125 



impulse universalized, and consequently, this virtue, which 

 had hitherto been considered 'artificial' is at last included 

 within the scope of the so-called natural virtues. Only on the 

 supposition that justice, too, takes its rise in feeling, can we 

 explain the difference in importance which obtains between 

 the moral and those other departments of human interest 

 which are so often confused with it, for example, the useful, 

 the suitable, the rational. Hume had not given any clear 

 explanation for this distinction, but had identified morality 

 with the natural as regards its emotional origin, and with the 

 prudent and useful as regards its completion by means of justice. 

 Adam Smith observes that even the retributive sentiments, if 

 they were limited like sensuous emotion and other feelings, to 

 the individual, could never have reached their dominant 

 position. The point of difference lies in the social aspect of 

 these sentiments, in the possibility of their sympathetic trans- 

 ference to other persons, a transference of which every one is 

 conscious. 



The conception of sympathy put forward by Adam Smith 

 had a very wide influence upon the way in which moral facts 

 were regarded. It has been seen that we approve of another's 

 passions when we observe that we entirely sympathize with 

 them, and we approve of our own passions when we are able 

 to think that an impartial spectator can sympathize with them. 

 The effect of this sympathy is that every member of society 

 tries to lower or raise his passions to that pitch at which the 

 ordinary spectator can sympathize with them. For example, 

 as certain spectators "are constantly considering what they 

 themselves would feel, if they were actually the sufferers, so 

 he is constantly led to imagine in what manner he would be 

 affected if he was only one of the spectators of his own situ- 

 ation". In this way a certain 'concord' is produced. 1 



A closer investigation of the doctrine of sympathy reveals 

 the view of the organic unity of social feeling based on common 

 circumstances and conditions of life and well-being. This view 

 is distinctly in advance of the theories propounded by Smith's 

 predecessors, either 'benevolent' or 'utilitarian'. The age 

 was individualistic, and in framing moral theories men enter- 

 tained the atomic view of society as built up of individuals 

 equipped each with a complete moral faculty. Adam Smith, 

 on the contrary, derives the individual conscience from the 

 fact of society a society of which the individual forms a part. 

 "Were it possible", he says, "that a human creature could 

 grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any 



iS.B. 274. 



