The Yale literary magazine Volume 46 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ...line of argument on both topics. The conclusions of Smith are these: first, "These general rules of morality are ultimately founded on experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties approve of or condemn. They are not moral intuitions, or major premises of conduct supplied to us by nature. We do not start with a general rule, and approve or disapprove of particular actions according as they conform or not to this general rule, but we form a general rule from experience of the approval or disapproval bestowed on particular actions." Our moral rules are inductions from the particular effects which good and bad actions produce upon us. The key to moral approbation, in his theory, is sympathy. His conclusion in respect to the character of virtue is "that it consists in a certain relation to one another of our selfish and unselfish affections, not exclusively in a predominance of either of them." The man of the most perfect virtue "is the man who unites the gentler virtues of humanity and sensibility with the severer virtues of self-control and self-denial." The editor gives a valuable discussion of the relation of Smith's theory to other theories of morals and its permanent place in the history of morals. The concluding chapter contains the chief criticisms that have been made on this theory, with a reply to the weak points in them and a statement of the true objections to be brought against Smith's doctrine. The book gives in a reasonable space the whole of this system of philosophy with a statement of its value; when time-saving books are so much in demand as at present, it cannot fail to find a place among the best publications of that useful class. On the Threshold. By Theodore T. Munger. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co. Let it...