Adam Smith and Robert Burns....

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” 
- Adam Smith

Adam Smith, a contemporary, greatly influenced our national Bard, Robert Burns.   In similar vein, Burns wrote "Address tae the Unco Guid".    (Address to those who are too good.)

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel', 
Sae pious and  sae holy, 
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell 
Your neibours' fauts and folly! 
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, 
Supplied wi' store o' water; 
The heaped happer's ebbing still, 
An' still the clap plays clatter......

......Then gently scan your brother man, 
Still gentler sister woman; 
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, 
To step aside is human: 
One point must still be greatly dark, - 
The moving Why they do it; 
And just as lamely can ye mark, 
How far perhaps they rue it. 


The image reproduces Smith's epitaph in Canongate Churchyard, from a book published in 1816.