live by vice. But the mob cannot fail to note differences of wealth and fortune. The
distinction of ranks as well as the peace and order of society are ultimately founded for
Smith upon the respect that we naturally have for rich and powerful and the
accompanying desire we have to be benevolently disposed to them in our actions (see
TMS: 226).
Throughout his analysis, Smith stresses a number of distinctive features of the
natural order by which our benevolent dispositions work directly towards other
individuals. First, like other sentiments discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
benevolent dispositions are psychological and moral, not physical. The bonds that direct
us to assist others are born and bred our minds, not inherited in our blood. They are thus
are open to moral cultivation. Education properly administered can promote benevolent
dispositions and the bonds that tie people together into close-knit communities.
Conversely, education improperly administered can destroy them. Hence Smith’s
preference for educating children at home where one can be close to one’s family rather
than away at boarding school where the bonds of affection for one’s family are easily
undermined by distance (see TMS: 221).
Similarly, Smith believes that commercial
society can destroy the familial bonds that exist in other social orders.
The bonds forged
out of benevolence must be nurtured in daily contact or they will wither away and die.
14
In the Wealth of Nations, Smith supports a system of public education in the early years for young
children in the poorer ranks of society. His concerns here is less with the affects that education outside the
home might have upon the development of benevolent dispositions in children towards their families than it
is in guaranteeing a minimal level of education such that moral development in the lower ranks is possible
at all. (WN: 785-86).
15
Smith writes, “In commercial societies, where the authority of law is always perfectly sufficient to
protect he meanest man in the state, the descendants of the same family, having no such motive for
keeping together, naturally separate and disperse, as interest or inclination may direct. They soon cease to
be of importance to one another; and, in a few generations, not only lose all care about one another, but
remembrance of their common origin, and of the connection which took among their ancestors. Regard for
remote relations becomes, in every country, less and less, according as this state of civilization has been
longer and more completely established.” (TMS: 223)
19
Convention