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• Preface
• Key to Abbreviations and References
• Introduction
• 1.: Formation of the Theory of Moral Sentiments
• 2.: Evolution
• 3.: Reception
• 4.: The Text
• A Advertisement
• Part I: Of the Propriety of Action Consisting of Three Sections
• Section I: Of the Sense of Propriety
• Chap. I: Of Sympathy
• A Chap. II: Of the Pleasure of Mutual Sympathy
• Chap. III: Of the Manner In Which We Judge of the Propriety Or Impropriety of the Affections of Other Men, By Their Concord Or Dissonance With Our Own
• Chap. IV: The Same Subject Continued
• Chap. V: Of the Amiable and Respectable Virtues
• Section II: Of the Degrees of the Different Passions Which Are Consistent With Propriety
• Introduction
• Chap. I: Of the Passions Which Take Their Origin From the Body
• Chap. II: Of Those Passions Which Take Their Origin From a Particular Turn Or Habit of the Imagination
• Chap. III: Of the Unsocial Passions
• Chap. IV.: Of the Social Passions
• Chap. V: Of the Selfish Passions
• Section III: Of the Effects of Prosperity and Adversity Upon the Judgment of Mankind With Regard to the Propriety of Action; and Why It Is More Easy to Obtain Their Approbation In the One State Than In the Other
• Chap. I: That Though Our Sympathy With Sorrow Is Generally a More Lively Sensation Than Our Sympathy With Joy, It Commonly Falls Much More Short of the Violence of What Is a Naturally a Felt By the Person Principally Concerned
• Chap. II: Of the Origin of Ambition, and of the Distinction of Ranks
• A Chap. III: Of the Corruption of Our Moral Sentiments, Which Is Occasioned By This Disposition to Admire the Rich and the Great, and to Despise Or Neglect Persons of Poor and Mean Condition
• Part II: Of Merit and Demerit; Or, of the Objects of Reward and Punishment Consisting of Three Sections
• Section I: Of the Sense of Merit and Demerit
• Introduction
• Chap. I 1: That Whatever Appears to Be the Proper Object of Gratitude, Appears to Deserve Reward; and That, In the Same Manner, Whatever Appears to Be the Proper Object of Resentment, Appears to Deserve Punishment
• Chap. II: Of the Proper Objects of Gratitude and Resentment
• Chap. III: That Where There Is No Approbation of the Conduct of the Person Who Confers the Benefit, There Is Little Sympathy With the Gratitude of Him Who Receives It: and That, On the Contrary, Where There Is No Disapprobation of the Motives of the Perso
• Chap. IV: Recapitulation of the Foregoing Chapters
• Chap. V: The Analysis of the Sense of Merit and Demerit
• Section II: Of Justice and Beneficence
• Chap. I: Comparison of Those Two Virtues
• Chap. II: Of the Sense of Justice, of Remorse, and of the Consciousness of Merit
• Chap. III: Of the Utility of This Constitution of Nature
• Section III: Of the Influence of Fortune Upon the Sentiments of Mankind, With Regard to the Merit Or Demerit of Actions
• Introduction
• Chap. I: Of the Causes of This Influence of Fortune
• Chap. II: Of the Extent of This Influence of Fortune
• Chap. III: Of the Final Cause of This Irregularity of Sentiments
• Part III: Of the Foundation of Our Judgments Concerning Our Own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the Sense of Duty a Consisting of One Section a
• B Chap. I B: C of the Principle of Self–approbation and of Self–disapprobation C
• A Chap II: Of the Love of Praise, and of That of Praise–worthiness; and of the Dread of Blame, and of That of Blame–worthiness
• A Chap. III: Of the Influence and Authority of Conscience
• A Chap. IV: Of the Nature of Self–deceit, and of the Origin and Use of General Rules
• A Chap. V A: of the Influence and Authority of the General Rules of Morality, and That They Are Justly Regarded As the Laws of the Deity
• A Chap. Vi A: In What Cases the Sense of Duty Ought to Be the Sole Principle of Our Conduct; and In What Cases It Ought to Concur With Other Motives
• Part IV: Of the Effect of Utility Upon the Sentiment of Approbation a Consisting of One Section a
• B Chap. I B: of the Beauty Which the Appearance of Utility Bestows Upon All the Productions of Art, and of the Extensive Influence of This Species of Beauty
• A Chap. Ii A: of the Beauty Which the Appearance of Utility Bestows Upon the Characters and Actions of Men; and How Far the Perception of This Beauty May Be Regarded As One of the Original Principles of Approbation
• Part V: Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation a Consisting of One Section a
• B Chap. 1 B: of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon Our Notions of Beauty and Deformity
• A Chap. Ii A: of the Influence of Custom and Fashion Upon Moral Sentiments
• A Part VI: Of the Character of Virtue Consisting of Three Sections
• Introduction
• A a Section I: Of the Character of the Individual, So Far As It Affects His Own Happiness; Or of Prudence a
• Section II: Of the Character of the Individual, So Far As It Can Affect the Happiness of Other People
• Introduction
• Chap. I.: Of the Order In Which Individuals Are Recommended By Nature to Our Care and Attention
• Chap. II: Of the Order In Which Societies Are By Nature Recommended to Our Beneficence
• Chap. III: Of Universal Benevolence
• Section III: Of Self–command
• Conclusion of the Sixth Part
• Part VII: Of Systems of Moral Philosophy Consisting of Four Sections
• Section I: A of the Questions Which Ought to Be Examined In a Theory of Moral Sentiments a
• Section II: A of the Different Accounts Which Have Been Given of the Nature of Virtue a
• Introduction
• Chap. I: Of Those Systems Which Make Virtue Consist In Propriety
• Chap. II: Of Those Systems Which Make Virtue Consist In Prudence
• Chap. III: Of Those Systems Which Make Virtue Consist In Benevolence
• Chap. IV: Of Licentious Systems
• Section III: Of the Different Systems Which Have Been Formed Concerning the Principle of Approbation
• Introduction
• Chap. I: Of Those Systems Which Deduce the Principle of Approbation From Self–love
• Chap. II: Of Those Systems Which Make Reason the Principle of Approbation
• Chap. III: Of Those Systems Which Make Sentiment the Principle of Approbation
• Section IV: Of the Manner In Which Different Authors Have Treated of the Practical Rules of Morality
• Appendix I: Minor Variants
• Appendix II: The Passage On Atonement, and a Manuscript Fragment On Justice
• Addendum to Introduction, Pp. 32–3

Introduction

1.

formation ofThe Theory of Moral Sentiments

(a)

Adam Smith’s lectures on ethics

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith’s first book, was published in 1759 during his tenure of the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. A second, revised edition appeared in 1761. Smith left Glasgow at the beginning of 1764. Editions 3 (1767), 4 (1774), and 5 (1781) of TMS differ little from edition 2. Edition 6, however, published shortly before Smith’s death in 1790, contains very extensive additions and other significant changes. The original work arose from Smith’s lectures to students. The revisions in edition 2 were largely the result of criticism from philosophically minded friends. The new material in edition 6 was the fruit of long reflection by Smith on his wide knowledge of public affairs and his equally wide reading of history.

