The most important of the new contributions to this last edition of
the _Theory_ is the chapter "on the corruption of our moral
sentiments, which is occasioned by our disposition to admire the rich
and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean
condition." In spite of his alleged republicanism he was still a sort
of believer in the principle of birth. It was not, in his view, a
rational principle, but it was a natural and beneficial delusion. In
the light of reason the vulgar esteem for rank and fortune above
wisdom and virtue was utterly indefensible, but it had a certain
advantage as a practical aid to good government. The maintenance of
social order required the establishment of popular deference to some
species of superiority, and the superiorities of birth and fortune
were at least plain and palpable to the mob of mankind who have to be
governed, whereas the superiorities of wisdom and virtue were often
invisible and uncertain, even to the discerning. But however useful
this admiration for the wrong things might be for the establishment of
settled authority, he held it to be "at the same time the great and
most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."[360]

But the additions attracted little notice compared with the
deletions--the deletion of the allusion to Rochefoucauld associating
that writer in the same condemnation with Mandeville, and the deletion
of the passage in which the revealed doctrine of the atonement was
stated to coincide with the repentant sinner's natural feeling of the
necessity of some other intercession and sacrifice than his own. The
omission of the reference to Rochefoucauld has been blamed as a
concession to feelings of private friendship in the teeth of the
claims of truth; but Stewart, who knew the whole circumstances, says
that Smith came to believe that truth as well as friendship required
the emendation, and there is certainly difference enough between
Rochefoucauld and Mandeville to support such a view.

The suppression of the passage about the atonement escaped notice for
twenty years, till a notable divine, Archbishop Magee, in entire
ignorance of the suppression, quoted the passage from one of the
earlier editions as a strong testimony to the reasonableness of the
Scriptural doctrine of the atonement from a man whose intellectual
capacity and independence were above all dispute. "Such," he says,
"are the reflections of a man whose powers of t