《道德情操论·卷三·论评判自己情感与行为的基础·三·论良心的影响与权威》第9节
Even the excess of those kind affections which are most apt to offend by their excess, though it may appear blamable, never appears odious. We blame the excessive fondness and anxiety of a parent, as something which may, in the end, prove hurtful to the child, and which, in the mean time, is excessively inconvenient to the parent; but we easily pardon it, and never regard it with hatred and detestation. But the defect of this usually excessive affection appears always peculiarly odious. The man who appears to feel nothing for his own children, but who treats them upon all occasions with unmerited severity and harshness, seems of all brutes the most detestable. The sense of propriety, so far from requiring us to eradicate altogether that extraordinary sensibility which we naturally feel for the misfortunes of our nearest connections, is always much more offended by the defect, than it ever is by the excess of that sensibility. The stoical apathy is, in such cases, never agreeable, and all the metaphysical sophism by which it is supported can seldom serve any other purpose than to blow up the hard insensibility of a coxcomb to ten times its native impertinence. The poets and romance writers, who best paint the refinements and delicacies of love and friendship, and of all other private and domestic affections, Racine and Voltaire; Richardson, Maurivaux, and Riccoboni; are, in such cases, much better instructors than the philosophers Zeno, Chrysippus, or Epictetus. That moderated sensibility to the misfortunes of others, which does not disqualify us for the performance of any duty; the melancholy and affectionate remembrance of our departed friends; the pang, as Gray says, to secret sorrow dear; are by no means undelicious sensations. Though they outwardly wear the features of pain and grief, they are all inwardly stamped with the ennobling characters of virtue and of self-approbation. It is otherwise in the misfortunes which affect ourselves immediately {125} and directly, either in our body, in our fortune, or in our reputation. The sense of propriety is much more apt to be offended by the excess, than by the defect of our sensibility, and there are but few cases in which we can approach too near to the stoical apathy and indifference.
注释摘要
这一段在斯密论证的脉络里，是在处理一个棘手的问题：既然他刚刚花了很大篇幅说，发生在自己身上的不幸，我们对它的情感反应更容易因为过度而显得不合宜，那么，在家庭亲情这种最贴近自身的情感上，这个标准是否也完全一样？他的回答是：不，家庭亲情是一个重要的例外，而正是这个例外，彻底暴露了斯多亚冷静标准的局限。 斯密的观察起点很日常。父母对子女的溺爱，过度了当然可以批评…