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• Key to Abbreviations and References
• General Introduction
• Introduction
• The History of Astronomy
• The History of the Ancient Physics and the History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics
• The History of Astronomy
• Section I: Of the Effect of Unexpectedness, Or of Surprise
• Section II: Of Wonder, Or of the Effects of Novelty
• Section III: Of the Origin of Philosophy
• Section IV: The History of Astronomy
• Of the External Senses
• Of the Nature of That Imitation Which Takes Place In What Are Called the Imitative Arts/of the Affinity Between Music, Dancing, and Poetry
• Of the Affinity Between Music, Dancing, and Poetry
• Of the Affinity Between Certain English and Italian Verses
• Contributions to the Edinburgh Review of 1755–56 Review of Johnson’s Dictionary a Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review
• Review of Johnson’s Dictionary
• A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review.
• Appendix: Passages Quoted From Rousseau
• Preface and Dedication to William Hamilton’s Poems On Several Occasions
• Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, Ll.d. From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh [read By Mr Stewart, January 21, and March 18, 1793]

The History of the Ancient Physics and the History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics

The History of Astronomy, though naturally imperfect, was in a sense complete. After the second edition of Newton’s Principia there was no fundamental change or addition to the ‘system of the world’, that was Smith’s main concern, until long after his death. The mathematical theory was under constant refinement; and Smith shows his continuing interest in the progress of physical astronomy when in the Edinburgh Review article he refers to James Bradley’s important discovery of the aberration of light. But the titles of the two subsequent essays suggest that the restriction to the ‘ancient’ period expressed the fact that he had said all that he intended to say.

The two essays now to be considered, though like that on the History of Astronomy both written with an eye to ‘philosophical investigation’, are in a different class from the first. The title of each reveals a subtle change of aim: the histories of these ‘sciences’ are to be restricted to their ‘ancient’ development. For this and other reasons that will appear during the discussion it is convenient to introduce them under a single heading. To a greater extent than in the ‘history’ of astronomy his account of the ‘facts’ of pre–Socratic ‘physics’ is not only without adequate historical foundation but lacks any historical coherence other than that imposed by Smith’s own ‘likely story’, namely that ‘from arranging and methodizing the System of the Heavens, Philosophy descended to the consideration of the inferior parts of Nature’ (Ancient Physics, 1). There neither is, nor ever was, as far as we know, any evidence for this order of inquiry; on the contrary, Aristotle rightly referred to his predecessors as φυσιολόγοι—those who strove to ‘account for nature’, which for them was the whole cosmos. Their speculations about the objects above the Earth in fact lacked any ‘arrangement or methodizing’: they remained crude and ill–supported by reason. The views on the ‘elements’ (ἀρχαί, Aristotle calls them), on the other hand, put forward separately by the Ionian pioneers embodied a profound insight into the problem of the relation between change and the permanent ground of being. Only later did the Italian, Empedocles, order the elements in such a manner as to make possible the even later ‘square of opposite properties’ introduced by Aristotle.

As has been hinted already, Smith never made explicit the cardinal distinction between ‘physics’ and ‘astronomy’—a distinction that in fact ‘guided and directed philosophical enquiry’ from Aristotle onwards, and which, in somewhat altered terms, is still a living issue in the philosophy of science, notably in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The basic formulation has never been more clearly put than by the sixth–century Neoplatonist, Simplicius, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, and in which he claims to be quoting the actual words of Geminus summarizing the views of the Stoic Poseidonius, both of them having lived much nearer to the time of Aristotle. After a long and detailed preamble he emphasized that while ‘the physicist will in many cases, reach the cause by looking to creative force’, ‘it is no part of the business of the astronomer to know what is by nature suited to a position of rest and what sort of bodies are apt to move, but he introduces hypotheses under which some bodies remain fixed while others move, and then considers to which hypotheses the phenomena actually observed in the heaven will correspond’.7 The astronomer, in other words, is satisfied if, given certain physical postulates, such as ‘equable motion’, he can devise a mathematical scheme from which the motions of the heavenly bodies can be deduced; the question of ‘truth’ has for him, qua astronomer, no relevance. In the History of Astronomy (notably in the introductory Section II) Smith shows his appreciation of this aspect of ‘philosophical investigation’. But his failure to explicate the notion of cause, latent in the various pre–Socratic speculations and dominating Aristotle’s whole philosophy, reduces his Ancient Physics, despite its elegant and persuasive presentation of certain aspects, to a much lower level of cogency. Detailed justification for this judgement would here be out of place; suffice it to say that the reader of the text will find no hint of the pervasive notion of final causation and the grades of ‘animation’ (the Latin anima replaced ψυχή in the transmission of the Aristotelian corpus) in living beings.

