148 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety a man who hasn’t completely subdued all his private, partial, and selfish passions, who has an earnest desire for anything other than universal happiness, who hasn’t completely emerged from that abyss of misery and disorder that he has been in because of his anxiety for the satisfaction of those private, partial, and selfish passions, can’t breathe the free air of liberty and independence, can’t enjoy the security and happiness of the wise man, any more than someone who is enormously far from that situation. [Here and in what follows, ‘partial’ means ‘not impartial’, or ‘biased’.] Just as all the actions of the wise man are perfect, equally perfect, so all the actions of the man who hasn’t arrived at this supreme wisdom are faulty, and, according to some of the Stoics, equally faulty. One truth can’t be more true than another, and one falsehood can’t be more false than another; and similarly one honourable action can’t be more honourable than another, nor can one shameful action be more shameful than another. . . . A man who has killed a cock improperly and without a sufficient reason is morally
- 338. on a par with a man who has murdered his father. The first of those two paradoxes seems bad enough, but the second is obviously too absurd to deserve seri- ous consideration. It’s so absurd, indeed, that one sus- pects that it must have been somewhat misunderstood or misrepresented. I can’t believe that men such as Zeno or Cleanthes—men whose eloquence was said to be both simple and very uplifting—could be the authors of these two paradoxes of Stoicism, or of most of the others. The others are in general mere impertinent quibbles, which do so little honour to Stoicism that I shall say no more about them. I’m inclined to attribute them to Chrysippus. He was indeed a disciple and follower of Zeno and Cleanthes; but from what we know of him he seems to have been a mere argumentative pedant, with no taste or elegance of any kind. He may have been the first who put Stoicism into the form of a scholastic or technical system of artificial definitions, divisions, and subdivisions; which may be one the most effective ways of extinguishing whatever good sense there is in a moral or metaphysical doctrine! It is easy to believe that such a man could have construed too literally some of the lively expressions that his masters used in describing the happiness of the man of perfect virtue and the unhappiness of whoever fell short of that character. [Smith says that the Stoics in general seem to have allowed that there are different degrees of wrongness of behaviour, and he reports some technical terms that were used in this connection by Cicero and Seneca. None of this is needed for what comes next. Having said that the main lines of the moral philosophies of Plato and of Aristotle are in line with his own views, Smith now implies that Stoicism is not. But he doesn’t put it like that. Rather, he says:]
- 339. The plan and system that Nature has sketched out for our conduct seems to be altogether different from that of the Stoic philosophy. The events that immediately affect the little department in which we ourselves have some management and direction— the events that immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our country—are the ones that Nature •makes us care about most and •makes the main causes of our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows. When those passions are too violent (as they are apt to be), Nature has provided a proper remedy and correction. The real or even the imaginary presence of the impartial spectator, the authority of the man within the breast, is always at hand to awe our passions into coming down to a properly moderate level. If despite our best efforts all the events that can affect our 149 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems equating virtue with propriety little department turn out to be unfortunate and disastrous, Nature hasn’t left us without consolation. We can get comfort not only from the complete approval of the man within the breast but also from a still nobler and more generous source, namely a firm reliance on, and a reverential submission to, the benevolent wisdom which directs all the events of human life, and which (we can be sure) would never have allowed those misfortunes to happen if
- 340. they hadn’t been utterly necessary for the good of the whole. But Nature has not prescribed this lofty thought to us as the great business and occupation of our lives! She merely points it out to us as consolation in our misfortunes. The Stoic philosophy prescribes this thought as though turning it over in our minds were the main thing we have to do with our lives. That philosophy teaches us that we are not to care earnestly and deeply about anything except •the good order of our own minds, the propriety of our own choosings and rejections, and •events that concern a department where we don’t and shouldn’t have any sort of management or direction, namely the department of the great Superintendent of the universe. By •the perfect passiveness that it prescribes to us, by •trying not merely to moderate but to eradicate all our private, partial, and selfish affections, by •not allowing us to have feelings for what happens to ourselves, our friends, our country—not even the sympathetic and reduced passions of the impartial spectator, Stoicism tries to make us entirely indifferent and uncon- cerned about the success or failure of everything that Nature has prescribed to us as the proper business and occupation of our lives. Although the reasonings of philosophy may confound and perplex the understanding, they can’t break down the necessary connection Nature has established between causes and their effects. The causes that naturally arouse our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows, produce their proper and necessary effects on each
- 341. individual, according to his actual level of sensitivity, and all the reasonings of Stoicism can’t stop that. However, the judg- ments of the man within the breast might be considerably affected by those reasonings, and that great inmate might be taught by them to attempt to overawe all our private, partial, and selfish affections into a more or less perfect tranquillity. Directing the judgments of this inmate is the great purpose of all systems of morality. There’s no doubt that the Stoic philosophy had great influence on the character and conduct of its followers; and though it might sometimes have incited them to unnecessary violence, its general tendency was to stir them up to perform actions of heroic magnanimity and extensive benevolence. (4) [This follows the treatment of (3) Stoicism which began on page 143.] Besides these ancient systems there are some modern ones according to which virtue consists in propriety, i.e. in the suitableness of •the affection from which we act to •the cause or object that arouses it. Clark’s system places virtue in 150 Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with prudence •acting according to the relations of things, i.e. in •regulating our conduct according to whether a pro- posed action would fit, or be congruous with, certain things or certain relations; Wollaston’s system places virtue in •acting according to the truth of things, according to their proper nature and essence, i.e. •treating them
- 342. as what they really are and not as what they are not; Lord Shaftesbury’s system identifies virtue with •maintaining a proper balance of the affections, allow- ing no passion to go beyond its proper sphere. These theories are all more or less inaccurate presentations of the same fundamental idea. None of those systems gives—none of them even claims to give—any precise or distinct criterion that will guide us in discovering or judging this fitness or propriety of affections. The only place where that precise and distinct measure can be found is in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator. Each of those systems gives a description of virtue that is certainly correct as far as it goes. (I should really say ‘gives or intends to give’—some of the modern authors don’t express themselves very well.) There’s no virtue without propriety, and wherever there is propriety some degree of approval is due. But this is an incomplete account of virtue. Propriety is indeed an essential ingredient in every virtuous action, but it’s not always the sole ingredient. Beneficent actions have in them another quality which seems to entitle them not only to approval but also to reward. None the systems I have mentioned accounts either easily or sufficiently for •the superior degree of esteem that seems due to such actions, or for •the variety of sentiments that they naturally arouse. And their description of vice is also incomplete in a similar way. Impropriety is a necessary ingredient in every vicious action, but it isn’t always the sole ingredient. Deliberate actions that cause real harm to those we live with are not merely improper but have a special quality of their own that seems to make them deserve not only disapproval but punishment, and to
- 343. be objects not only of dislike but of resentment and revenge. None of those systems easily and sufficiently accounts for the higher degree of detestation that we feel for such actions. (·Also, impropriety doesn’t necessarily involve immorality·: there is often the highest degree of absurdity and impropriety in actions that are harmless and insignificant.) Chapter 2: A system that makes virtue consist in prudence The most ancient of the systems that make virtue consist in prudence, and of which any considerable record has come down to us, is that of Epicurus. He is said to have borrowed all the leading principles of his philosophy from some of his predecessors, especially Aristippus; but that’s what his enemies said, and it’s probable that at least his way of applying those principles was altogether his own. According to Epicurus, bodily pleasure and pain are the sole ultimate objects of natural desire and aversion. (Cicero, De Finibus I; Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I.10.) Of course it might sometimes seem that some pleasure should be avoided; but that is only because by enjoying it we would be losing some greater pleasure or incurring some pain that wouldn’t have been compensated for by the pleasure that led to it. And sim- ilarly for cases where it seems that some pain should be chosen—as a way of avoiding some other worse pain, or of getting a pleasure that would more than make up for the pain. Given those explanations, Epicurus thought it 151 Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with
- 344. prudence to be really obvious—and not in need of proof—that bodily pain and pleasure are always natural objects of desire and aversion, and that they are the only ultimate objects of those passions. According to him, anything else that is either desired or avoided is so because of its tendency to produce one or other of those sensations. •The tendency to procure pleasure makes power and riches desirable, as the contrary tendency to produce pain makes poverty an object of aversion. •Honour and reputation are valued because the esteem and love of those we live with are a great help in getting us pleasure and defending us from pain. •Disgrace and notoriety are to be avoided because the hatred, contempt and resentment of those we lived with destroys all security and lays us wide open to the greatest bodily evils. [The next two pages expound the views of Epicurus, and that’s all they do. Smith resumes speaking for himself in the paragraph starting ‘Such is the doctrine of Epicurus. . . ’ on page 153.] All the pleasures and pains of the •mind are ultimately derived from those of the •body. The mind is happy when it thinks of the past pleasures of the body and hopes for more to come; and it is miserable when it thinks of pains that the body has endured, and dreads the same or greater thereafter. But the pleasures and pains of the mind, though ulti- mately derived from those of the body, are vastly greater than their originals. The body feels only the sensation of the •present instant, whereas the mind also feels the •past by memory and the •future by anticipation, and consequently
- 345. suffers and enjoys much more. When we are suffering the greatest bodily pain, we’ll always find—if we attend to it—that what chiefly torments us is not the suffering of the present instant but either the agonizing memory of the past or the even more horrible fear of the future. The pain of each instant, considered by itself and cut off from everything that happens before or after it, is a trifle, not worth attending to. Yet that is all that the body can ever be said to suffer. Similarly, when we enjoy the greatest pleasure we’ll always find that the bodily sensation—the sensation of the present instant—creates only a small part of our happiness, and that our enjoyment mainly comes from the cheerful recollection of the past or the still more joyous anticipation of the future, so that the mind always contributes by far the largest share of the entertainment. Since our happiness and misery mainly depend on the mind, if this part of our nature is well disposed, and our thoughts and opinions are as they should be, it doesn’t mat- ter much how our body is affected. Though in great bodily pain, we can still enjoy a considerable share of happiness if our reason and judgment keep the upper hand. We can entertain ourselves with memories of past pleasures and hopes for future ones; and we can soften the severity of our pains by bearing in mind what it is that at this moment we have to suffer. Thinking about this can lessen our suffering in any of four ways by leading us to ponder four thoughts. (1) All I am compelled to suffer is merely the bodily sensation, the pain of the present instant, and that can’t be great. (2) Any agony that I suffer from the fear that my pain will continue is an effect of an opinion of my mind, and I can correct that by having sentiments that are more correct. (3) If my pains are violent they probably won’t last long; and if they go on for long they will probably be moderate, and will be interrupted from time to time. (4) Death is always available
- 346. to me as an option; it would put an end to all sensation, whether of pain or of pleasure, and can’t be regarded as an evil. When we exist, death doesn’t; and when death exists, we don’t; so death can’t matter to us. If the actual sensation of positive pain is, in itself, •so little to be feared, the sensation of pleasure is •still less to 152 Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with prudence be desired. The sensation of pleasure is naturally much less forceful [Smith: ‘pungent’] than that of pain; so if pain can take so little from the happiness of a well-disposed mind, pleasure could add hardly anything to it. When the body is free from pain and the mind from fear and anxiety, the added sensation of bodily pleasure can’t matter much; it might diversify someone’s mental content but can’t properly be said to increase the happiness of his situation. Thus, the most perfect state of human nature, the most complete happiness that man is capable of enjoying, is bodily ease and security or tranquillity of mind. To obtain this great end of natural desire is the sole object of all the virtues, which are desirable not on their own account but because of their tendency to bring about this situation ·of ease and tranquillity·. Take the case of prudence. It is the source and energiser of all the virtues, but it isn’t desirable on its own account. That careful and laborious and circumspect state of mind— always on the watch for even the most distant consequences
- 347. of every action—can’t be pleasant or agreeable for its own sake. What makes it valuable is its tendency to procure the greatest goods and to keep off the greatest evils. Similarly with temperance—curbing and restraining our natural passions for enjoyment, which is the job of temper- ance, can’t ever be desirable for its own sake. The whole value of this virtue arises from its utility, from its enabling us to postpone the present enjoyment for the sake of a greater to come, or to avoid a greater pain that might ensue from it. Temperance, in short, is nothing but prudence with regard to pleasure. The situations that fortitude would often lead us into— keeping hard at work, enduring pain, risking danger or death—are surely even further from being objects of natural desire. They are chosen only to avoid greater evils. We submitted to hard work in order to avoid the greater shame and pain of poverty, and we risk danger and death •in defence of our liberty and property, which are means and instruments of pleasure and happiness, or •in defence of our country, the safety of which necessarily includes our own safety. Fortitude enables us to do all this cheerfully, as the best that is possible in our present situation; it’s really just prudence—good judgment and presence of mind in properly appreciating pain, labour, and danger, always choosing the less in order to avoid the greater. It is the same case with justice. Abstaining from taking something that belongs to someone else isn’t desirable on its own account: it’s not certain that it would be better for you if I kept this item of mine than that you should possess it. But you oughtn’t to take any of my belongings from me because if you do you’ll provoke the resentment and indignation of mankind. ·If that happens·, the security and
- 348. tranquillity of your mind will be destroyed. You’ll be filled with fear and confusion by the thought of the punishment that you will imagine men are always ready to inflict on you. . . . The other sort of justice that consists in giving good help to various people according to their relations to us—as neighbours, kinsmen, friends, benefactors, superiors, or equals—is recommended by the same reasons. Acting properly in all these different relations brings us the esteem and love of those we live with, and doing otherwise arouses their contempt and hatred. By the one we naturally secure, and by the other we necessarily endanger, our own ease and tranquillity, which are the great and ultimate objects of all our desires. So the whole virtue of justice—the most important of all the virtues—is no more than discreet and prudent conduct with regard to our neighbours. Such is the doctrine of Epicurus concerning the nature of virtue. It may seem extraordinary that this philosopher, 153 Smith on Moral Sentiments A system equating virtue with prudence who was said to be personally very likeable, should have overlooked the fact that •whatever those virtues (or the contrary vices) tend to produce in the way of bodily ease and security, the sentiments they naturally arouse in others are objects of a much more passionate desire (or aversion) than all their other consequences; that •every well-disposed mind attaches more value to being
- 349. likeable, being respectworthy, being a proper object of esteem, than to all the ease and security that may come from such love, respect, and esteem; that •being odious, being contemptible, being a proper object of indignation, is more dreadful than any bodily suffering that can come from such hatred, contempt, or indignation; and that consequently our desire to be virtuous and our aversion to being vicious can’t arise from any concern for the bodily effects that either virtue or vice is likely to produce. There’s no doubt that this system is utterly inconsistent with the one I have been trying to establish. But it is easy enough to see what way of looking at things gave Epicurus’s system its plausibility. The Author of nature has wisely arranged things so that, even in this life, virtue is ordinarily. . . .the surest and readiest means of obtaining both safety and advantage. Our success or failure in our projects must depend largely on whether people commonly have a good or a bad opinion of us, and on whether those we live with are generally disposed to help us or oppose us. But the best, surest, easiest, most readily available way to get people to think well of us is to deserve their good opinion, to be proper objects of their approval. . . . So the practice of virtue is in general very advantageous to our interests, and the practice of vice is contrary to our interests; and these facts undoubtedly stamp an additional beauty and propriety on virtue and a new ugliness and impropriety on vice. In this way temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence come to be approved of not only for what they essentially are but also for their role as very real prudence. And similarly, the contrary vices of intemperance, pusillanimity, injustice, and either malevolence or sordid selfishness come to be
- 350. disapproved of not only for what they essentially are but also for their role as short-sighted folly and weakness. It seems that when Epicurus considered any virtue he attended only to this kind of propriety. It’s the one that is most apt to occur to those who are trying to persuade others to behave well. When someone’s conduct (and also perhaps things he says) make it clear that the natural beauty of virtue isn’t likely to have much effect on him, how can he be moved in the direction of better behaviour except by showing him the folly of his conduct, and how much he himself is likely eventually to suffer by it? By reducing all the •different virtues to this •one species of propriety, Epicurus did something that comes naturally to all men but is especially beloved of philosophers as a way of displaying their ingenuity! I am talking about the practice of explaining all appearances in terms of as few causes or sources as possible. And it’s clear that he was taking this even further when he equated all the primary objects of natural desire and aversion with bodily pleasures and pains. This great patron of atomism, who so enjoyed deducing •all the powers and qualities of bodies from •the most obvious and familiar of them—namely, the shapes, motions, and arrangements of the small parts of matter—no doubt felt a similar satisfaction when he explained •all the sentiments and passions of the mind in terms of •those that are most obvious and familiar. The system of Epicurus agrees with those of Plato, Aristo- tle, and Zeno, in making virtue consist in acting in the most 154 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with
- 351. benevolence suitable manner to obtain the primary objects of natural desire. It differs from all of them in two other respects—its account of what the primary objects of natural desire are, and its account of the excellence of virtue, i.e. of why virtue ought to be esteemed. According to Epicurus the primary objects of natural desire are bodily pleasure and pain, and that’s all; whereas the other three philosophers held that many other objects are ultimately desirable for their own sakes—e.g. knowledge, and happiness for our relatives, our friends, and our country. Also, according to Epicurus virtue doesn’t deserve to be pursued for its own sake, and isn’t one of the ultimate objects of natural appetite. He held that virtue is something to be chosen only because of its tendency to prevent pain and to procure ease and pleasure. In the opinion of the other three philosophers, on the other hand, virtue is desirable not merely •as a means for procuring the other primary objects of natural desire but •as something that is in itself more valuable than all of them. Because man is born for action, they held, his happiness must consist not merely in the agreeableness of his passive sensations but also in the propriety of his active efforts. Chapter 3: Systems that make virtue consist in benevolence The system that makes virtue consist in benevolence is of great antiquity, though I don’t think it is as old as any of the ones I have been discussing. It seems to have been the doctrine of the greater part of those philosophers who, in the time of Augustus and shortly thereafter, called themselves ‘Eclectics’ and claimed to be following mainly the opinions
- 352. of Plato and Pythagoras—which is why they are often called ‘later Platonists’. In the divine nature, according to these authors, benevo- lence or love is the sole driver of action, and directs the exercise of all the other attributes. God employed his •wisdom in finding out the means for bringing about the ends that his goodness suggested, and he exercised his infinite •power in bringing them about. But •benevolence was the supreme and governing attribute, and the other attributes were subservient to it. The ultimate source of the whole excellence. . . .of God’s operations is his benevolence. The whole perfection and virtue of the human mind consists in its •having some resemblance to, some share in, the perfections of God, and therefore in its •being filled with the same drive of benevolence and love that influences all the actions of the Deity. The only actions of men that were truly praiseworthy, or could claim any merit in God’s sight, are ones that flowed from benevolence. It is only by actions of charity and love that we can suitably imitate the conduct of God, expressing our humble and devout admiration of his infinite perfections. Only by fostering in our own minds the divine drive towards benevolence can we make our own affections resemble more closely God’s holy attributes, thereby becoming more proper objects of his love and esteem; until at last we arrive at the state that this philosophy is trying to get us to, namely immediate converse and communication with God. This system was greatly admired by many ancient fathers of the Christian church, and after the Reformation it was adopted by several ·protestant· divines—eminently pious and learned men, likeable men—especially Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and John Smith of Cambridge. But there can be no doubt that of all this system’s patrons, ancient or modern, the late Francis Hutcheson was incomparably the most acute, the clearest, the most philosophical, and—the most
- 353. important point—the soberest and most judicious. [Hutcheson died, aged 52, a dozen years before Smith wrote this.] 155 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with benevolence Many aspects of human nature support the idea that virtue consists in benevolence. I have pointed out that proper benevolence •is the most graceful and agreeable of all the affections, that •it is recommended to us by a double sympathy, that •because it necessarily tends to do good, it is a proper object of gratitude and reward, and that for all these reasons •it appears to our natural sentiments to have a higher merit than any other virtue. I have also remarked that even the excesses [Smith writes ‘weaknesses’; evidently a slip] of benevolence are not disagreeable to us, whereas those of every other passion are always extremely disgusting. Everyone loathes excessive malice, excessive selfishness, and excessive resentment; but the most excessive indulgence even of partial friendship is not so offensive. . . . Just as benevolence gives to the actions it produces a beauty that is superior to all others, so the lack
- 354. of benevolence—and even more the contrary inclination, malevolence—gives to all its manifestations in behaviour a special ugliness all of its own. Pernicious actions are often punishable simply because they show a lack of sufficient attention to the happiness of our neighbour. Besides all this, Hutcheson observed that when an action that was supposed to have come from benevolent affections turns out to have had some other motive, our sense of the merit of this action is lessened in proportion to how much influence this motive is believed to have had over the action. (Hutcheson, Inquiry Concerning Virtue, sections 1 and 2 [thus Smith’s reference; actually, that’s the title of a work by Shaftesbury; Smith presumably meant to refer to Hutcheson’s Inquiry into the original of our idea of Virtue].) If an action supposed to come from •gratitude turns out to have arisen from •an expectation of some new favour, or if an action supposed to have come from •public spirit turns out to have been motivated by a •hope for reward-money, such a discovery will entirely destroy all notion of merit or praiseworthiness in either of these actions. Thus, the mixture of any selfish motive. . . .lessens or abolishes the merit that the action would otherwise have had, and Hutcheson thought that this made it obvious that virtue must consist in pure and disinterested benevolence alone. And when an action that is commonly supposed to come from a selfish motive turns out to have arisen from a benev- olent one, that greatly enhances our sense of the action’s merit. . . . This fact seemed to Hutcheson to be a further confirmation of his thesis that benevolence is the only thing that can make any action virtuous.
- 355. And finally he thought that the correctness of his account of virtue is shown by the fact that in all the disputes of casuists [= ‘theorists of applied ethics’] concerning the rectitude of conduct, the public good is the standard to which they constantly refer, thereby all accepting that whatever tends to promote the happiness of mankind is right and laudable and virtuous, and whatever tends to go against it is wrong, blameworthy, and vicious. In debates about passive obe- dience and the right of resistance, the sole disagreement among men of sense concerns the answer to this: When privileges are invaded, which response is likely to bring the greater evils—universal submission or temporary insurrection? As for this question: Would the upshot that tended most to the happiness of mankind be the morally good one? —nobody, Hutcheson said, even bothered to ask it! 156 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with benevolence Since benevolence is the only motive that can make an action virtuous, the greater the benevolence that an action shows the greater is the praise that it deserves. The actions that aim at the happiness of a great commu- nity, because they show a more enlarged benevolence than
- 356. do actions aiming only at the happiness of a smaller system, are correspondingly more virtuous. So the most virtuous of all affections is the one that embraces as its object the happiness of all thinking beings; and the least virtuous of the affections that could be called ‘virtuous’ at all is the one that aims no further than at the happiness of some one individual—a son, a brother, a friend. [See note about ‘affection’ on page 116.] The perfection of virtue, ·Hutcheson held·, consists in •directing all our actions to promote the greatest possi- ble good, •submitting all inferior affections to the desire for the general happiness of mankind, •regarding oneself as merely one of the many, whose prosperity is to be pursued no further than is consis- tent with the prosperity of the whole. Self-love can never be virtuous in any degree or in any direc- tion, ·Hutcheson said·. When it obstructs the general good, it is vicious. When its only effect is to make the individual take care of his own happiness, it is merely innocent—not deserving of praise or blame. A benevolent action is especially virtuous if it is performed in defiance of some strong motive from self-interest, because that demonstrate the strength and vigour of that person’s benevolent drive. Hutcheson was so far from allowing self-love ever to be a motive of virtuous actions that, according to him, the merit of a benevolent action is lessened if the person wanted the pleasure of self-approval, the comfortable applause of his own conscience. He saw this as a selfish motive which, so
- 357. far as it contributed to any action, showed the weakness ·in that person at that time· of the pure and disinterested benev- olence that is the only thing that can make a human action virtuous. Yet in the common judgments of mankind, this concern for the approval of our own minds, far from being considered as reducing the virtue of any action, is looked on as the only motive that deserves the label ‘virtuous’. Well, that is how virtue is described in this likeable system, a system that has a special tendency •to nourish and support the noblest and most agreeable of all affections—and not only •to stop self-love from acting unjustly but also to some extent •to discourage self-love altogether by implying that it can never reflect any honour on those who are influenced by it. Some of the other systems I have described don’t suffi- ciently explain what gives the supreme virtue of benevolence its special excellence, whereas this system of Hutcheson’s seems to have the opposite defect, of not sufficiently ex- plaining why we approve of the inferior virtues of prudence, vigilance, circumspection, temperance, constancy, firmness. The only feature of an affection that this system attends to at all is its aim, the beneficent or harmful effects that it tends to produce. Its propriety or impropriety, its suitableness and unsuitableness to the cause that arouses it, is completely ignored. Also, a regard for our own private happiness and interest seems often to be a praiseworthy motive for action. It is generally supposed that self-interested motives are what lead us to develop the habits of economy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought, and these are taken by everyone to be praiseworthy qualities that deserve everyone’s esteem and approval. It’s true of course that an action that ought to arise from a benevolent affection seems to
- 358. have its beauty spoiled by an admixture of a selfish motive; 157 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems that equate virtue with benevolence but that isn’t because self-love can never be the motive of a virtuous action, but only because in the given case the benevolent motive appears to lack its proper degree of strength and to be altogether unsuitable to its object. The person’s character seems to be imperfect, and on the whole to deserve blame rather than praise. When an action for which self-love alone ought to be a sufficient motive has an admixture of benevolence in its motivation, that isn’t so likely to diminish our sense of the action’s propriety or of the virtue of the person who performs it. We’re not ready to suspect anyone of being defective in selfishness!. . . . But if we really believe, of any man, that if it weren’t for a concern for his family and his friends he wouldn’t take proper care of his health, his life, or his fortune,. . . .that would undoubtedly be a failing, though one of those likeable failings that make a person an object of pity rather than of contempt or hatred. It would somewhat lessen the dignity and worthiness of his character, however. Carelessness and lack of economy are universally disapproved of—not as coming from a lack of benevolence but from a lack proper attention to the objects of self-interest. Although the standard by which applied-ethics people often decide what is right or wrong in human conduct is whether a proposed action tends to the welfare or to the dis- order of society, it doesn’t follow that a •concern for society’s welfare is the sole virtuous motive for action—merely that in
- 359. any competition •it ought to outweigh all other motives. Benevolence may perhaps be God’s only action-driver; there are several not improbable arguments that tend to per- suade us that it is so. It’s hard to conceive what other motive can drive the actions of an independent and all-perfect Being who has no need for anything external and whose happiness is complete in himself. But be that as it may, man is an imperfect creature whose existence needs to be supported by many things external to him, and who must often act from many other motives. Think about the affections that ought—by the nature of our being—often to influence our conduct, and ask youself ’Can such affections never appear virtuous or deserve anyone’s commendation?’ How hard our condition would be if that were so! I have described three systems: (1) the ones that place virtue in propriety, (2) the ones that place virtue in prudence, and (3) the ones that place virtue in benevolence. Those are the principal accounts that have been given of the nature of virtue. All the other descriptions of virtue ·that philosophers have presented·, however different they may look, are easily reducible to one of those three. The system that places virtue in •obedience to the will of the Deity can be counted among (2) or among (1). Consider the question ‘Why ought we to obey the will of the Deity?’ This question would be impious and perfectly absurd if it came from doubt about whether we ought to obey him; ·but there is an acceptable role for the question to play, because· it can admit of two different answers. We’ll have to say (2) we ought to obey the will of the Deity because he is a
- 360. Being of infinite power who will reward us eternally if we do obey him and punish us eternally if we don’t; or (1) independently of any concern for our own happiness or for rewards and punishments of any kind, it is fitting that a creature should obey its creator, that a limited and imperfect being should submit to one whose perfections are infinite and incomprehensible. Those are the only two answers that we conceive to that question. If (2) is the right answer then virtue consists in prudence, or in the proper pursuit of our own final interest and happiness. . . . If (1) is the right answer, then virtue must consist in propriety. . . . 158 Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems The system that places virtue in utility belongs in (1). According to this system, all the qualities of the mind that are agreeable or advantageous to the person himself or to others are approved of as virtuous, and the contrary qualities disapproved of as vicious. And the agreeableness or utility of any affection depends on its degree, i.e. on how strongly or intensely the person has it. Every affection is useful when it is confined to a certain degree of moderation, and every affection is disadvantageous when it exceeds the proper bounds. According to this system, therefore, virtue consists not in any one affection but in the proper degree of all the affections. The only difference between this and the system I have been working to establish is that it makes utility—rather than sympathy, i.e. the corresponding affection of the spectator—the natural and basic measure of
- 361. this proper degree. Chapter 4: Licentious systems All the systems I have presented assume that there is a real and essential distinction between vice and virtue, whatever these qualities may consist in. There is a real and essential difference between (1) the propriety and impropriety of any affection, between (3) benevolence and any other motive for action, between (2) real prudence and shortsighted folly or precipitate rashness. And all of them contribute to encourag- ing praiseworthy dispositions and discouraging blameworthy ones. [Smith now gives the three a paragraph each in which the system in question is criticised for not getting the moral balance exactly right. This repeats things he has said already, and is given here just to set the scene for what will come in the next paragraph but one.] Despite these defects, the general tendency of each of those three systems is to encourage the best and most laudable habits of the human mind; and it would be a good thing for society if mankind in general (or even just the few who claim to live according to some philosophical rule) were to regulate their conduct by the precepts of any one of the three. We may learn from each of them something that is both valuable and peculiar. [Smith goes into details about this, in praise of each of the three, with a special emphasis on Epicurus. Then:] There is, however, another system that seems to remove entirely the distinction between vice and virtue, so that its tendency is wholly pernicious; I mean the system of Mandeville, ·presented in his book The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices, Public Benefits·. [Mandeville died 26 years
- 362. before the present work was published.] Although this author’s opinions are in almost every respect erroneous, some aspects of human nature, when looked at in a certain way, seem at first sight to favour them. When they are described and exaggerated by Mandeville’s lively and humorous though coarse and rustic eloquence, they give his doctrines an air of truth and probability that is apt to impose on the unskillful. Mandeville regards anything done from a sense of propri- ety, from a concern for what is commendable and praisewor- thy, as being done from a love of praise and commendation— or in his words ‘done from vanity’. Man, he observes, is naturally much more interested in his own happiness than in anyone else’s, and it is impossible for him ever to prefer—really, in his heart—someone else’s prosperity to his own. Whenever he appears to do so, we can be sure that he is deceiving us, and acting from the same selfish motives as he does at all other times. One of the strongest of his selfish passions is vanity—he is always easily flattered and greatly delighted with the applause of those around 159 Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems him. When he appears to sacrifice his own interests to those of his companions, he knows that his conduct will be highly agreeable to their self-love and that they won’t fail to express their satisfaction by giving him extravagant praises. He thinks that the pleasure he’ll get from this outweighs the interest that he abandons in order to get it. So •his conduct on this occasion is really just as selfish, and
- 363. arises from just as mean a motive, as his conduct at any other time. He is flattered with the belief that •it is entirely disinterested, and he flatters himself with it too; because if this were not supposed, his behaviour wouldn’t seem to him or to anyone else to merit any commendation. So all public spirit, all preference of public to private interest, is according to Mandeville a mere cheat and imposition on mankind; and the human virtue that is so much boasted of, and that is the occasion of so much emulation among men, is the mere offspring of pride impregnated by flattery! Can the most generous and public-spirited actions be re- garded as in some sense coming from self-love? I shan’t try to answer that now. The answer to it is no help in establishing the reality—·or the non-reality·—of virtue, because self-love can often be a virtuous motive for action. I’ll only try to show that (1) the desire to do what is honourable and noble, to make ourselves proper objects of esteem and approval, cannot with any propriety be called ‘vanity’. Even (2) the love of well-grounded fame and reputation, the desire to acquire esteem by what is really estimable, does not deserve that name. (1) is the love of virtue, the noblest and best passion in human nature. (2) is the love of true glory, a passion that in dignity appears to come just below the love of virtue. [Smith describes the sort of person who is guilty of vanity: someone who •wants praise for qualities that don’t deserve as much praise as he wants, or •cares about fancy clothing and trivial bits of ‘elegant’ behaviour, or •wants to be praised for something that he didn’t do, or
- 364. •comes across as ‘important’ although he isn’t, or •gets himself congratulated on adventures that in fact he didn’t have, or •claims to be the author of something he didn’t write; that person really is vain in the proper sense of the word. Also:] (3) Someone is rightly said to be guilty of vanity if he •isn’t contented with the silent sentiments of esteem and approval, •is fonder of noisy acclamations than of the sentiments themselves, •is never satisfied except when his own praises are ringing in his ears, •tries really hard to get external marks of respect, •is fond of titles, of compliments, of being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in public places with the appearance of deference and attention. This trivial passion is entirely different from either of the other two; it’s a passion of the lowest and least of mankind, just as (1) and (2) are passions of the noblest and greatest. But though these three passions—(1) the desire to make ourselves proper objects of honour and esteem, i.e. to become honourable and estimable, (2) the desire to acquire honour and esteem by really deserving those sentiments, and (3) the trivial desire for praise no matter how or why it comes—are widely different; though two are always approved of while the third never fails to be despised; there is a certain remote affinity among them; and that is what the humorous and entertaining eloquence of this lively author has exaggerated and used to deceive his readers. There is an affinity between (3) vanity and (2) the love of true glory, in that both these passions aim at getting esteem and approval. But they are different in this—(2) is a just, reasonable, and equitable passion, while (3) is unjust, absurd, and ridiculous. The 160
- 365. Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems man who wants to be esteemed for something that really is estimable wants only what he is justly entitled to—you would be wronging him by refusing it. Whereas a man who wants esteem on any other terms is asking for something that he has no just claim to. [Smith adds details about ways in which the (3) person is sure to behave badly. Then:] There is also an affinity between (1) the desire to become honourable and estimable and (2) the desire for honour and esteem, between the love of virtue and the love of true glory. They are alike in both aiming at being honourable and noble, and also in a respect in which (2) the love of true glory resembles (3) what is properly called vanity—namely having some reference to the sentiments of others. The man of the greatest magnanimity who (1) desires virtue for its own sake and cares least about what mankind actually think of him is still delighted with thoughts of what they should think, with an awareness that though he may be neither honoured nor applauded he is still a proper object of honour and applause. . . . But there is still a great difference between (1) and (2). . . . The man (1) who acts solely from a concern for what is right and fit to be done, a concern for what is a proper object of esteem and approval even if these sentiments are never bestowed on him, acts from the most sublime and godlike motive that human nature is even capable of conceiving. In contrast with that, the man (2) who doesn’t just want to •deserve approval but is also anxious to •get it, though he too is praiseworthy in the main, has motives with a greater mixture of human infirmity in them. He risks being humiliated by the ignorance and injustice of mankind, and his happiness is vulnerable to the envy of his rivals and the folly of the public. The happiness of (1) the other is altogether secure and independent of fortune,
- 366. and of the whims of those he lives with. If contempt and hatred are thrown on him by the ignorance of mankind, he isn’t humiliated because he regards this as not really aimed at him. Mankind despise and hate him because they have a false notion of his character and conduct. If they knew him better, they would esteem and love him. . . . It seldom happens, however, that human nature arrives at this degree of firmness. Only weak and worthless people are much delighted with •false glory, and yet by a strange inconsistency •false disgrace is often capable of humiliating those who appear the most resolute and determined. Mandeville isn’t satisfied with representing the trivial motive of vanity as the source of all the actions that are commonly regarded as virtuous. He also tries to point out many other respects in which human virtue is imperfect. In every case, he claims, it falls short of the complete self-denial that it lays claim to, and is commonly a mere concealed indulgence of our passions rather than a victory over them. He treats as gross luxury and sensuality any relation to •pleasure except the most ascetic abstinence from •it. He counts as a luxury anything that goes beyond what is absolutely necessary for the support of human nature, so that there is vice even in the use of a clean shirt, or of a convenient place to live. He doesn’t morally distinguish •lawful sexual relations between husband and wife from •harmful ·and unlawful· gratification of sexual desire; and he sneers at a ‘temperance’ and a ‘chastity’ that can be practised at so cheap a rate, ·i.e. the cheap rate of merely being married to your sexual partner·. The ingenious sophistry of his reasoning, is here, as on many other occasions, covered by the ambiguity of language. [Smith explains this at considerable and slightly tangled length. When someone has a disagreeable and offensive degree of the passion love of sex, this disturbs and upsets people, which means that they
- 367. notice it and want to have a name for it; the chosen name in English being ‘lust’. When someone has this desire in a 161 Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems degree that doesn’t upset onlookers, they may completely overlook it, and if they do want to talk about it they give it a name that expresses the fact of its being kept down to a moderate level, the name being ‘chastity’. Smith’s other example is the love of pleasure, and the words ‘luxury’ for an extreme degree of this passion and ‘temperance’ for the fact that someone’s love of pleasure is suitably bounded. [That was true of ‘luxury’ in his day, though not in ours.] Mandeville’s trick has been to assume that ‘he is temperate’ means that he has no love of pleasure, and that ‘he is chaste’ means that he has no love of sex; and he claims to uncover the scandalous fact that supposedly temperate people do have some love of pleasure, and that supposedly chaste ones have some love of sex. By proceeding in this way, Smith continues:] Mandeville imagines that he has entirely demolished the reality of the virtues of temperance and chastity. . . . But those virtues don’t require that one be entirely numb to the objects of the passions they try govern. They aim only at keeping the violence of those passions below the level at which they might harm the individual or disturb or offend society. The great fallacy of Mandeville’s book is its representing any passion that is •vicious when it occurs with a certain intensity and aims in a certain direction
- 368. as though it were •vicious whenever it occurs with any degree of inten- sity and whatever direction it aims in. That’s how he goes about treating as vanity any passion that involves any reference to the sentiments that other people do have or ought to have; and it’s how he arrives at his favourite conclusion, namely that ‘private vices are public benefits’. If the love of magnificence, a taste for the elegant arts and improvements of human life, for whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, architecture, statuary, painting, and music is to be regarded as ‘luxury’, ‘sensuality’, and ‘showing off’, even in those whose are in a position to indulge those passions without harming anyone else, then indeed luxury, sensuality, and showing off are indeed public benefits! That’s because without the qualities to which Mandeville sees fit to give such nasty names, the arts of refinement would have no encouragement, and would eventually die for lack of employment. The real foundation of this licentious system was a set of popular ascetic doctrines that had been current before Mandeville’s time and identified •virtue with •the complete wiping out of all our passions. It was easy for him to prove (1) that this entire conquest of all human passions never happened, and (2) that if it did occur universally, that would be pernicious to society because it would put an end to all industry and commerce and—in a way—to the whole business of human life. He used (1) to give himself the appearance of proving that there is no real virtue, and that what claimed to be virtue was a mere cheat and imposition on mankind; and he used (2) to give himself the appearance of proving that •private vices are public benefits because without •them no society could prosper or flourish.
- 369. Such is the system of Mandeville, which ·was published 45 years ago and· once made so much noise in the world. It may not have given rise to more vice than there would have been without it; but it did at least encourage vice that arose from other causes to appear more boldly and to proclaim the corruptness of its motives with a bold openness that had never been heard of before. This system. . . .could never have imposed on so many people, or given rise to such a general alarm among the friends of better principles, if it hadn’t in some respects bordered on the truth. ·I am not saying that no theory can get widespread acceptance unless it is close to the truth·. 162 Smith on Moral Sentiments Licentious systems A theory in natural philosophy [here = ‘science’] may seem plausible and be for a long time generally accepted, without having any basis in nature or any sort of resemblance to the truth. Descartes’s ‘vortices’ were regarded by a ingenious nation, ·the French·, for nearly a century as a satisfactory account of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Yet it has been demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction that these supposed causes of those wonderful effects not only don’t actually exist but are utterly impossible, and that if they did exist they couldn’t produce the effects that Descartes ascribed to them. But it’s not like that with systems of moral philosophy. An author claiming to account for the origin of our moral sentiments can’t deceive us so grossly, or depart so far from all resemblance to the truth ·as did the Cartesian
- 370. theory of ‘vortices’·. When a traveller describes some distant country, he can pass off groundless and absurd fictions as established matters of fact. But when someone offers to inform us of •what is going on in our neighbourhood, and of •the affairs of the parish that we live in, although he may get us to accept many falsehoods (if we don’t take the trouble to examine things with our own eyes), the greatest falsehoods that he gets us to accept must have some resemblance to the truth, and must even have a considerable mixture of truth in them. . . . Section 3: The different systems that have been formed concerning the source of approval Introduction After the inquiry into the nature of virtue, the next most important question in moral philosophy concerns the source of approval—the power or faculty of the mind that makes certain characters agreeable or disagreeable to us, makes us prefer one tenor of conduct to another, calling one ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’, and consider one as an object of approval, honour, and reward and the other as an object of blame, censure, and punishment. Three accounts have been given of the generator of ap- proval. Some people hold that we approve and disapprove of actions—our own and other people’s—purely from (1) self-love, i.e. from what we think about their tendency to ·lead to· our own happiness or disadvantage. Others say that (2) reason—the faculty by which we distinguish truth from falsehood—enables us to distinguish what is fit from what is unfit, both in actions and affections. According to yet others, this distinction is wholly an effect of (3) immediate sentiment and feeling, arising from the satisfaction or disgust that
- 371. certain actions or affections produce in us. So there they are, the three different sources that have been assigned for the principle [see note below] of approval: (1) self-love, (2) reason, (3) sentiment. Before I go on to describe those different systems, I should remark that finding the right answer to this question, though it’s very important for moral theory, has no practical significance. The question about the nature of virtue is bound to have some influence on our notions of right and wrong in many particular cases, but the question about the principle of approval can’t possibly have any such effect. It’s 163 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems tracing approval back to self-love only from philosophical curiosity that we try to discover what the inner contrivance or mechanism is from which those different notions or sentiments arise. [In the early modern period, the word ‘principle’ was sometimes used with the meaning we have for it, in which a principle is a proposition with a special status; but it was much more often used to mean ‘source’ or ‘cause’ or ‘drive’— something entirely non-propositional that brings about some event or state of affairs.