Adam Smith was appointed to the Chair of Logic at Glasgow in 1751 and moved to the Chair of Moral Philosophy in 1752. His predecessor as Professor of Moral Philosophy, Thomas Craigie, was already ill in 1751, and Smith was asked to substitute for him with lectures on natural jurisprudence and politics1 in addition to taking the Logic class. Thereafter Smith gave the whole of the Moral Philosophy course, in which he was expected to deal with natural theology and ethics before proceeding to law and government. In view of the speed with which Smith had to prepare his extensive range of teaching at Glasgow, it was inevitable that he should make use of material already available from a series of public lectures which he had delivered in Edinburgh during the years 1748–50. These lectures were sponsored especially by Lord Kames. Both Dugald Stewart in a biography of Smith and A. F. Tytler in one of Kames describe the subject–matter of the Edinburgh lectures simply as rhetoric and belles lettres,2 but it seems that by 1750 Smith also included political and economic theory, presumably under the title of jurisprudence or civil law.3 In a later part of his biography (IV.25), Dugald Stewart refers to a short manuscript written by Adam Smith in 1755, listing ‘certain leading principles, both political and literary, to which he was anxious to establish his exclusive right’. Stewart says that they included ‘many of the most important opinions in The Wealth of Nations’, and then quotes a few sentences from the manuscript itself. These end with a statement from Smith that ‘a great part of the opinions enumerated in this paper’ had formed ‘the constant subjects of my lectures since I first taught Mr. Craigie’s class, the first winter I spent in Glasgow, down to this day, without any considerable variation’ and that they had also ‘been the subjects of lectures which I read at Edinburgh the winter before I left it’.

A report of the content and character of the early Glasgow lectures, both in the Logic and in the Moral Philosophy class, was given to Stewart by John Millar, Professor of Law at Glasgow, originally a pupil and afterwards a close friend of Smith. In his Logic course Smith despatched the traditional logic rather briskly and then ‘dedicated all the rest of his time to the delivery of a system of rhetoric and belles lettres’.4 His Moral Philosophy course could not rely so heavily on the Edinburgh lectures but it will certainly have drawn on them in its latter sections. Millar’s report to Dugald Stewart gives a detailed description of it.

There is no evidence to suggest that the Edinburgh lectures included ethical theory proper, and we must therefore presume that Smith’s composition of the subject–matter of TMS began in 1752 at Glasgow.

Millar’s statement that both of Smith’s books arose from his lectures on Moral Philosophy is confirmed by the evidence of James Wodrow, writing (probably in 1808) to the eleventh Earl of Buchan.

Francis Hutcheson was Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1730 to 1746. Smith was his pupil in the late 1730s, Wodrow in the 1740s. Wodrow remained at the University as Keeper of the Library from 1750 to 1755.

It seems, then, that the first published version of TMS was prepared or worked up from the final form of the second part of Smith’s lectures on Moral Philosophy. No doubt there was steady development between 1752 and 1758. Although no copy of a student’s notes of Smith’s lectures on ethics has as yet appeared, there is some evidence from which we can reconstruct his method of improving what he had written. In Appendix II we give reasons for thinking that a fragmentary manuscript of philosophical considerations on justice is a part of Smith’s lectures on ethics. Revisions within the manuscript itself and detailed comparison with corresponding passages in TMS show that Smith tended to work over previous composition rather than write a new version. He made minor corrections both of style and of content, he inserted substantial additions, and (when it came to preparing a text for publication) he shuffled passages about like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Exactly the same methods of development can be seen in the changes that Smith made when revising the printed book for edition 2 and for edition 6. There is far more evidence for tracing the genesis of The Wealth of Nations; we have two Reports by students, apparently from successive sessions, of Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence, a fairly long manuscript that has been called ‘An early draft of part of The Wealth of Nations’, and two fragmentary manuscripts that come much nearer to the text of WN itself. From this material Professor Ronald L. Meek and Mr. Andrew S. Skinner have been able to give an extraordinarily precise account of the development of Smith’s thought on a central topic of his economic theory.7 The picture of Smith’s working methods that emerges from a comparison of these documents with one another and with WN is similar to that gathered from the more limited evidence for TMS.

The printed text at times betrays its origin in lectures. At several points Smith refers back to something he has said on a former ‘occasion’, whereas it would be more natural, in a book, to write of an earlier ‘place’. Then again, in the final paragraph of the work he promises to treat of the general theory of jurisprudence in another ‘discourse’.

One other piece of internal evidence seems to match part of the description of the original Glasgow lectures given to Dugald Stewart by Millar: ‘Each discourse consisted commonly of several distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and illustrate.’8 Much of Part II of TMS can be said to fit this account in a general way, but the first chapter, II.i.1, illustrates it quite strikingly and would seem, if unrelated to Millar’s account and the lecture form, a rather odd way of continuing from the more natural mode of discussion in Part I. If this chapter does indeed retain Smith’s original method of procedure in his lectures, it is almost unique in this respect and shows that Smith must have commonly recast the actual structure of his lectures for the book, even though he kept most of the words and phrases.

The printed text allows a further conjecture about the lectures. The last part of the book seems to originate from material that formed the first part of the lectures on ethics in their earliest version. Why otherwise should Smith set out here (VII.i.2) the two main problems of ethical theory, as if by way of introduction, when in fact most of his task is already done? It seems probable (and it would accord with his usual method of approaching a subject) that at first he entered upon ethics with a survey of its history in dealing with the two topics of moral motive and moral judgement. Having carried the history up to the thinkers of his own day, he will have reflected upon the differences between the two theories that impressed him most, those of his teacher Hutcheson and his friend Hume. Whether or not he already had definite views of his own on these matters in 1752, it is impossible to say; in any event his account of sympathy and its place in moral judgement will have developed as he gave more attention to the subject. Once it had developed it became the focus of Smith’s own distinctive theory of ethics, and at this stage (if our conjecture about the original form of the lectures is correct) Smith will have recast his thoughts, starting off with sympathy, building up his theory from that base, and making the historical survey a sort of appendix.

An examination of changes in style might perhaps give some guidance about alterations from the original lecture notes. There is a clear difference in style between much of what Smith wrote for edition 1 and the considerable additions, including the whole of Part VI, which he composed late in life for edition 6. The earlier matter tends to be rhetorical, in tune with the style accepted for lectures in the mid–eighteenth century, while the later writing is in the more urbane style of WN. Both WN and the additions to TMS were of course written with a direct view to publication. When one remembers the type of classes that Smith addressed as a Professor in Glasgow, the style of the original material can be better understood. Most of the students were of the age of secondary schoolboys today. The number attending the class of public lectures on Moral Philosophy in Smith’s time was probably about eighty, many of them being destined for the Church. To hold the attention of his class Smith used rhetorical language and made humorous references to manners of the day in a way likely to interest young people.

Of the lectures that Smith delivered in his last four years at Glasgow after the publication of TMS, Stewart (III.1) writes:

The last statement appears to be borne out by the two surviving Reports of the lectures on jurisprudence as delivered in sessions 1762–3 and 1763–4. It would be wrong, however, to infer from Stewart’s account that Smith’s thought on ethics stood still at this time. There is substantial development of his theory in edition 2 of TMS, especially of his notion of the impartial spectator. He can also be seen to apply that concept in the lectures on jurisprudence, so that there is a continuity in his thinking, as indeed Smith himself makes plain at the end of TMS.

(b)

Influence of Stoic philosophy

Stoic philosophy is the primary influence on Smith’s ethical thought. It also fundamentally affects his economic theory. Like other scholars of his day Smith was well versed in ancient philosophy, and in TMS he often refers as a matter of course to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero (the last sometimes, but not always, as a source of information about Stoicism). In his survey of the history of moral philosophy in Part VII, however, Stoicism is given far more space than any other ‘system’, ancient or modern, and is illustrated by lengthy passages from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. (The Discourses of Epictetus seem to have been chiefly responsible for Smith’s early fascination with Stoicism.) In editions 1–5 of TMS some of this material on the Stoics appears separately in Part I, but the separation does not produce a lesser impact on the reader; on the contrary, it shows up more clearly the pervasive character of Stoic influence. Even in edition 6 there remain in the earlier Parts of the book enough direct references to and quotations from Stoic doctrine to indicate this. Stoicism never lost its hold over Smith’s mind. When revising his book for edition 6 in his last years, he not only moved two of the earlier passages on ‘that famous sect’ (as he calls it in the Advertisement) to the historical survey in Part VII. He also added further reflections, especially on the Stoic view of suicide, stimulated no doubt by the posthumous publication of an essay by Hume arguing that suicide was sometimes admirable.

More important, however, is the influence of Stoic principles on Smith’s own views, again something that persisted to his latest writings. In the fresh material added to edition 6 of TMS, Smith’s elaboration of his account of Stoicism in Part VII is less significant than the clearly Stoic tone of much that he wrote for Part III on the sense of duty and for the new Part VI on the character of virtue. Part VI deals with the three virtues of prudence, beneficence, and self–command. The third of these, which also figures in the additions to Part III, is distinctively Stoic. The first, though common to many systems of ethics, is interpreted by Smith in a Stoic manner. He departs from Stoicism in his views on beneficence, but even there, when he comes to discuss universal benevolence in VI.ii.3, he introduces Stoic ideas and Stoic language to a remarkable degree.

Smith’s ethical doctrines are in fact a combination of Stoic and Christian virtues—or, in philosophical terms, a combination of Stoicism and Hutcheson. Hutcheson resolved all virtue into benevolence, a philosophical version of the Christian ethic of love. At an early stage in TMS, Adam Smith supplements this with Stoic self–command.

Smith emphasizes self–command again when supplementing for edition 6 his treatment of the sense of duty in Part III. He there repeats the dual character of his ideal. ‘The man of the most perfect virtue . . . is he who joins, to the most perfect command of his own original and selfish feelings, the most exquisite sensibility both to the original and sympathetic feelings of others’ (II.3.34). In Part VI Smith goes farther, making self–command a necessary condition for the exercise of other virtues. Great merit in the practice of any virtue presupposes that there has been temptation to the contrary and that the temptation has been overcome; that is to say, it presupposes self–command. ‘Self–command is not only itself a great virtue, but from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal lustre’ (VI.iii.11). For Adam Smith, self–command has come to permeate the whole of virtue, an indication of the way in which Stoicism permeated his reflection over the whole range of ethics and social science.

When Smith sets Stoic self–command beside Christian love in the first of the quotations given above, he calls it ‘the great precept of nature’. Life according to nature was the basic tenet of Stoic ethics, and a Stoic idea of nature and the natural forms a major part of the philosophical foundations of TMS and WN alike. The Stoic doctrine went along with a view of nature as a cosmic harmony. Phrases that occur in Smith’s account of this Stoic conception are echoed when he expresses his own opinions. The correspondence is most striking in the chapter on universal benevolence, where Marcus Aurelius is recalled by name as well as in phrase: ‘the great Conductor’ whose ‘benevolence and wisdom have . . . contrived and conducted the immense machine of the universe’ (in the new material of edition 6 at VI.ii.3.4–5) is a recollection of the ‘all–wise Architect and Conductor’ of ‘one immense and connected system’, ‘the whole machine of the world’, (quoted from Marcus Aurelius in VII.ii.1.37). Essentially similar turns of speech are to be found in a number of passages, both early and late, of TMS. Indeed, the frequency of such phrases leads one to think that commentators have laid too much stress on the ‘invisible hand’, which appears only once in each of Smith’s two books. On both occasions the context is the Stoic idea of harmonious system, seen in the working of society.

The Stoics themselves applied the notion to society no less than to the physical universe, and used the Greek word sympatheia (in the sense of organic connection) of both. This is not the sympathy that figures in Adam Smith’s ethics. Sympathy and the impartial spectator, as Smith interprets them, are the truly original features of his theory. Yet it is quite likely that in his own mind each of these two ideas was intimately related to the Stoic outlook. Like the Stoics he thought of the social bond in terms of ‘sympathy’, and he describes the Stoic view of world citizenship and self–command as if it implied the impartial spectator.

In WN the Stoic concept of natural harmony appears especially in ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty’ (IV.ix.51). We should remember that the three writers on whom Smith chiefly draws for Stoic doctrine—Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero—were all Roman, and that the practical bent of the Romans closely connected men’s moral duties with their legal obligations as citizens. The universalist ethic of Stoicism became enshrined in the ‘law’ of nature. This tradition Smith accepted, understandably in his setting. Ethics for him implied a ‘natural jurisprudence’, and his economic theories arose out of, indeed were originally part of, his lectures on jurisprudence.

The Stoic concept of social harmony, as Smith understood it, did not mean that everyone behaved virtuously. Stoic ethics said it was wrong to injure others for one’s own advantage, but Stoic metaphysics said that good could come out of evil.

This doctrine anticipates the better–known statement of Smith’s own opinion that the selfish rich ‘are led by an invisible hand’ to help the poor and to serve the interest of society at large (IV.1.10). Smith has added the idea of a ‘deception’ by nature and the phrase ‘an invisible hand’. The famous phrase may have sprung from an uneasiness about the reconciliation of selfishness with the perfection of the system. In itself the idea of deception by an invisible hand is unconvincing. It gains its plausibility from the preceding account of aesthetic pleasure afforded by power and riches, a pleasure that is reinforced by the admiration of spectators. Smith himself clearly set most store by the psychological explanation. But the invisible hand, through its reappearance in WN, has captured the attention, especially of economists.

In the TMS passage Smith writes disparagingly of the ‘natural selfishness and rapacity’ of the rich, but this does not mean that he regards all self–interested action as bad in itself and redeemable only by the deception of nature. He does not even accept the view of Hutcheson that self–love is morally neutral. Smith follows the Stoics once again in holding that self–preservation is the first task committed to us by nature and that prudence is a virtue so long as it does not injure others. His explicit account of Stoicism in Part VII begins with the doctrine that ‘every animal was by nature recommended to its own care, and was endowed with the principle of self–love’, for the sake of preserving its existence and perfection (VII.ii.1.15). This is echoed by an expression of Smith’s own view in Part II, ‘Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care’ (II.ii.2.1), and then again in the new Part VI, where it is reaffirmed with acknowledgement, ‘Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care’ (VI.ii.1.1).

Smith does appear to give rather more scope to prudence in the new Part VI than in the earlier material, no doubt reflecting a change of emphasis in the thought of the more mature man who had written WN. Essentially, however, TMS and WN are at one. For example, Smith writes in TMS of ‘that great purpose of human life which we call bettering our condition’ (I.iii.2.1). This reappears in WN in vivid form: ‘But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave’ (II.iii.28).9 In WN this is of course worked out in its economic aspect, as the drive to employ one’s stock and industry to one’s best advantage. In TMS the desire to better our condition is related to class distinction and is attributed to ‘vanity’, the desire ‘to be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation’. There is a difference of tone, but both books treat the desire to better our condition as natural and proper.

The consistency and the Stoic character of Smith’s views of prudence may be brought out by comparing two passages, one written for edition 6, the other for edition 1. In VI.i.11 Smith says: ‘In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator. . . .’ The reference to industry and frugality immediately recalls WN. The other passage, in IV.2.8, written thirty years earlier, contains a similar reference when discussing self–command: from the spectator’s approval of self–command ‘arises that eminent esteem with which all men naturally regard a steady perseverance in the practice of frugality, industry, and application, though directed to no other purpose than the acquisition of fortune’. The passage in Part VI appears to take a more charitable view of prudence as such, but in fact there is no real change of doctrine, for in the Part VI passage Smith goes on to explain that the approval of the impartial spectator is really directed at ‘that proper exertion of self–command’ which enables the prudent man to attach almost as much importance to future enjoyment as to present. There is no reason to suppose that Smith departs in any way from this view when he gives similar praise to industry and frugality in WN. The moral quality of prudence depends on its association with the Stoic virtue of self–command.

Smith’s respect for Stoicism was not unqualified, and he ends his account of it, as of other ‘systems’, with some firm criticisms. Apart from the particular question of suicide, which he says is contrary to nature ‘in her sound and healthful state’, Smith finds fault with two features of the Stoic philosophy. First, he rejects the Stoic ‘paradoxes’ that all virtuous actions are equally good and all failings equally bad. Second, while accepting the idea of world citizenship, he rejects the Stoic view that this should obliterate stronger ties of feeling for smaller groups. On the contrary, Smith argues, it is nature that teaches us to put family, friends, and nation first, while also providing us with the judgements of the impartial spectator to check any excessive attachment. Despite the criticisms, however, it is not too much to say that Adam Smith’s ethics and natural theology are predominantly Stoic.

