126 ADAM SMITH. 



ciple of convenient arrangement, and tracing their con- 

 nexion with each other, as well as with the common 

 source, may be of great importance, because of great use, 

 although the arrangement itself is defective, and the 

 pivot on which it hinges insufficient to bear it. This 

 merit belongs in a very eminent degree to Dr. Smith's 

 theory, which brings together a much larger collection of 

 moral facts, and exhibits a much greater variety of moral 

 arguments than any other ethical treatise in ancient or 

 modern times. 



Fourthly. There are whole compartments of the work 

 which are of inestimable value, without any regard to the 

 theory, and independent of those portions more connected 

 with it, of which we have admitted the value. Thus the 

 copious and accurate and luminous account of the other 

 systems of morals, forming the seventh part, which occu- 

 pies a fourth of the book, would have been a valuable 

 work detached from the rest. To relish it we do not 

 require the striking contrast of perusing such works as 

 the dry and uninteresting and indistinct histories of 

 Enfield and Stanley. So the third section of the first 

 part, on the influence of success, or the event, upon our 

 feelings and judgments of actions, what the author terms 

 the influence of fortune, has great originality, and is at 

 once judicious and profound. The like may be said of 

 the fifth part, which treats of the influence of custom and 

 fashion. 



Lastly. The admirable felicity, and the inexhaustible 

 variety of the illustrations in which the work everywhere 

 abounds, sheds a new and a strong light upon all the 

 most important principles of human nature; and affords 

 an explanation of many things which are wholly inde- 



