The Theory of Moral Sentiments

“The sympathy, which my friends express with my joy, might, indeed, give me pleasure by enlivening that joy: but that which they express with my grief could give me none, if it served only to enliven that grief. Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction; and it alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart almost the only agreeable sensation which it is at that time capable of receiving.”

Sympathy, the central concept in Smith’s entire theory of moral sentiments, gives us pleasure in both joy and grief. In this case, it is the sympathy of friends, “the correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own,” that intensifies our joyous feelings and diminishes our sadness. Those who espouse a purely cynical view of human nature might attribute our desire for sympathy to mere “self-interest,” but “self-interest” cannot account for the motives of the friends who express sympathy.

“Originally, however, we approve of another man’s judgment, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality: and it is evident we attribute those qualities to it for no other reason but because we find that it agrees with our own.”

Sympathy denotes fellow feeling not only with the joys and sorrows of others but also with their ideas and conduct. In short, sympathy is the central concept in Smith’s entire theory because it is the basis of our moral judgments.

“And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety.”

To feel much for others and little for ourselves is to adopt the impartial spectator’s view of our conduct. In this context, it means controlling our anger and, when we feel slighted or injured, showing only as much resentment as would meet with the impartial spectator’s approval.

“There is no passion, of which the human mind is capable, concerning whose justness we ought to be so doubtful, concerning whose indulgence we ought so carefully to consult our natural sense of propriety, or so diligently to consider what will be the sentiments of the cool and impartial spectator.”

Smith again refers to the passion of resentment. When we feel this selfish and unsocial passion, we must consider how the impartial spectator would regard it, and we must seriously question our own feelings. We cannot feel resentment for every slight we experience. We know this because we ourselves cannot sympathize with the resentments of others unless we believe they have powerful reasons for harboring such feelings.

“Nature, it seems, when she loaded us with our own sorrows, thought that they were enough, and therefore did not command us to take any further share in those of others, than what was necessary to prompt us to relieve them.”

Smith argues that, contrary to assertions common among philosophers, our propensity to sympathize with joy, at least in cases where we feel no envy, is actually stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow. We grieve for others’ misfortunes, but entering fully into their grief—descending into their darkness and sharing their sufferings—would unsettle our minds and serve no meaningful purpose. In the context of Smith’s broader theory of moral sentiments, this quotation illustrates both his faith in a benevolent God and his corresponding belief that individuals behave most appropriately when they act within the boundaries God has set for them.

“It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make a parade of our riches, and conceal our poverty. Nothing is so mortifying as to be obliged to expose our distress to the view of the public, and to feel, that though our situation is open to the eyes of all mankind, no mortal conceives for us the half of what we suffer.”

Smith asserts that we show off our wealth because we want others to admire it. In fact, this innate desire for sympathy, more than any other factor, prompts us to seek wealth in the first place. Poverty, on the other hand, elicits only a fraction of that sympathy. Loneliness compounds destitution by reminding us that very few of our fellow human beings can share in the misery we feel on account of our own misfortune.

“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Having argued that human beings are more inclined to sympathize with joy than sorrow, and having further argued that this inclination (coupled with our desire for sympathy) best explains our pursuit of riches, Smith nonetheless concludes that these natural tendencies have unfortunate consequences. The most obvious, and the most fatal to individuals and societies, is the corollary tendency to confuse wealth and greatness with wisdom and virtue.

“Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must entirely destroy it.”

Justice, Smith argues, is the only truly inflexible virtue. Its rules are fixed in large part because society cannot survive without it. Although we have a natural tendency to sympathize, we do not care for mankind more than we care for ourselves. Justice alone, imposed by force if necessary, prevents chaos.

“For it well deserves to be taken notice of, that we are so far from imagining that injustice ought to be punished in this life, merely on account of the order of society, which cannot otherwise be maintained, that Nature teaches us to hope, and religion, we suppose, authorizes us to expect, that it will be punished, even in a life to come.”

Smith often straddles the line between optimistic and pessimistic views of human nature, and this passage is an excellent example, for it softens and qualifies the prior quotation. In Smith’s view, justice is essential and human beings would descend into chaos without it. Here, he further argues that our natural desire for justice, even in circumstances unconnected to us, affects us so powerfully that we wish to see the just rewarded and the unjust punished. This is true not only in the mortal world but also, and perhaps especially, in the afterlife, where such rewards and punishments have no effect on the order of society.

