introduction to ethic

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

By

Adam Smith, 1723–1790

(excerpt)

Chapter 1: The principle of self-approval and self-disapproval

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) 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.

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 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 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 favors our interests, however ruinous to his. 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 ourselves 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 the propriety of generosity and the ugliness of injustice, the propriety of forgoing our own greatest interests in favor of the still greater interests of others, and 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 neighbor, 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 honorable 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. 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 neighbor, 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 depends 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.

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 acquired not from the abstruse syllogisms of a quibbling 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 biased protectors, its anger is the first and perhaps the only passion it is taught to moderate. In defense 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 favor 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 classmates 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 lifetime! 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 anything relating to him with the eyes of •this great inmate.