(c)

Influence of contemporary thinkers

Among contemporary thinkers Hume had the greatest influence on the formation of Smith’s ethical theory. Smith rejects or transforms Hume’s ideas far more often than he follows them, but his own views would have been markedly different if he had not been stimulated to disagreement with Hume. Second in order of importance is the influence of Hutcheson, whose teaching directed Smith’s general approach to moral philosophy and enabled him to appreciate the progress in that approach made by Hume. The particular doctrines of TMS, however, owe little to Hutcheson’s actual theory, which Smith probably took to be superseded by Hume’s more complex account.

The relation of Smith’s ethics to the thought of Hutcheson and Hume needs to be described in some detail, but first let us note the extent to which Smith was influenced by other moral philosophers of his time. It is remarkably small. Smith was well informed about ancient philosophy, keenly interested in the history of science and the evolution of society, and widely read in the culture of his own time, especially its literature, history, and nascent social science. He was anything but insular: his reading of recent books was almost as extensive in French as in English, and it was not negligible in Italian. Yet he was not closely acquainted with much of the ethical theory of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the very breadth of his interests and outlook was responsible for this. In his ‘Letter to the Editors of the Edinburgh Review’, July 1755, Smith could describe, from his own reading, not only Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality but also ‘the Theory of agreeable sentiments by Mr. De Pouilly’; yet his ignorance of recent works in English comparable with the latter is shown by his remark that the characteristic English approach to philosophy, taken over by France, ‘now seems to be intirely neglected by the English themselves’. In fact there were several English contributions to mental and moral philosophy in the 1740s and early 1750s at least as valuable as Lévesque de Pouilly’s little book on the psychology of pleasure. Smith’s statement in the ‘Letter’ that England had until then been pre–eminent for originality in philosophy is simply a repetition of what Hume had said in the Introduction to the Treatise of Human Nature, and Smith’s list of ‘English’ thinkers (Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Butler, Clarke, Hutcheson) differs little from Hume’s. It follows Hume in including Hutcheson, although the point of the ‘Letter’, unlike that of Hume’s Introduction, is to urge the Edinburgh Review to look beyond Scotland.

There are a few particular issues on which Smith was affected by contemporary thinkers other than Hutcheson and Hume. When he distinguishes justice from beneficence he refers to the work of Lord Kames, ‘an author of very great and original genius’ (II.ii.1.5), but perhaps Smith’s view of the distinction was reinforced rather than suggested by that of Kames since the theories of the two men do not have much in common. (The tone of homage in Smith’s allusion to Kames may owe something to gratitude for promoting the Edinburgh lectures, which in turn led to the Glasgow appointment.) At I.iii.1.1 Smith refers, rather inaccurately, to a passage of Bishop Butler about sympathy, though not so as to suggest any indebtedness. In another place, III.5.5–6, Smith unconsciously recalls some of Butler’s phrases about the authority of conscience. Here Smith is as much influenced by Hutcheson as by Butler himself, for Hutcheson’s lectures (posthumously published as A System of Moral Philosophy) had adopted Butler’s language on this topic. The passage in TMS probably survives from the earliest version of Smith’s lectures, in which he will have followed the example of Hutcheson more closely than in later years when he had developed his own theory of conscience as the imagined impartial spectator. The unconscious repetition of phrases, both from his own earlier work and from that of other writers who had moved him to agreement or disagreement, is a characteristic feature of Adam Smith’s writings, and Butler is not the only contemporary philosopher to leave such traces in his mind. Faint echoes of Mandeville and of Rousseau can be heard in the passage about the deception of nature (IV.1.8 and 10). But all these are nothing to the echoes of Stoicism and of Hume that appear so often in both the language and the doctrine of TMS.

In Part VII of the book Smith discusses recent as well as ancient philosophy. Apart from Hutcheson, the only contemporary philosopher who is considered at length is Mandeville in VII.ii.4. (In editions 1–5 his name was coupled with that of La Rochefoucauld, but Smith’s actual exposition and criticism of ‘licentious systems’ in this chapter were always confined to the work of Mandeville.) There are short accounts of Hume’s views in VII.ii.3.21 and in VII.iii.3.3 and 17. There are references to Hobbes in VII.iii.1 and 2, a glance at Clarke, Wollaston, and Shaftesbury in VII.ii.1.48, a perfunctory mention of the Cambridge Platonists in VII.ii.3.3, and a more definite reference in VII.iii.2.4 to one of them, Cudworth, as a representative of ethical rationalism.

The ethical writings of both Hutcheson and Hume contain important criticism of opposing views. Hutcheson attacked egoistic theory, notably as expounded by Mandeville, and theories of ethical rationalism, especially those of Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston. Hume redoubled the assault on rationalism with a veritable barrage of subtle argument, but he did not repeat Hutcheson’s criticism of egoism, doubtless thinking that this was now dead. Adam Smith evidently felt the same about ethical rationalism. His chapter on the rationalists (VII.iii.2) is brief and summary. He takes it for granted that moral rules are inductive generalizations and that moral concepts must arise in the first place from feeling. In the last paragraph of the chapter he refers to Hutcheson’s criticism of ethical rationalism in Illustrations upon the Moral Sense as being quite decisive. (It is noteworthy that he does not explicitly mention Hume’s more finely directed series of arguments in the Treatise of Human Nature, though there is presumably an implicit reference to Hume in the statement that Hutcheson was ‘the first’ to distinguish ‘with any degree of precision’ the respective roles of reason and feeling in morals.) Smith writes as if he had little knowledge or appreciation of the carefully argued counter–attacks on Hutcheson in writers such as John Balguy and Richard Price. Unlike Hume, however, Smith evidently thought that egoistic theory was still a force to be reckoned with, as is shown by the length of his chapter on Mandeville. Perhaps this was because he had seen the strength of Mandeville’s position in economic affairs. At any rate he treats it more seriously than ethical rationalism. Mandeville’s system, he says, could not have ‘imposed upon’ so many people or have caused ‘alarm’ to so many others ‘had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth’ (VII.ii.4.14).

Hutcheson held (against egoism) that moral action and moral judgement are both disinterested, and (against rationalism) that they both depend on natural feelings. Moral action is motivated by the disinterested feeling of benevolence, and moral judgement expresses the disinterested feeling of approval or disapproval that Hutcheson called ‘the moral sense’. Since benevolence aims at producing happiness or preventing unhappiness, and since a wide benevolence is approved more than a narrow, the morally best action is that which ‘procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers’.10 The approval of virtue is like the appreciation of beauty, a feeling aroused in a spectator.

Hume agreed with Hutcheson that benevolence is a motive natural to man and that it naturally evokes approval. But he did not agree that benevolence is the sole motive of virtuous action or that moral approval is an innate basic feeling. He distinguished natural from artificial virtue; benevolence is the chief example of the former, justice of the latter. Moral approval can be explained by sympathy. The spectator takes sympathetic pleasure in the happiness that natural virtue, such as benevolence, tends to produce, and his approval is an expression of that sympathetic pleasure. Artificial virtue depends indirectly on utility, the utility of its rules, and the approval of artificial virtue depends ultimately on sympathy with the happiness of society. Hume therefore retained the view that all virtue is connected with beneficial effects. He also retained from Hutcheson the analogy between ethics and aesthetics and an emphasis on the role of the spectator in moral judgement.

