University of Virginia Library

Chapter 7. Theory of Moral Principles

Closely connected in Adam Smith's theory with his account of the growth of conscience is his account of the growth of those general moral principles we find current in the World. lie regards these as a provision of Nature on our behalf, intended to counteract the perverting influences of self-love and the fatal weakness of self-deceit. They arise in the following way.

Continual observations on the conduct of others lead us gradually to form to ourselves certain general rules as to what it is fit and proper to do or to avoid. If some of their actions shock all our natural sentiments, and we hear other people express like detestation of them, we are then satisfied that we view them aright. We resolve therefore never to be guilty of the like offences, nor to make ourselves the objects of the general disapprobation they incur. Thus we arrive at a general rule, that all such actions are to be avoided, as tending to make us odious, contemptible, or punishable. Other actions, on the contrary, call forth our approbation, and the expressions of the same approval by others confirm us in the justice of our opinion. The eagerness of everybody to honour and re- ward them excite in us all those sentiments for which we have by nature the strongest desirethe love, the gratitude, the admiration of mankind. We thus become ambitious of per- forming the like, and thereby arrive at another general rule, that all such actions are good for us to do.

These general rules of morality, therefore, are ultimately founded on experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties approve of or condemn. They are not moral intuitions, or major premisses of conduct supplied to us by nature. We do not start with a general rule, and approve or disapprove of particular actions according as they conform or not to this general rule, but we form the general rule from experience of the approval or disapproval bestowed on particular actions. At the first sight of an inhuman murder, detestation of the crime would arise, irrespective of a reflection; that one of the most sacred rules of conduct prohibited the taking away another man's life, that this particular murder was a violation of that rule, and consequently that it was blameworthy. The detestation would arise instantaneously, and antecedent to our formation of any such general rule. The general rule would be formed afterwards upon the detestation we felt at such an action, at the thought of this and every other particular action of the same kind.

So when we read in history or elsewhere of either generous or base actions, our admiration for the one and our contempt for the other does not arise from the consideration that there are certain general rules which declare all actions of the one kind admirable and all of the other contemptible. Those rules are all formed from our experience of the effects naturally produced on us by all actions of one kind or the other.

Again, an amiable, a respectable, or a horrible action naturally excites for the person who performs them the love, the respect, or the horror of the spectator. The general rules, which determine what actions are or are not the objects of those different sentiments, can only be formed by observing what actions severally excite them.

When once these moral principles, or general rules, have been formed, and established by the concurrent voice of all mankind, they are often appealed to as the standards of judgment, when we seek to apportion their due degree of praise or blame to particular actions. From their being cited on all such occasions as the ultimate foundations of what is just and unjust, many eminent authors have been misled, and have drawn up their systems as if they supposed "that the original judgments of mankind, with regard to right and wrong, were formed, like the decisions of a court of judicatory, by considering first the general rule, and then, secondly, whether the particular action under consideration fell properly within its comprehension."

To pass now from the formation of such general rules to their function in practical ethics. They are most useful in correcting the misrepresentations of things which self-love is ever ready to suggest to us. Though founded on experience, they are none the less girt round with a sacred and unimpeachable authority. Take a man inclined to furious resentment, and ready to think that the death of his enemy is a small compensation for his provocation. From his observations on the conduct of others he has learned how horrible such revenges always appear, and has formed to himself a general rule, to abstain from them on all occasions. This rule preserves its authority with him under his temptation, when he might otherwise believe that his fury was just, and such as every impartial spectator would approve. The reverence for the rule, impressed upon him by past experience, checks the impetuosity of his passion, and helps him to correct the too partial views which self-love might suggest as proper in his situation. Even should he after all give way to his passion, he is terrified, at the moment of so doing, by the thought that he is violating a rule which he has never seen infringed without the strongest expressions of disapprobation, or the evil consequences of punishment.

