xxxThe Edinburgh Mission — 213

Claire coaxes Adam Smith to rediscover the heart of his philosophy while the Scots puzzle over a word not yet born, revealing both empathy and mischief at the table.

Claire: Another glass of claret, Adam?

Adam: Y-yes, thank you. Though I fear it may… may loosen my tongue.

Claire: That is exactly what I hope. Your tongue holds treasures rarer than gold, and I would hear them.

Adam: You are too generous, Miss Claire. My books are heavy things, filled with markets and prices. Hardly fit for such a table.

Claire: And yet, I recall another book of yours, lighter and nearer to the heart. You spoke of sympathy then—as if it were the hidden spring of all prosperity.

Adam: I—I did. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But few ask of it now. They prefer the clatter of coin to the stirrings of compassion.

Claire: Then let us be the few. Tell me—do you still believe sympathy is the truer foundation?

Adam: Yes… yes, though I say it haltingly. A man feels joy in the joy of another, sorrow in his sorrow. Without that fellow-feeling, commerce is but barter among strangers.

Claire: Fellow-feeling—you call it sympathy. In our own day, the word has shifted. We say empathy.

Adam: Emp… empathy?

Claire: Yes, empathy. To feel inside another’s skin, to know their hunger as your own.

Adam: Empathy. Hm. That is no word I know.

Stewart: Nor I. It sounds foreign, does it not?

Percy: It is simply sympathy in a new dress. One might say it laces itself tighter.

Claire: Or looser. Sympathy joins hands politely; empathy throws its arms around you without asking.

Adam: Ha! Then I begin to like it. Yes, I like it.

Watt: Like it if you wish, but what use is empathy against the evils of men? Sympathy never stopped a tyrant. Empathy never quenched a war.

Percy: True, yet without it, even peace is hollow. Empathy is no sword, James, but it is the reason we still fight to keep the world alive.

Claire: It is why we are here, Mr. Watt. Why we sit at this table with you tonight.

Stewart: Here? Why you are here?

Percy: Call it… call it hope. Hope that you might remember the heart beneath the ledger.

Stewart: Empathy, empathy. What curious company we keep.

Percy: Curious company indeed. Mark me, Dugald, the word will find its way to Parliament one day.

Watt: Parliament! Ha! Heaven help the clerks when it does.

Stewart: Adam?

Adam: Yes, Dugald?

Stewart: What just happened here?

Adam: I… I am not entirely sure. But I think we have been taught something.