Hume’s theory is superior to Hutcheson’s in explaining more. It recognizes a complexity in moral motivation and tries to account for our adherence to moral rules. It is not satisfied with the bare existence of disinterested approval and gives an explanation in terms of sympathy. Adam Smith follows up Hume’s advance by pointing out a greater complexity and offering different explanations. Sympathy is central in Smith’s account but is itself more complex than Hume’s concept of sympathy. For Hume, sympathy is a sharing of the pleasure or pain produced in a person affected by an action. For Smith, sympathy can be a sharing of any feeling and its first role in moral approbation concerns the motive of the agent. The spectator who sympathizes with the agent’s motive approves of the action as proper. Sympathy with the feelings of the person affected by the action comes in to help form the more complex judgement of merit. A benevolent action is not only proper but meritorious. The judgement of merit expresses a double sympathy, both with the benevolent motive of the agent and with the gratitude felt by the person benefited. The second element in double sympathy has some affinity with Hume’s concept but is not quite the same. Hume thinks of the spectator as sharing by sympathy the pleasure of the benefit itself; Smith thinks of the spectator as sharing by sympathy the gratitude that the benefit evokes.

This difference points to a sharper difference between the two philosophers on justice and on the place of utility in moral judgement. Although Hume distinguishes justice from benevolence, he connects both with utility and relates the approval of both to sympathy with beneficial effects. Smith’s explanation of justice is built in the first instance on sympathy with resentment for harm (as merit is built on sympathy with gratitude for benefit). Smith continually insists that considerations of utility are the last, not the first, determinants of moral judgement. Our basic judgement of right and wrong is concerned with the agent’s motive, not with the effect of his action. Our more complex judgements of merit and demerit, justice and injustice, depend on the reactions of gratitude and resentment to benefit and harm respectively, not simply on the benefit and harm themselves. And even though the pleasant or painful effects of action are relevant to the moral judgement passed upon it, they are primarily the effects of this particular action upon particular individuals, not the more remote effects upon society at large. Considerations of general social utility are an afterthought, not a foundation.

This is not to say that utility is of little importance in Smith’s thought. It is of course crucial for his economic theory. One feature that comes out more clearly in TMS is the place of aesthetic pleasure in the value attached to utility. Useful means are valued first for the ends at which they aim, but then we are charmed by the beauty of their own sheer efficiency, and this pleasure, Smith believes, plays a major part in sustaining economic activity and political planning. Smith legitimately took pride in his originality on this last point (IV.1.3) but derived the more general idea from Hume. Both Hume and Smith learned from Hutcheson to keep aesthetics in mind when thinking about ethics. In Treatise of Human Nature, II.ii.5, Hume wrote of the effect of sympathy in forming esteem for the rich and powerful (a thesis followed by Smith in TMS I.iii.2), and then went on to compare with this the role of sympathy in the communication of aesthetic pleasure, including the aesthetic pleasure afforded by convenience or utility. Smith seized on the last remark and emphasized its social importance.

It seems likely that the title of Lévesque de Pouilly’s book, Théorie des sentiments agréables, suggested to Smith that a suitable name for the philosophy of morals, as he understood it, would be the theory of moral sentiments. This is a description of the subject, not of Smith’s individual theory (for which the word ‘sympathy’ is virtually essential). Smith took it as established by Hutcheson and Hume that morals depend on ‘sentiment’ or feeling. He differed from them, however, in insisting upon the plurality of moral feelings. Hutcheson postulated a single ‘moral sense’ or capacity to feel approval, analogous to the sense of beauty and the sense of honour. Hume likewise wrote in the Treatise of Human Nature (III.i.2) of approbation as a ‘particular’ or ‘peculiar’ kind of pleasant feeling, but in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (appendix iv) he distinguished different kinds of approbation for different kinds of virtue. Smith followed the distinction drawn by Hume in the Enquiry between the ‘amiable’ and the ‘awful’ virtues, each arousing a different type of approval. For Smith this meant that there are different forms of the ‘sense of propriety’. He then further distinguished the sense of propriety from the sense of merit and the sense of duty. Smith accordingly took the view that there are several kinds of moral approbation, a variety of moral feelings or sentiments. The philosophy of morals may therefore be called the theory of moral sentiments. Nothing of all this can be found in Lévesque de Pouilly’s book, which is mainly concerned with the psychology of pleasant feeling in general. The content of TMS owes nothing to it, but Smith seems to have adapted Lévesque de Pouilly’s title to suit his own more specific subject. Lévesque de Pouilly’s book appeared in English translation in 1749 as The Theory of Agreeable Sensations, but Smith’s reference to it as the ‘Theory of agreeable sentiments’ shows that he had read the original French version, first published in 1747 and then reprinted in 1749 and 1750 (the 1750 edition in London). His use of the phrase ‘the Theory of moral Sentiments’ as a name for the subject of ethics appears already in the manuscript fragment of his lecture on justice, presumably written in the early 1750s (see Appendix II).

2.

evolution

(a)

Development between editions

Smith made substantial changes to TMS in editions 2 and 6. The most important feature of these changes is a development of his concept of the impartial spectator. An account of this is given by D. D. Raphael in the volume of Essays on Adam Smith (edited by Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson) accompanying the present edition of Smith’s Works. A summary of salient points will therefore suffice here.

Both Hutcheson and Hume gave prominence, in their ethical theories, to the approval of ‘a spectator’ or of ‘every spectator’, even of ‘a judicious spectator’. This conception helps to bring out the disinterested character of the moral standpoint; the spectator is not personally involved, as is the agent or a person affected by the action. A spectator theory of moral judgement implies impartiality, even though Hutcheson and Hume did not use the adjective ‘impartial’11 in this connection. The originality of Adam Smith’s impartial spectator lies in his development of the idea so as to explain the source and nature of conscience, i.e. of a man’s capacity to judge his own actions and especially of his sense of duty. On this aspect of ethics the theories of Hutcheson and Hume were undoubtedly lame, as was clear to their rationalist critics. Hutcheson himself must have seen the force of the criticism when he accepted, in his later work, the view of Bishop Butler that conscience has ‘authority’, though he did not attempt to explain this in terms of his theory of approval. Smith did, in terms of his own theory.

According to Smith, conscience is a product of social relationship. Our first moral sentiments are concerned with the actions of other people. Each of us judges as a spectator and finds himself judged by spectators. Reflection upon our own conduct begins later in time and is inevitably affected by the more rudimentary experience. ‘Reflection’ is here a live metaphor, for the thought process mirrors the judgement of a hypothetical observer. ‘We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour, and endeavour to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only looking–glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct’ (III.1.5). The looking–glass requires imagination; Smith’s impartial spectator is not the actual ‘man without’ but an imagined ‘man within’. When I judge my own conduct I do not simply observe what an actual spectator has to say; I imagine what I should feel if I myself were a spectator of the proposed action.

There is an important difference between this view and the more straightforward idea that conscience reflects the feelings of real external spectators. If I imagine myself as a spectator, I may on the one hand fail to overcome my natural partiality for myself as the actual agent, and in this respect ‘the man within’ may be an inferior witness. But on the other hand ‘the man without’ is liable to lack relevant information that I possess, and in that way the judgement of conscience can be superior to that of actual spectators.

This feature of Smith’s account was not made sufficiently clear in edition 1 of TMS. Smith was led to clarify it for his readers, and perhaps also for himself, as the result of an objection put to him by Sir Gilbert Elliot. Elliot’s letter has not survived but we can infer the point of it from Smith’s reply,12 which was accompanied by a draft of a revision that was introduced (with some changes of detail) in edition 2. Elliot’s objection must have come to this: if conscience is a reflection of social attitudes, how can it ever differ from, or be thought superior to, popular opinion? In the revision for edition 2 Smith showed how the imagined impartial spectator can reach a more objective opinion than actual spectators, who are liable to be misled by ignorance or the distortions of perspective. Imagination can conjure up a spectator free from those limitations, just as it can enable us to reach objective judgements of perception.

