The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Smith identifies gratitude and resentment as the sentiments that directly correlate with reward and punishment. In other words, those who feel gratitude come to regard the object(s) of their gratitude as deserving of reward, and those who feel resentment come to regard the object(s) of their resentment as deserving of punishment.

Sympathy determines the proper objects of gratitude and resentment. A person who “appears to deserve reward […] is the natural object of a gratitude which every human heart is disposed to beat time to, and thereby applaud” (73). Likewise, someone who seems to “deserve punishment” is the “natural object of a resentment” that is readily adopted by reasonable men (73).

The impartial spectator’s sympathy with either the gratitude or resentment of the person affected depends entirely upon knowing “the motives of the agent” (74). If, for instance, the agent—the object of the affected person’s gratitude—acted from improper motives, then the spectator cannot enter into that same grateful feeling. The same holds true for resentment. If the agent acted from proper motives, then the spectator cannot enter into the affected person’s resentful feeling.

When the spectator sympathizes with both the affected person’s gratitude and the agent’s motives, the spectator will view the agent as deserving of reward. When the spectator both sympathizes with the affected person’s resentment and “rejects with abhorrence all fellow-feeling with the motives of the agent,” the spectator will view the agent as deserving of punishment (77).

Smith describes “the sense of merit” as a “compound sentiment” consisting of the spectator’s “direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent” and “indirect sympathy” with the grateful recipient (77). Likewise, the spectator’s “sense of demerit” springs from “direct antipathy” to the agent’s motives and “indirect sympathy with the resentment of the sufferer” (78).

Smith contrasts beneficence, which is “always free” (81), with justice, which “may be extorted by force” (82). To withhold beneficence—to refrain from a simple act of doing good—might render a person contemptible, but it does not require punishment. An act of injustice, on the other hand, “does real and positive hurt to some particular persons, from motives which are naturally disapproved of,” and thus becomes “the proper object […] of punishment” (82). With regard to merit, the spectator views acts of beneficence as deserving of reward, whereas compulsory acts of justice deserve none.

Smith describes remorse as “the most dreadful” of sentiments, a fearful mixture of “shame,” “grief,” “pity,” and “terror of punishment from the consciousness of the justly provoked resentment of all rational creatures” (87). To a person who feels remorse, “[e]very thing seems hostile,” and “solitude is still more dreadful than society” (87). Only an act of grave injustice can produce a feeling of remorse in its perpetrator. Conversely, a person who, “from proper motives, has performed a generous action” (87) feels “the consciousness of merit, or of deserved reward” (88).

Consciousness of deserved punishment or deserved reward—of demerit or merit—is how human beings were “fitted by nature” to live in society (88). Universal benevolence certainly would make society more pleasant, but only justice is “essential” to society’s existence (88). Indeed, justice constitutes “the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice” (89).

This sense of justice strikes us so powerfully not because of its earthly object but because of its divine source. Smith likens this sense of justice to a watch, which serves the purpose of telling time in the same way that our sense of justice serves the purpose of ordering society. Credit for the watch’s smooth operation goes not to its springs and gears but to the watchmaker who designed and made it. In like manner, credit for our sense of justice belongs not to human beings but to “the wisdom of God” (90).

Furthermore, we decry the immorality of “the young and the licentious” not because their licentiousness undermines a stable society but because their “abominable maxims of conduct” have an “intrinsic hatefulness and detestableness” (91). If the utility of justice in promoting a stable society constituted our only or even primary concern, then we would not “hope” that injustice “will be punished, even in a life to come” (93).

When judging the merit or demerit of a particular action, the spectator considers the actor’s intent, not the action’s consequences. This is “acknowledged by all the world, and there is not a dissenting voice among all mankind” (94). In certain instances, however, notwithstanding this universal consensus, an action’s consequences do influence the affected person’s judgment. Smith devotes Part 2, Section 3 to explaining this “irregularity of sentiment” regarding the outcome of actions, which he calls “Fortune” (95).

Human beings can feel angry even at inanimate objects, “at the stone that hurts us,” for instance (95). Animals can both inflict and feel pain, yet they are “far from being complete and perfect objects, either of gratitude or resentment” (96). In both cases, upon reflection, the initial feeling of anger dissipates. After all, it is not the pain alone that “enrages us against the man who injures or insults us” (97). We are most offended by his ill designs and the “little account which he seems to make of us” (97). Still, those initial outbursts of anger, directed against even the most improper objects of resentment, demonstrate that the “consequences of action,” which are “altogether under the empire of Fortune,” do indeed exercise “influence upon the sentiments of mankind with regard to merit and demerit” (98).

Fortune often influences even the impartial spectator’s sense of merit and demerit. A general who has devised a brilliant wartime strategy but is “hindered” from executing that strategy “by the envy of ministers” does not receive the same approval as a general whose strategy produces actual victory (99). The same is true of an architect whose “plans are either not executed at all” or “are so far altered as to spoil the effect of the building” (100). Likewise, the “design to commit a crime,” though unsuccessful, “is scarce ever punished with the same severity as the actual commission of it” (100), though the “intentions were equally criminal” (101). Conversely, fortune tends to “increase our sense of the merit or demerit of actions beyond what is due to the motives or affection from which they proceed,” which is why, for instance, “even the messenger of bad news is disagreeable to us” (102).

Smith attributes the “irregularity of sentiments” to God’s design. All agree that actions proceeding from proper motives deserve praise, while those proceeding from improper motives deserve censure. However, our sense of an action’s merit or demerit, which informs our desire to reward or punish, depends both on motives and, to some extent, on the action’s consequences. Smith concludes that actions “are by the Author of nature rendered the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment,” while “[s]entiments, designs, affections […] are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction” (106). Thus, we see “the wisdom and goodness of God even in the weakness and folly of men” (106).