ABSTRACT
the sixth edition of the Theory of Moral Sentiments was published in 1790, the year in which Adam Smith died at the age of sixty-seven. The first edition had appeared in 1759, when he was thirty-six. In the second edition of 1761 some alterations were made— stylistic or in answer to criticisms, but there was no major revision. Alterations in the third, fourth and fifth editions were slight. Only in his last edition, in the last twelve months or so of his life, did Smith accomplish what was a thorough and major revision—a considerable feat for an ailing man of sixty-seven. He says of it in his Advertisement: ‘The various occupations in which the different accidents of my life necessarily involved me, have till now prevented me from revising this work with the care and attention which I had always intended’; and he mentions ‘several corrections, and a good many illustrations of the doctrines’, which thirty years experience had taught him. If we compare the first with the sixth editions, two conclusions can be drawn. First there occurred no fundamental change in his beliefs on ethical and social (including economic) theory, over this period. But, secondly, the revisions, re-arrangements and new writing of the sixth edition are considerable. We can therefore conclude that when in this final revision Adam Smith stated any important principle in a new way, and put it in a prominent place in his summing-up, he then fully intended so to emphasize it.
