it aimed "at a perfection altogether beyond the reach of human nature." He knew very well that the "soft, gentle, the amiable virtues" were better suited to commercial societies than the "virtues of self-denial"; yet he preferred the latter, on the whole.

He admitted that modern moralists offered better instruction in "private and domestic affections" than Zeno and Epictetus, whose "stoical apathy" was "never agreeable" when it attempted to moderate parental affection. But even though his own system unavoidably encouraged men to pursue private interest at the expense of public service, Smith had a republican contempt for such a life. He believed that politics and war, not commerce, served as the "great school of self-command." "Under the boisterous and stormy sky of war and faction, of public tumult and confusion, the sturdy severity of self-command prospers most." A commercial society needed the "gentle virtue of humanity," to be sure; and "justice and humanity" rested, in turn, on a "sacred regard" for life and property, necessarily weakened by the "violence of faction" and the "hardships and hazards of war." Even so, Smith reserved his highest praise, not only in The Theory of Moral Sentiments but in The Wealth of Nations itself, for the soldier's life. He regretted that "the general security and happiness which prevail in ages of civility and politeness, afford little exercise to the contempt of danger, to patience in enduring labor, hunger, and pain." The division of labor made possible an unheard-of expansion of productivity, as he explained at length in The Wealth of Nations, but it also dulled the mind and sapped the martial spirit.

His unsparing account of these effects drew on the republican identification of virtue with virility and resourcefulness. "A man, incapable either of defending or of revenging himself, evidently wants one of the most essential parts of the character of a man." Similarly "a man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man is ... more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of human nature." Smith could only hope that a comprehensive program of public education would teach the virtues no longer taught by service in the militia—now recognized as "much inferior to a well-disciplined and well-exercised standing army"— and by active participation in political life.

The harshest critics of modern specialization have added little to the indictment drawn up by its great apologist. But such misgivings were

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