The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the beauty of order, of art and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare. When a patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners that a public-spirited man encourages the mending of high roads. When the legislature establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen or woollen manufactures, its conduct seldom proceeds from pure sympathy with the wearer of cheap or fine cloth, and much less from that with the manufacturer or merchant. The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, and we are interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end. From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. There have been men of the greatest public spirit, who have shown themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of humanity. (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV.1.11, 185)
Smith identifies a particular intellectual, even theoretical feeling: the so-called, "love of system." In the passage above, "the love of system" is mostly identified with positive consequences through its ability to compensate for our all-to-human lack of emotional interest in the well-being of others. It do so, especially, when such love of system slides into the spirit of system and when that, in turn, is mixed into public spiritedness. However, as most readers of Smith have noticed later in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) in passages added to the sixth edition of TMS (1790), Smith emphasizes the horrible things that can occur when this love of system is transformed into a "spirit of system" and turns into the ideologically-driven "madness of fanaticism." (TMS VI.2.2.15, 232) Commentators tend to discern in this allusions to the unfolding French Revolution. And it might be thought that what is being targeted is the influence of Rousseau, who as many commentators have noted is, in fact, clearly alluded to in the pages just before the passage quoted at the start of this post. (TMS IV.1.8-9, 182-3) But nowhere does Smith refer to Rousseau's philosophy, which with he was very well acquainted, as a "system," and it has never been satisfactory shown why from Smith's vantage point the French Revolution would have involved "love of system."
A new clue was provided to me by Toland's (1704) Letters to Serena. Smith never refers to Toland, but I have recently argued that he alludes to it in non-trivial fashion in his (posthumously published) "History of Astronomy,"presumably composed around the 1740s. In Letter IV, Toland argues that Spinoza is a sectarian philosopher that wishes to have disciples over which he has a magisterial authority. (Toland allows that one can end up with disciples even if one did not wish so--Socrates is his main example.) One of Spinoza's intellectual vices is, in fact, his love of system (IV, p. 137). If the "love of sysem" is indeed associated with Spinozism in Smith's mind, then Smith's comments in TMS fit into Jonathan Israel's the narrative of the opposition of the moderate Enlightenment (as found in the so-called "Scottish Enlightenment") vs a more radical, Spinozist Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. (Recently I pointed out that Toland may, in fact, belong to the moderate branch.) This is, of course, highly speculative.
But there is one, final complication. As has been noted before, in context, TMS IV is devoted to a sustained criticism of Hume's focus on utility not just as a source of aesthetic pleasure, but as the source of "whole approbation of virtue." In fact, part of Smith's criticism of Hume is that "The same ingenious and agreeable author who first explained why utility pleases, has been so struck with this view of things, as to resolve our whole approbation of virtue into a perception of this species of beauty which results from the appearance of utility." (TMS IV.2.3, 188) That is, Hume is being charged of trying to turn the wrong principle into a system. And Smith insists that Hume's mistake is one common to "men of reflection and speculation." (TMS IV. 2.11, 192)
So, if the "love of system" is the intellectual vice associated with Spinozism and Smith attributes the vice to Hume, then Smith is charging Hume with....noooo00000!
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