"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience"

Adam Smith’s observation challenges conventional moral binaries, suggesting that even virtues, when taken to extremes, can cause harm, sometimes more insidiously than vices. Vice is typically looked upon with suspicion and social or internal constraint; we recognize greed, cruelty, or envy as wrong, and our conscience, along with communal censure, actively works to suppress such impulses. The structure of conscience, ethics, and law is largely built around identifying and containing vice.

Virtue, however, is cloaked in moral approval. Qualities such as honesty, generosity, courage, and piety are seen as unqualified goods, encouraged in individuals and praised by society. But Smith warns that these qualities can, in pursuit or application, become excessive: honesty untempered by compassion may verge on cruelty; generosity untethered from prudent judgment may lead to enabling vice or undermining self-sufficiency; zeal for justice may spill into fanaticism. The excesses do not spark the moral alarms that vice does because, dressed in the garb of virtue, they are often mistaken for commendable, even admirable, qualities. While vice is met by the brakes of conscience, excessive virtue can escape scrutiny, its harm masked by good intentions.

By stating that such excesses are “not subject to the regulation of conscience,” Smith identifies an ethical blind spot. Individuals who act under the banner of virtue may overlook the destructive potential of what they do, believing themselves justified, or even obligated, no matter how extreme their actions become. Societies, too, can become complicit, encouraging one-sided virtue without considering its balance against other values. The warning is subtle but important: moral judgment requires not only the avoidance of vice but also the moderation of virtue, a recognition that excess, of any kind, can undermine the very ethical order it seeks to uphold. Ethics, therefore, must be attentive not only to the dangers of immorality but also to the unforeseen consequences of unchecked virtue.