A way of philosophizing brief, but rash; easy and well fitted to conduct to disputes, but not leading to a knowledge of nature.This is the common mode.The other rises gradually and slowly from fact to fact and only at last arrives at the most general conclusions.These, however, are not notions, the products of the imagination, but real laws of nature, and such as she herself will acknowledge and obey.(135) Of the two, the former, the explanation of things according to preconceived notions, much more easily gains assent than the latter, its principles, collected from a few facts, and these of familiar occurrence, seize on the judgment, and fill the imagination.Whereas, on the other hand, a real interpretation of nature must find its materials in things very various in themselves, and gathered together from different quarters, cannot make a forcible impression on the mind, and must necessarily appear to it as something harsh, unusual, and mysterious.Hence in all chains of reasoning, having for their object not to gain a knowledge of nature, but to direct the opinions of men, the mode of philosophizing which proceeds by arguing from preconceived notions, will always be the most successful." (136)I believe it will be found, that the practice of the author of the Wealth of Nations, every where, agrees with his theory, and that he has himself, in all his speculations, adopted the explanatory and systematizing form of philosophizing, instead of the scientific and inductive, conforming himself to those principles which he has pointed out as leading and directing philosophical inquiry, and according to the accuracy of their agreement with which, all systems of nature have constantly, he tells us, "failed or succeeded in gaining reputation and renown to their authors;" and that, his object being every where to build common facts and familiar observations into a system, not to inquire into the causes or real laws from which they spring, he takes those things for fundamental principles which would present themselves to the inductive inquirer as phenomena, the principles of which his manner of philosophizing would call on him to investigate.
In the catalogue of our author's works, the Theory of Moral Sentiments ranks next to the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
On what is it founded? A generalization from what is termed sympathy --a principle than which there is perhaps no one more sensible to every individual, more capable of serving as a Familiar bond of connexion between the phenomena of the moral world, or better fitted therefore, for the purposes of the systematic philosopher; but than which, also, there is, probably, no single circumstance in the combined actions of the mind and body, that would appear to the inductive philosopher more deserving of being itself investigated.
A person enters for the first time an hospital, and the spectacle is presented to him of an individual undergoing a severe operation.As at each cut of the knife he sees the flesh divided, the muscles, vessels, and nerves exposed, the blood flowing from the large, gaping, quivering wound, and as he hears the stifled groans of the sufferer, he is conscious of a strange, tremulous sensation, stealing rapidly over his frame, a cold dew stands on his forehead, his features contract, he breathes with difficulty, his limbs sink under him; -- in fact, he will be found to be in the very same state with the person operated on, in all respects, but that he feels not the acuteness of torturing pain, and is not subject to the quickening reaction produced by it.The vital powers therefore very possibly yield for a little, he faints, is carried out to the fresh air, and in a few minutes walks off astonished at the strangeness of the occurrence.When he reaches his home, he learns that an intimate friend has suffered a great calamity, and the intelligence deeply afflicts him.In both cases he suffers, or sympathizes, with another person.But are the two precisely alike? are we warranted to assume, with Adam Smith, that the laws governing them are the same? and is there not a singular blending in both of mental and corporeal phenomena, all the circumstances of the actions and reactions of which are deserving of the minutest investigation from one, who would set about an inductive inquiry into the principles of our compound nature?
The picture, which, adopting the common notion of sympathy as the point of view, he has given of the phenomena of the moral world, is exceedingly interesting and comprehensive, and as a system regularly arranging a vast mass off acts, is very valuable.Here, however, its merits cease.No one, I apprehend, will now cite it, as truly developing the nature of our intellectual being, as an addition to the science of mind.(137)Similar observations will apply to his fragments on the imitative arts.
