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ADAM SMITH. 213 benevolence, and reward it more, than a kind intention vliich fails of execution ; that we judge and punish the purposed crime which is not carried out more leniently than the one which is completed ; that we even ascribe a cer- tain degree of accountability to an unintentional act of good or evil — although in these cases the moralist is compelled to see an ethically unjustifiable corruption of the judgment by external success or failure beyond the control of the agent. The first of these irregularities does not allow the man of good intentions to content himself with noble desires merely, but spurs him on to greater endeavors to carry them out — man is created for action ; the second protects us from the inquisitorial questioning of motives, for it is easy for the most innocent to fall under grave suspicion. To this inconsistency of feeling we owe the necessary legal principle that deeds only, not intentions, are punishable. God has reserved for himself judgment concerning dispositions. The third irregularity, that he who inflicts unintentional injury is not guilty, even in his own eyes, but yet seems bound to make atonement and reparation, is useful in so far as it warns everyone to be prudent, while the corresponding illusion, in virtue of which we are grateful to an involuntary benefactor — for instance, the bearer of good tidings — and reward him, is at least not harmful, for any reason appears sufficient for the bestowal of kind intentions and actions. It is impossible to explain in brief the relation of Smith's ethical theory to his political economy. His merit in the former consists in his comprehensive and characteristic combination of the results reached by his predecessors, and ill his preparation for Kantian views, so far as this was pos- sible from the empirical standpoint of the English. His impartial spectator was the forerunner of the categorical imperative. English ethics after Smith may, almost without excep- tion, be termed eclecticism. This is true of Ferguson {Insti- tutes of Moral Philosophy, 1769); of Paley (1785); of the Scottish School (Dugald Stewart, 1793). Bentham's utili. tarianism was the first to bring in a new phase.