I wish to thank the Charles A. Dana Foundation for support that was helpful in bringing this article to completion. Iamalso indebted to John Dwyer, Debra Hertz, and Kathleen Wine for helpful responses to earlier versions of this article.

1. Hirschman, Albert, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 12–20, 31–55, and 100–112Google Scholar for his treatment of Adam Smith; the passage quoted appears at pp. 14–15. I have addressed another aspect of the Hirschman, thesis in “Passions, Interests, and Moderate Virtues: La Rochefoucauld and the Origins of Enlightenment Liberalism,” Annals of Scholarship, 7 (1990): 33–50.Google Scholar See also Keohane, Nannerl O., Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 22 and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jaume, Lucien, Le Discours jacobin et la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 1989).Google Scholar

2. For other examples, see Pocock, J. G. A., “Virtues, rights and manners: A model for historians of political thought,” in Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 37–50 and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lerner, Ralph, “Commerce and Character The Anglo-American as New-Model Man,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 36 (1979): 3–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), esp. pp. 74–111.Google Scholar

3. Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S. (Oxford University Press, 1976; repr. Liberty Classics, 1982), 2 vols., 1:14.Google Scholar I use the abbreviations “WN” for this edition, and “TMS” for Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Raphael, D. D. and Macfie, A. L. (Oxford University Press, 1976; repr. Liberty Classics, 1984).Google Scholar

4. Conversation as a distinctively modern source of moral education appears not only in the TMS but also in his recently discovered Lectures on Jurisprudence. There, we read, “[I]n barbarous nations where literature is little cultivated and wisdom can only be got by experience, age is much more respected than when letters, conversation, and otherartificiall methods of acquiring knowledge are introduced.” See Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. Meek, R.l., Raphael, D. D. and Stein, P. G. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978; repr. Liberty Classics, 1982), p. 57 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

5. For two very different commentaries on this phenomenon, see Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981), chap. 1Google Scholar; and Blum, CarolRousseau and the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 28–30.Google Scholar

6. For example, see Rochefoucauld, La, Maxims, trans. Tancock, Leonard (Penguin, 1964; orig. pub. 1678), M. 264.Google Scholar

7. Unlike mere pity, sympathy is “a principle of communication between individuals which makes possible the moral judgment.” See Morrow, Glen, The Ethical and Economic Theories of Adam Smith (New York: Longman's, 1923), pp. 29, 31.Google Scholar

8. On the question of whether TMS as a whole is best interpreted as a work of philosophy or of social science, see the treatment by Campbell, T. D., Adam Smith's Science of Morals (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), pp. 19–21.Google Scholar

9. See Hont, Istvan, ‘The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical foundations of the ‘Four-Stages Theory,’” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Pagden, Anthony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 255, 260Google Scholar, for the dichotomy between civilization and barbarism in the natural law tradition, and for the role of this tradition in shaping Scottish social thought.

10. For this theme, see also Macfie, A. L., The Individual in Society (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), pp. 83–4, 87, 90, 94Google Scholar, where the author suggests that Smith historicizes Francis Hutcheson by replacing his notion of an immediate moral sense with a more flexible, circumstantially determined concept of sympathy in the “impartial spectator” mechanism. Glen Morrow is not necessarily wrong, in my view (Ethical and EconomicTheories of Adam Smith, p. 36), in asserting that Smith's theory “prepares the way for a conception of moral progress in society.” My contention is merely that at least a certain economic progress is itself a prerequisite to the moral education fleshed out in TMS.

11. Knud Haakonssen has suggested, along these lines, that Smith represents an advance upon Hume in the social contextualism of his concept of sympathy and of the operation of the “impartial spectator” by which conscience is formed. See his The Science of a Legislator (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 46, 47, and 59 for how mutual sympathy ensures “the possibility of [moral] education.Google Scholar” See also Morrow, , Ethical and Economic Theories of Adam Smith, p. 38Google Scholar, for the contextual nature of reason in Smith's system.

