The Theory of Moral Sentiments

by Adam Smith

it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations.

By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.

The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation.

Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that with their happiness.

We feel the darker emotions like grief and misery more readily. It is the heroes’ sacrifice that is more pervasive in our minds.

We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties;

Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies.

We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man

The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it.

is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave,

a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world,

Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity.

The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in danger of being forgot by every body;

And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.

When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion.

But though this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one, and to the pain which we feel from the other,

this correspondence of the sentiments of others with our own appears to be a cause of pleasure, and the want of it a cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manner.

Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by presenting another source of satisfaction; and it alleviates grief by insinuating into the heart

disagreeable

agreeable passions,

Love is an agreeable; resentment, a disagreeable passion;

It is frustrating when we love someone but it is not reciprocated but we find the mutual frustration with being in a committed relationship to be particularly pleasurable and comforting.

nor are we half so angry with them for not entering into our gratitude, as for not sympathizing with our resentment.

The bitter and painful emotions of grief and resentment more strongly require the healing consolation of sympathy.

Without some relief, grief and resentment can destroy a man’s heart and soil his outlook on life. It can turn saints into monsters in a moment.

We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted;

we hear a person loudly lamenting his misfortunes, which, however, upon bringing the case home to ourselves, we feel, can produce no such violent effect upon us, we are shocked at his grief;

It gives us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy or too much elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune.

first, in relation to the cause which excites it,

in relation to the end which it proposes, or the effect which it tends to produce.

We should have indulged, we say; perhaps, have approved of the violence of his emotion, had the cause been in any respect proportioned to it.

Emotions and reactions have to measured in proportion to what is being reacted to and if the catalyst and result are disproportionate we will be unnerved by it. It will bother us or elicit a kind of grimace or cringe at the response. Ex. Obnoxious or overly loud crying after tripping on a crack in the sidewalk or debris from a fallen tree.

Originally, however, we approve of another man's judgment, not as something useful, but as right, as accurate, as agreeable to truth and reality:

it is evident we attribute those qualities to it for no other reason but because we find that it agrees with our own.

Wear monads of emotion and relational sentiments. We feel each other’s pain and happiness because we have experienced these same feelings and judge them as accurate or comporting with our emotions.

Society and conversation,

the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper,

When a critic examines the work of any of the great masters in poetry or painting, he may sometimes examine it by an idea of perfection,

it may often appear to deserve the highest applause, upon account of its approaching much nearer to perfection than the greater part of those works which can be brought into competition with it.

When you reframe you’re standard to something that’s a little less exacting (than using a work that is likened to perfection) but not devoid of qualities of mastery, you will begin to see a few more distinguished works with praise and laudation. Whereas, if you use an unattainable master work as your standard, you will revile even the best works. It will be like lightning striking the highest point on a piece of land.

all strong expressions of them are loathsome and disagreeable.

We grow weary of the grave, pedantic, and long-sentenced love of Cowley and Petrarca, who never have done with exaggerating the violence of their attachments;

the gaiety of Ovid, and the gallantry of Horace, are always agreeable.

We tremble for whatever can disappoint such natural and agreeable hopes: and thus enter into all the anxiety, and concern, and distress of the lover.

It is not so much the love of Castalio and Monimia which attaches us in the Orphan, as the distress which that love occasions.

It is for a reason of the same kind, that a certain reserve is necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, our own professions.

cannot expect should interest our companions in the same degree in which they interest us.

We detest Iago as much as we esteem Othello; and delight as much in the punishment of the one, as we are grieved at the distress of the other.

It was, it seems, the intention of Nature, that those rougher and more unamiable emotions, which drive men from one another, should be less easily and more rarely communicated.

Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind. There is, in the very feeling of those passions, something harsh, jarring, and convulsive, something that tears and distracts the breast,

There is nothing in itself which renders it either ungraceful or disagreeable. We only regret that it is unfit for the world, because the world is unworthy of it, and because it must expose the person who is endowed with it as a prey to the perfidy and ingratitude of insinuating falsehood,

It is decent to be humble amidst great prosperity; but we can scarce express too much satisfaction in all the little occurrences of common life,

to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been strangers,

and by the want of company, and dulness of all public diversions when in town; such a person, I say, though he should have some reason, will seldom meet with much sympathy.

The wretch whose misfortunes call upon our compassion feels with what reluctance we are likely to enter into his sorrow, and therefore proposes his grief to us with fear and hesitation: