. . . Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorized the practice, that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by far-fetched considerations of public utility. Aristotle talks of it as of what the magistrate ought upon many occasions to encourage. The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, nowhere marks this practice with disapprobation.24

Smith’s insistence that we must view our sentiments, inter alia, at “a certain distance from us” thus extends, beyond the imperative to scrutinize the influence of vested interests, to the need to question the captivating hold of entrenched traditions and customs. In scrutinizing established rules today, including the permissibility of practices as different as the stoning of adulterous women under the Taliban and the widespread use of capital punishment (with or without the public jubilation with which it is sometimes accompanied)—for example, in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States (to name the four countries that led the world in the frequency of capital punishment in 2008)—the perspectives of other people from far as well as near have a relevance for reasons that Smith presented definitively in the Moral Sentiments.

INCLINATIONS, INCLUSION, AND EQUALITY

I end with some remarks on Smith’s personal sentiments. This introduction has been concerned almost entirely with Smith’s reasoning, rather than with his inclinations and predispositions. This has some rationale: I believe Smith was right in thinking (as I quoted him earlier) that “our most solid judgments . . . with regard to right and wrong, are regulated by maxims and ideas derived from an induction of reason.” And yet Smith also argued, again quite persuasively, that our “first perceptions” of right and wrong “cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense and feeling.”25Even though our first perceptions may change in response to critical examination (as Smith also noted), these perceptions can still give us interesting clues about our inclinations and emotional predispositions.

One of the striking features of Smith’s personality is his inclination to be as inclusive as possible—not only locally but also globally. He does acknowledge that we may have special obligations to our neighbors, but the reach of our concern must ultimately transcend that confinement. I have already discussed the strikingly global feature of Smith’s moral and political inclusiveness. To that I want to add the understanding that Smith’s ethical inclusiveness is matched by a strong epistemic inclination to see people everywhere as being essentially similar. There is something quite remarkable in the ease with which Smith rides over barriers of class, gender, race, and nationality to see human beings with a presumed equality of potential, and without any innate difference in intrinsic talents and abilities.

Smith’s empirical presumption of equality of potential of different human beings is stated most explicitly in The Wealth of Nations:

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference.26

It is easy to see that there is some real tension here between Smith’s firmly articulated empirical view and the scientific evidence for genetic differences between individuals within the same race or nationality or class. It is not so important whether the quoted statement is correct. What is really important to appreciate is that Smith’s epistemic generalization reflects not only what he very much wanted to believe, but also what he thought would be the right assumption to make—that differences between groups largely reflect differences of education and opportunities rather than differences of natural talents—when dealing with groups of people without any pre-identified genetic differentiation among them.27

It is not only that the working class has much less access to education—and good education in particular—than people of rank and fortune, but also that the work of the working class gives them far less occasion to cultivate their minds than the work of the privileged.

The employments of people of some rank and fortune, besides, are seldom such as harass them from morning to night. They generally have a good deal of leisure, during which they may perfect themselves in every branch either of useful or ornamental knowledge of which they may have laid the foundation, or for which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of life.

It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them even in infancy. As soon as they are able to work they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so simple and uniform as to give little exercise to the understanding, while, at the same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or even to think of, anything else.28

While it is important to understand Smith’s inclination—indeed, longing—to believe in the equal potential of all human beings, what is crucial to his policy prescriptions is his emphasis on the class-related neglect of human talents through the lack of education and the unimaginative nature of the work that many members of the working classes are forced to do by economic circumstances. Class divisions, Smith argued, reflect this inequality of opportunity, rather than indicating differences of inborn talents and abilities.

The presumption of similarity of intrinsic talents is accepted by Smith not only within nations but also across the boundaries of states and cultures, as is clear from what he says in both the Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. The assumption of racial or regional inferiority of some people, which had quite a hold on the minds of many of his contemporaries, is completely absent in Smith’s writings. And Smith does not address these points only abstractly. For example, he discusses why he thinks Chinese and Indian producers are really not in any different league of productive ability from Europeans, even though their institutions may handicap them. He is inclined to see the relative backwardness of African economic progress in terms of the continent’s geographical disadvantages, having nothing like the “gulfs of Arabia, Persia, India, Bengal, and Siam, in Asia” that provide opportunities for trade to other people. Smith is also incensed by the presumption of superior racial endowments of the white man, and at one stage even bursts into unconcealed wrath: “There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving.”29

Or consider Smith’s odd exuberance about the nutritional benefits of the potato:

The chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be the greater part of them from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root [potato].