In 1778 he was appointed, at the request of the Duke of Buccleuch, one of the commissioners of his majesty's customs in Scotland, and removed to Edinburgh, taking his mother with him: it is scarcely necessary to mention that he continued all his life a bachelor.Here he spent the last twelve years of his life.Henceforth he became an object of curiosity to all people of literary culture; and his person was scrutinized, as he walked the streets, by the curious, and his peculiar habits reported.Many a youth, studying in Edinburgh, was proud to relate in after years that he had seen him, -- a fine gentleman of the old school, a little above the ordinary size, with a manly countenance lighted by large gray eyes, wearing a cap, a long, wide great-coat, breeches, and shoebuckles; and they remarked that, when "he walked, his head had a gentle motion from side to side, and his body, at every step, a rolling or vermicular motion, as if he meant to alter his direction, or even turn back.In the street, or elsewhere, he always carried his cane on his shoulder, as a soldier does his musket." ("Lives," by Smellie.) Dr.Carlyle gives a graphic picture of his manner in company." Adam Smith was far superior to Hume in conversational talents.In that of public speaking they were equal.David never tried it; and I never heard Adam but once, which was at the first meeting of the Select Society, when he opened up the design of the meeting.His voice was harsh, and enunciation thick, approaching to stammering.His conversation was not colloquial, but like lecturing, in which, I have been told, he was not deficient, especially when he grew warm.He was the most absent man in company that I ever saw; moving his lips, and talking with himself, and smiling, in the midst of large companies.If you awaked him from his reverie {167} and made him attend to the subject of conversation, he immediately began to harangue, and never stopped till he told you all he knew about it, with the utmost philosophical ingenuity.He knew nothing of characters, and yet was ready to draw them on the slightest invitation.But when you checked him, or doubted, he retracted with the utmost ease, and contradicted all he had been saying." Carlyle tells us that " David Hume, like Smith, had no discernment at all of character."Dugald Stewart mentions it as an interesting circumstance that all Hume's works were written with his own hands, whereas Smith dictated to a secretary as he walked up and down his apartment, and hints that we may perceive, in the different styles of these two classical writers, the effects of these different modes of study: as he wrote with his own pen, Hume, gave a greater terseness and compactness to his style, whereas I Smith, in dictating to an amanuensis, kept himself more in sympathy with his reader, and was more disposed, like a speaker, to flow and fluency.
It may have been from the same circumstance that Hume wrote with great rapidity, whereas Smith composed as slowly, and with as great difficulty, at last as at first.
In Edinburgh, his studies were much interrupted by his official duties, and often -- as he mentions in a letter written on his being elected by the students lord rector of his old University-did he cast a longing eye back upon the academic leisure he enjoyed in Glasgow.Like most men of high aims, he regretted, when he saw death approaching, that he had done so little." I meant to have done more, and there are materials in my papers of which I could have made a great deal.But that is now out of the question." Shortly before his death, he gave orders to destroy all his manuscripts, which were supposed to contain his lectures on rhetoric, on natural religion, and on jurisprudence.He died in July, 1790.
Let us turn to his philosophy.His mind was essentially a reflecting one, a self-revolving one.He was always thinking, and talking to himself, gathering facts, forming theories, and seeking out events to confirm them; thus building up a system which was always ingenious, sometimes too ingenious, but {168} ever worthy of being weighed.His "Theory of Moral Sentiments " has commonly been a favorite with students, because of the eloquence of its language, modelled after the best philosophic writers of ancient Rome and modern France, and of the fertility of his resources in confirming his positions from his varied observation and reading.But his theory has gained the assent of few, and has often been prescribed by professors as a subject on which to exercise the critical acumen of their pupils.Adam Smith is always a discursive writer, and in the work now before us he wanders like a river amidst luxuriant banks, and it is not easy to define his course.Dugald Stewart in his "Memoir" has given the clearest account of it I have seen; and I mean to make free use of what he has written, in the shorter abstract which I submit.
According to the common moral theories, men first judge of their own actions, and then those of their neighbors.
Smith reverses this, and maintains that the primary objects of our moral perceptions are the actions of other men.We put ourselves in their position, and partake with them in their affections by what he calls <sympathy> or fellow-feeling, which is the grand principle of his system.We thus judge of their conduct, and then apply to ourselves the decisions which we have passed on our neighbors, and which we may conceive they would pronounce on us.Our moral judgments, both with respect to others and ourselves, include two perceptions: first, of conduct as right or wrong; and, secondly, of the merit or demerit of the agent.