The Theory of Moral Sentiments (76 page)

25
Smith here likely has in mind the line from the 1st c. AD Roman philosopher Demetrius the Cynic, as reported by his friend the Stoic philosopher Seneca, in
De providentia
5.5.

26
See Epictetus,
Discourses
2.5.10-14. On the individual’s obligation to understand himself as part of the whole, see esp. Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
2.4, 2.9, 7.13, 8.34, 11.8.

27
In addition to the passage cited above, see also Epictetus,
Discourses
1.25.1, 2.2.15-20, 2.5.1-5. For Smith’s own very different view, see 2.3 (p. 111).

28
For the Stoic conception of gratitude for our enemies and our challenges, see, e.g., Seneca,
De providentia
3.1-4, 4.4-8.

29
The remainder of this section was an addition to the sixth edition of 1790.

30
For the Stoic metaphor on life as a game, see, e.g., Epictetus,
Discourses
2.5.15-17.

31
See Epictetus,
Discourses
1.25.18-21.

32
The Stoics have long been understood as advocates of suicide. For more moderate views of the Stoic conception, see, e.g., Cicero,
De finibus
3.60-61; Diogenes Laertius 7.130.

33
See Epictetus,
Discourses
1.25.14-17.

34
See Cicero,
De finibus
3.60.

35
For the Stoic views on bearing misfortune with constancy, see, e.g., Seneca,
De constantia sapientis
passim. On their indifference to death, see, e.g., Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
2.17, 9.3; Seneca,
De tranquillitate animi
11. On the modern systems, see also 3.3 (p. 156).

36
Milton,
Paradise Lost
2.568-569.

37
See Plutarch,
Lives
, “Cleomenes” 37 and Polybius 5.39.

38
Of the Messian hero Aristomenes, to whom Smith presumably refers, there is no story of suicide. Smith may have confused him with the Aristomenes who attempts suicide in Apuleius’s
Metamorphoses
(1.16), or Aristodemus, a Messian hero of the previous century, who is reported to have committed suicide (Pausanias 4.13.4).

39
Ancient accounts of his suicide include Aristophanes,
Knights
83-84; Plutarch,
Lives
, “Themistocles” 31; Diodorus Siculus 11.58; the story is rejected in Thucydides 1.138; Cornelius Nepos, “Themistocles” and Cicero,
Brutus
42-43.

40
On Theramenes’ death, see Diodorus Siculus 14.4-5; Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1.40. On Phocion’s death, see Plutarch,
Lives
, “Phocion” 34-37; Diodorus Siculus, 18.66-67. On Socrates’, see note above.

41
The betrayal to which Smith refers happened after the battle of Gabiene (316 BC). On Eumenes’ death, see Plutarch,
Lives
, “Eumenes” 17-19; Diodorus Siculus 19.43-44.

42
See Plutarch,
Lives
, “Philopoemen” 18-20; Livy 39.49-50; Pausanias 8.51.5-7.

43
Several stories of the suicides of various Greek philosophers are told or alluded to in Diogenes Laertius; see, e.g., 2.120, 2.144, 4.3, 6.76-77, 6.95, 6.100, 7.167, 8.40, 10.15-16.

44
All three accounts are in Diogenes Laertius 7.28-31; Diogenes himself accepts the first, as Smith notes below. The story of Niobe, whose children were killed by Apollo in retaliation for her pride in her fertility, was first told by Homer (
Iliad
24) and then by Aeschylus and Sophocles (in lost works), but not Euripides.

45
Persaeus’s ostensible slavery is reported in Aulus Gellius 2.18.

46
Augustus Caesar ruled 27 BC-AD 14; Zeno died c. 263 BC. On the Apollonius to whom Smith here refers, see Diogenes Laertius 7.6, 24, 28.

47
Zeno’s death is noted in Lucian,
Long Lives
19 (now thought spurious); and Lactantius,
Divine Institutes
3.18.

48
See, e.g., Cicero,
De officiis
3.99-111; Cicero,
De finibus
2.65; Seneca,
De providentia
3.9-11; Aulus Gellius 7.4; Augustine,
City of God
1.15.

