When I read phychology, economy, or anything else, there are some references. The name of Adam Smith appears often, so I decided to read his books. I decided to read the theory of moral sentiments.
I expected the book to read worse than it did. Sometimes I had problems understanding, but it's not a surprise, the book is a quarter of millennia old.
In the book, Adam Smith presents sometimes a simple observation and sometimes a deep understanding. I would say it's partly a psychology book (written before psychology was born) and partly a widow in the lives of people 250 years ago.
I highlited some quotes. I will share them and add my small commentary.
We are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter. I understand it as complaining is better bonding strategy than enjoyment.
Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity.
And this is the case of all the passions which take their origin from the body: they excite either no sympathy at all or such a degree of it, as is altogether disproportioned to the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. It is quite otherwise with those passions which take their origin from the imagination. He talks about how we can have sympathy with other people. We can feel the feeling of (physical) pain, but it does not make us closer. Agreeing on emotions is more powerful.
Fear, however, is a passion derived altogether from the imagination, which represents, with an uncertainty and fluctuation that increases our anxiety, not what we really feel, but what we may hereafter possibly suffer. This seems so unbelievably modern.
Changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest who advances more gradually to greatness, whom the public destines to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy, and with regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes, or any envy in those he leaves behind.
These virtues are hardly ever to be met with in men who are born to those high stations. In all governments accordingly, even in monarchies, the highest offices are generally possessed, and the whole detail of the administration conducted, by men who were educated in the middle and inferior ranks of life, who have been carried forward by their own industry and abilities, though loaded with the jealousy, and opposed by the resentment, of all those who were born their superiors. Interesting how he is against the aristocracy.
Resentment would prompt us to desire, not only that he should be punished, but that he should be punished by our means, and upon account of that particular injury which he had done to us. If someone harms us and is not punished, we resent it. Even though the person might be punished for something else.
When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow.
In solitude, we are apt to feel too strongly whatever relates to ourselves: we are apt to over-rate the good offices we may have done, and the injuries we may have suffered: we are apt to be too much elated by our own good, and too much dejected by our own bad fortune.
Thus, to give a very low instance, to eat when we are hungry, is certainly, upon ordinary occasions, perfectly right and proper, and cannot miss being approved of as such by every body. Nothing, however, could be more absurd than to say it was virtuous. He asks what actions are virtuous, some of them clearly are not. The virtuosity requires more than just to satisfy a need.
The second is the idea of that degree of proximity or distance from this complete perfection, which the actions of the greater part of men commonly arrive at. Whatever goes beyond this degree, how far soever it may be removed from absolute perfection seems to deserve applause; and whatever falls short of it, to deserve blame. Is there some complete perfection?
In the command of those appetites of the body consists that virtue which is properly called temperance. To restrain them within those bounds, which regard to health and fortune prescribes, is the part of prudence. Not acting according to our basic desires is virtuous.
There is an obvious reason why custom should never pervert our sentiments with regard to the general style and character of conduct and behaviour.
Virtue alone is sufficient to secure happiness. Adam Smith quotes Aristotle here and he agrees with him.
All the members of human society stand in need of each others assistance, and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices. But though the necessary assistance should not be afforded from such generous and disinterested motives, though among the different members of the society there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved. Society may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation. Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficience, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. I like how he thinks about the society and justice here and how to design it.
Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice.
Gross negligence therefore is, in the law, said to be almost equal to malicious design. What is the difference between negligence and maliciousness?
There would be no safety for the most innocent and circumspect conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs, might still be suspected. The answer to the question whether we should consider only the aims and thoughts of people, not the actual effect.
The industrious knave cultivates the soil; the indolent good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to reap the harvest? who starve, and who live in plenty?
What institution of government could tend so much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? All government is but an imperfect remedy for the deficiency of these.
Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.
Man is naturally much more interested in his own happiness than in that of others, and it is impossible that in his heart he can ever really prefer their prosperity to his own. Whenever he appears to do so, we may be assured that he imposes upon us.
When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.
Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue. But these are all masters to whom nobody willingly puts himself to school. Here he talks about the self-control.
He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct.
We should despise a prince who was not anxious about conquering or defending a province. We should have little respect for a private gentleman who did not exert himself to gain an estate. That is about ambition, we as people do not like lazy people.
They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared.
The man who associates chiefly with the wise and the virtuous, though he may not himself become either wise or virtuous, cannot help conceiving a certain respect at least for wisdom and virtue. This one I heard a lot of times. Like the saying: "You are the average of the five people you associate yourself with". The same thought is here.
The most perfect knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty.
That utility is one of the principal sources of beauty has been observed by every body, who has considered with any attention what constitutes the nature of beauty.
That the fitness of any system or machine to produce the end for which it was intended, bestows a certain propriety and beauty upon the whole, and renders the very thought and contemplation of it agreeable.
Beauty of every object consists in that form and colour, which is most usual among things of that particular sort to which it belongs. Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each feature lies in a certain middle, equally removed from a variety of other forms that are ugly. A beautiful nose, for example, is one that is neither very long, nor very short, neither very straight.
Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong.
They can easily avoid being friends to our friends, but can hardly avoid being enemies to those with whom we are at variance. This is funny, it directly ties to my research of signed graphs.
The decision of the man who judges that exquisite beauty is preferable to the grossest deformity, or that twice two are equal to four, must certainly be approved of by all the world, but will not, surely, be much admired. How much is 1984 influenced by this quote? Or was it just a common saying?
Mathematicians and natural philosophers, from their independency upon the public opinion, have little temptation to form themselves into factions and cabals, either for the support of their own reputation, or for the depression of that of their rivals. They are almost always men of the most amiable simplicity of manners, who live in good harmony with one another. This is very funny.
Take the whole earth at an average, for one man who suffers pain or misery, you will find twenty in prosperity and joy, or at least in tolerable circumstances. No reason, surely, can be assigned why we should rather weep with the one than rejoice with the twenty.