Having momentarily forgotten his most promising hypothesis that ‘philosophical enquiries’ stem from ‘surprise and wonder’ Smith opens the essay on the ‘History of the Ancient Logics and Metaphysics’ with a liberal application of the term ‘evident’ to assumptions that to thinkers in another tradition seem far from evident. This apart, however, he rightly insists that ‘philosophy, . . . in considering the general nature of Water, takes no notice of those particularities which are peculiar to this Water, but confines itself to those things which are common to all water’. From which it follows that ‘Species, or Universals, and not Individuals, are the objects of Philosophy’ (§ 1). In the succeeding passage, amounting to little more than twenty lines, Smith condenses all that he has to say on the relation between the ‘ancient’ sciences of ‘logics’ and ‘metaphysics’. Restricted to such a compass his account of what came to be regarded as ‘logic’ and ‘metaphysics’ might do well enough, though the exclusive emphasis on classification is hardly warranted. But viewed as a stage in the achievement of his historical aim it is quite inadequate. In claiming with some justice that these two sciences ‘seem, before the time of Aristotle, to have been regarded as one’ and, with less justice, ‘to have made up between them that ancient Dialectic of which we hear so much, and of which we understand so little’ (Ancient Logics, 1) Smith gives no hint that λογική and its derivatives covered a huge range of meaning as much to do with ‘words’ as with ‘reasoning’; nor that the term ‘metaphysics’ came only long after Aristotle’s death to refer to those of his books which embodied a consideration of ‘those causes and principles the knowledge of which constitutes Wisdom’—‘First philosophy’ as Aristotle himself described it. The throw–away comment on the ‘ancient Dialectic’ may have been prompted by Smith’s native caution: the subtle and even inconsistent use of the term by Plato and Aristotle is still the subject of scholarly debate. The inappropriateness of the remark becomes even more remarkable in the light of the following definition proposed by the Stranger from Elea: ‘Dividing according to kinds, not taking the same Form for a difference or a different one for the same—is not that the business of the science of Dialectic?’ (Plato, Sophist, 253 D.) This ‘division by kinds’ is precisely the method that Smith himself regarded as being the essence of the ‘ancient logics’ and one of which he himself makes frequent use. This account of dialectic differs from the more basic requirement stipulated by Socrates (i.e. the effort to attain truth by correction of agreed hypotheses rather than the confutation of an adversary) but is not inconsistent with it. Equally regrettable is Smith’s failure to make clear, as Aristotle had, that the pre–Socratic φυσιολόγοι (as Aristotle calls them) were asking ‘metaphysical’ questions but for the most part (Parmenides being clearly an exception) giving ‘physical’ answers.

The part of the essay devoted to an exposition of Plato’s attitude to Nature and its relation to the general theory of ‘Ideas’, though disproportionately long, is almost the only part that carries conviction that the author had adequately prepared himself for the ambitious task he had undertaken. But even here he fails to drive home the lesson, so important for his own thesis, that what Plato was for the most part concerned with, even in the dialogue that looks like natural philosophy, the Timaeus, is perhaps not even metaphysics, but rather natural theology as it was perhaps understood in the original scheme for the Gifford Lectures. This was far from being without influence on the development of natural philosophy and subsequently of the natural sciences; but by placing ‘cause and principle’ of nature as it were outwith nature and providing only a ‘likely story’ of how it (δημιουργός) might have operated, Plato effectively closed the door on further investigation on the lines initiated by the φυσιολόγοι. Or rather he would have closed it, had not his independent–minded pupil, Aristotle, put his foot in the doorway—at least for the sublunary world!