“Actions, therefore, which either produce actual evil, or attempt to produce it, and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it, are by the Author of nature rendered the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment. Sentiments, designs, affections, though it is from these that according to cool reason human actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal.”

When judging the behavior of others, we nearly always find merit in actions motivated by good intentions, and we are inspired to reward accordingly. Ill intent, on the other hand, though it is not punishable by law, has no merit, even if it results in accidental benefits. Smith notes the moral paradox: When determining merit or demerit, intent matters above all; when determining reward, intent also matters a great deal, but when determining punishment, human law considers actions alone. According to Smith, this constitutes proof of God’s wisdom and benevolence.

“Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men.”

In part as an answer to claims that men are motivated primarily or even exclusively by self-interest, Smith argues that men desire both praise and praiseworthiness. Men judge their own conduct in the same way they form judgments about the conduct of others: by considering the view of the impartial spectator. Hence, love of praise without the corresponding praiseworthiness is mere vanity. If men were nothing but self-interested wretches, then praise alone would suffice, and no man would ever think himself a fraud.

“If, on the contrary, the man without should reproach us, either for actions which we never performed, or for motives which had no influence upon those which we may have performed; the man within may immediately correct this false judgment, and assure us, that we are by no means the proper objects of that censure which has so unjustly been bestowed upon us. But in this and in some other cases, the man within seems sometimes, as it were, astonished and confounded by the vehemence and clamour of the man without. The violence and loudness, with which blame is sometimes poured out seems to stupefy and benumb our natural sense of praise-worthiness and blame-worthiness; and the judgments of the man within, though not, perhaps, absolutely altered or perverted, are, however, so much shaken in the steadiness and firmness of their decision, that their natural effect, in securing the tranquility of the mind, is frequently in a great measure destroyed.”

This lengthy quotation reflects several key elements of Smith’s broader theory. First, the “man within” (meaning the impartial spectator inside everyone) aids us in forming moral judgments. Second, when the “man without” (i.e., anyone other than ourselves) forms a harsh judgment of our behavior that does not accord with our own judgments of our conduct, the result can be unsettling, which illustrates the intensity of our cravings for sympathy. Third, when the discord between our sentiments and the sentiments of others threatens our tranquility of mind, the only peace available to us lies in an appeal to God.

“It is not the love of our neighbor, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honorable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.”

The “divine virtues” include a willingness to sacrifice one’s own interests for the sake of others’ welfare. In response to philosophers who made exaggerated claims for man’s basic decency, Smith argues that benevolence alone cannot explain the innumerable occasions when human beings sacrificed their interests or their lives for a greater good. Courageous acts, for instance, follow not from pure selflessness but from the love of courage, a far “more powerful affection” than universal benevolence.

“Whatever interest we take in the fortune of those with whom we have no acquaintance or connexion, and who are placed altogether out of the sphere of our activity, can produce only anxiety to ourselves, without any manner of advantage to them.”

Smith rebukes the philosophers who chastise people for daring to be happy when so many of their fellow creatures are suffering. Universal compassion is one thing, but it is not natural to feel perpetually unsettled about events that we cannot control.

“Are you in adversity? Do not mourn in the darkness of solitude, do not regulate your sorrow according to the indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends; return, as soon as possible, to the day-light of the world and of society. Live with strangers, with those who know nothing, or care nothing about your misfortune; do not even shun the company of enemies; but give yourself the pleasure of mortifying their malignant joy, by making them feel how little you are affected by your calamity, and how much you are above it.”

Modern psychologists would give similar advice: Do not languish alone in the dark with your negative feelings. The command of one’s feelings, and consequently of one’s actions, constitutes a great virtue. The best way to cultivate this virtue is to bring ourselves into the company of actual spectators, people who cannot possibly feel for us what we feel for ourselves on account of our misfortune. This teaches us to temper our passions and to express our feelings, if we must express them at all, in a way that does command the spectator’s sympathy.

“No action can be called virtuous, which is not accompanied with the sentiment of self-approbation.”

The final sentence of Part 3 illustrates Smith’s assertion that the impartial spectator is key to understanding how we form moral judgments, in this case regarding our own conduct, and to determining how virtuous our conduct might be. Self-approbation occurs when, aided by the impartial spectator inside us, we approve of our own actions. Self-approbation alone does not confer virtue, but an act cannot be virtuous unless it meets with our entire approval, unlike an act that we carry out from weakness or merely from a sense of duty.

“Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.”

Smith’s “nations of heroes” include the indigenous inhabitants of America and Africa. The privations they endured, according to Smith, made indigenous Americans and Africans resolute in the face of difficulties. They developed a near-superhuman magnanimity, a kind of indifference to their own suffering. In a chapter partly devoted to custom, the contrast Smith draws between courageous indigenous peoples and the “refuse” of Europe suggests that different customs, born of different circumstances, might have a decisive influence on moral sentiments. Later in this same chapter, however, Smith concludes that custom’s influence on moral sentiments is comparatively “inconsiderable” and appears only in “particular usages” (195).

“That wisdom which contrived the system of human affections, as well as that of every other part of nature, seems to have judged that the interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted by directing the principal attention of each individual to that particular portion of it, which was most within the sphere both of his abilities and of his understanding.”

This single sentence, perhaps more than any other passage in the book, anticipates the economic theory Smith introduced to the world 17 years later when he published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Its significance in a theory of moral sentiments stems from its partial acceptance of self-interest as a central and healthy quality in human nature—a quality modified by a natural desire for sympathy and a love of virtue.

“Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him, and not he to them.”

This passage’s relevance to Smith’s broader theory is twofold. First, the arrogant fool who thinks himself “the only wise and worthy man” could refer either to some fantastical devotee of a political party or to an absolute ruler, each of whom has corrupted moral sentiments due to too-infrequent consultation with the impartial spectator. Second, any man who dabbles in grand schemes to reorder society takes a view of his powers, and the scope of them, that far exceeds what God intended.

“The wise man must support the propriety of his own conduct in health and in sickness, in success and in disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy indolence, as well as in that of the most awakened attention. The most sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and distress must never surprise him. The injustice of other people must never provoke him to injustice. The violence of faction must never confound him. All the hardships and hazards of war must neer either dishearten or appal him.”

This passage effectively summarizes Smith’s view of self-command. We are neither slaves to passion nor agents of universal benevolence. A natural sympathy for others, coupled with a natural love of all that is excellent and noble, compels us to restrain our passions—to exercise self-command. We learn to do this by paying attention to the impartial spectator, whose gaze never leaves us, even when we are not at our best or are provoked to resentment.

“That degree of self-estimation, therefore, which contributes most to the happiness and contentment of the person himself, seems likewise most agreeable to the impartial spectator. The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.”

Smith devotes more than half of this section on self-command to the principle of self-estimation, or what we think of ourselves and our own conduct. To properly estimate oneself requires a great deal of self-command. Our passions can lead us to overrate our own interests, to indulge negative feelings like anger and resentment, and to forget justice, all at the expense of others, and all while thinking ourselves right. The impartial spectator, however, regards our character and conduct as they ought to be regarded; to exercise self-command is to act as if the impartial spectator is always watching. Therefore, self-command allows us to estimate ourselves and our conduct exactly as we should.

“But to the man who under-rates himself, unless we have both more discernment and more generosity than belong to the greater part of men, We seldom fail to do, at least, all the injustice which he does to himself, and frequently a great deal more.”

The previous quotation identified the danger of excessive self-estimation, but Smith also regards excessive humility as a serious defect. If we do not estimate ourselves as we should, which we learn to do by exercising consistent and rigorous self-command, then we expose ourselves to scorn.

“Regard to our own private happiness and interest, too, appear on many occasions very laudable principles of action. The habits of economy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested motives, and at the same time are apprehended to be very praise-worthy qualities, which deserve the esteem and approbation of every body. The mixture of a selfish motive, it is true, seems often to sully the beauty of those actions which ought to arise from a benevolent affection. The cause of this, however, is not that self-love can never be the motive of a virtuous action, but that the benevolent principle appears in this particular case to want its due degree of strength, and to be altogether unsuitable to its object.”

Smith earlier argued that self-interest, properly restrained by the exercise of admirable virtues, is both natural and healthy—an argument that anticipates, at least in part, the economic theory for which he remains best known. Here, Smith elaborates on that point by noting that we naturally admire certain actions that proceed from self-love, which means that virtue cannot consist in benevolence alone.