The music of social intercourse: synchrony in Adam Smith.

• Author: Klein, Daniel B.

In an article in Psychological Science entitled "Synchrony and Cooperation," Scott C. Wiltermuth and Chip Heath tell how marching, singing, and dancing conduce to cooperation. They report on three experiments showing that greater cooperation in public-goods games occurred in the variant in which subjects either had previously been put to marching together (as opposed to walking normally) or were singing or moving in synchrony. They note that "[t]he idea that synchronous movement improves group cohesion has old roots" (2009, 1) and cite Emile Durkheim's writings as well as several more recent works of historical anthropology and psychology.

Here we examine the place of language denoting musicality or synchrony in the works of Adam Smith. His first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments ([1759] 1982), is suffused with the sense that synchrony is fundamental to human sympathy, cooperation, and well-being. We explore the place of synchrony or harmony in Smith's writings and visions, and we discuss the relationship between The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (Smith [1776] 1976, hereafter WN).

Sympathy as Coordinated Sentiment

In his moral theory, Smith considers a number of sources of moral approval, and at each turn he posits or invokes an accompanying spectator. In judging an action, we consult our sympathy with a spectator who is proper or natural to the occasion. Smith's idea of sympathy is mutually coordinated sentiment. The sentiment is shared; it exists as a common experience; much like the beat of a chant or melody of a song, it is neither mine, nor yours, but ours. To convey this notion of coordination, Smith often uses figures of speech denoting synchrony, as when our sentiments "keep time together."

The terms used include keeping or beating time, concord and discord, pitch, and, most important, harmony. Table 1 shows the number of occurrences of musical or synchronous terms in reference to sentiment coordination.

Synchronous Language at Important Moments

Besides being pervasive in Smith's first book, the language highlighting synchrony shows up especially at significant points in his writing. Smith simply posits the human yearning for sympathy, or coordinated sentiment, the importance of which can hardly be overstated. He speaks of a "character... so detestable as that of one who takes pleasure to sow dissension among friends." He asks: "Yet wherein does the atrocity of this so much abhorred injury consist?" "It is in depriving them of that friendship itself, in robbing them of each other's affections, from which both derived so much satisfaction; it is in disturbing the HARMONY of their hearts, and putting an end to that happy commerce which had before subsisted between them. These affections, that HARMONY, this commerce, are felt ... to be of more importance to happiness than all the little services which could be expected to flow from them" (TMS, 39). (Throughout this article, when quoting Smith, we highlight terms denoting synchrony by putting them in full capitals.)

Smith elaborates an example of a man who has suffered an offense: "He longs for that relief which nothing can afford him but the entire CONCORD of the affections of the spectators with his own. To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, BEAT TIME to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole consolation" (TMS, 22).

Smith explains that our yearning for sympathy leads us to modulate our own sentiments and passions. Continuing from the preceding quotation, he states: "But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that PITCH in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural TONE, in order to reduce it to HARMONY and CONCORD with the emotions of those who are about him" (TMS, 22).

Early in TMS, Smith distinguishes two sets of virtues. One set, the virtues of modulating our passions, belongs to "the great, the awful and respectable" virtues "of self-denial, of self-government." The other set consists of "[t]he soft, the gentle, the amiable virtues," from which we indulge the sentiments and passions of others: "And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our...