ADAM SMITH. 197 



was heard to go muttering, " Deil care, deil care, it's 

 all true." 



The ' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' although it be 

 not the work by which Dr. Smith is best known, and 

 for which he is most renowned, is yet a performance 

 of the highest merit. The system has not, indeed, been 

 approved by the philosophical world, and it seems liable 

 to insuperable objections when considered even with 

 an ordinary degree of attention, objections which never 

 could have escaped the acuteness of its author but for 

 the veil so easily drawn over an inquirer's eyes when 

 directed to the weak points of his own supposed dis- 

 covery. The principle or property in our nature which 

 leads us to sympathise or feel with the feelings of others, 

 to be pleased when our feelings are in accordance with 

 theirs, to be displeased when they are in discord, must 

 be on all hands admitted to exist; and thence may fairly 

 be deduced the inference, that our approval of another's 

 conduct is affected by the consciousness of this accord 

 of our feelings, and our self-approval by the expecta- 

 tion of his feelings according with our own. But 

 when we resolve our whole approval of his conduct 

 and of our own into this sympathy, we evidently assume 

 two things : first, that the accord is a sufficient ground 

 of approbation ; and, secondly, that this approbation is 

 not independent but relative, or reflected, and rests 

 upon either the feelings of others and upon our own 

 speculations respecting those feelings, or upon our sym- 

 pathy with those feelings, or upon both the one and 

 the other. Now, the first of these things involves a 

 petitio principii, and the second involves both a petitio 

 principii and a dangerous doctrine. It cannot surely 

 be doubted that a sense of right may exist in the mind, 

 a disposition to pronounce a thing fit and proper, in- 

 nocent or praiseworthy, unfit or unbecoming, guilty 

 or blameworthy, without the least regard either to the 

 feelings or the judgments of other men. It is quite 



