The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [259]
11 Louis XIV’s historian was Voltaire; the passage Smith here quotes is drawn from Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV 24.
12 coxcomb: “a fop; a superficial pretender” (Johnson).
13 Smith’s account of the triumph is derived from Plutarch, Lives, “Aemilius Paulus,” 33-34.
14 Smith quotes Maximes 490; see also the note below on Mandeville.
15 The first five editions of TMS here included a separate chapter with the title “Of the stoical philosophy”; some material from that chapter was incorporated into the discussion of Stoicism at 7.2.1 (p. 318).
16 Smith may have in mind a notorious incident concerning the future Frederick II (Frederick the Great) and his father, Frederick Wilhelm I. In June 1730, both were present at a parade given at the camp at Mühlberg in honor of the Elector of Saxony. While there, Frederick’s tyrannical father, who had long been given to humiliating his son for his effeminacy, caned him in view of the assembled regiments. Frederick was by then an officer, having received the commission of lieutenant-colonel and the command of two battalions in 1728; see David Fraser, Frederick the Great (2000), pp. 24, 28.
17 See Cardinal de Retz, Mémoires (p. 110 in the modern Pléiade edition); Smith also cites this passage in Rhetoric 2.42.
18 This chapter was an addition to the sixth edition of 1790. For Smith’s views on corruption and the obligation to remedy it, see esp. Jurisprudence B 328-333.
19 Having established the economic utility of vanity and the propensity to worship the rich and powerful (see 1.3.1 and 4.1 below), Smith in this chapter examines the moral effects of such a disposition. Among the “moralists” who take up the question of the best form of life, see, e.g., Plato, Republic 10, 613b-621d; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.5, 1095b14-1096a10; Cicero, De officiis 1.116-18.
20 The quotation is drawn from the “Supplement” to the Mémoires of the Duc de Sully (vol. 8, pp. 338-39 in the 1752 London edition that Smith owned).
21 See Cicero, Pro Marcello 25.
PART II , SECTION I
1 See 1.1.3 (p. 21).
2 Smith’s discussions of gratitude here and esp. 3.6 are indebted to several previous discussions of gratitude; see esp. Hutcheson’s claim that there is “no obligation more sacred than that of gratitude” in Short Introduction 2.4.6 (which cites Cicero; see De officiis 1.47); as well as Hutcheson, Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue 2.5.2.
3 Hume describes James I as “little enterprising” and “inoffensive,” emphasizing that his pacifism bordered on mere “pusillanimity,” and his efforts to “acquire the good will of all” through neutrality enabled him to garner “the esteem and regard of none” (History 49).
4 Their “actions of proper and beneficent greatness” can be read in the histories of Herodotus (8.79-81 on Aristides); Polybius (10, 14-15 on Scipio); Cornelius Nepos (who wrote lives of Timoleon and Aristides); Livy (5.19-6.27 on Camillus; 26-30 on Scipio); Diodorus Siculus (16.65-90 on Timoleon); and Plutarch (who wrote lives of Camillus, Timoleon, and Aristides). Smith’s observation is an intervention in a contemporary debate over the grounds of our admiration of virtue in distant ages; he returns to this debate in 7.3.1 below.
5 For Borgia’s cruelty, see, e.g., Machiavelli, Prince 7 and 17; Nero’s vices were condemned by Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, and Cassius Dio.
PART II , SECTION II
1 Smith’s contrast below of the negative duties of justice with the positive duties of beneficence is anticipated in several accounts of the social virtues; see Cicero, De of ficiis 1.20; and Hume, Enquiry Concerning Morals 1.11.
2 Smith has in mind Kames, Essays on Morality and Religion 1.2.3-4. Kames’s comments on duty, conscience, sympathy, consciousness of merit, and virtue as benevolence in these passages also merit comparison to Smith’s comments here and elsewhere.
3 Smith’s discussion here of the “duties of a law-giver” is tied to his broader conception of the “science of the legislator,