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CHAPTER XXIV.

DR. ADAM SMITH.

THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS.

ADAM SMITH was born at Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, in 1723. He obtained his elementary education at his native town; and in 1737 he went to Glasgow, and afterwards to Baliol College, Oxford, with a view of entering into the English Church. In 1751, he was elected Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy in the University in Glasgow. He published his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759, and his other well known work on the Wealth of Nations in 1766. He died in 1790.

The moral theory of Dr. Smith's is perhaps one of the most pleasing and instructive performances

which ever was written on the speculative principles of morality. Embellished with the fruits of a lively but chaste imagination, enforced by language at once dignified and simple, the reader generally becomes deeply interested in the theory of "Moral Sentiments." The system possesses all the charms of a most refined and accurate analysis, and the illustrations are so apposite and agreeable to nature, that the reader seems to pass pleasantly from one step of conviction to another, until he comes to the conclusion that now he has found a theory which sufficiently accounts for all moral appearances. Indeed, so captivating is the performance now under examination, that few readers of it will be found who have not, at the termination of their labours, expressed their approbation at its excellencies, and felt deeply impressed with the truth of its leading principles.

In the familiar and every-day intercourse of human life, we must on every side perceive the great influence of moral sympathy, which is only another word for that fellow-feeling we experience in other men's joys and sorrows, tastes and humours, successes and disappointments, opinions and sentiments. This feeling developes itself in our constitutions at a very early period of our existence; in childhood

and in youth, we enter warmly into all the feelings of those around us, and according to the strength of the benevolent principle or feeling of attachment, we are inclined to imitate the actions, and acquire the opinions, habits, and sentiments of those with whom we are upon terms of intimacy and friendship. "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility; the greatest ruffian,-the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.

"That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to

conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious assertions, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed, and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing on a dancer on the slack-rope, naturally writhe, and twist, and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel they themselves must do, if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body complain, that in looking on the ulcers and sores which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those wretches, affects that particular part in themselves more than any other; because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would suffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation

complained of. Men of the most robust make ob serve, that in looking upon sore eyes, they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest men more delicate than any other part of the body is in the weakest." *

Sympathy is the source of, or the principal share of our pleasures and pains, joys and sorrows; and this is finely explained by Mr. Smith-" But, whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own heart; nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearances of the contrary." "When we have read a book or poem so often that we even no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion-to him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider all the ideas which it presents, rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are

• Moral Sentiments, pp. 1-3.

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