THE SOCIAL AND SELFISH PASSIONS. 43

extinguished our humanity, and that, if we yield to revenge, we do so with reluctance and from necessity.

4. With regard to the social passions, such as generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, or friendship, the facts are quite different. Not only is the mere expression of these sentiments agreeable, but they are made doubly agreeable by a division of the spectator's sympathies between the person who feels them and the person who is the object of them. We enter with pleasure into the satisfaction of both, into the agreeable emotions of the man who is generous or compassionate, and into the agreeable emotions of the man who receives the benefit of his generosity or compassion.

Hence in these passions the point of propriety lies nearer to the excess than to the defect, just as in the opposite passions it lay nearer to the defect. "There is something agreeable even in the weakness of friendship and humanity," and if we blame the too tender mother, the too indulgent father, or the too generous friend, it is always with sympathy and kindness, and with no feeling of hatred or aversion. 5. Between the social and the unsocial passions the selfish passions occupy a middle place. These are joy and grief for our own personal good or bad fortune. Since no opposite sympathy can ever interest the spectator against them, their excessive expression is never so disagreeable as excessive resentment; and for the reason that no double sympathy can ever interest us for them, they are never so agreeable as proper humanity and benevolence.

We are, Adam Smith thinks, naturally disposed to sympathize more with our neighbours' small joys than with their great ones, and more with their great sorrows than with their small ones. A man raised suddenly to a much higher position may be sure that the congratulations of his best friends are not perfectly sincere. If he has any judgment, he is sensible

of this, and, instead of appearing elated, endeavours to smother his joy, and keep down his elevation of mind. He affects the same plainness of dress, and the same modesty of behaviour, which became him before, and redoubles his attentions to his former friends. So his conduct may meet with our approval, for "we expect, it seems, that he should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness than we have with his happiness."

With the smaller joys of life it is different. The ability of the spectators to sympathize with these places the point of propriety in their indulgence much higher. We readily sympathize with habitual cheerfulness, which spreads itself, as it were, by infection. Hence it is hardly possible to express too much satisfaction in the little occurrences of common life, in the company of yesterday evening, in the entertainment generally, in what was said or done," and in all those frivolous nothings which fill up the void of human life."

It is otherwise with grief, for while small vexations excite no sympathy, deep affliction calls for the greatest. A man will meet with little sympathy, who is hurt if his cook or. butler have failed in the least article of their duty; who is vexed if his brother hummed a tune all the time he was telling a story; who is put out of humour by the badness of the weather when in the country, by the badness of the roads when upon a journey, or by want of company and dulness when in town. Grief is painful to ourselves or to others, and we should endeavour either not to conceive it at all about trifles, or to shake it off if we do. There is a certain "malice in mankind which not only prevents all sympathy with little uneasinesses, but renders them in some measure diverting."

But though we all take delight in raillery, and in the small vexations which occur to our companions, our sympathy with

SYMPATHY FOR DISTRESS.

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them in case of deep distress is very strong and very sincere. "If you labour under any signal calamity; if by some extraordinary misfortune you are fallen into poverty, into diseases, into disgrace and disappointment . . . you may generally depend upon the sincerest sympathy of all your friends, and, as far as interest and honour will permit, upon their kindest assistance too. But if your misfortune is not of this dreadful kind, if you have only been a little baulked in your ambition, if you have only been jilted by your mistress, or are only henpecked by your wife, lay your account with the raillery of all your acquaintance."

CHAPTER IV.

THE FEELING OF MERIT AND DEMERIT.

THE sense of the propriety or impropriety of a moral action or sentiment is, according to Adam Smith, only one side of the fact of moral approbation, a sense of their merit or demerit constituting the other side. An action or sentiment is proper or improper in relation to its cause, or the motive which excites it, whilst it is meritorious or the contrary in relation to its effect, or in accordance with its beneficial or hurtful tendency.

causes.

It is important to notice this distinction, for it is a protest, as Adam Smith himself declares, against the theories of Dr. Hutcheson and Hume, who, he complains, had considered too much the tendency of affections, their good or bad results, whilst neglecting the relation in which they stood to their This was to overlook the facts of common life, since a person's conduct and sentiments are generally regarded under both these aspects, a man receiving blame for excess of love, or grief, or resentment, not only by reason of the ruinous effects they tend to produce, but also on account of the little occasion that was given for them. It is the want of proportion between a passion and its cause, as well as the sense of its disastrous effects, which make up the whole character of moral disapprobation. Whilst praise or blame are attached to the first aspect of an action or sentiment, a stronger feeling of sympathy or antipathy attaches itself to either in connexion

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with their effects, a feeling that they deserve reward or punishment, a feeling in other words of their merit or demerit.

As gratitude is the feeling which most directly prompts us to reward another man, and resentment that which most directly prompts us to punish him, an action will call for reward or punishment according as it is the object of either of these feelings. The measure, therefore, of the merit or demerit of any action will be the feeling of gratitude or resentment it excites.

But here again the principle of sympathy must come into play, to decide on the rightfulness of the gratitude or resentment. An action can only seem meritorious or the contrary, as deserving of reward or punishment, if it is the proper and right object of gratitude or resentment; and only that gratitude or resentment can be proper which commands the sympathy of the impartial spectator. That man's action deserves reward as meritorious who to somebody is the object of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to beat time to, whilst his action seems to deserve punishment as bad who to somebody is the object of a resentment which every reasonable man can sympathize with and adopt. According as everybody who hears of any action would wish to see it rewarded or punished may it fairly be accounted meritorious or the reverse.

In regarding, then, the beneficial or hurtful tendency of actions, our sense of their merit or demerit, due to sympathy with the gratitude or the resentment they respectively excite, appears to arise in the following way.

Sympathizing as we do with the joy of others in prosperity, we also join them in the satisfaction with which they regard the cause of their good fortune. If the cause has been a man, this is more especially the case. We regard him in the same engaging light in which we imagine he must appear to the