Look at this passage from Adam Smith, in which he describes how solitude leads us to misunderstand ourselves and the corresponding remedy of a conversation with an external spectator, who makes us realise our error.
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. The conversation of a friend brings us to a better, that of a stranger to a still better temper. The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty, by the presence of the real spectator: and it is always from that spectator, from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence, that we are likely to learn the most complete lesson of self-command.
from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, Chapter III, Adam Smith (1790 edition)
This should immediately be obvious to you, as Austen readers, as a crucial aspect of novels like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Austen is a novelist of daily life and conversation. And it is through conversation that moral revelations are made. Her heroines are not brought to their senses by activity, but by discussion. Think of Elinor and Marianne, Jane and Lizzie.
What follows is a summary of some of the ideas in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Of course, secondhand summaries are much less worthwhile than reading the original. My hope is that this will not only give you a better understanding of Austen’s work, but the temptation to read Smith himself.
Who are you talking to?
It matters very much who this important conversation is with. This person is not merely a vessel for good ideas; they must have developed good virtues themselves.
Throughout The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith relies on the idea of an “impartial spectator”. Smith says that we cannot judge ourselves; we must try to judge ourselves as an impartial spectator would judge us.
We can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them; unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our own natural station, and endeavour to view them as at a certain distance from us. But we can do this in no other way than by endeavouring to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. Whatever judgment we can form concerning them, accordingly, must always bear some secret reference, either to what are, or to what, upon a certain condition, would be, or to what, we imagine, ought to be the judgment of others. We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it.
Amartya Sen contrasts this to the social contract morality we are familiar with from so much modern philosophy. Whereas the social contract is about a set of established relationships between real people in a real society (and, idealistically, in some sort of global society), Smith’s morality is about impartial arbitration by imagined people. Sen points out that Smith’s criticism of empire, such as the East India Company, was not based on any social contract, but on what the impartial spectator would have made of such behaviour. Smith uses the example of Ancient Greece, where the killing of new born infants was allowed. Long practice blinded them to the cruelty of what they did. Even “the humane Plato” despite his “love of mankind” never criticises the practice. It is not social contracts we ought to use to regulate morality, but the ideal of an impartial spectator.
we even sympathise with the dead
The impartial spectator is important because imagination is the root of morality. When we empathise with someone, we do not feel what they feels they are on the rack and we are not. But we do imagine how it would feel if we were on the rack. So strongly does this work (think of mothers suffering with their infants) that, Smith says, “we even sympathise with the dead.” Indeed, the terror of being dead is one of the things that leads to well-regulated behaviour.
Imaginative sympathy is a crucial human feeling. When we have read a book so much we are bored with it, we can take pleasure in reading it to someone else, and seeing how much they enjoy it: we enjoy their enjoyment, and thus the book again. Our imaginations are highly susceptible to others’. We can summarise Smith saying that moods—shared feelings and dissociative feelings—dominate human life and morality. It is in the constant round of sympathy and disgust, fellow-feeling and looking at each other with incomprehension, that our moral lives are made. Agreement and sympathy are almost synonymous.
With what pleasure do we look upon a family, through the whole of which reign mutual love and esteem, where the parents and children are companions for one another… On the contrary, how uneasy are we made when we go into a house in which jarring contention sets one half of those who dwell in it against the other…
We enjoy good feelings, even when they involve weakness, such as over indulgent parents. We gladly abandon ourselves to joy, Smith says, whenever we can. But we dislike intemperance. We do not sympathise so easily with excessive grief or intemperate joy. Our greatest admiration is for a man who can command himself under excessive sorrow. Because we sympathise more with joy than sorrow, we make a parade of our riches and not our poverty. Indeed, this is why we work so hard to get rich. No-one really needs more than the wages of a lowly labourer. We all seek our superfluities. Why?
To be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which we can propose to derive from it. It is the vanity, not the ease, or the pleasure, which interests us. But vanity is always founded upon the belief of our being the object of attention and approbation. The rich man glories in his riches, because he feels that they naturally draw upon him the attention of the world, and that mankind are disposed to go along with him in all those agreeable emotions…
Hence the “ranks of society”. Even now, in our post-aristocratic societies, we fawn over celebrities and pop-stars, we imagine famous people to be happy, we wish to emulate the prominent. This is why we have aristocratic fictional detectives like Peter Whimsey and why we have the Kardashians. Cultural figures like Harry Potter and Taylor Swift are wealthy and prominent in a manner that allow people who believe themselves un-snobbish to approve of them. Smith says people of sense are supposed to be above all this, but no-one is, unless they very, very much higher or lower than everyone else.
