Every moralist’s, even Epictetus’s, description of virtue is just as far as it goes. But Smith claims to have been the first to give any precise or distinct measure by which the fitness or propriety of affection can be ascertained and judged. Such a measure he finds in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator. Here, then, we have the central and peculiar doctrine that stamps with originality Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.[11]
That sympathy or fellow-feeling is a primary instinct of man appears from the commonest incidents of life. Do we not shrink when a blow is aimed at another, do not the spectators wriggle as they follow a rope-dancer’s contortions, are we not moved by tears, is not laughter infectious? Sympathy is agreeable. We like to give it, and we long for it. It is too instinctive to be explained (though some would do so) by a refinement of self-love. Yet it is not a mere reflection or shadow. Generally speaking, we only sympathise when our sentiments and feelings correspond with those of another. Sympathy means approval. To give it is to praise, to withhold it to blame. How, then, does Adam Smith account for the growth of moral sentiments in the man, and for the progress of morality in mankind? He holds that what we call conscience, or the sense of duty, arises from a certain reflex action of sympathy. We apply to ourselves the moral judgments we have learned to pass on others. We imagine what they will say and think about our own thoughts and words and actions. We try to look at ourselves with the impartial eyes of other people, and seek to anticipate that judgment which they are likely to pass upon us. This is the first stage. But men have very different degrees of morality and wisdom. One man’s praise or blame carries infinitely more weight than another’s. Thus what is called conscience, that is our idea of the impartial spectator, insensibly develops. The impartial spectator becomes more and more our ideal man, and we come to pay more homage to his still small voice than to the judgment of the world. The pangs of conscience are far more terrible than the condemnation of the market-place. Praiseworthiness comes to be better than praise; blameworthiness comes to be worse than blame. The true hell is the hell within the breast; the worst tortures are those that follow the sentence of the impartial spectator. One feature in the phenomena of sympathy, which Smith points out, perhaps constitutes a weak point in his theory. The spectator’s emotions are apt to fall short of the sufferer’s. Compassion is never exactly the same as original sorrow.
Smith, like Kant, has his own way, and a curious one it is, of putting the rule of Christ. “As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.” Our philosopher readily admits that there are passions, like love, which, “though almost unavoidable in some part of life,” are not at first sight very agreeable to his theory. He says we cannot enter into the eagerness of a lover’s emotions. They are always “in some measure ridiculous.” “The passion appears to everybody but the man who feels it entirely disproportioned to the value of the object.” Ovid’s gaiety and Horace’s gallantry are pleasant enough, but you grow weary of the “grave, pedantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and Petrarca.”
Resentment provides him with a better illustration. The counterpart of gratitude, it is a very difficult passion to realise in a proper degree. “How many things,” he exclaims, “are requisite to render the gratification of resentment completely agreeable and to make the spectator thoroughly sympathise with our revenge?” First, the provocation must be such that if unresented we should become contemptible and be exposed to perpetual insults. Second, smaller offences had better be neglected. Third, we should resent from a sense of propriety and of what is expected of us. Above all, we should diligently consider what would be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator.
Though the love of the lover has to be belittled for the purpose of this theory, friendship and all the social and benevolent affections are dear to sympathy and “please the indifferent spectator upon almost every occasion.” True friendship is one of the virtues which prove the limitations of the utilitarian theory: “There is a satisfaction in the consciousness of being beloved which to a person of delicacy and sensibility is of more importance to happiness than all the advantage which he can expect to derive from it.”
As Smith goes through the list of virtues and vices his “Impartial Spectator” constantly reminds us of Aristotle’s theory that every virtue is a mean between two extremes. The impartial spectator dislikes excess. The rise of the upstart, for example, is too sudden an extreme, nor does his behaviour often conciliate our affections:—
“If the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved, as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest who advances more gradually to greatness, whom the public destines to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy, and with regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes or any envy in those he leaves behind.”
The Impartial Spectator is rather a fickle and illogical person; he does not like unexampled prosperity, but he is always ready to sympathise with trivial joys. “It is quite otherwise with grief. Small vexations excite no sympathy, but deep affliction calls forth the greatest.” It takes a great grief to enlist our sympathy, for “it is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter it with reluctance.” So when we hear a tragedy we struggle against sympathetic sorrow as long as we can, and when we finally give way, carefully conceal our tears! In a letter of July the 28th, 1759, from which we have already quoted, Hume made some objections to this part of Smith’s theory:—
“I am told that you are preparing a new edition, and propose to make some additions and alterations in order to obviate objections. I shall use the freedom to propose one; which, if it appears to be of any weight, you may have in your eye. I wish you had more particularly and fully proved that all kinds of sympathy are agreeable. This is the hinge of your system, and yet you only mention the matter cursorily on p. 20. Now it would appear that there is a disagreeable sympathy as well as an agreeable. And, indeed, as the sympathetic passion is a reflex image of the principal, it must partake of its qualities, and be painful when that is so....
“It is always thought a difficult problem to account for the pleasure from the tears and grief and sympathy of tragedy, which would not be the case if all sympathy was agreeable. An hospital would be a more entertaining place than a ball. I am afraid that on p. 99 and 111 this proposition has escaped you, or rather is interwoven with your reasoning. In that place you say expressly, ‘It is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter into it with reluctance.’ It will probably be requisite for you to modify or explain this sentiment, and reconcile it to your system.”
In the following spring (April 4th) Smith wrote from Glasgow to Strahan, Millar’s young and very able partner, about the second edition, for which he had sent “a good many corrections and improvements.” He asks Strahan to take care that the book is printed “pretty exactly according to the copy I delivered to you.” Strahan, it seems, had offered his services as a critic, and Smith was a little afraid that he might find unauthorised alterations in the text. He will be much obliged to his publisher for suggestions, but cannot consent to surrender “the precious right of private judgment, for the sake of which your forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infallible than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant, my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.”