ABSTRACT
Dr Shearmur has succeeded in his attempt to both stimulate and provoke us. He has given us an excellent paper full of pertinent and searching questions about ethics, commerce and government which are of crucial importance to the Scottish school. His interpretation of the works of Hutcheson, Hume and Smith is both admirable and controversial. But he is unnecessarily modest in declaring himself ‘a decided non-expert’. Evidently, he does not think much of either Hume’s condemnation of humility as a useless virtue, or Smith’s observation that ‘in almost all cases, it is better to be a little too proud, than, in any respect, too humble’ (Smith 1976a: 42).
