The Essays of Adam Smith
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~250,000 words · 1,209 passages
Cite this work
- APAAdam Smith. (n.d.). The Essays of Adam Smith. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/the-essays-of-adam-smith
- MLAAdam Smith. The Essays of Adam Smith. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/the-essays-of-adam-smith.
- ChicagoAdam Smith. The Essays of Adam Smith. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/adam-smith/the-essays-of-adam-smith.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The essays Smith allowed to be published: on the history of astronomy, the origin of languages, imitation in the arts, and other subjects that are not economics.
Context and history
These texts exist by a narrow margin. Smith had his papers burnt a few days before his death in 1790, saving only what he wanted kept; out of a lifetime of manuscripts this handful survived. The essay on the history of astronomy is the most interesting: it explains why we make systems — to quiet the surprise and discomfort caused by what does not fit — and it is a theory of science written by the author of the Wealth of Nations.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of the by-stander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer. {11} Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever. Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions, upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man to another, instantaneously, and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to everybody that sees it, a cheerful object; as a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one. This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every passion.…