49
On the death of Cato, see also the note on Sallust above. Cicero’s posthumous praises in his Cato in 46 BC were challenged in Caesar’s much longer (though now largely lost)
Anticato
.

50
Smith’s reference is untraced.

51
See Seneca,
De tranquillitate animi
17.9.

52
Pliny frequently describes suicides and attempted suicides (see, e.g., 1.12, 3.7, 3.9, 3.16, 6.24), and himself sets down a rule for distinguishing noble from cowardly suicides (1.22).

53
The question of suicide’s legitimacy was reopened in part by Hume’s posthumous 1777 publication of his essay “Of Suicide” which sought to marshal “the sentiments of all the ancient philosophers” (though it only explicitly mentions Seneca, Tacitus, and Pliny) to defend a view of suicide as not blameworthy.

54
Smith’s recognition of two distinct strains within Roman Stoicism—one emphasizing self-command, and the other benevolence—distinguishes his view from, e.g., Gataker (“Maxims of the Stoics”) or Hume (“The Stoic”), who share Smith’s emphases on providentialism and benevolence but emphasize self-command to a lesser degree. Some of the tensions in Smith’s conception of Stoicism are traceable in part to his differentiation of these strains.

55
The slave is Epictetus. Domitian (AD 51-96), Roman Emperor from 81 to his death, banished the philosophers from Italy in 89, only eighteen years after Vespasian had banished philosophers from Rome (including Demetrius; see note above).

56
On the beauties of the ordinary, see esp. Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
3.2; on death and old age, see
Meditations
9.3.

57
On the physician’s prescriptions, see Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
5.8; on the loss of children, see
Meditations
11.34, 12.26.

58
See Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
4.23.

59
Smith’s critique of the Stoic paradoxes continues a line of critique dating back to antiquity; among others, see esp. Cicero’s “Paradoxes of the Stoics” and
De finibus
4.74-76.

60
Pope,
Essay on Man
1.90.

61
Plutarch notes the utility of the wise man’s stretching of his finger in his essay “Of Common Conceptions, Against the Stoics” 22; he also uses the example of finger-stretching to criticize Chrysippus in “Contradictions of the Stoics” 26; see also Cicero,
De finibus
3.57.

62
The metaphor is frequently employed; see Cicero,
De finibus
3.48, 4.64; cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.120, 7.127; Plutarch, “Of Common Conceptions, Against the Stoics” 10.

63
Smith’s critical judgment is anticipated in Plutarch and Cicero and especially Diogenes Laertius 7.187-89.

64
Smith refers to Cicero’s
De officiis
. Brutus is reported by Seneca (
Epistles
95) to have written a lost work on propriety (
peri kathekontos
), but Smith may also have in mind the reference by Cicero (
De finibus
1.8) to Brutus’s now-lost work on virtue (
De virtute
). For Smith’s own embrace of the distinction here drawn between “perfect virtue” and mere “proprieties” see 1.1.5 (p. 30).

65
Smith’s account might be compared to Diogenes’ account of the Stoic conception of the ends of life, which emphasizes the insufficiencies of both the life devoted strictly to contemplation and the life devoted strictly to practical activity, preferring instead a life that makes room for both contemplation and action in accord with our rational nature (7.130). See also Cicero’s critique of Stoicism for focusing on the mind and ignoring the goods of the body pursued prudentially (
De finibus
4.35-42). See also 6.2.3 (p. 276) and accompanying notes.

66
On the Stoic doctrine of
apatheia
, or freedom from passion, see, e.g., Cicero,
De finibus
3.35; Diogenes Laertius 7.117.

67
See Clarke,
Discourse Concerning Natural Religion
Proposition 1; Wollaston,
Religion of Nature Delineated
1.4, 4.7; and Shaftesbury,
Inquiry Concerning Virtue
2.2.1 (under the marginal heading “Balance of the Affections”). Smith’s précis here may be shaped by the more extensive précis of the same thinkers given by Hutcheson (see
Essay with Illustrations
2.2-3, 5); Kames (
Essays on Morality and Religion
1.2.9, which treated only Clarke and Wollaston in the editions prior to the first edition of
TMS
, adding Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau and Smith himself in the third edition of 1779); and Hume (
Treatise
3.1.1.4).

