Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/147

Rh more acuteness than by Dr Brown. We shall very shortly explain the nature of that leading doctrine, and endeavour to show how it has been refuted.

It is impossible for us to contemplate certain actions performed by others, or to perform such actions ourselves, without an emotion of moral approbation or disapprobation arising in our minds; without being immediately impressed with a vivid feeling, that the agent is virtuous or vicious, worthy or unworthy of esteem. An inquiry regarding such moral emotions, must form the most interesting department of the philosophy of the mind, as it comprehends the whole of our duty to God, our fellow creatures, and ourselves. This department of science is termed Ethics, and is sometimes, though not very correctly, divided into two parts; the one comprehending the theory of morals, and the other its practical doctrines. The most important question to be considered in the theoretical part of ethics, is the following: What is essential to virtue and vice that is to say what is common, and invariably to be found in all those actions of which we morally approve, and what is in the same way peculiar to those which we morally condemn? Philosophers have formed various opinions upon this subject. Hobbes and his followers contended that all merit and demerit depends upon political regulations: that the only thing essential to a virtuous or vicious action, is its being sanctioned or discountenanced by the association of men, among whom it is performed. Mr Hume and others have supported the more plausible theory, that what is utility to the human race, unavoidably makes itself the measure of virtue: that actions are virtuous or vicious, according as they are generally acknowledged to be, in their final effects, beneficial or injurious to society in general. These, and many other theories of morals, have been often shown to be erroneous; and it would be out of place here, to enter into any discussion regarding them. We pass on to notice the theory of Dr Smith.

According to him, all moral feelings arise from sympathy. It is a mistake to suppose that we approve or disapprove of an action immediately on becoming acquainted with the intention of the agent, and the consequences of what he has done. Before any moral emotion can arise in the mind, we must imagine ourselves to be placed in the situation of the person who has acted, and of those to whom his action related. If, on considering all the circumstances in which the agent is placed, we feel a complete sympathy with the feelings that occupied his mind, and with the gratitude of the person who was the object of the action, we then approve of the action as right, and feel the merit of the person who performed it, our sense of the propriety of the action depending on our sympathy with the agent; our sense of the merit of the agent on our sympathy with the object of the action. If our sympathies be of an opposite kind, we disapprove of the action, and ascribe demerit to the agent.

In estimating the propriety or merit of our own actions, on the other hand, we, in some measure, reverse this process, and consider how our conduct would appear to an impartial spectator. We approve or disapprove of it, according as we feel from the experience of our own former emotions, when we imagined ourselves to be placed in similar circumstances, estimating the actions of others, that it would excite his approval or disapprobation. Our moral judgments, with respect to our own conduct are, in short, only applications to ourselves of decisions, which we have already passed on the conduct of others.

But in this theory of Dr Smith, the previous existence of those moral feelings, which he supposes to flow from sympathy, is in reality assumed; for the most exact accordance of sentiment between two individuals, is not sufficient to give rise to any moral sentiment. In the very striking emotions of taste, for