《道德情操论·卷三·论评判自己情感与行为的基础·四·论自欺的性质与一般准则的起源和用处》第4节
It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve, or disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular actions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, is formed, by finding from experience, that all actions of a {140} certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved or disapproved of. To the man who first saw an inhuman murder, committed from avarice, envy, or unjust resentment, and upon one too that loved and trusted the murderer, who beheld the last agonies of the dying person, who heard him, with his expiring breath, complain more of the perfidy and ingratitude of his false friend, than of the violence which had been done to him, there could be no occasion, in order to conceive how horrible such an action was, that he should reflect, that one of the most sacred rules of conduct was what prohibited the taking away the life of an innocent person, that this was a plain violation of that rule, and consequently a very blamable action. His detestation of this crime, it is evident, would arise instantaneously and antecedent to his having formed to himself any such general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, which he might afterwards form, would be founded upon the detestation which he felt necessarily arise in his own breast, at the thought of this and every other particular action of the same kind. When we read in history or romance, the account of actions either of generosity or of baseness, the admiration which we conceive for the one, and the contempt which we feel for the other, neither of them arise from reflecting that there are certain general rules which declare all actions of the one kind admirable, and all actions of the other contemptible. Those general rules, on the contrary, are all formed from the experience we have had of the effects which actions of all different kinds naturally produce upon us.
注释摘要
斯密在这一段里做了一件在当时的道德哲学中相当要紧的事：他把道德判断的顺序颠倒了过来。通常的想象是，我们先学会某些普遍的道德规则，再用这些规则去衡量眼前的具体行为，就像法官先查阅法条再断案。但他明确说，事情不是这样的。一般准则并不是判断的起点，而是判断的沉淀物。 他用了一个极其具体的场景来论证这一点。设想一个人亲眼目睹了一场谋杀，凶手出于贪婪、嫉妒或不义的怨…