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its perversion to ascetic purposes.' He quotes with indignation a passage in which Massillon, in preaching to a military audience, eloquently compares the hardships endured by a soldier to the penances endured by a monk; and proclaims that one day of a soldier's devotion might, if applied in a different direction, have won eternal happiness. When the rewards and penalties of futurity are perverted to secure the salvation of gloomy ascetics, and to ensure the damnation of heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, the doctrine is unnaturally opposed to all our moral sentiments. A cheerful discharge of daily duties proceeding from an equable and social temper is, in his opinion, the truest wisdom. 'Happiness,' he says, 'consists in tranquillity and enjoyment,' and enjoyment follows almost of necessity from tranquillity. With this moderate estimate of human wants it is easy to believe, and to rejoice in the belief, that there are twenty people happy for one in misery. 'What,' he characteristically asks, 'can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?'5 and this, he adds, is the actual condition of the greatest part of mankind. The sight of the universe and of the human race excites in him neither lofty raptures nor melancholy misgivings, but a kind of placid complacency, which he describes as belief in God.

75. The benevolence of the Creator shows itself in the skilful adaptation of human passions to produce this result. Nature (which is the polite term for God) has made us worshippers of rank and fortune, because she wisely judged' that order would be more secure when resting on visible distinctions than on the obscure qualities of virtue and wisdom. Hume explains the snobbishness of mankind by the obvious consideration that we naturally admire what is useful to us. In Adam Smith's view it becomes a mysterious arrangement of Providence, designed for the good of society."

1 Adam Smith, i. 268, ib.

2 Ib. i. 271, ib.

3 Ib. i. 302; part iii. ch. ii. Ib. i. 282, ib.

Ib. i. 87; part. i. sec. 3, ch. i. The phrase perhaps comes from Pope ('Essay on Man,' iv. 80), who says that all happiness consists in health, peace, and competence;' and Pope here follows Bolingbroke almost verbally (Boling. broke's Works, v. 298).

• Adam Smith, ii. 78; part, vii. sec. 2, ch. i.

The theory of the method is given with great clearness by Smith himself. After adducing the ordinary illustration of the watch, he remarks that we frequently mistake the end promoted by the existence of a given sentiment for the efficient cause of the sentiment; and thus 'imagine that to be the wisdom of man which in reality is the wisdom of God.'' Thus, as he goes on to say in tacit reference to Hume, the utility of just laws being obvious, it has been supposed that the utility was the cause of our approval of the enforcement of such laws. In opposition to this Smith argues that, although the utility has a certain influence, the sentiment of justice is excited in all men, and especially in the unthinking, by a spontaneous movement which does not take utility into account. Sympathy with the injured man excites our anger against a thief, and not any concern for the general interests of society. Smith's argument would be conclusive against a reasoner who should assert that the utility of an action was not merely the criterion of its morality, but also the immediate ground of our approval or disapproval. That would, of course, be a very crude statement of the utilitarian view. Smith's criticism, however, is significant of his position, and gives the starting-point of his special theory.

76. He holds that the moral sentiments contribute blindly to promote the happiness of mankind. Our anger against evildoers falls in by an undesigned coincidence--undesigned, that is, so far as we are concerned-with the general disposition of Providence to promote the greatest possible amount of happiness. But if not designed by us, it must have been designed by the Creator. The theory is, therefore, directed against a palpable weakness of the doctrine as generally expounded. It is easy to perceive that a dim perception of the utility of certain actions may have gradually generated moral sentiments which have no longer a conscious reference to the necessity which produced them. But until this distinction had been plainly drawn, it was a natural objection to the utilitarian theory that moral approval frequently did not involve any distinct recognition of the utility of actions. The instincts which had grown up by a complex process seemed, to observers still unable to place themselves at the historical point

Adam Smith, i. 178; part ii. sec. 2, ch. iii.

of view, to have something mysterious about them. Philosophers who talked not of concrete men, but of abstract human nature, assumed, or rather loudly asserted, to be the same in all times and places. They did not think of our instincts as slowly developed under the influence of a thousand modifying causes through long generations, but as suddenly springing into existence ready made. And to such observers it was natural that the conformity between our wants and our sentiments should appear to be the result of special contrivance, rather than of slow evolution. Smith, however, regards the moral sense described by Hutcheson as a superfluity, and as not properly explaining the phenomena. Our judgments of different vices and virtues vary too widely to be explained as the dictates of one sense; and it would be strange if an instinct so important and so peculiar should have been discovered for the first time within a few years, and not even have received a name. For this and other reasons, he rejects the theory of a specific moral faculty, and substitutes a theory of his own, which, however, seems to have gained few adherents.