68
The allegation that Epicurus borrowed his metaphysics from Democritus and his ethics from Aristippus is reported in Diogenes Laertius 10.4; see also Cicero,
De finibus
1.17, 1.23, 1.26.

69
None of Epicurus’s works have survived aside from the three letters and the collection of maxims published by Diogenes; hence Smith’s reliance again on Diogenes’ and Cicero’s accounts. For a glimpse into how Epicurus was regarded in the Scottish Enlightenment, see, e.g., the speech that Hume contrives for “Epicurus” in
Enquiry Concerning Understanding
11.9-23; and his essay “The Epicurean.”

70
On pleasure as the ultimate good and the occasional necessity of abstaining from present pleasures and withstanding present pains for greater future pleasures, see, e.g. Cicero,
De finibus
1.23, 1.29, 1.32-33; Diogenes Laertius 10.34, 10.128-129.

71
Diogenes Laertius 10.124-125, 10.139.

72
On tranquility as absence of pain and the proper end of life, see Cicero,
De finibus
1.37-41; Diogenes Laertius 10.128, 10.131. Epicurus in a related vein argues that natural philosophy is chiefly valuable for its alleviation of anxiety (Cicero,
De finibus
1.63; Diogenes Laertius 10.79-85, 10.142); compare to Smith’s account of the motives for scientific inquiry in
Astronomy
.

73
On the instrumentality of virtue, see Cicero,
De finibus
2.73; Diogenes Laertius 10.150-151. On the instrumentality of the individual cardinal virtues, see Cicero,
De finibus
1.48-53; Diogenes 10.144.

74
See Diogenes Laertius 10.132.

75
See, e.g., Cicero,
De finibus
2.80; Diogenes Laertius 10.9-10.

76
In accusing Epicurus of accounting only for external goods and being indifferent to moral worth, Smith anticipates his critique of Mandeville (see note below), reiterates his own commitment to the supreme value of praiseworthiness (see notes above), and echoes Cicero’s allegation that Epicurus fails to account for our commitment to genuine moral worthiness (
honestum
); see
De finibus
2.44-50.

77
phasis: “appearance exhibited by any body; as the changes of the moon” (Johnson).

78
A free rendering of Xenophon,
Memorabilia
1.7; Smith’s quotation marks seem to indicate this as a speech of Socrates rather than a direct transcription of the source text. See also Cicero’s similar discussion of “true glory” in
De officiis
2.43.

79
On Epicurus’s metaphysical doctrines and their debts to atomism, see, e.g., Diogenes Laertius 10.39f.

80
Hutcheson and Hume had both previously criticized self-love theorists on similar grounds; see, e.g., Hutcheson,
Essay with Illustrations
1. Preface, and Hume,
Enquiry Concerning Morals
App. 2.6. Elsewhere Smith describes the utility of such an approach in natural philosophy; see, e.g.,
History of Astronomy
2.12.

81
Literally “the things primary by nature.” In Stoicism these included the necessaries of the body essential to preservation and physical well-being, but rigorously distinguished these from that which was in itself genuinely good or honorable (
honestum
); see, e.g., Cicero,
De finibus
3.21.

82
See Smith’s similarly worded account given in his own name in the closing paragraphs of 2.3.3 (p. 103).

83
Smith here refers to the school of Alexandrian thinkers from Potamon to Iamblichus who flourished between the reign of Augustus and the fall of Rome, were united in receptivity to Platonism and hostility to Epicureanism, and were often receptive to Christianity. Smith’s likely sources include Diderot’s essay “
Eclectisme
” in the
Encyclopédie
(which emphasizes efforts to imitate God through contemplation, and the wise man’s duty to promote the well-being of others); Part II, Chapter 1 of the study of the 2nd c. AD in Mosheim,
Ecclesiastical History
(1726) (which especially emphasizes that the aim of Eclecticism is direct communication with God); and Hutcheson’s comment on the Eclectics at the conclusion of his “Dissertation on the Origin of Philosophy” (1756).