Eighteenth Century Collection Online Demo

The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ...

case to our own bosoms, we feel upon this, as upon many other occasions, an emotion which the person principally concerned is incapable of feeling, and which yet we feel by an illusive sympathy with him. The sympathetic tears which we shed for that immense and irretrievable loss, which in our fancy he appears to have sustained, seem to be but a small part of the duty which we owe him. The injury which he has suffered demands, we think, a prin|cipal part of our attention. We feel that resentment which we imagine he ought to feel, and which he would feel, if in his cold and lifeless body there remained any consci|ousness of what passes upon earth. His blood, we think, calls aloud for vengeance. The ve|ry ashes of the dead seem to be disturbed at the thought that his injuries are to pass unre|venged. The horrors which are supposed to haunt the bed of the murderer, the ghosts which, superstition imagines, rise from their graves to demand vengeance up|on those who brought them to an untimely end, all take their origin from this natu|ral sympathy with the imaginary resent|ment of the slain. And with regard, at least, to this most dreadful of all crimes,
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Title
The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ...
Author
Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.
Canvas
Page 152
Publication
London :: printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh,
1759.

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"The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ..." In the digital collection Eighteenth Century Collection Online Demo. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eccodemo/k111361.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2025.
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