The First Principle of Public Affection

Burke worried that the leaders of the french revolution were promoting a scheme for educating the young influenced by jean jacques rousseau. For burke, it was revealing that the french revolutionaries were erecting statues to aphilooph who had abandoned his illegitimate children at foundling hospitals. Adam smith agreed with burke about the biological tie parent to child as the natural root of social order. Darwin adopted smith's idea of sympathy to explain how the extension of sympathy beyond the family could explain social order generally. People develop affection for one another when they are habitually brought together by the circumstances of life.