Smith warns that each person must exercise impartiality of judgment in relation to his own feelings and behavior. Well aware of the human tendency to overlook ones own moral failings and the self-deceit in which individuals often engage, Smith argues that each person must scrutinize his own feelings and behavior with the same strictness he employs when considering those of others. Such an impartial appraisal is possible because a persons conscience enables him to compare his own feelings with those of others. Conscience and sympathy working together, then, provide moral guidance for man so that the individual can control his own feelings and have a sensibility for the affections of others.
The Wealth of Nations
In 1764, Smith resigned his professorship to take up duties as a traveling tutor for the young Duke of Buccleuch and his brother. Carrying out this responsibility, he spent two years on the Continent. In Toulouse, he began writing his best-known work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. While in Paris, he met Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helv閠ius, Baron Paul dHolbach, Fran鏾is Quesnay, A.R.J. Turgot, and Jacques Necker. These thinkers doubtless had some influence on him. His life abroad came to an abrupt end when one of his charges was killed.
Smith then settled in Kirkcaldy with his mother. He continued to work on The Wealth of Nations, which was finally published in 1776. His mother died at the age of 90, and Smith was grief-stricken. In 1778, he was made customs commissioner, and in 1784 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Smith apparently spent some time in London, where he became a friend of Benjamin Franklin. On his deathbed he demanded that most of his manuscript writings be destroyed. He died on July 17, 1790.
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