Rich-worship brings both a sense of order to society and the potential for moral corruption. We see the world’s attention go to the rich, not the wise. The vice and folly of the prominent are less despised than the misery of the poor. Most people do not choose the path to wisdom: the greater part of mankind is a mob admiring wealth. However for the middle and lower classes, the pursuit of money and virtue are often the same. Ability, prudence, and temperate conduct are what makes those people successful.
in the light in which he is conscious that others will view him
Despite its problems, sympathy is how we become morally good. All our sense of merit and demerit “arises from the sympathetic emotions of gratitude and love.” And the reverse is true. Think of a man who doesn’t recompense or thank his benefactor, when he has it in his power, and when his benefactor needs help. We cannot approve. The impartial spectator “rejects all fellow feeling” with such a person. (This idea is crucial the plot of Romola.)
Smith tells us we must constantly think about how we appear, or would appear, to others, not how we appear to ourselves. This, too, is a crucial lesson for Austen’s heroines.
We might all be selfish, Smith says, preferring ourselves, but we never actually confess to living like that. We know other people won’t go along with it. This awareness moderates our behaviour.
When he views himself in the light in which he is conscious that others will view him, he sees that to them he is but one of the multitude in no respect better than any other in it. If he would act so as that the impartial spectator may enter into the principles of his conduct, which is what of all things he has the greatest desire to do, he must, upon this, as upon all other occasions, humble the arrogance of his self-love, and bring it down to something which other men can go along with.
Knowing we are being watched—and having the idea of an inner impartial spectator—brings us down from selfishness to proper conduct. It is by knowing what others would think of us that we become moral.
We are delighted when we find a benefactor who values us as we value ourselves. We act so as to keep that person in good opinion of us. But, when we are unable to “enter into the motives of our benefactors”, or when our benefactors become unworthy, our esteem for them falls. Think of Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins. She is a benefactor who is chased not out of fellow-feeling, but from mere snobbery; Lizzie will have nothing to do with her. We must admire our benefactors for good reasons.
Likewise, praise is properly reserved for action, not indolent benevolence. Smith says that the man who has good intentions but who does little of real benefit might receive our love, but still, we say, we owe you nothing. The “loudest acclamations of the world” are for good actions, not good intentions.
We approve of people when we can sympathise with them and their motives. We approve of ourselves when we imagine ourselves in someone else’s position and believe they could sympathise with us. The awareness of other people doesn’t just moderate our selfishness, it gives us the means to be aware that we should be judged impartially too. In the imaginative awareness of other people’s claim to our moral conduct, we create an idealised “impartial spectator” (not unlike the “reasonable observer” concept in the law). This spectator lives within us and acts like a conscience.
We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it.
What so great happiness as to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved?
Society in this way acts as a moral mirror. Someone who grew up away from other people would not be able to consider their merits and demerits. We learn about beauty from looking at other people, not ourselves. Then we examine ourselves. The handsome can tolerate a few adverse remarks about their appearance; the “deformed” cannot. (This is essentially what Mr. Knightly tells Emma when she mocks Miss Bates, albeit transposed a little.)
So it is with moral criticism. We see other people behaving and begin to examine ourselves, and thus imagine an impartial spectator judging us. That is the only looking-glass we can find for morality. We divide ourselves into two people: examiner and judge, and the one being examined; the spectator and the agent. Virtue’s reward is other people’s love, not our own, so we temper selfishness. Smith says, in lines that could epigraph each of Austen’s novels,
What so great happiness as to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery as to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
What pleases us is not mere praise, but the fact of being praise-worthy. Praise reinforces that underlying condition of virtue. Desiring praise for its own sake is contemptible; desiring it for true work is admirable. “The love of just fame… is not unworthy even in a wise man.” So it is that when we do someone wrong, but secret, we still feel ashamed. This is also why people of “sensibility” are more affected by unjust accusations of wrongdoing than criminals are of real accusations of guilt. Smith disagrees with the “splenetic philosophers” who disdain all love of praise. Where we have been praise-worthy, Smith says, we ought to seek praise.
The all-wise Author of Nature has, in this manner, taught man to respect the sentiments and judgments of his brethren; to be more or less pleased when they approve of his conduct, and to be more or less hurt when they disapprove of it. He has made man, if I may say so, the immediate judge of mankind; and has, in this respect, as in many others, created him after his own image, and appointed him his vicegerent upon earth, to superintend the behaviour of his brethren. They are taught by nature to acknowledge that power and jurisdiction which has thus been conferred upon him, to be more or less humbled and mortified when they have incurred his censure, and to be more or less elated when they have obtained his applause.
Of course, there is always an appeal open from other people to the impartial spectator. External judgement is about praise; internal “impartial spectator” judgement is about praise-worthiness. Hence the judge within is vital. It is only by consulting him that “we can ever see what relates to ourselves in its proper shape and dimensions.”
From Pride and Prejudice to Persuasion, Austen’s heroines are Smithian. They are learning how to view themselves in the light which others see them.
Something Socratic about this, too—Callard’s “kinship command” qua “impartial spectator”?
Very thought provoking post! I wonder what Adam Smith would make of mindfulness. A lot of this post resonated with me, and is more action orientated, but I also see the value of mindfulness and introspection.