trasted with that of the Manchester School, the sobriety of his judgment ceases to be impressive.

4. THIS BOOK IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY THE CONTENT OF ADAM SMITH'S MORAL

PHILOSOPHY.

The essential matter is not what he thought about the particular nature of moral relations, but that he conceived of human society as subject to moral law of some sort, and of this moral law as more authoritative over the members of society collectively and severally than the precepts of prudence. It is necessary to exhibit at some length the evidence on which this proposition rests.

The chief witness on the subject of Adam Smith's general moral system is Mr. Millar, once a pupil of Smith, later professor of law in the University of Glasgow, and an intimate friend of Smith until his death. I quote Millar as reported by Dugald Stewart."

About a year after his appointment to the Professorship of Logic, Mr. Smith was elected to the Chair of Moral Philosophy. His course of lectures on this subject was divided into four parts. The first contained Natural Theology; in which he considered the proof of the being and attributes of God, and of those principles of the human mind upon which religion is founded. Account, etc. (Bohn ed.), p. xvii.

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The second comprehended Ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of the doctrines which he afterwards published in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In the third part, he treated at more length that branch of morality which related to justice, and which being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and particular explanation.

Upon this subject he followed the plan that seems to be suggested by Montesquieu; endeavoring to trace the gradual progress of jurisprudence, both public and private, from the rudest to the most refined ages, and to point out the effects of those arts which contribute to subsistence, and to the accumulation of property, in producing correspondent improvements or alterations in law and government. This important branch of his labors he also intended to give to the public; but this intention, which is mentioned in the conclusion of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, he did not live to fulfil.

In the last part of his lectures, he examined those political regulations which are founded not upon the principles of justice, but that of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power and the prosperity of a State. Under this view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. What he delivered on these subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published under the title of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Of the first part of the course little is known, and that little may easily be interpreted rather ingloriously. In his lifetime these disparaging

opinions were not silent. They seem to have fallen early out of tradition, but the suggestion of them is revived by Haldane.10

He remarks: 11

Of what Smith taught in that first part of his fourfold course at Glasgow . . . we have no authentic record; but there is abundant internal evidence that it could not have been anything either very definite, or that committed him very deeply.

He then broadly hints that Smith Smith held theological views similar to Hume's, but did not dare to divulge them in a Scotch university. Although evidence is lacking that Smith was made of martyr stuff, Haldane's innuendo does not seem justified. The greater probability is that Smith's mind was relatively indifferent to metaphysics, and that he did not strongly grip the questions which the philosophy of his time raised with reference to that substratum of philosophy. As I shall argue later, he shows more virile affinity for the utilitarians than for the a-priori philosophers. It is not unlikely that the real

10 Life of Adam Smith, by R. B. Haldane, M.P. (London, 1887); with a bibliography by John P. Anderson of the British Museum; 161+x pages. The bibliography is the really valuable portion of the book.

11 P. 20.

energy of his thinking springs from his ethics rather than from his theology.12

Turning to the second division of Smith's moral philosophy, or ethics, it is a gymnastic feat of no little difficulty to put ourselves long enough in the mental attitude of Smith and his contemporaries to understand the quaint classification which served their purposes. Although Dugald Stewart was a pupil of the men to whom these classifications appealed, he evidently had his own troubles with them. At the same time his version of them is helpful. I quote his analysis before speaking of the treatise to which it must be applied.13

The science of Ethics has been divided by moderns into two parts; the one comprehending the theory of Morals, and the other its practical doctrines. The questions about which the former is employed are chiefly the two following: First, by what principle of our constitution are we led to form the notion of moral distinctions: -whether by that faculty which, in the other branches of

Hirst, Adam Smith, Chap. III, is worth consulting on this point. Although he would probably have resented Haldane's slur, if it had been in his mind when he wrote, he throws something into that side of the scale. A faint light is shed on this subject by Part III, Chap. V, of Theory of Moral Sentiments. (Cf. below, p. 43, and also pp. 53, 54.)

13 D. Stewart, Account, etc., of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. xix.

human knowledge, perceives the distinction between truth and falsehood; or by a peculiar power of perception (called by some the Moral Sense) which is pleased with one set of qualities and displeased with another?

Secondly, What is the proper object of moral approbation? or, in other words, what is the common quality or qualities belonging to all the different modes of virtue? Is it benevolence; or a rational self-love; or a disposition (resulting from the ascendency of Reason over Passion) to act suitably to the different relations in which we are placed? These two questions seem to exhaust the whole theory of Morals. The scope of the one is to ascertain the origin of our moral ideas; that of the other, to refer the phenomena of moral perception to their most simple and general laws.

The practical doctrines of morality comprehend all those rules of conduct which profess to point out the proper ends of human pursuit, and the most effectual means of attaining them; to which we may add all those literary compositions, whatever be their particular form, which have for their aim to fortify and animate our good dispositions, by delineations of the beauty, of the dignity, or of the utility of Virtue.

I shall not inquire at present into the justness of this division. I shall only observe, that the words Theory and Practice are not, in this instance, employed in their usual acceptations. The theory of Morals does not bear, for example, the same relation to the practice of Morals, that the theory of Geometry bears to practical Geometry. In this last science all the practical rules are founded on theoretical principles previously established. But in the former science, the practical rules are obvious to the capacities of all mankind [sic]; the theoretical principles