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

feel ourselves every moment wreaking, in imagination, upon such violators of the laws of society, that punishment which our sympathetic indignation tells us is due to their crimes. Our sense of the horror and dreadful atrocity of such conduct, the delight which we take in hearing that it was properly punished, the indignation which we feel when it escapes this due re|taliation, our whole sense and feeling, in short, of its ill desert, of the propriety and fitness of inflicting evil upon the person who is guilty of i••, and of making him grieve in his turn, arises from the sympa|thetic indignation which naturally boils up in the breast of the spectator, whenever he thoroughly brings home to himself the case of the sufferer * 1.1

Notes

* 1.1

To ascribe in this manner our natural sense of the ill desert of human actions to a sympathy with the re|sentment of the sufferer, may seem, to the greater part of people, to be a degradation of that sentiment. Re|sentment is commonly regarded as so odious a passion, that they will be apt to think it impossible that so laudable a principle, as the sense of the ill desert of vice, should in any respect be founded upon it. They will be more willing, perhaps, to admit that our sense of the merit of good actions is founded upon a sympathy with the gratitude of the persons who receive the benefit of them; because gratitude, as well as all the other bene|volent passions, is regarded as an amiable principle,

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Title: The theory of moral sentiments: By Adam Smith, ...
Author: Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.
Canvas: Page 165
Publication: London :: printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh,; 1759.

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Collection: Eighteenth Century Collection Online Demo
Link to this Item: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eccodemo/k111361.0001.001
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Full citation: "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 12, 2025.