At this stage Smith still retained the view that conscience begins with popular opinion. He says, in the revision for edition 2, that the jurisdiction of conscience ‘is in a great measure derived from the authority of that very tribunal, whose decisions it so often and so justly reverses’. But by the time he came to revise the work again for edition 6, Smith had become even more sceptical of popular opinion and replaced the passage just quoted by the statement that ‘the jurisdictions of those two tribunals are founded upon principles which, though in some respects resembling and akin, are, however, in reality different and distinct’ (III.2.32). The judgement of the real spectator depends on the desire for actual praise, that of the imagined impartial spectator on the desire for praiseworthiness. Smith maintains the distinction in other parts of the new material added to edition 6, especially in his treatment of self–command.

Although Smith’s special concept of the impartial spectator was developed to explain a man’s moral judgements about himself, the general idea is of course used for other moral judgements too. In Smith’s view, the main stream of ethical theory, which holds that virtue consists in ‘propriety’, has offered only two suggestions for a firm criterion of right action; one is utility, the other is the impartial spectator. Throughout the work he gives reasons for preferring the second. Its central importance for him is underlined by his adding to edition 6 a short paragraph in criticism of modern theories of propriety (VII.ii.1.49).

Sir Gilbert Elliot was not the only critic to be answered in edition 2. Smith also deals, at I.iii.1.9, with an objection put to him by Hume in Letter 36, dated 28 July 1759. Hume’s objection concerned sympathy and approval. According to Hume’s own theory, the feeling of approval is a special sort of pleasure and arises from sympathy with the pleasure produced by a virtuous action. Smith likewise connected approbation with sympathy but did not limit this to sympathy with pleasure. He wrote of sympathizing with grief and thereby approving it as proper in the circumstances. Sympathy with grief is of course a sharing of a painful feeling. But Smith also wrote, in I.i.2.6, that we are always pleased when we can sympathize. Hume thought there was an inconsistency here. In his reply Smith makes clearer the relation between sympathetic feeling and the feeling of approval. Sympathetic feeling can be either pleasurable or painful. When a spectator does sympathize, in either way, he can also note the correspondence between his own feeling and that of the person observed, and this perception of correspondence is always pleasurable. The sentiment of approval is the second, necessarily pleasurable, feeling, not the first.

A distinction between sympathy and approval is all the more necessary for a passage added to edition 6. As has already been mentioned in section 1(c) above (p. 14), Smith followed Hume in using sympathy to explain ‘the distinction of ranks’ (I.iii.2). We admire the rich and the great because we take sympathetic pleasure in their enjoyments. The admiration or respect is perfectly natural and contributes to the stability of society. By 1789, however, when revising the book for edition 6, Smith was less complacent and followed that discussion with a new chapter (I.iii.3) on ‘the corruption of our moral sentiments’ by the disposition to admire the rich and the great. In it he says that while wealth and power commonly receive respect, they do not deserve it, as do wisdom and virtue. Yet he still thinks that the respect for the rich and the great is both natural and useful. In VI.ii.1.20, again a passage written for edition 6, Smith returns briefly to the rich and the great as contrasted with the wise and the virtuous. He there commends ‘the benevolent wisdom of nature’ in leading us to admire the former so much, his reason being the old one that our natural tendency to respect wealth and power helps to maintain social order. Despite the connection with sympathy and utility, Smith does not wish to class this respect as a form of moral approbation. It is, he says, similar to and apt to be mistaken for the moral respect that we feel for wisdom and virtue, but nonetheless it is not the same (I.iii.3.3).

A major change in edition 6 was the inclusion of an entirely new Part VI. In general this rounds out and clarifies, rather than changes, Smith’s ethical theory. It describes a division of virtue into three categories: prudence; benevolence and justice (both of which concern the effects of conduct on other people); and self–command. Smith always included all of these in his idea of virtue, but the earlier version of his views did not set out so clearly their relative place in the scheme of things and did not say much about prudence. The increased attention to prudence in edition 6 is natural from the more mature Adam Smith who had pondered on economics for so long. The prudent man of TMS VI.i. is the frugal man of WN.II.iii. The Stoic virtue of self–command was highlighted even in edition 1. Edition 6 devotes a substantial section (iii) to self–command in the new Part VI and also adds further reflections in III.3, where self–command is compared with conscience in the fully developed concept of the impartial spectator. The more extensive treatment given to self–command in edition 6 suggests that Smith had now acquired an even warmer regard for Stoicism than he felt in earlier days. This is confirmed both by the more elaborate treatment of Stoic philosophy as such, in VII.ii.1, and by the account of universal benevolence, in VII.ii.3, in terms of Stoic rather than of Christian doctrine.

Other features of the new Part VI reflect the interests and experience of an older man. Descriptions of different characters—the prudent man, the man of system, the magnanimous, the proud, the vain man—follow the model of Aristotle and Theophrastus but also declare Smith’s own scale of values. Unlike Aristotle he did not think that theorizing was necessarily the best form of human life. Indeed he despised the pure theorist who pursued dogma with no regard for practice, and he seems to have admired heroic characters most.

In his strictures on civil faction and the spirit of system (VI.ii.2.12–18), Smith appears to be reacting to the French Revolution. This has led Walther Eckstein, in the Introduction (xlii f.) to his edition of TMS, to attribute to Smith’s old age a conservatism that was not there before. If we did not know from other evidence that Smith was a lifelong Whig, Eckstein says, we might suppose from this section of TMS that he was a Tory. It seems to us, however, that Eckstein’s interpretation is dubious. Most men grow more cautious with advancing years, and Smith was no exception. But his general position in politics does not seem to have changed substantially. He was always a staunch republican in spirit (as Eckstein agrees). There is at first sight some substance in a specific point made by Eckstein. In VI.ii.2.16 Smith commends ‘the divine maxim of Plato’ that a man should not ‘use violence’ against his country any more than against his parents. Eckstein notes (xliii) that this is recalled in LJ(B) 15 (Cannan ed., 11), where Smith says the Tory principle of authority declares that ‘to offend’ against government is as bad as ‘to rebel’ against a parent. (LJ(A) v.124 contains a similar statement.) There is, however, a difference between the two formulations; one does not have to be a Tory to take the TMS view that it is wrong to use ‘violence’ against the state. Eckstein also cites as evidence Smith’s view in VI.ii.1.20 that respect for rank contributes to social stability, and his comparable statements in VI.ii.2.9–10 that attachment to one’s own particular order also helps stability and ‘checks the spirit of innovation’. But such support for the existing social structure is nothing new in Smith. We have already noted that he approved of the respect for rank even more warmly (i.e. without qualification) in edition 1. Further, his approval is on grounds of utility, which in the LJ passage is said to be the principle of Whig, as contrasted with Tory, politics. Smith believed in a careful balance between order and innovation. There is a strong conservative strain in his thinking, but it is not markedly stronger in the edition 6 material of TMS than in the earlier writing. That he should be shocked by the events of 1789 is entirely what we would expect.

There is more of a case for Eckstein’s further suggestion (intro. xlv ff.) that a change in Smith’s religious views can be inferred from revisions in edition 6, especially from the omission of a passage on the Atonement and from the sceptical sound of a single dry sentence that took its place (II.ii.3.12). Less striking indications of such a change can in fact be seen in earlier revisions of the passage. This matter is dealt with fully in Appendix II. Other passages added in edition 6 show that Smith was still imbued with a religious spirit (as Eckstein notes), but it seems reasonable to conclude that he had moved away from orthodox Christianity. There is additional evidence pointing in the same direction, e.g. Letter 163 addressed to Alexander Wedderburn, dated 14 August 1776, which says: ‘Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great chearfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any Whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.’ Smith did not, however, follow Hume into scepticism. All the evidence points rather to a trend towards natural religion, an attitude shown also in the sympathy with which he rearranged and expanded the Stoic passages of TMS.

