Peace of mind, family peace, a country free from civil, religious, and foreign strife,—these he thought in their order the things most momentous to happiness. Yet he would not allow the leisurely philosopher to bask in the selfish sunshine of tranquillity. “The most sublime contemplation of the philosopher will scarce compensate the neglect of the smallest act of virtue.” The study of politics tends to promote public spirit, and political disquisitions are therefore the most useful of all speculations. The trade of the vulgar politician was often ignoble and deceitful; but the best happiness attended the patriotism and public spirit of those who sought to improve government and extend trade. The leader of a successful party may do far more for his country than the greatest general. He may re-establish and reform its constitution, and from the doubtful and ambiguous character of a party leader he may assume “the greatest and noblest of all characters, that of the reformer and legislator of a great state,” who by the wisdom of his institutions secures the international tranquillity and happiness of his fellow-citizens for many succeeding generations. For the man of system in politics Smith has no liking. Wise in his own conceit, such a man “seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard.” He forgets that “in the great chessboard of human society every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.” A true son of Oxford in his admiration for Aristotle, he was fond, as we have seen, of appealing to common life and popular opinion. But another of Aristotle’s methods, that of the eclectic who arrives at the truth by choosing out and combining what is good in other philosophers, may almost be said to be the foundation of _The Moral Sentiments_. When, after explaining his system, he comes in his last (seventh) part to describe and criticise his predecessors, it is apparent that he considers his own theory to be an assemblage or reconciliation in one harmonious whole of all the happiest efforts of ethical speculation:— “If we examine the most celebrated and remarkable of the different theories which have been given concerning the nature and origin of our moral sentiments, we shall find that almost all of them coincide with some part or other of that which I have been endeavouring to give an account of; and that if everything which has already been said be fully considered, we shall be at no loss to explain what was the view or aspect of nature which led each particular author to form his particular system. From some one or other of those principles which I have been endeavouring to unfold, every system of morality that ever had any reputation in the world has, perhaps, ultimately been derived.”