- 372. In the present version ‘principle’ is usually replaced by one of those other words when it has been used in this early-modern sense—e.g. in the heading of the present Section, where ‘principle’ has been replaced by ‘source’. We have just met an agreeably clear bit of evidence of how the land lies: after saying that his topic is a question about the principle of approval, Smith goes straight on to say that it’s an inquiry into the inner contrivance or mechanism from which approval arises.] Chapter 1: Systems that trace the source of approval back to self-love Those who explain approval as arising from self-love don’t all account for it in the same manner, and all their different systems contain a good deal of confusion and imprecision. According to Hobbes and many of his followers—such as Pufendorf and Mandeville—man is driven to take refuge in society not by any natural love for his own kind but because without the help of others he is incapable of surviving with ease or safety. According to this theory, society becomes necessary for a man, and anything that favours the support and welfare of •society he regards as having an indirect tendency to promote •his own interests; and anything that is likely to disturb or destroy •society he regards as to some extent harmful or pernicious to •himself. Virtue is the great support of society, and vice its great disturber. That is why virtue is agreeable to every man and vice is offensive to him;
- 373. he sees virtue as pointing to the prosperity of the society that is so necessary for the comfort and security of his existence, and vice as pointing to its ruin and disorder. As I remarked earlier, there can be no doubt that virtue’s tendency to promote the order of society and vice’s tendency to disturb it reflects a great beauty in virtue and a great ugliness in vice; and I mean that we get this sense of beauty and ugliness when we consider this matter coolly and philosophically—·i.e. setting aside the fact that we have a stake in society’s surviving and flourishing·. When we think about human society in a certain abstract and philosophical light, it appears like an immense machine whose regular and harmonious movements produce countless agreeable effects. As with any other beautiful and noble machine made by men, whatever tends to make its movements smoother and easier will derive a beauty from this effect, and whatever tends to obstruct its movements will displease on that account. So virtue, which is like the fine polish to the wheels of society, necessarily pleases; while vice, like the vile rust that makes the wheels jar and grate on one another, is as necessarily offensive. So this account of the origin of approval and disapproval, to the extent that it derives them from a concern for the order of society, turns into the account that gives beauty to utility (I explained this earlier); and that’s the source of all the plausibility that this ·Hobbes· system has. When those authors •describe the countless ways in which a cultivated and social life is better than a savage and solitary one, •go on about how virtue and good order are needed for social life to survive, and •demonstrate how certain it is that the prevalence of
- 374. vice and lawlessness tends to bring back the savage life, the reader is charmed with the novelty and grandeur of the views that they open to him. He now clearly sees a beauty in 164 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making reason the source of approval virtue and an ugliness in vice that he hadn’t noticed before, and is commonly so delighted with the discovery that he doesn’t takes time to reflect that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, can’t possibly be the source of the approval and disapproval that he has always been accustomed to give to virtue and vice. When those authors derive from self-love our interest in the welfare of society and the esteem that we therefore give to virtue, they don’t mean that when we now applaud the virtue of Cato and detest the villainy of Catiline our sentiments are influenced by any thought of getting benefit from Cato or being harmed by Catiline!. . . . The Hobbesian philosophers never imagined that when we applaud Cato and blame Catiline we are influenced by some belief about how the behaviour of those citizens of ancient Rome might cause events that help or harm us now. Their view was rather that these moral sentiments of ours are influenced by ·the thought of· the help or harm we might have received if we had lived at that time in that place, or by ·the thought of· help or harm that might still come our way if we encounter characters of the same kinds as Cato and Catiline. So really the idea that those authors were groping for, but were
- 375. never able to get hold of firmly, was the idea of the indirect sympathy that we feel with the gratitude or resentment of those who received the benefit or suffered the damage resulting from such opposite characters. That is what they were vaguely gesturing towards when they said that what prompted our applause or indignation was not •the thought of what we had gained or suffered but rather •the conception or imagination of what we might gain or suffer if we were to act in society with such associates. But there is nothing selfish about sympathy! When I sympathize with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be claimed that my emotion is based on self-love because it arises from bringing your case home to myself, putting myself in your situation, and in that way getting a sense of what I would feel in those circumstances. But although it’s true that sympathy arises from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to •me in my own person and character, but to •me in the character of the person with whom I sympathize. When I sympathize with you over the death of your only son, in order to enter into your grief I don’t think about •what I, a person of such-and-such a character and profession, would suffer if I had an only son who died. What I think about is rather
- 376. •what I would suffer if I were really you. In this thought I don’t just switch your •circumstances with mine; I change •persons and •characters. So my grief is not in the least selfish: it is entirely on your account, and not in the least on my own. . . . A man may sympathize with a woman in the labour of child-birth, but he can’t possibly conceive himself —in his own proper person and character—as suffering her pains. That whole account of human nature, which •derives all sentiments and affections from self-love, which •has made so much noise in the world, but which •appears never yet to have been fully and clearly explained, seems to me to have arisen from some confused failure to grasp what sympathy is. 165 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making reason the source of approval Chapter 2: Systems that make reason the source of approval It is well known to have been Hobbes’s view that a state of nature is a state of war; and that before civil government was set up there could be no safe or peaceable society among men. According to him, therefore, preserving society is supporting civil government, and destroying civil government was the same thing as putting an end to society. But the
- 377. existence of civil government depends on people’s obeying the supreme magistrate [here = ‘the ruler’]. The moment he loses his authority all government is at an end. So, Hobbes concludes, because ·a desire for· self-preservation teaches men to applaud whatever tends to promote the welfare of society and to blame whatever is likely to harm it, that same desire ought to teach them to applaud all instances of obedi- ence to the civil magistrate and to blame all disobedience and rebellion—it •ought to, and it •will if they think and speak consistently. Thus, the ideas of laudable and blameworthy ought coincide with the ideas of obedient and disobedient; so the laws of the civil magistrate ought to be regarded as the sole ultimate standards of what is just and unjust, right and wrong. It was Hobbes’s announced intention, in publishing these notions, to bring men’s consciences immediately under the civil powers—not the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence and ambition he regarded as the principal source of the disorders of society (he had been taught to think this by the example of his own times, ·which covered the entire Cromwellian revolution against Charles I·). This made his doctrine especially offensive to theologians, who accordingly vented their indignation against him with great ferocity and bitterness. It was also offensive to all sound moralists because it supposed that there is no natural distinction between •right and •wrong, that •these could be changed, being dependent on what the civil magistrate chooses to command. So Hobbes’s account of things was attacked from all directions, and with all sorts of weapons, by sober reason as well as by furious declamation. In order to refute this odious doctrine it was necessary to prove that in advance of any law or man-made institutions the ·human· mind was naturally endowed with a faculty by
- 378. which it distinguished in certain actions and affections the qualities of right, praiseworthy, and virtuous, and in others those of wrong, blameworthy and vicious. Cudworth in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Im- mutable Morality rightly said that law couldn’t be the original source of those distinctions, ·using the following argument·. Suppose that there is a law: then either (1) it is right to obey it and wrong to disobey it, or (2) it makes no moral difference whether we obey it or disobey it. If (2) is correct, then there’s a law that obviously couldn’t be the source of the distinction between right and wrong; and if (1) is right, then this presupposes that there is a standard for right and wrong independently of this law, a standard in terms of which we can say that obedience to the law squares with the idea of right, and disobedience squares with the idea of wrong. So the mind has a notion of those distinctions antecedent to all law; and from this it seems to follow (·Cudworth said·) that this notion was derived from reason, which distinguishes right from wrong in the same way that it distinguishes truth from falsehood. There is some truth in this conclusion, though in some ways it is rather hasty. It was easier to accept back then, when the abstract science of human nature was still in its infancy, and the different roles and powers of the different faculties of the human 166 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making reason the source
- 379. of approval mind hadn’t yet been carefully examined and distinguished from one another. [This could refer to Hume’s work; he published his Treatise and both Enquiries in the 28 years between the publication of that work of Cudworth’s and Smith’s writing of the present work. (Cudworth’s book was first published 43 years after his death.)] When this controversy with ·the views of· Hobbes was being carried on with such warmth and keenness, no-one had thought of any other faculty from which such moral ideas could be supposed to arise. And so at that time it was widely accepted that the essences of virtue and vice consist not in conformity or disagreement of human actions with •the law of a superior, but in their conformity or disagreement with •reason, which thereby came to be regarded as the original source and driver of approval and disapproval. That virtue consists in conformity to reason is true in some respects, and reason can rightly considered as in some sense the source and driver of approval and disapproval, and of all solid judgments about right and wrong. It is by reason that we discover the general rules of justice by which we ought to regulate our actions; and it is by reason that we form the more vague and indeterminate ideas of what is prudent, or decent, or generous or noble, which we carry around with us, doing our best to model the tenor of our conduct on them [see note on ‘tenor’ on page 85]. Like all general maxims, the general maxims of morality are based on experience and induction. We observe in a variety of particular cases what pleases or displeases our moral
- 380. faculties,. . . .and by induction from this experience we set up the general rules. And induction is always regarded as an operation of reason. So it is right to say that we derive from reason all those general maxims and ideas. ·This is an important result, because· general maxims regulate most of our moral judgments. Those judgments would be extremely uncertain and precarious if they depended entirely on something as variable as immediate sentiment and feeling, which the different states of health and mood can alter so essentially. Thus, our most solid judgments about right and wrong are regulated by maxims and ideas derived from an induction of reason; so it is correct to say that virtue consists in conformity to reason, and we can go that far with the thesis that reason is the source and driver of approval and disapproval. But ·that’s as far as we can go·; it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that our first ·or most basic· perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in the particular cases on the basis of which we form general moral rules. These first perceptions can’t be an object of reason; they must be matters of immediate sense and feeling. (That holds true for all experiences on which any general rules are based.) We form the general rules of morality by finding in a vast variety of instances that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a certain way and that another constantly displeases. But reason can’t make any particular object either agreeable or disagreeable to the mind •for its own sake. Reason can show that this object is a means to getting something else that is naturally either pleasing or displeasing, and in this way reason can make it either agreeable or disagreeable •for the sake of something else. But nothing can be agreeable or disagreeable for its own sake unless it is made to be so by immediate sense and feeling. So if virtue in each particular
- 381. case necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice equally certainly displeases the mind, then what reconciles us to virtue and alienates us from vice can’t be reason; it has to be immediate sense and feeling. [Smith now offers a short paragraph in which he seems to lose track of what he wanted to say. Its main point is to liken distinguishing virtue from vice to distinguishing pleasure from pain.] 167 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making sentiment the source of approval But because reason can in a certain sense be regarded as the source of •approval and disapproval, •these sentiments were carelessly regarded as basically flowing from the opera- tions of reason; and that went on for a long time. Hutcheson had the merit of being the first who distinguished with any degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions may be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are founded on immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations of the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and I think so unanswerably, that any remaining controversy about the subject must be due either to inattention to what Hutcheson wrote or to a superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression. . . . Chapter 3: Systems that make sentiment the source of approval Systems that make sentiment the source of approval can be divided into two classes. (1) According to some writers, our approvals express a
- 382. sentiment of a special kind; we have a particular power of perception that the mind employs when it encounters certain actions or affections. Some of them have an agreeable effect on this faculty, and they are given the labels ‘right’, ‘praiseworthy’, and ‘virtuous’. Others have a disagreeable effect on the faculty, and are labelled ‘wrong’, ‘blameworthy’, and ‘vicious’. These writers regard this sentiment as being of a special nature distinct from every other, and as the effect of a particular power of perception—·as distinct from any of the others as the sense of sight is distinct from the sense of hearing·—so they give it a name of its own and call it a ‘moral sense’. (2) According to others, we can account for the business of approving without having to suppose any new power of perception that has never been heard of before. They think that Nature acts here—as everywhere else—with the strictest economy, producing a multitude of effects from a single cause; and that all the effects ascribed to this peculiar faculty of ‘moral sense’ can be explained in terms of sympathy, a power that we obviously do have and that has always been known and noticed. [In the last paragraph of this chapter Smith briefly deals with (2); the rest of the chapter is all about (1).] Hutcheson was at great pains to show that the approval is not driven by self-love. [Smith refers to Hutcheson’s Inquiry concerning Virtue; for what he probably meant, see note on page 156.] He demonstrated too that it couldn’t arise from any operation of reason. The only remaining possibility, he thought, was that approval is an exercise of a faculty of a special kind that Nature has given to the human mind purely so as to produce this one particular and important effect. With self-love and reason ruled out, it didn’t occur to him that the desired explanation might come from some other known faculty of
- 383. the mind. He called this ·supposed· new power of perception a moral sense, and thought it to be somewhat analogous to the external senses. Just as the bodies around us, by affecting our external senses in a certain way, appear to possess the different qualities of sound, taste, odour, colour; so the various affections of the human mind, by touching the moral sense in a certain manner, appear to possess the different qualities of likeable and odious, of virtuous and vicious, of right and wrong. According to this system, the various senses—or powers of perception—from which the human mind derives all its simple ideas are of two kinds: (1) the direct or antecedent senses and (2) the reflex or consequent senses. (1) The direct senses are the faculties through which the mind gets its perceptions of qualities of things that don’t presuppose a 168 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making sentiment the source of approval previous perception of any other qualities. Thus sounds and colours are objects of the direct senses. Hearing a sound or seeing a colour doesn’t require us to perceive some other quality or object first. (2) The reflex or consequent senses are the faculties through which the mind gets perceptions of qualities of things that do presuppose a previous perception of some other qualities. For example, harmony and beauty are objects of the reflex senses: to perceive the harmony of a sound or the beauty of a colour we must first perceive the sound or the colour. The moral sense was regarded as a
- 384. faculty of this kind. According to Hutcheson, the faculty that Locke called ‘reflection’, from which he derived the simple ideas of the passions and emotions of the human mind, is (1) a direct internal sense. And the faculty by which we perceive the beauty or ugliness—the virtue or vice—of those passions and emotions is (2) a reflex internal sense. Hutcheson tried to support this doctrine further by point- ing out that it is agreeable to the analogy of nature, because the mind does have a variety of other reflex senses exactly similar to the moral sense. Examples: a sense of beauty and ugliness in external objects; a public sense through which we sympathize with the happiness or misery of our fellow-creatures; a sense of shame and honour; a sense of ridicule. But despite all the trouble this philosopher put into proving •his ‘moral sense’ theory,. . . .one of its admitted consequences will strike many of us as flatly refuting •it. He accepts that it would be highly absurd to ascribe to any •sense a quality belonging to •objects of that sense. ·He is right about this·: who ever thought of calling the sense of sight ‘black’ or ‘white’, the sense of hearing ‘loud’ or ‘soft’, or the sense of tasting ‘sweet’ or ‘bitter’? Well, according to Hutcheson it is equally absurd to say that our moral faculties are ‘virtuous’ or ‘vicious’, ‘morally good’ or ‘morally evil’. These are qualities of the objects of those faculties, not of the faculties themselves. Suppose we are confronted by someone who is so absurdly constituted that he approves of cruelty and injustice as the highest virtues, and disapproves of fairness and humaneness as the most pitiful vices. Such a constitution of mind might be regarded as bad for the individual and bad for society, and also as strange, surprising, and unnatural in itself; but—Hutcheson contends—it could not without absurdity be called vicious
- 385. or morally evil. But now suppose we see someone shouting with admira- tion and applause at a barbarous and undeserved execution that some insolent tyrant has ordered—we won’t think we are guilty of any great absurdity in saying that this behaviour is vicious and morally evil in the highest degree, although all it expresses are •depraved moral faculties, or •an absurd approval of this dreadful conduct. . . . In such a case I think we might for a while ignore our sympathy with the victim and feel nothing but horror and detestation at the thought of this dreadful spectator. We would abominate him even more than we would the tyrant who ordered the execution; he might have been goaded on by strong passions of jealousy, fear, and resentment, which would make him more excusable than the spectator. His sentiments seem to be entirely without cause or motive, and therefore to be perfectly and completely detestable. There’s no perversion of sentiment or affection that our heart would. . . .reject with greater hatred and indignation than one of this kind; and so far from regarding such a constitution of mind as being merely ‘strange’ or ‘unsuitable’ and not in any respect vicious or morally evil, we would consider it rather as the last and most dreadful stage of moral depravity. 169 Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making sentiment the source of approval And on the other side of the ledger, correct moral senti- ments naturally appear to be to some extent praiseworthy and morally good. If a man’s applause and censure are always precisely suited to the value or unworthiness of
- 386. the object, he seems to deserve a certain amount of moral approval for that. We admire the delicate precision of his moral sentiments; they provide leadership for our own judg- ments, and their uncommon and surprising justness arouses our wonder and applause. It’s true that we can’t always be sure that this person’s conduct will match up to the precision and accuracy of his judgments about the conduct of others. Virtue requires •habit and •firmness of mind, as well as •delicacy of sentiment; and unfortunately the former qualities are sometimes lacking in people who have the latter in the greatest perfection. Still, this disposition of mind, although it may sometimes be accompanied by imperfections, is incompatible with anything grossly criminal and is the best foundation on which to build the superstructure of perfect virtue. There are many men who mean well, and seriously intend to do what they think is their duty, who notwithstanding are disagreeable because of the coarseness of their moral sentiments. You may want to object: Although the source of approval isn’t based on any power of perception analogous to the external senses, it may still be based on a special sentiment that serves this one particular purpose and no other. Approval and disapproval are •certain feelings or emotions that arise in the mind when it sees or contemplates characters and actions; and just as resentment might be called ‘a sense of injuries’ and gratitude ‘a sense of benefits’, so •these feelings can properly be called ‘a sense of right and wrong’ or ‘a moral sense’. But this account of things, though not open to the same objections as the previous account, is exposed to ·two· others that are equally unanswerable.
- 387. (1) Whatever variations any specific kind of emotion may undergo, it still preserves the general features that mark it off as being of that kind; and these general features are always more striking and noticeable than any variation which it may undergo in particular cases. For example: anger is an emotion of a specific kind, so that its general features always stand out more clearly than all the variations it undergoes in particular cases. Anger against a •man differs somewhat from anger against a •woman, which differs from anger against a •child. In each of those cases the general passion of anger appears in a different version because of the particular character of its object; you’ll easily see this if you attend ·to what goes on in you when you are angry·. But what predominate in all these cases are the general features of the passion. To distinguish these you don’t need any precise observation, whereas a delicate attention is needed if one is to discover their variations; everyone is aware of the general features, while hardly anyone notices the variations. Well, then, if approval and disapproval were emotions of a particular kind distinct from every other kind—in the way gratitude and resentment are—we would expect that each of them in all the variations it undergoes would still retain the general features that mark it off as an emotion of that particular kind, clear, plain, and easily distinguishable. But that isn’t what happens. Attend to what you really feel on different occasions when you approve of something. You’ll find that your emotion in one case is often totally different from [Smith’s phrase] what it is in another, and that you can’t find any features that those particular emotional episodes have in common. Your approval of a •tender, delicate, and humane sentiment ·in someone else· is quite different from your approval of sentiment that strikes you as •great, daring, 170
- 388. Smith on Moral Sentiments Systems making sentiment the source of approval and magnanimous. Your approval of each may be perfect and entire; but you are •softened by one and •elevated by the other, and there’s no sort of resemblance between the emotions they arouse in you. This is bound to be the case if my theory of the moral sentiments is true: the emotions of the persons you approve of are different and indeed opposite in those two cases; your approval arises from sympathy with those opposite emotions; so of course what you feel on the one occasion can’t have any resemblance to what you feel on the other. But this couldn’t be right if approval consisted in a special emotion that •is triggered by a view of some sentiment in someone but •has nothing in common with that sentiment. And all this can be re-applied to disapproval. Our horror at cruelty has no resemblance to our contempt for mean-spiritedness. When we encounter cruelty, the discord we feel between our minds and the mind of cruel person is quite different from the discord we feel between our mind and the mind of someone who is mean-spirited. (2) I would remind you of my earlier point that as well as approving or disapproving of •the different passions or affections of the human mind that we encounter, we also find it natural to approve or disapprove of •people’s approvals and disapprovals. How can that be so if the theory now under investigation is right? In fact, to the question •How does it come about that we approve of proper
- 389. approvals and disapprove of improper approvals? only one answer can possibly be given. It is this: When •you approve ·or disapprove· of •his conduct, your frame of mind coincides with •mine; and so I approve of your approval ·or disapproval· and consider it as to some extent morally good. And when •your approval ·or disapproval· creates a mis-match between your frame of mind and my own, I disapprove of •it and consider it as to some extent morally evil. So it must be granted that at least in this one ·kind of· case, ·where A (dis)approves of B’s (dis)approval of C·, what constitutes A’s moral (dis)approval is the coincidence or opposition between A’s sentiments and B’s. And if that’s what (dis)approval amounts to in this one ·kind of· case, why shouldn’t it be what it amounts to in every other? Why imagine a new power of perception to account for those sentiments? Any account of approval that makes it depend on a special sentiment distinct from every other is open to the following objection: It is strange that this sentiment, which Providence undoubtedly intended to be the governing force in human nature, should have been overlooked to such an extent that it doesn’t have a name in any language! The phrase ‘moral sense’ is a recent invention and can’t yet be considered as part of the English tongue. It was only a few years ago that the word ‘approbation’ [= ‘approval’] was appropriated to mean something of this kind. In propriety of language we approve of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, the form of a building, the design of a machine, the flavor of a dish of meat. The word ‘conscience’ doesn’t immediately stand for any moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience does presuppose the existence of •some such faculty, and the word used properly signifies our awareness that we have acted agreeably or contrary to •its directions. When love,
- 390. hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment—and so many other passions that are all supposed to be governed by force of (dis)approval—have made themselves considerable enough to get labels, isn’t it surprising that the sovereign of them all should have been so little noticed that no-one apart from a few philosophers has thought it worthwhile to give it a name?. . . . 171 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality [Picking up now from paragraph (2) on page 168:] There’s another system that tries to account for the origin of our moral sentiments in sympathy, but not in the way that I have been trying to establish. I have already given some account of it in Part IV above. This is a system that places virtue in utility, and explains the pleasure with which the spectator surveys the utility of any quality in terms of •sympathy with the happiness of those who get the benefit of it. This is different from the •sympathy by which we enter into the motives of the benefactor and from the •sympathy by which we go along with the gratitude of the beneficiaries. The causal story here is like the story of what happens when we approve of a well-designed machine. But no machine can be an object of either of those two last mentioned sympathies—sympathy with motives and sympathy with gratitude. Section 4: What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality
- 391. toc I noted in Part III above [page 93] that the rules of justice are the only rules of morality that are precise and detailed; that the rules of all the other virtues are loose, vague, and indeterminate. And I likened the rules of justice to rules of grammar, and those of the other virtues to rules that critics lay down for the achievement of what is sublime and elegant in composition, presenting us with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at rather than giving us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it. Because the different rules of morality can differ so much in their degrees of precision, authors wanting to collect and digest them into systems have gone about this in two differ- ent ways. (1) One set has followed through the whole loose method that they were naturally directed to by considering any one species of virtues. (2) The other set has universally tried to introduce into their precepts the kind of precision that only some of them are capable of. (1) have written like critics, (2) like grammarians. (1) The first group include all the ancient moralists, and others. They have contented themselves with describing the different vices and virtues in a general manner, and with pointing out the ugliness and misery of one disposition and the propriety and happiness of the other; they haven’t pretended to lay down many precise rules that are to hold good in all particular cases, with no exceptions. What they have done are two things. (a) They have tried to say, as precisely as language will allow, •what the sentiment of the heart is on which each specific kind of virtue is founded—what sort of in- ternal feeling or emotion constitutes the essence of friendship, of humaneness, of generosity, of justice, of
- 392. magnanimity, and of all the other virtues; and •what the sentiment of the heart is in the vices that are the opposites of those virtues. (b) And they have tried to say what is the general way of acting—the ordinary tone and tenor of conduct—to which 172 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality each of those sentiments would direct us, i.e. what kind of conduct ordinarily goes with a person’s being friendly, or generous, or brave, or just, or humane. (a) Sketching the sentiment of the heart on which each particular virtue is based requires a pencil that is both delicate and precise, but it’s a task that can be carried out with some degree of exactness. Of course it isn’t possible to express all the variations that each sentiment either does or ought to undergo according to every possible variation of circumstances. The variations are endless, and language lacks names for ·most of· them. Consider for example the sentiment of friendship. •The feeling of our friendship for an old man differs from what we feel for a young man. •The feeling of our friendship for an austere man differs from what we feel for someone who has softer and gentler manners. •The feeling of our friendship for a gentle man differs
- 393. from what we feel for one who has cheerful vivacity and spirit. •The feeling of our friendship for a man differs from what we feel for a woman, even when there is no sexual feeling mixed in with it. What author could list and describe these and all the other infinite varieties that friendship can undergo? Still, the general sentiment of friendship and familiar attachment that is common to them all can be pinned down precisely enough. Although the picture that is drawn of it will always be incomplete, it may provide enough of a likeness to enable us to know the original when we meet with it, and even to distinguish it from other sentiments that are considerably like it, such as good-will, respect, esteem, admiration. (b) To describe in a general way the way of acting to which each virtue would ordinarily prompt us is even easier. In fact it is hardly possible to (a) describe the internal sentiment or emotion on which a virtue is based without doing (b) something of this kind. It isn’t possible to express in language the invisible features of all the different special forms of a passion as they show themselves within. The only way to mark them off from one another is by describing the effects that they produce without—facial expression and external behaviour, the resolutions they suggest, the actions they prompt to. That is what led Cicero in Book 1 of his Offices to direct us to the practice of the four cardinal virtues; and led Aristotle in the practical parts of his Ethics to point out to us the different habits by which he would have us regulate our behaviour—habit such as those of liberality, magnificence, magnanimity. . . . Such works present us with nice lively pictures of man-
- 394. ners. Their liveliness stirs up our natural love of virtue, and increases our hatred of vice; by the rightness and delicacy of their observations they can help to correct. . . .our natural sentiments concerning the propriety of conduct,. . . .helping us to get our behaviour more exactly right, by standards that we might not have thought of without such instruction. This treatment of the rules of morality is the science that is properly called ‘Ethics’—a science that •can’t be done with great precision (it’s like criticism in that respect) but that •is nevertheless highly useful and agreeable. It is more open than any other science to using the ornaments of eloquence, through which it gives even the smallest rules of duty a new importance. Its precepts, thus adorned, can produce noble and lasting impressions on young people, getting them while they are young enough to be flexible. . . . Anything that precept and exhortation [= roughly ‘commanding and pleading’] can do to spur us to the practice of virtue is done by this science delivered in this way. [That completes (1), started on page 172.] 173 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality (2) The second set of moralists •don’t content themselves with characterizing in this general manner the tenor of conduct that they want to recommend to us, but •work to lay down exact and precise rules to govern every detail of our behaviour. This group includes: (a) All the casuists [= ‘applied-ethics theorists’] of the middle and latter ages of the Christian church, as well as
- 395. (b) All those who, during those times or in the century just past, have written about ‘natural jurisprudence’, as they call it. Because justice is the only virtue for which such exact rules can properly be given, it’s the one that has had most consideration from both of those sub-groups of writers. But they treat it very differently. (b) Those who write about the principles of jurisprudence attend only to what the person to whom the obligation is due ought to think he is entitled to get by force—what every impartial spectator would approve of him for getting in that way, or what a duly appointed judge or arbiter ought to require the other person to allow or do. (a) The casuists attend less to •what one can properly use force to get from someone than to •what the person who owes the obligation ought to think himself bound to perform because of a sacred and scrupulous regard for the general rules of justice, and of a conscientious fear of wronging his neighbour or of violating the integrity of his own character. What jurisprudence is for is to prescribe rules for the de- cisions of judges and arbiters. What casuistry is for is to prescribe rules for the conduct of a good man. If the rules of jurisprudence were perfectly complete, and if we always obeyed them all, what would we then deserve? Nothing but •freedom from external punishment! But if the rules of casuistry were such as they ought to be, and we always obeyed them all, the exact and scrupulous delicacy of our behaviour would entitle us to •considerable praise.
- 396. It can happen that a good man ought to think himself bound by a sacred and conscientious respect for the general rules of justice to do something that it would be utterly unjust to extort from him, or for any judge or arbiter to impose on him by force. A trite example: a traveller is obliged by his fear of death to promise a certain sum of money to a highwayman. Should a promise that is in this manner extorted by unjust force be regarded as obligatory? That question has been much debated. If we take it merely as a question of jurisprudence, the answer is obvious: it would be absurd to suppose that the highwayman can be entitled to use force to constrain the traveller to keep his promise. Extorting the promise was a crime that deserved severe punishment, and extorting the promise-keeping would only be adding a second crime to the first. . . . It would be a ridiculous absurdity to suppose that a judge ought to enforce the keeping of such promises, or that the magistrate [here = ‘the legal system’] ought to allow actions at law concerning them. So if we consider this question as a question in jurisprudence, the answer is easy. But if we understand it rather as a question in casuistry, it isn’t so easily answered. Consider a good man who has a conscientious regard for the sacred rule of justice commanding that all serious promises be kept: will he think himself obliged to keep his promise to the highwayman? There really is a question about this. Everyone will agree that •this good man isn’t obliged to care about the disap- pointment of the wretch who brought him into this situation, that 174
- 397. Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality •no injury is done to the robber ·by the promise’s not being kept·, and consequently that •payment of the promise can’t be extorted by force. ·That stops jurisprudence from ruling that the promise should be kept, but casuistry may still have something to say·. It may be the case that •this good man owes some respect to his own dignity and honour, to the inviolable sacredness of the part of his character that makes him reverence the law of truth and hate everything that smacks of treachery and falsehood. It’s not obvious that this is false; and the casuists are greatly divided about such cases. On one side there are those who unhesitatingly say that no sort of regard is due to any such promise, and that to think otherwise is mere weakness and superstition. Cicero was one of these, among the ancients, and Pufendorf among the moderns. Also, above all, Hutcheson, who in most cases was by no means a loose ·or unduly permissive· casuist. On the other side are some of the ancient fathers of the church (e.g. Augustine) as well as some eminent modern casuists; they judge that all such promises are obligatory. If we bring the common sentiments of mankind to bear on the question, we get the answer that some regard is due even to a promise of this kind, but that it’s impossible to determine how much by any general rule that will apply to
- 398. all cases without exception. A man who is quite frank and easy in making promises of this kind, and who violates them quite casually, is not someone we would choose as a friend and companion. A gentleman who promised a highwayman five pounds and didn’t pay would incur some blame. But if the promised sum was very large, it might be more doubtful what was the right thing to do. Suppose that keeping the promise would entirely ruin the family of the promiser, or that the sum was large enough be sufficient for promoting the most useful purposes, then it would seem to be in some measure criminal, or at least extremely improper, to put it into such worthless hands merely for the sake of a punctilio [= ‘a nit-picking point in morals’]. A man who beggared himself, or one who threw away a hundred thousand pounds (even if he could afford that vast sum) so as to keep his word to a thief would appear to the common sense of mankind to be utterly absurd and extravagant. Such profusion would seem inconsistent with his duty—with what he owed both to himself and to others. . . . But it’s obviously impossible to lay down any precise rule saying how much respect should be had for such a promise, or what the greatest sum is that could be owing because of it. This would vary according to —the characters of the persons, —their circumstances, —the solemnity of the promise, and —what in detail happened in the hold-up on the highway. ·Regarding that last item·: If the promiser had been treated with a great deal of the sort of elaborate politeness that is sometimes to be met with in really bad people, the promise would seem to have more force than it would otherwise have had. It may be said in general that
- 399. exact propriety requires that all such promises should be kept, except when that would be inconsistent with some other duties that are more sacred, such as •regard for the public interest, •regard for those who should be provided for out of gratitude, natural affection, or respect for the laws of proper beneficence. But, I repeat, we have no precise rules to determine what actions such motives require or, therefore, to determine when those virtues are inconsistent with keeping such promises. We should remember, though, that whenever such promises are broken—even if for the most necessary 175 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality reasons—that will always bring some degree of dishonour to the person who made them. After they are made, we may be convinced that it would be wrong to keep them, but still there is some fault in having made them ·in the first place·. It is, at least, a departure from the highest and noblest maxims of magnanimity and honour; a brave man ought to die rather than make a promise that it would be foolish to keep and disgraceful to break. For some degree of disgrace always accompanies a situation of this kind. Treachery and falsehood are vices so dangerous, so dreadful, and at the same time so •easy to practice and often so •safe, that we are more protective concerning them than concerning almost any other. So our imagination attaches the idea of shame to all violations of faith, in every circumstance and in every situation. In this respect they resemble the violations
- 400. of chastity in the fair sex, a virtue of which (for the same reasons) we are excessively protective; and our sentiments concerning female chastity are not more delicate than our sentiments concerning the breaking of promises. A breach of chastity dishonours the woman irretrievably. No details of the case. . . .can excuse it; no sorrow or repentance can atone for it. We are so hard to satisfy in this respect that even a rape dishonours ·the victim·: in our imagination the innocence of her mind can’t wash out the pollution of her body. It is just like that with breaking one’s word when it has been solemnly pledged, even if it was to the most worthless of mankind. Fidelity [here = ‘promise-keeping’] is such a necessary virtue that we see it as being in general due even to those to whom nothing else is due, and whom we think it lawful to kill and destroy. The culprit may plead that he promised only in order to save his life, and that he broke his promise because keeping it would be inconsistent with some other respectworthy duty; these facts may alleviate his dishonour but they can’t entirely wipe it out. He appears to have been guilty of an action that has some degree of shame inseparably connected with it in the imaginations of men, He has broken a promise that he had solemnly said he would keep; and his character, if not irretrievably stained and polluted, at least has affixed to it a ridicule that it will be difficult to get rid of entirely. No man who had gone through an adventure of this kind would be fond of telling the story! This example may serve to show how casuistry differs from jurisprudence, even when both are dealing with the obligations of the general rules of justice. But though this difference is real and essential, though those two sciences have quite different purposes, the same- ness of their subject-matter has made them alike—so much
- 401. so that most authors who announce that they are doing jurisprudence raise various questions of which they answer some according to the principles of jurisprudence and oth- ers according to those of casuistry, without distinguishing them and perhaps without even being aware of this switch whenever it occurs. But casuistry is by no means confined questions about what would be demanded of us by a conscientious respect for the •general rules of justice. It also takes in many •other parts of Christian and moral duty. What seems principally to have led to the development of casuistry was the custom of spoken confession, introduced by the Roman Catholic superstition in times of barbarism and ignorance. By that institution everyone’s most secret actions and even thoughts that could be suspected of veering away ever so slightly from the rules of Christian purity were to be revealed to the confessor. The confessor told his penitents whether and how they had violated their duty, and what penance they would have to undergo before he could absolve them in the name of the offended Deity. 176 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality The consciousness of having done wrong, or even the suspicion of it, is a load on every mind; and it is accompanied by anxiety and terror in everyone who isn’t hardened by long habits of wickedness. Here as in all other distresses men are naturally eager to unburden themselves of the oppression they feel on their thoughts, by revealing the agony of their mind to someone whose secrecy and discretion they can trust
- 402. in. The shame they suffer from this acknowledgment is fully compensated for by the lessening of their uneasiness that nearly always comes from the sympathy of their confidant, ·the confessor·. They get relief from the discovery that they are not entirely unworthy of respect; and that however their past conduct may be censured, their present disposition is approved of and may be sufficient to make up for the past, or at least to bring them some degree of esteem from their friend, ·the confessor·. In those times of superstition a numerous and skillfully contriving clergy insinuated themselves into the confidence of almost every private family. [Smith continues at some length describing the priests as cunningly working themselves into the position of accepted moral authorities. Then:] To qualify themselves as confessors thus became a necessary part of the study of churchmen and divines; and that led them to collect what are called ‘cases of conscience’, difficult and delicate situations where it is hard to decide what is the right thing to do. Such collections, they imagined, might be useful to the directors of consciences and to those who were to be directed; and that is how books of casuistry were started. The casuists mainly dealt with moral duties of which it is true that •they can at least to some extent be covered by general rules, and •the violation of them is naturally followed by some degree of remorse and some fear of punishment. The institution that gave rise to their works—·namely, confession·—was designed soothe the terrors of conscience that come with the infringement of such duties. But one can fall short in some virtues without any severe moral worries of this kind; no-one applies to his confessor for absolution
- 403. because he didn’t do the most generous, the most friendly, or the most magnanimous thing that could possibly have been done in his circumstances. The rule that is violated in failures of this kind is usually not determinate, and—a second point—is generally of such a kind that although one might be entitled to honour and reward for obeying it, one isn’t exposed to positive blame, censure, or punishment if one violates it. The exercise of virtues of that kind seems to have been regarded by the casuists as a sort of work of supererogation, which couldn’t be strictly demanded and which therefore didn’t have to be discussed by them. [‘Supererogation’ is still a standard English word, if not a very common one. A supererogatory act is one that goes beyond the call of duty, one that it is praiseworthy to perform and not blameworthy to not- perform.] The breaches of moral duty that did come before the tribunal of the confessor, and on that account came within the s cope of the casuists, were chiefly of three kinds. (1) Breaches of the rules of justice. These rules are all explicit, firm, and definite, and violating them naturally brings an •awareness of deserving and a •fear of suffering punishment from both God and man. (2) Breaches of the rules of chastity. In all the grosser instances these are real breaches of the rules of justice, and no-one can be guilty of them without doing unpardonable harm to someone else. In lesser instances, where the breaches amount only to violations of the exact rules of conduct that ought to be observed in relations between the two sexes, they aren’t violations of the rules of justice. Still, they are generally violations of a pretty plain rule, and
- 404. 177 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality they tend, in at least one of the sexes, •to bring disgrace on the person who has been guilty of them and thus to •be accompanied attended in scrupulous people with some degree of shame and remorse. (3) Breaches of the rules of veracity. Although the vio- lation of truth is often a breach of justice, it isn’t always so, which is why such violations can’t always expose the person to any external punishment. The vice of ordinary everyday lying, though a miserable meanness, often doesn’t harm anyone; and in those cases no-one can claim to have a right of revenge or a right to compensation. But the violation of truth, though not always a breach of justice, is always a breach of a plain rule, and it naturally tends to bring shame on the person who is guilty of it. ·AN ASIDE ON TRUTHFULNESS· Young children seem to have an instinctive disposition to believe whatever they are told. Nature seems to have judged it necessary for their survival that they should, for a while at least, have complete confidence in the people who entrusted with the care of their childhood and of the earliest and most necessary parts of their education. So they are excessively credulous, and it requires long experience of the falsehood of mankind to reduce them to a reasonable degree of caution and distrust. In adults the degrees of credulity are clearly different. The wisest and most experienced are generally the least credulous. But there’s hardly a man alive who isn’t
- 405. more credulous than he ought to be, and who doesn’t often believe tales that not only •turn out to be perfectly false but also •could have been spotted as false through a quite small amount of reflection and attention. One’s natural disposition is always to believe. Only through acquired wisdom and experience do we learn incredulity, and we don’t often learn enough. The wisest and most cautious of us often accepts stories that he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing. The man we believe is our leader and director in the matters concerning which we believe what he tells us, and we look up to him with a certain amount of esteem and respect. But just as we move from admiring other people to wanting to be admired ourselves, so also we move from being led and directed by other people to wanting to be leaders and directors ourselves. And just as we can’t always be satisfied merely with being admired unless we can persuade ourselves that we are to some extent really worthy of admiration, so also we can’t always be satisfied merely with being believed unless we are aware that we are really worthy of belief. Just as the desire for praise and the desire for praiseworthiness are (though closely related) distinct and separate desires, so also the desire to be believed and the desire to be worthy of belief are (though closely related) equally distinct and separate desires. The desire to be believed—the desire to persuade, lead and direct other people—seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. It may be the instinct on which the faculty of speech is based. . . . No other animal has this faculty, and we can’t find in any other animal any desire to lead and direct the judgment and conduct of its fellows. Great ambition—the desire for real superiority, the desire to lead and direct—seems to be exclusive to man; and speech
- 406. is the great instrument of ambition—of real superiority, of leading and directing the judgments and conduct of other people. It is always humiliating not to be believed, and it is doubly so when we suspect that the reason we aren’t believed is that we are regarded as •unworthy of belief and as •capable of seriously and deliberately deceiving. To tell a man that he lies is the gravest of all insults. Yet anyone who seriously and deliberately deceives others must be aware that he deserves 178 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality this insult, that he doesn’t deserve to be believed, and that he is giving up any claim to the sort of trust that he needs if he is to have any sort of ease, comfort, or satisfaction in the society of his equals. A man who had the misfortune to imagine that nobody believed a single word he said would feel himself an outcast from human society, would dread the thought of going into it, or of presenting himself before it; and I think he would probably die of despair. But it is likely that no man ever had good reason to have this belief about his situation. The most notorious liar, I’m inclined to think, tells the truth at least twenty times for once that he seriously and deliberately lies; and just as in the most cautious people the disposition to believe is apt to prevail over the disposition to doubt and distrust, so also in those who care least about truth the natural disposition to tell it usually prevails over the disposition to deceive, or in any way to alter or disguise it.
