“The theory is in all its essential parts just, and founded on truth and nature. The author seeks for the foundation of the just, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and most allowed passions; and making approbation and disapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and shewing that those are founded on sympathy, he raises from this simple truth, one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared. The illustrations are numerous and happy, and shew the author to be a man of uncommon observation. His language is easy and spirited, and puts things before you in the fullest light; it is rather painting than writing.” “Perhaps there is no ethical work since Cicero’s _Offices_,” wrote Sir James Mackintosh, “of which an abridgment enables the reader so inadequately to estimate the merit, as the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_. This is not chiefly owing to the beauty of diction, as in the case of Cicero, but to the variety of explanations of life and manners which embellish the book often more than they illuminate the theory.” This criticism has been adopted by Mr. Farrer in his luminous account of Smith’s moral philosophy, and its justice may be conceded. With all its faults, the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ is still one of the most instructive and entertaining of all our English treatises on ethics. There is plenty of warmth and colour. The argument is never bare; you follow its thread through a wondrous maze, till your perplexities are solved, and you finally congratulate yourself as well as the author on having rejected all the errors and collected all the wisdom of the ages. When the main theme threatens to be tedious he entertains you with an imaginary portrait, or digresses into some subsidiary discussion upon fortune, or fashion, or some other of the currents that turn men from their purpose. It has been observed that the strongest antagonists of Smith’s central doctrine are enthusiastic in praising his skill in the analysis of human nature. The truth is, that the most absent-minded was also the most observant of men. He seems to have watched the actions and passions of his acquaintances with extraordinary precision. Motives interested him at least as much as conduct; he rather blames philosophers for having of late years given too much attention to the tendency of affections, and too little to the relationship in which they stand to their causes.