[11]The crude theory that sympathy is the foundation of altruism was noticed by Hutcheson. In his System of Moral Philosophy (B. I. ch. iii.) he writes: “Others say that we regard the good of others, or of societies ... as the means of some subtiler pleasures of our own by sympathy with others in their happiness.” But this sympathy, he adds, “can never account for all kind affections, tho’ it is no doubt a natural principle and a beautiful part of our constitution.”
[12]Mr. Rae’s Life of Adam Smith, pp. 148-9. Mr. Rae also says that it contained none of the alterations or additions that Hume expected, and expresses surprise that the additions, etc., which had been placed in the printer’s hands in 1760 were not incorporated in the text until the publication of the sixth edition thirty years afterwards. On the other hand, he says that the Dissertation on the Origin of Languages was added. But the Dissertation was first appended in the third edition (1767).
[13]See Moral Sentiments, 1st edition, p. 464.
[14]Origine de l’inégalité. Partie première, pp. 376, 377. Édition d’Amsterdam des œuvres diverses de J. J. Rousseau. The reference is from Moral Sentiments, 3rd ed. p. 440.
[15]Millar adds: “The great Montesquieu pointed out the road. He was the Lord Bacon in this branch of philosophy. Dr. Smith is the Newton.”
[16]Cp. Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. iii.
[17]And even Hume, as Smith warned his class, had not quite emancipated himself from mercantilist misconceptions.
[18]Lectures, p. 241: “Excise raises the price of commodities and makes fewer people able to carry on business. If a man purchase £1000 worth of tobacco he has a hundred pounds of tax to pay, and therefore cannot deal to such an extent as he would otherwise do. Thus, as it requires greater stock to carry on trade, the dealers must be fewer, and the rich have, as it were, a monopoly against the poor.”
[19]Uztariz, Theory and Practice of Commerce and Maritime Affairs, translated by John Kippax, 1751, vol. ii. p. 52. The allusion has been discovered by Mr. Edwin Cannan. See Lectures, p. 246.
[20]Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V. chap. i. art. 2.