- 407. We are humiliated when we happen to deceive other people, even though it was unintentional and a result of having been deceived ourselves. Although this involuntary falsehood is often not a sign of any lack of truthfulness—of any lack of the most perfect love of truth—it is always to some extent a sign of •lack of judgment, of failure of memory, of •improper credulity, of •some degree of impulsiveness and rashness. It always lessens our authority to persuade, and always casts some doubt on our fitness to lead and direct. Still, the man who sometimes misleads because he has made a mistake is very different from the one who is capable of wilfully deceiving. The former may safely be trusted on many occasions, the latter almost never. Frankness and openness win confidence. We trust the man who seems willing to trust us. We see clearly, we think, the road along which he means to lead us, and we are glad to give ourselves over to his guidance and direction. Reserve and concealment, on the other hand, call forth unconfidence. We’re afraid to follow a man who is going we-don’t-know- where. Also, what makes conversation and society such a pleasure is a certain correspondence of sentiments and opinions, a certain harmony of minds that blend and keep time with one another like musical instruments. But this delightful harmony can’t be obtained unless there is a free communication of sentiments and opinions. So we all want to feel how each other is affected, to penetrate into each others’ bosoms and observe the sentiments and affections that really exist there. The man who co-operates with us in this natural passion, who invites us into his heart,. . . .seems to offer a kind of hospitality that is more delightful than any other. [Smith goes on at rather laborious length about •the pleasures of open-hearted communication, •the dangers of going too far and prying into things that others want to keep private, •the unpleasantness of a person who repels all our
- 408. attempts to get to know him, •the strengths and dangers of being temperamentally reserved and secretive, and •the upsettingness of learning that one has innocently passed along a falsehood. He works a few mentions of the casuists into all this, and eventually returns to them as his main topic, with a quick recapitulation:] So the chief topics of the writings of the casuists were these: (1) the conscientious respect that should be paid to the rules of justice; how far we ought to respect the life and property of our neighbour; the duty of restitution; (2) the laws of chastity and modesty, and what consti- tuted the ‘sins of concupiscence’, as they called them [= ‘sins involving an immoderate desire for worldly things’]; (3) the rules of veracity, and the obligation of oaths, promises, and contracts of all kinds. The casuists in their works tried to take things that only 179 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality •feeling and sentiment can judge of, and to direct them by •precise rules—tried and failed! How could one ascertain by rules •the exact point at which in any given case a delicate sense of justice begins to turn into a trivial and weak
- 409. fussiness of conscience? •when secrecy and reserve begin to grow into dissimu- lation? •how far an agreeable irony can be carried, and at what precise point it begins to degenerate into a detestable lie? •what is the highest pitch of freedom and ease of behaviour that can be regarded as graceful and be- coming, and when does it start to turn into a negligent and thoughtless licentiousness? With regard to all such matters, what would be right in one case would hardly be exactly right in any other, and what constitutes behaving in a fully satisfactory way varies from case to case because of tiny differences in the situations. Books of casuistry, therefore, are generally as useless as they are commonly tiresome. They couldn’t give much help to anyone who consulted them occasionally, even if their decisions were always right, because it is so unlikely that a casuist author will have considered cases exactly parallel to the one he is now being consulted about. Someone who is really anxious to do his duty must be weak if he thinks he has much use for works of casuistry; and as for someone who doesn’t care much about his duty, the style of those writings makes them unlikely to awaken him to care more. None of them tend to animate us to what is generous and noble. None of them tend to soften us to what is gentle and humane. Many of them, on the contrary, tend rather to teach us to logic-chop with our own consciences, and by their vain subtleties serve to authorize countless evasive refinements concerning the most essential articles of our duty. The frivolous precision that they tried to introduce into
- 410. subjects that don’t admit of it was almost certain to betray them into those dangerous errors; and at the same time it made their works dry and disagreeable, full of abstruse and metaphysical distinctions, but unable to arouse in the heart any of those emotions that it is the principal use of books of morality to arouse. [In preparation for this paragraph, recall that Smith has identified three kinds of writings on morality, to which he gives the labels ‘ethics’, ‘casuistry’ and ‘jurisprudence’.] The two useful parts of moral philosophy, therefore, are Ethics and Jurisprudence; Casu- istry ought to be rejected altogether. •The ancient moralists appear to have judged much better ·than did the mediaeval and modern casuists·. When •they treated those same subjects they didn’t make a parade of minute exactness, but settled for describing in a general way the sentiments on which justice, modesty, and veracity are founded, and the ordinary ways of acting to which those virtues would commonly prompt us. [Some ancient philosophers did produce what looks like casuistry, Smith admits; he mentions Book 3 of Cicero’s Offices. But he says that they weren’t attempting any sort of completeness, and were only illustrating situations where there is a question as to whether the ordinary rules of duty should be adhered to.] Every system of man-made law can be seen as a more or less imperfect attempt at a system of natural jurisprudence, or at an enumeration of the particular rules of justice. Because the violation of •justice is something men will never submit to from one another, the public magistrate [see note on page 44] has to use the power of the commonwealth to
- 411. enforce the practice of this •virtue. If this were not done, civil society would become a scene of bloodshed and disorder, 180 Smith on Moral Sentiments What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality with every man getting his own private revenge whenever he fancied he had been harmed. To prevent the confusion that would come with every man’s •seeking justice for himself, the magistrate in any government that has acquired any considerable authority undertakes to •provide justice for everyone, and promises to hear and to redress every com- plaint of injury. In all well-governed states, as well as judges being appointed to settle the controversies of individuals, rules are laid down to regulate the decisions of those judges; and these rules are generally intended to coincide with the rules of natural justice. Not that they actually always do so. •It sometimes happens that the man-made laws of a country are wrenched away from what natural justice would prescribe—sometimes by the so-called ‘constitution’ of the state, i.e. the interests of the government; and sometimes by the interests of particular groups of men who tyrannize the government. •In some countries, the crudeness and barbarism of the people prevent the natural sentiments of justice from reaching the accuracy and precision that they naturally attain to in more civilized nations. Their laws are, like their manners, gross and crude and undistinguishing [Smith’s word]. •In other countries where the people are civilized enough to sustain a disciplined regular system of jurisprudence, no such system becomes established because the unfortunate structure of their legal system blocks it. •In no country do the decisions of man-made law coincide,
- 412. exactly and in every case, with the rules that the natural sense of justice would dictate. So systems of man-made law, though they deserve the greatest authority, as the records of mankind’s sentiments in different ages and nations, can’t ever be seen as accurate systems of the rules of natural justice. One might have expected that lawyers’ reasonings about the various imperfections and improvements of the laws of various countries would give rise to an inquiry into what are the natural rules of justice independently of all man-made institutions. One might have expected that these reasonings would lead the lawyers to aim at establishing a system of natural jurisprudence properly so-called, a theory of the gen- eral principles that ought to permeate and be the foundation of the laws of all nations. Well, the reasonings of lawyers did produce something of this kind; and everyone who has systematically treated the laws of any particular country has mixed into his work many observations of this sort; but it was late in the world before any such general system was thought of, and before the philosophy of law was addressed on its own and without reference to the particular institutions of any one nation. In none of the ancient moralists, do we find any attempt at a detailed list of the rules of justice. Cicero in his Offices and Aristotle in his Ethics discuss •justice in the same general manner in which they discuss •all the other virtues. In the laws of Cicero and Plato, where we might naturally have expected some attempts at a list of the rules of natural equity—rules that ought to be enforced by the man-made laws of every country—there is nothing of this kind. Their laws are laws of policy, not of justice. Grotius seems to have been the first to try to give the world anything like a system of the principles that ought to permeate and be the foundation of the laws of all nations; and his treatise on the laws of war and peace, with all its imperfections, is
- 413. perhaps the most complete work that has so far been given on this subject. In another work I shall try to give an account of the general principles of law and government and of the different revolutions they have gone through in the different ages and periods of society, not only in relation to justice but also in relation to policy, taxation, and arms, and whatever else is the object of law. 181 Part I: The Propriety of ActionSection 1: The Sense of ProprietyChapter 1: SympathyChapter 2: The pleasure of mutual sympathyChapter 3: How we judge the propriety of other men's affections by their concord or dissonance with our ownChapter 4: The same subject continuedChapter 5: The likeable virtues and the respectworthy virtuesSection 2: The degrees of the different passions that are consistent with proprietyChapter 1: The passions that originate in the bodyChapter 2: The passions that originate in a particular turn or habit of the imaginationChapter 3: The unsocial passionsChapter 4: The social passionsChapter 5: The selfish passionsSection 3: How prosperity and adversity affect our judgments about the rightness of actions; and why it is easier to win our approval in prosperity than in adversityChapter 1: The intensity-difference between joy and sympathy with joy is less than the intensity- difference between sorrow and sympathy with sorrowChapter 2: The origin of ambition, and differences of rankChapter 3: The corruption of our moral sentiments that comes from this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect the downtrodden and poorPart II: Merit and demerit: the objects of reward and punishmentSection 1: The sense of merit and demeritChapter 1: Whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude (resentment) appears to deserve reward (punishment)Chapter 2: The proper objects of gratitude and resentmentChapter 3: Where there's no approval of the benefactor's conduct, there's not much sympathy with the beneficiary's gratitude; and where there's no disapproval of the
- 414. motives of the person who does someone harm, there's absolutely no sympathy with the victim's resentmentChapter 4: Recapitulation of the preceding chaptersChapter 5: Analysing the sense of merit and demeritSection 2: Justice and beneficenceChapter I: Comparing those two virtuesChapter 2: The sense of justice, of remorse, and of the consciousness of meritChapter 3: The utility of this constitution of natureSection 3: The influence of luck on mankind's sentiments regarding the merit or demerit of actionsChapter 1: The causes of this influence of luckChapter 2: The extent of this influence of luckChapter 3: The purpose of this irregularity of sentimentsPart III: Moral judgments on ourselves; the sense of dutyChapter 1: The principle of self-approval and self- disapprovalChapter 2: The love of praise and of praiseworthiness; the dread of blame and of blameworthinessChapter 3: The influences and authority of conscienceChapter 4: The nature of self-deceit, and the origin and use of general rulesChapter 5: The influence and authority of the general rules of morality, and why they are rightly regarded as the laws of the DeityChapter 6: When should the sense of duty be the sole driver of our conduct? and when should it co-operate with other motives?Part IV: The effect of utility on the sentiment of approvalChapter 1: The beauty that the appearance of utility gives to all the productions of art, and the widespread influence of this type of beautyChapter 2: How the characters and actions of men are made beautiful by their appearance of utility. Is our perception of this beauty one of the basic sources of approval?Part V: The moral influence of custom and fashionChapter 1: The influence of custom and fashion on our notions of beauty and uglinessChapter 2: The influence of custom and fashion on moral sentimentsPart VI: The character of virtueSection 1: Prudence, i.e. the character of the individual in its bearing on his own happinessSection 2: The character of the individual in its bearing on the happiness of other peopleChapter 1: The order in which individuals are recommended by nature to our care and attentionChapter 2: The
- 415. order in which societies are recommended by nature to our beneficenceChapter 3: Universal benevolenceSection 3: Self- controlPart VII: Systems of moral philosophySection 1: The questions that ought to be examined in a theory of moral sentimentsSection 2: The different accounts that have been given of the nature of virtueChapter 1: Systems that make virtue consist in proprietyChapter 2: A system that makes virtue consist in prudenceChapter 3: Systems that make virtue consist in benevolenceChapter 4: Licentious systemsSection 3: The different systems that have been formed concerning the source of approvalChapter 1: Systems that trace the source of approval back to self-loveChapter 2: Systems that make reason the source of approvalChapter 3: Systems that make sentiment the source of approvalSection 4: What different authors have said about the practical rules of morality SOCIAL WORK CASE STUDIES: FOUNDATION YEAR 12 Working With Families: The Case of Carol and Joseph Carol is a 23-year-old, heterosexual, Caucasian female and the mother of a 1-year-old baby girl. She is currently unemployed, having previously worked for a house cleaning company. The baby is healthy and developmentally on target, and she and the parents appear to be well bonded with one another. Carol lives in a rented house with her husband, Joseph. Joseph is a 27-year- old, heterosexual, Hispanic male. He was recently arrested at their home for a drug deal, which he asserts was a setup. Both parents
- 416. were charged with child endangerment because weapons were found in the child’s crib and drugs were found in the home. The parents assert that the child never sleeps in the crib but in their bed. As a result of the parents’ arrest, social services was notified, and the child was temporarily placed in a kinship care arrange- ment with the maternal grandmother, who resides nearby. As a result of Joseph’s arrest, he was fired from the cleaning company where he worked, and the family is now experiencing financial difficulties. After initial contact was made with the parents, a number of concerns were noted and the family was recommended for addi- tional case management. Carol’s mother indicated that she had concerns about Carol’s drinking habits and stated that Carol’s father and grandfather were alcoholics. She and the father sepa- rated when Carol was a baby, and Carol has had only limited contact with him. There appears to be significant tension between the grandmother and Carol and Joseph. I addressed the alcohol issue with both parents, who denied there was a problem, but shortly after the discussion, Carol was involved in a serious car accident with the baby in the car. She was determined to have been under the influence of alcohol. I advised Carol that she could not have any unsupervised contact with her child until she completed intensive inpatient substance abuse treatment. I made arrange- ments for her placement, but after a week, she was discharged for noncompliance with the rules. She was then referred to an intensive outpatient program and began therapy there. Initially
- 417. PRACTICE 13 her attendance was erratic because she had lost her license as a result of the DUI. Eventually, however, she became engaged in the program and began to address her issues. She acknowledged that she had started using drugs at a very young age but said that she had only begun drinking in the previous year or so. We discussed the genetics of her family, and she said that she realized that she had deteriorated rapidly since beginning to drink and knew that she simply could not drink alcohol. Joseph’s mother is deceased, and his father travels exten- sively in his job and is not available as a support. Joseph was very devoted to his mother and was devastated by her premature death. We discussed the strengths that he and Carol demonstrated in staying together and working out their problems. Joseph indi- cated that as a Hispanic man, family is very important to him and he wants his family to stay together. Although they have been struggling financially, Joseph has obtained stable employment landscaping for a large development and said he plans to take courses at the community college to learn the trade. He stated that he wants to provide a good life for his child. Carol has a lot of unresolved issues to deal with in therapy, not the least of which is the accident that could have killed her child and the legal ramifica- tions that resulted from this incident. Although angry and hostile
- 418. at the beginning, through the implementation of person-centered therapy, we were able to establish agreed-upon goals that showed respect for the client and encouraged her to find solutions to her problems. Although our relationship was tenuous at times, providing encouragement to her rather than judgment enabled her to forgive herself and take corrective action. APPENDIX 93 the common myth that a traditional therapy office setting is necessary to do “clinical work.” Through this case, students can also witness how treat- ment goals can shift throughout the course of treatment. This is evident in the step-by-step growth that Pedro demon- strated. Each shift in treatment goals resulted in a change or deepening of our relationship and gave Pedro the opportunity to address more difficult issues as time went on. Working With Families: The Case of Carol and Joseph 1. What specific intervention strategies (skills, knowledge, etc.) did you use to address this client situation? This case required extensive use of active and passive listening and patience to enable the client to become sufficiently comfort- able with me and to arrive at a point where she could work on her issues. Initially she was very angry, hostile, resistant, and very much in denial.
- 419. 2. Which theory or theories did you use to guide your practice? I work with people in their homes, which is their territory, not mine. I think it is very important to be aware of how I would feel if I were in their shoes. The person-in-environment perspective and Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach are crucial here. 3. What were the identified strengths of the client(s)? She was smart and had a good support system in her husband and mother, who were very supportive during her treatment. 4. What were the identified challenges faced by the client(s)? Carol was a severe alcoholic and had a drug problem to a lesser extent. She had psychological issues as well, including low self- esteem, depression, and anxiety. She also had transportation and legal problems as a result of losing her driver’s license after the DUI. 5. What were the agreed-upon goals to be met to address the concern? The primary goal was to protect her child by keeping Carol sober and finding the intervention method that would be most appropriate for her to do that. This took time due to the resist- ance to treatment. jjones2 Typewritten Text Reflection Questions jjones2 Typewritten Text
- 420. jjones2 Typewritten Text SOCIAL WORK CASE STUDIES: FOUNDATION YEAR 94 6. How would you advocate for social change to positively affect this case? Treatment options and access to them need to be improved in rural areas. There were not many choices for this client, and losing her license in an area with no public transportation greatly affected her ability to seek treatment. 7. Is there any additional information that is important to this case? I subsequently found out that there had been other serious episodes concerning Carol’s drinking that the family had failed to disclose to me because they were covering up for her. Carol’s parents separated when she was very young, so she was mostly cared for by a family friend and grandparents. Carol’s mother seemed to have resented the child’s interference with her social life, and clearly the daughter resented her mother’s lack of involvement with her. Carol’s mother, who was from a Southern White Protestant family, seemed uncomfortable with Joseph’s culturally unfamiliar Hispanic Catholic background. She reported to me that she felt the son-in-law was lazy and did not work in the
- 421. early stages of his relationship with her daughter, who she said worked very hard. During my involvement with this couple, I found Joseph to be hard working and doing his best to provide for all of them. He was very committed to doing whatever was necessary to keep his family intact, even if his judgment at times was poor. Working With Immigrants and Refugees: The Case of Aaron 1. What specific intervention strategies (skills, knowledge, etc.) did you use to address this client situation? I used support, active listening, reflection, reframing, and vali- dation with the client, and I recognized the importance of structure, reliability, and predictability of the social worker in the therapeutic alliance. 2. Which theory or theories did you use to guide your practice? I used family systems theory, multicultural family theories, and attachment theory. SOCIAL WORK CASE STUDIES: FOUNDATION YEAR 12 Working With Families: The Case of Carol and Joseph
- 422. Carol is a 23-year-old, heterosexual, Caucasian female and the mother of a 1-year-old baby girl. She is currently unemployed, having previously worked for a house cleaning company. The baby is healthy and developmentally on target, and she and the parents appear to be well bonded with one another. Carol lives in a rented house with her husband, Joseph. Joseph is a 27-year- old, heterosexual, Hispanic male. He was recently arrested at their home for a drug deal, which he asserts was a setup. Both parents were charged with child endangerment because weapons were found in the child’s crib and drugs were found in the home. The parents assert that the child never sleeps in the crib but in their bed. As a result of the parents’ arrest, social services was notified, and the child was temporarily placed in a kinship care arrange- ment with the maternal grandmother, who resides nearby. As a result of Joseph’s arrest, he was fired from the cleaning company where he worked, and the family is now experiencing financial difficulties. After initial contact was made with the parents, a number of concerns were noted and the family was recommended for addi- tional case management. Carol’s mother indicated that she had concerns about Carol’s drinking habits and stated that Carol’s father and grandfather were alcoholics. She and the father sepa- rated when Carol was a baby, and Carol has had only limited contact with him. There appears to be significant tension between the grandmother and Carol and Joseph. I addressed the alcohol issue with both parents, who denied there was a problem, but shortly after the discussion, Carol was involved in a serious car accident with the baby in the car. She was determined to have been
- 423. under the influence of alcohol. I advised Carol that she could not have any unsupervised contact with her child until she completed intensive inpatient substance abuse treatment. I made arrange- ments for her placement, but after a week, she was discharged for noncompliance with the rules. She was then referred to an intensive outpatient program and began therapy there. Initially PRACTICE 13 her attendance was erratic because she had lost her license as a result of the DUI. Eventually, however, she became engaged in the program and began to address her issues. She acknowledged that she had started using drugs at a very young age but said that she had only begun drinking in the previous year or so. We discussed the genetics of her family, and she said that she realized that she had deteriorated rapidly since beginning to drink and knew that she simply could not drink alcohol. Joseph’s mother is deceased, and his father travels exten- sively in his job and is not available as a support. Joseph was very devoted to his mother and was devastated by her premature death. We discussed the strengths that he and Carol demonstrated in staying together and working out their problems. Joseph indi- cated that as a Hispanic man, family is very important to him and he wants his family to stay together. Although they have been
- 424. struggling financially, Joseph has obtained stable employment landscaping for a large development and said he plans to take courses at the community college to learn the trade. He stated that he wants to provide a good life for his child. Carol has a lot of unresolved issues to deal with in therapy, not the least of which is the accident that could have killed her child and the legal ramifica- tions that resulted from this incident. Although angry and hostile at the beginning, through the implementation of person-centered therapy, we were able to establish agreed-upon goals that showed respect for the client and encouraged her to find solutions to her problems. Although our relationship was tenuous at times, providing encouragement to her rather than judgment enabled her to forgive herself and take corrective action. APPENDIX 93 the common myth that a traditional therapy office setting is necessary to do “clinical work.” Through this case, students can also witness how treat- ment goals can shift throughout the course of treatment. This is evident in the step-by-step growth that Pedro demon- strated. Each shift in treatment goals resulted in a change or deepening of our relationship and gave Pedro the opportunity to address more difficult issues as time went on. Working With Families: The Case of Carol and Joseph
- 425. 1. What specific intervention strategies (skills, knowledge, etc.) did you use to address this client situation? This case required extensive use of active and passive listening and patience to enable the client to become sufficiently comfort- able with me and to arrive at a point where she could work on her issues. Initially she was very angry, hostile, resistant, and very much in denial. 2. Which theory or theories did you use to guide your practice? I work with people in their homes, which is their territory, not mine. I think it is very important to be aware of how I would feel if I were in their shoes. The person-in-environment perspective and Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach are crucial here. 3. What were the identified strengths of the client(s)? She was smart and had a good support system in her husband and mother, who were very supportive during her treatment. 4. What were the identified challenges faced by the client(s)? Carol was a severe alcoholic and had a drug problem to a lesser extent. She had psychological issues as well, including low self- esteem, depression, and anxiety. She also had transportation and legal problems as a result of losing her driver’s license after the DUI. 5. What were the agreed-upon goals to be met to address the concern? The primary goal was to protect her child by keeping Carol sober and finding the intervention method that would be most
- 426. appropriate for her to do that. This took time due to the resist- ance to treatment. jjones2 Typewritten Text Reflection Questions jjones2 Typewritten Text jjones2 Typewritten Text SOCIAL WORK CASE STUDIES: FOUNDATION YEAR 94 6. How would you advocate for social change to positively affect this case? Treatment options and access to them need to be improved in rural areas. There were not many choices for this client, and losing her license in an area with no public transportation greatly affected her ability to seek treatment. 7. Is there any additional information that is important to this case? I subsequently found out that there had been other serious episodes concerning Carol’s drinking that the family had failed to disclose to me because they were covering up for her. Carol’s parents separated when she was very young, so she was mostly cared for by a family friend and grandparents.
- 427. Carol’s mother seemed to have resented the child’s interference with her social life, and clearly the daughter resented her mother’s lack of involvement with her. Carol’s mother, who was from a Southern White Protestant family, seemed uncomfortable with Joseph’s culturally unfamiliar Hispanic Catholic background. She reported to me that she felt the son-in-law was lazy and did not work in the early stages of his relationship with her daughter, who she said worked very hard. During my involvement with this couple, I found Joseph to be hard working and doing his best to provide for all of them. He was very committed to doing whatever was necessary to keep his family intact, even if his judgment at times was poor. Working With Immigrants and Refugees: The Case of Aaron 1. What specific intervention strategies (skills, knowledge, etc.) did you use to address this client situation? I used support, active listening, reflection, reframing, and vali- dation with the client, and I recognized the importance of structure, reliability, and predictability of the social worker in the therapeutic alliance. 2. Which theory or theories did you use to guide your practice? I used family systems theory, multicultural family theories, and attachment theory.
- 428. The Enlightenment Human Progress and the Individual in the Economy Topics Progress Scientific Revolution: Knowing & Mastering Nature Enlightenment: Knowing & Improving Society Property The Individual The concept of “laws of nature” Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) Fg= G m1m2/r2 What does this “mastery” of nature mean? Mastery of nature means… …that humans can figure out God’s order in the universe so as to be no longer at the mercy of nature—to control nature, and free humanity from the bonds of nature. This is the broader historical significance of the Scientific Revolution.
- 429. The Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Dare to Know! This meant that you, as an individual, should question established norms, ideas, and institutions to see if they stood up to the test of reason. Individuals have agency And so, Europeans set out to “know” everything. L’ Encyclopédie of Diderot & d’Alembert L’ Encyclopédie: Diderot & d’Alembert l‘Encyclopédie Published serially between 1751 and 1772 75,000 entries 18,000 pages of text 17 volumes of articles and 11 volumes of illustrations (engravings)
- 430. l‘Encyclopédie Bakery and harnessmaking 9 l‘Encyclopédie: Taxonomy of Knowledge Memory (History) Sacred, Ecclesiastical, Civil, Natural Reason (Philosophy) Metaphysics, Sciences of the Spirit (Theology), Human Sciences, Natural Sciences (Math & Physics) Imagination (Arts) The Enlightenment & the State “Science” challenged prevailing conception of universe and its order, therefore it also challenged prevailing conception of the state. Two Views: Absolutist state “bad” by definition and to be viewed with the utmost suspicion State itself, if properly constructed and run, could be an instrument of enlightenment and a guarantee of the general welfare Cameralism, Polizeistaat, Enlightened Absolutism (Catherine II, 1729-1796; Frederick II, 1712-1786; Joseph II, 1741-1790) All rested on some concept of a “social contract” and view of human beings and their place in the world Humans as inherently sinful and therefore in need of strong direction/government vs. humans as sinful, but capable of exercising reason so as to avoid liberty turning into license. Nature vs. Nurture—tabula rasa
- 431. “rights” vs. “privileges” Property (labor theory of value/ownership) Property And it all rested on a conception of property unique to the West: Idea of private individual ownership based on “improvement” or the application of labor Labor theory of value (something has value because of the human labor added to it, including land) Nature is a waste, and those who improve it can rightfully claim it as theirs. Labor theory of value is the standard conception of value until well, into 19th century. Individual From Privileges to Natural Rights Revolution in France and its Spread As in England, emerging ideas about the individual and property did not sit right with the notion of royal absolutism, precipitating a revolution. American revolution about this on paper, but also simply colonial rebellion. Limiting the state State’s main role is to enforce contracts; individual rights exist to facilitate this. Ending collective identities and privileges based on birth: from social estate to individual merit The Economy All of these things (universal laws of nature and society, private property vs property as a public good, individual as opposed to collective identities) at play as economics (political economy)
- 432. emerged as a discipline. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type.—The numbering of paragraphs in small bold type is Bentham’s.—The First Edition of this work was privately printed in 1780 and first published in 1789. The present version is based on ‘A New Edition, corrected by the Author’ [but not changed much], published in 1823. First launched: Contents Preface (1789) 1 Chapter 1: The Principle of Utility 6 Chapter 2: Principles opposing the Principle of Utility 10
- 433. Chapter 3: The Four Sanctions or Sources of Pain and Pleasure 20 Chapter 4: Measuring Pleasure and Pain 22 Chapter 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain 24 Chapter 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility 29 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Chapter 7: Human Actions in General 44 Chapter 8: Intentionality 50 Chapter 9: Consciousness 53 Chapter 10: Motives 56 1. Different senses of ‘motive’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 2. No motives constantly good or constantly bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3. Matching motives against pleasures and pains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4. Order of pre-eminence among motives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5. Conflict among motives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Chapter 11: Human Dispositions in General 73 Chapter 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences 84 1. Forms in which the mischief of an act may show itself . . . . .
- 434. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 2. How intentionality etc. can influence the mischief of an act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Chapter 13: Cases not right for Punishment 93 1. General view of cases not right for punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 2. Cases where punishment is groundless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 3. Cases where punishment must be ineffective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 4. Cases where punishment is unprofitable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5. Cases where punishment is needless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Chapter 14: The Proportion between Punishment and Offences 97 Chapter 15: The Properties to be given to a Lot of Punishment 102 Chapter 16: Classifying Offences 109 1. Five Classes of Offences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 2. Divisions and sub-divisions of them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 3. Further subdivision of Class 1: Offences Against Individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 4. Advantages of this method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 5. Characters of the five classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
- 435. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Chapter 17: The Boundary around Penal Jurisprudence 143 1. Borderline between private ethics and the art of legislation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 2. Branches of jurisprudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Material added nine years later 153 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Glossary affection: In the early modern period, ‘affection’ could mean ‘fondness’, as it does today; but it was also often used, as it is in this work, to cover every sort of pro or con attitude—desires, approvals, likings, disapprovals, dislikings, etc. art: In Bentham’s time an ‘art’ was any human activity that requires skill and involves techniques or rules of procedure. ‘Arts’ in this sense include medicine, farming, painting, and law-making. body of the work: This phrase, as it occurs on pages 96, 120 and 139, reflects the fact that Bentham had planned the present work as a mere introduction to something much bigger, the body of the work. See the note on page 4. cæteris paribus: Latin = other things being equal. caprice: whim; think of it in terms of the cognate adjective, ‘capricious’.
- 436. difference: A technical term relating to definitions. To define (the name of) a kind K of thing ‘by genus and difference’ is to identify some larger sort G that includes K and add D the ‘difference’ that marks off K within G. Famously, a K human being is an G animal that is D rational. The Latin differentia was often used instead. education: In early modern times this word had a somewhat broader meaning than it does today. It wouldn’t have been misleading to replace it by ‘upbringing’ on almost every occasion. See especially 18 on page 39. event: In some of its uses in this work, as often in early modern times, ‘event’ means ‘outcome’, ‘result’. Shakespeare: ‘I’ll after him and see the event of this.’ evil: This noun means merely ‘something bad’. Don’t load it with all the force it has in English when used as an adjective (‘the problem of evil’ merely means ‘the problem posed by the existence of bad states of affairs’). Bentham’s half-dozen uses of ‘evil’ as an adjective are replaced in this version by his more usual ‘bad’, as he clearly isn’t making any distinction. excite: This means ‘arouse’ or ‘cause’; our present notion of excitement doesn’t come into it. An ‘exciting cause’ in Bentham’s usage is just a cause; he puts in the adjective, presumably, to mark it off from ‘final cause’, which meant ‘purpose’ or ‘intention’ or the like, though in fact he uses ‘final cause’ only once in this work. expensive: When Bentham speaks of a punishment as being ‘too expensive’ he means that it inflicts too much suffering for the amount of good it does. See the editorial note on page 93.
- 437. fiduciary: Having to do with a trust. ideal: Existing only as an idea, i.e. fictional, unreal, or the like. indifferent: Neither good not bad. interesting: When Bentham calls a mental event or ‘percep- tion’ interesting he means that it hooks into the interests of the person who has it: for him it isn’t neutral, is in some way positive or negative, draws him in or pushes him back. irritable: Highly responsive, physically or mentally, to stimuli. lot: In Bentham’s usage, a ‘lot’ of pleasure, of pain, of punishment etc. is an episode or dose of pleasure, pain, etc. There is no suggestion of a large amount. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham lucre: In a now obsolete sense, ‘greed for profit or gain’ (OED). magistrate: In this work, as in general in early modern times, a ‘magistrate’ is anyone with an official role in gov- ernment. The phrase ‘the magistrate’—e.g. in paragraph 41. on page 40—refers to the whole legal=judicial system or to those who operate it. material: When on page 44 Bentham speaks of ‘conse- quences that are material’ he means consequences that matter. He uses the phrase ‘material or important’.
- 438. member: Any part or organ of an organic body (not nec- essarily a limb). When on page 7 Bentham writes of a community as a ‘fictitious body composed of the individuals who are. . . .as it were its members’, this is a metaphor. method: On pages 2 and 4, and throughout chapter 16, Bentham uses ‘method’ in the sense of ‘system of classifica- tion’. mischief: This meant ‘harm, hurt, damage’—stronger and darker than the word’s meaning today. Bentham’s ‘mis- chievous’ and ‘mischievousness’ are replaced throughout by ‘harmful’ and ‘harmfulness’, words that don’t occur in the original moral: In early modern times ‘moral’ had a use in which it meant something like ‘having to do with intentional human action’. When Bentham speaks of ‘moral science’ or ‘moral physiology’ he is referring to psychology. In virtually all his other uses of ‘moral’ he means by it roughly what we mean today. nicety: ‘precision, accuracy, minuteness’ (OED), sometimes with a suggestion of overdone precision etc. obnoxious: ‘obnoxious to x’ means ‘vulnerable to x’. party: Bentham regularly uses ‘the party’ to mean ‘the individual or group of individuals’. In assessing some action by a government, the ‘party’ whose interests are at stake could be you, or the entire community. peculiar: This usually meant ‘pertaining exclusively to one individual’; but Bentham often uses it to mean ‘pertaining exclusively to one kind of individual’. The line he draws on page 109 between •properties of offences that are shared
- 439. with other things and •properties that ‘are peculiar’, he is distinguishing (e.g.) •being-performed-by-a-human-being from (e.g.) •being-against-the-law’. positive pain: Bentham evidently counts as ‘positive’ any pain that isn’t a ‘pain of privation’, on which see 17. on page 26. science: In early modern times this word applied to any body of knowledge or theory that is (perhaps) axiomatised and (certainly) conceptually highly organised. sensibility: Capacity for feeling, proneness to have feelings. (It’s in the latter sense that quantity comes in on page 29— the notion of how prone a person is to feel pleasure or pain. sentiment: This can mean ‘feeling’ or ‘belief’, and Bentham uses it in both senses. The word is always left untouched; it’s for you to decide what each instance of it means. uneasiness: An extremely general term. It stands for any unpleasant sense you may have that something in you or about you is wrong, unacceptable, in need of fixing. This usage is prominent in—popularized by?—Locke’s theory that every intentional act is the agent’s attempt to relieve his ‘uneasiness’. vulgar: Applied to people who have no social rank, are not much educated, and (the suggestion often is) not very intelligent. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface (1789)
- 440. Preface (1789) [Bentham wrote this Preface in the third person, ‘the author’ and ‘he’, throughout.] The following pages were printed as long ago as 1780. My aim in writing them was not as extensive as the aim announced by the present title. It was merely to introduce a plan of a penal code in terminis, which was follow them in the same volume. I had completed the body of the work according to my views as they then were, and was investigating some flaws I had discovered, when I found myself unexpectedly entan- gled in an unsuspected corner of the metaphysical maze. I had to suspend the work, temporarily I at first thought; suspension brought on coolness, and coolness—aided by other causes—ripened into disgust. Imperfections pervading the whole thing had already been pointed out by severe and discerning friends, and I had to agree that they were right. The inordinate length of some of the chapters, the apparent uselessness of others, and the dry and metaphysical tone of the whole, made me fear that if the work were published in its present form it would have too little chance of being read and thus of being useful. But though in this way the idea of completing the present work slid insensibly aside, the considerations that had led me to engage in it still remained. I still pursued every opening that promised to throw the light I needed; and I explored several topics connected with the original one; with the result that in one way or another my researches have embraced nearly the whole field of legislation. Several causes have worked together to bring to light under this new title a work that under its original one had
- 441. seemed irrevocably doomed to oblivion. In the course of eight years I produced materials for various works corresponding to the different branches of legislation, and some I nearly reduced to form [= ‘had nearly ready to publish’]; and in every one of them the principles exhibited in the present work had been found so necessary that I had to •transcribe them piecemeal or •exhibit them somewhere where they could be referred to in the lump. The former course would have involved far too many repetitions, so I chose the latter. The question was then whether to publish the materials in the form in which they were already printed, or to work them up into a new form. The latter had all along been my wish, and it is what I would certainly have done if I had had time and had been a fast enough worker. But strong reasons concur with the irksomeness of the task in putting its completion immeasurably far into the future. Furthermore, however strongly I might have wanted to suppress the present work, it is no longer altogether in my power to do so. In the course of such a long interval—·nine years sine the initial printing·—copies of the work have come into various hands, from some of which they have been transferred, by deaths and other events, into the hands of other people whom I don’t know. Considerable extracts of it have even been published, with my name honestly attached to them but without my being consulted or even knowing that this was happening. To complete this excuse for offering to the public a work pervaded by blemishes that haven’t escaped even my biased eye, perhaps I should add that the censure so justly applied to the •form of the work wasn’t applied to its •content.
- 442. In sending it out into the world with all its imperfections on its head, I think it may be helpful to readers—I don’t ex- pect there to be many—to be told briefly what the main ways 1 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface (1789) are in which it doesn’t square with my maturer views. . . . An introduction to a work on the totality of any science [see Glossary] ought •to deal with everything that concerns every particular branch of that science, or at least more than one of them, and ought •not to deal with anything else. Given its present title, this work fails in both ways to conform to that rule. As an introduction to the principles of morals it ought to have contained, in addition to its analysis of the extensive ideas signified by the terms ‘pleasure’, ‘pain’, ‘motive’, and ‘disposition’, a similar analysis of the equally extensive though much less determinate ideas annexed to the terms ‘emotion’, ‘passion’, ‘appetite’, ‘virtue’, ‘vice’, and some others, including the names of the particular virtues and vices. But I think that the only true groundwork for the explaining the latter set of terms has been laid by the explanation of the former; and if I am right about that then the completion of such a dictionary (so to call it) would be little more than a
- 443. mechanical operation. Again, as an introduction to the principles of legislation in general, the work ought to have included topics related exclusively to the civil branch of the law, rather than ones relating more particularly to the penal branch; because the latter is merely a means of achieving the ends aimed at by the former. so the chapters on punishment ought to have had less weight than—or at least to have been preceded by—a set of propositions that I have come to see as providing a standard for the operations of government in creating and distributing proprietary and other civil rights. I’m talking about certain axioms of what we may call mental pathology, expressing the ways in which •the feelings of the people concerned are related to •the various classes of incidents that the operations of government either call for or produce.1 Also, the discussion of the classification of offences, and everything else pertaining to offences, ought to have preceded the treatment of punishment; because the idea of punishment presupposes the idea of offence. . . . Lastly, I now think that the analytical discussions of the classification of offences should be transferred to a separate treatise in which the system of legislation is considered solely in respect of its form—i.e. in respect of its method [see Glossary] and terminology. In these respects the work falls short of my ideas of what should be presented in a work with the title ‘Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation’. But I don’t know of any title that would be less unsuitable. The work’s actual contents would not have been indicated as well by a title corresponding to the more limited plan that I had in writing it, namely as an introduction to a penal code.
- 444. Most readers are sure to find dry and tedious many of the discussions the work contains, yet I don’t know how to regret having written them, or even having made them public. Under every heading I indicate the practical uses to which those discussions appear applicable; and I don’t think there is a single proposition that I haven’t needed to build on when writing about some detailed matter of the sort that any body of law, authoritative or unauthoritative, must be com- posed of. I venture to mention in this connection chapters 1 For example; •It is worse to lose than simply not to gain. •A loss falls the lighter by being divided. •The suffering of a person hurt in gratification of enmity is greater than the gratification produced by the same cause. These. . . .have the same claim to be called ‘axioms’ as those given by mathematicians under that name; referring to universal experience as their immediate basis, they can’t be proved and need only to be developed and illustrated in order to be recognised as incontestable. 2 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface (1789) 6–12 on Sensibility, Actions, Intentionality, Consciousness, Motives, Dispositions, Consequences. Even in the enormous chapter on the classification of offences,. . . .pages 138–140 are employed in stating the practical advantages that can be reaped from the plan of classification that it presents. Those in whose sight my ‘Defence of Usury’ has been fortunate enough to find favour can count as one such advantage the
- 445. discovery of the principles developed in that little treatise. In the preface to an anonymous tract published back in 1776 [Fragment on Government] I had hinted at the usefulness of a natural classification of offences by presenting a test for distinguishing genuine offences from spurious ones. The case of usury is just one instance of the truth of that hint. A note on page 123 below shows how the opinions developed in ‘Defence of Usury’ owed their origin to the difficulty I experienced when trying to find a place in my classification for that imaginary offence. To readers who would like help in wading through an analysis of such enormous length, I would almost recommend beginning with subsection 4 on pages 138–140. One good at least can result from the present publication, namely that the more I have trespassed on the reader’s patience on this occasion, the less need I will have to do so later on; so that this book may do for my later works the service that books of pure mathematics do for books that combine mathematics with natural philosophy [= ‘natural science’]. The narrower the present work’s circle of readers. the larger may be the number of those to whom my later works are accessible. I may in this respect be in the condition of the philosophers of antiquity who are said to have held two bodies of doctrine, a popular and an occult [= ‘hidden’] one; but with this difference that in my case the occult and the popular will (I hope) be found to be as consistent as those of the ancients were contradictory; and that in my work whatever occultness there is has been the pure result of sad necessity and not choice. Having referred to different arrangements that have been suggested by my more extensive and maturer views, I think it may be useful for me to give a brief account of their nature; without such explanation, my occasional references
- 446. to unpublished works might create perplexity and mistakes. Here, then, are the titles of the works by the publication of which my present plans would be completed. I give them in the order that seems to me best fitted for understanding; it’s the order they would have if the whole assemblage were to come out at once; but the order in which they will eventually appear will probably be affected by extraneous considerations. Principles of legislation in matters of. . . (1) . . . civil law, more distinctively called ‘private distribu- tive law’. (2) . . . penal law. (3) . . . procedure, with a unified treatment of the criminal and civil branches, between which no line can be drawn that isn’t •very indistinct and •continually liable to shift. (4) . . . reward. (5) . . . public distributive law, more concisely and famil- iarly called ‘constitutional law’. (6) . . . political tactics; the art of maintaining order in the proceedings of political assemblies so as to direct them to the goal they were created for. . . . (7) . . . relations between nation and nation, or—to use a new though not inexpressive label—in matters of ‘interna- tional law’. (8) . . . finance. (9) . . . political economy [= economics]. (10) Plan of a body of law, complete in all its branches,
- 447. 3 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface (1789) considered in respect of its form (i.e. its method and ter- minology); including a view of the origin and connection of the ideas expressed by the short list of terms the exposition of which contains everything that properly falls within the scope of universal jurisprudence.1 The principles listed above are to be used to prepare the way for the body of law itself, presented in explicit detail. For this to be complete with reference to any political state it must consequently be calculated for the meridian [meaning?], and adapted to the circumstances of some one such state in particular. If I had had unlimited time and every other condition necessary, I would have wanted to postpone the publication of each part until the whole thing was complete. The ten parts exhibit what appear to me to be the dictates of utility in every line; and what they are for is to provide reasons for the corresponding provisions contained in the body of law itself; so the exact truth of the ten parts can’t be precisely ascertained until the provisions they are meant to apply to are themselves settled in explicit detail. But the infirmity of human nature makes all plans precarious, and the more so the more extensive they are; and I have already made considerable advances in several branches of the theory without having made corresponding advances in the practical applications; so I think it more than probable that the materials won’t be published in what is theoretically
- 448. the best order. This irregularity will inevitably lead to a multitude of imperfections that might have been avoided if the formulating of •the body of law in explicit detail had kept pace with the development of •the principles, so that each part had been adjusted and corrected by the other. But I am not much swayed by this drawback because I suspect that it has more to do with my vanity than with the instruction of the public; any amendments in the detail of the principles that might be suggested by the fixed wording of the corresponding legal provisions can easily be made in a corrected edition of the principles after the publication of the law. In the course of this work references will be found •to the plan of a penal code to which the work was meant as an introduction and •to other branches of the above-mentioned general plan—not always under the titles they have been given here. Giving you this warning is all I can do to save you from the perplexity of looking out for things that don’t yet exist. . . . [This refers to, among other things, occurrences of the phrase ‘the body of the work’ on pages 96, 120 and 139.] I have referred to some unspecified difficulties as the causes of the present work’s publication delay and its unfin- ished state. Ashamed of this defeat and unable to cover it up, I can’t refuse myself the benefit of such an apology as a slight sketch of those difficulties may provide. They arose from my attempt to solve the questions that will be found at the conclusion of this volume; Wherein consists the identity and completeness of a law? What is the distinction. . . .between a penal and a civil law? And between the penal and other branches of the law?