77. In the place of Butler's conscience and Hutcheson's moral sense, Smith erects an internal monitor, who is the object of much eloquence, and who is generally described as the 'man,' or 'the demigod within the breast-the great judge and arbiter of conduct.'2 What, then, is this demigod? Whence his authority, and what his origin? The general reply is that he is formed by sympathy. God has given us the gift, though not in such perfection as might be desired, to see ourselves as others see us. We invent, as it were, an impartial spectator, and approve or disapprove of our conduct as we feel that another man would or would not sympathise with our actions.3 Or, to use an appropriate metaphor, we form a mirror from the opinions of other men, by supposing ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour. This is the only lookingglass by which we can in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinise the propriety of our own conduct.' The theory becomes complex as it is worked out.

1 Adam Smith, ii. 299 et seq. ; part vii. sec. 4, ch. ii.

2 Ib. ii. 127; part vi. sec. 3.

♦ Ib. i. 230, ib.

We have to

3 Ib. i. 226; part iii. ch. i.

take into account not merely the primary but the secondary reflections; and, indeed, we must imagine two opposite mirrors, reflecting images in indefinite succession. We must consider A's sympathy for B, and then B's sympathy with A's sympathy, and then A's own sympathy with B's sympathy with A's sympathy for B, and we are finally rather puzzled to discover the ultimate basis of the sympathy. From some points the doctrine seems to resolve itself into a regard for public opinion as embodied in the hypothetical 'impartial spectators.' But which sympathies are right and which wrong? Where is the ultimate criterion? Impartiality is, doubtless, an essential condition for a sound moral judgment, but can it be the only condition? The standard of morality seems to be too fluctuating to serve any intelligible purpose. We can understand the process by which, according to Smith, the amiable virtues' are generated by the spectator's sympathy with the sufferer, and the 'respectable virtues' by the sufferer's sympathy with the spectator's sympathy, and consequent desire to restrain his emotions within moderate bounds. But how are these inconsistent demands to be regulated? How far should the spectator sympathise, and within what bounds should the sufferer restrain his demands for sympathy? The man within the breast' is not an incorruptible judge. He may be persuaded to make reports very different from what circumstances would authorise.2 Who, then, is to correct his judgments? Man, says Smith, has been constituted a judge of his brethren, and is thus the vicegerent upon earth' of his Creator. But he is only judge in the first instance. An appeal lies from him to the higher tribunal of conscience, or, what is identical, to that of the supposed well-informed and impartial spectator, to that of the 'man within the breast, the great judge and arbiter of their' (that is, mankind's) 'conduct.' The jurisdiction of the 'man without' is founded in the desire of simple praise; that of the 'man within' in the desire of praiseworthiness. Does, then, the impartial spectator give a final judgment? No; for it seems that this demigod is

1 Adam Smith, i. 35; part i. sec. 1, ch. v.

2 Ib. i. 320; part iii. ch. iv. Ib. i. 264; part iii. ch. ii. kind of cant phrase with Smith.

127.

The 'great judge and arbiter of conduct' is a
He appears again, for example, i. 276, and ii.

His

partly of mortal, though partly of immortal extraction.1 judgment is perverted by the clamour of the man without.' There lies, therefore, another appeal to a still higher tribunal —that of the 'all-seeing Judge of the world,'2 from whom perfect justice may be anticipated in another life, if not in this.

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78. But how is the appeal to be made? Smith avoids all reference to supernatural revelation, and we must assume that the decisions of this final and absolute tribunal are to be sought in nature. But on what principle they are to be discovered is nowhere apparent. Smith asserts that, beyond the standard of conduct which is formed from the ordinary opinions of the world, there is a higher standard, slowly framed by the demigod,' and approximating indefinitely to the 'archetype of perfection' framed by the Divine artist 3— but we seek in vain for any definite account of its nature. The appeal is ultimately made to an inaccessible tribunal, or, in other words, the standard of absolute morality seems to be hopelessly uncertain. It is in heaven, not on earth, and heaven is shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Here, as elsewhere, Smith's copious and rather unctuous eloquence enables him to glide over the real difficulty, quite unconscious of its existence. His ultimate analysis of the sources of approbation is given in his concluding account of 'Systems of Moral Philosophy.' First, he says, we sympathise with the motives of the agent; secondly, with the gratitude of those he has benefited; '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.' And this he asserts to be a complete analysis of the sentiment. 79. The general laws of morality, then, are merely formulæ expressive of the mode in which sympathy habitually acts, and are convenient standards of reference, but not the ultimate foundation of morality.5 strictly subordinate position.

1 Adam Smith, i. 266, ib.

2 Ib. i. 267, ib.

Ib. ii. 128; part vi. sec. 3.

4

Utility, again, occupies a Smith rejects Hume's explana

Ib. ii. 304; part vii. sec. 4, ch. iii.

See vol. i. p. 327; part iii. ch. iv.

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