That sense of duty, that feeling of the obligatoriness of the rules of morality, which is so important a principle in human life, and the only principle capable of governing the bulk of mankind, is none other than an acquired reverence for these general principles of conduct, arrived at in the manner described. This acquired reverence often serves as a substitute for the sense of the propriety or impropriety of a particular course of conduct. For many men live through their lives without ever incurring much blame, who yet may never feel the sentiment upon which our approbation of their conduct is founded, but act merely from a regard for what they see are the established rules of behaviour. For instance, a man who has received great benefits from another may feel very little gratitude in his heart, and yet act in every way as if he did so, without any selfish or blameable motive, but simply from reverence for the established rule of duty. Or a wife, who may not feel any tender regard for her husband, may also act as if she did, from mere regard to a sense of the duty of such conduct. And though such a friend or such a wife are doubt- less not the best of their kind, they are perhaps the second best, and will be restrained from any decided dereliction from their duty. Though "the coarse clay of which the bulk of mankind are formed, cannot be wrought to such perfection's as to act on all occasions with the most delicate propriety, there is scarcely anybody who may not by education, discipline, and example, be so impressed with a regard to general rules of conduct, as to act nearly always with tolerable decency, and to avoid through the whole of his life any considerable degree of blame.

Were it not indeed for this sense of duty, this sacred regard for general rules, there is no one on whose conduct much reliance could be placed. The difference between a man of principle and a worthless fellow is chiefly the difference between a man who adheres resolutely to his maxims of conduct aud the man who acts "variously and accidentally as humour, inclination, or interest chance to be uppermost." Even the duties of ordinary politeness, which are not difficult to ob- serve, depend very often for their observance more on regard for the general rule than on the actual feeling of the moment; and if these slight duties would, without such regard, be so readily violated, how slight, without a similar regard, would be the observance of the duties of justice, truth, fidelity, and chastity, for the violation of which so many strong motives might exist, and on the tolerable keeping of which the very existence of human society depends!

The obligatoriness of the rules of morality being thus first impressed upon us by nature, and afterwards confirmed by reasoning and philosophy, comes to be still further enhanced by the consideration that the said rules are the laws of God, who will reward or punish their observance or violation.

For whatever theory we may prefer of the origin of our moral faculties, there can be no doubt, Adam Smith argues, but "that they were given us for the direction of our conduct in this life." Our moral faculties "carry along with them the most evident badges of this authority, which denote that they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all our actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites, and to judge how far each of them was either to be indulged or restrained." Our moral faculties are not on a level in this respect with the other faculties and appetites of our nature, for no other faculty or principle of action judges of any other. Love, for instance, does not judge of love, nor resentment of resentment. These two passions may be opposite to one another, but they do not approve or disapprove of one another. It belongs to our moral faculties to judge in this way of the other principles of our nature. What is agreeable to our moral faculties is fit, and right, and proper to be done; what is disagreeable to them is the contrary. The sentiments which they approve of are graceful and becoming; the contrary ungraceful and unbecoming. The very wordsright, wrong, fit, improper, graceful, unbecoming mean only what pleases or displeases our moral faculties."

Since, then, they "were plainly intended to be the governing principles of human nature, the rules which they prescribe are to be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, promulgated by those vicegerents which He has thus set up within us." These "vicegerents of God within us" never fail to punish the violation of the rules of morality by the torments of inward shame and self-condemnation, whilst they always reward obedience to them with tranquillity and self- satisfaction.

Having thus added the force of a religious sanction to the authority of moral rules, and accounted for the feeling of obligation in morality, from the physical basis of the pain or pleasure of an instinctive antipathy or sympathy, the philosopher arrives at the question, How far our actions ought to arise chiefly or entirely from a sense of duty or a regard to general rules, and how far any other sentiment ought to concur and have a principal influence. If a mere regard for duty is the motive of most men, how far may their conduct be regarded as right?

The answer to this question depends on two circumstances, which may be considered in succession.

First, it depends on the natural agreeableness or deformity of the affection of the mind which prompts us to any action, whether the action should proceed rather from that affection than from a regard to the general rule. Actions to which the social or benevolent affections prompt us should proceed as much from the affections or passions themselves as from any regard to the general rules of conduct. To repay a kindness from a cold sense of duty, and from no personal affection to one's benefactor, is scarcely pleasing to the latter. As a father may justly complain of a son, who, though he fail in none of the offices of filial duty, yet manifests no affectionate reverence for his parent, so a son expects from his father something more than the mere performance of the duties of his situation.