- 449. It is obvious that I couldn’t completely and correctly answer these questions until the relations and dependencies of every part of the legislative system with respect to every other part had been ascertained; and that could be done only in the light of these parts themselves. The accuracy of such a survey requires the existence of the whole fabric to be surveyed; and this cannot be met with anywhere. The main body of the legal fabric in every country is made up of 1 Such as ‘obligation’, ‘right’, ‘power’, ‘possession’, ‘title’, ‘exemption’, ‘immunity’, ‘franchise’, ‘privilege’, ‘nullity’, ‘validity’, and the like. 4 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham Preface (1789) what in England is called ‘common law’, and might aptly be called ‘judiciary law’ everywhere, namely that •fictitious composition that has no known person for its author, and no known assemblage of words for its substance. It is like that imagined ‘ether’ that ·supposedly· fills spaces where there is no perceptible matter. Every nation’s legal code is made up of shreds and scraps of real law tacked onto that •imaginary backboard. What follows? That anyone who for any reason wants an example of a complete body of law to refer to must begin by making one. There is—or rather there ought to be—a logic of •the will as well as of •the understanding; the operations of the will are as susceptible of being delineated by rules, and as worthy
- 450. of such treatment, as are those of the understanding. Of these two branches of that recondite art [see Glossary] Aristotle saw only the latter, and succeeding logicians following in the steps of their great founder have followed him in this. Yet of these two branches it is the logic of the will that is more important; because the operations of the understanding wouldn’t matter if they didn’t direct the operations of the will. The science of law, considered in respect of its form, is the most considerable branch—the most important application— of this logic of the will. The relation of (a) the logic of the will to the art of legislation is the same as the relation of (b) the science of anatomy to the art of medicine; except that in (b) the artist works on the subject of anatomy whereas in (a) the artist works with the subject of the logic of the will. And the body politic is as much in danger from a lack of knowledge of the one science as the natural human body is from ignorance in the other. One example, among a thousand that might be adduced in proof of this, can be seen in the note that ends this volume [page 157]. Such then were the difficulties, such the preliminaries; •an unexampled work to achieve, and then •a new science to create—a new branch to add to one of the most abstruse of sciences. Yet more; even a perfectly complete a body of proposed law would be comparatively useless and uninstructive unless it were explained and justified—in every detail—by a contin- ual running commentary of reasons. These reasons must be organised into a hierarchy with the top level taken by
- 451. extensive and leading reasons of the sort called ‘principles’; this is needed so that the comparative value of reasons that point in opposite directions may be estimated, and the joint force of reasons that point in the same direction may be felt. So there has to be not one system but two parallel and connected systems—one of legislative provisions, the other of political reasons, each giving correction and support to the other. Are enterprises like these achievable? I do not know. I only know that they have been started and that some progress has been made in all of them. I venture to add that if they are achievable it won’t be by anyone to whom the fatigue of attending to discussions as arid as those in this book would either appear useless or feel intolerable. I am not the first to say, but I repeat it boldly, that truths that form the basis of political and moral science [see Glossary] can only be discovered by investigations that are as severe as—and vastly more intricate and extensive than—mathematical ones. Their terminology is familiar, which may suggest that the subject- matter is easy; but that is quite wrong. Truths in general have been called stubborn things, and the truths I am talking about here are stubborn in their own way. •They can’t be forced into detached and general propositions that have no exceptions and need no explanations. •They refuse to 5 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The Principle of Utility compress themselves into epigrams. •They recoil from the tongue and the pen of the declaimer. •They don’t flourish in the same soil as sentiment [see Glossary]. •They grow among
- 452. thorns, and can’t be plucked (like daisies) by infants as they run. Labour, the inevitable lot of humanity, is nowhere more inevitable than along this path. . . . There is no easy road to legislative science, any more than to mathematical science. [The present version of this work aims to make its content more easily accessible, at the cost of losing much of the colour and energy of Ben- tham’s writing. A good example of this trade-off starts at the ellipsis immediately above, where Bentham wrote; ‘In vain would an Alexander bespeak a peculiar road for royal vanity, or a Ptolemy, a smoother one, for royal indolence. There is no King’s Road, no Stadtholder’s Gate, to legislative, any more than to mathematic science.’] Chapter 1: The Principle of Utility 1. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. They alone point out what we ought to do and determine what we shall do; the standard of right and wrong, and the chain of causes and effects, are both fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, all we say, all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection ·to pain and pleasure· will only serve to demonstrate and confirm it. A man may claim to reject their rule but in reality he will remain subject to it. The principle of utility1 recognises this subjection, and
- 453. makes it the basis of a system that aims to have the edifice of happiness built by the hands of reason and of law. Systems that try to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice [see Glossary] instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. But enough of metaphor and declamation! It is not by such means that moral science is to be improved. 2. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work, so I should start by giving an explicit and determinate account of what it is. By ‘the principle2 of utility’ is meant 1 [Note added in 1822.] This label has recently been joined or replaced by the greatest happiness principle. This is an abbreviated version of The principle stating that the greatest happiness of all those whose interests are involved is the right and proper—and the only right and proper and universally desirable—end of human action; of human action in every situation, and in particular in the situation of functionaries exercising the powers of Government. The word ‘utility’ doesn’t point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as clearly as ‘happiness’ does; nor does it lead us to the thought of how many interests are affected, though this number contributes more than any other factor to the formation of the standard here in question, namely the only standard of right and wrong by which the propriety of human conduct in every situation can properly be tested. This lack of a clear enough connection between •the ideas of happiness and pleasure on the one hand and the •idea of utility on the other has sometimes
- 454. operated all too efficiently as a bar to the acceptance. . . .of this principle. 2 The word ‘principle’ [he suggests Latin roots for the word] is a term of very vague and very extensive signification; it is applied to anything that is conceived to be a foundation or beginning of a series of operations; in some cases physical operations, but in the present case mental ones. The principle I am discussing may be taken for an act of the mind; a sentiment; a sentiment of approval; a sentiment that when applied to an action approves of its utility, taking that to be the quality of it by which the measure of approval or disapproval of it ought to be governed. 6 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The Principle of Utility the principle that approves or disapproves of every action according to the tendency it appears to have to increase or lessen—i.e. to promote or oppose—the happiness of the person or group whose interest is in question. I say ‘of every action’, not only of private individuals but also of governments. 3. By ‘utility’ is meant the property of something whereby it tends •to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all equivalent in the present case) or (this being the same thing) •to prevent the happening of mischief [see Glossary], pain, evil [see Glossary], or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered. If that party is the community
- 455. in general, then the happiness of the community; if it’s a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual. 4. ‘The interest of the community’ is one of the most general expressions in the terminology of morals; no wonder its meaning is often lost! When it has a meaning, it is this. The community is a fictitious body composed of the individuals who are thought of as being as it were its members [see Glossary]. Then what is the interest of the community? It is the sum of the interests of the members who compose it. 5. It is pointless to talk of the interest of the community without understanding what the interest of the individual is.1 A thing is said to ‘promote the interest’ (or be ‘for the interest’) of an individual when it tends to increase the sum total of his pleasures or (the same thing) to lessen the sum total of his pains. 6–7. An action then may be said to conform to the principle of utility. . . .when its tendency to increase the happiness of the community is greater than any tendency it has to lessen it. And the same holds for measures of government, which are merely one kind of action performed by one or more particular persons. 8. When someone thinks that an action (especially a measure of government) conforms to the principle of utility, he may find it convenient for purposes of discourse to •imagine a kind of law or dictate of utility and to •speak of the action in question as conforming to such a law or dictate. 9. A man may be said to be a ‘partisan’ of the principle of utility when his approval or disapproval of any action (or governmental measure) is fixed by and proportional to the tendency he thinks it has to increase or to lessen the community’s happiness. . . . 10. Of an action that conforms to the principle of utility one
- 456. may always say that •it ought to be done, or at least that •it is not something that ought not to be done. One may say also that •it is right that it should be done; it is a right action; or at least that •it is not wrong that it should be done; it is not a wrong action. When thus interpreted, the words ‘ought’ and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and others of that sort have a meaning; otherwise they have none. 11. Has the rightness of this principle ever been formally contested? next sentence: It should seem that it had, by those who have not known what they have been meaning. 1 ‘Interest’ is one of those words that can’t be defined in the ordinary way because it isn’t a species of some wider genus. [Unlike (for example) ‘square’ falls under the genus ‘rectangle’ and can be defined through that and the differentia ‘equilateral’.] 7 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The Principle of Utility
- 457. perhaps meaning: It seems to have been contested, by people who didn’t understand what they were contesting. Is it susceptible of any direct proof? It seems not, because something that is used to prove everything else can’t itself be proved; a chain of proofs must start somewhere. To give such a proof is as impossible as it is needless. 12. Not that there has ever been anyone, however stupid or perverse, who hasn’t often and perhaps usually deferred to the principle of utility. [The next sentence if exactly what Bentham wrote.] By the natural constitution of the human frame, on most occasions of their lives men in general embrace this principle, without thinking of it; if not for the ordering of their own actions, yet for the trying of their own actions, as well as of those of other men. Yet there may not have been many, even of the most intelligent, who have been disposed to embrace the principle just as it stands and without reserve. There aren’t many, indeed, who haven’t sometimes quarrelled with it, either •because they didn’t always understand how to apply it, or •because of some prejudice that they were afraid to examine or couldn’t bear to give up. Such is the stuff that man is made of: in principle and in practice, on the right path or a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency. 13. When a man tries to combat the principle of utility, his reasons are drawn—without his being aware of it—from that very principle itself.1 If his arguments prove anything, it isn’t that the principle is wrong but that he is applying it wrongly. Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand on.
- 458. 14. To disprove it by arguments is impossible; but from the causes I have mentioned, or from some confused or partial view of it, a man may come to be disposed not to like it. Where this is the case, if he thinks it’s worth the trouble to settle his opinions on such a subject, let him take the following steps, and he may eventually come to be reconciled with the principle of utility. (1) Let him decide whether he wants to discard this principle altogether; if so, let him consider what all his reasonings (especially in politics) can amount to? (2) If he does want to discard the principle, let him decide whether he wants to judge and act without any principle, or is there some other principle he would judge and act by? 1 I have heard it described as ‘a dangerous principle’, something that on certain occasions it is ‘dangerous to consult’. This amounts to saying that it is not consonant to utility to consult utility—i.e. that it is not consulting it, to consult it. Addition by Bentham in 1822 . Not long after the publication of my ‘Fragment on Government’ (1776), in which the principle of utility was brought to view as an all-comprehensive and all-commanding principle, one person who said something to that effect was Alexander Wedderburn, at that time Attorney General [and Bentham lists his later positions and titles]. He said it in the hearing of someone who passed it on to me. So far from being self- contradictory, the remark was shrewd and perfectly true. . . . A principle that lays down, as the only right and justifiable end of government, the greatest happiness of the
- 459. greatest number—how can it be denied to be dangerous? It is unquestionably dangerous to every government that has for its actual goal the greatest happiness of one person, perhaps with the addition of a comparatively small number of others whom he finds it pleasing or convenient to admit to a share in the concern, like junior partners. So it really was dangerous to the sinister interest of all those functionaries, Wedderburn included, whose interest it was to maximise delay, vexation, and expense in judicial and other procedures, for the sake of the profit they could extract from this. In a government whose goal really was the greatest happiness of the greatest number, Wedderburn might still have been Attorney General and then Chancellor; but he would not have been •Attorney General with £15,000 a year, or •Chancellor with a peerage and a veto on all justice and £25,000 a year, and with 500 sinecures at his disposal. 8 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 1:; The Principle of Utility (3) If he thinks he has found another principle, let him examine whether it is really •a separate intelligible principle rather than merely a •principle in words, a verbal flourish that basically expresses nothing but his own unfounded sentiments—what he might call ’caprice’ if someone else had it? (4) If he is inclined to think that his own (dis)approval annexed to the idea of an act, with no regard for its con-
- 460. sequences, is a sufficient basis for him to judge and act on, let him ask himself whether (i) his sentiment is also to be everyone else’s standard of right and wrong or whether instead (ii) every man’s sentiment has the same privilege of being a standard to itself? (5) If (i), let him ask himself whether his principle is not despotical, and hostile to the rest of the human race? (6) If (ii), let him ask himself: •Isn’t this position anarchic, implying that there are as many different standards of right and wrong as there are men? •Aren’t I allowing that to the same man the same thing that is right today could (with no change in its nature) be wrong tomorrow? •and that the same thing could be right and wrong in the same place at the same time? •Either way, wouldn’t all argument be at an end? •When one man says ‘I like this’ and another says ‘I don’t like it’, is there—on my view—anything more for them to say? (7) If he answers all that by saying ‘No, because the sentiment that I propose as a standard must be based on reflection’, let him say what facts the reflection is to turn on. If on facts about the utility of the act, then isn’t he deserting his own principle and getting help from the very one in opposition to which he set it up? And if not on those facts, then on what others? (8) If he favours a mixed view, wanting to adopt his own
- 461. principle in part and the principle of utility in part, how far will he go with his principle? (9) When he has decided where he will stop, let him ask himself how he justifies taking it that far, and why he won’t take it further. (10) Admitting something P other than the principle of utility to be a right principle, one that it is right for a man to pursue; and admitting (what is not true) that ‘right’ can have a meaning that doesn’t involve utility; let him say whether there is any motive that a man could have to pursue P’s dictates. •If there is, let him say what that motive is, and how it is to be distinguished from the motives that enforce the dictates of utility; and •if there isn’t, then (lastly) let him say what this other principle can be good for. 9 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles Chapter 2: Principles opposing the Principle of Utility 1. If the principle of utility is a right principle to be governed by in all cases, it follows that whatever principle differs from it must be a wrong one. To prove that any other principle is a wrong one, therefore, we need only to show show it to be •what it is, •a principle whose dictates are at some point different from those of the principle of utility; to state it is to refute it. 2. A principle may be different from the principle of utility either •by being constantly opposed to it, as is the principle
- 462. of asceticism,. . . ·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE· ‘Ascetic’, a term that has sometimes been applied to monks, comes from a Greek word meaning ‘exercise’. The practices by which monks sought to distinguish themselves from other men were called their ‘exercises’, and consisted in ways they had for tormenting themselves. By this they thought they were ingratiating themselves with the deity: ‘The deity is a being of infinite benevolence. A being of the most ordinary benevolence is pleased to see others make themselves as happy as they can; therefore to make ourselves as unhappy as we can is the way to please the Deity.’ When they were asked what motive they could find for doing all this, they replied: ‘Oh! Don’t think we are punishing ourselves for nothing; we know very well what we are doing. For every grain of pain it costs us now, we are to have a hundred grains of pleasure later on. God loves to see us torment ourselves at present—he has as good as told us so—but this is done only to test us in order to see how we would behave; which he obviously couldn’t know without making the experiment. Then, from the satisfaction it gives him to see us make ourselves as unhappy as we can in this present life, we have a sure proof of the satisfaction it will give him to see us as happy as he can make us in a life to come. ·END OF FOOTNOTE·
- 463. . . . or •by being sometimes opposed to it, and sometimes not, as with the principle of sympathy and antipathy. 3. By ‘the principle of asceticism’ I mean the principle that is like the principle of utility in approving or disapproving of any action according to its apparent tendency to increase or lessen the happiness of the party [see Glossary] whose interest is in question; but in an inverse manner, approving of actions insofar as they tend to lessen his ·or their· happiness and disapproving of them insofar as they tend to increase it. 4. It is evident that anyone who rejects any particle of pleasure, as such, from whatever source, is to that extent a partisan of the principle of asceticism. It is only on that principle, and not from the principle of utility, that the most abominable pleasure that the vilest malefactor ever got from his crime should be rejected if it stood alone. In fact it never does stand alone: it is inevitably followed by so much pain (or—the same thing—such a high probability of a certain amount of pain) that the pleasure is as nothing by compari- son. This is the only real reason (a perfectly sufficient one) for making the crime a ground for punishment. 5. The principle of asceticism appears to have been embraced by two classes of men of very different characters whose reasons for embracing it have been correspondingly different. 10 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles They are
- 464. moralists, who seem to be driven by hope, i.e. the prospect of pleasure; the hope that philosophic pride feeds on, the hope of honour and reputation at the hands of men; and religionists, who seem to be driven by fear, i.e. the prospect of pain; the fear that is the offspring of superstitious fancy, the fear of future punishment at the hands of an angry and revengeful deity. In the religionists’ case I highlight fear, because of the invisible future •fear is more powerful than •hope. These details characterise the two parties among the partisans of the principle of asceticism; the parties and their reasons are different, the principle is the same. 6. But the religious party seem to have carried it further than the philosophical party; they have acted more consistently and less wisely. The philosophical party have scarcely gone further than to •reject pleasure; the religious party have often gone so far as to make it a matter of merit and of duty to •seek pain. The philosophical party have hardly gone beyond making pain a matter of indifference. They have said that it is not an evil but they haven’t said that it is a good. They haven’t even rejected all pleasure in the lump [Bentham’s phrase]. They have discarded only what they have called the gross ·pleasures·, i.e. organical [here = ‘animal’] pleasures or ones that are easily traced back to those; and they have even cherished and magnified refined pleasure. But they haven’t called it ‘pleasure’: to cleanse it from the filth of its impure original, it had to have a different name; it was to be called ‘the honourable’, ‘the glorious’, ‘the reputable’, ‘the becoming’, the honestum, the decorum—anything but ‘pleasure’. 7. Those are the two sources of the doctrines that have
- 465. continually put traces of this principle into the sentiments [see Glossary] of the bulk of mankind; some from the philo- sophical, some from the religious, some from both. Men of education more frequently get it from the philosophical side, as more suited to the elevation of their sentiments; the vulgar [see Glossary] more frequently get it from the su- perstitious side, as more suited to the narrowness of their intellect, not expanded by knowledge, and to the abjectness of their condition, continually open to the attacks of fear. [In that sentence, of course, ‘superstitious’ is Bentham’s stand- in for ‘religious’.] But the traces derived from the two sources would naturally intermingle, so that that a man wouldn’t always know which of them influenced him more; and they would often serve to corroborate and enliven one another. This conformity created a kind of alliance between parties that are otherwise so dissimilar; and disposed them to unite sometimes against their common enemy, the partisan of the principle of utility, whom they joined in branding with the odious name ‘epicurean’. 8. The principle of asceticism, however, however warmly its partisans may have embraced is as a rule of private conduct, seems not to have been carried far when applied to the busi- ness of government. In a few instances it has been carried a little way by the philosophical party—witness the regimen of ancient Sparta. Though that may be seen as •a measure of security and •a (hasty and perverse) application of the principle of utility. There have been hardly any instances of much duration by the religious: the various monastic orders, and the societies of the Quakers, Dumplers [a religious sect in Pennsylvania], Moravians, and other religionists have been free societies, whose regimen no man has been subjected to without his consent. Whatever merit a man may have thought there would be in making himself miserable, it seems
- 466. 11 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles never to have occurred to them that it may be a merit, let alone a duty, to make others miserable; although it would seem that if a certain quantity of misery were desirable it wouldn’t matter much whether it were brought by each man on himself or by one man on another. It is true that among the religionists a great deal of misery was produced in some men by the instrumentality of others, because of other doctrines and practices that had the same source as the principle of asceticism; witness the holy wars, and the religious persecutions. But the passion for producing misery in these cases was based on special reasons; the exercise of it was confined to persons of certain kinds—they were tormented not as •men but as •heretics and infidels. To have inflicted the same miseries on their fellow believers. . . .would have been as blameworthy in the eyes of these religionists as in the eyes of a partisan of the principle of utility. For a man to give himself a certain number of lashes was indeed meritorious (·they thought·), but to give the same number of lashes to another man without his consent would have been a sin. We read of saints who, for the good of their souls and the mortification of their bodies, have voluntarily let themselves be a prey to vermin; but though many people of this kind have ruled nations we don’t read of any who have deliberately made laws aimed at stocking the body politic with ·such vermin as· highwaymen, burglars or arsonists. •If at any time they have allowed the nation to be preyed on by swarms of idle pensioners or useless placemen [= ‘holders of soft, easy government jobs’], it has been through negligence and stupidity rather than any settled plan for oppressing
- 467. and plundering of the people. •If at any time they have sapped the sources of national wealth by cramping commerce and driving the inhabitants into emigration, it has been with other views and in pursuit of other goals. •If they have declaimed against the pursuit of pleasure and the use of wealth, they have commonly stopped at declamation; they have not (like Lycurgus, ·the austere lawgiver of early Sparta·), made laws specifically for the purpose of banishing the precious metals. •If they have established idleness by a law, it has been not because idleness (the mother of vice and misery) is itself a virtue, but because idleness (they say) is the road to holiness. . . . •If they have established or allowed to be established punishments for the breach of celibacy, they have merely been complying with the petitions of those deluded rigorists, who—dupes to the ambitious and deep-laid policy of their rulers—first put themselves under that idle obligation by a vow. 9. The principle of asceticism seems originally to have been dreamed up by certain hasty theorisers who—having seen or imagined that certain pleasures when taken in certain circumstances have in the long run been outweighed by pains they brought with them—set out to quarrel with every- thing that offered itself under the name of ‘pleasure’. After getting that far and forgetting the point they set out from, they pushed on and ended up thinking that it is meritorious to fall in love with pain. Even this, we see, is basically just the principle of utility misapplied. 10. The principle of utility can be followed consistently; and it’s a mere tautology to say that the more consistently it is followed the better it must be for human-kind. The principle of asceticism couldn’t be consistently followed by any living creature. If a tenth of the inhabitants of this earth follow it consistently, in a day’s time they will turn it into a hell.
- 468. 11. Among principles opposed to the principle of utility, the one that seems these days to have most influence in matters of government is what may be called ‘the principle of sympathy and antipathy’. . . [to be picked up at page 15] 12 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles ·STAR T OF LONG FOOTNOTE· It ought to have been given the broader title ‘principle of caprice’ [see Glossary]. Where it applies to the choice of actions to be marked out for injunction or prohibition, for reward or punishment (in short, marked out as subjects for obligations to be imposed), it may indeed properly be called the ‘principle of sympathy and antipathy’, as it is in the main text. But this is not such a good name for it when occupied in the choice of the events that are to serve as sources of title with respect to rights; where the actions prohibited (the •obligations) and allowed (the •rights) are already fixed, and the only question is: under what circumstances is a man to be •subjected to one or •invested with the other?. . . . In this case it may more appropriate to call it ‘the fantastic principle’ [= ‘principle of imagination’]. Sympathy and antipathy are states of feeling; but decisions about entitlements to rights—especially property rights—on grounds unconnected with utility has often been the work not of the feelings but of the imagination.
- 469. Lord Coke, defending an article of English common law allowing uncles to succeed in certain cases in preference to fathers, produced a sort of ponderosity [= ‘heaviness’] that he had discovered in rights, disqualifying them from ascending in a straight line! It wasn’t that he loved uncles or hated fathers. The analogy ·with weight·, such as it was, was what his imagination presented him with instead of a reason; and once feeling is out of the way, imagination is the only guide for a mind that doesn’t observe the standard of utility or doesn’t know the art [see Glossary] of consulting it. When some ingenious grammarian invented the propo- sition Delegatus non potest delegare [Latin; ‘No delegated powers can be further delegated’] to serve as a rule of law, surely it wasn’t that he •was hostile to delegates of the second order, or •took pleasure in the thought of the ruin that might befall the affairs of a traveller whose chosen manager at home has somehow been made unable to serve ·and isn’t allowed to appoint a substitute·. Rather, it was that the incongruity of giving the same law to objects as different as active and passive are, was not to be surmounted, and that -atus (·passive·) chimes, as well as it contrasts, with -are (·active·). When that inexorable maxim (whose range is no more to be defined than the date of its birth and the name of its father are to be found) was imported from England for the government of Bengal, and the whole fabric of the judiciary was crushed by the thunders of retroactive justice, it surely wasn’t because the prospect of blameless magistrates perishing in prison gave enjoyment to the unoffended authors of their misery;
- 470. but because the music of the maxim—·Delegatus non potest dele- gare·—absorbed the whole imagination and drowned the cries of humanity along with the dictates of com- mon sense. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum, says another maxim, as full of extravagance as it is of harmony. Let heaven go to wreck as long as justice is done; and what is the ruin of kingdoms compared to the wreck of heaven? [With another example, Bentham develops his idea that certain Latin sentences have a ‘music’ of that appeals to the imagination of lawyers who aren’t thinking hard. He continues:] If this were looked into thoroughly, it would be found that the goddess of harmony has exercised more influence, however latent, over the dispensations of Themis [a mythical Greek Titaness, symbolising divine order, law, and custom] than her most diligent biographers or even her most pas- sionate devotees, seem to have been aware of. Everyone 13 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles knows how she (the goddess of harmony) used the services of Orpheus to collect the sons of men beneath the shadow of the sceptre; but it seems that men haven’t yet learned—despite continual experience of it—with what successful diligence she has laboured to guide it [=? ’law’] in its course. Everyone knows that measured numbers [= rhythmical lines of poetry’]
- 471. were the language of law in its infancy, but no-one seems to have noticed powerfully they have governed it in its maturer age. In English jurisprudence in particular, the connection between law and music, though much less perceived than in Spartan legislation, is not perhaps less real or less close. The formal music of the Church, though not of the same kind as the music of the theatre, is not less musical; music that hard- ens the heart is not less musical than what softens it; the sostenutos are as long, the cadences as sonorous; and these ·musical events· are governed by rules which, though not yet promulgated, are quite determinate. Search indictments, pleadings, proceedings in chancery, conveyances; whatever sins against truth or common sense you find, you won’t find any against the laws of harmony. The Anglican liturgy. . . . doesn’t have more of it than is commonly to be found in an English act of parliament. Dignity, simplicity, brevity, precision, intelligibility, possibility of being remembered or even understood—all that gives way to harmony. . . . To return to the principle of sympathy and antipathy—a name that I preferred at first to ‘principle of caprice’, on account of its impartiality. It is actually too narrow, for the reasons I have given; but I chose it because I hadn’t at that time surveyed •the civil branch of law except where I had found it inseparably involved in •the penal branch. When we come to the former we’ll see the fantastic principle looming at least as large there as the principle of sympathy and antipathy does in the latter. In the days of Lord Coke, the light of utility can scarcely be said to have shone on the face of •common law. A faint ray of it under the name argumentum ab inconvenienti [= ‘argument from inconvenience’] is to be found in a list of about twenty topics exhibited by that great lawyer as the equal
- 472. leaders of •that all-perfect system, but its appearance in that way in that context is a sure proof of neglect. . . . It stands neither in the front nor in the rear, nor in any post of honour; but huddled in towards the middle without the smallest mark of preference. Nor is this Latin ‘inconvenience’ by any means the same as the English one. It is distinguished from mis- chief [see Glossary]; and because the vulgar take it to be less bad than mischief the learned present it as something worse. ‘The law prefers a mischief to an inconvenience’, says an admired maxim, and the more admired because—as nothing is expressed by it—it is supposed to be well understood. Not that there is any declared opposition, let alone a constant one, between the prescriptions of utility and the operations of the common law; such constancy we have seen to be too much even for ascetic fervour. From time to time instinct would unavoidably betray them into the paths of reason; instinct which, however it may be cramped, can never be killed by education. The cobwebs spun out of the materials brought together by ‘the competition of opposite analogies’ must always have been warped by the silent attraction of the rational principle (like needle to magnet), without the conscience coming into it. [An 1822 addition to this note savagely criticises Eng- land’s conduct in India, replacing ‘the bad system of Ma- hometan and other native law’ by the ‘still more harmful system of English judge-made law’; with some English oppressors making fortunes at the expense of ‘a hundred million plundered and oppressed Hindus and Mahometans’.] ·END OF LONG NOTE· 14
- 473. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles [picking up from page 12] . . . By ‘the principle of sympathy and antipathy’ I mean the principle that approves or disapproves of certain actions not •because of their tending to increase or lessen the happiness of the party whose interest is involved, but merely •because a man finds himself disposed to approve or disapprove of them, taking that approval or disapproval as a sufficient reason for itself and denying any need to look for an independent reason. That’s how it works in the general department of morals; and in the particular department of politics it uses the degree of the disapproval as a measure of •how severe punishment should be and of •what should be the grounds for punishment. 12. Obviously this is a ‘principle’ in name rather than in reality. It is not so much a positive principle as a term employed to signify the negation of all principle. What one expects to find in a principle is something that points out some external consideration that will support and guide the internal sentiments of approval and disapproval; this expectation is not well fulfilled by a proposition that does neither more nor less than hold up each of those sentiments as a ground and standard for itself. 13. The partisans of this ‘principle’ say the following [to the end of this paragraph and perhaps on into 14]. In looking over the catalogue of human actions to determine that are to be marked with the seal of disapproval, you need only consult your own feelings: anything that you find yourself inclined to condemn is wrong for that very reason. For the same reason it is also fit for punishment; it makes no difference
- 474. whether, or by how much, it is adverse to utility. But the strength of your feeling of disapproval does make a difference: if you hate much, punish much; if you hate little, punish little; punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all; the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and tyrannised by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility. 14. The various systems that have been formed concerning the standard of right all come down to the principle of sympathy and antipathy. One account can serve for all of them. They are all devices for avoiding the need to appeal to any external standard, and for persuading the reader to accept the author’s sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself. The wording differs but the principle the same. ·STAR T OF LONG FOOTNOTE· It is interesting to see the variety of inventions men have come up with, and the variety of phrases they have presented, in order to conceal from the world (and if possible from themselves) this very general and therefore very pardonable self-sufficiency. One man says that he has something made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong, calling it his ‘moral sense’; and then he goes to work comfortably, saying that x is right and y is wrong ‘because my moral sense tells me so’. Another man replaces ‘moral’ by ‘common’, and tells you that his ‘common sense’ teaches him what is right and wrong, as surely as the other’s moral sense did. By ‘common sense’ he means a sense of some kind or other, which he says everyone has—and the sense of those whose sense is not the same as his is disregarded as not worth attending to. This device does better than the other: a moral sense is a new
- 475. thing, and a man may search within himself for a good while without being able to find it; whereas common sense is as old as the creation, and any man would be ashamed to be thought to have less of it than his neighbours. . . . Another man says that he can’t find that he has any such thing as a moral sense, but that he has an understanding, which will do quite as well. This understanding, he says, is 15 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles the standard of right and wrong; it tells him so and so. All good and wise men understand as he does; if other men’s understandings differ in any point from his, so much the worse for them; it is a sure sign they are either defective or corrupt. Another man says that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right; that this rule of right dictates so and so; and then he begins giving you his sentiments on anything that comes uppermost; and these sentiments (you are to take for granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule of right. Another man, or perhaps the same man, says that certain practices conform to the fitness of things, while others don’t; and then he tells you which practices conform and which don’t, just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it. A great multitude of people are continually talking of the law of nature; and when they give you their sentiments about what is right and what is wrong you are to understand that
- 476. these sentiments are so many chapters and sections of the law of nature. Instead of ‘law of nature’ you have sometimes ‘law of reason’, ‘right reason’, ‘natural justice’, ‘natural equity’, ‘good order’. Any of them will do equally well. The last of them is most used in politics. It and the two just before it are much more tolerable than the others, because they don’t explicitly claim to be anything more than phrases; they don’t strongly insist on being seen as positive standards, and seem content to be taken as merely ways of saying that the thing in question conforms to the proper standard, whatever that may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say ‘utility’; that is clearer because it refers more explicitly to pain and pleasure. We have one philosopher [William Wollaston] who says that there’s no harm in anything in the world but in telling a lie; and that if, for example, you murder your father this is a way of saying that he isn’t your father. When this philosopher sees anything that he doesn’t like, he of course says that it is a particular way of telling a lie. It is saying that the act ought to be done, or may be done, when in truth it ought not to be done. The fairest and most open of them all is the sort of man who says: ‘I am one of the elect [= “the chosen”]; God himself takes care to tell the elect what is right, doing this with such good effect that however much they struggle they can’t help not only knowing it but doing it. So if you want to know what is right and what is wrong, come to me.’ The principle of antipathy is often at work when such-and- such acts are condemned as being ‘unnatural’; the practice of exposing children [i.e. leaving unwanted children to starve or
- 477. to die from the weather or predators], established among the Greeks and Romans, is said to have been an unnatural practice. When ‘unnatural’ means anything, it means ‘infrequent’; but that is irrelevant to the present question because the frequency of such acts ·of child-exposure· is perhaps the greatest complaint against them. So in the present context it means nothing—I mean nothing concerning the act itself. All it can do is to express the speaker’s disposition to be angry at the thought of child exposure. Whether his anger is appropriate is a question that can be answered rightly only on the principle of utility. . . . The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and arguing (which we have seen to be one way, worded dif- ferently) is that they serve as a cloak and pretence and support for despotism. Perhaps not a despotism in practice, but a despotism in disposition, which will be all too apt to show itself in practice when the opportunity turns up. The consequence is that a man whose intentions may well be of the purest kind becomes a torment to himself or his fellow-creatures. If his cast of mind is melancholy, he sits in 16 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles silent grief bewailing others’ blindness and depravity; if it is angry, he declaims with fury and virulence against all who differ from him, fanning the coals of fanaticism and branding as corrupt and insincere everyone who doesn’t think, or profess to think, as he does.
- 478. If such a man happens to have a good writing-style, his book may do a great deal of mischief before the nothingness of it is understood. These principles—if they can be called ‘principles’—are applied more often to morals than to politics; but their influence spreads to both. A man will be at least as glad in politics as he would be in morals to have a pretence for deciding a question in the way that best pleases him, without the trouble of inquiry. If a man is an infallible judge of what is right and wrong in the actions of private individuals, why not in the measures that public men take to direct those actions?. . . . I have more than once known the pretended ‘law of nature’ set up in legislative debates in opposition to arguments based on the principle of utility. ‘But do we always base our notions of right and wrong on utility alone?’ I do not know; I do not care. Here are three questions about a moral sentiment: (i) Can it be originally conceived from any source except a view of utility? (ii) Can it, when examined and reflected on, be actually persisted in and defended by a thoughtful person on any other basis than utility? (ii) Can it be properly justified by a person addressing himself to the community on any basis except utility? The two first are questions of speculation; it doesn’t matter much how they are answered. The third is a question of practice; the answer to it is as important as any answer to any question can be.
- 479. You tell me: ’I feel disposed to morally approve of action A; but not because of any notion of its being useful to the community. I don’t claim to know whether it is useful or not; for all I know, it may be harmful.’ I reply: ‘But then is A a harmful action? Look into that; and if you can make yourself aware that it is so, then if moral duty means anything it your duty at least •to abstain from doing A, and •to try to prevent it from being done if this lies in your power and wouldn’t require too great a sacrifice. You won’t be excused by cherishing the notion of A in your bosom and calling it “virtue”.’ You say again: ’I feel in myself a disposition to morally detest action B, but this is not because of any notions I have of its being harmful to the community. I don’t claim to know whether it is a harmful action; for all I know, it may be a useful one.’ I reply: May it indeed? Then let me tell you that unless duty and right and wrong are just what you please to make them, if someone plans to do B and it really isn’t harmful then it is no duty of yours to prevent him. On the contrary, it would be very wrong for you to do so. Detest B within yourself as much as you please; that may be a very good reason (unless B is downright useful) for you not to do it yourself ; but if by word or deed you do anything to hinder him or make him suffer for it, it is you and not he that have done wrong. Your setting yourself to blame his conduct or labelling it ‘vice’ won’t make him guilty or you blameless. If you can settle for his being of one mind about B, and you of another, it is well; but if you insist that you and he must be of the same mind, it’s for you to get the better of your antipathy, not for him to knuckle under to it.
- 480. ·END OF LONG FOOTNOTE· 17 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles 15. It is obvious that the dictates of this principle ·of sym- pathy and antipathy· will often coincide with those of ·the principle of· utility, even if that isn’t what is intended. They probably coincide more often than not. That’s why it is that the business of penal justice is conducted on that tolerable sort of basis that we see it carried on in common at this day. For what more •natural or more general ground for hatred of a practice can there be than its being harmful? What all men are exposed to suffer from, all men will be disposed to hate. But it is far from being a •constant ground, because when a man suffers he doesn’t always know what caused his suffering. A man may suffer grievously from a new tax without being able to track the cause of his sufferings to the injustice of some neighbour who has eluded the payment of an old one. 16. The principle of sympathy and antipathy is most apt to err on the side of severity. It favours applying punishment in many cases that deserve none; and in many cases that deserve some it favours applying more than they deserve. There is no incident imaginable, however trivial and far from mischief, from which this principle can’t extract a ground of punishment. Any difference in taste; any difference in opin- ion on one subject as well as on another. No disagreement so trivial that perseverance and quarrelling won’t make it
- 481. turn serious. Each sees the other as an enemy and, if laws permit, as a criminal.1 17. But the principle of sympathy and antipathy also some- times errs by being too lenient. A near and perceptible mischief generates antipathy. A remote and imperceptible mischief, though not less real, has no effect. Instances of this will occur in their proper places in the course of this work. 18. You may be surprised that in all this I haven’t mentioned the theological principle, i.e. the principle that professes to look to the will of God for the standard of right and wrong . But this is not in fact a distinct principle. It is never anything but one or other of the three before-mentioned principles presenting itself in another form. The ‘will of God’ that is referred to here cannot be his revealed will, as contained in the sacred writings; for that is a system that nobody ever thinks of invoking at this time of day [= ‘at this stage in history’] for the details of •political administration; and even to apply 1 King James I of England conceived a violent antipathy against Arians, two of whom he burnt. He hadn’t much difficulty in procuring this gratification for himself: the notions of the times were favourable to it. He wrote a furious book against Vorstius, for being an Arminian, ·that being the most he could do· because Vorstius was at a distance. He also wrote a furious book called A Counterblast to Tobacco against the use of that drug, which Sir Walter Raleigh had recently introduced ·into England·. If the notions of the times had co-operated with him, he would have burnt Anabaptists and smokers of tobacco in the same fire. However he had the satisfaction of putting Raleigh to death afterwards, though for
- 482. another crime. [Arians, Armenians, and Anabaptists held theological views that other Christians regarded as heretical.] Disputes about the comparative excellence of French and Italian music have generated very serious quarrels in Paris. One of the parties would not have been sorry (D’Alembert reports) to have brought government into the quarrel. . . . (This is one of the ways in which the human race is distinguished—not much indeed to its advantage—from the lower animals.) Long before that, a similar and equally fierce dispute had been kindled at London about the comparative merits of two composers who were there; and in London these days riots between the approvers and disapprovers of a new play are not infrequent. The ground of quarrel between the Big-endians and the Little-endians in the fable [i.e. in Gulliver’s Travels; two nations at war over the right way to eat an egg] was not more frivolous than many that have laid empires desolate. In Russia, it is said, there was a time when thousands of persons lost their lives in a quarrel, in which the government had taken part, about how many fingers to use in making the sign of the cross. . . . 18 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 2: Opposing Principles it to the details of •private conduct, the most eminent divines of all persuasions agree that it first needs a great deal of
- 483. interpretation—otherwise what use are the works of those divines? And it is also agreed that some other standard must be assumed for the guidance of these interpretations. So the ‘will of God’ that is meant in this context is what may be called the ‘presumptive will’ of God, i.e. what is presumed to be his will by virtue of the conformity of its dictates to those of some other principle. What then can this other principle be? It must be one of the three I have talked about, for we have seen that there cannot be any more. So it is clear that, with revelation being out of the question, no light can be thrown on the standard of right and wrong by anything that can be said about ‘God’s will’. We may be perfectly sure that whatever is right conforms to the will of God; but so far is that from showing us what is right that we have to now first whether a thing is right in order to know whether it conforms to the will of God. ·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE· The principle of theology refers everything to ‘God’s pleasure’. But what is God’s pleasure? God does not—everyone agrees that he does not now—either speak or write to us, so how can we know what is his pleasure? By observing what is our own pleasure and pronouncing it to be his! Accordingly, what is called ‘the pleasure of God’ can only be (revelation apart) the good pleasure of the speaker. How know you it to be God’s pleasure that action A should be abstained from? Why do you even suppose that this is so? •‘Because doing A would, I imagine, be over-all prejudicial to the happiness of mankind’ says the partisan of the principle of utility; •‘Because doing A brings a gross and sensual, or at least a trifling and transient, satisfaction’ says the partisan of the principle of asceticism; •‘Because I detest the thought of anyone’s doing A, and I cannot and ought not to be asked to say why’ says the person who goes by the principle of antipathy. One of those three
- 484. answers must (revelation apart) be given by the person who professes to take for his standard the will of God. ·END OF FOOTNOTE· 19. There are two things that are very apt to be confused, but that it is important for us to distinguish carefully: •the motive or cause that operates on the mind of an individual to produce the act; and •the ground or reason that justifies a legislator or other bystander in regarding that act with approval. When the act happens in a particular case to be productive of effects that we approve of, and even more if we happen to observe that the same motive may often have similar effects in other cases, we are apt •to transfer our approval to the motive itself, and •to assume, as the real basis for our approval of the act, the fact of its originating from that motive. It is in this way that the sentiment of antipathy has often been regarded as a just basis for action. Antipathy, for instance, in such-and-such a case, is the cause of an action that has good effects; but this doesn’t make it a right ground for action in that case, any more than in any other. Suppose further that the agent sees beforehand that the effects will be good. This may make the action a perfectly right action, but it doesn’t make antipathy a right ground for action. For the same sentiment of antipathy, if implicitly deferred to, may and very often does produce the very worst effects. So antipathy can never be a right ground for action. No more can resentment, which as I’ll show later is just a special case of antipathy. The only right ground of action there can possibly be is, after all, the consideration of utility; and if that is a right principle of action and of approval in any one case, then it is so in every other. Other principles in abundance,
- 485. 19 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 3: Sources of Pain and Pleasure i.e. other motives, may be the reasons why such-and-such an act has been done, i.e. the reasons or causes of its being done; but only utility can be the reason why it could or should have been done. Antipathy or resentment requires always to be regulated, to prevent its doing mischief; to be regulated by what? always by the principle of utility. The principle of utility neither requires nor admits of any another regulator than itself. Chapter 3: The Four Sanctions or Sources of Pain and Pleasure 1. It has been shown that the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, i.e. their pleasures and their security, is the only goal that the legislator ought to have in view; and insofar as legislation affects how individu- als behave, the legislator should aim to have their behaviour conform to this same standard. But there is nothing by which a man can ultimately be made to do something, whatever its goal is, except pain or pleasure. Having taken a general view of these two grand objects (namely pleasure and—what comes to the same thing—immunity from pain) in their role as final causes [= ‘goals to be aimed at’], we now have to take a view of pleasure and pain in their role as efficient causes or means. 2. Pleasure and pain can flow from four sources:
- 486. •the physical, •the political, •the moral and •the religious. Because the pleasures and pains belonging to each of them can give a binding force to any law or rule of conduct, they can all be called ‘sanctions’.1 3. Pleasure or pain that occurs in the present life in the ordinary course of nature, not purposely modified by the will of any human being or of any superior invisible being, can be said to come from or to belong to the physical sanction. 4. Pleasure or pain that comes from a particular person or set of persons in the community who. . . .have been chosen for the particular purpose of dispensing it by the will of the sovereign or supreme ruling power in the state, it can be said to come from the political sanction. 5. Pleasure or pain that comes to a person from persons in the community who happen to be connected with him in some way, according to each man’s spontaneous disposition and not according to any settled or agreed rule, it can be said to issue from the moral sanction or ‘popular sanction’. . . . 1 Sanctio in Latin meant •the act of binding and, by a common grammatical transition, •anything that serves to bind a man; to wit, to the observance of such-and-such a mode of conduct. According to the Latin grammarian Servius, the word’s meaning is derived by rather a far-fetched process. . . .from the word sanguis, blood [and he gives the derivation, which we don’t need].
- 487. A sanction, then, is a source of obligatory powers or motives. That is, a source of pains and pleasures, which are the only things that can operate as motives by being connected with specific kinds of conduct. See chapter 10. 20 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 3: Sources of Pain and Pleasure 6. Pleasure or pain that comes immediately from the hand of a superior invisible being, either in the present life or in a future one, may be said to come from the religious sanction. 7. Pleasures or pains from the physical, political, or moral sanctions must all be expected to be experienced, if ever, in the present life; those from the religious sanction may be expected to be experienced either in the present life or in a future one. 8. Those that can be experienced in the present life must of course be pleasures and pains of kinds that human nature is capable of having in the present life. . . .; and each of these sources can produce all the pleasures or pains that human nature is capable of having in the present life. There are no intrinsic differences between •the pleasures and pains coming from any one of the sanctions and •those that come from the others; they differ only in the circumstances that accompany their production. [The rest of this paragraph states abstractly the very same things that 9 gives with a little more detail.] 9. A man loses his goods or his life in a fire. If this happened
- 488. ‘by accident’, as we say, it was a calamity; if by reason of his own imprudence (e.g. he neglected to put out his candle) it may be called a punishment of the physical sanction; if it happened by the sentence of the political magistrate [see Glossary], it may be called a punishment belonging to the political sanction (i.e. what is commonly called, simply, a punishment); if because his neighbour didn’t help because he didn’t like his moral character, it may be called a punishment of the moral sanction; if it comes from •an immediate act of God’s displeasure on account of some sin he has committed, or from •any distraction of mind caused by the dread of such displeasure, it may be called a punishment of the religious sanction.1 10. The religious sanction promises pleasures and pains in a future life; what these are like we cannot know, as they don’t lie open to our observation. During the present life they are only something to expect; and whether our expectation comes from natural religion or revelation, the particular kind of pleasure or pain, if it is different from all those that do lie open to our observation, is something we can have no idea of. The best ideas we can get of such pains and pleasures are altogether silent about their quality. In what other respects our ideas of them may have content will be considered in later. (See chapter 13, 2, note.) 11. The physical sanction is entirely the groundwork of the political and moral sanctions, and also of the religious sanction insofar as it concerns the present life. It is included in each of those other three; it can operate (i.e. any of the pains or pleasures belonging to it can operate) independently of them; but none of them can operate except by means of it. In short, the powers of nature can operate of themselves; but neither the magistrate nor men in general can operate except through the powers of nature, and the same is supposed to
- 489. hold for God’s effects on us in our present life. 12. Finding a common name for these four things that are so alike in their nature seemed useful in two ways. (a) It is convenient to have a name for certain pleasures and pains for which no other equally descriptive name seems to be available. (ii) It is useful for displaying the efficacy of certain moral [see Glossary] forces whose influence is apt not to be sufficiently attended to. Does the political sanction influence the conduct of mankind? The moral and religious sanctions 1 A suffering that a man is thought to be inflicted on him by the immediate act of God is ofen called ‘a judgment’, which is short for ‘a suffering inflicted on him in consequence of a special judgment formed by the Deity and a decision based on it’. 21 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 4: Measuring Pleasure and Pain do so too. In every inch of his career the operations of the political magistrate are liable to be aided or impeded by these two foreign powers, who are sure to be either his rivals or his allies. If he leaves them out of his calculations he will almost certainly find himself mistaken in the result. . . . So he ought to have them continually before his eyes, under a name [‘sanction’] that exhibits the relation they have to his own purposes and designs. Chapter 4: Measuring Pleasure and Pain
- 490. 1. Pleasures and the avoidance of pains, then, are the legislator’s goals; so he ought to understand their value. Pleasures and pains are the instruments he has to work with, so he needs to understand their force, i.e. their value. 2. To a person (considered by himself) the value of a plea- sure or pain (considered by itself) will be greater or less according to: (1) its intensity. (2) its duration. (3) its certainty or uncertainty. (4) its nearness or remoteness. 3. These are the circumstances that are to be considered when estimating a pleasure or a pain considered by itself. But when the value of a pleasure or pain is considered for the purpose of estimating the tendency of an act by which it is produced, two other circumstances must be taken into the account: (5) its fecundity, i.e. its chance of being followed by sensations of the same kind (pleasure by pleasure, pain by pain), and (6) its purity, i.e. its chance of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind (pleasure by pain, pain by pleasure). These last two, however, are not strictly properties of the pleasure or the pain itself, so they aren’t strictly to be taken into the account of the value of that pleasure or pain. They are really only properties of the act or other event by which such pleasure or pain has been produced; so they are only to be taken into the account of the tendency of that act or event.
