University of Virginia Library

Chapter 5. Influence of Prosperity or Adversity, Chance, and Custom Upon Moral Sentiments

In the estimation of Dugald Stewart, the most valuable contribution of' Adam Smith to the improvement of moral science is his attempt to account for the irregularity of our moral sentiments, and for their liability to be modified by other considerations, very different from the propriety or impropriety of the affections of the agent, or from their beneficial or hurtful tendency. Adam Smith was, he thinks, the first philosopher to appreciate thoroughly the importance of the difficulty, which is equally great in every theory of the origin of our moral sentiments; namely, that our actual moral sentiments of approbation, or the contrary, are greatly modified by matters extraneous to the intention of the agent; as, for example, by the influence on the act itself of quite fortuitous or accidental circumstances.

There are, first of all, the effects of prosperity and adversity on the moral judgments of men with regard to the propriety of action, whereby it is easier to obtain approbation in the one condition than it is in the other.

In equal degrees of merit there is scarcely any one who does not more respect the rich and great than the poor and humble; and, on the other hand, an equal amount of vice and folly is regarded with less aversion and contempt in the former than it is in the latter. How is this to be explained? and what is the origin of this perversion of moral sentiment?

The real explanation of it is to be sought in the fact of our sympathetic emotions, which, as they enter more vividly into the joys than into the sorrows of others, feel more pleasure in the condition of the wealthy than in that of the poor. It is agreeable to sympathize with joy, and painful to enter into grief; so that, where there is no envy in the case, our propensity to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow; and our fellow-feeling for the agreeable emotion approaches nearer to its original intensity than our fellow-feeling for the painful emotion of another person. It is for this reason that we are more ashamed to weep than to laugh before company, though we may often have as real occasion to do the one as the other: we always feel that the spectators are more likely to go along with us in the agreeable than in the painful emotion. Hence our disposition to admire the rich and powerful, and to despise or neglect the poor and lowly, arises from our association of joy and pleasure with the condition of the former, and of pain and distress with that of the latter.

The condition of the former, in the delusive colours of our imagination, seems to be almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state. Hence we feel a peculiar satisfaction with the satisfaction we attribute to them. We favour all their inclinations, and forward all their wishes. We are eager to assist them in completing a system of happiness that approaches so near to perfection.

It is from the command which wealth thus has over the sympathetic and agreeable sentiments of mankind that leads to so eager a pursuit and parade of it, and to so strong an aversion to, and concealment of, poverty. To what purpose is all the toil of the world for wealth, power, and pre-eminence? The only advantage really looked to from it is "to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation;" and the rich man glories more in his riches, because they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world, than for any of the other advantages connected with them. And for the same reason the poor man is ashamed of his poverty, for though he may be as well supplied as the rich man with the necessities of life, he is mortified at being placed out of the sight of mankind, at being treated with neglect, and at being an object of the antipathy rather than of the sympathy of his fellows.

Rank and distinction are therefore coveted, as setting us in a situation most in view of general sympathy and attention. "And thus, placethat great object which divides the wives of aldermenis the end of half the labours of human life, and is the cause of all the tumult and bustle, all the rapine and injustice, which avarice and ambition have introduced into the world."

And thus, from our natural disposition to admire the rich and powerful, a different standard of judgment arises about the propriety of their conduct than that employed about the behaviour of other men. A single transgression of the rules of temperance and propriety by a common man is generally more resented than their constant and avowed neglect by a man of fashion. In the superior stations of life, the road to virtue and that to fortune are not always the same, as they are generally in the middling and inferior stations. In the latter stations of life success nearly always depends on the favour and good opinion of equals and neighbours, and these can seldom be obtained without a tolerably regular conduct. In them, therefore, "we may generally expect a considerable degree of virtue; and fortunately for the good morals of society, these are the situations of by far the greater part of mankind."

Not only however has prosperity or adversity great influence on our moral sentiments, leading us to see a propriety in a certain course of behaviour in the one condition which we are apt to condemn as improper in the other, but the praise or blame we attach to any action depends to a great extent on the effect upon it of fortune or accident. Although everybody allows that the merit or demerit of actions is still the same, whatever their unforeseen consequences may be, yet, when we come to particular cases, it is clear that our sentiments of merit or demerit are very much affected by the actual consequences which happen to proceed from any action, and that our sense of either of them is thereby enhanced or diminished.

