1 22 ADAM SMITH. 



tive sitting opposite, and stopt ; but lie 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 ap- 

 proved 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 

 expectation 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 specula- 

 tions respecting those feelings, or upon our sympathy 

 with those feelings, or upon both the one and the other. 

 Now, the first of these things involves a petitio principii, 



