《道德情操论·卷六·论德性的品质·二之一·论天性推荐给我们照顾的个人次序》第7节
This natural disposition to accommodate and to assimilate, as much as we can, our own sentiments, principles, and feelings, to those which we see fixed and rooted in the persons whom we are obliged to live and converse a great deal with, is the cause of the contagious effects of both {199} good and bad company. The man who associates chiefly with the wise and the virtuous, though he may not himself become either wise or virtuous, cannot help conceiving a certain respect at least for wisdom and virtue; and the man who associates chiefly with the profligate and the dissolute, though he may not himself become profligate and dissolute, must soon lose, at least, all his original abhorrence of profligacy and dissolution of manners. The similarity of family characters, which we so frequently see transmitted through several successive generations, may, perhaps, be partly owing to this disposition to assimilate ourselves to those whom we are obliged to live and converse a great deal with. The family character, however, like the family countenance, seems to be owing, not altogether to the moral, but partly too to the physical connection. The family countenance is certainly altogether owing to the latter.
注释摘要
斯密在这里引入了一个他此前未曾如此明确表述的心理机制：人有一种天然倾向，会把自己内心的情感、原则和感受，尽可能调适到与那些自己不得不长期相处、密切交谈的人相一致。他称之为一种可以适应和同化的自然倾向，并将其视为良好或恶劣人际圈子的传染效果的根源。也就是说，这股同化力本身不作道德上的区分，它既能让一个人逐渐靠近智慧与德性的情感模式，也能让他慢慢丧失对放荡与败…