LECTURE LXXXI.

EXAMINATION OF DR. SMITH'S SYSTEM CONCLUDED; RECAPITULATION OF THE DOCTRINES OF Moral apprOBATION.

My last Lecture, Gentlemen, was chiefly employed in considering a theory of our moral sentiments which has been stated and defended with great eloquence, by one of the profoundest philosophers, whom our country and our science can boast-a theory which founds our moral sentiments, not on the direct contemplation of the actions which we term virtuous; but on a sympathy, which it is impossible for us not to feel, with the emotions of the agent, in the circumstances in which he has been placed, and with the emotions, also, of those to whom his actions have been productive of benefit or injury;-our direct sympathy with the agent, giving rise to our notion of the propriety of his actions, our indirect sympathy with those whom his actions have benefited or injured, giving rise to our notions of merit or demerit in the agent himself. Both these supposed sympathies I examined with a more minute review, than that to which they have usually been submitted; and, in both cases, we found that, even though many other strong objections to which the theory is liable were abandoned; and though the process for which the theorist contends were allowed to take place, to the fullest extent to which he contends for it; his system would still be liable to the insuperable objection, that the moral sentiments which he ascribes to our secondary feelings, of mere sympathy, are assumed as previously existing, in those original emotions with which the secondary feelings are said to be in unison. If those to whom an action has directly related, are incapable of discovering, by the longest and minutest examination of it-however much they may have been benefited by it, or injured, and intentionally benefited or injured-any traces of right or wrong, merit or demerit, in the performer of the action; those whose sympathy consists merely in an illusory participation of the same interest, cannot surely derive, from the fainter reflex feelings, that moral knowledge which even the more vivid primary emotions were incapable of affording, any more than we can be supposed to acquire from the most faithful echo, important truths that were

never uttered by the voices which it reflects. The utmost influence of the liveliest sympathy, can be only to render the momentary feelings the same, as if the identity of situation with the object of the sympathy were not illusive, but real; and what it would be impossible for the mind to feel, if really existing, in the circumstances supposed, it must be impossible for it also to feel, when it believes itself to exist in them, and is affected in the same manner, as if truly that very mind, with whose emotions it sympathizes.

If, indeed, we had previously any moral notions of actions as right or wrong, we might very easily judge of the propriety or impropriety of the sentiments of others, according as our own do or do not sympathize with them; and it is this previous feeling of propriety or impropriety which Dr. Smith tacitly assumes, even in contending for the exclusive influence of the sympathy, as itself the original source of every moral sentiment. The sentiments of others could not fail, indeed, in that case, to appear to us proper, if they coincided with sentiments which we had before, in our own mind, recognized as proper, or morally suitable to the circumstances-improper if they differed from these. But, if we have no previous moral notions whatever, the most exact sympathy of feelings can tell us only that our feelings are similar to the feelings of some other person,-which they may be, as much when they are vicious as when they are virtuous, or when they are neither virtuous nor vicious;-the most complete dissonance, in like manner, can tell us only that our feelings are not similar to those of some other person. When another calls scarlet or green what we have previously felt to be scarlet or green, we think that his vision and ours agree; but we presuppose, in him as in ourselves, that visual sensibility which distinguished the colours; and we do not consider him an object of moral regard, because his vision coincides with ours. When he is affected with a delightful emotion, similar to ours, on the contemplation of a work of art, we acknowledge mentally, and are pleased, perhaps, with this coincidence of taste. But the coincidence does not seem to us to be that which constitutes the emotions of taste. On the contrary, it presupposes, in both, an independent susceptibility of these emotions, by which we should, individually, have admired what is beautiful, and distinguished from it what is ugly, though no one had been present with us to participate our sentiments. When, in like manner, we admire, with vivid approbation, some generous action,-that is to say, according to Dr. Smith's language, when we sympathize with the feelings of any one in the circumstances in which he has been placed,-we have a coincidence of feelings, indeed, as exact, though probably not more exact, than in a case of simple vision, or admiration of some work of art, in which no moral sentiment was felt ;-and

this very coincidence, in like manner, presupposes a capacity of distinguishing and admiring what is right,-without which, there would have been a similarity of feelings, and nothing more, precisely as in the other cases. It is not a mere coincidence of feeling, however, which we recognize in our moral sentiments, like that which we recognize in the most exact coincidence of taste. We feel, not merely that another has acted as we should have done, and that his motives, in similar circumstances, have been similar to ours. We feel, that, in acting as he has done, he has acted properly;-because, independently of the sympathy which merely gives us feelings to measure with our own, as we might measure with our own any other species of feelings, we are impressed with the propriety of the sentiments, according to which we trust that we should ourselves have acted;-so thoroughly impressed with these previous distinctions of right and wrong, that, in the opposite case of some act of atrocious delinquency, no sympathy in vice of one villain with another, can make the common crime seem a virtue in the eyes of his accomplice,who is actuated by similar motives and therefore by similar feelings, in a sympathy of the finest unison,-when he adds his arm to the rapine, and afterwards to the murder, which is to conceal and to consummate the guilt.