Every action consists of three parts, some one of which must constitute the basis of whatever praise or blame we attribute to it. These three parts are: the intention or affection of the heart, from which the action proceeds; the external movement of the body which this affection causes; and the good or bad consequences which actually flow from it. It is evident that the movement of the body, being often the same in the most innocent as in the most blameable actions as in the case of shooting at a bird and shooting at a mancannot be the source of praise or blame. Neither can the accidental consequences of an action, which depend on fortune, not on the agent. The only consequences for which the latter is responsible are those in some way connected with his intention; so that it is to the intention or affection of the heart, to the propriety or impropriety, to the beneficence or hurt- fulness of the design, that all praise or blame, all approbation or disapprobation of any kind, must ultimately belong.

The problem then to be explained is the fact that our sense of a man's merit or demerit is at all influenced by re- suits which lie beyond his control, and that we moderate our praise or blame of his conduct according as his good or bad intention fails or not of its intended benefit or injury. The explanation is as follows.

The passions of gratitude and resentment, on which depend our feeling of the merit or demerit of actions, are ultimately based on the bodily sensation of pleasure and pain. They are excited primarily by whatever produces pleasure or pain, even by inanimate objects. "We are angry for a moment even with the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barks at it, a choleric man is apt to curse it." We should feel guilty of a sort of inhumanity, if we neglected to avenge our friend by the destruction of the instrument that had accidently caused his death. So it is with gratitude. A sailor who mended his fire with the plank that had saved him from shipwreck would seem guilty of an unnatural act, for we should expect him to preserve it with care and affection. So we conceive something like a real love and affection for a snuff-box, or pen-knife, or a stick, to which we have long been accustomed. "The house which we have long lived in, the tree whose verdure and shade we have long enjoyed, are both looked upon with a sort of respect which seems due to such benefactors. The decay of the one, or the ruin of the other, affects us with a kind of melancholy, though we should sustain no loss by it."

Nevertheless to be the proper object of gratitude and resentment, a thing must not only be the cause of pleasure and pain, but itself capable of feeling them in return. Animals therefore are less improper objects of gratitude and resentment than inanimate things. "The dog that bites, the ox that gores, are both of them punished. If they have been the causes of the death of any person, neither the public, nor the relations of the slain, can be satisfied, unless they are put to death in their turn." And on the other hand, animals that have done a great service, are regarded with much gratitude; and we are shocked with the ingratitude of the officer, in theTurkish Spy, who stabbed the horse which had carried him across an arm of the sea, lest it should ever distinguish some other person by a similar feat.

But something more is still necessary to the complete gratification of gratitude and resentment than the mere capability for feeling pleasure or pain in return for pain or pleasure caused. The latter must have been caused by design, and there must be a consciousness of design in the return. The object of resentment is chiefly not so much to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, as to make him conscious that he feels it upon account of his past conduct, and to make him repent of that conduct. And the chief object of gratitude is not only to make our benefactor feel pleasure in his turn, but to make him conscious that he meets with that reward on account of his past conduct, and to make him pleased with that conduct.

Hence three different qualifications are necessary to render anything the complete and proper object of gratitude or resentment. It must first of all be the cause of pleasure or pain; it must secondly be capable of feeling pleasure or pain; and it must thirdly produce pleasure or pain from a design, approved of in the one case or disapproved of in the other.

Since then the productiveness of pleasure or pain is the primary exciting cause of gratitude or resentment, though the intentions of any person should be ever so proper and beneficent, or ever so improper and malevolent, yet, if he has failed in producing the good or evil he intended, less gratitude or resentment seems due to him, or in other words, less merit or demerit seems to attach to him, because the pleasure or pain, the exciting causes of gratitude or resentment, are in either case wanting. And so, where in a man's intentions there has been no laudable benevolence or blameable malice, but his actions have nevertheless done great good or great evil, then some gratitude or resentment will attach to him, because their exciting causes have been present in either case. But since the consequences of a man's actions rest altogether with fortune, our sentiments of merit or demerit depend to a great extent upon her influence on events, upon her control of the good or bad, the pleasurable or painful results, which flow from our actions.

