《道德情操论·卷二·论功劳与过失·二之三·论这种天性构造的效用》第2节
Though Nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence, by the pleasing consciousness of deserved reward, she has not thought it necessary to guard and enforce the practice of it by the terrors of merited punishment in case it should be neglected. It is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports, the building, and which it was, therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means necessary to impose. Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of Nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce the observation of justice, therefore, Nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safeguards of the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty. Men, though naturally sympathetic, feel so little for another, with whom they have no particular connexion, in comparison of what they feel for themselves; the misery of one, who is merely their fellow-creature, is of so little importance to them in comparison even of a small conveniency of their own; they have it so much in their power to hurt him, and may have so many temptations to do so, that if this principle did not stand up within them in his {80} defence, and overawe them into a respect for his innocence, they would, like wild beasts, be at all times ready to fly upon him; and a man would enter an assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
注释摘要
斯密在这里做了一个建筑学上的类比，这个类比精确地表达了他对仁慈与正义在社会中不同位置的判断。仁慈是装饰，正义是支柱。装饰可以使大厦更悦目，但没有它，大厦依然矗立；支柱一旦抽走，整座建筑即刻崩塌。他要论证的是，自然在人心之中为这两种德性配备了截然不同的推动机制：仁慈靠的是对当得奖赏的愉快意识来劝诱，正义则靠的是对当得惩罚的恐惧来强制执行。 这段话承接了本章开…