The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f those systems which deduce the principle of approbation from self-love.

Those who account for the principle of approbation

from self-love, do not all account for it in

the same manner, and there is a good deal of confusion

and inaccuracy in all their different systems.

According to Mr. Hobbes, and many of his followers,[22]

man is driven to take refuge in society, not

by any natural love which he bears to his own kind,

but because without the assistance of others he is incapable

of subsisting with ease or safety. Society,

347upon this account, becomes necessary to him, and

whatever tends to its support and welfare, he considers

as having a remote tendency to his own interest,

and, on the contrary, whatever is likely to disturb

or destroy it, he regards as in some measure hurtful

or pernicious to himself. Virtue is the great support,

and vice the great disturber of human society. The

former, therefore, is agreeable, and the latter offensive

to every man; as from the one he foresees the

prosperity, and from the other the ruin and disorder

of what is so necessary for the comfort and security

of his existence.

22. Puffendorff. Mandeville.

That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of

vice to disturb the order of society, when we consider

it coolly and philosophically, reflects a very great

beauty upon the one, and a very great deformity

upon the other, cannot, as I have observed upon a

former occasion, be called in question. Human society,

when we contemplate it in a certain abstract

and philosophical light, appears like a great, an immense

machine, whose regular and harmonious movements

produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in

any other beautiful and noble machine that was the

production of human art, whatever tended to render

its movements more smooth and easy, would derive

a beauty from this effect, and, on the contrary,

whatever tended to obstruct them would displease

upon that account: so virtue, which is, as it were,

the fine polish to the wheels of society, necessarily

pleases; while vice, like the vile rust, which makes

them jar and grate upon one another, is as necessarily

offensive. This account, therefore, of the origin of

approbation and disapprobation, so far as it derives

them from a regard to the order of society, runs into

348that principle which gives beauty to utility, and

which I have explained upon a former occasion; and

it is from thence that this system derives all that appearance

of probability which it possesses. When

those authors describe the innumerable advantages of

a cultivated and social, above a savage and solitary

life; when they expatiate upon the necessity of virtue

and good order for the maintenance of the one,

and demonstrate how infallibly the prevalence of

vice and disobedience to the laws tend to bring back

the other, the reader is charmed with the novelty

and grandeur of those views which they open to him:

he sees plainly a new beauty in virtue, and a new

deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice

of before, and is commonly so delighted with the

discovery, that he seldom takes time to reflect, that

this political view, having never occurred to him in

his life before, cannot possibly be the ground of that

approbation and disapprobation with which he has

always been accustomed to consider those different

qualities.

When those authors, on the other hand, deduce

from self-love the interest which we take in the welfare

of society, and the esteem which upon that account

we bestow upon virtue, they do not mean, that

when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and

detest the villainy of Catiline, our sentiments are influenced

by the notion of any benefit we receive from

the one, or of any detriment we suffer from the

other. It was not because the prosperity or subversion

of society, in those remote ages and nations,

was apprehended to have any influence upon our

happiness or misery in the present times; that according

to those philosophers, we esteemed the virtuous,

349and blamed the disorderly character. They

never imagined that our sentiments were influenced

by any benefit or damage which we supposed actually

to redound to us, from either; but by that which

might have redounded to us, had we lived in those distant

ages and countries; or by that which might still

redound to us, if in our own times we should meet

with characters of the same kind. The idea, in short,

which those authors were groping about, but which

they were never able to unfold distinctly, was that

indirect sympathy which we feel with the gratitude

or resentment of those who received the benefit or suffered

the damage resulting from such opposite characters:

and it was this which they were indistinctly

pointing at, when they said, that it was not the

thought of what we had gained or suffered which

prompted our applause or indignation, but the conception

or imagination of what we might gain or

suffer if we were to act in society with such associates.

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded

as a selfish principle. When I sympathize

with your sorrow or your indignation, it may be

pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in

self-love, because it arises from bringing your case

home to myself, from putting myself in your situation,

and thence conceiving what I should feel in the

like circumstances. But though sympathy is very

properly said to arise from an imaginary change of

situations with the person principally concerned, yet

this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to

me in my own person and character, but in that of

the person with whom I sympathize. When I condole

with you for the loss of your only son, in order

to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a

350person of such a character and profession, should

suffer, if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately

to die: but I consider what I should suffer if I

was really you, and I not only change circumstances

with you, but I change persons and characters. My

grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and

not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore,

in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a

selfish passion, which does not arise even from the

imagination of any thing that has befallen, or that

relates to myself, in my own proper person and character,

but which is entirely occupied about what

relates to you? A man may sympathize with a woman

in child-bed; though it is impossible that he

should conceive himself as suffering her pains in his

own proper person and character. That whole account

of human nature, however, which deduces

all sentiments and affections from self-love, which

has made so much noise in the world, but which, so

far as I know, has never yet been fully and distinctly

explained, seems to me to have arisen from some

confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy.