《道德情操论·卷六·论德性的品质·第六卷结语》第3节
The virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence, have no tendency to produce any but the most agreeable effects. Regard to those effects, as it originally recommends them to the actor, so does it afterwards to the impartial spectator. In our approbation of the character of the prudent man, we feel, with peculiar complacency, the security which he must enjoy while he walks under the safeguard of that sedate and deliberate virtue. In our approbation of the character of the just man, we feel, with equal complacency, the security which all those connected with him, whether in neighbourhood, society, or business must derive from his scrupulous anxiety never either to hurt or offend. In our approbation of the character of the beneficent man, we enter into the gratitude of all those who are within the sphere of his good offices, and conceive with them the highest sense of his merit. In our approbation of all those virtues, our sense of their agreeable effects, of their utility, either to the person who exercises them, or to some other persons, joins with our sense of their propriety, and constitutes always a considerable, frequently the greater part of that approbation. But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, complacency with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and frequently but a small part, of that approbation. Those effects may sometimes be agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and though our approbation is no doubt stronger in the former case, it is by no means altogether destroyed in the latter. The most heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either of justice or of injustice; and though it is no doubt much more loved and admired in the former case, it still appears a great and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and in all the other Virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling {236} quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in order to make and to maintain that exertion. The effects are too often but too little regarded. Part VII.--Of Systems of Moral Philosophy.
注释摘要
斯密在这里对整部书里反复梳理的几组德性做了一个收束性的比较，切口很小，但牵动的正是他整个赞许理论的基石。他要回答的问题是：我们赞许一种德性，究竟是赞许它本身，还是赞许它带来的好结果？这个看似简单的区分，在审慎、正义与仁慈这三种德性那里，和在自制那里，给出了不同的答案。 他先从审慎、正义与仁慈入手。这三种德性的共同点在于，它们产生的结果无一例外都是令人愉快的…