- 491. 4. For many people the value of a pleasure or a pain will be greater or less according to seven circumstances—the six preceding ones and and one other, namely (7) its extent, i.e. the number of persons to whom it extends or (in other words) who are affected by it. 5. Thus, to take an exact account of an act’s general tendency to affect the interests of a community, proceed as follows. Of those whose interests seem to be most immediately affected by the act, take one, and take an account, (1) of the value of each pleasure that appears to be produced by it in the first instance; (2) of the value of each pain that appears to be produced by it in the first instance; (3) of the value of each pleasure that appears to be produced by it after the first, this being the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain; 22 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 4: Measuring Pleasure and Pain (4) of the value of each pain that appears to be produced by it after the first, this being the fecundity of the first pain and the impurity of the first pleasure. Then (5) Sum up the values of all the pleasures on one side and of all the pains on the other. If the balance is on
- 492. the side of pleasure, that is the over-all good tendency of the act with respect to the interests of that person; if on the side of pain, its over-all bad tendency. (6) Repeat the above process with respect to each person whose interests appear to be concerned; and then sum the results. If this balance is on the side of pleasure, that is the over-all good tendency of the act with respect to the interests of the community; if on the side of pain, its over-all bad tendency. 6. It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued before every moral judgment or every legislative or judicial operation. But it can be always kept in view; and the nearer the process actually pursued on these occasions come to it, the nearer they will come to exactness. 7. This process is applicable to pleasure and pain in whatever form they appear, and by whatever name they are labelled: to pleasure, whether it be called ‘good’ (that is properly the cause or instrument of pleasure) or profit (that is distant pleasure, or the cause or instrument of distant pleasure) or ‘convenience’ or ‘advantage’, ‘benefit’, ‘emolument’, ‘happi- ness’, and so forth; to pain, whether it is called ‘evil’ (that corresponds to ‘good’) or ‘mischief’ or ‘inconvenience’ or ‘disadvantage’ or ‘loss’ or ‘unhappiness’, and so forth. [In that sentence, both ‘evil’ [See glossary] and ‘good’ are nouns.] 8. This is not a novel and unjustified theory, any more than it is a useless one. What it presents is nothing but what perfectly fits the practice of mankind whenever they have a clear view of their own interest. What makes (for instance) an article of property, an estate in land, valuable? The pleasures of all kinds that it enables a man to produce, and (the same thing) the pains of all kinds that it enables him to avert. But
- 493. everyone takes the value of such an article of property to rise or fall according to •how long a man has it, •how certain it is that he will get it, and •how long it will be before he gets it if indeed he does. The intensity of the pleasures he may derive from it is never thought of, because that depends on how he in particular chooses to use it, which can’t be estimated till the particular pleasures he may derive from it or the particular pains he may exclude by means of it are brought to view. For the same reason, he doesn’t think, either, of the fecundity or purity of those pleasures. So much for pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappi- ness, in general. I shall now consider the various particular kinds of pain and pleasure. 23 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain Chapter 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain 1. Having presented what is common to all sorts of pleasures and pains, I now present separately the various sorts of pains and pleasures. Pains and pleasures may be called by one general word, interesting [see Glossary] perceptions. Interesting perceptions are either simple or complex. The complex perceptions are those that can be resolved into various simpler ones; simple perceptions are those that can’t. A complex interesting perception can be composed of •pleasures alone, •pains alone, or •a combination of one or more pleasures and one or more pains.What determines a lot [see Glossary] of pleasure, for example, to be regarded as one complex pleasure rather than several simple ones is
- 494. the nature of its cause. Whatever pleasures are excited [see Glossary] all at once by the action of a single cause are apt to be regarded as constituting only a single pleasure. 2. The simple pleasures of which human nature is suscepti- ble seem to be the pleasures of (1) sense (2) wealth (3) skill (4) friendship (5) a good reputation (6) power (7) piety (8) benevolence (9) malevolence (10) memory (11) imagination (12) expectation (13) association (14) relief. 3. The simple pains seem to be the pains of (i) privation (ii) the senses (iii) awkwardness (iv) enmity (v) a bad reputation (vi) memory (vii benevolence (viii) malevolence (ix) memory (x) imagination (xi) expectation (xii) association1
- 495. 4. (1) The pleasures of sense seem to be as follows: (a) The pleasures of the taste or palate, including plea- sures from satisfying hunger and thirst. (b) The pleasure of intoxication. (c) The pleasures of smelling. (d) The pleasures of touch. (e) The simple pleasures of the ear, independent of asso- ciation [i.e. setting aside pleasures that heard speech may give because of what it means]. 1 This is what seemed to be a complete list of the various simple pleasures and pains of which human nature is susceptible; whenever a man feels pleasure or pain, it is either something on the list or is resolvable into ones that are. You might have liked to see an analytical view of the subject,. . . .demonstrating the list to be complete. It is in fact the outcome of such an analysis, but I thought it better to omit this as being of too metaphysical a cast, and not strictly within the limits of the present work’s design. 24 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain (f) The simple pleasures of the eye, independent of asso- ciation. (g) The pleasure of the sexual sense.
- 496. (h) The pleasure of health, i.e. the internal pleasurable feeling or flow of spirits (as it is called) that accom- panies a state of full health and vigour, especially at times of moderate bodily exertion. (j) The pleasures of novelty, i.e. the pleasures derived from satisfying curiosity by the application of new objects to any of the senses.1 5. (2) By ‘the pleasures of wealth’ may be meant the pleasures that a man is apt to get from his awareness of possessing any article or articles that count as instruments of enjoyment or security, especially when he first acquires them; at that time it may be called a pleasure of ‘gain’ or of ‘acquisition’; at other times a pleasure of ‘possession’. (3) The pleasures of skill, as exercised on particular objects, are those that go with using particular instruments of enjoyment that can’t be used without a considerable amount of difficulty or exertion.2 6. (4) The pleasures of friendship or self-recommendation are the pleasures that can come with a man’s conviction that he is acquiring, or already has, the good will of certain particular people, and thus is well placed to have the benefit of their spontaneous and gratuitous services. 7. (5) The pleasures of a good reputation are the pleasures that accompany a man’s conviction that he is acquiring, or already has, the good will of the world around him, i.e. of such members of society as he is likely to have concerns with, this being a result of their love or their esteem or both; and thus is well placed to have the benefit of their spontaneous and gratuitous services. These may also be
- 497. called the pleasures of ‘good repute’, of ‘honour’, or of ‘the moral sanction’. 8. (6) The pleasures of power are those that accompany a man’s conviction that he is in a condition to get people to give him the benefit of their services because they hope to get some service, or fear getting some disservice, from him. 9. (7) The pleasures of piety are those that accompany a man’s conviction that he is acquiring, or already has, the good will of the supreme being, and thus is well placed ti enjoying pleasures to be received by God’s special appoint- ment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may also be called the pleasures of ‘religion’, of ‘a religious disposition’, or of ‘the religious sanction’. 10. 8 The pleasures of benevolence are those that result from the view of pleasures supposed to be had by the beings who may be the objects of benevolence, namely the sensitive beings we are acquainted with. These are commonly taken to include •the supreme being, •human beings, and •other animals. These may also be called the pleasures of ‘good will’, of ‘sympathy’, or of ‘the benevolent or social affections’ [see Glossary]. 11. 9 The pleasures of malevolence are those that result from the view of pain supposed to be suffered by the beings who may become the objects of malevolence, namely •human beings and •other animals. These may also be called the pleasures of ‘ill-will’, of the irascible appetite [= ‘of anger’], of 1 There are also pleasures of novelty, excited by the appearance of new ideas; these are pleasures of the imagination. 2 For instance, the pleasure of being able to gratify the sense of hearing by singing or playing a musical instrument. This
- 498. pleasure is additional to—and perfectly distinguishable from—what a man enjoys from hearing someone else perform in the same manner. 25 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain ‘antipathy’, or of ‘the malevolent or unsocial affections’. 12. 10 The pleasures of the memory are the pleasures which, after having enjoyed certain pleasures (or even in some case after having suffered certain pains), a man will sometimes experience at recollecting them exactly in the order and in the circumstances in which they were actually enjoyed or suffered. These derivative pleasures can of course be divided into as many species as there are of original experiences from which they may be copied. They may also be called pleasures of ‘simple recollection’. 13. 11 The pleasures of the imagination are the pleasures that can be derived from contemplating pleasures that hap- pen to be suggested by the memory but in a different order and accompanied by different groups of circumstances. So these can be referred to present, past, or future. Obviously they admit of as many distinctions as those of the former class. 14. 12 The pleasures of expectation are those that result from contemplating any sort of pleasure thought of as future, accompanied with the sentiment of belief. These also admit of the same distinctions. All pleasures other than them may be called pleasures of ‘enjoyment’.
- 499. 15. 13 The pleasures of association are the pleasures that certain objects or incidents provide solely because of some association they have contracted in the mind with other objects or incidents that are in themselves pleasurable. An example is experience one can have when playing a game of chess, which gets its pleasurable quality from its association •partly with the pleasures of skill as exercised in the production of incidents pleasurable of themselves and •partly with the pleasures of power. Another example: the pleasure of playing a game of chance when not played for any stakes, which gets its pleasurable quality from its association with one of the pleasures of wealth, namely the pleasure of acquiring it. 16. 14 Later on we’ll see pains grounded on pleasures; similarly we can now see pleasures grounded on pains, namely the pleasures of relief. These are the pleasures a man experiences when pain that he has been enduring stops or lessens. These can of course be distinguished into as many species as there are of pains, and can give rise to so many pleasures of memory, of imagination, and of expectation. 17. (i) Pains of privation are the pains that can result from the thought of not possessing now any of the various kinds of pleasures. Pains of privation can be resolved into as many kinds as there are kinds of pleasures. . . .from whose absence they are derived. 18. There are three sorts of pains that are special cases of the pains of privation. •When the enjoyment of a particular pleasure is particularly desired, but with nothing close to assurance ·that it will be acquired·, the resulting pain of privation is called the pain of ‘desire’ or of ‘unsatisfied desire’.
- 500. 19. •Where the enjoyment has been looked for with a degree of expectation approaching assurance, and that expectation is suddenly wiped out, the resultant pain is called a pain of ‘disappointment’. 20. A pain of privation is called a pain of ‘regret’ •when it is based on the memory of a pleasure that was once enjoyed and appears not likely to be enjoyed again; and •when it is based on the idea of a pleasure that was never actually enjoyed but is thought of as something that might have been enjoyed if such-and-such a contingency had happened, which in fact it didn’t. [The former of those two uses ‘regret’ in a sense that the word has since lost, a sense in which ‘I regret my youth’ means that I miss my youth, I’m sad about no longer being young.] 26 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain 21. (ii) The pains of the senses seem to be the following nine: •The pains of hunger and thirst, i.e. the disagreeable sensations produced by the lack of suitable substances in the alimentary canal. •The pains of the taste, i.e. the disagreeable sensations produced by applying various sub- stances to the palate and other upper parts of the alimentary canal. •The pains of the organ of smell, i.e. the disagree- able sensations produced when the effluvia [= ‘microscopic particles’] of various substances come into contact with that organ. •The pains of touch, i.e. the disagreeable sensations
- 501. produced by the application of various substances to the skin. •The simple pains of hearing, i.e. the disagreeable sensations excited in the organ of that sense by various kinds of sounds, independently of association. •The simple pains of the sight, i.e. the disagreeable sensations (if there are any) that may be excited in the organ of that sense by visible images, independently of association. •The pains resulting from excessive heat or cold, unless these relate to touch.1 •The pains of disease, i.e. the acute and uneasy [see Glossary] sensations resulting from the various diseases and indispositions that human nature is open to. •The pain of exertion, i.e. the uneasy sensation that is apt to accompany any intense effort of mind or body. 22. (iii) 2 The pains of awkwardness are those that some- times result from •the unsuccessful attempt to make use of particular instruments of enjoyment or security, or from the difficulty a man experiences in using them. 23. (iv) The pains of enmity are those pains that may accompany a man’s conviction that he is obnoxious [see Glossary] to the ill-will of some particular person or persons (being ‘on ill terms with’ him or them, as we say), and is therefore obnoxious to pains of some kind that he or they may cause. 24. (v) The pains of a bad reputation are those that accom- pany a man’s conviction that is he is, or is likely to become, obnoxious to the ill-will of the world around him. They can also called the pains of ‘ill-repute’, of ‘dishonour’, or of ‘the moral sanction’.3 25. (vi) The pains of piety are those that accompany a man’s conviction that he obnoxious to the displeasure of •the supreme being; and in consequence obnoxious to certain
- 502. pains to be inflicted by •his special decrees, either in this 1 The pleasure of the sexual sense [Bentham’s phrase] seems to have no corresponding positive pain [see Glossary]—only a pain of privation, or a mental pain, the pain of unsatisfied desire. If any positive bodily pain results from the lack of such indulgence [Bentham’s phrase], it counts as a pain of disease. 2 There seem to be no positive pains corresponding to the pleasures of power. The pains that a man may feel from the lack or loss of power—insofar as far as power is distinguished from all other sources of pleasure—seem to be merely pains of privation. The pleasures of novelty have no positive pains corresponding to them. The pain that a man experiences when he doesn’t know what to do with himself—the pain that in French is called ennui—is a pain of privation, a pain resulting from the absence not only of the pleasures of novelty but of all kinds of pleasure whatsoever.—The pleasures of wealth also have no positive pains corresponding to them; the only pains opposed to them are pains of privation. positive pains resulting from the lack of wealth belong in some other class of positive pains, principally those of the senses. From the lack of food, for instance, result the pains of hunger; from the lack of clothing, the pains of cold; and so forth. 3 Bentham has a footnote distinguishing two cases: •I think that my ill-name will lead people to be less helpful than they would otherwise have been, so I suffer a pain of privation; •I think that my ill-name will lead people to be outright harmful to me, so I suffer a positive
- 503. pain. He concludes:] The pain of privation and the positive pain in this case run one into another indistinguishably. 27 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 5: The Kinds of Pleasure and Pain life or in a life to come. These can also be called the pains of ‘religion’, of a ‘religious disposition’, or of the ‘religious sanction’. When the man’s belief is seen as well-grounded, these pains are commonly called ‘religious terrors’; when it is seen as ill-grounded, ‘superstitious terrors’.1 26. (vii) The pains of benevolence are those that result from the view of pains supposed to be endured by other beings. These may also be called the pains of ‘good will’, of ‘sympathy’, or of ‘the benevolent or social affections’. 27. (viii) The pains of malevolence are pains resulting from the view of pleasures supposed to be enjoyed by beings who are objects of a man’s displeasure. These may also be called the pains of ‘ill-will’, of ‘antipathy’, or of ‘the malevolent or unsocial affections’. 28. (ix) The pains of the memory can be grounded on any one of the above kinds—pains of privation as well as of positive pains. These correspond exactly to the pleasures of the memory. 29. (x) The pains of the imagination can also be grounded on any one of the above kinds, whether pains of privation or positive pains; in other respects they correspond exactly to
- 504. the pleasures of the imagination. 30. (xi) The pains of expectation can also be grounded on any one of the above kinds, whether pains of privation or positive pains. They can be also called pains of ‘apprehension’.2 31. (xii) The pains of association correspond exactly to the pleasures of association. 32. The pleasures and pains of •benevolence and of •malevolence presuppose. and have regard to, a pleasure or pain of some other person; these two can be called ‘extra-regarding’ pleasures and pains. None of the other pleasures and pains presuppose any such thing; they can be called ‘self-regarding’.3 33. Virtually all of all these various sorts of pleasures and pains are liable, on more accounts than one, to come under the consideration of the law. •Is an offence committed? The mischief of it—and the ground for punishing it—consists in its tendency to destroy some of these pleasures or to produce some of these pains in certain persons. •The motive or temptation to commit the offence is the prospect of some of these pleasures, or of security from some of these pains. •The profit of the offence consists in the attainment of those pleasures or that security. •Is the offender to be punished? That can only be by inflicting on him one or more of these pains. ·STAR T OF A FOOTNOTE THAT ENDS THE CHAPTER·
- 505. It would be interesting and somewhat useful to exhibit a catalogue of the various complex pleasures and pains, analysing them into the simple ones of which they are com- posed. This would take up too much space to be admitted here, but a short specimen, for the purpose of illustration, can hardly be dispensed with. 1 A footnote here runs exactly parallel to the immediately preceding footnote. You can easily work it out for yourself. 2 All pains other than these can be called pains of ‘sufferance. 3 This lets us distinguish the pleasures and pains of •amity more clearly from those of •benevolence; and the pleasures and pains •of enmity from those of •malevolence. The pleasures and pains of amity and enmity are self-regarding; those of benevolence and malevolence are extra-regarding. 28 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility The pleasures taken in at the eye and ear are generally very complex. The pleasures of a country scene, for instance, often consists of the following pleasures among others: Pleasures of the senses: •The simple pleasures of sight, excited [see Glossary] by the perception of agreeable colours and forms, green fields, waving foliage, glistening water, and the like. •The simple pleasures of the ear, excited by the perceptions of the chirping of birds, the murmuring
- 506. of waters, the rustling of the wind among the trees. •The pleasures of smell, excited by taking in the fragrance of flowers, of new-mown hay, or other vegetable substances in the first stages of fermentation. •The agreeable inward sensation produced by a brisk circulation of the blood, and the ventilation of it in the lungs by air that is purer than is often breathed in towns. Pleasures of the imagination produced by association: •The idea of the affluence resulting from the possession of the objects one sees, and of the happiness arising from it. •The idea of the innocence and happiness of the birds, sheep, cattle, dogs, and other gentle or domestic animals. •The idea of the constant flow of health that all these creatures are supposed to enjoy—a notion that is apt to result from the occasional flow of health enjoyed by the spectator. •The idea of gratitude, excited by contemplating the all-powerful and beneficent being who is looked up to as the author of these blessings.—These last four are all to some extent pleasures of sympathy. Depriving a man of this group of pleasures is one of the evils apt to result from imprisonment, whether produced by illegal violence, or as legal punishment. Chapter 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility 1. Pain and pleasure are produced in men’s minds by the action of certain causes. But the quantity of pleasure and pain does not vary uniformly with the quantity of force exerted by its cause. The truth of this doesn’t rests on any metaphysical nicety [see Glossary] in the meanings of ‘cause’, ‘quantity’ and ‘force’; it will be equally true however such a force is measured. 2. How disposed is this man to feel such-and-such a quantity of pleasure or pain when acted on by a cause with
- 507. such-and-such a force? The answer to that question gives the degree or quantum of his sensibility [see Glossary]. We can speak of the degree of his sensibility with reference •to all the causes that act on him during a given period or •to one particular cause or one sort of cause. 3. People vary in which causes produce this or that degree of pleasure or pain in them. A given person’s pattern of feeling-strength in relation to cause-force may be called the quality or ‘bias’ of his sensibility. One man, for instance, may be most affected by the pleasures of taste, another by those of the ear. And when a single cause creates in everyone two pains or pleasures, people can vary (though there’s less of this) in which of the two is uppermost. It can happen, for instance, that the same injury causes the same over-all quantity of grief and resentment in x as in y, but x feels more grief than resentment while y feels more resentment than grief. 29 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility 4. Any incident that serves as a cause of pleasure or pain may be called an ‘exciting cause’ [see Glossary]; if of pleasure, a ‘pleasurable’ cause; if of pain, a ‘painful’ or ‘afflictive’ cause.1 5. The quantity of pleasure or pain that a man is liable to experience from a given exciting cause will depend not only on that cause but also on some other circumstances—we can call these ‘circumstances influencing sensibility’.2
- 508. 6. These circumstances will apply differently to different exciting causes; a certain circumstance may greatly influence the effect of one exciting cause while having no influence on that of another. But without going into all that just now, it may be useful if I to sum up all the circumstances that can be found to influence the effect of any exciting cause. Following my earlier procedure, I shall first list them as briefly as possible, and then give a few words to explaining each of them separately. They are: (1) Health. (2) Strength. (3) Hardiness. (4) Bodily imperfection. (5) Quantity and quality of knowledge. (6) Strength of intellectual powers. (7) Firmness of mind. (8) Steadiness of mind. (9) Bent of inclination. (10) Moral sensibility. (11) Moral biases. (12) Religious sensibility. (13) Religious biases. (14) Sympathetic sensibility. (15) Sympathetic biases. (16) Antipathetic sensibility. (17) Antipathetic biases. (18) Insanity. (19) Habitual occupations. (20) Pecuniary circumstances. (21) Connections in the way of sympathy. (22) Connections in the way of antipathy. (23) Radical frame of body. (24) Radical frame of mind. (25) Sex.
- 509. (26) Age. (27) Rank. (28) Education [see Glossary]. (29) Climate. (30) Lineage. (31) Government. (32) Religious profession ·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE· An analytical view of all these circumstances will be given in 46 at the end of the chapter. It had to be delayed until then because it couldn’t have been well understood until some of them had been explained. 1 Three things that are intimately connected: •the exciting cause, •the pleasure or pain produced by it, and •the intention produced by such pleasure or pain in the character of a motive. I fear that I haven’t always been able to keep these sufficiently distinct. Having given you this warning, I hope that there won’t be much confusion if such mistakes do turn up. 2 Thus, in physical bodies, the momentum of a ball put in motion by impulse will be influenced—increased or lessened— by the circumstance of gravity. When a ship is put in motion by the wind, its momentum and direction will be influenced by the attraction of gravity, by the motion and resistance of the water, and by several other circumstances. 30 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility
- 510. To •search out the vast variety of exciting or moderating causes that can influence the degree or bias of a man’s sensibility, to •define the boundaries of each, to •disentangle them from one another, and to •lay the effect of each of them clearly before the reader’s eye—all this constitutes one of the most difficult tasks in moral [see Glossary] physiology. To do this well would require examples. To provide a sufficient collection of such examples would be a work of great labour as well as nicety; history and biography would need to be ransacked; a vast course of reading would be needed. Such a process would. . . .be so enormous that this single chapter would have swelled into a considerable volume. Invented cases can sometimes make the general points tolerably intelligible, but they can’t make it palatable. So here, as so often elsewhere, I must confine myself to dry and general instruction, while realising that illustrations would have doubled the power of the instruction. The subject is so difficult and so new that I’ll think I have succeeded pretty well if, without claiming to exhaust it, I can mark out the principal points of view and put things in order in a way that will help the researches of more fortunate inquirers. The great difficulty lies in the nature of words that are not (like ‘pain’ and ‘pleasure’) •names of homogeneous real enti- ties, but •names of fictitious entities that have no common genus and therefore must be picked up here and there as they happen to occur. It would take a vast and roundabout chain of investigation to bring them under any exhaustive plan of arrangement. ·END OF LONG FOOTNOTE· 7. (1) Health is the absence of disease, and thus the absence of all the kinds of pain that are symptoms of disease. A man
- 511. may be said to be in a state of ‘health’ when he is not conscious of any uneasy [see Glossary] sensations anywhere in his body.1 Health affects general sensibility: a man suffering from a bodily indisposition—a man in a state of ill-health—is less sensible to the influence of any pleasurable cause, and more so to that of any afflictive one, than if he were well. 8.(2) Although strength is causally closely linked with health, the two are perfectly distinguishable. A man will indeed generally be stronger in a good state of health than he will be in a bad one; but one man in a bad state of health may be stronger than another who is in good health. Weakness commonly comes with disease; but a man’s radical frame of body [= ‘basic physical constitution’] may make him weak all his life long without having any disease. Health, as I have observed, is principally a negative circumstance; strength a positive one. The degree of a man’s strength can be measured with tolerable accuracy.2 1 This negative account of health may seem inadequate to the degree of health where the whole body is filled with a kind of feeling—a ‘flow of spirits’, as it is called—that could properly be called a positive pleasure. But without experiencing any such pleasurable feeling, if a man experiences no painful one he may be said to be in health. 2 The most accurate measure of a man’s strength seems to come from the weight he can lift with his hands in a given attitude. This admittedly relates immediately only to his arms; but these are •the organs of strength that are used most, •the ones whose strength corresponds most exactly with the person’s bodily strength generally, and •the ones whose quantum of strength is most easily measured. . . .—‘Weakness’
- 512. is a negative term, implying the absence of strength. It is also a relative term: calling someone ‘weak’ is implicitly comparing him with others. When a man is so weak that it is painful for him to go through the motions of the ordinary functions of life—to get up, to walk, to dress himself, and so forth—that is counted as being in ill-health. 31 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility 9. (3) Hardiness is closely connected with strength, but dis- tinguishable from it. Hardiness is the absence of irritability [see Glossary]. There is •irritability that is a disposition to undergo more or less pain on the application of a mechanical cause such as whipping or other procedures by which simple afflictive punishments are inflicted; and •irritability that is a disposition •to contract disease more or less easily on the application of anything that acts on the body through its physiological properties, as when damp air produces fevers, colds, or other inflammatory diseases; or •to experience immediate uneasiness, as in the feelings caused by the surround- ing air’s being too hot or too cold. Hardiness, even in the sense in which it is opposed to the action of mechanical causes, can be distinguished from strength. The external indications of strength are
- 513. the abundance and firmness of the muscular fibres; those of hardiness, in this sense, are the firmness of the muscular fibres, and the thick hardness of the skin. Strength is more particularly the gift of nature; hardiness the gift of education. Someone brought up as a gentleman may be stronger than a common sailor, but the sailor may be the hardier of the two. 10. (2) By ‘bodily imperfection’ we understand the condition a person is in if he is •distinguished by some noticeable deformity, or lacks some part or faculty that persons of the same sex and age generally have; for instance, someone who has a hare-lip, is deaf, or has lost a hand. Like ill-health, bodily imperfection tends in general to lessen the effect of any pleasurable circumstance and to increase the effect of any afflictive one. But there is great variety in the effects of this circumstance, i.e. in the ways in which a man can suffer in his personal appearance, and in his bodily organs and faculties. These differences will be taken notice of in their proper places. 11. (5) So much for circumstances relating to the condition of the body; we come now to those relating to the condition of the mind. . . . Let us start with the quantity and quality of knowledge possessed by the person in question, i.e. of the ideas that he actually has in store, ready to call to mind when needed. I’m talking about ideas that are in some way of an interesting [see Glossary] nature, i.e. that could affect his happiness or that of other men. When these ideas are many, and of importance, a man is said to be a man of knowledge; when they are few or not of importance, he is said to be
- 514. ignorant. 12. (6) By ‘ strength of intellectual powers’ I understand the degree of ease with which a man calls to mind •ideas that he has already aggregated to his stock of knowledge and •any other ideas that he comes to want to place there. The words ‘parts’ and ‘talents’ commonly come in here. We can include under this heading the qualities of •readiness of apprehension, •accuracy and tenacity of memory, •strength of attention, •clearness of discernment, •amplitude of com- prehension, and •vividness and rapidity of imagination. . . . 13. (7) [Bentham’s account of ‘firmness of mind’ and its opposite ‘irritability of mind’ involves his notion of the ‘value’ of an exciting cause—see 2 on page 22. Two contributors to a cause’s value are •its size and •its nearness in time; and a man shows firmness of mind to the extent that he attaches more weight to the former than to the latter. Bentham purports to illustrate this, in a footnote, with something that is surely an example of something quite different, namely the firmness of sticking to a decision one has made—a man who has been ‘determined by the prospect of some inconvenience 32 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility not to disclose a fact’, and stays firm in this decision even when he is tortured on the rack. For this to illustrate what it is meant to illustrate, the future ‘inconvenience’ would have to be in some relevant sense bigger than the present agony on the rack.]
- 515. 14. (8) Steadiness ·of mind· has to do with the time during which a given exciting cause of a given value continues to affect a man in nearly the same manner and degree as at first if no identifiable external event or change of circumstances has intervened to alter its force.1 15. (9) By the ‘bent of a man’s inclinations’ I understand his propensity to expect pleasure or pain from certain objects rather than from others. A man’s inclinations may be said to have such-and-such a bent when, among the various sorts of objects that give some pleasure to all men, he is apt to expect more pleasure from one particular sort than from another, or more from one particular sort than another man would expect from that sort; or when, among the various sorts of objects that would give pleasure to one man while giving none to another, he is apt to expect, or not to expect, pleasure from an object of such-and-such a sort; so also with regard to pains. The bent of a man’s inclinations is intimately connected with the bias of his sensibility, but the two can be distinguished. How much pleasure or pain a man experiences on a given occasion from item x may be influenced by the expectations he has usually had of pleasure or pain from x; but it won’t be absolutely determined by them, because pleasure or pain may reach him from a direction from which he isn’t accustomed to expect it. 16. (10) The circumstances of moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibility will turn out under scrutiny to be special cases of bent of inclination; but they are important enough to deserve separate treatment. A man’s moral sensibility may be said to be strong when the influence on him of the pains and pleasures of the moral sanction, as compared with the influence of other pleasures and pains, is stronger than it is with the persons he is compared with. In other words, he is acted on with more than ordinary efficacy by the sense of honour. . . ,
- 516. 17. (11) Moral sensibility seems to concern the average effect or influence of the pains and pleasures of the moral sanction on all sorts of occasions to which it is relevant—the average force or quantity of the impulses the mind receives from that source during a given period. Moral bias concerns the particular acts to which on many particular occasions the force of the moral sanction is seen as relevant. It concerns the quality or direction of those impulses, so there are as many varieties of it as there are dictates that the moral sanction may be conceived to issue. A man may be said to have such-and-such a moral bias, or to have a moral bias in favour of such-and-such an action, when he sees it as one whose performance is dictated by the moral sanction. 18. (12) What I have said about moral sensibility also applies, mutatis mutandis, to religious sensibility. 19. (13) What I have said about moral biases also applies, mutatis mutandis, to religious biases. 20. (14) ‘Sympathetic sensibility is a man’s propensity to derive pleasure from the happiness of other sensitive beings, 1 The speed with which children grow tired of their toys and throw them away is an instance of unsteadiness; a merchant’s perseverance in his trade or an author’s in writing his book are examples of steadiness. It’s hard to estimate the quantity of pleasure or pain in these cases except from its effect in producing a motive; and even then it’s hard to say whether the change of conduct happens through the extinction of the old pleasure or pain or through the intervention of a new one. 33
- 517. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility and pain from their unhappiness. Its strength is given by ratio of •the pleasure or pain he feels on their account and •the pleasure or pain he thinks they feel for themselves. 21. (15) Sympathetic bias has to do with which parties are the objects of a man’s sympathy, and the acts or other circumstances of those persons that his sympathy is excited by. These parties may be •certain individuals •any subordinate class of individuals •the whole nation •human kind in general •the whole sensitive creation. The more numerous these objects of his sympathy are, the more enlarged his sympathy may be said to be. 22. (16, 17) Antipathetic sensibility and antipathetic biases are just the reverse of sympathetic sensibility and sympa- thetic biases. Antipathetic sensibility is a man’s propensity to derive pain from the happiness of other sensitive beings, and pleasure from their unhappiness. 23. (18) The circumstance of insanity of mind corresponds to that of bodily imperfection. But there can’t be as many varieties of it because as far as we can see the soul [here = ‘the mind’] is one indivisible thing, not distinguishable into parts as the body is. I’m not including the lesser degrees of imperfection that a mind may be susceptible of, because
- 518. they seem to fall under the already-mentioned headings of ignorance, weakness of mind, irritability, or unsteadiness— or under others that are reducible to those. My topic here is the extraordinary kinds and degrees of mental imperfection that are in any context as conspicuous and as unquestion- able as lameness or blindness in the body. They seem to operate partly by •inducing an extraordinary degree of the imperfections mentioned above and partly by directing the inclinations in extraordinary and preposterous directions. 24. (19) Under the heading of a man’s ‘habitual occupations’ I am including both the ones he pursues for the sake of profit and those he pursues for the sake of present pleasure. . . . [Bentham goes on to say that the ‘profit’ topic will come up in the next paragraph; that it is distressing to be blocked, by punishment or some other cause, from one’s habitual occupations; and that your habitual occupations are not the same as the bent of your inclinations—you might be much inclined to go in for some activity that is never possible for you.] 25. (20) Under the heading of ‘pecuniary circumstances’ I mean to bring to view the ratio between a man’s means and his wants—the sum total of all his means and the sum total of all his wants. A man’s means depend on three things: (a) his property—everything that he has in store indepen- dently of his labour; (b) the profit of his labour, whether physical or mental or both; (c) his connections in the way of support—i.e. the pe- cuniary help that he is well placed to receive from any persons (e.g. parents, patrons, relatives) whom
- 519. he has reason to expect to contribute gratis to his maintenance. It seems obvious that this list is complete. Anything that a man uses he must have either (a) of his own or from other people, and if from other people then either (c) gratis or (b) for a price. His wants seem to depend on (a) his habits of expense: a man’s desires are largely governed by his habits; in many cases a desire (and consequently the pain of privation connected with it) wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for previous enjoy- ment. 34 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility (b) his connections in the way of burden—meaning what- ever expense he has reason to think he is bound to incur in the support of those who are warranted (by law or the customs of the world) in looking to him for assistance; such as children, poor relations, pensioned servants, other dependents. (c) any present casual [here = ‘non-recurring’] demand he may have: there are occasions when a given sum will be worth infinitely more to a man than the same sum would at another time; e.g. when he needs money •to pay for extraordinary medical assistance or •to carry on a law-suit on which his all depends or •to pay for transport to a distant country where a job is waiting for him. . . .
- 520. (d) the strength of his expectation: when one man expects to gain or to keep a thing that another does not, the lack of the thing will obviously affect the former very differently from the latter. . . . 26. (21) Under the heading of a man’s connections in the way of sympathy I want to exhibit the number and descrip- tion of the persons whose welfare concerns him in such a way the idea of their happiness brings him pleasure, and that of their unhappiness brings him pain—e.g. his wife, children, parents, near relations, and intimate friends. These will obviously include two groups mentioned in (20) above, namely •those from whom he may expect support and •those whose wants operate on him as a burden. But there may well be others with whom he has no such pecuniary connection; and even when there is such a connection—a dependence ·in one direction or the other·—it is perfectly distinguishable from the union of affections that is our topic in the present paragraph. These connections here have an influence on the effect of any exciting causes, not merely ones involving money. Their tendency is to increase a man’s general sensibility, i.e. to increase the pleasure produced by all pleasurable causes and the pain produced by all afflictive ones. When something pleasurable happens to a man, he naturally first thinks of the pleasure it will immediately give him; soon after that (except in a few negligible cases) he begins to think of the pleasure his friends will feel when they come to know of it; and the thought of that pleasure of theirs is often a considerable addition to his pleasure. First comes the self-regarding pleasure; then comes the idea of the pleasure of sympathy that you think this pleasure of yours will arouse in the bosom of your friend; and this idea excites again in your bosom a new pleasure of sympathy. The first pleasure radiating out (as it were) from your bosom
- 521. •illuminates the bosom of your friend, and reflected back from it •brings new warmth to the point from which it started; and similarly with pains.1 This effect doesn’t depend wholly on affection. Among near relatives, even when there is no kindness, the pleasures and pains of the moral sanction are quickly propagated by a special kind of sympathy; a man can’t incur any honour or disgrace without its extending a certain distance within the circle of his family. What reflects honour on the father reflects honour on the son; what reflects disgrace, disgrace. . . . 27. (22) There is nothing very special to say about a man’s connections in the way of antipathy. Fortunately there’s 1 This is one reason why legislators generally prefer, in their dealings, married people to single ones, and people with children to childless ones. Obviously, the stronger and more numerous a man’s connections in the way of sympathy are, the stronger is the law’s hold on him; a wife and children are so many pledges a man gives to the world for his good behaviour. 35 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility no primeval and constant source of antipathy in a human nature, as there is of sympathy. There are no permanent sets of persons who are naturally and as a matter of course the objects of a man’s antipathy as there are who are the objects
- 522. of his sympathy. Still, causes of antipathy—all too many of them—are apt to spring up in the course of a man’s life; and when they do they can influence considerably the effects of various exciting causes. For example, a punishment will be all the more distressing if it separates a man from those he is connected with in the way of sympathy, or if it forces him into the company of those with whom he is connected in the way of antipathy. Notice that sympathy itself multiplies the sources of antipathy: sympathy for your friend gives rise to antipathy on your part against all those to whom he is antipathetic, and to sympathy for those to whom he is sympathetic. In the same way antipathy multiplies the sources of sympathy, though perhaps not as effectively. . . . 28. (23) So much for the factors that can influence the effect of an exciting cause on particular occasions at particular times. But such an influence is also had by other circum- stances that relate to a man from the time of his birth. In the first place, everyone seems to agree that something in the original frame or texture of a man’s body makes him sys- tematically liable to be affected by causes of bodily pleasure or pain in different way from how another man would be affected by the same causes. So we can add to the list of circumstances influencing a man’s sensibility his original or radical frame, texture, constitution, or temperament of body. 29. (24) In the next place, everyone seems to agree that something in the original frame or texture of a man’s mind makes him systematically liable—independently of all other circumstances, even of his radical frame of body—to be affected by various exciting causes differently from how another man would be. So we can add to the list of circum- stances influencing a man’s sensibility his original (or radical) frame, texture, constitution, or temperament of mind. 30. This circumstance and the preceding one are different: we see persons whose frame of body is as much alike as can
- 523. be conceived, differing considerably in their mental frame; and vice versa.1 31. [Bentham says here that changes in a man’s mind are not solely due to ‘external occurrences’, from which he seems to infer that they aren’t purely changes in the body. He adds that how a man develops depends partly on ‘nature’ and partly on ‘education’, from which he infers (surely invalidly!) that frame of body and frame of mind are distinct from one another.] 32. Distinct though they are, it’s clear that at no time in a man’s active life can they either of them make their appearance by themselves. They merely constitute the latent groundwork that the other circumstances—·the ones in the (1)–(22) list·—have to work on; whatever influence the original frames of body and mind have is so modified and covered over (as it were) by those other circumstances that it is never separately detectable. The effects of the one influence are indistinguishably blended with those of the other. 1 Those who maintain that the mind and the body are one substance may object that all we have here is a verbal distinction, and that therefore there’s no such thing as a frame of mind distinct from the frame of body. But even if we grant the premise, for argument’s sake, we can challenge the inference to the conclusion. Even if the mind is only a part of the body, it is very different in kind from the other parts of the body.—No part of a man’s bodily frame can alter considerably without the alteration’s being immediately indicated in ways the senses can pick up. A man’s frame of mind can alter very considerably while his frame of body remains the same to all appearance, i.e. in all the ways that might become known to other men.
- 524. 36 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility [That last sentence is verbatim from Bentham. This puzzling paragraph seems to go as follows: What seemed to be shaping up to be the thesis that neither of these two shows up by itself, rather than in harness with the other becomes instead the thesis that the pair of them don’t show up by themselves, rather than in harness with other factors. But then in that interplay between •these two and •the others, the influences of the two run together. In short, ‘Distinct though they are, the effects of one are indistinguishably blended with those of the other.’] 33. The emotions of the body are rightly regarded as probable indications of the emotional state of the mind, but they are pretty far from conclusive. A man may exhibit the exterior appearances of grief without grieving anything like as much as he appears to, and perhaps without really grieving at all. Oliver Cromwell, whose conduct indicated a more than ordinarily callous heart, was remarkably profuse in tears. Many men can command the outer appearances of sensibility with very little real feeling.1
- 525. 34. The remaining items may be called ‘secondary’ influenc- ing circumstances—secondary, that is, to the ones already mentioned. They do influence the quantum or bias of a man’s sensibility [= ‘the strength or direction of his feelings’], but only by means of the primary ones. In these events, it’s the primary ones that do the business, while the secondary ones are most open to observation; so the secondary ones are most talked about, which is why I have to discuss them. But their influence can be explained only through the primary ones, whereas the influence of the primary ones will be apparent enough without any mention of the secondary ones. 35. (25) Among the basic facts about the bodily frame that appear to influence the quantum and bias of sensibility, the most obvious and conspicuous are those that constitute the sex. The female sex appears in general to have more sensibility than the male sex does. The female’s health is more delicate than the male’s; she is commonly lower on the scale of •strength and hardiness of body, •quantity and quality of knowledge, •strength of intellectual powers, and •firmness of mind. Moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibility are commonly stronger in her than in the male. The quality of her knowledge and the direction of her inclinations are commonly different in many respects. Her moral biases are also in certain respects remarkably different: for example, chastity, modesty, and delicacy are prized more than courage in a woman; courage is prized more than any of those qualities in a man. The religious biases in the two sexes
- 526. are not apt to be remarkably different, except that the female is rather more inclined than the male to superstition, i.e. to 1 As regards the sort of pain known as ‘grief’: its quantity is hardly to be measured by any external indications—not (for example) by the quantity of the tears or the number of moments spent in crying. Perhaps the pulse? A man can’t control the motions of his heart as he can those of the muscles of his face. But the specific meaning of these indications is still very uncertain; they can tell us •that the man is affected, but not •how or •from what cause; and he can lie about that. . . . Tears of rage he may attribute to contrition. His concern at the thoughts of a punishment that awaits him he may represent as a sympathetic concern for the mischief produced by his offence.—A very tolerable judgment, however, can often be reached by a discerning person who lays together all the external indications a man exhibits and compares them with his actions. . . .—A remarkable instance of the power of the will over the external signs of sensibility is to be found in Tacitus’s story of the Roman soldier who raised a mutiny in the camp, pretending to have lost a brother by the lawless cruelty of the General. The truth was, he never had had a brother.—The female sex is commonly better at this than the male; hence the proverbial phrase ‘a woman’s tears’. To have this kind of command over oneself was the characteristic excellence of the orator of ancient times, and is that of the actor today. 37
- 527. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility rituals that aren’t dictated by the principle of utility; a difference that may be pretty well accounted for by some of the before-mentioned circumstances. Her sympathetic biases are in many ways different: for her own offspring all through their lives, and for children in general while they are young, her affection is commonly stronger than the male’s. Her affections are apt to be less broad, seldom expanding themselves to take in the welfare of her country in general, much less that of mankind or the whole sensitive creation; seldom embracing any extensive class or division even of her own countrymen, except in virtue of her sympathy for some individuals that belong to it. Her antipathetic and sympathetic biases are generally apt to conform less to the principle of utility than the male’s, mainly because of some deficiency in knowledge, discernment, and comprehension. Her usual pastimes are apt to be in many ways different from the male’s. There can be no difference ·between the sexes· regarding connections in the way of sympathy. As for pecuniary circumstances, according to the customs of perhaps all countries she is in general less independent. 36. (26) Age is of course divided into different periods whose number and limits are by no means uniformly settled on. For the present purpose one might distinguish •Infancy •Adolescence •Youth •Maturity •Decline •Decrepitude.
