FORMULAE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 1 83 



of " selves." Indeed in Smith we have a theological and meta- 

 physical l interpretation of the principles which a hundred years 

 or more later were to be established by historical and empirical 

 study and interpreted in scientific terms. 



Adam Smith has been given the credit of being the founder of 

 the laissezfaire school of economists, and to this degree he stands 

 primarily as an exponent of passive adaptation; but while he 

 gives prominence to wise self-interest, especially in his political 

 economy, he criticizes severely those who make this the deter- 

 mining factor in social progress and raises to a prominence 

 previously unknown the correlative and corrective doctrine of 

 sympathy or fellow-feeling. Nor does he try to evolve the latter 

 from the former, as did Helvetius, Bentham and others, 2 holding, 

 on the contrary, that the capacity for f ellow-feeling is an original 

 endowment of man functioning contrary to self-interest under the 

 sense of duty. 3 



Smith holds that etymologically sympathy includes only fel- 

 low-feeling with the sufferings of another, but practically that 

 it includes all kinds of fellow-feeling, and that " our propensity to 

 sympathize with joy is much stronger than our propensity to 

 sympathize with sorrow." 4 This is due to its relation to individ- 

 ual pleasure and pain, based on the purpose of the Creator, and 

 also on its greater social utility. 5 



Sympathy is the result of imagination, — of putting one's self in 

 place of another, 6 — and so requires community of experience. 

 This calls for a levelling process manifested especially in self- 

 control on the part of those in distress. 7 



Judgment of propriety concerning the action of another is 

 based on imaginary self-judgment and the sentiment of approval 

 resulting. " If, upon bringing the case home to our own breast," 

 he says, " we find that the sentiments which it gives occasion to 



1 Using these terms in the Comtean sense; cf. Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 

 139 f-, 174, 223, 232. 



2 Ibid., pp. 477 f. 



3 Ibid., pt. 3, chs. II and III, especially pp. 515 i- 



4 Ibid., pp. 4, 68, 145. 



6 Ibid., Book I, Sect. 2, pp. 94 f., 310. 



6 Ibid., ch. I, pp. 178 f. 7 Ibid., pp. 25 f. 



