亚当·斯密的人格和信仰

　　Character

　　Not much is known about Smith's personal views beyond what can be deduced from his published works. His personal papers were destroyed after his death.He never married and seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother, with whom he lived after his return from France and who died six years before his own death.

　　Contemporary accounts describe Smith as an eccentric but benevolent intellectual, comically absent minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait and a smile of "inexpressible benignity".He was known to talk to himself, and had occasional spells of imaginary illness.

　　Smith is often described as a prototypical absent-minded professor. He is reported to have had books and papers stacked up in his study, with a habit he developed during childhood of speaking to himself and smiling in rapt conversation with invisible companions.

　　Various anecdotes have discussed his absentminded nature. In one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory and while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he had to be removed.Another episode records that he put bread and butter into a teapot, drank the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had. In another example, Smith went out walking and daydreaming in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24 km) outside town before nearby church bells brought him back to reality.

　　Smith is reported to have been an odd-looking fellow. One author stated that Smith "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment".Smith is reported to have acknowledged his looks at one point saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books."Smith "never" sat for portraits,so depictions of him created during his lifetime were drawn from memory, with rare exceptions. The most famous examples were a profile by James Tassie and two etchings by John Kay.The line engravings produced for the covers of 19th century reprints of The Wealth of Nations were based largely off of Tassie's medallion.

　　Religious views

　　There has been considerable scholarly debate about the nature of Adam Smith's religious views. Smith's father had a strong interest in Christianity and belonged to the moderate wing of the Church of Scotland.Smith may have gone to England with the intention of a career in the Church of England: this is controversial and depends on the status of the Snell Exhibition. At Oxford, Smith rejected Christianity and it is generally believed that he returned to Scotland as a deist.

　　Economist Ronald Coase has challenged the view that Smith was a deist,stating that while Smith may have referred to the "Great Architect of the Universe", other scholars have "very much exaggerated the extent to which Adam Smith was committed to a belief in a personal God".He based this on analysis of a remark in The Wealth of Nations where Smith writes that the curiosity of mankind about the "great phenomena of nature" such as "the generation, the life, growth and dissolution of plants and animals" has led men to "enquire into their causes". Coase notes Smith's observation that "[s]uperstition first attempted to satisfy this curiosity, by referring all those wonderful appearances to the immediate agency of the gods". Smith's close friend and colleague David Hume, with whom he agreed on most matters, was described by contemporaries as an atheist, although there is some debate about the exact nature of his views among modern philosophers.

　　In a letter to William Strahan, Smith's account of Hume's courage and tranquility in the face of death aroused violent public controversy,since it contradicted the assumption, widespread among orthodox believers, that an untroubled death was impossible without the consolation of religious belief.