At this stage some readers may reasonably protest that it is an editor’s function at most to comment on the text and not to argue with its author. To leave without qualification the rather disparaging remarks which this editor has felt it necessary to make would amount to a failure to view the matter in that historical perspective for the lack of which Smith has been censured. Well versed in the classical tongues as the young Adam Smith undoubtedly was, he cannot be blamed for having failed to transcend the limitations set by the materials available to him. And these were meagre indeed, for though we may think of the eighteenth century as one in which classical scholarship was most highly appreciated and familiarity with the classical authors more widely spread than perhaps at any other time, it is apt to be forgotten that both scholarship and familiarity were almost wholly restricted to grammatical and stylistic aspects; it is probable that Smith’s contemporaries were far less conversant with the matter of the Greek classics than had been the humanists of three centuries earlier. In his valuable Greek Studies in England, 1700–1830 (1945) (which in fact includes a knowledgeable chapter on Scotland) M. L. Clarke states that ‘the undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge read only a few isolated dialogues of Plato and learned nothing of his philosophical theories’. Before 1759 there was no English translation, except of the Phaedo, to which the Scottish scholar, Spens, added the Republic only in 1763. Aristotle was in like case. Smith’s dismissal (Astronomy, III.6) of the Ionian φυσιολόγοι on the ground that the extant accounts ‘represent the doctrines of those sages as full of the most inextricable confusion’ is of a piece with Clarke’s judgment that ‘of the remarkable speculations of the pre–Socratics there was no appreciation’ (op. cit., 114); he would have had to rely upon Aristotle’s biased views put forward in the Metaphysics. In respect of ‘Logics’ he was presumably the victim of the ‘trivialization’ of Aristotle’s logic, unavoidable if it was to be taught to the lower end of the teenage stream! His point of view (putting ‘objects’ into the ‘right’ classes) seems to be based on the Topics, even perhaps mediated through Ramism; but of the structure of inference as expounded by Aristotle himself in the two Analytics he gives no hint. If this ‘conditioning’ was effected at Glasgow it would not have been unique; it is only in our time (by Jan Lukasiewicz and others) that the ‘modernity’ of Aristotle’s canon has been made generally known. Smith was also unlucky in setting forth on this immensely ambitious endeavour at a time when Giambattista Vico’s principles of critical historiography based on critical philology (Scienza Nuova, 1725–44) were still wholly unappreciated outside Italy. Nevertheless, when all allowance has been made for the handicaps under which Smith must have laboured when composing these ‘juvenile’ historical pieces, there remains an air of brashness about the two (presumably) later ones that provokes the question whether the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations would have countenanced their publication in the form in which he had left them. It is true that as late as November 1785, in the letter (248) to Rochefoucauld referred to above, the ‘sort of Philosophical History’ he mentions as still being ‘upon the anvil’ must have been at least based on the ‘great work’ mentioned in the letter to Hume twelve years earlier. But in that letter he expressly stated that none of his papers were worth publishing except a fragment—the history of the astronomical systems—and even that one he suspected contained ‘more refinement than solidity’. How much more apposite would this judgment be of the two subsequent essays! In view of his repeated request—as he neared his end—for assurance that his papers had been destroyed, it seems more than a little doubtful whether his editors were not doing his memory a disservice in making public these two essays without a more extensive caveat than the rather fulsome and misleading last sentence of their Advertisement.

Bibliographical Note

The survey on which this Note has been based was restricted to the following institutions: British Library (BL), National Library of Scotland (NLS), Bodleian (O), Cambridge University (C), Trinity College, Dublin (D), and the four Scottish universities existing before the recent expansion: St. Andrews (StA), Glasgow (G), Aberdeen (A—see, however, No. 6 below), Edinburgh (E). Eight editions prior to 1900 have been established, at least one copy of each having been examined. Only NLS has a copy of every edition, two of these being accessions from the library of Lauriston Castle near Edinburgh. Thanks are due to members of the library staff at NLS, C, StA, and D for information about their holdings.