(b)

Relation of TMS to WN

In the light of what has been said in the preceding section about changes in edition 6, there is no need to add much to discussions in the past about the relation of TMS to WN. The so–called ‘Adam Smith problem’ was a pseudo–problem based on ignorance and misunderstanding. Anybody who reads TMS, first in one of the earlier editions and then in edition 6, will not have the slightest inclination to be puzzled that the same man wrote this book and WN, or to suppose that he underwent any radical change of view about human conduct. Smith’s account of ethics and of human behaviour is basically the same in edition 6 of 1790 as in edition 1 of 1759. There is development but no fundamental alteration. It is also perfectly obvious that TMS is not isolated from WN (1776). Some of the content of the new material added to edition 6 of TMS clearly comes from the author of WN. No less clearly, a little of the content of edition 1 of TMS comes from the potential author of WN. Of course WN is narrower in scope and far more extensive in the working out of details than is TMS. It is largely, though by no means wholly, about economic activity and so, when it refers to motivation, concentrates on self–interest. There is nothing surprising in Adam Smith’s well known statement (WN I.ii.2): ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ Who would suppose this to imply that Adam Smith had come to disbelieve in the very existence or the moral value of benevolence? Nobody with any sense. But this does not necessarily exclude scholars, some of whom have adopted the Umschwungstheorie, the hypothesis that the moral philosopher who made sympathy the basis of social behaviour in TMS did an about–turn from altruistic to egoistic theory in WN owing to the influence of the French ‘materialist’ thinkers whom he met in Paris in 1766.

The charge of ‘materialism’ (meaning an egoistic theory of human nature) in WN was made by Bruno Hildebrand as early as 1848 in Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Frankfurt). It was followed up by Carl G. A. Knies in Die Politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode (Braunschweig, 1853), where the suggestion was first made that Smith changed his views between writing TMS and WN, and that the change was a result of his visit to France. The full–blown version of the Umschwungstheorie, however, was produced by Witold von Skarżyński in Adam Smith als Moralphilosoph und Schoepfer der Nationaloekonomie (Berlin, 1878). Skarżyński’s ideas were sparked off by those of H. T. Buckle in vol. ii of his History of Civilization in England (London, 1861). Buckle put forward a theory of a peculiar relationship between Smith’s two books. Skarżyński saw that this was questionable, but in reacting against it (and against Buckle’s high praise of Smith) he adopted one of Buckle’s chief errors and then added some of his own. Buckle’s view needs to be considered first.

Buckle’s interpretation of Adam Smith is in Chapter 6 of his book, dealing with Scottish thought in the eighteenth century. Buckle had a curious obsession with methodology, and in this chapter he insists that all Scottish philosophers of that period proceeded by the method of deduction and would have nothing to do with induction. Adam Smith conformed to the pattern, according to Buckle, except for one thing; he followed ‘a peculiar form of deduction’ (p. 437) in arguing from premisses that deliberately left out part of the relevant data. The procedure, based on the method of geometry (so Buckle says), was to select one set of premisses and reason from them in one context, and then to take the remaining data as another set of premisses for inference in a different context. Each piece of reasoning, Buckle continues, is incomplete on its own; they need to be seen as supplementing each other. That is how we must view TMS and WN.

The general theme of this passage has point, but it is distorted by Buckle’s assumption that sympathy and selfishness can be set side by side as motives, indeed as an ‘exhaustive division’ of motives. After asserting that Smith ‘soon perceived that an inductive investigation was impossible’ and therefore adopted his ‘peculiar form of deduction’, Buckle repeats his view of how Smith proceeded in the two books.

It is indeed true that the two books complement each other and that the understanding of either is helped by studying both. But Buckle has not taken his own advice. He cannot have ‘studied’ TMS if he thinks that it ‘ascribes our actions to sympathy’. Sympathy is the core of Smith’s explanation of moral judgement. The motive to action is an entirely different matter. Smith recognizes a variety of motives, not only for action in general but also for virtuous action. These motives include self–interest or, to use the eighteenth–century term, self–love. It is this, not ‘selfishness’, that comes to the fore in WN. Smith distinguished the two expressions, using ‘selfishness’ in a pejorative sense for such self–love as issues in harm or neglect of other people. While Smith is ready to couple selfishness with ‘rapacity’ (TMS IV.1.10), he also insists, against Hutcheson, that a proper ‘regard to our own private happiness and interest’ is a necessary element in virtue (VII.ii.3.16). It is therefore impossible to accept the view that there is any difference of substance between TMS and WN on self–interest as a motive.

As for methodology, Buckle may have been misled by WN V.i.f.26, the one paragraph about logic in that work. In describing the divisions of ancient philosophy, Smith says that logic arose from considering ‘the difference between a probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a conclusive one’. Buckle may have taken this to imply that probable or inductive argument should be wholly rejected. Smith has something more to say about methodology in LRBL and in the essay on the History of Astronomy in EPS. In LRBL ii.133–5 (Lothian ed., 139–40) he prefers the ‘Newtonian’ method of ‘didactic’ discourse to ‘that of Aristotle’. The first connects together all the relevant phenomena and their explanatory principles, while the latter, ‘the unconnected method’, explains each phenomenon ad hoc. But it is not at all clear that this is a distinction between deduction and induction. For in Astronomy. II.12, Smith represents scientific explanation, including that of Newton, as addressing itself to the imagination by showing regularities in the apparently irregular, and here he is following Hume’s view of inductive reasoning. There is no good reason to suppose that Smith thought ‘inductive investigation was impossible’, let alone that he pursued a special form of deduction, with a ‘peculiar artifice’, derived from geometry. His own habits of reasoning include both deduction and induction, as one would expect. Buckle’s suggestion that he followed the analogy of geometry is particularly inept because it allies Smith with the method of rationalism. Smith was in fact a firm empiricist and had little sympathy with rationalist philosophy. The ‘peculiar artifice’ of distorting the premisses of an argument is Buckle’s own invention, designed to explain the existence of two allegedly inconsistent accounts of human nature.

Skarżyński rightly rejected the idea that an artifice of logic could make inconsistency consistent, but he mistakenly accepted Buckle’s assumption that Smith’s two books gave contrary accounts of conduct. He therefore was led to the conclusion that Smith changed his views between writing them. To this was added the conviction that Smith was not an original thinker: according to Skarżyński, Smith learned all his moral philosophy from Hutcheson and Hume, and all his economics from French scholars. So Smith’s change of mind between 1759 and 1776 was attributed to his visit to France in 1764–6.

Skarżyński knew Dugald Stewart’s ‘Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith’, which contains two important pieces of evidence against the thesis that Smith learned all his economics in France. We have already noted these in section 1(a) above. First, Stewart gives us the report of John Millar that Smith’s lectures on Moral Philosophy included a section on economics that ‘contained the substance’ of WN; and second, Stewart describes a manuscript of 1755 in which Smith claims to have dictated before 1749, and to have delivered from 1750 onwards, lectures that incorporated certain of his leading principles in political economy. For Skarżyński, however, this is not evidence. How unfortunate, he says ironically, that ‘these valuable lectures’ were burned shortly before Smith’s death; mere assertion without written evidence is worthless (pp. 6–7). And when he quotes Millar’s statement that the lectures contained the substance of WN, he adds two exclamation marks to show his incredulity (53).

What Skarżyński would have called genuine evidence came to light eighteen years after the appearance of his book. A Report, copied in 1766, of Adam Smith’s lectures on jurisprudence was brought to the attention of Edwin Cannan and published by him in 1896. We can now say with some certainty that it relates to lectures given in 1763–4. A further Report of the lectures given in 1762–3 has been discovered more recently. Skarżyński would (or should) have found these Reports even more effective than the original notes that Adam Smith asked his friends to burn as he lay dying. If Smith’s manuscripts had not been burned, Skarżyński might have said that they were not necessarily the same as the manuscripts used for lectures in the 1760s; and indeed they may well have been altered. The Reports that we now have are less authentic in one sense, but there is no question of their having been revised by Smith after his visit to France.

