That sympathy or fellow-feeling is a primary instinct of man appears from the commonest incidents of life. Do we not shrink when a blow is aimed at another, do not the spectators wriggle as they follow a rope-dancer’s contortions, are we not moved by tears, is not laughter infectious? Sympathy is agreeable. We like to give it, and we long for it. It is too instinctive to be explained (though some would do so) by a refinement of self-love. Yet it is not a mere reflection or shadow. Generally speaking, we only sympathise when our sentiments and feelings correspond with those of another. Sympathy means approval. To give it is to praise, to withhold it to blame. How, then, does Adam Smith account for the growth of moral sentiments in the man, and for the progress of morality in mankind? He holds that what we call conscience, or the sense of duty, arises from a certain reflex action of sympathy. We apply to ourselves the moral judgments we have learned to pass on others. We imagine what they will say and think about our own thoughts and words and actions. We try to look at ourselves with the impartial eyes of other people, and seek to anticipate that judgment which they are likely to pass upon us. This is the first stage. But men have very different degrees of morality and wisdom. One man’s praise or blame carries infinitely more weight than another’s. Thus what is called conscience, that is our idea of the impartial spectator, insensibly develops. The impartial spectator becomes more and more our ideal man, and we come to pay more homage to his still small voice than to the judgment of the world. The pangs of conscience are far more terrible than the condemnation of the market-place. Praiseworthiness comes to be better than praise; blameworthiness comes to be worse than blame. The true hell is the hell within the breast; the worst tortures are those that follow the sentence of the impartial spectator. One feature in the phenomena of sympathy, which Smith points out, perhaps constitutes a weak point in his theory. The spectator’s emotions are apt to fall short of the sufferer’s. Compassion is never exactly the same as original sorrow.