12. See the suggestive framework for this redefinition proposed by Ralph Lerner, “Commerce and Character.”

13. Fora recent statement of the opposite interpretation, see Heilbroner, Robert L., “The socialization of the individual in Adam Smith,” History of Political Economy 14: 3 (1982): 432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Mandeville, Bernard, The Fable of the Bees, ed. Kaye, F. B. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924; repr. Liberty Classics, 1988), 2 vols., 1:219.Google Scholar

15. “Among the ancients, the character of the fair-sex was considered as altogether domestic; nor were they regarded as part of the polite world or of good company. This, perhaps, is the true reason why the ancients have not left us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent.... This, therefore, is one considerable improvement, which the polite arts have received from gallantry, and from courts, where it first arose.” Hume, David, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987), p. 134.Google Scholar

16. Maclntyre, Alasdair has argued, in After Virtue, p. 196Google Scholar, that conversation is an overlooked topic in the history of philosophy. “[R]emove conversation from human life and what would be left?” he asks rhetorically. But Smith, while not subjecting it to sustained discursive analysis, nonetheless made it a prominent part of his own moral philosophy. My argument is thus meant to complement rather than to contradict Macfie's, A. L. observation, in The Individual in Society, p. 91Google Scholar, that reason and sympathy (rather than sympathy alone, as is often thought) must be combined to produce moral judgment and moral education; I wish only to emphasize the role of conversation as a catalyst in engaging both of these faculties.

17. For the role of conversation in that continental tradition, see Gordon, Daniel, ‘“Public Opinion’ and the Civilizing Process in France: The Example of Morellet,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 22 (1989): 326 and passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Moore, James, “The Social Background of Hume's Science of Human Nature,” in McGill Hume Studies, ed. Fate Norton, David, Capaldi, Nicholas and Robison, Wade L. (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1979), pp. 23–41, esp. 33–34.Google Scholar

19. Duncan Forbes has some suggestive remarks on the political aspects of Smith's concept of civilization, and of the place of France within it, in his “Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce, and Liberty,” Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Skinner, Andrew S. and Wilson, Thomas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 179–201, esp. 188–95.Google Scholar

20. See Hume, , “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, p. 126.Google Scholar

21. The success of conversation as an ideal, it hardly needs to be said, has been no less imperfect in practice, in Smith's view, than had commerce (on which, see WN, p. 493). See The Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. Mossner, E. C. and Ross, I. S. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977; repr.Liberty Press, 1987), p. 108Google Scholar, for his description of the French, masters of the art of conversation, as more “meanly interested” and having less “real and sincere affection” than his countrymen. On the other hand, Smith never suggests that conversation in a civilized society instills or exacerbates such selfishness, as Rousseau had done, for example, in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.

22. Indeed, Smith suggests at one point that the desire to persuade may be “the instinct upon which is founded the faculty of speech” (TMS, p. 336). To appreciate the novelty of this view, see the quite different accounts of the origins of speech that appear in other natural-law theorists, such as Hobbes, Leviathan, pt. 1, chap. 4; Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.3, chap. 1 -2; Samuel Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium libri octo, bk. 4, chap. 1.

23. See Teichgraeber, Richard F., “Rethinking Das Adam Smith-Problem,” in New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland, ed. Dwyer, John, Mason, Roger A. and Murdoch, Alexander (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982), pp. 249–64Google Scholar (orig. pub. in Journal of British Studies 20 [1981]: 262).

24. For Aristotle on virtuous friendship, see Nicomachean Ethics 1156a–b.

25. For a sociological perspective, see Silver, Allan, “Friendship in Commercial Society: Eighteenth-Century Social Theory and Modern Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 95 (1990): 1474–1504, esp. 1479–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. See ‘The History of Astronomy,” in Smith, Adam, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. Wightman, W. P. D., Bryce, J. C.and Ross, I. S. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980; repr. Liberty Press, 1982), p. 47Google Scholar, cited in Campbell, , Adam Smith's Science of Morals, p. 33.Google Scholar

27. Fora different approach to this theme, see H. Mizuta, “Moral Philosophy and Civil Society,” in Skinner, and Wilson, , Essays on Adam Smith, esp. p. 124.Google Scholar

