Treaties are violated; and the violation, if some advantage is gained by it, sheds scarce any dishonour upon the violator. The ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation is admired and applauded." The same conduct which in private transactions would make a man beloved and esteemed, in public transactions would load him with contempt and detestation. Not only are the laws of nations violated without dishonour, but they are themselves laid down with very little regard to the plainest rules of justice. It is in the most perfect conformity with what are called the laws of nations that the goods of peaceable citizens should be liable to seizure on land and sea, that their lands should be laid waste, their homes burnt, and they themselves either murdered or taken into captivity.
Nor is the conduct of hostile parties, civil or ecclesiastical, more restrained by the power of conscience than that of hostile nations to one another. The laws of faction pay even less regard to the rules of justice than the laws of nations do. Though it has never been doubted whether faith ought to be kept with public enemies, it has often been furiously debated whether faith ought to be kept with rebels and heretics. Yet rebels and heretics are only those who, when things have come to a certain degree of violence, have the misfortune to belong to the weaker party. The impartial spectator is never at a greater distance than amidst the rage and violence of contending parties. For them it may be said that "such a spectator scarce exists anywhere in the universe. Even to the great judge of the universe they impute all their own prejudices, and often view that Divine Being as animated by all their own vindictive and implacable passions." Those who might act as the real controllers of such passions are too few to have any influence, being excluded by their own candour from the confidence of either party, and on that account condemned to be the weakest, though they may be the wisest men of their community. For "a true party man hates and despises candour; and in reality there is no vice which could so effectually disqualify him for the trade of a party man as that single virtue."But even when the real and impartial spectator is not at a great distance, but close at hand, our own selfish passions may be so strong as entirely to distort the judgment of the "man within the breast." We endeavour to view our own conduct in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, both when we are about to act and when we have acted. On both occasions our views are apt to be partial, but they are more especially partial when it is most important that they should be otherwise.
This is the explanation of the moral phenomenon of self-deceit, and accounts for the otherwise remarkable fact, that our conscience in spite of its great authority and the great sanctions by which its voice is enforced, is so often prevented from acting with efficacy. When we are about to act, the eagerness of passion seldom allows us to consider what we are doing with the candour of an indifferent person. Our view of things is discoloured, even when we try to place ourselves in the situation of another and to regard our own interests from his point of view. We are constantly forced back by the fury of our passions to our own position, where everything seems magnified and misrepresented by self-love, whilst we catch but momentary glimpses of the view of the impartial spectator.
When we have acted, we can indeed enter more coolly into the sentiments of the indifferent spectator, and regard our own actions with his impartiality.
We are then able to identify ourselves with the ideal man within the breast and view in our own character our own conduct and situation with the severe eyes of the most impartial spectator. But even our judgment is seldom quite candid. It is so disagreeable to think ill of ourselves, that we often purposely turn away our view from those circumstances which might render our judgment unfavourable. Rather than see our own behaviour in a disagreeable light, we often endeavour to exasperate anew those unjust passions which at first misled us; we awaken artificially our old hatreds and irritate afresh our almost forgotten resentments; and we thus persevere in injustice merely because we were unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so.
And this partiality of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own conduct, both at the time of action and after it, is, our author thinks, one of the chief objections to the hypothesis of the existence of a moral sense, and consequently an additional argument in favour of his own theory of the phenomena of self-approbation. If it was by a peculiar faculty, like the moral sense, that men judged of their own conductif they were endowed with a particular power of perception which distinguished the beauty and deformity of passions and affectionssurely this faculty would judge with more accuracy concerning their own passions, which are more nearly exposed to their view, than concerning those of other men, which are necessarily of more distant observation. But it is notorious that men generally judge more justly of others than they ever do about themselves.
CHAPTER VII.THEORY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES.
Closely connected in Adam Smith's theory with his account of the growth of conscience is his account of the growth of those general moral principles we find current in the World. lie regards these as a provision of Nature on our behalf, intended to counteract the perverting influences of self-love and the fatal weakness of self-deceit. They arise in the following way.