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the same things happen to other people; thus all the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I.; and hence the misfortunes of kings, like those of lovers, are the only real proper subjects of tragedy, for in spite of reason and experience our imagination attaches to these two conditions of life a happiness superior to that of any other.

But this disposition of mankind to sympathize with all the passions of the rich and powerful has also its utility as the source of the distinction of ranks and of the peace and order of society. It is not the case, as was taught by Epicurus, that the tendency of riches and power to procure pleasure makes them desirable, and that the tendency to produce pain is the great evil of poverty. Riches are desirable for the general sympathy which goes along with them, and the absence of such sympathy is the evil of their want. Still less is the reverence of men for their superiors founded on any selfish expectations of benefit from their good-will. It arises rather from a simple admiration of the advantages of their position, and is primarily a disinterested sentiment. From a natural sympathetic admiration of their happiness, we desire to serve them for their own sakes, and require no other recompense than the vanity and honour of obliging them.

It would equally be a mistake to suppose that the common deference paid to the rich is founded on any regard for the general utility of such submission, or for the support it gives to the maintenance of social order, for even when it may be most beneficial to oppose them, such opposition is most reluctantly made. The tendency to reverence them is so natural, that even when a people are brought to desire the punishment of their kings, the sorrow felt for the mortification of a monarch is ever ready to revive former sentiments of loyalty. The death of Charles I. brought about the Restoration, and

sympathy for James II. when he was caught by the populace making his escape on board ship, went very nigh to preventing the Revolution.

But although this disposition to sympathize with the rich is conducive to the good order of society, Adam Smith admits that it to a certain extent tends to corrupt moral sentiments. For in equal degrees of merit, the rich and great receive more honour than the poor and humble; and if it be "scarce agreeable to good morals or even to good language, to say that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect," it is certain that they almost always obtain it, and that they are therefore pursued as its natural objects.

Hence it comes about, that "the external graces, the frivolous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing, called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher or a legislator." Not only the dress, and language, and behaviour of the rich and great become favourable, but their vices and follies too, vain men giving themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy of which in their hearts they do not approve and of which perhaps they are not guilty. For "there are hypocrites of wealth and greatness as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is apt to pretend to be what he is not in one way, as a cunning man is in the other."

CHAPTER XI.

ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF FINAL CAUSES IN ETHICS.

IN our sympathy for rank and wealth, as explained in the last chapter, Adam Smith sees plainly the "benevolent wisdom of nature." "Nature," he says, "has wisely judged that the distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, would rest more securely upon the plain and palpable difference of birth and fortune than upon the invisible and often uncertain difference of wisdom and virtue." And in discussing the perverting influence of chance upon our moral sentiments, he finds the same justification for our admiration of Success. equally with our admiration for mere wealth it is necessary for the stability of society. We are thereby taught to submit more easily to our superiors, and to regard with reverence, or a kind of respectful affection, that fortunate violence we can no longer resist. By this admiration for success, we acquiesce with less reluctance in the government which an irresistible force often imposes on us, and submit no less easily to an Attila or a Tamerlane than to a Cæsar or an Alexander.

For

To a certain extent this conception of Nature, and recognition of design, entered into the general thought of the time. Even Hume said, "It is wisely ordained by nature that private connexions should commonly prevail over universal views and considerations; otherwise our affections and actions would be dissipated and lost for want of a proper limited object." But Adam Smith more particularly adopted this

view of things, and the assumption of Final Causes as explanatory of moral phenomena is one of the most striking features in his philosophy; nor does he ever weary of identifying the actual facts or results of morality with the actual intention of nature. It seems as if the shadow of Mandeville had rested over his pen, and that he often wrote rather as the advocate of a sytem of nature which he believed to have been falsely impugned than as merely the analyst of our moral sentiments. Writing too as he describes himself to have done, with an immense landscape of lawns and woods and mountains before his window, it is perhaps not surprising, that his observation of the physical world should have pleasantly affected his contemplation of the moral one, and blessed him with that optimistic and genial view of things, which forms so agreeable a feature in his Theory.

The extent to which Adam Smith applies his doctrine of final causes in ethics is so remarkable, that it is worth while to notice the most striking examples of it.

Our propensity to sympathize with joy being, as has been said, much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow, we more fully sympathize with our friends in their joys than in their sorrows. It is a fact, that however conscious we may be of the justice of another's lamentation, and however much we may reproach ourselves for our want of sensibility, our sympathy with the afflictions of our friends. generally vanishes when we leave their presence. Such is the fact, the final cause of which is thus stated: "Nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take any further share in those of others than was necessary to prompt us to relieve them."

Another purpose of nature may be traced in the fact, that as expressions of kindness and gratitude attract our sympathy,

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those of hatred and resentment repel it. The hoarse discordant voice of anger inspires us naturally with fear and aversion, and the symptoms of the disagreeable affections never excite, but often disturb, our sympathy. For, man having been formed for society, "it was, it seems, the intention of nature that those rougher and more unamiable emotions which drive men from one another should be less easily and more rarely communicated."

Our natural tendency to sympathize with the resentment of another has also its purpose. For instance, in the case of a murder, we feel for the murdered man the same resentment which he would feel, were he conscious himself, and into which we so far enter as to carry it out as his avengers; and thus, with regard to the most dreadful of all crimes, has nature, antecedent to all reflections on the utility of punishment, stamped indelibly on the human heart an immediate and instinctive approbation of the sacred and necessary law of retaliation.

Resentment within moderation is defensible as one of the original passions of our nature, and is the counterpart of gratitude. Nature "does not seem to have dealt so unkindly with us as to have endowed us with any principle which is wholly and in every respect evil." The very existence of society depending as it does on the punishment of unprovoked malice, man has not been left to his own reason, to discover that the punishment of bad actions is the proper means to preserve society, but he has been endowed with an immediate and instinctive approbation of that very application of punishment which is so necessary. In this case, as in so many others, the economy of nature is the same, in endowing mankind with an instinctive desire for the means necessary for the attainment of one of her favourite ends. As the self-preservation of the individual is an end, for which man has not been left to the

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