admiration of it is not founded so much on a sense of its utility as upon the great and exalted propriety of the actions. to which it prompts. Take, for instance, the case of Brutus, leading his own sons to capital punishment for their conspiracy against the rising liberty of Rome. Naturally he ought to have felt much more for the death of his own sons than for all that Rome could have suffered from the want of the example. But he viewed them, not as a father, but as a Roman citizen; that is to say, he entered so thoroughly into the sentiments of the impartial spectator, or of the ordinary Roman citizen, that even his own sons weighed as nothing in the balance with the smallest interest of Rome. The propriety of the action, or the perfect sympathy of feeling between the agent and the spectator, is the cause of our admiration of it. Its utility certainly bestows upon it a new beauty, and so still further recommends it to our approbation. But such beauty "is chiefly perceived by men of reflection and speculation, and is by no means the quality which first recommends such actions to the natural sentiments of the bulk of mankind."

Adam Smith also differs from Hume no less in his theory of the cause of the beauty which results from a perception of utility than in his theory of the place assignable to utility in the principle of moral approbation. According to Hume, the utility of any object is a source of pleasure from its suggestion of the conveniency it is intended to promote, from its fitness to produce the end intended by it. Adam Smith maintains, rather by way of supplement than of contradiction, that the fitness of a thing to produce its end, or the happy adjustment of means to the attainment of any convenience or pleasure is often more regarded than the end or convenience itself, and he gives several instances to illustrate the operation of this principle.

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For instance, a man coming into his room and finding all the chairs in the middle, will perhaps be angry with his servant and take the trouble to place them all with their backs to the wall, for the sake of the greater convenience of having the floor free and disengaged. But it is more the arrangement than the convenience which he really cares for, since to attain the convenience he puts himself to more trouble than he could have suffered from the want of it, seeing that nothing was easier for him than to have sat down at once on one of the chairs, which is probably all he does when his labour is

over.

The same principle applies to the pursuit of riches, under circumstances which imply much more trouble and vexation than the possession of them can ever obviate. The poor man's son, cursed with ambition, who admires the convenience of a palace to live in, of horses to carry him, and of servants to wait on him, sacrifices a real tranquillity for a certain artificial and elegant repose he may never reach, to find at last that "wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility, no more adapted for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind, than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys." Indeed, there is no other real difference between them than that the conveniences of the one are somewhat more observable than those of the other. The palaces, gardens, or equipage of the great are objects of which the conveniency strikes every one; their utility is obvious; and we readily enjoy by sympathy the satisfaction they are fitted to afford. But the conveniency of a toothpick or of a nail-cutter, being less obvious, it is less easy to enter into the satisfaction of their possessor. They are less reasonable objects of vanity than wealth and greatness, and less effectually gratify man's love of distinction. To a man who had to live alone on a desolate island, it might be a matter of doubt, "whether a palace, or a collection of

such small conveniences as are commonly contained in a tweezer-case, would contribute most to his happiness and enjoyment."

The fact that the rich and the great are so much the object of admiration is due not so much to any superior ease or pleasure they are supposed to enjoy, as to the numberless artificial and elegant contrivances they possess for promoting such ease and pleasure. The spectator does not imagine "that they are really happier than other people, but he imagines that they possess more means of happiness. And it is the ingenious and artful adjustment of those means to the end for which they were intended, that is the principal source of his admiration."

Again, the sole use and end of all constitutions of government is to promote the happiness of those who live under them. But from this love of art and contrivance, we often come to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellows, less from any sympathy with their sufferings or enjoyment than from a wish to perfect and improve a beautiful system. Men of the greatest public spirit have often been men of the smallest humanity, like Peter the Great; and if a public-spirited man encourages the mending of roads, it is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners so much as from a regard to the general beauty of order.

This admits however of a practical application, for if you wish to implant public virtue in a man devoid of it, you will tell him in vain of the superior advantages of a well-governed state, of the better homes, the better clothing, or the better food. But if you describe the great system of government which procures these advantages, explaining the connexions and subordinations of their several parts, and their general subserviency to the happiness of their society; if you show

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the possibility of introducing such a system into his own country, or of removing the obstructions to it, and setting the wheels of the machine of government to move with more harmony and smoothness, you will scarce fail to raise in him. the desire to help to remove the obstructions, and to put in motion so beautiful and orderly a machine. It is less the results of a political system that can move him than the contemplation of an ingenious adjustment of means to ends.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RELATION OF ADAM SMITH'S THEORY TO OTHER SYSTEMS

OF MORALITY.

THE longest and perhaps the most interesting division of Adam Smith's treatise is that in which he reviews the relation of his own theory to that of other systems of moral philosophy. For like all writers on the same difficult subject, he finds but a very partial attainment of truth in any system outside his own, and claims for the latter a comprehensive survey of all the phenomena, which his predecessors had only grasped singly and in detail. Every system of morality, every theory of the origin of our moral sentiments, has been derived, he thinks, from some one or other of the principles expounded by himself. And" as they are all of them in this respect founded upon natural principles, they are all of them in some measure in the right. But as many of them are derived from a partial and imperfect view of nature, there are many of them too in some respects in the wrong."

I. Thus with regard, first, to the nature of Virtue, all the different theories, whether in ancient or in modern times, may, Adam Smith thinks, be reduced to three, according as they make it to consist in Propriety, Prudence, or Benevolence: or in other words, according as they place it in the proper government and direction of all our affections equally, whether selfish or social; in the judicious pursuit of our own private interest and happiness by the right direction of the selfish