The contrary maxim applies to the malevolent and unsocial passions. If we ought to reward from gratitude and generosity, without any reflections on the propriety of rewarding, we ought always to punish with reluctance, and more from a sense of the propriety of punishing than from a mere disposition to revenge.

Where the selfish passions are concerned, we should attend to general rules in the pursuit of the lesser objects of private interest, but feel more passion for the objects themselves when they are of transcendent importance to us. The parsimony, for instance, of a tradesman should not proceed from a desire of the particular threepence he will save by it to-day, nor his attendance in his shop from a passion for the particular tenpence he will gain by it, but from a regard to the general rule which prescribes severe economy as the guiding principle of his life. To be anxious, or to lay a plot to gain or save a single shilling, would degrade him in the eyes of all his neighbours. But the more important objects of self-interest should be pursued with more concern for the thing's themselves and for their own sake; and a man would justly be regarded as mean-spirited who cared nothing about his election to Parliament or about the conquest of a province.

Secondly, it depends upon the exactness or inexactness of the general rules themselves, how far our conduct ought to proceed entirely from a regard to them.

The general rules of almost all the virtues, which determine what are the duties of prudence, charity, generosity, gratitude, or friendship, admit of so many modifications and exceptions, that it is hardly possible to regulate our conduct entirely from regard to them. Even the rule of gratitude, plain as it seems to be, that it behoves us to make a return of equal, or, if possible, superior value to the benefit received from another, gives rise to numberless questions, whenever we seek to apply it to particular cases. For instance, if your friend lent you money in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his? and, if so, how much? and when? and for how long a time? No definite answer can be given to such questions. And even still more vague are the rules which indicate the duties of friendship, hospitality, humanity, and generosity.

Justice, indeed, is the only virtue of which the general rules determine exactly every external action required by it. If, for instance, you owe a man ten pounds, justice requires that you should pay him precisely that sum. The whole nature of your action is prescribed and fixed. The most sacred regard, therefore, is due to the rules of justice, and the actions it requires are never more properly performed than from a regard to the general rules themselves. In the practice of the other virtues, our conduct should be directed rather by a certain idea of propriety, by a certain taste for a particular kind of behaviour, than by any regard to a precise rule or maxim; and we should consider more the end and foundation of the rule than the rule itself. But it is otherwise with justice, where we should attend more to the rule itself than to its end. Though the end of the rules of justice is to hinder us from hurting our neighbour, it would still be a crime to violate them, although we might pretend, with some show of reason, that this particular violation could do him no harm.

The rules of justice, and those of the other virtues, may therefore be compared in this way. The rules of justice are like the rules of grammar, those of the other virtues like the rules laid down by critics for the attainment of elegance in composition. Whilst the former are precise and accurate, the latter are vague and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of perfection to be aimed at than any certain directions for acquiring it. As a man may be taught to write grammatically by rule, so perhaps may he be taught to act justly. But as there are no rules which will lead a man infallibly to elegance in composition, so there are none by which we can be taught to act on all occasions with prudence, magnanimity, or beneficence.

Lastly, in reference to moral principles, may be considered the case of their liability to perversion by a mistaken idea of them. There may be a most earnest desire so to act as to deserve approbation, and yet an erroneous conscience or a wrong sense of duty may lead to a course of conduct with which it is impossible for mankind to sympathize. "False notions of religion are almost the only causes which can occasion any very gross perversion of our natural sentiments in this way; and that principle which gives the greatest authority to the rules of duty, is alone capable of distorting them in any considerable degree. In all other cases common sense is sufficient to direct us, if not to the most exquisite propriety of conduct, yet to something which is not very far from it; and, provided we are desirous in earnest to do well, our behaviour will always, upon the whole, be praise-worthy." All men are agreed that the first rule of duty is to obey the will of God, but it is concerning the particular commandments imposed by that will that they differ so widely; and crimes committed from a sense of religious duty are not regarded with the indignation felt for ordinary crimes. The sorrow we feel for Seid and Palmira in Voltaire's play of Mahomet, when they are driven by a sense of religious duty to murder an old man whom they honoured and esteemed, is the same sorrow that we should feel for all men in a similar way misled by religion.