University of Virginia Library

Chapter 10. Adam Smith's Theory of Happiness

Although Adam Smith never distinctly faces the problem of the supreme end of life, nor asks himself whether virtue and morality are merely means to the attainment of happiness, or whether they are ends in themselves irrespective of happiness, he leaves little doubt that happiness really occupies in his system very much the same place that it does in the systems of professed utilitarians. But he distinguishes between happiness as the natural result of virtue and happiness as the end or purpose of virtue; and, by satisfying himself that it is the natural result, he saves himself from considering whether, if' it were not, virtue would remain in and for itself desirable as an end.

"The happiness of mankind," he says, "as well as of all other rational creatures, seems to have been the original purpose of the Author of Nature," no other end appearing to be worthy of His supreme wisdom and beneficence. The fact therefore that we most effectually promote the happiness of mankind, and so to some extent promote the great plan of Providence by acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, is an additional reason, though not the primary one, for our doing so; and, conversely, the tendency of an opposite course of conduct to obstruct the scheme thus ordained for the happiness of the world, is an additional reason for abstaining from it. Accordingly, the ultimate sanction of our compliance with the rules for the promotion of human welfarethe ultimate sanction, that is, of virtuelies in a system of future rewards and punishments, by which our co-operation with the divine plan may be enforced.

To this extent, therefore, Adam Smith seems to agree with the utilitarianism of Paley in making the happiness of another world the ultimate motive for virtuous action in this. But although be thus appeals to religion as enforcing the sense of duty, he is far from regarding morality as only valuable for that reason. He protests against the theory that "we ought not to be grateful from gratitude, we ought not to be charitable from humanity, we ought not to be public-spirited from the love of our country, nor generous and just from the love of mankind, and that our sole motive in performing these duties should be a sense that God has commanded them."

Hence when he speaks of the perfection and happiness of mankind as "the great end" aimed at by nature, it is clear that he intends the temporal and general welfare of' the world, and that, though the happiness of another may be a motive to virtue, it is not so much the end and object of it as happiness in this. It is in this life, also, that virtue and happiness, vice and misery, are closely associated; and nature may be regarded as having purposely bestowed on every virtue and vice that precise reward or punishment which is best fitted either to encourage the one or to restrain the other. Thus the reward attached to industry and prudencenamely, success in every sort of businessis precisely that which is best calculated to encourage those virtues, just as in the same way and for the same reason there is attached to the practice of truth, justice, and humanity, the confidence and esteem of those we live with. It requires indeed a very extraordinary concurrence of circumstances to defeat those natural and temporal rewards or punishments for virtue or vice, which have been fixed in the sentiments and opinions of mankind.

Adam Smith does not then regard virtue entirely as its own end, irrespective of its recompence in the increase of our happiness. Still less, however, does he acknowledge the cardinal doctrine of the utilitarian school, that virtue derives its whole and sole merit from its conduciveness to the general welfare of humanity. He takes up a sort of middle ground between the Epicurean theory, that virtue is good as a means to happiness as the end, and the theory of the Stoics, that virtue is an end in itself independently of happiness. The practice of virtue, he would have said, is a means to happiness, and has been so related to it by nature; but it has, nevertheless, prior claims of its own, quite apart from all reference to its effect upon our welfare.

There is little attempt on the part of our author at any scientific analysis of human happiness like that attempted by Aristotle, and in modern times by Hutcheson or Bentham. But if we take Aristotle's classification of the three principal classes of lives as indicative of the three main ideas of human happiness current in the world, namely, the life of pleasure, the life of ambition, and the life of contemplation and know- ledge, there is no doubt under which of these three types Adam Smith would have sought the nearest approximation to earthly felicity.

The life of pleasure, or that ideal of life which seeks happiness in the gratification of sensual enjoyment, he rejects rather by im- plication than otherwise, by not treating it as worthy of discussion at all. But his rejection of the life of ambition is of more interest, both because he constantly recurs to it, and because it seems to express his own general philosophy of life and to contain the key to his own personal character.

Happiness, he says, consists in tranquillity and enjoyment. Without tranquillity there can no be enjoyment, and with tranquillity there is scarcely anything but may prove a source of pleasure. Hence the Stoics were so far right, in that they maintained that as between one permanent situation and another there was but little difference with regard to real happiness; and the great source of all human misery is our constant tendency to overrate the difference between such situations. Thus avarice overrates the difference between poverty and wealth, ambition that between public and private life, vain-glory that between obscurity and renown. "In ease of body and peace of mind all the different ranks of life are nearly on a level, and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway possesses that security which kings are fighting for."

The story, therefore, of what the favourite of the king of Epirus said to his master admits of general application to men in nil the situations of human life. When Pyrrhus had recounted all his intended conquests, Cincas asked him, "What does your majesty propose to do then?" "I propose," said the king, "to enjoy myself with my friends, and endeavour to be good company over a bottle." And the answer was, "What hinders your majesty from doing so now?"