The full title–page of the First Edition is provided together with brief descriptions of the remaining editions. Only ‘sample’ collations have been carried out; no substantial differences in the texts have been discovered.

• 1. London 1795 4to. First edition. BL, NLS, O, C. StA, G, A, E.
• 2. Dublin 1795 8vo. Some spelling mistakes have been corrected. BL, NLS, O, C, D. Mr. M. Pollard of Trinity College Library states that the copy of this edition was purchased only in 1962; it contains the bookplate of Eliz. Anne Levinge with the signature ‘Elizth. Anne Parkyns 1808’ on the title–page. Mr. Pollard emphasizes that reprint by Dublin printers was perfectly legal provided that the books were not offered for sale in England.
• 3. Essais philosophiques; par feu ADAM SMITH, Docteur en droit, de la société royale de Londres, de celle d’Edimbourg, etc. etc. Précédés d’un précis de sa vie et de ses écrits; Par DUGALD STEWART, de la société royale d’Edimbourg. Traduits de l’anglais par P. Prevost, professeur de philosophie à Genève de l’académie de Berlin, de la société des Curieux de la Nature, et de la société royale d’Edimbourg. PREMIERE PARTIE. A Paris, Chez H. AGASSE, imprimeur–librairie, rue des Poitevins, no^o 18. An V de la République (1797, vieux style.) Fine portrait bust of Adam Smith (‘B.L. Prevost sculp.’) opposite title–page.Of this, in some respects the most adequate, edition a rather fuller description seems to be justified. It is unique among editions before 1900 in containing Adam Smith’s long letter to the Edinburgh Review (1756), here in French translation, numerous notes of varying lengths by the translator and mainly relating to the later essays, also a fairly detailed Table of Contents of the whole, the Seconde Partie of which is separately signed and paged. The Notes are described (presumably by the publisher) as ‘très intéressantes’ (ii.316). Of special interest is the translator’s statement (i.277) that the note on Halley’s comet is de ‘l’editeur anglais’ (sic). BL, NLS.
• 4. Basel 1799 8vo. Essays on Philosophical Subjects by the late ADAM SMITH LL.D. . . . To which is affixed an account of the Life and Writings of the Author by DUGALD STEWART F.R.S.E. Basil: printed for the Editor of the Collection of English Classics sold by James Decker, Printer and Bookseller 1799. BL, NLS.The only point of interest in this edition is the omission of any reference to the original editors, Joseph Black and James Hutton.
• 5. Volume v of Adam Smith’s Works edited by Dugald Stewart and dated 1811 (as is vol. iv, vols. i–iii being 1812). Vol. v also contains the essay entitled Considerations concerning the first Formation of Languages. BL, NLS, O.
• 6. Essays on Philosophical Subjects by Adam Smith LL.D., F.R.S. etc. London 1822. A new edition. This apparently very rare edition was printed (title–page verso) by A. Allardice, Leith, for Allardice, Edinburgh; R. Griffin, Glasgow; and several London houses. The copy examined is inscribed ‘Biblioth. Classis Physicae in Acad. Mariscallana’ and stamped ‘Nat. Phil. Clas. Library 1860 University of Aberdeen’, i.e. on the union of King’s and Marischal Colleges, previously separate universities. NLS. A.
• 7. London 1869 8vo. Essays. The volume is in fact a reprint of both TMS (followed, as usual, by Languages) and EPS. The ‘Biographical Notice’ is drastically abridged. BL, O, C, StA.
• 8. London 1880 8vo. Essays Philosophical and Literary. Stated in BL catalogue to be a ‘duplicate’ of No. 7. BL, NLS, O, C, StA.
• 9. The Essays are included in The Early Writings of Adam Smith edited by J. R. Lindgren (Augustus M. Kelley, New York 1967). This edition includes the Edinburgh Review articles, the Preface to William Hamilton’s Poems on Several Occasions (1748), and the Languages. It is not introduced or annotated.

