Adam Smith

by Francis W. Hirst

The second edition was issued soon afterwards. It has been erroneously described as a reprint of the first.[12]

As a matter of fact, the corrections and alterations made in it were very numerous and it was set up in much smaller type, so that the 551 pages of the first edition are compressed, in spite of some enlargements of the text, into 436 pages. What is particularly noteworthy is that the author, without altering any of the passages criticised by Hume, does make what we conceive to be a perfectly satisfactory answer in an important footnote on page 76 of the second edition after the sentence, “It is painful to go along with grief, and we always enter into it with reluctance.” We give the note in full in order that the reader may judge for himself:—

“It has been objected to me that as I found the sentiment of approbation, which is always agreeable, upon sympathy, it is inconsistent with my system to admit any disagreeable sympathy. I answer, that in the sentiment of approbation there are two things to be taken notice of: first, the sympathetic passion of the spectator; and secondly, the emotion which arises from his observing the perfect coincidence between this sympathetic passion in himself, and the original passion in the person principally concerned. This last emotion, in which the sentiment of approbation properly consists, is always agreeable and delightful. The other may either be agreeable or disagreeable, according to the nature of the original passion, whose features it must always, in some measure, retain. Two sounds, I suppose, may each of them, taken singly, be austere, and yet, if they are perfect concords, the perception of their harmony and coincidence may be agreeable.”

Of modern philosophers, those to whom Smith is most indebted are certainly Mandeville, his old master Hutcheson, and his friend Hume, “an ingenious and agreeable philosopher who joins the greatest depth of thought to the greatest elegance of expression, and possesses the singular and happy talent of treating the abstrusest subjects not only with the most perfect perspicuity, but with the most lively eloquence.” (Was it the religious prejudice against Hume that left his name unmentioned in the Theory?) All four were in a greater or less degree utilitarians. But Smith denies that the perception of a distinction between virtue and vice originates in the utility of the one and the disadvantageousness of the other. Hume would explain all virtues by their usefulness to oneself or society. But Smith only regards utility as a powerful additional reason for approving virtue and virtuous actions. It influences our ideas of virtue, as custom and fashion influence our ideas of beauty. Usefulness is seldom the first ground of approval, and “it seems impossible that we should have no other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers.” Even our approval of public spirit arises at first rather from a feeling of its magnificence and splendour than of its utility to the nation, though a sense of utility greatly strengthens our approval. Adam Smith notes, by the way, what Hume had not observed, that the fitness of a thing to produce its end is often more admired than the end itself. Most people prefer order and tidiness to the utility which they are intended to promote.

Buckle has remarked on a contrast between Smith’s theory of morals and his theory of economics. In the first, sympathy is the premise, and he works out the principle of sympathy to its logical conclusions. In the Wealth of Nations, on the contrary, the word sympathy scarcely occurs. He assumes self-interest as the sole motive of the economic man, and works out all the consequences without troubling about that other-regarding principle which is the foundation and measure of morality, though he shows, it is true, that the motive of self-interest, if sufficiently enlightened, will result in the general good. Without denying that Buckle’s contention is suggestive, we may observe that Smith distinctly refuses to confine virtue to benevolence, and parts company on this very point from “the amiable system” of Hutcheson. “Regard to our own private happiness, and interest too, appear,” says he, “upon many occasions very laudable principles of action. The habits of economy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested motives, and at the same time are apprehended to be very praiseworthy qualities, which deserve the esteem and approbation of everybody.”[13] Benevolence may perhaps be the sole principle of action in the Deity, but an imperfect creature like man must and ought often to act from other motives.

To the third edition of the Moral Sentiments (1767) was appended an essay on the formation of Languages and the different genius of original and compounded languages. It is the fruit of his philological studies, and contains no doubt the substance of lectures that he had read in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He starts with the proposition that names of objects, that is to say, nouns substantive, must have been the first steps toward the making of a language. Two savages who had never been taught to speak would naturally begin to make their mutual wants intelligible by uttering certain sounds, as cave, tree, fountain, whenever they wanted to denote particular objects. What was at first a proper name would thus be extended to similar objects, by the same law which leads us to call a great philosopher a Newton. Similarly, “a child that is just learning to speak calls every person who comes into the house its papa or its mamma.” Smith could call to mind a clown “who did not know the proper name of the river which ran by his own door.” It was “the river.” This process of generalisation explains the formation of those classes and assortments called genera and species in the schools, “of which the ingenious and eloquent M. Rousseau of Geneva finds himself so much at a loss to account for the origin.”[14] In his account of the dual number, which he finds in all primitive and uncompounded languages, he says that in the rude beginnings of society, one, two, and more, might possibly be all the numerical distinctions which mankind would have any occasion to take notice of. But these words, though custom has rendered them familiar to us, “express perhaps the most subtle and refined abstractions which the mind of man is capable of forming.” His purpose through all this ingenious train of reasoning was to suggest a new mode of approaching a subject which, in itself so fascinating, had been reduced to a dull routine. He is very severe on the Minerva of Sanctius and on some other grammarians who, neglecting the progress of nature, had expended all their industry in drawing up a number of artificial rules so as to exclude exceptions. He sees that languages are the products not of art but of nature or circumstance. He explains how the modern dialects of Europe arose from conquest, migration, and mixture—through Lombards trying to speak Latin, or Normans trying to speak Saxon. In this way the older tongues were decomposed and simplified in their rudiments while they grew more complex in composition. The processes of linguistic development provoke a comparison of philology with mechanics:—

“All machines are generally, when first invented, extremely complex in their principles, and there is often a particular principle of motion for every particular movement which, it is intended, they should perform. Succeeding improvers observe, that one principle may be so applied as to produce several of those movements, and thus the machine becomes gradually more and more simple, and produces its effects with fewer wheels, and fewer principles of motion. In Language, in the same manner, every case of every noun, and every tense of every verb, was originally expressed by a particular distinct word, which served for this purpose and for no other. But succeeding observation discovered that one set of words was capable of supplying the place of all that infinite number, and that four or five prepositions, and half a dozen auxiliary verbs, were capable of answering the end of all the declensions, and of all the conjugations in the antient Languages.”

The comparison, however, suggests a contrast. The simplification of machines renders them more perfect, but the simplification of languages renders them more and more imperfect, and less proper (in his opinion) for many of the purposes of expression. Thus in a decomposed and simple language, he observes, we are often restrained from disposing words and sounds in the most agreeable order. When Virgil writes

“Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,”

we can easily see that tu refers to recubans, and patulae to fagi, though the related words are separated from one another by the intervention of several others. But if we translate the line literally into English, Tityrus, thou of spreading reclining under the shade beech, Œdipus himself could not make sense of it, because there is no difference in termination to assist us in tracking out the meaning. In the same way Milton’s exquisite translation of Horace, “Who now enjoys thee, credulous all gold,” etc., can only be interpreted by aid of the original. We may dissent when he goes on to denounce “the prolixness, constraint, and monotony of modern languages.” Yet it would be as unfair to estimate the scientific value of these speculations by the accumulated achievements of modern philologists, as to sneer at his essay on the Imitative Arts or at Burke’s treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, because Lessing has helped inferior men to see so much further.