with the same moral attributes. The moral sense theory cannot account for this fact; and the only explanation possible is, that, in this instance at least, the coincidence or opposition of sentiments between the person judging and the person judged constitutes moral approbation or the contrary. When the approbation with which our neighbour regards the conduct of another person coincides with our own, we approve of his approbation as in some measure morally good; and so, on the contrary, when his sentiments differ from our own, we disapprove of them as morally wrong. If a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every other, were really the source of the principle of approbation, it is strange that such a sentiment "should hitherto have been so little taken notice of as not to have got a name in any language. The word 'moral sense' is of very late formation, and cannot yet be considered as making part of the English tongue. The word 'conscience' does not immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or disapprove. Conscience supposes, indeed, the existence of some such faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably to its directions. When love, hatred, joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, with so many other passions which are all supposed to be the subjects of this principle, have made themselves considerable enough to get them titles to know them by, is it not surprising that the sovereign of them all should hitherto have been so little heeded that—a few philosophers excepted— nobody has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name upon it?" In opposition then to the theory which derives moral approbation from a peculiar sentiment, Adam Smith reduces it himself to four sources, in some respects different from one another. "First, we sympathize with the motives of the agent; secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who SOURCES OF MORAL APPROBATION. 171 receive the benefit of his actions; thirdly, we observe that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which those two sympathies generally act; and last of all, when we consider such actions as making a part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the happiness either of the individual or of the society, they appear to derive a beauty from this utility not unlike that which we ascribe to any well-contrived machine." LIBRARY UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA CHAPTER XIV. REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL CRITICISMS OF ADAM SMITH'S THEORY. THE result of the preceding chapter, in which the relation of Adam Smith's theory to other ethical theories has been defined, is that it is a theory in which all that is true in the "selfish" system of Hobbes or Mandeville, in the "benevolent" system of Hutcheson, or in the "utilitarian" system of Hume, is adopted and made use of, to form a system quite distinct from any one of them. It seeks to bridge over their differences, by avoiding the one-sidedness of their several principles, and taking a wider view of the facts of human nature. It is therefore, properly speaking, an Eclectic theory, if by eclecticism be understood, not a mere commixture of different systems, but a discriminate selection of the elements of truth to be found in them severally. The ethical writers who most influenced Adam Smith were undoubtedly Hume and Hutcheson, in the way of agreement and difference that has been already indicated. Dugald Stewart has also drawn attention to his obligations to Butler.' It would be interesting to know whether he ever read Hartley's Observations on Man, a work which, published in 1749that is, some ten years before his own-would have materially assisted his argument. For Adam Smith's account of the growth of conscience-of a sense of duty, is in reality 1 Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 412. closely connected with the theory which explains its origin by the working of the laws of association. From our expe rience of the constant association between the acts of others and pleasurable or painful feelings of our own, according as we sympathize or not with them, comes the desire of ourselves. causing in others similar pleasurable, and avoiding similar painful, emotions-or in other words, that desire of praise and aversion to blame which, refined and purified by reference to an imaginary and ideal spectator of our conduct, grows to be a conscientious and disinterested love of virtue and detestation of vice. The rules of moral conduct, formed as they are by generalization from particular judgments of the sympathetic instinct, or from a number of particular associations of pleasurable and painful feelings with particular acts, are themselves directly associated with that love of praise or praiseworthiness which originates in our longing for the same sympathy from other men with regard to ourselves that we know to be pleasurable in the converse relation. The word "association" is never once used by Adam Smith, but it is implied at every step of his theory, and forms really as fundamental a feature in his reasoning as it does in that of the philosopher who was the first to investigate its laws in their application to the facts of morality. This is, perhaps, internal evidence enough that Adam Smith never saw Hartley's work.2 But the writer who, perhaps, as much as any other contributed to the formation of Adam Smith's ideas, seems to have 2 Yet in his Essay on the External Senses, of which the date is uncertain, and in his History of Astronomy, which he certainly wrote before 1758, mention is made by Adam Smith of the association of ideas. It is probable, however, that he was acquainted with the doctrine, not from Hartley, but from Hume's statement of it in the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding. been Pope, who in his Essay on Man anticipated many of the leading thoughts in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. The points of resemblance between the poet and the philosopher are frequent and obvious. There is in both the same constant appeal to nature, and to the wisdom displayed in her laws; the same reference to self-love as the basis of the social virtues and benevolence; the same identification of virtue with happiness; and the same depreciation of greatness and ambition as conducive to human felicity. Adam Smith's simple theory of happiness, for instance, reads like a commentary on the text supplied by Pope in the lines,― "Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words-Health, Peace, and Competence." Said in prose, the same teaching is conveyed by the philosopher: "What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" Or, to take another instance. Adam Smith's account of the order in which individuals are recommended by nature to our care is precisely the same as that given by Pope. Says the former: "Every man is first and principally recommended to his own care," and, after himself, his friends, his country, or mankind become by degrees the object of his sympathies So said Pope before him : "God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, |