200 ADAM SMITH. 



feelings and our judgments, its sudden and even instan- 

 taneous action, its direct and indirect, and immediate 

 and reflex workings ; all the modifications which it 

 undergoes. There remains a great body of important 

 truth, even concerning sympathy, in the work, after 

 we shall have deducted the portion of it which cannot 

 be supported. Sympathy is a great agent in our moral 

 system, though it may not be allowed either to be the 

 only one, or one of unlimited power ; and its agency 

 was never before so fully perceived, or so clearly traced. 



Thirdly. In a system of ethics the truth or falsehood 

 of the fundamental principle is not, as in a physical or 

 mathematical speculation, the only point to be regarded, 

 and upon our determination respecting which the whole 

 value of the theory depends. The exhibiting an ex- 

 tensive and connected view of feeKngs and judgments, 

 of moral qualities and sentiments, referring the whole 

 to one principle of convenient arrangement, and trac- 

 ing their connection with each other, as well as with 

 the common source, may be of great importance, be- 

 cause of great use, although the arrangement itself is 

 defective, and the pivot on which it hinges insufficient 

 to bear it. This merit belongs in a very eminent de- 

 gree to Dr. Smith's theory, which brings together a 

 much larger collection of moral facts, and exhibits a 

 much greater variety of moral arguments than any other 

 ethical treatise in ancient or modern times. 



Fourthly. There are whole compartments of the work 

 which are of inestimable value, without any regard to 

 the theory, and independent of those portions more 

 connected with it, of which we have admitted the value. 

 Thus the copious and accurate and luminous account 

 of the other systems of morals, forming the seventh 

 part, which occupies a fourth of the book, would have 

 been a valuable work detached from the rest. To relish 

 it we do not require the striking contrast of perusing 

 such works as the dry and uninteresting and indistinct 

 histories of Enfield and Stanley. So the third section 