- 528. It would be a waste of time to examine each period, observing the indications it gives regarding the various circumstances I have been discussing. Infancy and decrepitude are com- monly inferior to the other periods in health, strength, hardiness, and so forth. In infancy the imperfections of the female sex are greater than at other periods; the male imperfections in infancy are mostly similar in quality but greater in quantity than those of the female in adolescence, youth, and maturity. In the stage of decrepitude both sexes relapse into many of the imperfections of infancy. . . . 37. (27) Station, or rank in life will commonly undergo a number of variations among a civilised people. Other things being equal, the quantum of sensibility appears to be greater in the higher ranks of men than in the lower. The main circumstances in respect of which rank is apt to produce or indicate a difference seem to be: •quantity and quality of knowledge •strength of mind •bent of inclination •moral sensibility •moral biases •religious sensibility •religious biases •sympathetic sensibility •sympathetic biases •antipathetic sensibility •antipathetic biases •habitual occupations •nature and productiveness of a man’s means of livelihood •connections bringing profit •habit of expense
- 529. •connections implying burden: a man of a certain rank will frequently have dependents in addition to those whose dependency is the result of natural relation- ship. As for health, strength, and hardiness, if rank has any influence on these it is only in a remote way chiefly by its influence on habitual occupations. 38 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility 38. (28) The influence of education is still more extensive. Education [see Glossary] stands on a somewhat different foot- ing from age, sex, and rank. Although the influence of these three comes mainly if not entirely through the medium of certain of the primary circumstances I have mentioned, each of them has a separate existence in itself. This is not the case with education: all there is to education is one or more of those primary circumstances. Education may be divided into physical and mental, the education of the body and that of the mind. Mental education divides into intellectual and moral, the culture of the understanding and the culture of the affections. [In that sentence, ‘culture’ refers to •a process of helping something to grow. But in the rest of this paragraph Bentham is thinking of a man’s education primarily as educatedness, •the upshot of a process.] The education a man receives comes partly from others, partly from himself. By ‘education’, then, what is
- 530. meant is just a man’s condition in respect of those primary circumstances, as resulting partly from •the management and contrivance of others, principally of those who have had charge of him in the early periods of his life, partly from •his own. The physical part of his education includes health, strength, and hardiness; sometimes, by accident, bodily imperfection, as when by intemperance or negligence an irreparable mischief happens to his person. The intellectual part includes quantity and quality of knowledge, and perhaps in some measure firmness of mind and steadiness. The moral part includes the bent of his inclinations, and the quantity and quality of his moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibility. All three parts include his habitual recreations, his property, his means of livelihood, his connections in the way of profit and of burden, and his habits of expense. The influence of education with respect to these is modified (in a more or less obvious way) by •the influence of exterior occurrences, and (in a way that is very unobvious and altogether out of the reach of calculation) by •the original texture and constitution of his body and of his mind. 39. (29) Among the external circumstances that modify the influence of education the main ones come under the heading of climate. This pushes to the front and demands its own heading not merely •because of how big its influence is but also •because it is conspicuous to everybody and applies indiscriminately to many people at a time. The climate of region x depends for its essence on where x is in relation to the planet earth’s revolution round the sun; but its influence depends on the condition of the bodies on x’s surface—principally on the quantities of sensible heat at different periods, and on the density, and purity, and humidity of the air. Nearly all the primary circumstances are influenced by this secondary one, partly by its manifest
- 531. effects on the body, and partly by its less perceptible effects on the mind. In hot climates men’s health is apt to be more precarious than in cold ones; their strength and hardiness are less; their vigour, firmness, and steadiness of mind are less, and thence indirectly so is their quantity of knowledge; the bent of their inclinations is different (most noticeably in their greater propensity to sexual enjoyments, and in how early in life that propensity begins to manifest itself); their sensibilities of all kinds are more intense; their habitual occupations are slack rather than active; their radical frame of body is less strong, probably, and less hardy; their radical frame of mind is less vigorous, less firm, less steady. 40. (30) Another item in the list of secondary circumstances is race or lineage—the national race or lineage that a man issues from. This, independently of climate, will commonly make some difference to the radical frame of mind and body. A man of negro race, born in France or England, is in many 39 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility respects a very different being from a man of French or English race. A man of Spanish race, born in Mexico or Peru, is at the hour of his birth in many respects a different sort of being from a man of the original Mexican or Peruvian race. The influence of race, insofar as it is distinct from ·the influences of· climate, rank, and education,. . . .operates chiefly through the medium of moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic biases. 41. (31) Then we come to government, the government
- 532. under which a man has been most accustomed to live. This operates principally through the medium of education; the magistrate [see Glossary] operating as a tutor to all the members of the state by the direction he gives to their hopes and fears. Indeed under a solicitous and attentive government an ordinary teacher—indeed, even a parent—is only a deputy (as it were) to the magistrate, whose controlling influence. . . .stays with a man to his life’s end. The effects of the magistrate’s special power are seen more particularly in its influence over the quantum and bias of men’s moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic sensibilities. Under a well-constituted government, and even under a badly con- stituted government that is well administered, men’s moral sensibility is commonly stronger, and their moral biases more in conformity with the dictates of utility; their religious sensibility is often weaker, but their religious biases conform better to the dictates of utility; their sympathetic affections are more enlarged, directed more to the whole community than to the magistrate, and more to the magistrate than to small parties or to individuals; their antipathetic sensibilities are less violent because •more obedient to well-directed moral biases and •less apt to be excited by ill-directed religious ones; their antipathetic biases conform better to well-directed moral ones, and are correspondingly more apt to be grounded on enlarged and sympathetic affections [see Glossary] than on narrow and self-regarding ones, and accordingly are over-all more in conformity with the dictates of utility. 42. (32) Finally we come to a man’s religious profession—the religious fraternity of which he is a member. This operates mainly through •religious sensibility and •religious biases; but it also operates, as a fairly conclusive indication, with re- spect to several other circumstances. With some of them the indication comes mainly through •the two just mentioned—
- 533. for example, the intensity and direction of a man’s moral sensibility (sympathetic and antipathetic); perhaps in some cases the quantity and quality of knowledge, strength of intellectual powers, and bent of inclination. With respect to other circumstances religious profession may operate immediately, unaided; this seems to be the case with a man’s •habitual occupations, •pecuniary circumstances, and •connections in the way of sympathy and antipathy. A man who in himself cares very little about the dictates of the religion that he finds it necessary to profess may find it hard to avoid joining in its ceremonies and bearing a part in the pecuniary burdens it imposes.1 By the force of habit and example he may even be led to favour persons whose religious profession is the same as his, and to be correspondingly hostile to those whose profession is different. Antipathy 1 There are various ways in which a religion may lessen a man’s means, or increase his needs. Sometimes it will prevent him •from making a profit by his money or •from setting his hand to labour. Sometimes it will oblige him •to buy dearer food instead of cheaper, •to purchase useless labour, •to pay men for not labouring, •to purchase trinkets on which imagination alone has set a value, •to purchase exemptions from punishment or titles to happiness in the world to come. 40 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility against persons of different religious persuasions is one of the last points of religion that men part with. . . .
- 534. 43. All or many of these circumstances will need to be attended to whenever account is being taken of a quantity of pain or pleasure as resulting from some cause. Has he sustained an injury? they will need to be considered in estimating the mischief of the offence. Is satisfaction to be made to him? they will need to be attended to in fixing the amount of that satisfaction. Is the injurer to be punished? they will need to be attended to in estimating the force of the impression that any given punishment will make on him. 44. The items on my list are not all of equal use in practice. . . . Some apply routinely to whole classes of persons without any great difference in degree; and these can be directly and pretty fully provided for by the legislator. Examples of this include the primary circumstances of bodily imperfection and insanity; the secondary circumstance of sex; perhaps also age; rank, climate, lineage, and religious profession. Others can apply to whole classes of persons but are subject to indefinite amounts of individual variation. These can’t be fully provided for by the legislator; but. . . .in each particular case provision can be made for them by the judge or other executive magistrate who can know the details about the relevant individuals. This is the case •wholly with regard to health, •to some extent with strength, •hardly at all with hardiness, •even less with quantity and quality of knowledge, strength of intellectual powers, firmness or steadi- ness of mind; except insofar as a man’s condition in those respects may be indicated by the secondary circumstances of sex, age, or rank, •hardly at all with bent of inclination, except insofar
- 535. as that latent circumstance is indicated by the more manifest one of habitual occupations, •hardly at all with moral sensibility or biases, except insofar as they may be indicated by sex, age, rank, and education, •not at all with religious sensibility and religious biases, except insofar as they may be indicated by religious profession, •not at all with the quantity or quality of sympathetic or antipathetic sensibilities, except insofar as they may be presumed from sex, age, rank, education, lineage, or religious profession, •wholly with regard to habitual occupations, pecu- niary circumstances, and connections in the way of sympathy. Neither the legislator nor the executive magistrate can take into account circumstances whose existence can’t be as- certained or whose degree can’t be measured. They would have no claim to be taken notice of here if it weren’t for the secondary circumstances by which they are indicated and whose influence couldn’t be well understood without them. I explained earlier what these are. 45. . . . .It remains to be considered what the exciting causes are that the legislator has to be concerned with. Anything could happpen to be such a cause in a particular case; but the ones he has principally to attend to are those of the painful or afflictive kind. (The pleasurable ones are not his business except now and then by accident. It’s easy to see why, and I shan’t take up space here explaining the reasons.) The exciting causes that he mainly has to attend to are
- 536. •the harmful acts, which it is his business to prevent and •the punishments, by the fear of which he tries to prevent them. 41 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 6: Circumstances influencing Sensibility He produces only the latter of these, partly by his own special appointment and partly through the special appointment of the judge. If these people want to know what they are doing when they assign punishments, they have to take all these circumstances into account: •the legislator, so that when he applies a certain quantity of punishment to all persons who put themselves in a given predicament he doesn’t inadvertently apply to some of them a much more or much less severe punishment than he intended; and •the judge, so that when he sentences a particular person to a particular punishment he doesn’t inadvertently make the punishment much more or much less severe than he intended, or anyway than the legislator intended. So each of them ought to have before him •a list of the various circumstances by which sensibility can be influenced and •a list of the various kinds and degrees of punishment that he intends to make use of;
- 537. and then, by inter-relating the two lists, to form a detailed estimate of the influence of each circumstance on the effect of each kind and degree of punishment. There are two procedures either of which might be fol- lowed in drawing up this estimate. (i) One is to start with the name of the circumstance, and under it to represent the different influences it exerts over the effects of the various modes of punishment. (ii) The other is to start with the name of the punishment, and under it to represent the different influences that are exerted over its effects by the various circumstances. [Bentham says that (ii) is ‘by far the most useful and commodious’ of the two: the legislator thinks first about the punishment, and defines it as he thinks fit; and then he has to relate this to facts about circumstances that are in no way under his control. He concludes:] But on neither procedure can any such estimate be delivered here.1 46. It may be of use to give some sort of analytic view of the circumstances I have listed, making it easier to see if anything that should have been there has been omitted, and also showing how those that are on the list differ and agree. In the first place, they may be distinguished into primary (those that operate immediately of themselves) and •secondary: those that operate only through the pri- mary ones: sex, age, station in life, education, climate, lineage, government, and religious profession. Everything not on that list is primary. The primary circum- stances divide into those that are innate (namely, radical frame of body and radical frame of mind) and •those that are adventitious, ·i.e. that come to the
- 538. person during the course of his life.· The adventitious circumstances divide into •those that are exterior to him: involving •things he is concerned with (his pecuniary circumstances)1 and 1 [In a footnote Bentham says that he has ‘actually drawn up such an estimate’ though an incomplete one based on procedure (i), and that he plans to take this further in ‘another work’; and refers us to the footnote to paragraph 3 on page 103. Then a further note:] Some of these circumstances give particular labels to the persons they relate to: from bodily imperfections persons are denominated ‘deaf’, ‘dumb’, ‘blind’, and so forth: from insanity, ‘idiots’ and ‘maniacs’; from age, ‘infants’. For all these classes of persons particular provision is made in the legal code. . . . 1 The causes on which a man’s pecuniary circumstances depend don’t all belong to the same class. The absolute quantum of a man’s property does indeed belong to the same class as his pecuniary circumstances in general; so does the profit he makes from the occupation by which he earns his living. But that occupation itself concerns his own person, and comes under the same heading as his habitual pastimes, as do also his habits of expense. [And Bentham then re-classifies some other contributors to pecuniary circumstances. 42 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General
- 539. •persons he is concerned with (his connections in the way of sympathy and antipathy) and •those that are personal. The personal ones divide into •those that concern his actions (namely his habitual occupations) and those that concern his dispositions either of •body (health, strength, hardiness, and bodily imperfection) or of •mind; and the latter divide into •those that concern his understanding: quantity and quality of knowledge, strength of understanding, and insanity; and •those that concern his affections: firmness of mind, steadiness, bent of inclination, moral sensibility, moral biases, religious sensibility, religious biases, sympathetic sensibility, sympathetic biases, antipa- thetic sensibility, and antipathetic biases. Chapter 7: Human Actions in General 1. The business of government is to promote the happiness of the society by punishing and rewarding. The punishing part of its business is more particularly the subject of penal law. In proportion as an act tends to disturb society’s happiness, i.e. in proportion as its tendency is pernicious, it will create a demand for punishment. (Happiness, we have already seen, consists in enjoyment of pleasures and security from pains.) 2. The general tendency of an act is more or less pernicious according to the sum total of its consequences, i.e. according to the difference between the sum of its good consequences and the sum of its bad ones. 3. Here and from here on when I speak of ‘consequences’
- 540. I mean ‘consequences that are material’ [see Glossary]. The number and variety of consequences of any act must be infinite; but only the material ones are worth attending to. Now, the consequences of an act that a legislator can regard as material or important are those that consist of pain or pleasure or produce pain or pleasure. . . . 4. In thinking about the consequences of an act we have to take into account not only •the ones that would have ensued from the act even if there had been no intention but also •the ones that depend on connections between those and the intention. We shall see later that the connection between the intention and certain consequences is a means of producing other consequences. In this lies the difference between rational agency and irrational. 5. What a person intends to be the consequences of an act depends on two things: •the state of the will or intention with respect to the act itself; •the state of the understanding, or perceptive faculties, with regard to the circumstances that do (or may appear to) accompany the act. The perceptive faculty can be in any one of three states regarding these circumstances: •consciousness, when the person’s beliefs about the circumstances are true and don’t omit anything; •unconsciousness, when there are some circumstances 43
- 541. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General that he fails to have any belief about; and •false consciousness, when he believes or imagines that certain circumstances exist which actually don’t. 6. Thus, whenever conduct is being examined with a view to punishment there are four things to consider: (1) the act itself, (2) the circumstances in which it is done, (3) the intentionality that may have accompanied it, and (4) the consciousness, unconsciousness, or false con- sciousness that may have accompanied it. Items (1) and (2) will be the subject of the present chapter; (3) and (4) will be the subjects of chapters 8 and 9 respectively. 7. There are two other things that contribute to the general tendency of an act and to the demand that it creates for punishment: (1) the particular motive or motives that gave birth to the act, and (2) the general disposition that it indicates. These will be the subjects of chapters 10 and 11 respectively. 8. Acts can be classified in various ways for various purposes. Firstly, they can be divided into positive and negative. By ‘positive’ are meant ones that consist in motion or exertion (e.g. striking someone); by ‘negative’ ones that consist in keeping at rest, i.e. forbearing to move or exert oneself in such-and-such circumstances (e.g. not striking on a certain
- 542. occasion). Positive acts are called also acts of commission; negative, acts of omission or forbearance.1 9. Negative acts can be either absolutely negative or only relatively so. Absolutely, when they involve the negation of all positive agency whatsoever, e.g. not striking at all; relatively, when they involve the negation of such-and-such a particular mode of agency, e.g. not striking Jones or not punching one’s fist into the air. 10. Whether an act is positive or negative isn’t automatically settled by the words used to name it. An act that is positive in its nature may be characterised by a negative expression— e.g. not being at rest is the same as moving. And an act that is negative in its nature may be characterised by a positive expression—e.g. omitting to bring food to a person in certain circumstances may be the same as starving him. 11. Secondly, acts can be divided into external (acts of the body) and internal (acts of the mind). To strike is an external or exterior act; to intend to strike is an internal or interior one. 12. Acts of discourse are a sort of mixture of the two— external acts that express the existence of internal ones and wouldn’t be in any way material or have any consequences if they didn’t do so. To say to someone ‘Strike him!’, to write to him ‘Strike him’ and to signal to him to strike him are all acts of discourse. 13. External acts can be divided into transitive and intransitive. A transitive act is one in which the motion is communicated from the person of the agent to some other body that it affects in a way that is regarded as material—e.g. when a man runs against you or throws water in your face.
- 543. 1 The distinction between positive and negative acts runs through the whole system of offences, and sometimes makes a material difference with regard to their consequences. There are reasons for giving the word ‘act’ such an extensive signification, one that may sometimes appear inconsistent. (i) In many cases where no exterior or overt act is performed the state that the mind of the person who is said to have performed an ‘act’ is as truly and directly the result of the will as the plainest and most conspicuous exterior act. Not revealing a conspiracy, for instance, may be as perfectly an act of the will as joining it. (ii) [The second point is that if in a certain context you don’t give any thought to whether or not to do A, your not doing it—though not intentional—may still have ‘material consequences’, and you may properly be regarded as punishable for them. 44 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General An intransitive act is one in which the motion has no material effects on anything but the agent’s own body—e.g. when a man runs, or washes himself.1 14. A transitive act can be said to be ‘in its commencement’ when the motion is still confined to the agent’s body and hasn’t yet been communicated to any other body on which it can have material effects—e.g. when a man lifts his hand to strike you. It can be said to be ‘in its termination’ as soon
- 544. as the motion or impulse has been communicated to some such other body—e.g. when his hand has reached you. If the act involves the motion of a body that is separated from the agent’s body before it reaches the object, it can be said to be, during that interval, ‘in its intermediate progress’—e.g. when a man throws a stone or fires a bullet at you. 15. An act of the intransitive kind can be said to be ‘in its commencement’ when the motion or impulse is still confined to the member or organ ·of the agent’s body· in which it originated. . . . It can be said to be ‘in its termination’ as soon as it reaches some other part of that same body. When a man poisons himself, while he is lifting the poison to his mouth the act is in its commencement; as soon as it has reached his lips it is in its termination. 16. In the fourth place, acts may be distinguished into transient and continued. Thus, to strike is a transient act; to lean, a continued one. To buy, a transient act; to keep in one’s possession, a continued one. 17. In strictness of speech a continued act is different from a repetition of acts. There’s a repetition of acts when there are intervals occupied by acts of different natures; and a continued act when there are no such intervals. To lean, is continued act; to keep striking, a repetition of acts. 17. In strictness of speech a continued act is different from a repetition of acts. There’s a repetition of acts when there are intervals occupied by acts of different natures; and a continued act when there are no such intervals. To lean, is continued act; to keep striking, a repetition of acts. 18. A repetition of acts is not the same as a habit or practice. The label ‘repetition of acts’ can be used however brief the
- 545. intervals are between the acts in question, and however little time is occupied by the sum total of them. We don’t speak of a ‘habit’ unless we think that the acts in question are separated by lengthy intervals and their sum total occupies a consid- erable space of time. For example, a habit of drunkenness isn’t constituted by •having ever so many drinks in a single session, or by •drinking ever so much in a single session; for there to be a habit, the drinking sessions must themselves be frequently repeated. Every habit is a repetition of acts; or—to put it more accurately—when a man has frequently repeated such-and-such acts after considerable intervals, he is said to have contracted a habit; but every repetition of acts is not a habit.2 19. Fifth, acts can be divided into indivisible and divisible. Indivisible acts are merely imaginary; they are easy to con- ceive, but can never be known to be exemplified. A divisible act can be divisible with regard to matter or with regard to motion ·or both·. An act that is •indivisible with regard 1 The distinction arose from the grammarians’ distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.—Intransitive acts are more often called neuter, i.e. neither active nor passive. This is a bad label, because rather than being neither they are both at once. ·e.g. the man actively washes and passively gets washed·.—The class of acts here called ‘intransitive’ include the offences called ‘self regarding’ in paragraph 8 on page 110. 2 Why is it not strictly accurate to say that a habit is an aggregate of acts? Because acts are real entities, whereas habits are a kind of fictitious entities or imaginary beings that are supposed to be constituted by—or to result (as it were) out of—the former.
- 546. 45 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General to matter is the motion or rest of a single atom of matter; one that is •indivisible with regard to motion is the motion of a body from one single atom of space to its immediate neighbour. [Notice that this paragraph concerns events generally, not merely the ones that would ordinarily be called ‘acts’.] Sixth, acts can be divided into simple and complex. Simple acts include striking, leaning, drinking; a complex act consists of many very different simple acts that derive a sort of unity from their relation to some common goal—e.g. giving a dinner, maintaining a child, exhibiting a triumph, bearing arms, holding a court, and so forth. 20. Questions sometimes arise in particular cases: •Did this involve one act or many? and •If more than one act, where did one act end and the next begin? It is now evident that •these questions can often be answered with equal propriety in opposite ways; and that •when they can be answered in only one way, the answer will depend on the nature of the occasion and on why the question is being asked. A man is wounded in two fingers at one stroke—is it one wound or several? A man is beaten at noon and again at 12:08—is it one beating or several? You beat one man and immediately go on to beat another—is this one beating or several? In any of these cases the answer might be ‘One’ for some purposes and ‘Several’ for others. I give these examples
- 547. so as to alert you to the ambiguity of language, so that you won’t harass yourself with unsolvable doubts or harass others with interminable disputes. 21. So much for acts considered in themselves; we now come to the circumstances they can be accompanied by. These have to be taken into the account if anything is to be determined regarding the consequences; without knowing the circumstances we can’t know whether an act is beneficial or harmful or neither. In some circumstances killing a man may be a beneficial act; in others putting food before him may be a pernicious one. 22. The circumstances of an act are. . . what? Any objects whatsoever.1 Take any act whatsoever, there is nothing in the nature of things that excludes any imaginable object from being a circumstance to it. Any given object can be a circumstance to any other. 23. I have already divided an act’s consequences into mate- rial [see Glossary] and immaterial. Its circumstances can be divided in the same way. Now, ‘material’ is a relative term: •applied to an act’s consequences it relates to pain and pleasure; •applied to the circumstances, it relates to the conse- quences. A circumstance can be said to be ‘material’ when it has a visible causal relation to the consequences; ‘immaterial’ when it doesn’t. 24. The consequences of an act are events [see Glossary]. A circumstance can be causally related to an event in any one of four ways:
- 548. (a) in the way of causation or production, when the circumstance is one of those that contribute to the production of the event; 1 The etymology of ‘circumstance’ perfectly matches its meaning: circum stantia, things standing around; objects standing around a given object. Some mathematician defined God as a circle whose centre is everywhere, but whose circumference nowhere. Similarly, the field of circumstances belonging to any act may be defined as a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is the act in question. Well, then, just as any act can for the purpose of discourse be regarded as a centre, so any other act or object whatsoever can be regarded as one of the items that are standing around it. 46 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General (b) in the way of derivation, when the event is one of those that contribute to the production of the circumstance; (c) in the way of collateral connection when that circum- stance and that event are both related to some one object that has been concerned in the production of them both, without either of them having any part in the production of the other; (d) in the way of conjunct influence, when—whether or not they are related in any other way—they have
- 549. concurred in producing some common consequence.1 25. An example may be of use. In 1628 the Duke of Buckingham. . . .received a wound and died: A man named Felton, exasperated at the mal- administration of which the Duke was accused, went from London to Portsmouth, where Buckingham hap- pened then to be, went into his antechamber and, finding him engaged in conversation with several people around him, got close to him, drew a knife and stabbed him. In the effort, the assassin’s hat fell off, and in the crown of it were found scraps of paper with sentences expressing the purpose he came with. The bloody knife was also found on his person. Let us focus on one event, the wound received by Bucking- ham. Then circumstances related to this event in the way of causation or production include •Felton’s drawing out his knife, •his making his way into the chamber, •his going from London to to Portsmouth, •his becoming indignant about Bucking ham’s admin- istration, •that administration itself, •King Charles’s appointing such a minister, and so on, higher and higher without end.2 One circum- stance related to the same event in the way of derivation is the bloodiness of the knife. Circumstances related to it in the way of collateral connection include finding the hat on the ground, finding the sentences in the hat, and writing them. Circumstances related to Felton’s entering the room, going to Portsmouth etc. in the way of conjunct influence
- 550. include the situation and conversations of the people around Buckingham, because they also contributed to the event by preventing Buckingham from putting himself on his guard on the first appearance of the intruder. 1 This classification may be illustrated by animal generation. Production: father → son. Derivation: son → father. Collateral connection: siblings. Conjunct influence: marriage and copulation. [Bentham sketches another illustration which he might have used but decided not to because] while it made the subject a little clearer to one man out of a hundred, it might—like the mathematical formulae we see sometimes employed for that purpose—make it more obscure and formidable for the other ninety-nine. 2 The more remote a connection of this sort is, of course, the more obscure. It will often happen that a connection the idea of which would at first sight seen extravagant and absurd is made highly probable—indeed indisputable—merely by putting in a few intermediate circumstances. At Rome in 390 BC a goose starts cackling; in 1610 AD a king of France is murdered. Considering these two events on their own, what can appear more extravagant than the notion that one should have had any influence in producing the other? Fill up the gap, bring to mind a few intermediate circumstances, and nothing can appear more probable. The cackling of geese when the Gauls were creeping up on the Capitol saved the Roman commonwealth; if it had not survived and gained ascendancy over most of the nations of Europe, France included, it wouldn’t have been humanly possible for the Christian religion to establish itself as it did in France. Even if Henry IV
- 551. had existed, no-one could have had the motive to kill him that his actual assassin did, because that involved beliefs about the king’s relationship to that religion. 47 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 7: Human Actions in General 26. These relations don’t all attach to an event with equal certainty. Obviously, every event must have some circumstance—actually, an indefinite multitude of circumstances—related to it in the way of production; and it must of course have even more circumstances related to it in the way of collateral connection. But it doesn’t appear to be necessary that every event should have circumstances related to it in the way of derivation or, therefore, that it should have any related to it in the way of conjunct influence. But of the circumstances of all kinds that actually do attach to an event, only a very few can be discovered by the utmost exertion of the human faculties, and even fewer actually come to our attention. How many any individual discovers will depend on the strength •of his intellectual powers and •of his inclination. So it seems that the number and descriptions of the circumstances belonging to an act that appear to a person to be material will be determined by •the nature of things themselves and •the strength or weakness of that person’s faculties. 27. Before moving into the consideration of particular sorts of acts with their particular circumstances, it seemed necessary to say this much about acts and their circumstances in gen- eral. Every notion of an offence has to include •an act of some
- 552. sort and •certain circumstances that enter into the essence of the offence because they contribute by their conjunct influence to the production of its consequences. ·On this page· I shall label these as ‘criminative’ circumstances. Other circumstances, ·which don’t enter into the notion of the offence, i.e. into the meaning of its name·, combine with the act and the criminative set of circumstances to produce still further consequences. If these additional consequences are beneficial, the circumstances to which they owe their birth are called ‘exculpative’ or ‘extenuative’; if they are harmful, the circumstances giving rise to them are called ‘aggravative’. ·THE REST OF THE PARAGRAPH, UNDOCTORED·: Of all these different sets of circumstances, the criminative are connected with the consequences of the original offence, in the way of production; with the act, and with one another, in the way of conjunct influence; the consequences of the original offence with them, and with the act respectively, in the way of derivation; the consequences of the modified offence, with the criminative, exculpative, and extenuative circumstances respectively, in the way also of derivation; these different sets of circumstances, with the consequences of the modified act or offence, in the way of production; and with one another (in respect of the consequences of the modified act or offence) in the way of conjunct influence. Lastly, whatever circumstances can be seen to be connected with the consequences of the offence, whether directly in the way of derivation, or obliquely in the way of collateral affinity (to wit, in virtue of its being connected, in the way of derivation, with some of the circumstances with which they stand connected in the same manner) bear a material relation to the offence in the way of evidence, they may accordingly be called evidentiary circumstances, and may become of use, by being held forth on occasion as so many proofs, indications, or evidences of its having been
- 553. committed. 48 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 8: Intentionality Chapter 8: Intentionality 1. So much for the first two items on which an action’s bad tendency of may depend—•the act itself and •the general assemblage of circumstances that may have accompanied it. I now turn to the ways in which the particular circumstance of intention may be involved. 2. First, then, the agent’s intention or will may be directed either at •the act itself or at •its consequences; and the one the intention aims at may be called ‘intentional’—an ‘intentional act’ or ‘intentional consequences’.1 If it aims at both the act and consequences, the whole action may be said to be ‘intentional’. And of course if either of those items was not aimed at by the intention, it can be said to be ‘unintentional’. 3. An act can be intentional without the consequences’ being so: you may intend to touch a man without intending to hurt him, though it turns out that you do hurt him. 4. And the consequences of an act can be intentional without the act’s being intentional throughout—i.e. without its being intentional in every stage of it—but this is less common. Here is an example: You intend to hurt a man by running against him and pushing him down; you run towards him,
- 554. but a second man suddenly comes between you and the first man, and before you can stop yourself you run against the second man and by him push down the first. 5. But an act’s consequences can’t be intentional unless the act itself is intentional, at least in the first stage. If the act isn’t intentional in the first stage then it is not an act of yours, so there’s no intention on your part to produce the consequences—I mean the individual consequences. All you can have had is a distant intention to produce similar consequences by some act of yours at a future time; or else, without any intention, a bare wish to see such an event take place. . . .2 6. Second. A consequence can be either •directly intentional or only •obliquely so. •Directly or lineally intentional: the prospect of producing it was a link in the chain of causes by which the person was determined to do the act. •Obliquely or collaterally intentional: the person foresaw the consequence as likely to ensue if he performed the act, but the prospect of producing it wasn’t a link in the aforesaid chain. 1 In this context the words ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ are commonly employed, but I abstain from these because they are so ambiguous. A ‘voluntary’ act may be any act in the performance of which the will has been involved (= ‘intentional’); or any act in the production of which the will was determined by motives that weren’t painful in nature (= ‘unconstrained’ or ‘uncoerced’); or any act in the production of which the will was determined by motives—whether pleasurable or painful—that occurred to the agent himself without being suggested by anyone else (= ‘spontaneous’). The word
- 555. ‘involuntary’ is sometimes used in opposition to ‘intentional’ or to ‘unconstrained’, but not in opposition to ‘spontaneous’. It might be useful to confine the meaning of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ to one very narrow case, which I’ll mention in the next note. 2 [Bentham has a footnote here going into further details that might be thought trivial. The first stage of a positive act consists in motion, which has three aspects to which correspond three intentions: did he intend to move his whole arm or only his fore-arm? to move it in that direction? to move it as fast as that? This fine-tuning might sometimes be relevant to proceedings in a criminal trial, Bentham says, and might also, ‘in the hands of an expert metaphysician’, play a part in ‘an exhaustive analysis of the possible varieties of mechanical inventions’.] 49 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 8: Intentionality 7. Third. An incident that is directly intentional may be so either •ultimately or only •mediately. •Ultimately intentional: it stands last of all exterior events in the aforesaid chain of motives; so that the agent would have aimed to produce it even if there were no prospect of its producing anything else in its turn. •Only mediately intentional: when the prospect of producing some other incident forms a subsequent link in the same chain; so that the agent would not have been motivate to aim at the former if he hadn’t expected it to produce the latter.
- 556. 8. Fourth. When an incident is directly intentional, it may either be exclusively or inexclusively so. •Exclusively intentional: only that very individual incident would have answered the agent’s purpose; no other incident had any share in directing is will to the act in question. •Inexclusively intentional: there was some other incident the prospect of which was acting on the agent’s will at the same time. 9. Fifth. When an incident is inexclusively intentional, it may be either conjunctively or disjunctively or indiscriminately so. •Conjunctively intentional with regard to the other incident: the agent intended to produce both. •Disjunctively: he intended to produce either the one or the other—he didn’t care which—but not both. •Indiscriminately: the agent didn’t care whether he produced one or the other or both. 10. Sixth. When two incidents are disjunctively intentional, they may be so with or without preference. . . .1 11. One example will make all this clear. King William II of England, when stag-hunting, received from Sir Walter Tyrrel a wound from which he died. Let us take this case, and diversify it with a variety of suppositions involving the distinctions I have just presented. (i) Tyrrel did not so much as entertain a thought of the king’s death; or looked on it as an event of which there was no danger. Either way, the incident of his killing the king was altogether unintentional. (ii) He saw a stag running that way and saw the king riding that way at the same time; he aimed to kill the stag and did not wish to kill the king. But he saw that if he shot,
- 557. he was as likely to kill the king as to kill the stag; yet he went ahead and shot, and killed the king accordingly. In this case his killing the king was intentional, but obliquely so. (iii) He killed the king on account of the hatred he bore him, and for no other reason than the pleasure of destroying him. In this case the incident of the king’s death was not only directly but ultimately intentional. (i) He killed the king, fully intending so to do, not for any hatred he bore him but for the sake of robbing him when dead. In this case the king’s death was directly but not ultimately intentional; it was mediately intentional. (v) He intended neither more nor less than to kill the king; he had no other aim or wish. In this case his killing the king was exclusively as well as directly intentional—meaning exclusively with regard to every other material incident. (vi) Sir Walter shot the king in the right leg when the king was pulling a thorn out of it with his left hand. He intended by shooting the arrow into the leg through the hand to cripple 1 There is a difference between •the case where a consequence is altogether unintentional and •that in which it is disjunctively intentional with reference to another, with the other being preferred. . . . All these are distinctions need to be attended to in the use of the particle ‘or’, a word of very ambiguous import and of great importance in legislation. 50 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 8:
- 558. Intentionality the king in both those limbs at the same time. In this case the king’s being shot in the leg was intentional, and was so conjunctively with another incident that did not happen, namely his being shot in the hand. [Bentham then adds (vii)- (ix) three variations on this hand/leg scenario, illustrating concepts presented in paragraphs 9 and 10 above.] 12. An act may be unintentional in any stage of it, though intentional in the preceding stage. . . . (See paragraph 14 on page 46.) But if it was unintentional in the last stage, its being or not being intentional in any preceding stage is immaterial with respect to the consequences. The only point with respect to which it is material is the proof ·about what he intended·. In most cases the more stages the act is unintentional in, the more apparent it is that it was unintentional with respect to the last stage. If a man, intending to strike you on the cheek, strikes you in the eye and puts it out, it will probably be hard for him to prove that he didn’t intend to strike you in the eye. It will probably be easier if he didn’t intend to strike you at all, or didn’t intend to strike anything . 13. We often hear men speak of a ‘good intention’, of a ‘bad intention’; and the goodness or badness of a man’s intention is a circumstance on which great stress is generally laid. It is indeed of considerable importance when properly understood, but these phrases are utterly ambiguous and obscure. Nothing can be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’, strictly speaking, unless it is so •in itself, which is the case only with pain or pleasure, or •because of its effects, which is the case only with things that cause or prevent pain or pleasure. But in a figurative and less proper way of speaking a thing may be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ •in consideration of its cause. Now, the effects of an intention to do such-and-such an act are what I have been calling its ‘consequences’; and the causes
- 559. of an intention are called ‘motives’. So a man’s intention on any occasion can be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because of the act’s consequences or because of his motives. . . . The goodness or badness of the consequences depends on the circumstances, and these are not objects of the man’s intention. A man intends the act, and by his intention produces the act; but he doesn’t intend the circumstances, and just because they are circumstances of his act he doesn’t produce them. (He may have produced some of them by previous intentions and acts, but in this present act he takes them as he finds them.) Acts and their consequences are objects of the will as well as of the understanding; circumstances as such are objects of the understanding only. [Why ‘circumstances, as such’? Because a circumstance might have been an object of the will in its role as a consequence of an earlier act.] All our man can do with these, as such, is to know or not to know them, i.e. to be conscious of them or not conscious of them. Thus, what is to be said about the goodness or badness of a man’s intention as resulting from the consequences of his act comes under the heading of Consciousness (chapter 9), and what is to be said about of the goodness or badness his intention as resulting from his motive comes under the heading of Motives (chapter 6). 51 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 9: Consciousness Chapter 9: Consciousness
- 560. 1. That was about how the •will or intention can be involved in the production of any incident; now I turn to the part that the •understanding or perceptive faculty may have played in relation to such an incident. 2. A certain act has been performed intentionally; it was attended with certain circumstances on which certain of its consequences depended; and some of those were purely physical in nature. Now then, take any one of these cir- cumstances C: at the time of performing the act from which those consequences ensued, a man may have been either conscious or unconscious of C; he may have been aware of it or not aware; it may have been present to his mind or not present. In the former case the act may be said to have been an ‘advised’ act with respect to C; in the other case, an ‘unadvised’ one. 3. An act can be advised or unadvised with respect to circumstance C because the agent is aware or unaware of •the existence of C or •the materiality of C. 4. Obviously, a circumstance of a present act may exist in the present, the past, or the future. 5. An unadvised act is either •heedless or •not heedless. It is called ‘heedless’ if it is thought that a person of ordinary pru- dence and an ordinary share of benevolence would probably have attended to and reflected on the material circumstances sufficiently to have been led to prevent the harmful incident from taking place; and ‘not heedless’ if that is not thought to be the case. 6. Whether a man did or didn’t suppose the existence or materiality of a given circumstance, it may be that he did suppose the existence and materiality of some circumstance
- 561. that either didn’t exist or wasn’t material. In such a case the act may be said to be ‘misadvised’ with respect to the imagined circumstance, and it may be said that in this case there has been an erroneous supposition or a mis-supposal. 7. A circumstance whose existence is thus erroneously supposed may be material either •in the way of prevention: its effect or tendency, if it had existed, would have been to prevent the obnoxious consequences; or •in the way of compensation: the effect or tendency would have been to produce, also, consequences whose beneficialness would have outweighed the harmfulness of the others. 8. Obviously such an imaginary circumstance may have been supposed to be present, past, or future relative to the time of the act. 9. To return to the Tyrrel example that I dropped on page 52, ·with some further suppositions·. (x) Tyrrel intended to shoot in the direction in which he shot, but he didn’t know that the king was riding so near that way. In this case his act of shooting was unadvised with respect to the existence of the circumstance of the king’s being so near. (xi) He knew that the king was riding that way; but he didn’t know how probable it was that the arrow would reach the king at that distance. In this case the act was unadvised with respect to the materiality of the circumstance.