The moral sentiments which we have as yet considered, are those which relate to the conduct and feelings of others. The same inconsistencies which are found, on the theory of these, are to be found, as might be supposed, in the application of the principle to other species of supposed sympathy which we have still to consider, in the sentiments which we form of our own moral conduct. That we should be capable, indeed, of forming a moral estimate of our own actions, from the direct contemplation of the circumstances in which we may have been placed, and of the good or evil which we may have intentionally produced, would evidently be subversive of the whole theory of sympathy; since, with the same knowledge of circumstances, and of intention, if we could form any moral judgment of our own actions, we might be equally capable of forming some moral judgment of the actions of others. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, for Dr. Smith to maintain, that we have no power of judging of our own actions directly,-that, knowing the choice which we have made, and all the circumstances which led to our choice, and all the consequences of benefit or injury to individuals, and to the world, which our choice may have produced,-it is yet absolutely impossible for us to distinguish, without the aid of the real or supposed sentiments of others, any difference of propriety or impropriety, right or wrong, merit or demerit, or whatever other names we may use to express the differences of vice and virtue ;-though our vice had been the atrocious fury of plung

ing a dagger in the heart of her who had been our happiness in many connubial years, and who was slumbering beside us on the same pillow in the calmness of unsuspecting love; or our virtue, the clemency of drawing back from the bosom of the assassin whom we had laid at our feet, the dagger which we had wrenched from his murderous hand. Even of actions so different as these, it would be absolutely impossible for us, we are told, to form any moral distinction, if we were to look on them only with our own eyes, and measure them by the feelings of our own heart. Before the one can appear to us less virtuous than the other, we must imagine some witnesses, or hearers, of what has been done, and sympathize with their sympathy. Such is the process which Dr. Smith believes to take place. But, surely, if our original feelings, on the consideration of all the circumstances of an action, involve no notion of right or wrong,—the sympathy with our feelings, or our sympathy with that sympathy, or even an infinite series of reciprocal sympathies, if these should be thought necessary, cannot afford the moral notions of which the original feelings, themselves more vivid, afforded no elements. If the impartial spectator be able to discover merit or demerit, by making our case his own, and becoming conscious as it were of our feelings; our feelings, which he thus makes his own, must speak to us with the same voice of moral instruction, with which, during his temporary illusion, they speak to him. If, considering our action and all its consequences, we cannot discover any merit or demerit, they, considering our action in all its circumstances as theirs, must be alike insensible of any merit or demerit:-or, if they have feelings essentially different from ours, they have not made our case their own;-and what is misnamed sympathy has not been sympathy. Unless we presuppose, as I before said, on their part some moral notions of what is right or wrong, meritorious or worthy of punishment, by which they may measure our conduct and feelings, all the knowledge which the most complete system can afford, is merely that they have certain feelings, that we have had certain feelings, and that these feelings are similar to each other; as our feelings have coincided before in various other emotions, perceptions, judgments that involved or suggested no moral notion whatever.

We have now then considered, both in its relation to our sentiments of our own moral conduct, and in its relation to our sentiments of the conduct of others, the very celebrated theory of Dr. Smith, a theory, which I cannot but regard as involving, in morals, the same error that would be involved in a theory of the source of light, if an optician, after showing us many ingenious contrivances, by which an image of some beautiful form may be made to pass from one visible place to another, were to

contend that all the magnificent radiations of that more than etherial splendour which does not merely adorn the day, but constitutes the day, had their primary origin in reflection,-when reflection itself implies, and cannot be understood but as implying the previous incidence, and, therefore, the previous existence, of the light which is reflected. A mirror presents to us a fainter copy of external things; but it is a copy which it presents. We are, in like manner, to each other, mirrors, that reflect from breast to breast joy, sorrow, indignation, and all the vivid emotions of which the individual mind is susceptible; but though, as mirrors, we mutually give and receive emotions, these emotions must have been felt before they could be communicated. To ascribe original moral feelings to this mental reflection, is truly, then, as much an error, in the theory of morality, as the doctrine of the production of light by reflection without the previous incidence of light, would be an error in the theory of catoptrics.

The argument, after the fuller views of it which I have given, may be recapitulated in very brief compass.

There are only two senses in which sympathy can be understood; one having immediate relation to the feelings, the other to the situation, of him with whom we are said to sympathize. We partake his emotions directly, as if by instant contagion; or we partake them indirectly, by first imagining ourselves in the circumstances in which he is placed; the emotion in this latter case, being similar, merely because the situation, in which we imagine ourselves for the moment, is similar, and arising in us when the situation is imagined to be ours, precisely in the same manner, and according to the same principles, as it arose in the mind of him who truly existed in the circumstances in which our imagination has placed us. In either case, it is equally evident, that sympathy cannot be the source of any additional knowledge :it only gives a wider diffusion, to feelings, that previously exist, or that might have previously existed. If it reflect to us the very emotions of others, as if by contagion, without any intervening influence of imagination on our part; it reflects feelings that have been directly excited in them, the primary subjects of the feelings, by their real situation; and which they would not the less have had, though no one had been present to sympathize with them, or even though the tendency to sympathy had not formed a part of the mental constitution. If, on the other hand, sympathy do not reflect to us the very emotions of others, but make us first enter, by a sort of spiritual transmigration, into their situation, and thus, indirectly, impress us with their feelings; it still, in making their situation ours, while the illusion lasts, excites in us only the feelings, which we should have had, if the situation had been really ours; and which the same tend