It’s common for people to ruin themselves by spending money on trinkets that are useful in some trivial way. What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much •the use they make of their little machines as •the machines’ fitness to be used. Their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences; they have new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number ·of ‘useful’ gadgets·. They walk around about loaded with a multitude of baubles,. . . .some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be well done without. The whole use that is made of them is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden! And it’s not only with regard to such trivial objects that our conduct is influenced by this motive—·this liking for things because of what they could do, without much interest in having them actual do those things·. It is often the secret motive of very serious and important pursuits in both private and public life. Consider the case of a poor man’s son whom heaven in its anger has infected with ambition. When he begins to look around him, he admires the condition of the rich. [Smith goes into details: the convenience of larger home, the ease of riding on horseback and of having servants to do everything, and so on; and his idea that with all these conveniences of wealth he would be contentedly idle. Then:] He devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To get the conveniences that these provide, he works, giving himself in the first year—indeed in the first month—of his work more fatigue of body and more anxiety of mind than he would have suffered through the whole of his life from the lack of wealth. He works to distinguish himself in some laborious profession, labouring night and day to acquire talents superior to those of his competitors. He then tries to bring those talents into public view, taking every chance to get employment. For this purpose he makes himself pleasant to everyone, serves people whom he hates, and is deferential to people he despises. Throughout his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose •which he may never arrive at, •for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is always in his power, and •which, if in old age he at last achieves it, he will find to be in no way preferable to the humble security and contentment that he had gave up in order to pursue wealth and greatness. Then. . . .he will start to learn that wealth and greatness are only trivially useful, mere trinkets, no more fit for procuring ease of body or tranquillity of mind than the tweezer-cases of the lover of toys; and, also like them, giving trouble to the person who carries them around with him that far outweighs any advantages they can provide him with. [Smith develops this comparison at great length. The useful little ‘toys’, he says, may actually be as useful as a grand house or a retinue of servants, he says, but the owner of the ‘toys’ won’t be admired and envied as much as the owner of the things that wealth and greatness procure. The only real advantage of the latter is the attitude of other people to the wealthy great man

Smith returns to the state of the wealthy man in old age:] In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly pines for the ease and idleness of youth, pleasures that are gone for ever, having been foolishly sacrificed for something that can’t give him real satisfaction now that he has it. That’s how things look to every wealthy man who is led by depression or disease to attend to his own situation and to think about why he is actually so unhappy. Power and riches appear then to be what they actually are. . . . They are immense structures •which it takes a lifetime’s work to build, •which are constantly threatening to ·collapse and· overwhelm the person who lives in them, and •which, while they stand, may save him from some smaller inconveniences but can’t protect him from any of the severer harshnesses of the season. They keep off the summer shower (·to continue the metaphor·) but not the winter storm. They always leave the rich man as much—sometimes even more—exposed to anxiety, fear, and sorrow; to diseases, danger, and death. Any of us when ill or depressed may have this view of things, entirely depreciating the great objects of human desire; but when we’re in better health and a better mood we always see them in a more favourable light. When we are in pain and sorrow our imagination seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, but in times of ease and prosperity it expands itself to everything around us. Then we are charmed by the beauty of the accommodation that palaces provide, and the living arrangements of the great; and we admire how everything is fitted to promoting their ease, anticipating their wants, gratifying their wishes, and entertaining their most trivial desires. If we take the real satisfaction that any of these things is capable providing, and consider it in itself, independently of the beauty of the arrangement that is fitted to promote it, it will always appear to be enormously negligible and trivial. But we don’t often look at it in this abstract and philosophical way. We naturally run it together it in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement, of the system or machine. . . .that produces it. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, the attainment of which is well worth all the toil and anxiety that we are so apt to bestow on it. [By ‘this complex view’ Smith means the way of looking at the thing that runs together •the thing’s fitness to produce a certain result and •the pleasures of that result.] [From here to the end of this chapter, Smith goes on at undue length about matters that aren’t central to his announced main topic in the chapter. That material won’t be much abbreviated here, because it’s a notable precursor of ideas that Smith was to present 17 years later in The Wealth of Nations, widely regarded as the first work in theoretical economics. We find here the phrase ‘invisible hand’, which was made famous by the later work.]