- 562. (xii) Somebody had dipped the arrow in poison,without Tyrrel’s knowing this. In this case the act was unadvised with respect to the existence of a past circumstance. 52 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 9: Consciousness (xiii) At the very instant that Tyrrel drew the bow, the king (screened from his view by some bushes) was riding furiously in such a way as to meet the arrow head-on, this being a circumstance that Tyrrel didn’t know of. In this case the act was unadvised with respect to the existence of a present circumstance. (xiv) The king was too far from court to be able to get anyone to dress his wound until the next day; and Tyrrel was not aware of this circumstance. In this case the act was unadvised with respect to what was then a future circumstance. (xv) Tyrrel knew of the king’s riding that way, being so near, and so forth; but being deceived by the foliage of the bushes, he thought he saw a bank between the place where he was and the place to which the king was riding. In this case the act was misadvised, being based on the mis-supposal of a preventive circumstance. (xvi) Tyrrel knew that everything was as above, nor was he deceived by the supposition of any preventive circumstance. But he •believed the king to be an usurper, and supposed he was coming up to attack a person whom Tyrrel believed to be the rightful king, and who was riding by Tyrrel’s side. In this
- 563. case the act was also misadvised, based on the mis-supposal of a compensative circumstance. 10. Notice the connection between intentionality and con- sciousness. When the act itself is intentional, and advised with respect to the existence and the materiality of all the circumstances in relation to a given consequence C, and there is no mis-supposal with regard to any preventive circumstance, then consequence C must also be intentional. In other words, advisedness regarding circumstances, if clear from the mis-supposal of any preventive circumstance, extends the intentionality from the act to the consequences. Those consequences may be either directly or only obliquely intentional, but they can’t be not intentional. 11. Let us go on with the example. If Tyrrel •intended to shoot in the direction in which the king was riding, •knew that the king was coming to meet the arrow, and •knew the probability of the king’s being shot in the same part ·of his body· where he was shot, or in another part equally dangerous,. . . .and •was not misled by the erroneous supposition of a circumstance that would, ·if it had existed·, have prevented the shot from taking place,. . . .it is clear that he couldn’t have not intended the king’s death. Perhaps he didn’t positively wish it, but still in a certain sense he intended it. 12. What heedlessness is in the case of an unadvised act, rashness is in the case of a misadvised one. A misadvised
- 564. act may be called ‘rash’ when the case is thought to be such that an ordinarily prudent and ordinarily benevolent person would •have attended to and thought about the imagined circumstance sufficiently to realise that it was nonexistent, improbable or immaterial, and would thus •have been led to prevent the harmful incident from taking place. 13. In ordinary discourse, when a man does something whose consequences turn out to be harmful, it is often said that his intention was good or bad. While this is said about the intention, what is usually at work here is a supposition about the nature of the motive. Although the act turns out to be harmful, it said to be done with a good intention when it is supposed to arise from a motive which is looked on as a good motive, and with a bad intention when it is supposed to arise from a motive that is looked on as a bad motive. But the nature of the consequences intended [by 53 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 9: Consciousness which Bentham must mean ‘the nature of the intention’] is perfectly distinguishable from the nature of the motive that gave birth to the intention, though they are intimately connected. The intention counts as being a good one if the consequences of the act would have been ben- eficial if they had turned out to be what the agent thought them likely to be. So the intention might properly be called a good one even if
- 565. •its consequences turned out to be harmful and •the motive that gave birth to it was what is called a bad one. And in the same way the intention may be bad even if •its consequences turned out to be good and •the motive that gave birth to it was a good one. [This is the first time in the work that Bentham has spoken of something as being a good motive rather than as being ‘looked on as a good motive’.] 14. [This paragraph deplores at great length people’s ten- dency to say ‘intention’ when they mean ‘motive’.] 15. An example will make this clear. [Here ‘this’ refers to the penultimate sentence of 13. above.] Out of malice a man prosecutes you for a crime of which he wrongly believes you to be guilty. The consequences of his conduct are harmful to you (shame and anxiety at least, and the evil of the punishment if you are convicted), and not beneficial to anyone. The man’s motive was also what is called a bad one: for malice will be allowed by everybody to be a bad motive. But if the consequences of his conduct had turned out to be what he believed them likely to be, they would have been good; because they would have included the punishment of a criminal, which is a benefit to everyone who could become a victim of a similar crime. . . . I’ll say more about motives in the next chapter. 16. An intention that isn’t bad may be called ‘innocent’ even if it isn’t outright good. Accordingly, even if the consequences have turned out to be harmful, and whatever the motive may have been, the intention may be called innocent if the agent •didn’t know about one of the circumstances on which the harmfulness of the consequences depended; or
- 566. •wrongly thought that some circumstance would serve to prevent or to outweigh the mischief. 17. A few words for the purpose of applying what has been said to the Roman law. [Bentham here presents more than a few words on the proper use of various Latin words that were sometimes used by lawyers. We can safely spare ourselves all this.] 18. The definitions and distinctions that I have presented ·in this chapter· are not only of •theoretical significance; they can be widely and constantly •used in moral discourse as well as in legislative practice. The degree and bias of a man’s intention, ·and· the absence or presence of conscious- ness or mis-supposal on his part, go a long way towards •settling whether the consequences of his act are good or bad, and for this and other reasons towards •creating a great demand for punishment (see chapter 13). The presence of intention regarding consequence Co, and of consciousness with regard to circumstance Ci, of the act, will constitute essential ingredients in the composition of this or that offence; and consciousness regarding other circumstances will contribute to an offence’s gravity. And nearly always the absence of intention regarding certain consequences and the absence of consciousness, or the presence of mis-supposal, regarding certain circumstances, will constitute grounds of extenuation. 54 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives
- 567. Chapter 10: Motives 1. Different senses of ‘motive’ 1. It is an acknowledged truth that every kind of act—and therefore every kind of offence—is apt to have a different character and lead to different effects according to the nature of the motive that gives birth to it. So we need to look into the various motives by which human conduct is liable to be influenced. 2. In the broadest sense that the word is ever given with reference to a thinking being, a motive is anything that can contribute to give birth to, or even to prevent, any kind of action. Now an action of a thinking being is the act either of the body or only of the mind; and an act of the mind is an act either of the intellectual faculty or of the will. [Bentham then mentions motives leading to ‘acts of the intellectual faculty’ that stay within the understanding and have no influence on the will. Those motives have nothing to do with the production of pleasure or pain; they are irrelevant to our present purposes; and Bentham sets them aside.] 3. The only motives we have any concern with are ones that are of the right kind to act on the will. By a motive in this sense of the word, then, is to be understood anything whatsoever which, by influencing the will of a sensitive being, is supposed to serve as a means of determining him to act, or voluntarily to forbear to act, on any occasion.1 [The indented passage is verbatim from Bentham.] Motives of
- 568. this sort, in contradistinction to the former, may be called practi- cal motives, or motives applying to practice. 4. Owing to the poverty and unsettled state of language, ‘motive’ is used indiscriminately to denote two kinds of objects which have to be distinguished if the subject is to be better understood. Sometimes it is used to denote any of those really existing incidents from which the act in question is supposed to arise; in these uses the word has what may be called its ‘literal’ or ‘unfigurative’ sense. At other times it is used to denote a certain fictitious entity, a passion, an affection of the mind, an ideal [see Glossary] being which, on the occurrence of any such ·really existing· incident, is considered as operating on the mind and prompting it to take the course that the influence of the incident is impelling it towards. Motives of this class are avarice, indolence, benevolence, and so forth, as we’ll see in more detail further on. This latter may be called the ‘figurative’ sense of ‘motive’. 5. The real incidents to which the name ‘motive’ is given are of two kinds. •The internal perception of an individual lot [see Glossary] of pleasure or pain, the expectation of which is thought likely to determine you to act in such-and-such a manner—e.g. the pleasure of acquiring a certain sum of money, or the pain of exerting yourself on a certain occasion. •Any external event the happening of which is regarded as tending to bring about the experience of such pleasure or pain—e.g. the coming up of a winning lottery ticket owned 1 When the effect or tendency of a motive is to determine a man to forbear to act, it may seem improper to use the term ‘motive’, since strictly speaking ‘motive’ means ‘something that disposes an object to move’. But we have no acceptable alternative to that improper term. By way of justification, or at least apology, for this popular use of ‘motive’ I point out that even forbearance to act, or the negation of motion (i.e. of bodily
- 569. motion), when it is voluntary, presupposes an act of the will that is as much a positive act, as much a case of motion, as any other act of a thinking substance. 55 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives by you, or the breaking out of a fire in the house you are in, making it necessary for you to get out. 6. Two other senses of the term ‘motive’ need also to be distinguished. ‘Motive’ refers necessarily to action: it is a pleasure, pain, or other episode that prompts ·the person· to action. In one sense of the word, then, a motive must be previous to such an event [here = ‘such an action’]. But a man can’t be governed by a motive unless he looks beyond the event that is called his action, looking to its consequences; it is only in this way that the idea of pleasure, pain, or any other event can give birth to it. So he must always look to some event later than the act he is contemplating performing—an event that doesn’t yet exist. . . . Now, because it is always hard and usually unnecessary to distinguish two objects as intimately connected as (a) the later possible object that is thus looked forward to, and (b) the present existing object or event that takes place when a man looks forward to (a) the other, they are both spoken of as ‘motive’. To distinguish them we
- 570. may call (a) a motive in prospect and (b) as a motive in esse [= ‘a now-existent motive’; but see the footnote to 7]; and each of these has exterior as well as internal versions. Consider this case: A fire breaks out in your neighbour’s house; you are afraid of its extending to your own house; you are afraid that if you stay in it you will be burnt; so you run out of it. Your running out of the house is the act; the other items are all motives to it. •The fire’s breaking out in your neighbour’s house is an external motive, and a motive in esse; •the idea or belief of the probability of the fire’s extend- ing to your own house, •the idea or belief of your being burnt if you stay indoors, and •the pain you feel at the thought of such a catastrophe, are all internal events, but still in esse; •the fire’s actually extending to your own house, and •your being actually burnt by it, are external motives in prospect; •the pain you would feel at seeing your house burning, •the pain you would feel while you were burning, are internal motives in prospect. These last may in the upshot come to be in esse, but then of course they will cease to act as motives.
- 571. 7. Of all these motives that jointly produce the action, the one that stand nearest to it is the internal motive in esse that consists in the expectation of the internal motive in prospect—the pain or uneasiness you feel at the thought of being burnt.1 All other motives are more or less remote. The motives in prospect are remote in proportion as their expected time of happening is more distant from—and thus later than—the time of the act, and the motives in esse are remote in proportion as their time of happening is more distant from—and thus earlier than—the time of the act. ·STAR T OF FOOTNOTE· Under the term esse we must include •past as well as •present existence. They are equally real, in comparison with what is still in the future. Language is seriously deficient in not enabling us to distinguish 1 In a footnote Bentham says that it may be hard to separate •the expectation from •the pain that accompanies it, and that it isn’t important to do so. Similarly with ‘the other kinds of motives’: sometimes we need to consider them separately, but] it will often be scarcely practicable and not always material to avoid confounding them, as they always have been confounded up to now. 56 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives •existence as opposed to unreality precisely from
- 572. •present existence as opposed to past. The English word ‘existence’ and esse (adopted by lawyers from Latin) have the inconvenience of appearing to confine the existence in question to some single period considered as being present. ·END OF FOOTNOTE· 8. As I remarked earlier, we have no concern here with motives whose influence does not reach beyond the under- standing. So if we have any concern with any objects that are spoken of as motives with reference to the understanding [Bentham’s phrase], it can only be with ones which through the medium of •the understanding influence •the will. That is the only way in which something can in a practical sense act as a motive on the strength of its influence on the sentiment of belief. . . . When we talk of giving reasons, we are often pointing to motives such as these. Your neighbour’s house is on fire; I observe to you •that at the lower part of your neighbour’s house is some wood-work that joins onto yours, •that the flames have caught this wood-work, and so forth. I’m saying this in order to dispose you to believe, as I do, that if you stay in your house much longer you will be burnt. In doing this, I suggest motives to your understanding; and these motives, by their tendency to cause or strengthen a pain that operates on you as an internal motive in esse, combine to act as motives on the will. 2. No motives constantly good or constantly bad 9. In all this chain of motives, the principal or original link seems to be the last internal motive in prospect; it is to this that •the other motives in prospect owe their materiality and •the action owes its existence. [Bentham actually wrote ‘and
- 573. the immediately acting motive owes its existence’; but this passage falls to pieces unless he meant ‘the action’. The phrase ‘immediately acting’ doesn’t occur anywhere else in this work.] This motive in prospect is always some pleasure (which the act is expected to produce or continue) or some pain (which the act is expected to prevent or discontinue). A motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or pain, operating in a certain manner. 10. Now, pleasure is in itself a good; indeed it’s the only good if we set aside immunity from pain; and pain is in itself an evil, and without exception the only evil; or else ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have no meaning! And this is equally true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure. So it follows—immediately and incontestably—that there is no such thing as a sort of motive that is in itself a bad one. Let a man’s motive be ill-will, malice, envy, cruelty—it is still a kind of pleasure that is his motive, the pleasure he takes at the thought of the pain that he sees or expects to see his adversary undergo. Even this wretched pleasure, taken by itself, is good. It may be faint; it may be short; it must be impure; but while it lasts, and before bad consequences arrive, it’s as good as any other pleasure that isn’t more intense. 11. Yet actions are commonly said to come from good or bad motives—always meaning internal motives. This way of speaking is far from accurate, and because it is apt to occur in connection with almost every kind of offence, we need to settle its precise meaning and observe how far it squares with the truth of things. 12. With regard to anything that isn’t itself either pain or
- 574. pleasure: if it is good, that is because it tends to produce pleasure or avert pain; if it is bad, that is because it tends to produce pain or avert pleasure. This holds for everything, including motives. Now the fact is that from one and the 57 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives same individual motive, and from every kind of motive, there may come some good actions, some bad ones, and others that are indifferent [see Glossary]. I will now show this with respect to all the different kinds of motives, as determined by the various kinds of pleasures and pains. 13. This analysis will be found to be difficult, largely because of a certain perversity of structure that prevails more or less throughout all languages. . . . To speak of motives we must call them by their names, but it is rare to meet with a motive whose name expresses only that and nothing more. Along with the motive’s name, a proposition is tacitly involved imputing to it a certain quality; and in many cases the quality will appear to include that very goodness or badness that we are here inquiring into. The name of the motive is a word that is employed—as they commonly say—only •‘in a good sense’: meaning that it conjoins the idea of the motive with an idea of approval—i.e. of pleasure or satisfaction that the name-user has at the thought of such a motive; or •‘in a bad sense’: meaning that it conjoins the idea of the motive with an idea of disapproval—i.e. of
- 575. displeasure that the name-user has at the thought of such a motive. Such approval is likely enough to be based on the opinion that the object in question is good, and according to the principle of utility that’s what it ought to be based on; similarly with disapproval and the opinion that the object in question is bad. Some motives are almost always named by words that are used only in a good sense—e.g. the motives of piety and honour. The result is that if a man wants to characterise as ‘bad’ an action that he says is apt to arise from such a motive, he must appear to be guilty of a contradiction in terms. And there are many more motives that are hard to name except by names that used only in a bad sense—e.g. lust and avarice. (For the reason, see the footnote to paragraph 17 on page 76.) If a man describes as ‘good’ or ‘indifferent’ actions that he mentions as apt to result from lust or avarice, he too must appear to be guilty of a similar contradiction.1 This perverse association of ideas is bound to throw great difficulties in the way of the inquiry now before us. Confining himself to the terms most in use, a man can hardly avoid perpetually seeming to contradict himself. His propositions will appear •false and also •adverse to utility: as paradoxes they will arouse contempt; as harmful paradoxes, indignation. The truths he labours to convey, however important and salutary, do his reader no good and do himself harm. To conquer this inconvenience completely, he has only one remedy—nasty medicine!—namely to lay aside the old terminology and invent a new one. Happy the man whose language is ductile enough to permit him this resource! To lessen the inconvenience, where that method of conquering it is impracticable, his only resource is •to enter into a long
- 576. discussion, •to state the whole matter at large, •to confess that for serious reasons he has violated the established laws of language, and •to throw himself on the mercy of his readers. (Fortunately, language sometimes lets us use two words instead of one, avoiding the inconvenience of 1 This imperfection of language is the main source of the violent clamours that have from time to time been raised against those ingenious moralists who, travelling off the beaten track of moral theorising, have found more or less difficulty in disentangling themselves from the shackles of ordinary language; for example, Rochefoucault, Mandeville and Helvetius. Doctrines that commonly arose from a lack of discernment on the part of the author, or a lack of skill in matters of language, or perhaps in a few cases from a lack of honesty on the part of a commentator, have often been attributed to the unsoundness of their opinions and—with still greater injustice—to the corruption of their hearts. 58 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives inventing new words. Replacing ‘lust’ by ‘sexual desire’ we have a neutral expression; we can replace ‘avarice’ by the neutral expression ‘pecuniary interest’. This is the course I have taken. In these instances, indeed, the combination isn’t novel; the only novelty consists in steady adherence to the one neutral expression, entirely rejecting the terms whose meaning is infected by adventitious and unsuitable ideas.) This perverse association of ideas is bound to throw
- 577. great difficulties in the way of the inquiry now before us. Confining himself to the terms most in use, a man can hardly avoid perpetually seeming to contradict himself. His propositions will appear •false and also •adverse to utility: as paradoxes they will arouse contempt; as harmful paradoxes, indignation. The truths he labours to convey, however important and salutary, do his reader no good and do himself harm. To conquer this inconvenience completely, he has only one remedy—nasty medicine!—namely to lay aside the old terminology and invent a new one. Happy the man whose language is ductile enough to permit him this resource! To lessen the inconvenience, where that method of conquering it is impracticable, his only resource is •to enter into a long discussion, •to state the whole matter at large, •to confess that for serious reasons he has violated the established laws of language, and •to throw himself on the mercy of his readers. (Fortunately, language sometimes lets us use two words instead of one, avoiding the inconvenience of inventing new words. Replacing ‘lust’ by ‘sexual desire’ we have a neutral expression; we can replace ‘avarice’ by the neutral expression ‘pecuniary interest’. This is the course I have taken. In these instances, indeed, the combination isn’t novel; the only novelty consists in steady adherence to the one neutral expression, entirely rejecting the terms whose meaning is infected by adventitious and unsuitable ideas.) 3. Matching motives against pleasures and pains 14. From the pleasures of the senses considered all together, arises the motive that can be given the neutral name ‘phys- ical desire’; in a bad sense it is called ‘sensuality’. It has no name used in a good sense. Nothing more can be said about the pleasures of the senses in general; they have to be divided up according to the senses that are involved, ·which I shall do in 15–16.·1
- 578. 15. Corresponding to the pleasures of the taste or palate is a motive that has to be given the round-about name ‘love of the pleasures of the palate’, because there isn’t a ·one-word· name referring to it in a neutral sense. In particular cases it is called ‘hunger’; in others, ‘thirst’.2 The phrase ‘love of good cheer’ expresses this motive but seems to go beyond, •implying that the pleasure is to be enjoyed in company, and •involving a kind of sympathy. In a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘greediness’, ‘voraciousness’, ‘gluttony’; in some others. . . .it can be represented by ‘daintiness’. It has no name used in a good sense. •A boy who has plenty to eat steals a cake out of a shop, and eats it. His motive will be universally deemed a bad one; and if we ask what the motive is, the answer may be ‘gluttony’. •A boy buys a cake out of a shop, and eats it. In 1 I have put into my catalogue of motives, corresponding to the several sorts of pains and pleasures, such as have occurred to me. I don’t claim that it is complete. To make sure of its being so, I would have to go through the dictionary from beginning to end. . . . 2 Hunger and thirst, considered as motives, imply not so much the desire for a particular kind of pleasure as the desire for removing a positive kind of pain. They don’t extend to the desire for the kind of pleasure that depends on the choice of food and drink. 59 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives
- 579. this case his motive can scarcely be looked on as either good or bad. . . . But in both cases his motive is the same: it is neither more nor less than the motive corresponding to the pleasures of the palate.1 16. To the pleasures of the sexual sense corresponds the motive which in a neutral sense may be called ‘sexual desire’. In a bad sense it is spoken of as ‘lasciviousness’ and given a variety of other names of reproof. It has no name used in a good sense.2 •A man rapes a virgin. His motive is confidently labelled as ‘lust’, ‘lasciviousness’, or the like, and is universally regarded as a bad one. •The same man, at another time, exercises the rights of marriage with his wife. In this case the motive may be regarded as a good one, or at least as indifferent [see Glossary], and people would hesitate to call it ‘lust’ etc. Yet it may be that in both cases the motive is precisely the same, namely sexual desire. 17. The other pleasures of sense are of too little consequence to have given separate names to the corresponding motives. 18. Corresponding to the pleasures of curiosity is the motive also called ‘curiosity’, and could instead be called ‘the love of novelty’, or ‘the love of experiment’; and on particular occasions it may be called ‘sport’ or ‘play’. •A boy, wanting to do something interesting, reads an improving book; the motive may be regarded as a good one, and certainly not a bad one. •He sets his top spinning; the motive is regarded as at any rate not a bad one. •He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd; his motive may now be described as ‘abominable’. Yet in all three cases the motive
- 580. may be the very same—namely curiosity. 19. Corresponding to the pleasures of wealth is the sort of motive that can be labelled in a neutral sense as ‘pecuniary interest’; in a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘avarice’, ‘covetousness’, ‘rapacity’, or ‘lucre’ [see Glossary]; in other cases ‘niggardliness’; in a good sense—but only in particular cases—‘economy’ and ‘frugality; and in some cases the word ‘industry’ may be applied to it. In some particular cases it is called ‘parsimony’, this being a sense that is nearly indifferent but leaning towards the bad side. •For money you gratify a man’s hatred, by putting his adversary to death. •For money you plough his field for him. In the first case your motive is called ‘lucre’, and is regarded as corrupt and abominable; in the second case, for lack of a proper label it is called ‘industry’, and is regarded as innocent and perhaps downright meritorious. Yet the motive is in both cases precisely the same—pecuniary interest. 20. The pleasures of skill are not sufficiently distinct or important to have given any name to the corresponding motive. 21. To the pleasures of friendship corresponds a motive which in a neutral sense may be called ‘the desire to ingrati- ate oneself’. In a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘servility’; 1 It won’t be worthwhile in every case to give an example in which the action would be indifferent: if good as well as bad actions can come from the same motive, it is easy to conceive that indifferent ones can come from it also. 2 ‘Love’ sometimes includes this idea ·in its meaning·; but it can’t serve the purpose of picking it out separately, because it
- 581. can also include at least three other motives, namely the love of beauty corresponding to •the pleasures of the eye, and the motives corresponding to •the pleasure of friendship and •the pleasure of benevolence. We speak of the love of children, of the love of parents, of the love of God— these pious uses protect the word from the ignominy poured forth onto its profane associates. Even ‘sensual love’ wouldn’t serve the purpose, because that would include the love of beauty. 60 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives it has no name of its own in a good sense; in the cases where it has been looked on favourably it has seldom been distinguished from a motive that commonly accompanies it in such cases, namely sympathy or benevolence. •To acquire the affections of a woman before marriage and preserve them afterwards, you do everything that is consistent with other duties to make her happy; in this case your motive is regarded as praiseworthy, though there is no name for it. •For the same purpose you poison a woman with whom she is at enmity; in this case your motive is regarded as abominable, though again there is no name for it. •To acquire or preserve the favour of a man who is richer or more powerful than yourself, you make yourself subservient to his pleasures. Even if the pleasures are lawful, if people attribute your behaviour to this motive you won’t get them to find any other name for it than ‘servility’. Yet in all three cases the
- 582. motive is the same—the desire to ingratiate yourself. 22. The pleasures of the moral sanction—i.e. the pleasures of a good name—have a corresponding motive for which we don’t yet have an adequate neutral name. It may be called ‘the love of reputation’. It is nearly related to the motive discussed in 21, because it is neither more nor less than the desire to ingratiate oneself with—or recommend oneself to—the world at large. In a good sense it is called ‘honour’ or ‘the sense of honour’. . . well, no, that isn’t strictly correct. Strictly speaking, ‘honour’ is the name people give to an imaginary object that a man is said to possess when he obtains a conspicuous share of the pleasures of a good name. that are in question. . . . In particular cases this motive is called ‘the love of glory’. In a bad sense it is in some cases called ‘false honour’; in others, ‘pride’; in others, ‘vanity’. In a sense that leans towards the bad side, ‘ambition’. In an indifferent sense it is in some cases called ‘the love of fame’; in others, ‘the sense of shame’. And because the pleasures belonging to the moral sanction merge indistinguishably with the pains derived from the same source (see footnote to 24 on page 27), it may also in some cases be called ‘the fear of dishonour’, ‘. . . of disgrace’, ‘. . . of infamy’, ‘. . . of ignominy’, ‘. . . of shame’. •You have received an open insult from a man; according to the custom of the country, so as to save yourself from the shame of being thought to bear it patiently. . . ·STAR T OF LONG FOOTNOTE· A man’s bearing an insult patiently—i.e. without taking this method of ‘wiping it off’—is thought to show either •that he isn’t as sensitive to the pleasures and pains of the moral
- 583. sanction as a respectable member of society has to be; or •that he does feel a resentment appropriate to a proper sense of the value of those pleasures and those pains, but isn’t brave enough to stake his life for the chance of gratifying it. There are various other motives by which the same conduct might be produced: the motives corresponding to the religious sanction, and the motives that come under the head of benevolence. •Piety towards God (because duelling is generally regarded as contrary to the dictates of the religious sanction); •sympathy for your antagonist, whose life would be at risk at the same time as yours; •sympathy for persons who depend on him for support or are connected with him in the way of sympathy; •sympathy for people you are connected with; and even •sympathy for the public, if the man is such that it matters to the public that he should stay alive. But the religious sanction is known to be in general weaker than the love of life, especially among people of the kind who are apt to engage in duelling, a sure proof of which is the prevalence of this very practice. Where the religious sanction is so strong as to preponderate, that is so rare that it exalts the person to the rank of martyr. And it won’t often happen 61 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives that private benevolence or public spirit predominate over the love of life; and because of the general propensity for detraction it will be even rarer for them to be thought to do so. Now, when someone acts in a manner that could be attributed to any one of several motives all of which he has, the one that appears to be the most powerful will routinely be regarded as having actually •done the most; and because
- 584. most people are given to swift superficial judgments it will generally be regarded as having done the whole. The result is that when a man of a certain rank forbears to take this chance of revenging an open insult, most people will attribute this to his love of life, which when it predomi- nates over the love of reputation is. . . .stigmatized with the reproachful name ‘cowardice’. ·END OF FOOTNOTE· . . . and to obtain the reputation of courage, you challenge him to fight with mortal weapons. In this case some peo- ple will count your motive as praiseworthy and will call it ‘honour’; others will count it as blameworthy, and if they bring ‘honour’ into the story it will be in a phrase like ‘false honour’. •In order to obtain a post of rank and dignity, and thereby to increase the respects paid to you by the public, you bribe the relevant electors or judge. In this case your motive is commonly accounted corrupt and abominable, and may be called ‘dishonest ambition’ or ‘corrupt ambition’, as there is no one-word name for it. •In order to obtain the good will of the public, you give a large sum to works of private charity or public utility. In this case people will be apt to disagree about your motive. Your enemies will put a bad colour on it and call it ‘ostentation’; your friends, to save you from this reproach, will choose to attribute your conduct to some other motive such as charity. . . .or public spirit. •A king engages his kingdom in a bloody war, wanting to get the admiration that goes with the name ‘conqueror’ (let’s suppose that power and resentment don’t come into it) . His motive will be deemed an admirable one by the multitude (whose sympathy for millions is easily outweighed by the pleasure their imagination gets from gaping at any novelty they see in the conduct of a single person). Men of feeling and
- 585. reflection, who disapprove of the power of this motive on this occasion (without always seeing that it’s a motive that they approve of in other instances) deem it an abominable motive; and because the multitude, who are the manufacturers of language [Bentham’s phrase], haven’t provided a simple name for it, they will call it ‘love of false glory’ or ‘love of false ambition’ or the like. Yet in all four cases the motive is the same—the love of reputation. 23. Corresponding to the pleasures of power is the motive that can neutrally be called ‘the love of power’; those who disapprove of it sometimes call it ‘the lust for power’. It has no name in a good sense. In some cases this motive is run together with the love of reputation under the single label ‘ambition’. This is not surprising, given •how intimately the two motives are connected in many cases: it commonly happens that something giving one sort of pleasure gives the other sort at the same time (e.g. government positions which are at once posts of honour and places of trust); and given •that reputation is the road to power. •If in order to gain a place in administration you poison the man who occupies it, or •if for the same reason you propose a useful plan for the advancement of the public welfare, your motive is the same in both cases. Yet in the first case it is regarded as criminal and abominable; in the second case allowable and even praiseworthy. 24. Corresponding to the pleasures and pains of the religious sanction is a motive that has, strictly speaking, no perfectly 62 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
- 586. Motives neutral name that fits all cases unless the word ‘religion’ is allowed to serve. But ‘religion’, strictly speaking, seems to mean not so much the motive itself as a kind of fictitious personage by whom the motive is supposed to be created, or an assemblage of acts supposed to be dictated by that personage; and anyway it doesn’t seem to be completely settled into a neutral sense. In the same sense it is also in some cases called ‘religious zeal’; in other cases ‘the fear of God’. The love of God, though commonly contrasted with the fear of God, doesn’t strictly come under this heading. It coincides properly with a motive that has a different name, a kind of sympathy or good will that has the Deity for its object. In a good sense it is called ‘devotion’, ‘piety’, and ‘pious zeal’. In a bad sense it is called ‘superstition’ or ‘superstitious zeal’ in some cases and ‘fanaticism’ or ‘fanatic zeal’ in others; and in a sense that isn’t decidedly bad because it isn’t exclusive to this motive, ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘enthusiastic zeal’. •In order to obtain the favour of the Supreme Being, a man assassinates his lawful sovereign. In this case the motive is now almost universally regarded as abominable, and is called ‘fanaticism’; but in earlier times many people regarded it as praiseworthy and called it ‘pious zeal’. •With the same purpose a man lashes himself with a whip. In this case, one man will regard the motive as praiseworthy and call it ‘pious zeal’, while the man next door thinks it contemptible and calls it ‘superstition’. •Still with the same purpose, a man eats a piece of bread (or at least what seems to be a piece of bread) with certain ceremonies. In this case too, one man regards his motive as praiseworthy and calls it ‘piety’ and ‘devotion’, while the man next door thinks it abominable and calls ‘superstition’ and perhaps even ‘impiety’ (though that is absurd). •With the same purpose a man holds a cow
- 587. by the tail while he is dying. On the Thames his motive would be regarded as contemptible, and called ‘superstition’; on the Ganges it is regarded as meritorious, and called ‘piety. •With the same purpose a man gives a large sum to works of charity or public utility. In this case his motive is called ‘praiseworthy’ at least by those who see the works in question as praiseworthy, and these people would call it ‘piety’. Yet in all these cases the motive is precisely the same—it is just the motive belonging to the religious sanction.1 25. To the pleasures of sympathy corresponds the motive which in a neutral sense is called ‘good will’. (The word ‘sympathy’ can also be used here, though its meaning seems to be rather broader.) In a good sense it is called ‘benevolence’ and in certain cases ‘philanthropy’ and in a figurative way ‘brotherly love’; in other cases ‘humanity’, in others ‘charity’, in others ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’, in others ‘mercy’, in others ‘gratitude’, in others ‘tenderness’, in others ‘patriotism’, in others ‘public spirit’. ‘Love’ is also used in this sense as in so many others. This motive has no bad-sense name that fits it in all cases; in particular cases it is called ‘partiality’. The word ‘zeal’, with certain adjectives, might also be used sometimes for this motive, though its sense is broader, applying sometimes to ill will as well as to good will. And so we speak of ‘party zeal’, ‘national zeal’, and ‘public zeal’. . . . •A man who has set a town on fire is arrested and charged; out of regard or compassion for him, you help him to escape from prison. In this case the generality of people will probably scarcely know whether to condemn your 1 I hope that people in general, when they see the matter thus stated, will accept that in none of these cases is the motive itself a bad one, whatever be the tendency of the acts it produces; but this doesn’t detract from the truth that until now it has been common for men in
- 588. popular discourse to speak of such acts as coming from a bad motive. The same remark will apply to many of the other cases. 63 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives motive or to applaud it; those who condemn your conduct will be disposed to attribute it to some other motive; and if they call it ‘benevolence’ or ‘compassion’ they will want to prefix an adjective—‘false benevolence’, ‘false compassion’. . . . •Again, the man is arrested and put on trial; to save him you swear falsely in his favour. People who wouldn’t call your motive a bad one in the previous case will perhaps call it so now. •A man has a lawsuit against you about an estate; he has no right to the estate; the judge knows this, but because of his esteem or affection for your adversary he awards it to him. In this case everyone regards the motive as abominable, calling it ‘injustice’ and ‘partiality’. •You detect a statesman receiving bribes; out of regard for the public interest you inform against him and prosecute him. In this case, everyone who accepts that your conduct did originate from this motive will regard the motive as praiseworthy, and will call it ‘public spirit’. But his friends and supporters won’t choose to explain your conduct in any such manner; they will prefer to attribute it to party enmity. •You find a man on the point of starving; you relieve him, and save his life. In this case everyone will regard your motive as praiseworthy, will call it ‘compassion’, ‘pity’, ‘charity’, ‘benevolence’. Yet in all these cases the motive is the same—it is just the motive of good will.
- 589. 26. Corresponding to the pleasures of malevolence or antipathy there is a motive which in a neutral sense is called ‘antipathy’ or ‘displeasure’; and in particular cases ‘dislike’, ‘aversion’, ‘abhorrence’, and ‘indignation’; in a sense that is neutral or perhaps leaning a little to the bad side, ‘ill-will’; and in particular cases ‘anger’, ‘wrath’, and ‘enmity’. In a bad sense it is called, in different cases, ‘wrath’, ‘spleen’, ‘ill-humour’, ‘hatred’, ‘malice’, ‘rancour’, ‘rage’, ‘fury’, ‘cru- elty’, ‘tyranny’, ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’, ‘revenge’, ‘misanthropy’, and by other names that it’s hardly worthwhile to try to collect.1 Like ‘good will’, ‘ill will’ is used with adjectives that express the persons who are the objects of the affection [see Glossary]—‘party enmity’, ‘party rage’, and so forth. There seems to be no single good-sense name for this motive. In compound expressions it can be spoken of in a good sense, by prefixing adjectives such as ‘just’ and ‘praiseworthy’ to words that are used in a neutral or nearly neutral sense. •You rob a man; he prosecutes you, and gets you pun- ished; out of resentment you attack him and hang him with your own hands. In this case your motive will universally be regarded as detestable, and will be called ‘malice’, ‘cruelty’, ‘revenge’, and so forth. •A man has stolen a little money from you; out of resentment you prosecute him, and get him hanged by course of law. In this case people will probably be a little divided in their opinions about your motive; your friends will regard it as praiseworthy, and will call it ‘just resentment’ or ‘praiseworthy resentment’; your enemies may be disposed to regard it as blameworthy and to call it ‘cruelty’, ‘malice’, ‘revenge’, and so forth; and to counter this your friends may try to change the motive, calling it ‘public spirit’. •A man has murdered your father; out of resentment you prosecute him and get him put to death in course of law. In this case everyone will regard your motive as praiseworthy,
- 590. and will (again) call it ‘just resentment’ or ‘praiseworthy resentment’; and your friends, wanting to display the more 1 Here as elsewhere you may note that many of the names of motives are also names of passions, appetites, and affections— fictitious entities that are contrived only by considering pleasures or pains from some particular point of view. Some of them are also names of moral qualities. This branch of nomenclature is remarkably tangled: to unravel it completely would take a whole volume, not a syllable of which would belong properly to the present design. 64 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives amiable principle [see Glossary] from which the malevolent one that was your immediate motive arose, will want to keep the latter out of sight, speaking only of the former, under some such name as ‘filial piety’. Yet in all these cases the motive is the same—it is the motive of ill-will. 27. The motive which in a neutral sense is called ‘self- preservation’—the desire to preserve oneself from some threatened pain or evil—corresponds to •the various sorts of pains (or at least to those that are thought of as very intense), and to •death, which seems to us to bring the end all the pleasures and to all the pains that we are acquainted with. In many instances the desire for pleasure merges indistin- guishably with the sense of pain. So self-preservation, where the degree of the corresponding pain is slight, will be hard
- 591. to distinguish sharply from the motives corresponding to various sorts of pleasures. Thus with the pains of hunger and thirst: physical need will often be scarcely distinguishable from physical desire. In some cases it is called, still in a neutral sense, ‘self-defence’. I have already noted this lack of boundaries between the pleasures and the pains of the moral and religious sanctions, and thus of the corresponding motives, and between the pleasures of friendship and the pains of enmity. The same thing holds for the pleasures of wealth and the corresponding pains of privation. So in many cases it will be hard to distinguish the motive of self-preservation from pecuniary interest, from the desire to ingratiate oneself, from the love of reputation, and from religious hope; and in those cases those more specific and explicit names will naturally be preferred to the general and inexplicit ‘self-preservation’. And we could devise a multitude of compound names (some of them are already in use) to distinguish the specific branches of the motive of self-preservation from various motives of a pleasurable origin such as the fear of poverty, the fear of losing such-and-such a man’s regard, the fear of shame, and the fear of God. To the evil of death corresponds in a neutral sense ‘the love of life’; in a bad sense ‘cowardice’. . . . There seems to be no name for the love of life that has a good sense, unless it is the vague and general name ‘prudence’. •To save yourself from being hanged, pilloried, impris- oned, or fined, you poison the only person who can give evidence against you. In this case your motive will univer- sally be regarded as abominable; but people won’t call it ‘self- preservation’, because that has no bad sense; so they’ll prefer to change the motive and call it ‘malice’. •A woman, having just given birth to an illegitimate child, destroys or abandons it so as to save herself from shame. In this case, also, people will call the motive a bad one, and rather than giving it a
- 592. neutral name they will be apt to change the motive and call it by some such name as ‘cruelty’. •To save the expense of a halfpenny, you allow a man whom you could save at that expense to die of starvation before your eyes. In this case everyone will regard your motive as abominable; and to avoid calling it by such a permissive name as ‘self-preservation’ people will be apt to call it ‘avarice’ and ‘niggardliness’, with which indeed in this case it indistinguishably coincides; so as to have a more reproachful label they will be apt to change the motive and call it ‘cruelty’. •To put an end to the pain of hunger, you steal a loaf of bread. In this case your motive may not be deemed a very bad one; and in order to express more indulgence for it people will be apt to find a stronger name for it than ‘self-preservation’, calling it ‘necessity’. •To save yourself from drowning, you beat off an innocent man who has got hold of the same plank. In this case your motive will in general be regarded neither as good nor as bad, and it will be called ‘self-preservation’ or ‘necessity’ or ‘the love of life’. •To save your life from a gang of robbers, you kill them in the conflict. In this case the motive may 65 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives be deemed praiseworthy rather than otherwise; and besides ‘self-preservation’ it is called also ‘self-defence’. •A soldier is sent out with a squad against a weaker squad of the enemy; before he reaches them he runs away, to save his life. In this case everyone will find the motive to be contemptible, and it will be called ‘cowardice’. Yet in all these various cases the motive is still the same—it is just self-preservation.
- 593. 28. Corresponding to the pains of exertion is the motive that can in a neutral sense be called ‘the love of ease’ or ‘the desire to avoid trouble’. In a bad sense it is called ‘indolence’.1 It seems to have no name that carries with it a good sense. •To save the trouble of taking care of it, a parent leaves his child to perish. In this case the motive will be deemed an abominable one, and, because ‘indolence’ will seem too mild a name for it the motive may be changed and spoken of under some such term as ‘cruelty’. •To save yourself from being illegally enslaved you make your escape. In this case the motive will be regarded as certainly not a bad one; and because ‘indolence’ or even ‘the love of ease’ will be thought too unfavourable a name for it, it may called ‘the love of liberty’. •A mechanic, in order to save his labour, makes an improvement in his machinery. In this case, people will look on his motive as a good one; and finding no name for it that carries a good sense, they will prefer to keep the motive out of sight and speak instead of his ingenuity rather than of the motive that was the means of his manifesting that quality. Yet in all these cases the motive is the same—it is the love of ease. 29. It appears then that there’s no such thing as a sort of motive that is bad in itself; nor therefore any such thing as a sort of motive that is in itself exclusively a good one. And it appears too that their effects are sometimes bad, at other times either indifferent or good; and this seems to be the case with every sort of motive. Thus, if any sort of motive is either good or bad because of its effects, this is the case only on individual occasions and with individual motives; and that holds for every sort of motive. So if any sort of motive can properly be called a bad one because of its effects, that must be with reference to the balance of all the effects—good
- 594. and bad—that it has had within a given period, i.e. with reference to its most usual tendency. 30. You will want to say: ‘What then? Aren’t lust, cruelty, avarice, bad motives? Is there even one individual occasion in which motives like these can be anything but bad?’ No, certainly; despite which the proposition that any sort of motive will on many occasions be a good one is true. The fact is that ‘lust’, cruelty’ and ‘avarice’ are names which, if used properly, are applied only in cases where the motives they signify happen to be bad. The names of those motives, considered apart from their effects, are ‘sexual desire’, ‘dis- pleasure’, and ‘pecuniary interest’. . . . Why is lust always a bad motive? Because in any case where the effects of the motive are not bad, it oughtn’t to be called ‘lust’. The propo- sition ‘Lust is a bad motive’ merely concerns the meaning of ‘lust’, and it would be false if we replaced ‘lust‘ by ‘sexual desire’. although that is a name for the same motive. Hence we see the emptiness of all those rhapsodies of commonplace morality that consist in taking such names as ‘lust’, ‘cruelty’, and ‘avarice’ and branding them with marks of disapproval; applied to •the thing, they are false; applied to •the name, 1 It may seem odd at first sight to speak of the love of ease as giving rise to action: but exertion is as natural an effect of the love of ease as inaction is, when a smaller degree of exertion promises to exempt a man from a greater. 66 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
- 595. Motives they are true but empty. If you want to do mankind a real service, show them the cases in which sexual desire merits the name of ‘lust’, displeasure that of ‘cruelty’ and pecuniary interest that of ‘avarice’. 31. If it were necessary to classify motives as good, bad, and indifferent, this might be done on the basis of the nature of their most usual effects. That would yield this: •Good motives: good will love of reputation desire for friendship religion •Bad motives: displeasure •Neutral or indifferent motives: physical desire pecuniary interest love of power self-preservation, understood as including •the fear of the pains of the senses, •the love of ease, and •the love of life. 32. [Bentham says that this classification must be imperfect, and may well be wrong. We can’t possibly know that the four motives listed as ‘good’ have always led to more good than bad. As for those listed as ‘neutral or indifferent’, we can’t know that the good and bad in their consequences ‘have exactly balanced each other’. He continues, more interestingly, with positive reasons for scepticism about this:]
- 596. The interests of the person himself can no more be left out of the estimate than those of the rest of the community. For what would become of the species if it were not for the motives of hunger and thirst, sexual desire, the fear of pain, and the love of life? And the motive of displeasure may have a place in the •actual constitution of human nature that is as essential as any of the others; although a system in which the business of life is carried on without it may be conceived as •possible. . . . 33. It seems that the only way a motive can safely and properly be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is with reference to its effects in each •individual instance. The focus here will be principally on the intention the motive gives birth to, because (as I’ll show later) the most material effects of the motive come through the intention. A motive is good (bad) when the intention it gives birth to is good (bad); and an intention is good or bad according to the material consequences that are the objects of it. . . . But we have seen that one motive can generate intentions of every sort; so this circumstance can afford no clue for the arrangement of the various •sorts of motives. 34. So it seems that a fuller classification would group motives how Bentham went on: according to the influence which they appear to have on the interests of the other members of the community, laying those of the party himself out of the question: to wit. . . what he seems to have meant: according to a comparison be- tween •their influence on the interests of the other members of the community and •their influence on the interests of the person himself; namely. . .
- 597. . . . according to the tendency which they appear to have to unite, or disunite, his interests and theirs. On this basis they can be distinguished into social, unsocial, and self-regarding. [Bentham now produces a list of these; it exactly matches the list in 31, with ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘neutral or indifferent’ re- placed by ‘social’, ‘unsocial’ and ‘self-regarding’ respectively.] 67 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives 35. If it were useful to subdivide further the motives that I have called ‘social’, we could mark off •good will as the only one that is purely social, while the other three can be grouped together as semi-social, because the social tendency is much more constant and unequivocal in good will than in any of the other three, which are in fact self-regarding as well as social. 4. Order of pre-eminence among motives 36. Of all these sorts of motives, good will is the one whose dictates are in general the surest of coinciding with those of the principle of utility. For the dictates of utility are just the dictates of the most extensive and enlightened—i.e. well-advised—benevolence. The dictates of the other motives may conform to those of utility, or conflict with them, as it may happen. 37. In saying this I am supposing that in the case in question the dictates of benevolence are not contradicted by those of a more extensive—i.e. enlarged—benevolence. When (a) the dictates of benevolence with regard to the
- 598. interests of a certain set of persons conflict with (b) the dictates of benevolence with regard to the more important or more valuable interests of another set of persons, it’s clear that (a) are repealed, as it were, by (b); and if a man were governed by (a) he couldn’t be rightly said to be governed by the dictates of benevolence. If the motives on both sides were equally present to a man’s mind, the case where they conflict would hardly be worth marking off, because (a) the partial benevolence could be considered as swallowed up in (b) the more extensive; if (a) prevailed and governed the action, the action must be considered as owing its birth not to benevolence but to some other motive; if (b) prevailed, (a) could be considered as having no effect. But the fact is that that (a) a partial benevolence may govern the action without entering into any direct competition with (b) the more extensive benevolence that would forbid it; because the interests of the less numerous set of persons may be present to a man’s mind at a time when those of the more numerous set are either not present or anyway make no impression. This is how the dictates of this motive can conflict with utility yet still be the dictates of benevolence. What makes the dictates of •private benevolence conform on the whole with the principle of utility is that in general they aren’t opposed to the dictates of •public benevolence; when they do conflict with them it is only by accident. What makes them conform even better is the fact that, in a civilised society, in most of the cases where they would be apt to run counter to those of public benevolence they are opposed by stronger motives of the self-regarding class, which are played off against them by the laws; and that they are left free only where they aren’t opposed by the other more salutary dictates. An act of injustice or cruelty that a man commits for the sake of his father or his son is rightly punished as much as if it were committed for his own sake.
