The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f the consciousness of merited praise or blame.

In the two foregoing parts of this discourse, I have

chiefly considered the origin and foundation of our

judgments concerning the sentiments and conduct

of others. I come now to consider the origin of

those concerning our own.

The desire of the approbation and esteem of those

we live with, which is of such importance to our

happiness, cannot be fully and entirely contented but

by rendering ourselves the just and proper objects of

those sentiments, and by adjusting our own character

and conduct according to those measures and

rules by which esteem and approbation are naturally

bestowed. It is not sufficient, that from ignorance

174or mistake, esteem and approbation should some way

or other be bestowed upon us. If we are conscious

that we do not deserve to be so favourably thought

of, and that if the truth was known, we should be

regarded with very opposite sentiments, our satisfaction

is far from being complete. The man who applauds

us either for actions which we did not perform,

or for motives which had no sort of influence

upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another person.

We can derive no sort of satisfaction from his

praises. To us they should be more mortifying than

any censure, and should perpetually call to our minds,

the most humbling of all reflections, the reflection

upon what we ought to be, but what we are not. A

woman who paints to conceal her ugliness, could derive,

one should imagine, but little vanity from the

compliments that are paid to her beauty. These,

we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of

the sentiments which her real complexion would excite,

and mortify her more by the contrast. 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 foundation of the

most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of

affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience

did not teach us how common they are, one

should imagine the least spark of common sense

would save us from. The foolish liar, who endeavours

to excite the admiration of the company by

the relation of adventures which never had any existence,

the important coxcomb who gives himself

airs of rank and distinction which he well knows he

has no just pretensions to, are both of them, no

doubt, pleased with the applause which they fancy

175they meet with. But their vanity arises from so

gross an illusion of the imagination, that it is difficult

to conceive how any rational creature should be imposed

upon by it. When they place themselves in

the situation of those whom they fancy they have

deceived, they are struck with the highest admiration

for their own persons. They look upon themselves,

not in that light in which, they know, they ought to

appear to their companions, but in that in which

they believe their companions actually look upon

them. Their superficial weakness and trivial folly

hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards,

or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of

view in which their own consciences should tell them

that they would appear to every body, if the real

truth should ever come to be known.

As ignorant and groundless praise can give no solid

joy, no satisfaction that will bear any serious examination,

so, on the contrary, it often gives real

comfort to reflect, that though no praise should actually

be bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has

been such as to deserve it, and has been in every respect

suitable to those measures and rules by which

praise and approbation are naturally and commonly

bestowed. We are pleased not only with praise, but with

having done what is praise-worthy. We are pleased to

think that we have rendered ourselves the natural

objects of approbation, though no approbation,

should ever actually be bestowed upon us: and we

are mortified to reflect that we have justly incurred

the blame of those we live with, though that sentiment

should never actually be exerted against us.

176The man who is conscious to himself that he has exactly

observed those measures of conduct which experience

informs 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 which influenced it; he

looks back upon every part of it with pleasure

and approbation, and though mankind should never

be acquainted with what he has done, he regards

himself not so much according to the light in which

they actually regard him, as according to that, in

which they would regard him if they were better informed.

He anticipates the applause and admiration

which in this case would be bestowed upon

him, and he applauds and admires himself by sympathy

with sentiments which do not indeed actually

take place, but which the ignorance of the public

alone hinders from taking place, which he knows are

the natural and ordinary effects of such conduct,

which his imagination strongly connects with it,

and which he has acquired a habit of conceiving as

something that naturally and in propriety ought to

flow from it. Men have often voluntarily thrown

away life to acquire after death a renown which they

could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in the

mean time, anticipated that fame which was thereafter

to be bestowed upon them. Those applauses

which they were never to hear rung in their ears;

the thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they

were never to feel, played about their hearts, banished

from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears,

and transported them to perform actions which seem

aimed beyond the reach of human nature. But in

177point of reality there is surely no great difference

between that approbation which is not to be bestowed

till we can no longer enjoy it, and that which indeed

is never to be bestowed, but which would be

bestowed if the world was ever made to understand

properly the real circumstances of our behaviour.

If the one often produces such violent effects, we

cannot wonder that the other should always be highly

regarded.

On the contrary, the man who has broke through

all those measures of conduct, which can alone render

him agreeable to mankind, tho’ he should have

the most perfect assurance that what he had done

was for ever to be concealed from every human eye,

it is all to no purpose. When he looks back upon it,

and views it in the light in which the impartial spectator

would view it, he finds that he can enter into

none of the motives which influenced it. He is abashed

and confounded at the thoughts of it, and necessarily

feels a very high degree of that shame which he

would be exposed to, if his actions should ever come

to be generally known. His imagination, in this

case too, anticipates the contempt and derision from

which nothing saves him but the ignorance of those

he lives with. He still feels that he is the natural

object of these sentiments, and still trembles at the

thought of what he would suffer if they were ever actually

exerted against him. But if what he had been

guilty of was not merely one of those improprieties

which are the objects of simple disapprobation, but

one of those enormous crimes which excite detestation

and resentment, he could never think of it, as

long as he had any sensibility left, without feeling all

178the agony of horror and remorse; and though he

could be assured that no man was ever to know it,

and could even bring himself to believe that there

was no God to revenge it, he would still feel enough

of both these sentiments to embitter the whole of his

life: He would still regard himself as the natural object

of the hatred and indignation of all his fellow-creatures;

and if his heart was not grown callous by the

habit of crimes, he could not think without terror and

astonishment even of the manner in which mankind

would look upon him, of what would be the expression

of their countenance and of their eyes, if the

dreadful truth should ever come to be known.

These natural pangs of an affrighted conscience are

the dæmons, the avenging furies which in this life

haunt the guilty, which allow them neither quiet nor

repose, which often drive them to despair and distraction,

from which no assurance of secrecy can protect

them, from which no principles of irreligion can

entirely deliver them, and from which nothing can

free them but the vilest and most abject of all states,

a complete insensibility of honour and infamy, to

vice and virtue. Men of the most detestable characters,

who, in the execution of the most dreadful

crimes, had taken their measures so coolly as to avoid

even the suspicion of guilt, have sometimes been

driven, by the horror of their situation, to discover of

their own accord, what no human sagacity could ever

have investigated. By acknowledging their guilt,

by submitting themselves to the resentment of their

offended citizens, and by thus satiating that vengeance

of which they were sensible that they were become

the proper objects, they hoped by their death

179to 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, if possible, to die in peace and with the

forgiveness of all their fellow-creatures. Compared

to what they felt before the discovery, even the

thought of this, it seems, was happiness.

180