According to Adam Smith, there was again some truth in each of these theories, but they each fell short of that completeness of explanation which was the merit of his own peculiar system.
The self-love theory, best expounded by Hobbes and Mandeville, reduced the principle of approbation to a remote perception of the tendency of conduct upon personal well-being; and the merit of virtue or demerit of vice consisted in their respectively serving to support or disturb society, the preservation of which was so necessary to the security of individual existence.
To this our author objects, that this perception of the good effects of virtue enhances indeed our appreciation of it, but that it does not cause it. When the innumerable advantages of a cultivated and social life over a savage and solitary one are described, and the necessity of virtue pointed out for the maintenance of the one, and the tendency of vice to reproduce the other, the reader is charmed with the novelty of the observation;"he sees plainly a new beauty in virtue and a new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice of before; and is commonly so delighted with the discovery, that he seldom takes time to reflect that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot possibly be the ground of that approbation and disapprobation with which he has always been accustomed to consider those different qualities."In the application of the self-love theory to our praise or blame of actions or conduct in past timeas of the virtue of Cato or of the villany of Catilinethere was only an imaginary, not an actual, reference to self;and in praising or blaming in such cases we thought of what might have happened to us, had we lived in those times, or of what might still happen to us if in our own times we met with such characters. The idea which the authors of this theory "were groping about, but which they were never able to unfold distinctly, was that indirect sympathy which we feel with the gratitude or resentment of those who received the benefit or suffered the damage resulting from such opposite characters."Is the principle of sympathy then a selfish principle? Is sympathy with the sorrow or indignation of another an emotion founded on self-love, because it arises from bringing the case of another home to oneself; and then conceiving of one's own feelings in the same situation?
The answer to this question is important, and is best giver in Adam Smith's own words, as he himself admits that the whole account of human nature which deduces all sentiments and affections from self-love, seems to have arisen "from some confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy."His answer, which is as follows, will perhaps not be thought completely satisfactory : "Though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own person and character, but in that of the person with whom I sympathize. When Icondole with you for the loss of your only son, in order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer if I had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die;but I consider what I should suffer if I was really you; and I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief; therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion, which does not arise even from the imagination of anything that has befallen, or that relates to myself; in my own proper person or character, but is entirely occupied about what relates to you?"Yet if a reference to self be the fundamental fact of sympathy, it would seem that this is equivalent to making a reference to self the foundation of all moral sentiment; as in Hobbes' explanation of pity, that it is grief for the calamity of another, arising from the imagination of the like calamity befalling oneself. And it is remarkable that the same passage of Polybius which has been thought to be an anticipation of the theory of sympathy, should have also been quoted by flume, as showing that Polybius referred all our sentiments of virtue to a selfish origin.
Next to the theory which founded moral approbation in self- love, comes that which founded it in reason. This theory originated in the opposition to the doctrine of Hobbes, who made the laws of the civil magistrate the sole ultimate standards of just and unjust, of right and wrongimplying the consequence, that there was no natural distinction between right and wrong, but that they were the arbitrary creations of law. Cudworth taught, that, antecedent to all law or positive institution, there was a faculty of the mind which distinguished moral qualities in actions and affections, and that this faculty was reason; the same faculty that distinguished truth from falsehood, thus also distinguishing right from wrong. It became therefore the popular doctrine, when the controversy with Hobbes was at its height, that the essence of virtue and vice did not consist in the conformity or nonconformity of actions with the law of a superior, but in their conformity or nonconformity with reason; and reason thus came to be considered as the original source of all moral approbation.