Note on the Text

The present volume follows the text of the first edition (published by Cadell and Davies in 1795, five years after Smith’s death), but with printer’s errors corrected. Since the essay is designed to illustrate ‘the principles which lead and direct philosophical enquiries’ rather than to provide a history of astronomy per se, no attempt has been made to achieve that completeness of documentation which would be appropriate in a definitive classic.

the PRINCIPLES which lead and direct PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRIES;
illustrated by the HISTORY of ASTRONOMY

ADVERTISEMENT By the EDITORS

The much lamented Author of these Essays left them in the hands of his friends to be disposed of as they thought proper, having immediately before his death destroyed many other manuscripts which he thought unfit for being made public.1 When these were inspected, the greater number of them appeared to be parts of a plan he once had formed, for giving a connected history of the liberal sciences and elegant arts. It is long since he found it necessary to abandon that plan as far too extensive; and these parts of it lay beside him neglected until his death. His friends are persuaded however, that the reader will find in them that happy connection, that full and accurate expression, and that clear illustration which are conspicuous in the rest of his works; and that though it is difficult to add much to the great fame he so justly acquired by his other writings, these will be read with satisfaction and pleasure.

the HISTORY of ASTRONOMY

Wonder, Surprise, and Admiration, are words which, though often confounded, denote, in our language, sentiments that are indeed allied, but that are in some respects different also, and distinct from one another. What is new and singular, excites that sentiment which, in strict propriety, is called Wonder; what is unexpected, Surprise; and what is great or beautiful, Admiration.

We wonder at all extraordinary and uncommon objects, at all the rarer phaenomena of nature, at meteors, comets, eclipses, at singular plants and animals, and at every thing, in short, with which we have before been either little or not at all acquainted; and we still wonder, though forewarned of what we are to see.

We are surprised at those things which we have seen often, but which we least of all expected to meet with in the place where we find them; we are surprised at the sudden appearance of a friend, whom we have seen a thousand times, but whom we did not imagine we were to see then.

We admire the beauty of a plain or the greatness of a mountain, though we have seen both often before, and though nothing appears to us in either, but what we had expected with certainty to see.

Whether this criticism upon the precise meaning of these words be just, is of little importance. I imagine it is just, though I acknowledge, that the best writers in our language have not always made use of them according to it. Milton, upon the appearance of Death to Satan, says, that

• The Fiend what this might be admir’d;
• Admir’d, not fear’d.1 —

But if this criticism be just, the proper expression should have been wonder’d.—Dryden, upon the discovery of Iphigenia sleeping, says, that

• The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes
• And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.2

But what Cimon must have felt upon this occasion could not so much be Surprise, as Wonder and Admiration. All that I contend for is, that the sentiments excited by what is new, by what is unexpected, and by what is great and beautiful, are really different, however the words made use of to express them may sometimes be confounded. Even the admiration which is excited by beauty, is quite different (as will appear more fully hereafter) from that which is inspired by greatness, though we have but one word to denote them.

These sentiments, like all others when inspired by one and the same object, mutually support and enliven one another: an object with which we are quite familiar, and which we see every day, produces, though both great and beautiful, but a small effect upon us; because our admiration is not supported either by Wonder or by Surprise: and if we have heard a very accurate description of a monster, our Wonder will be the less when we see it; because our previous knowledge of it will in a great measure prevent our Surprise.

It is the design of this Essay to consider particularly the nature and causes of each of these sentiments, whose influence is of far wider extent than we should be apt upon a careless view to imagine. I shall begin with Surprise.

[7 ]Quoted from T. Heath, Greek Astronomy (1932), 124–5.

[1 ]Details of the executry are given in Stewart, V.8 and note; Rae, Life, chap. 32.

[1 ][Paradise Lost, ii.677–8, but Milton wrote ‘Th’ undaunted Fiend . . .’.]

[2 ][‘Cymon and Iphigenia’, 107–8.]