28. See Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce and History, pp. 150, 236.Google Scholar

29. John Dwyer misinterprets Smith in accusing him of overemphasizing the virtues of self-command at the expense of those of humanity, and in attributing to him the view that ‘The man of little humanity was his own worst enemy... and not a threat to the moral community [as was the man lacking in self-command],” See his Virtuous Discourse (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), p. 181.Google Scholar In truth, self- command and humanity are inextricably interdependent in the formation of the true moral agent, on Smith's account. For Smith's opposition to those who exaggerate the importance of the “respectable” virtues of self-command, see Skinner, A. S., “Moral Philosophy and Civil Society,” in A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 42–67, esp. 43–5.Google Scholar

30. As Macfie, A. L. has done in The Individual in Society, p. 78.Google ScholarReisman, David A., Adam Smith's Sociological Economics (London: Croom and Helm, 1976), pp. 70–71Google Scholar, stands on firmer ground in finding an obligation, in Smith's theory, to show a sort of benevolence to oneself no less than to others.

31. Home, Thomas, “Envy and Commercial Society: Mandeville and Smith on ‘Private Vices, Public Benefits,’” Political Theory 9 (1981): 566.Google Scholar

32. Forone example of this ethos, see Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, L'sprit des lois (1748), bk. 24, chap. 7.

33. 1 am here elaborating on Morrow's argument (Ethical and Economic Theories of Adam Smith, p. 57) that “The superior man... does freely what the inferior man must be compelled to do,” and that, for Smith, it is better to act generously from a spontaneous sympathy than from strict rules of conduct, precisely because it better engages our moral liberty (p. 36).

34. It strikes me as erroneous, therefore, to posit a narrowing of Smith's faith in the social efficacy of benevolence in the latter stages of his life, as Dwyer does in Virtuous Discourse, chap. 7. Smith is here simply elaborating upon a feature of his system that was fully present from the beginning. For a more accurate treatment of the continuity in Smith's theory from the first edition to the sixth, see Raphael, D. D., “The Impartial Spectator,” in Skinner, and Wilson, , Essays on Adam Smith, pp. 83–99, esp. 94Google Scholar; and Macfie, , The Individual in Society, p. 82.Google Scholar

35. Those who argue that self-command is the ultimate virtue for Smith, or who claim that Smith is best seen as a Stoic moral philosopher, are in my view overlooking this fundamentally modernist dimension of his enterprise. See the “Introduction” to TMS by Macfie and Raphael, pp. 5–11 and passim.

36. See Skinner, , A System of Social Science, p. 51Google Scholar; perhaps this is what Evensky, Jerry means when he writes, “Smith the moral philosopher argues that social virtue rests on private virtue,” in his “The Two Voices of AdamSmith: Moral Philosopher and Social Critic,” History of Political Economy 19, no. 3 (1987): 464.Google Scholar

37. For an elaboration of this point, see the remarks by Smith's student Millar, John of Glasgow, “On the Origin of the Distinction of Ranks,” in John Millar of Glasgow, 1735–1801: His Life and Thought and his Contributions to Sociological Analysis, ed. with an intro. Lehmann, William C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 219, 238–39.Google Scholar

38. For this misinterpretation, see Dwyer, , Virtuous Discourse, p. 183.Google Scholar It is true, however, that Smith gives greater emphasis to self-command than do other Scottish moralists such as Hume and Hutcheson. On this, see the commentary by Raphael and Macfie in TMS, pp. 23–24 n. 1.

39. Soboul, Albert, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le jacobinisme,” in Journées d'études surle “Control social” dejean-JacquesRousseau (Paris: Socie'te les Belles Lettres, 1964)Google Scholar; cited in Blum, , Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue, p. 15.Google Scholar

40. Keohane, , Philosophy and the State in France, pp. 11, 296Google Scholar; see also 166 and 357.

41. Maclntyre, , After Virtue, pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

42. For one view of it, see my “Passions, Interests, and Moderate Virtues,” cited in note 1, above

43. Hirschman, , Passions and the Interests, p. 107.Google Scholar

44. Ibid., pp. 109–10.

45. Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael, “Needs and Justice in the Wealth of Nations: An Introductory Essay,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Hont, and Ignatieff, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), chap. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a different approach to prudence in Smith's system, see Dickey, Laurence, “Historicizing the ‘AdamSmith Problem': Conceptual, Historiographical, and Textual Issues,” journal of Modern History 58 (1986): 579–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. See WN, pp. 781–88, and, for a similar thought, Lectures on Jurisprudence, pp. 539–41.