Thus the irregularity of our moral sentiments concerning the merit or demerit of actions depends ultimately on the accidental amount of pleasure or pain they produce, since these are the primary exciting causes of our gratitude or resentment. Having explained the cause of the phenomenon, it remains to illustrate the effects.

Even the impartial spectator feels in. some measure a difference of merit in a man's conduct according as his good intentions have produced or not the results intended by him, although they may only have been defeated by accident. It is indeed common to say, that we are equally obliged to the man who has endeavoured to serve us, as to the man who really has served us; but this saying, "like all other fine speeches, must be understood with a grain of allowance." When all other circumstances are equal, there will always be, even in the best and noblest mind, some difference of affection in favour of the friend who carries out his good intention, as against the friend who fails to do so.

And as the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good is diminished by its miscarriage, so is the demerit of an un- successful attempt to do evil. Except in the case of treason, the conception of which is in many countries punished as severely as its commission, the mere design to commit a crime is scarcely ever punished as heavily as its actual perpetration. In hardly any country is the man, who fires a pistol at his enemy but misses him, punished with death, though there is the same degree of depravity in the criminal design as in the criminal action. "The resentment of mankind, however, runs so high against this crime, their terror for the man who shows himself capable of committing it is so great, that the mere attempt to commit it ought in all countries to be capital. The attempt to commit smaller crimes is almost always punished very lightly, and sometimes is not punished at all. The thief, whose hand has been caught in his neighbour's pocket before he had taken anything out of it, is punished with ignominy only. If he had got time to take away a handkerchief, he would have been put to death." [6] The state of the law only reflects the natural feelings of individuals, who feel less resentment when a man has failed in executing the mischief he intended than when he has actually done them an injury.

For the same reason, a man, who has been saved purely by accident from the commission of a crime he intended, though he is conscious that his real guilt, that of his heart, remains the same, considers himself as less deserving of resentment and punishment; and thus all the sense of his guilt is either diminished or destroyed by the mere fact of fortune having favoured him.

Again, as Fortune influences our moral sentiments by lessening the good or evil, the pleasure or pain, intended by our actions, so does she increase our sense of their merit or demerit, beyond what their mere intention would justify, when they happen to give rise to extraordinary pleasure or pain. Even when an intention deserves neither praise nor blame, we are conscious of a shade of merit or demerit, according to its agreeable or disagreeable effects on us. We feel a transitory gratitude to the bearer of good tidings, and a transitory resentment to the innocent author of our sorrow. And though we think it barbarous in Tigranes, king of Armenia, to have struck off the head of a man for being the first to announce the approach of an enemy, yet we think it reasonable that, by the custom of all courts,.the officer who first brings the news of a victory should be entitled to considerable preferments.

When the negligence of one man causes damage to another, even though his negligence should be no more than a want of extreme circumspection, the law often insists on compensation. In Rome there was a law which compelled any one who, by reason of his horse taking fright and becoming unmanageable, rode over another man's slave, to compensate the loss. The man himself who thus unintentionally hurts another shows some sense of his own demerit by at least offering an apology. Yet why should he make an apology more than any one else? It is because he is aware that the impartial spectator will feel some sympathy with the natural, but unjust, resentment of the person he has accidentally injured.

But the negligence displayed in any action may be so great as to call not merely for blame and censure, but for actual punishment. For we may so far enter into the resentment felt by one man on account of an unintended injury done to him by another, as to approve of his inflicting a punishment on the offender which would have seemed in excess of the demerit of his offence had no unlucky consequences ensued. For instance, though nothing would appear more shocking to our natural sense of equity than to execute a man merely for having carelessly thrown a stone into the street without hurting anybody, yet, if the stone happened to kill anybody, so great would be the effect of this accident on our moral sentiments that, though the man's folly and inhumanity would not be greater in one case than in the other, we should not consider the severest punishment too hard for him. Gross negligence is, therefore, in law almost the same as malicious design.Lata culpa prope dolum est.

