The Theory of Moral Sentiments (80 page)

BOOK: The Theory of Moral Sentiments

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The inspired writers would not surely have talked so frequently or so strongly of the wrath and anger of God, if they had regarded every degree of those passions as vicious and evil, even in so weak and imperfect a creature as man.

Let it be considered too, that the present inquiry is not concerning a matter of right, if I may say so, but concerning a matter of fact. We are not at present examining upon what principles a perfect being would approve of the punishment of bad actions; but upon what principles so weak and imperfect a creature as man actually and in fact approves of it. The principles which I have just now mentioned, it is evident, have a very great effect upon his sentiments; and it seems wisely ordered that it should be so. The very existence of society requires that unmerited and unprovoked malice should be restrained by proper punishments; and consequently, that to inflict those punishments should be regarded as a proper and laudable action. Though man, therefore, be naturally endowed with a desire of the welfare and preservation of society, yet the Author of nature has not entrusted it to his reason to find out that a certain application of punishments is the proper means of attaining this end; but has endowed him with an immediate and instinctive approbation of that very application which is most proper to attain it. The economy of nature is in this respect exactly of a piece with what it is upon many other occasions. With regard to all those ends which, upon account of their peculiar importance, may be regarded, if such an expression is allowable, as the favourite ends of nature, she has constantly in this manner not only endowed mankind with an appetite for the end which she proposes, but likewise with an appetite for the means by which alone this end can be brought about, for their own sakes, and independent of their tendency to produce it. Thus self-preservation, and the propagation of the species, are the great ends which Nature seems to have proposed in the formation of all animals. Mankind are endowed with a desire of those ends, and an aversion to the contrary; with a love of life, and a dread of dissolution; with a desire of the continuance and perpetuity of the species, and with an aversion to the thoughts of its intire extinction. But though we are in this manner endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has not been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason, to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.

Before I conclude this note, I must take notice of a difference between the approbation of propriety and that of merit or beneficence. Before we approve of the sentiments of any person as proper and suitable to their objects, we must not only be affected in the same manner as he is, but we must perceive this harmony and correspondence of sentiments between him and ourselves. Thus, though upon hearing of a misfortune that had befallen my friend, I should conceive precisely that degree of concern which he gives way to; yet till I am informed of the manner in which he behaves, till I perceive the harmony between his emotions and mine, I cannot be said to approve of the sentiments which influence his behaviour. The approbation of propriety therefore requires, not only that we should entirely sympathize with the person who acts, but that we should perceive this perfect concord between his sentiments and our own. On the contrary, when I hear of a benefit that has been bestowed upon another person, let him who has received it be affected in what manner he pleases, if, by bringing his case home to myself, I feel gratitude arise in my own breast, I necessarily approve of the conduct of his benefactor, and regard it as meritorious, and the proper object of reward. Whether the person who has received the benefit conceives gratitude or not, cannot, it is evident, in any degree alter our sentiments with regard to the merit of him who has bestowed it. No actual correspondence of sentiments, therefore, is here required. It is sufficient that if he was grateful, they would correspond; and our sense of merit is often founded upon one of those illusive sympathies, by which, when we bring home to ourselves the case of another, we are often affected in a manner in which the person principally concerned is incapable of being affected. There is a similar difference between our disapprobation of demerit, and that of impropriety.

Lata culpa prope dolum est.

Culpa levis.

Culpa levissima.

See Voltaire.

Vous y grillez sage et docte Platon,
Divin Homere, eloquent Ciceron, &c.
²²

See Thomson’s
Seasons
, Winter:

“Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,” &c. See also Pascal.
⁷

See Robertson’s
Charles V
., vol. ii. pp. 14 and 15, first edition.
²¹

Raro mulieres donare solent.
⁸

See Plato de Rep. lib. iv.

The distributive justice of Aristotle is somewhat different. It consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public stock of a community. See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. l. v. c. 2.

See Aristotle, Ethic. Nic. l. ii. c. 5, et seq. et l. iii. c. 5, et seq.

See Aristotle, Ethic. Nic. lib. ii. ch. 1, 2, 3, and 4.

See Aristotle Mag. Mor. lib. i. ch. 1.

See Cicero de finibus, lib. iii.; also Diogenes Laertius in Zenone, lib. vii. segment 84.

See Cicero de finibus, lib. iii. c. 13. Olivet’s edition.

See Cicero de finibus, lib. i. Diogenes Laert. l.x.

Prima naturæ
⁸¹

See Inquiry concerning Virtue, sect. i. and ii.

Inquiry concerning virtue, sect. ii. art. 4; also Illustrations on the moral sense, sect. v. last paragraph.
⁹¹

Luxury and lust.

Fable of the Bees.

Puffendorff, Mandeville.

Immutable Morality, l. 1.

Inquiry concerning Virtue.

Treatise of the Passions.

Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, sect. i. p. 237, et seq.; third edition.

St Augustine, La Placette.

Origine de l’Inegalité. Partie Premiere, p. 376, 377. Edition d’Amsterdam des Oeuvres diverses de J. J. Rousseau.

As the far greater part of verbs express, at present, not an event, but the attribute of an event, and, consequently, require a subject, or nominative case, to complete their signification, some grammarians, not having attended to this progress of nature, and being desirous to make their common rules quite universal, and without any exception, have insisted that all verbs required a nominative, either expressed or understood; and have, accordingly, put themselves to the torture to find some awkward nominatives to those few verbs, which still expressing a complete event, plainly admit of none.
Pluit
, for example, according to
Sanctius
, means
pluvia pluit
, in English, the
rain rains
. See Sanctii Minerva, l. iii. c. 1.
⁷

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

PART I. - OF THE PROPRIETY OF ACTION.

SECTION I. - OF THE SENSE OF PROPRIETY.

SECTION II. - OF THE DEGREES OF THE DIFFERENT PASSIONS WHICH ARE CONSISTENT ...

SECTION III. - OF THE EFFECTS OF PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY UPON THE JUDGMENT OF ...

PART II. - OF MERIT AND DEMERIT; OR, OF THE OBJECTS OF REWARD AND PUNISHMENT. ...

SECTION I. - OF THE SENSE OF MERIT AND DEMERIT.

SECTION II. - OF JUSTICE AND BENEFICENCE.

SECTION III. - OF THE INFLUENCE OF FORTUNE UPON THE SENTIMENTS OF MANKIND, ...

PART III. - OF THE FOUNDATION OF OUR JUDGMENTS CONCERNING OUR OWN SENTIMENTS ...