- 599. 38. The motive whose dictates seem to have the second-best chance (after good will) of coinciding with those of utility is the love of reputation. There’s only one circumstance that prevents the dictates of this motive from always coinciding with those of utility, namely the fact that men in their likings and dislikings, in their disposi- tions to approve or disapprove of any mode of conduct, and thus in their good will or ill will towards the person who appears to practice it, are not governed exclusively by the principle of utility. Sometimes they are guided by the principle of asceticism, some- times by the principle of sympathy and antipathy (see chapter 2). 68 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives Another circumstance lessens. . . .the effectiveness of the dictates of the motive of love of reputation in comparison with the dictates of the motive of benevolence, namely the fact that the dictates of benevolence will operate as strongly in secret as in public;. . . .whereas those of the love of reputation will coincide with those of benevolence only in proportion as the man’s conduct seems likely to be known. But this doesn’t make as much difference as at first sight might appear. The more material an act is, the more likely it is to become known; and a slight suspicion can harm a man’s
- 600. reputation as much as a proof. Besides, when someone is considering performing a disreputable act, even if he is sure that this act will remain secret he has to reckon with the fact that if he performs it, that will go towards forming a habit that will lead to other acts that may not meet with the same good fortune. There is perhaps no adult human being on whom considerations of this sort don’t have some weight; and they have the more weight on a man in proportion to the strength of his intellectual powers and the firmness of his mind (see 12–13 in chapter 6). . . . 39. After the dictates of the love of reputation come, ap- parently, those of the desire for friendship. The former tend to coincide with the dictates of utility because they tend to coincide with the dictates of benevolence. So do the dictates of the desire for friendship, but only with a •narrower benevolence than the kind that dictates of the love of reputation tend to coincide with. But it is still •broader than any benevolence flowing from the dictates of the self-regarding motives. A man’s love of reputation will dispose him, at one time or another in his life, to contribute to the happiness of a considerable number of persons; his self-regarding motives throughout his life confine themselves to the care of that single individual. Other things being equal, how near a man’s desire for friendship will come to coinciding with the dictates of the love of reputation—and thus with the dictates of utility—will depend on how many people he wants to be friends with. On upshot of that is that a member of the English parliament, despite his own weaknesses and the follies of the people whose friendship he has to cultivate, is probably in general a better character than the secretary of a Vizier at Constantinople or of a Viceroy in Hindustan. [Just a reminder: the topic of this section is the ‘ranking’ of motives in
- 601. terms of how close their dictates are to those of benevolence and thus to those of utility.] 40. Given the infinite diversity of religions, it’s hard to know what general account to give of them or how to rank the associated motive. The word ‘religion’ turns people’s thoughts first to the religion they themselves profess. This is a great source of miscalculation, tending to rank this sort of motive higher than it deserves. The dictates of religion would always coincide with those of utility if it were the case that •the Being who is the object of religion is supposed by everyone to be as benevolent as he is supposed to be wise and powerful; and •people’s notions of his benevolence are as correct as their notions of his wisdom and his power. Unfortunately, though, neither of these is the case. He is universally supposed to be all-powerful; for what does anyone mean by ‘the Deity’ except ‘the Being, whatever he is, who does everything’? And as for knowledge, the rest of the sentence: by the same rule that he should know one thing he should know another. perhaps meaning: the reasons for crediting God with some knowledge are reasons for thinking that he knows everything. 69 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10:
- 602. Motives These notions seem to be as •correct (for all material purposes) as they are •universal. But among the devotees of religion (of whom the multifarious fraternity of Christians is only a fraction) there seem to be few (I won’t say how few) who really believe in his benevolence. They call him ‘benevolent’ but they don’t mean that he really is so. They don’t mean that he is benevolent in the way a man is thought to be benevolent; they don’t mean that he is benevolent in the only sense in which ‘benevolent’ has a meaning. If they did, they would recognise that the dictates of religion could be neither more nor less than the dictates of utility—not a tittle different from them. But the fact is that on a thousand occasions they turn their backs on the principle of utility. They go straying after those strange principles, its antagonists—sometimes the principle of asceticism, sometimes the principle of sympa- thy and antipathy. On such occasions the idea they have in their minds is often the idea of malevolence, which they strip of its own proper name and instead give it the more attractive name ‘the social motive’.1 The dictates of religion, in short, are simply the dictates of a principle that I introduced in 18 on page 18 as ‘the theological principle’. These, as I said back there, are copies of the dictates of one or other of the three original principles—which of them depending on the biases of the person in question. Sometimes, indeed, it’s the dictates of utility; but frequently the dictates of asceticism or those of sympathy and antipathy. In this respect they are on a par with the dictates of the love of reputation; in another respect they are below it. Everywhere in the world the dictates of religion are somewhat intermixed with ones that don’t conform to the dictates of utility—ones deduced from texts (well or badly interpreted) of the writings that the sect in question regards as sacred. They conflict with utility by imposing •some practices that are inconvenient to
- 603. a man’s self and •others that are pernicious to the rest of the community. The sufferings of uncalled martyrs, the calamities of holy wars and religious persecutions, the mischiefs of intolerant laws. . . .are additional mischiefs far outnumbering those that were ever brought into the world by the love of reputation. On the other hand, the dictates of religion share with those of benevolence a certain advantage over the dictates of the love of reputation and the desire for friendship, namely the power of operating in secret. 41. Fortunately, the dictates of religion seem to be steadily coming nearer to those of utility. But why? Because the dictates of the moral sanction do so, and they influence the dictates of religion. Men of the worst religions, influenced by how the surrounding world speaks and acts, keep borrowing new pages out of the book of utility and trying—sometimes with strenuous efforts!—to patch them into the repositories of their faith. 42. [This paragraph remarks that the self-regarding and unsocial motives come lower in the ranking than the dictates of religion; that there’s no significant rank-difference among the self-regarding motives; and that two instances of ‘the unsocial motive’ (displeasure) have different rankings if one comes from self-regarding considerations (you are displeased with him because of how he has affected you) and the other 1 Sometimes, so that this cheat will be better hidden (from their own eyes, doubtless, as well as from others), they set up a phantom of their own that they call ‘Justice’: whose dictates aim to •modify the dictates of benevolence; or so they say, but the real aim is to •oppose them. But justice, in the only sense in which the word has a meaning, is an imaginary personage, invented for the convenience of discourse, whose dictates are those of
- 604. utility, applied to certain particular cases. Justice, then, is simply an imaginary instrument employed to advance the purposes of benevolence on certain occasions and by certain means. . . . 70 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 10: Motives comes from social considerations (you are displeased with him because of how he has affected some other party whom you care about). The paragraph ends:] Obviously, a motive that is in itself unsocial can come from a social origin and have a social tendency; and how social it is will probably depend how large the class is of persons whose interests you support. Displeasure that is vented against a man on account of mischief he is supposed to have done to the public may be more social in its effects than any good will that is confined to an individual (see 37 above). 5. Conflict among motives 43. When a man is thinking about how to act, he is frequently acted on at the same time by different motives driving him in opposite directions—e.g. one disposing him to do x and another disposing him not to do x. A motive that tends to dispose him to do x may be called an ‘impelling’ motive; one that tends to dispose him not to do x may be called a ‘restraining’ motive. But these labels can of course be switched, depending on whether x is positive or negative. (See 8 on page 45.) 44. I have shown that any sort of motive can give birth to any
- 605. sort of action, from which it follows that any two motives can come to be opposed to one another. In most cases where the tendency of the act is bad, it has been dictated by a motive that is either self-regarding or unsocial. In such a case the motive of benevolence has commonly been acting, though ineffectually, in the role of a restraining motive. 45. An example may help to show the variety of contending motives that can act on a man at the same time. At a time when it was generally thought meritorious among Catholics to kill Protestants, Charles IX of France ordered one of his Catholic subjects, a man named Crillon, to waylay and assassinate a Protestant named Coligny. His answer was ‘Excuse me, Sire; but I’ll fight him with all my heart.’ Here were all the three forces above mentioned, including that of the political sanction, acting on him at once. •By the political sanction—or at least as much of its force as such a command from such a sovereign on such an occasion might be supposed to carry with it—he was enjoined to put Coligny to death by assassination; •by the religious sanction—i.e. by the dictates of re- ligious zeal—he was enjoined to put him to death somehow; •by the moral sanction, or in other words by the dictates of honour—i.e. the love of reputation—he was permitted to fight the adversary on equal terms (a permission which when coupled with his sovereign’s command he conceived as an injunction); •by the dictates of enlarged benevolence (supposing the command to be unjustifiable) he was enjoined not
- 606. to attempt Coligny’s life in any way, but to remain at peace with him; •by the dictates of private benevolence (supposing the command to be unjustifiable), he was enjoined not to meddle with Coligny in any way. Among this confusion of conflicting dictates, Crillon seems to have given the preference in the first place to the dictates of honour, and in the next place to the dictates of benevolence. He would have fought, if his offer had been accepted; it wasn’t, so he remained at peace. Here a multitude of questions might arise. If the dictates of the political sanction told him to obey the sovereign’s command, what kind of motives for this did they provide him with? Well, the self-regarding kind anyway, because it was 71 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General in the power of the sovereign to punish him for disobedience or reward him for obedience. Did they provide him with the motive of religion? Yes, if he thought it was God’s pleasure that he should obey; No, if he didn’t. Did they provide him with the motive of the love of reputation? Yes, if he thought that the world [= ‘society at large’] would expect and require him to obey; No, if he didn’t. Did they provide him with the motive of benevolence? Yes, if he thought that the community would on the whole be the better for his obeying; No, if he didn’t. Was the king’s command legal? This is a mere question of
- 607. local jurisprudence, and altogether irrelevant to the present topic. 46. This discussion of the goodness and badness of motives is not a mere matter of words. There will be uses for it later on for various important purposes. I’ll need it in dissipating various prejudices that are harmful to the community— sometimes by fanning the flames of civil dissensions, at other times by obstructing the course of justice. I’ll show that with many offences the consideration of the motive is a most material one, because •it makes a very material difference to the magnitude of the mischief, and •it is easy for the motive to be ascertained, so that it can have an effect on the demand for punishment; whereas in other cases •it can’t possibly be ascertained, and even if it could it would have no effect on the demand for punishment; and in all cases a prosecutor’s motive ·for bringing the prosecution· is a totally immaterial fact; which shows the harm- fulness of the prejudice people are apt to have against informers—a prejudice that judges in par- ticular should guard themselves against. Lastly, We have to tackle the subject of motives if we are to form a judgment on any means that may be proposed for combating offences at their source. But before the theoretical foundation for these practical observations can be completely laid, I have to say something about dispositions; so that will be the topic of the next chapter.
- 608. Chapter 11: Human Dispositions in General 1. I showed at length in chapter 10 that goodness or badness can’t properly be predicated of motives. Well, then, when on a particular occasion a man allows himself to be governed by such-and-such a motive, is there nothing about him that can properly be called ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Yes, there is something—his disposition. Now a disposition is a kind of fictitious entity, invented for the convenience of discourse in order to express what is thought to be permanent in a man’s frame of mind when on a particular occasion he is influenced by such-and-such a motive to perform an act that appears to him to have such-and-such a tendency. 2. A disposition, like anything else, is good or bad according to the effects it has in increasing or lessening the happiness of the community. So a man’s disposition can be considered from the point of view of its influence •on his own happiness 72 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General or •on the happiness of others. Looked at in both ways at once or in either one of them, the disposition may be called either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or, in flagrant cases, ‘depraved’.1 There are no good/bad labels to apply to dispositions in reference to their effect on their owners’ happiness: we could, though inexpressively, call a disposition ‘sound’ or ‘firm’ on the one hand and ‘frail’ or ‘infirm’ on the other. From the viewpoint of its effect on other people, a disposition might be called
- 609. ‘beneficent’ or ‘meritorious’ on the one hand and ‘pernicious’ or ‘harmful’ on the other. Nothing much needs to be said here about the strand in a man’s disposition the effects of which concern only himself in the first instance. When it is bad, it’s for the moralist rather than the legislator to reform it; and it isn’t susceptible of the various modifications that make so much difference to the effects of the other ·strand in a man’s disposition·. . . . 3. A man, then, is said to have a harmful disposition when he is presumed to be more apt to perform or intend to perform acts that are apparently of a pernicious tendency than in ones that are apparently of a beneficial tendency; and to have a meritorious or beneficent disposition in the opposite case. It makes no difference to any of this what his motives are. 4. I say ‘when he is presumed to be etc.’, because we are looking at one single action with one set of circumstances. The degree of uniformity that experience has shown to be observable in a single person’s different actions makes it natural and reasonable for us to infer from our observation of a single act the probable existence (past or future) of a number of acts of a similar nature. Under such circum- stances, what the motive proves to be in one instance is what the disposition is presumed to be in others. 5. I say ‘apparently harmful’, meaning that the act appears to him to have that tendency. From the mere event [see Glossary], independently of what it seemed to him likely to be, nothing can be inferred about the goodness or badness of his disposition. If to him it appears likely to be harmful, then even if in the upshot it turns out to be innocent or even beneficial, that makes no difference to the case for presuming his disposition to be bad; and if to him it appears likely to be
- 610. beneficial or innocent, then even if in the upshot it turns out to be pernicious, there’s no less reason on that account for presuming his disposition to be a good one. [Bentham wrote ‘no more reason’; obviously a slip.] And here we see the importance of the circumstances of intentionality (see chapter 8), con- sciousness, unconsciousness, and mis-supposal (for those three see chapter 9). 6. The truth of these positions depends on two others that are sufficiently verified by experience. One is that in the ordinary course of things the consequences of actions commonly turn out to conform to intentions. A man who sets up a butcher’s shop and sells beef, when he intends to knock down an ox usually does knock down an ox, though by some unlucky accident he may miss his blow and knock down a man; he who sets up a grocer’s shop and sells sugar, when he intends to sell sugar he usually does sell sugar, though by some unlucky accident he may chance to sell arsenic in place of it. 1 It might also be called ‘virtuous’ or ‘vicious’, but those terms are unsuitable here because of how much good or bad repute they are associated with. The drawback of this is that ‘vicious’ is apt to come down too hard on a disposition that is ill-constituted only with respect to the person whose disposition it is—involving him in a degree of ignominy that should be reserved for dispositions that are mischievous with regard to others. . . . To exalt small evils to a level with great ones is the way to diminish the share of attention that ought to be paid to great ones. 73
- 611. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General 7. The other is that a man who has intentions of doing mischief at one time is apt to have similar intentions at another.1 8. If we are faced with an individual act and want to infer from it the nature of the person’s disposition, there are two circumstances we have to take into account: •the apparent tendency of the act, and •the nature of the motive that gave birth to it. How these relate to the disposition is different for different motives; ·I’ll have to take ten different kinds of case·. In presenting them I shall assume throughout that the apparent tendency of the act is the same as its real tendency—as indeed it usually is. 9. (i) Where the tendency of the act is good and the motive is of the self-regarding kind, the motive doesn’t support any inference either way. It doesn’t indicate a good disposition, but nor does it indicate a bad one. A baker sells his bread to a hungry man who asks for it. This is one of those acts of which, in ordinary cases, the tendency is unquestionably good. The baker has the ordinary commercial motive of pecuniary interest. There’s clearly nothing in this transaction, as described, that provides grounds for presuming that the baker is a better or a worse man than any of his neighbours. 10. (ii) Where the tendency of the act is bad, and the motive is of the self-regarding kind, this indicates a disposition that is harmful. A man steals bread out of a baker’s shop; this is an act whose tendency will readily be acknowledged to be bad. (In
- 612. chapter 12 I’ll explain why and in what ways it is bad.) His motive is that of pecuniary interest—the desire to get the value of the bread for nothing. So his disposition appears to be a bad one, for everyone will agree that a thievish disposition is a bad one. 11. (iii) Where the tendency of the act is good, and the motive is the purely social one of good will, the disposition indicated is a beneficent one. A baker gives a poor man a loaf of bread. His motive is compassion, a name given to benevolence in some particular cases. The disposition indicated by the baker’s act in this case is one that every man will readily acknowledge to be a good one. 12. (iv) Where the tendency of the act is bad and the motive is the purely social one of good will, the disposition that the motive indicates is dubious: it may be harmful or meritorious, depending on whether the harmfulness of the act is more or less apparent ·to the agent·. 13. You may think this: A case of this sort can’t exist—it is a contradiction in terms. It is stipulated that the act is one that the agent knows to be harmful; so how could he have been led to it by the motive of good will, i.e. the desire to do good? To answer this I must remind you of the distinction between enlarged benevolence and confined benevolence (see 37 on page 69). The motive that led him to his act was confined benevolence; if he had followed the dictates of enlarged benevolence he wouldn’t have done what he did. Now, although he followed the dictates of the kind of benevolence
- 613. 1 ‘This man is likely, in virtue of a good disposition that he has, to engage in an habitual series of mischievous actions’—that is a contradiction in terms. No-one could say such a thing if he gave to ‘disposition’ its proper meaning. Suppose that a man with a religious disposition engages, in virtue of that very disposition, in a habitual course of mischief- making, e.g. by persecuting his neighbours; then either •his disposition, though good in certain respects, is not good on the whole, or •a religious disposition is not in general a good one. 74 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General that is harmful in any single instance where it is opposed to the other kind, there are incomparably more cases where there is a call for the former (i.e. confined benevolence) than cases where there is a call for the latter (i.e. enlarged benevolence); so the disposition indicated by his act in following the impulse of the former will often be one that will in an average sort of person count as good on the whole. 14. A man with a large family of children on the point of starving goes into a baker’s shop, steals a loaf, and divides it among the children reserving none for himself. It will be hard to infer that this man’s disposition is a harmful on the whole. Now alter the case: the man has one child, who is hungry but in no imminent danger of starving; he sets fire to a house full of people so as to steal money out of it to buy bread with. The disposition here indicated will hardly
- 614. be regarded as a good one. 15. Another case will appear more difficult to decide than either. [This case is historical as regards François Ravaillac, who murdered Henry IV of France, but the stories about his son are fictions invented for purposes of discussion.] Ravaillac assassinated one of the best and wisest of sovereigns, at a time when a good and wise sovereign. . . .was particularly precious to the inhabitants of a populous and extensive empire. He is taken and condemned to the most excruciating tortures. His son, who is convinced that he is a sincere penitent and that if he were free mankind would have nothing more to fear from him, enables him to escape. Is this a sign of a good disposition in the son, or of a bad one? Some people may answer: ‘Of a bad one, because •the nation has an interest in the sufferings of such a criminal as an example to others, and •the future good behaviour of such a criminal is more than anyone can be entitled to be sure of.’ 16. Well then, change the case: Ravaillac, the son, doesn’t facilitate his father’s escape but settles for conveying poison to him, so that through an easier death he may escape his torments. The decision may now be more difficult. Granted that the act is a wrong one, and certainly ought to be punished; but is the disposition it shows a bad one? Because the young man breaks the law in this one instance, is it probable that if left alone he would break the laws in ordinary instances, for the satisfaction of any inordinate desires of his own? Most men would probably answer No. 17. (v) Where the tendency of the act is good, and the motive is a semi-social one, namely the love of reputation, the
- 615. disposition indicated is a good one. In a time of scarcity, a baker aims to get the esteem of the neighbourhood by distributing bread gratis among the working poor. . . . Let’s stipulate that it’s uncertain whether he had any real feeling for the sufferings of those he has relieved. Even then, his disposition can’t with any pretence of reason be called other than good and beneficent. Anyone who denies this must be in the grip of some very idle prejudice.1 1 The bulk of mankind, always ready to depreciate the character of their neighbours in order to exalt their own, will refer a ·good· motive to the class of bad ones if they can find a still better one to which the act might have owed its birth. Each man— •conscious that his own motives are not of the best class, or convinced that if they are he won’t get credit for this from others; and •afraid of being taken for a dupe, and anxious to show how insightful he is —takes care first •to attribute each other person’s conduct to the least praiseworthy of the motives that can account for it; and then •when he has gone as far he can down that path and cannot drive down the individual motive to any lower class he changes his battery [military jargon = ‘points his cannons in a different direction’] and attacks the very class itself. Every time the love of reputation comes up, he will give it a bad name such as ‘ostentation’, ‘vanity’, or ‘vainglory’. . . . 75
- 616. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General 18. (vi) Where the tendency of the act is bad and the motive (again) is the semi-social one of love of reputation, the disposition that it indicates is more or less good or bad depending on •how harmful the tendency of the act is, and on •how close the dictates of the moral sanction come—in the society in question—to coinciding with the dictates of utility. It does not seem probable that in any tolerably civilised—i.e. any nation in which rules like these can come to be consulted—the dictates of the moral sanction will be so far from coinciding with the dictates of utility (i.e. of enlightened benevolence) that the disposition indicated in this case can be other than a good one on the whole. 19. An ·American· Indian receives an injury from an Indian of another tribe. He revenges it on the person of his antago- nist with the most excruciating torments, because cruelties inflicted on such an occasion gain him reputation in his own tribe. The disposition manifested in such a case can never be deemed a good one among a people who are even a tiny bit more civilised than the Indians. 20. A nobleman (to come back to Europe) contracts a debt with a poor tradesman, and later contracts a debt for the same amount to another nobleman (it was from a loss at cards). He can’t pay both; he pays the whole debt to the com- panion of his amusements and no part of it to the tradesman. The disposition manifested in this case can hardly count as anything but bad. But it isn’t as bad as if he had not paid either creditor. The principle of •love of reputation or (as it is called in the case of this partial application of it) •honour is here opposed to the worthier principle of •benevolence, and overcomes it. But also overcomes the self-regarding
- 617. principle of pecuniary interest. So the disposition that it indicates, although not as good as that in which the principle of benevolence predominates, is better than one in which the principle of self-interest predominates. He would be the better for having more benevolence; but would he be the better for having no honour? This seems to admit of great dispute. 21. (vii) Where the tendency of the act is good and the motive is the semi-social one of religion, the indicated disposition (considered with respect to its influence on the man’s con- duct towards others) is plainly beneficent and meritorious. A baker distributes bread gratis among the industrious poor, not because •he feels for their distresses, or because •he wants to gain reputation among his neighbours, but because •he wants to gain the favour of the Deity, to whom (he takes for granted) such conduct will be acceptable. The disposition manifested by this conduct is plainly what every- one would call a good one. 22. (viii) Where the tendency of the act is bad, and the motive is that of religion, the disposition is dubious. Whether it is good or bad, and how good or bad, depends on •how harmful the tendency of the act is, and on •how near the religious tenets of the person in question come to coinciding with the dictates of utility. 23. History seems to tell us that even in nations that are tolerably civilised in other respects the dictates of religion are far from coinciding with the dictates of utility (i.e. of en- lightened benevolence)—so far that the disposition indicated in this present case may even be a bad one on the whole. But that doesn’t apply to most of the countries of Europe at present, where religion’s dictates respecting a man’s conduct
- 618. towards other men come very close to coinciding with the dictates of utility. Religion’s dictates respecting a man’s conduct towards himself seem in most European nations to savour a good deal of the ascetic principle; but obedience to such mistaken dictates doesn’t point to any disposition that 76 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General is likely to break out into acts of pernicious tendency with respect to others. It very rarely happens that the dictates of religion lead a man to acts that are pernicious in respect to others; except for acts of persecution, or impolitic measures on the part of government, where the law itself is either the principal agent or an accomplice in the mischief. Ravaillac was driven by no other motive than this when he gave his country one of the most fatal stabs that a country ever received from a single hand; but fortunately Ravaillacs are rare! But there have been more of them in France than in any other country during the same period; and it’s noteworthy that it is always this motive ·of religion· that has produced them. When they do appear, nobody but the likes of them will say that the disposition they manifest is a good one. It seems hardly deniable that they are the worse for their notions of religion; and that if they had been left to the sole guidance of benevolence and the love of reputation, without any religion at all, it would have been ever so much better for mankind. One may say nearly the same thing about the people who, without any particular obligation, have actively applied laws made for the punishment of those who have the misfortune to differ from the magistrate [see Glossary] in matters of religion, and even more about the legislator
- 619. himself who has given them the power to do this. If Louis XIV had had no religion, France would not have lost 800,000 of its most valuable subjects. This applies also to the authors of the so-called ‘holy wars’, whether waged against persons called ‘infidels’ or persons branded with the still more odious name ‘heretics’. . . . It should be noted. . . .that in almost all the countries of Europe, instances of this, though once abundantly frequent, have for some time ceased. In certain countries, the disposition to persecute at home when the opportunity presents itself is not yet at an end: if there’s no actual persecution, it is only because there are no heretics; and if there are no heretics, it is only because there are no thinkers. [Bentham builds into that sentence the remark that the disposition to persecute heresy tends to restrain heresy, ‘which is one part of the mischiefs of persecution’.] 24. (ix) Where the tendency of the act is good and the motive is the unsocial one of ill-will, the motive seems not to point in either direction: there is no indication of a good disposition, nor any of a bad one. You have detected a baker in selling short weight, and you prosecute him for cheating. You don’t do this •for the sake of gain, because there’s nothing you can get by it; or •out of public spirit; or •for the sake of reputation, because there’s no reputa- tion you can get by it; or •in order to please the Deity.
- 620. You prosecute the man merely because of a quarrel you have with him. On this account of the transaction there seems to be nothing to be said either in favour of your disposition or against it. . . . Your motive is of a sort that can properly enough be called a bad one; but the act is of a sort—·prosecuting a cheating tradesman·—that could never have any bad tendency, or indeed anything but a good one, however often it was performed. In the story as told it was dictated by the motive of ill-will; but the act itself could have been dictated by the most enlarged benevolence, if you had had enough discernment to see this. Now, from the fact that •a man allowed himself to be induced to gratify his resentment by means of an act whose tendency is good it doesn’t at all follow that •on another occasion he would be led by the same sort of motive to perform an act whose tendency is bad. The motive that impelled you was an unsocial one; but what social motive could there have been to restrain you?. . . . Because the unsocial motive prevailed when it 77 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General stood alone, it doesn’t follow that it would prevail when it had a social one to combat it. 25. (x) Where the tendency of the act is bad, and the motive is the unsocial one of malevolence, the indicated disposition is of course a harmful one. The man who stole the bread from the baker did it solely in order to impoverish and afflict him; when he had the bread he destroyed it. Everyone must perceive immediately
- 621. that the disposition evidenced by such conduct is a bad one. 26. So much for the circumstances from which the over-all harmfulness or meritoriousness of a man’s disposition is to be inferred; I now turn to the effect of those circumstances on how harmful or meritorious a given disposition is. In the present work we have no direct concern with meritorious acts and dispositions. The penal law’s only concern is to measure the depravity of the disposition in cases where the act is harmful. So I shall confine myself to that topic. 27. Obviously the nature of a man’s disposition depends on the nature of the motives he is apt to be influenced by, i.e. on how receptive he is to the force of such-and-such motives. His disposition is, as it were, the sum of his intentions; the disposition he has during a certain period is the sum or result of his intentions during that period. Of the acts he has been intending to perform during the supposed period, if those that are apparently of a harmful tendency greatly outnumber those that appear to him to be of the contrary tendency, his disposition will be of the harmful sort; if the balance goes the other way, it will be of the innocent or upright sort. 28. Intentions like everything else are produced by their causes; and the causes of intentions are motives. Whenever a man forms a good or a bad intention, it must be by the influence of some motive. 29. When the act that a motive prompts a man to perform is of a harmful nature, we could call it a ‘seducing’ or ‘corrupting’ motive; and any motive that acts as a restraint on a seducing motive can be called a ‘tutelary’, ‘preservatory’, or ‘preserving’ motive. 30. Tutelary motives can be further divided into •standing
- 622. or constant motives and •occasional motives. By ‘standing tutelary motives’ I mean ones that always or nearly always act with some force tending to restrain a man from harmful acts that he may be prompted to perform, doing that with a force that depends on •the general nature of the act rather than on •any circumstance that an individual act happens to be accompanied by. By ‘occasional tutelary motives’ I mean ones that may chance to act in this ·restraining· role, depending on the nature of the ·contemplated· act and of the particular occasion that brings the performing of it into contemplation. 31. I have shown that there is no sort of motive by which a man can’t be prompted to perform acts that are of a harmful nature, i.e. that can’t come to act in the role of a seducing motive. I have shown on the other hand that some motives are notably less likely to operate in this way than others; and that the least likely of all is the motive of benevolence or good will—the most common tendency of which (I have shown) is to act in the role of a tutelary motive. I have also shown that even when by accident benevolence acts in one way in the role of a seducing motive, it still acts in another way in the opposite role of a tutelary one. The motive of good will directed to the interests of one set of persons may prompt a man to perform acts that do harm to another and larger set; but this is only because his good will is imperfect and confined, not bearing in mind the interests of all the persons whose interests are at stake. If that same motive 78 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General
- 623. had arisen from a more enlarged affection, it would have operated effectively as a constraining motive against the very act that his confined benevolence led him to perform. So this sort of motive can truthfully be counted among the standing tutelary motives, despite the occasions in which it may act at the same time as a seducing motive. 32. It is nearly the same story for the semi-social motive of love of reputation. The force of this, like that of good will, is liable to be divided against itself:. . . .the sentiments of some of the persons whose good opinion is desired can differ from the sentiments of others of those persons. Now, when a really harmful act is performed it can scarcely happen that no-one whatsoever looks on it with an eye of disapproval. So it can scarcely ever happen that a really harmful act isn’t opposed by at least a part—if not the whole—of the force of this motive ·of love of reputation·; which means that this motive nearly always acts with some force in the role of a tutelary motive. We can include it, therefore, in the list of standing tutelary motives. 33. This holds also for the desire for friendship, though not quite as thoroughly. Why not? Because even a harmful act might happen to be looked on favourably by everyone whom the agent hopes to be friends with. This is all too likely among fraternities such as those of thieves, smugglers, and many other kinds of offenders. Still, this usually isn’t the case; so that the desire for friendship can still be regarded on the whole as a tutelary motive, if only because of its close connection with the love of reputation. And it may be listed among standing tutelary motives because the force with which it acts—when it does act—depends not on •the occasional circumstances of the act that it opposes but on •principles as general as those that put the other semi-social motives into action.
- 624. 34. The motive of religion is not entirely in the same category as those last three. Its force is not liable (as theirs is) to be divided against itself. I’m talking here about the civilised nations of modern times, among whom the notion of the unity of the Godhead is universal. In times of classical antiquity it was otherwise. If a man got Venus on his side, Pallas was on the other; if Æolus was for him, Neptune was against him. Æneas, with all his piety, didn’t have all the gods on his side in the court of heaven. It’s different nowadays: in any given person the force of religion, whatever it may be, is all on one side. It may weigh up which side to take ·on a given practical issue·, and it may opt for the wrong side, as we have seen already that it all too often does. . . . Still, where it acts (as it does in the great majority of cases) in opposition to the ordinary seducing motives, it acts as the motive of benevolence does in a uniform manner, not •depending on the particular circumstances of the case but •tending to oppose the act in question purely on account of its harmfulness; so that its force is the same, no matter what the circumstances of the case are. So religion can be added to the list of standing tutelary motives. 35. As for the motives that can operate occasionally in the role of tutelary motives, these (I repeat) are of various sorts, and various degrees of strength in various offences; depending not only on •the nature of the offence but on •the circumstances in which the question arose of whether to commit the offence. Absolutely any sort of motive can come to operate in this role: a thief, for example, may be prevented from engaging in a projected scheme of house-breaking by sitting too long over his bottle, by a visit from his mistress, by his having to go elsewhere to receive his share of the loot from a previous crime, and so on. 79
- 625. Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General 36. Some motives, however, seem more apt to act in this role than others; especially now that the law has set up everywhere artificial tutelary motives of its own creation, to oppose the force of the principal seducing motives. [Bentham means of course only that the law creates the situations in which the motives come into play.] They seem to be of two basic kinds: •the love of ease—a motive put into action by the prospect of the trouble it may require to overcome physical difficulties that accompany the offence; •self-preservation, as opposed to the dangers the agent may be exposed to in committing the offence. 37. These dangers may be either •of a purely physical nature or •results of moral agency, i.e. of the conduct of people who can be expected to object to the act if they come to know about it. But moral agency requires knowledge regarding the circum- stances that will have the effect of external motives in giving birth to the act in question. And when such knowledge regarding the commission of an objectionable act is acquired by persons who may be disposed to make the agent suffer for it, this is called detection, and the agent is said to be detected. So the dangers that can threaten an offender from this direction all depend on the event his being detected; and they can be grouped under the heading danger of detection.
- 626. 38. The danger depending on detection can be divided into two branches: •what may result from opposition to the enterprise by persons on the spot, i.e. at the very time the offence is being committed; •what concerns legal punishment or other suffering that may inflicted some time after the offence. 39. Among the tutelary motives that I have called ‘constant’ there are two whose force depends on the circumstance of detection; not as entirely as the force of the occasional ones I have just been discussing, but still in a great measure. These are •the love of reputation and •the desire for friendship. The greater the chance of being detected, the greater the force these motives will have. This is not the case with the two other standing tutelary motives, those of •benevolence and of •religion. 40. We are now in a position to determine fairly precisely what is to be understood by the strength of a temptation, and what indication it may give of the degree of harmfulness in a man’s disposition in the case of any offence. When a man is prompted to perform a harmful act, the strength of the temptation depends on the ratio between on the one hand •the force of the seducing motives and on the other •·the force of· whatever occasional tutelary motives the circumstances of the case call into action. The temptation can be said to be strong when the pleasure or advantage to be gained from the crime strikes the offender as great in comparison with the trouble and danger that
- 627. appear to him to accompany the enterprise; and slight or weak when that pleasure or advantage strikes him as small in comparison with that trouble and danger. Obviously the strength of the temptation doesn’t depend entirely on the force of the impelling (i.e. seducing) motives: with the motive held steady, the temptation will be stronger or weaker depending on the probabilities regarding trouble and danger. After taking account of the tutelary motives that have been called occasional, the only tutelary motives remaining are the ones that have been called standing ones. But the ones I have called ‘standing tutelary motives’ are exactly the ones I have been calling ‘social’. It follows, therefore, 80 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General that the strength of the temptation in any given case, after subtracting the force of the social motives, is the ratio between •the sum of the forces of the seducing motives and •the sum of the forces of the occasional tutelary motives. 41. The final question to be investigated ·in this chapter· is: When an offence has been committed, what can we learn about the harmfulness or depravity of the of- fender’s disposition from the strength of the tempta- tion he was under? It seems that the weaker the temptation by which he was overcome, the more depraved and harmful his disposition is shown to have been. Here is why. The goodness of his disposition is measured by how receptive he is to the action
- 628. of the social motives (see 17–18 above), i.e. by the strength of the influence that those motives have over him; and the weaker force is by which their influence on him has been overcome, the weaker their influence on him must have been. Again, given the degree of a man’s receptiveness to the force of the social motives, their force in tending to restrain him from engaging in a harmful enterprise is proportional to the apparent harmfulness of the enterprise, i.e. to the amount of mischief that he thinks will arise from it. In other words: •the less harmful the offence appears to him to be, the less averse he will be—as far as he is guided by social considerations—to perform it; •the more harmful, the more averse. So if the nature of the offence is such that it must appear to him highly harmful, yet he still engages in it, this shows that he can’t be very receptive to the force of the social motives, and consequently that his disposition is correspondingly de- praved. And the weaker the temptation, the more pernicious and depraved his disposition must have been. . . . 42. From all this it seems that the following rules can be laid down judging •the depravity of a man’s disposition on the basis of •the strength of the temptation and •the harmfulness of the enterprise. Rule 1. The strength of the temptation being given, the harmfulness of the disposition shown by the enterprise is proportional to the apparent harmfulness of the act. It would show a more depraved disposition to murder a man for a reward of a guinea, or falsely to charge him with a robbery for the same reward, than to obtain a guinea from him by simple theft; given that the offender’s trouble and
- 629. danger would be about the same either way. Rule 2. The apparent harmfulness of the act being given, a man’s disposition is the more depraved the slighter the temptation is by which he has been overcome. It shows a more depraved and dangerous disposition if one man kills another •for mere sport (as Muley Mahomet, Emperor of Morocco, is said to have killed many) than if he killed him •for revenge (as Sylla and Marius killed thousands), or •for self-preservation (as Augustus killed many), or even •for money (as that same Emperor is said to have killed some). And the effects of each depravity on that part of the public that knows about it is also proportional: from Augustus some persons had to fear under some circumstances; from Muley Mahomet every man had to fear at all times. Rule 3. The apparent harmfulness of the act being given, the evidence it provides of the depravity of the offender’s disposition is less conclusive, the stronger the temptation that has overcome him. If a poor man who is near to death from starvation steals a loaf of bread, this is a less explicit [Bentham’s word] sign of depravity than if a rich man committed a theft for the same amount. Notice that this rule speaks only of the strength of the evidence of depravity in the two cases; it doesn’t say 81 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 11: Human Dispositions in General that the poor man is less depraved than the rich one. Given what we have been told about the poor man’s theft, he might have gone ahead with it even if the temptation not been so
- 630. strong. In this case, the alleviating circumstance ·of strong temptation· is only a matter of presumption; in the rule-three case, the aggravating circumstance ·of weak temptation· is a matter of certainty. Rule 4. Where the motive is of the unsocial kind—the apparent harmfulness of the act and the strength of the temptation being given—the depravity is proportional to the degree of deliberation with which it is accompanied [= ‘to how much thought the offender gave to the question of whether to act in that way’]. In every man, however depraved his disposition is, it’s the social motives that regulate and determine the general tenor of his life whenever the self-regarding motives aren’t engaged. If the unsocial motives are put into action, it is only in particular circumstances, and on particular occasions, when the gentle but constant force of the social motives has been subdued for a while. So the general and standing bias of every man’s nature is towards the side favoured by the social motives; so that the force of the social motives tends continually to extinguish the force of the unsocial ones (compare: in natural bodies the force of friction tending to extinguish the force generated by impulse). Thus, time, which wears away the force of the unsocial motives, adds to that of the social ones; so the longer a man continues on a given occasion under the dominion of the unsocial motives, the more convincing is the evidence this gives of his unreceptiveness to the force of the social ones. Thus, if a man beats his antagonist on the spot, in consequence of a sudden quarrel, this doesn’t show as bad a disposition as a man who lays a deliberate plan for beating his antagonist, and beats him accordingly, and not nearly as bad as the disposition of a man who has his antagonist
- 631. in his power for a long times and beats him at intervals, and at his leisure. 43. The depravity of disposition indicated by an act is a material [see Glossary] consideration in several respects. Any mark of extraordinary depravity, by adding to the terror already inspired by the crime and by holding up the offender as a person from whom there may be more mischief to be feared in future, adds in •one way to the demand for punishment. By indicating a general lack of receptiveness on the part of the offender it may also add in •another way to the demand for punishment. The offender’s disposition is important in this context because when the severity of punishment is being decided the principle of sympathy and antipathy is apt to look at nothing else. A man who punishes because he hates, and for no other reason, when he doesn’t find anything odious in the disposition he doesn’t want to punish at all; and when he does want to, he doesn’t favour carrying the punishment further than his hatred carries him. [The next sentence is exactly as Bentham wrote it.] Hence the aversion we find so frequently expressed against the maxim that the punishment must rise with the strength of the temptation; a maxim the contrary of which, as we shall see, would be as cruel to offenders themselves as it would be subversive of the purposes of punishment. 82 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences Chapter 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences
- 632. 1. Forms in which the mischief of an act may show itself 1. Up to here I have been speaking of the items on which the consequences or tendency of an act can depend: •the bare act itself, •the circumstances in which it was, or was supposed to have been, performed, •what the agent knew or believed about such circum- stances, •what he intended in performing the act, •what motives gave birth to those intentions, and •what disposition is indicated by the connection between his intentions and his motives. I now come to speak of the consequences or tendency them- selves, an item that forms the concluding link in all this chain of causes and effects, and is the sole source of the materiality of the whole [= ‘the sole reason why all this matters’]. My only immediate concern here is with the part of this tendency that is harmful, so I shall confine myself to that. 2. The tendency of an act is harmful when its actual or probable consequences are harmful; and the harmful consequences of an act whose tendency is harmful can be thought of as constituting one aggregate item that we could call the mischief of the act. 3. This mischief can often be divided into two shares or parcels—the primary mischief and the secondary mischief, as we might call them. We can label as ‘primary’ the share of the mischief that is suffered by an identifiable individ-
- 633. ual, or a number of identifiable individuals. We can label as ‘secondary’ the share which, taking its origin from the former, extends itself over some multitude of unidentifiable individuals (it could be the whole community). 4. The primary mischief of an act can be divided into •the original mischief: what comes to any person P1 who is a sufferer in the first instance and on his own account; the person, for instance, who is beaten, robbed, or murdered; and •the derivative mischief: what comes to any person P2 because—and only because—of primary mischief suffered by P1. Of course P2 must be in some way connected with P1; and we have already seen the ways in which one person can be connected with another—namely, in the way of interest (meaning self-regarding interest) or merely in the way of sympathy. And when x is connected with y in the way of interest, x either provides support to y or gets support from him. (See chapter 6.) 5. The secondary mischief often involves two strands, pain and danger. The pain it produces is a pain of anxiety, a pain based on the •fear of suffering mischiefs or inconveniences that it is the nature of the primary mischief to produce. We can give it the one-word label alarm. The danger is the •chance of suffering those mischiefs or inconveniences. Danger is nothing but the chance of pain, which is the same as the chance of loss of pleasure. 6. An example may serve to make this clear. A man attacks you on the road, and robs you. You suffer a pain on the occa- sion of losing so much money, and also suffer pain from your anxiety over how he might treat you physically if you don’t satisfy his demands. These together constitute the original
- 634. strand in the primary mischief resulting from the robbery. 83 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences A creditor of yours who expected you to pay him with part of that money, and a son of yours who expected you to give him another part, are in consequence disappointed; and you have to fall back on the bounty of your father to make up for some part of the deficiency. These mischiefs together make up the derivative strand ·in the primary mischief·. The news of this robbery spreads through the neighbourhood, then finds its way into the newspapers and is propagated over the whole country. This causes various people to call to mind the danger that they and their friends—judging from this example—are exposed to in travelling, especially when travelling the same road. They naturally feel a certain degree of pain. How intense it is for any given person will depend on •how badly he thinks you were treated, •how often he ·thinks he· may have occasion to travel on that same road, or its neighbourhood, •how near he is to the place where your robbery oc- curred, •his level of personal courage, •how much money he may have occasion to carry about with him, and a variety of other circumstances. This constitutes the
- 635. first part of the secondary mischief resulting from the act of robbery, namely the alarm. But the robbery committed on you affects people of various kinds not merely by getting them to think they have a chance of being robbed but also (as I’ll show in a moment) by giving them such a chance. This chance constitutes the remaining part of the secondary mischief of the robbery, namely the danger. 7. Let us see what this chance amounts to, and where it comes from. How can one robbery R1 contribute to producing another robbery R2? Certainly not by creating any direct motive. A motive must be the prospect of some pleasure, or other advantage, to be enjoyed in future; but R1 is past, and even if it weren’t it wouldn’t provide any such prospect for the person who may be about to commit robbery R2. A man’s motive or inducement to commit a robbery must be the idea of the pleasure he expects to derive from the fruits of that robbery, a pleasure that exists independently of any other robbery. 8. It seems that the means by which one robbery tends to produce another robbery are these two, both operating on a person who is open to temptation in this direction: •By suggesting to him the idea of committing another such robbery (and perhaps getting him to believe that it will be easy). This is an influence on his understanding. •By weakening the force of the tutelary motives that tend to restrain him from such an action, thereby strengthening the temptation. In this case the influ- ence works on the will. The tutelary motives exert four forces: (i) The motive of benevolence, which acts as a branch of
- 636. the physical sanction.1 (ii) The motive of self-preservation, as against the punish- ment that may be provided by the political sanction. (iii) The fear of shame—a motive belonging to the moral sanction. (iv) The fear of the divine displeasure—a motive belonging to the religious sanction. 1 To wit, in virtue of the pain it may give a man to witness or otherwise be conscious of the sufferings of a fellow-creature, especially when he himself caused them—in short. the pain of sympathy. See 26 on page 28. 84 Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremy Bentham 12: A harmful Act’s Consequences The earlier robbery may have no significant influence on (i) and (iv), but it has on the other two. 9. How can a past robbery weaken the force with which (ii) the political sanction tends to prevent a future robbery? Well, this sanction tends to prevent a robbery by proclaiming some particular kind of punishment against anyone who commits it; the real value of such punishment will of course be lessened by real uncertainty as to whether it will be inflicted. [Bentham adds: ‘and also, if there’s any difference, the apparent