But our moral sentiments arc considerably affected, not only by the fact of the prosperity or adversity of the person whose conduct we judge, and by the influence of fortune or accident on the result of his intentions, but they are also greatly modified by those two great principles of Custom and Fashion, which have caused so wide a difference of opinion about what is blameable or praiseworthy to prevail in different ages and nations. For the virtues of the savage state are different from those of the civilized state, the virtues of one profession are different from those of another, and those again which we admire in youth are different from those we look for in old age.

This fact is due to the influence of custom, or of fashion, which is a species of custom, as the custom of persons of high rank or character. For both these affect our moral sentiments, albeit in a less degree, yet in exactly the same way that they affect our ideas and feelings about beauty in all objects submitted to our observation.

The influence of custom on our ideas of beauty is very great. For whenever two objects have been seen in frequent conjunction together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other; and thus, from the mere habit of expecting to see one when we see the other, though there should be no real beauty in their union, we are conscious of an impropriety when they chance to be separated. If even a suit of clothes is without some insignificant but usual ornament, such as a button, we are in some measure displeased by its absence.

The fashion of things changes with a rapidity proportioned to the durableness of their material. The modes of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress, because furniture is generally more durable; but in five or six years it generally undergoes a complete revolution, and every man sees its fashion change in many different ways even in his own lifetime. But the productions of such arts as music, poetry, or architecture, being much more lasting, the fashion or custom, which prevails no less over them than over whatever else is the object of taste, may continue unchanged for a much longer time. A building may endure for ages, a beautiful air may be handed down through generations, a poem may last as long as the world, and thus they may all set the fashion of their particular style or taste much longer than the design of a particular mode of dress or furniture. It is only because of the greater permanence of their fashion, which prevents our having much experience of any change in them, that makes it less easy for us to recognize that the rules we think ought to be observed in each of the fine arts are no more founded on reason and the nature of things than they are in the matter of our furniture and dress.

In architecture, for instance, no reason can be assigned beyond habit and custom for the propriety of attaching to each of the five orders their peculiar ornaments. The eye, having been used to associate a certain ornamentation with a certain order, would be offended at missing their conjunction; but it is inconceivable that, prior to established custom, five hundred other forms should not have suited those proportions equally well.

It is the same in poetry. The ancients thought that a certain species of verse was by nature appropriated to a particular species of writing, according to the sentiment or character intended to be described. One kind of verse was fit for grave and another for gay themes, nor could either be interchanged without the greatest impropriety. Yet that which is the verse of burlesque in English is the heroic verse in French, simply because "custom has made the one nation associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and seriousness with that measure which the other has connected with whatever is gay, flippant, and ludicrous."

Custom influences our judgment no less with regard to the beauty of natural objects; and the proportions which we admire in one kind of animal are quite different from those we admire in another. Every class of things has a beauty of its own, distinct from that of every other species.

Adam Smith stops short, however, of adopting the theory, so ably advocated in the last century by the Jesuit Buffier, and followed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that custom is the sole principle of beauty, and that the beauty of every object consists simply in that form and colour which ismost moral in every particular class of things. According to Buffier, in each species of creatures, that form was most beautiful which bore the strongest character of the general fabric of its species, and had the strongest resemblance to the greater number of the individuals with which it was classed. Hence the most customary form was the most beautiful, and much practice was needed to judge of the beauty of distinct species of things, or to know wherein the middle or most usual form consisted. Hence, too, different ideas of beauty existed in different countries, where difference of climate produced difference of type. Adam Smith so far agrees with this doctrine as to acknowledge that there is scarcely any external form so beautiful as to please, if quite contrary to custom, nor any so deformed as not to be agreeable, if uniformly supported by it; but he also argues that, independently of custom, we are pleased by the appearance of the utility of any formby its fitness for the purposes for which it was intended. Certain colours, moreover, are more agreeable than others, even the first time they are beheld by us; and though he does not lay the same stress on smoothness as Burke did, who held that nothing was beautiful that was not smooth, he also admits that a smooth surface is naturally more agreeable than a rough one.

