“The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” By Adam Smith, 1759

Abstract

To this, his first book, the author owed the opportunities of travel and leisure which enabled him to perfect his second, the Wealth of Nations, 1776. It has needed all the fame of the second to keep alive the memory of the first. The Moral Sentiments founded no school, and is usually passed over with the faint praise due to the author's reputation. Yet Burke welcomed its theory as “in all its essential parts just” (Annual Register, 1759, p. 484; Rae's Life of Adam Smith, p. 145); and it was treated by Lessing with respect, though not agreement, in the Laocoon, 1766 (ch. iv).