In the highest situation we can fancy, the pleasures from which we propose to derive our real happiness are generally the same as those which, in a humbler station, we have at all times at hand and in our power. The poor man's son, "whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition," will go through, in the first month of his pursuit of the pleasures of wealth, more fatigue of body and uneasiness of mind than he could have suffered through the whole of his life for the want of them. "Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened in the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you have either read of or heard of or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and be contented."

Pope taught the same lesson better and more briefly in his well-known lines:--

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be, blest.

And Horace asked Mecaenas the same question long ago:--

Qui fit, Mecaenas, ut nemo quam sibi sortem

Seu ratio dederit, sen fors objecerit illa

Contentus vivat?

"What can be added," asks Adam Smith, "to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?" And this condition, he maintains, is the ordinary condition of the greater part of mankind. Would you live freely, fearlessly, and independently, there is one sure way: "Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return, never come within the circle of ambition." The love of public admiration admits of no rival nor successor in the breast, and all other pleasures sicken by comparison with it. It is very true, as was said by Rochefoucault, "Love is commonly succeeded by ambition, but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love."

The following passage is perhaps the best illustration of our philosopher's view of the objects of ambition. "Power and riches," he says, "are enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. `They are immense fabrics which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, though they may save him from some smaller inconveniencies, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower but not the winter storm, but leave him as much, and sometimes more, exposed than before to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death."

The question then arises, Why do we all so generally flee from poverty and pursue riches? The answer is (and it is one of the happiest applications of the author's favourite theory, though it equally solves the problem of the great absence of contentment), from regard to the common sentiments of mankind; from the greater sympathy or admiration naturally felt for the rich than for the poor. For being as we are more disposed to sympathize with joy than with sorrow, we more naturally enter into the agreeable emotions which accompany the possessor of riches, whilst we fail of much real fellow-feeling for the distress and misery of poverty. Sympathy with poverty is a sympathy of pity; sympathy with wealth a sympathy of admiration, a sympathy altogether more pleasurable than the other. The situation of wealth most sets a man in the view of general sympathy and attention; and it is the consciousness of this sympathetic admiration which riches bring with them, not the ease or pleasure they afford, that makes their possession so ardently desired. It is the opposite consciousness which makes all the misery of poverty; the feeling of being placed away from the sight or notice of mankind, the feeling that a man's misery is also disagreeable to others. Hence it is that for every calamity or injury which affects the rich, the spectator feels ten times more compassion than when the same things happen to other people; thus all the innocent blood that was shed in the civil wars provoked less indignation than the death of Charles I.; and hence the misfortunes of kings, like those of lovers, are the only real proper subjects of tragedy, for in spite of reason and experience our imagination attaches to these two conditions of life a happiness superior to that of any other.

But this disposition of mankind to sympathize with all the passions of the rich and powerful has also its utility as the source of the distinction of ranks and of the peace and order of society. It is not the case, as was taught by Epicurus, that the tendency of riches and power to procure pleasure makes them desirable, and that the tendency to produce pain is the great evil of poverty. Riches are desirable for the general sympathy which goes along with them, and the absence of such sympathy is the evil of their want. Still less is the reverence of men for their superiors founded on any selfish expectations of benefit from their good-will. It arises rather from a simple admiration of the advantages of their position, and is primarily a disinterested sentiment. From a natural sympathetic admiration of their happiness, we desire to serve them for their own sakes, and require no other recompense than the vanity and honour of obliging them.

It would equally be a mistake to suppose that the common deference paid to the rich is founded on any regard for the general utility of such submission, or for the support it gives to the maintenance of social order, for even when it may be most beneficial to oppose them, such opposition is most reluctantly made. The tendency to reverence them is so natural, that even when a people are brought to desire the punishment of their kings, the sorrow felt for the mortification of a monarch is ever ready to revive former sentiments, of loyalty. The death of Charles I. brought about the Restoration, and sympathy for James II when he was caught by the populace making his escape on board ship, went very nigh to preventing the Revolution.

But although this disposition to sympathize with the rich is conducive to the good order of society, Adam Smith admits that it to a certain extent tends to corrupt moral sentiments. For in equal degrees of merit, the rich and great receive more honour than the poor and humble; and if it be "scarce agreeable to good morals or even to good language, to say that mere wealth and greatness, abstracted from merit and virtue, deserve our respect," it is certain that they almost always obtain it, and that they are therefore pursued as its natural objects.

Hence it comes about, that "the external graces, the frivolous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing, called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesman, a philosopher or a legislator." Not only the dress, and language, and behaviour of the rich and great become favourable, but their vices and follies too, vain men giving themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy of which in their hearts they do not approve and of which perhaps they are not guilty. For "there are hypocrites of wealth and greatness as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is apt to pretend to be what he is not in one way, as a cunning man is in the other."