The influence of custom and fashion upon our ideas of beauty generally being so great as has been explained, what is their influence upon our ideas of beauty of conduct? To this the answer is, that their influence is perfectly similar in kind, though not so great, or rather less potent, over morals than it is over anything else. Although there is no form of external objects to which custom will not reconcile us, nor fashion render agreeable to us, the characters or the conduct of a Nero or a Claudius are what no custom can ever make agreeable, or other than the objects of our hatred or derision; for the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation are founded on the strongest passions of human nature, and, though they can be warpt, they can never be perverted.

Just as custom diminishes our sense of the impropriety of' things which we are accustomed to see together, as in the case of absurdity of dress, so familiarity from youth upwards with violence, falsehood, and injustice takes away all sense of the enormity of such conduct; and, on the other hand, when custom and fashion coincide with the principles of right and wrong, they enhance our moral ideas and increase our abhorrence for everything evil. "Those who have been educated in what is really good companynot in what is commonly called suchwho have been accustomed to see nothing in the persons whom they esteemed and lived with but justice, modesty, humanity and good order, are more shocked with whatever seems to be inconsistent with the rules which those virtues prescribe."

Custom affords an explanation of the different ideas of good conduct prevalent in different degrees of civilization. For every age and country look upon that degree of each quality which is most usual in those among themselves who are most esteemed as the golden mean of that particular talent or virtue. Their sentiments concerning the degree of each quality that deserves praise or blame vary according to the degree which is most common in their own country and times; thus, that degree of politeness which might be thought effeminate adulation in Russia might be regarded as barbarous rudeness in France.

In general, the style of manners prevalent in any nation is that which is most suitable to its situation. That which is most suitable being, then, that which is naturally most com- mon, different standards arise with regard to the general propriety of behaviour. A savage, in continual danger, or exposed to frequent want, acquires a hardiness of character, an insensibility to the sufferings of himself or others, which is most suitable to the circumstances of his situation, and which affords a very different standard of self-command than that which is either usual or necessary in civilized life. The general security and happiness which prevail in ages of culture, by affording little exercise to contempt of danger, or to the endurance of pain or hunger, enable the virtues which are founded on humanity to be more cultivated than those which are founded on self-denial; so that to complain when in pain, to grieve in distress, to be overcome by love or anger, are not regarded as weaknesses, as they would be in savage life, nor as affecting the essential parts of a man's character.

In the different professions and ages of life the same influence of custom may be traced. In each rank and profession we expect a degree of those manners which experience has taught us to look for in them. As in each species of natural objects we are pleased with the conformity to the general type, so in each species of men we are pleased, "if they have neither too much nor too little of the character which usually accompanies their particular condition and situation." Our approbation of a certain kind of military character is founded entirely on habit; for we are taught by custom to annex to the military profession "the character of gaiety, levity, and sprightly freedom, as well as of some degree of dissipation." Whatever behaviour we have been accustomed to see in any order of men, comes to be so associated with that order, that whenever we see the one we expect to see the other, and are pleased or disappointed according as we see it or not. Nevertheless, there may exist a propriety of professional behaviour, independent of the custom which leads us to expect it; and we feel that, apart from all custom, there is a propriety in the gravity of manners which custom has allotted to the profession of a clergyman.

In the same way different manners are assigned to the different periods which mark human life. In youth we look for that sensibility, gaiety, and vivacity which experience teaches us to expect at that age; and at the extreme of life, a certain gravity and sedateness is the character which custom teaches us is both most natural and most respectable.

But nevertheless it is necessary not to exaggerate the effects of custom and fashion on our moral sentiments; for it is more concerning the propriety or impropriety of particular usages than about things of the greatest importance that their in- fluence is most apt to cause perversion of judgment. "We expect truth and justice from an old man as well as from a young, from a clergyman as well as from an officer; and it is in matters of small moment only that we look for the distinguishing marks of their respective characters." No society could subsist a moment if custom could exercise such perversion over our moral sentiments, with regard to the general style of conduct and behaviour, as it exercises with regard to the propriety of particular usages. Uninterrupted custom prevented the philosophers of Athens recognizing the evil of infanticide; and to say that a thing is commonly done is daily offered as an apology for what in itself is the most unjust and unreasonable conduct.

Footnotes