A comparison of the two Reports shows that Smith was actively developing and varying his treatment of the subject–matter in the period 1762–4. We also have a manuscript that W. R. Scott called ‘An early draft of part of The Wealth of Nations’ and published in his Adam Smith as Student and Professor. It must have been written before April 1763.13 These documents show that Smith had gone a considerable way in his economic thinking by the time he left Scotland for France in 1764, and that this early material provided a sound foundation for developments which were certainly stimulated by the visit to France but which occupied his mind throughout the period 1764–76. What he took from the Physiocrats is clear, as are his criticisms.

Although Skarżyński did not have access to the manuscripts known today, he could have informed himself more adequately of facts that were available. He says on p. 166 of his book, truly enough, that Smith did not publish anything on political economy before 1776, but he then goes on to assert, in defiance of the testimony of Dugald Stewart, that Smith had ‘probably not once applied himself definitely to the study of political economy’ before his visit to France. Skarżyński evidently had no notion that lectures on economic matters were a recognized part of Moral Philosophy as taught in the Scottish Universities at that time. The tradition stemmed from the treatment of natural law by Roman and medieval writers, and more immediately from the jurisprudence of Grotius and Pufendorf. At Glasgow, Hutcheson’s predecessor in the Chair of Moral Philosophy, Gerschom Carmichael, used his own annotated edition of Pufendorf’s De Officio Hominis et Civis. Hutcheson continued the practice. Smith draws on Grotius in TMS (and on both Grotius and Pufendorf in LJ, though Skarżyński could not have known that). The tradition is common to all the Scottish teachers of Moral Philosophy in the eighteenth century. Skarżyński’s study of TMS seems to have been concentrated on noting Smith’s indebtedness to Hume. He treats the book as merely reproducing from Hume and at times doing it badly (76–7, 94–5). He even says (88) that Smith’s ‘twists and turns’, ‘sophistries and confusions’, could serve very well to obtain for TMS ‘the approval of three bishops and numerous literati’ (Schöngeister), an ironic reference to Hume’s teasing account (Letter 31, dated 12 April 1759) of the success of the book. If Skarżyński had studied TMS more thoroughly, he might have learned that Smith’s ethical theory differs substantially from Hume’s, despite indebtedness. He might even have come to see that Buckle’s interpretation of it was mistaken.

Smith himself provides the best evidence against any idea that there is a conflict between his two works. In the Advertisement to edition 6 of TMS he refers to the final paragraph of the book, which promises another one on law and government, and says that he has ‘partly executed this promise’ in WN. Clearly therefore he regards WN as continuing the sequence of thought set out in TMS. Moreover, as we have said at the beginning of this section, any reader can see that the new material in edition 6 is simply a development of Smith’s earlier position and at the same time reflects some of the interests of WN. Skarżyński was presumably unaware of the Advertisement and the additional matter in edition 6 of TMS. The references on pp. 36 and 48 of his book show that he used the Rautenberg translation (1770) of edition 3, although the main additions to edition 6 were in fact available in the later German translation by Kosegarten (1791–5).

Commentators who have taken the trouble to read TMS with more care reject the view that there was a ‘swing’ or that there is any radical inconsistency between TMS and WN. The scholars who show the most thorough knowledge of the book and of its Scottish background are: Wilhelm Hasbach, Untersuchungen über Adam Smith und die Entwicklung der Politischen Ökonomie (Leipzig, 1891); Ludovico Limentani, La morale della simpatia (Genoa, 1914); Walther Eckstein in the Introduction to his translation (1926); and T. D. Campbell, Adam Smith’s Science of Morals (London, 1971). To these can be added, for acute treatment of the Umschwungstheorie: Richard Zeyss, Adam Smith und der Eigennutz (Tübingen, 1889); and August Oncken, ‘The Consistency of Adam Smith’, Economic Journal, vii (London, 1897), 443–50, and in more detail, ‘Das Adam Smith–Problem’, Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft, ed. Julius Wolf, I Jahrgang (Berlin, 1898), 25–33, 101–8, 276–87. See also A. L. Macfie, The Individual in Society (London, 1967).

3.

reception

(a)

Early comment and foreign translations

Smith’s reputation in Scotland was already established before 1759. The publication of TMS made him known and esteemed both in England and abroad. The immediate success of the book is delightfully described by Hume, writing from London in Letter 31, dated 12 April 1759. After a teasing tale of alleged interruptions to his letter, he finally reaches the point, prefacing it with a reminder that popular opinion is worthless, as if to console Smith for a coming disappointment.

At the beginning of the letter Hume says that he sent copies of the book to the Duke of Argyll, Lord Lyttelton, Horace Walpole, Soame Jenyns, and Edmund Burke (‘an Irish Gentleman, who wrote lately a very pretty Treatise on the Sublime’). Their names, and also those of Charles Townshend and ‘Mr. Solicitor General’ (i.e. Charles Yorke, referred to in Hume’s second letter below), are included in a list of recipients of complimentary copies that heads Letter 33, sent by Andrew Millar to Adam Smith on 26 April 1759. Hume wrote again to Smith on 28 July (Letter 36) to report further reactions.

Hume then proceeds to give Smith his own objection about sympathy, which we have discussed in section 2(a) above. The contemplation by Smith (and presumably Millar) of a second edition so soon after the publication of the first is a further mark of the book’s success.

Burke did write to Smith, but not until the autumn. Meanwhile Smith had received additional testimony of the warm reception in London. William Robertson wrote to him from Edinburgh on 14 June (Letter 34):

In July 1759 a notice of the book appeared in the Monthly Review (xxi.1–18). It was unsigned, as was customary, but it has been identified as the work of William Rose.16 After some general introductory remarks on moral philosophy, he writes:

Then follows extensive quotation or summary of Smith’s argument covering all six Parts of the book. When the reviewer gives Smith’s criticism of utilitarian theory in Part IV, he names Hume as the target. A concluding paragraph reverts from quotation to appraisal and ends as follows:

The Monthly Review was owned and edited by Ralph Griffiths. In Letter 48 addressed to William Strahan, dated 4 April 1760, Smith asks to be remembered to Griffiths and adds: ‘I am greatly obliged to him for the very handsom character he gave of my book in his review.’

Burke wrote a review that was more handsome still, for his periodical, the Annual Register. But first he sent a letter to Smith on 10 September 1759 (Letter 38), in which he gave his opinion at greater length and added some criticism. It will be remembered that Hume had expected Burke to thank Smith for a complimentary copy of TMS. In his letter Burke apologizes for the delay, pleading business and saying that he wanted to read the book ‘with proper care and attention’ before writing. He then shows that he has indeed read it and reflected on it with care.

Burke’s review in the Annual Register (year 1759, pp. 484 ff.) repeats some of the comments made in the private letter. After some general introductory remarks about ‘this excellent work’ in which ‘the parts grow so naturally and gracefully out of each other’, the review goes on:

Charles Townshend, referred to in Hume’s first letter, had married the widowed Countess of Dalkeith and was therefore the stepfather of the young Duke of Buccleuch. Townshend did eventually carry out the plan that Hume describes, of asking Smith to act as tutor to the Duke, on terms tempting enough for Smith to give up his Professorship at Glasgow. That is how Smith visited France and Geneva in 1764–6, and how he was able to retire thereafter to Kirkcaldy and devote himself to writing WN.

Townshend was not alone in being led by TMS to think of using Smith’s services as a teacher. Lord Buchan says he went to Glasgow after St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Oxford in order to learn from Smith and John Millar; but since this was in 1760 and since Millar’s appointment at Glasgow began in 1761, Buchan must in fact have been attracted in the first place by the reputation of Smith alone.17 Another student who came from Oxford, in 1762, was Henry Herbert, later Lord Porchester.18 Some came from farther afield. Théodore Tronchin, the celebrated physician of Geneva who attended Voltaire among others, sent his son to Glasgow in 1761, expressly ‘to study under Mr. Smith’.19

The internatio