The Theory of Moral Sentiments - Adam Smith [261]
3 For elaboration see Jurisprudence A 5.61-62 and B 80.
4 See, e.g., Alexander Bayne, Institutions of the Criminal Law of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1730), which reports it to have been “general custom and practice of courts” to attribute to natural causes the death of any victim of attempted homicide who expires 40 days after the injury (p. 89).
5 See Plutarch, Lives, “Lucullus” 25.
6 police: “the regulation and government of a city or country, so far as regards the inhabitants” (Johnson).
7 Smith’s distinction of three species of negligence is an intervention in an ongoing debate in natural jurisprudence over negligence and compensation; see, e.g., Grotius, Rights of War and Peace 2.17; Pufendorf, Duty of Man and Citizen 1.6.9; Hutcheson, Short Introduction 2.15.1-3. Smith reiterates the distinction at Jurisprudence A 2.78 and 2.88-89.
8 Smith reiterates the lack of distinction between murder and man-slaughter in Jurisprudence A 2.112 and B 187.
9 The Lex Aquilia of the third c. BC was a Roman private law statute governing compensation for damaged or destroyed property. It was included as part of the Corpus Iuris Civilis (Justinian’s Institutes 4.3.8); it emphasizes the negligence of one unable to control his horse by “weakness or lack of skill,” clarifying Smith’s discussion here.
10 For anticipations of Smith’s claim, see, e.g., Shaftesbury, Inquiry Concerning Virtue 1.2.1; Hutcheson, Short Introduction 1.1.10, 1.2.7. Smith uses similar language in the conclusion of his comparison of Epicurus to Aristotle, Plato and Zeno (7.2.2, p. 346).
11 The discussion of guilt and atonement that occupies the remainder of this paragraph and the next was an addition to the sixth edition of 1790.
12 Smith’s three examples refer to cases of unintentional transgressions of sexual norms: Oedipus’s unwitting incest with his mother (in Sophocles, Oedipus the King), Monimia’s unwitting relationship with her brother-in-law (in Otway, The Orphan), and Isabelle’s remarriage while her husband was still living (in Thomas Southerne, The Fatal Marriage).
PART III, CHAPTER I
1 Hume uses the same metaphor in Treatise 2.2.5.21.
PART III, CHAPTER II
1 Most of this chapter was an addition to the sixth edition. The distinction between what is merely praised and what is genuinely praiseworthy is fundamental to Smith’s ethics, and has important implications for his attempts to preserve moral sentimentalism from degenerating into moral relativism. The nature and reality of this distinction between praise and virtue or praiseworthiness had also been examined by several others before Smith; see esp. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.20, 8.1; Seneca, De otio 1.3; Cicero, De of ficiis 1.14-15; De finibus 2.49-50; Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2.28.10-11; Hutcheson, Essay with Illustrations 2.5; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Morals 1.10 and “Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature.”
2 emulation: “rivalry; desire of superiority” or “envy; desire of depressing another; contest; contention” (Johnson).
3 paint: “to lay colours on the face” (Johnson); to use makeup.
4 This paragraph and the two paragraphs that follow were added to the sixth edition; they restate the distinction between three levels of praise that Smith draws in his discussion of Mandeville in 7.2.4 (p. 362).
5 Smith’s distinction between the desire to appear virtuous and the desire of being virtuous is central to his efforts to preserve his sentimentalist theory from relativism. The distinction has an important history (e.g., Plato, Republic 2, 360e-361d; Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline 53-55); particularly important interlocutors include Mandeville (see 7.2.4, p. 362) and Rousseau, whose passage on the distinction