《道德情操论·卷五·论习惯与风尚对道德情感的影响·一·论习惯与风尚对美丑观念的影响》第1节
THERE are other principles besides those already enumerated, which have a considerable influence upon the moral sentiments of mankind, and are the chief causes of the many irregular and discordant opinions which prevail in different ages and nations concerning what is blamable or praise-worthy. These principles are custom and fashion, principles which extend their dominion over our judgments concerning beauty of every kind. When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. Though, independent of custom, there should be no real beauty in their union, yet when custom has thus connected them together, we feel an impropriety in their separation. The one we think is awkward when it appears without its usual companion. We miss something which we expected to find, and the habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems to want something if they are without the most insignificant ornament which usually accompanies them, and we find a meanness or awkwardness in the absence even of a haunch button. When there is any natural propriety in the union, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to see things in a good taste, are more disgusted by whatever is clumsy or awkward. Where the conjunction is improper, custom either diminishes, or takes away altogether, our sense of the impropriety. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of furniture or dress which {172} seem ridiculous to strangers, give no offence to the people who have been used to them. Fashion is different from custom, or rather is a particular species of it. That is not the fashion which every body wears, but which those wear who are of a high rank, or character. The graceful, the easy, and commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow upon it. As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something that is genteel and magnificent, and though in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account of this relation, to have something about it that is genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess before, and being now used only by the inferior ranks of people, seems to have something of their meanness and their awkwardness.
注释摘要
斯密在第五卷开头提出一个新的分析方向。前四卷他已经铺陈了同情机制、合宜感、功劳与过失、以及良心的权威，现在他转向一个更外在的因素：为什么不同时代、不同民族，对于什么该受责备、什么该受赞扬，会有如此纷歧而互不调和的意见？他的答案是习惯与风尚。这两个原则，他马上说明，不仅影响道德判断，其势力遍及一切关于美的判断。这里"美的判断"取的是最宽泛的意义，包括对人工制…