 Smith devotes considerable space to the Stoic virtue of self-command. Another eighteenth century Scottish thinker who devotes considerable space to it is Hugh Blair (1718–1800), minister of the High Kirk of St Giles in Edinburgh and first professor of rhetoric and belles lettres at Edinburgh University. Blair’s sermons bear ample witness to his interest in Stoic virtue. For example, in the sermon ‘On our imperfect knowledge of a future state’ he wonders why we have been left in the dark about our future state. Blair replies that to see clearly into our future would have disastrous consequences. We would be so spellbound by the sight that we would neglect the arts and labours which support social order and promote the happiness of society. We are, believes Blair, in ‘the childhood of existence’, being educated for immortality. The education is of such a nature as to enable us to develop virtues such as self-control and self-denial. These are Stoic virtues, and Blair’s sermons are full of the need to be Stoical. In his sermon ‘Of the proper estimate of human life’ he says: “if we cannot control fortune, [let us] study at least to control ourselves.” Only through exercise of self- control is a virtuous life possible, and only through virtue can we attain happiness. He adds that the search for worldly pleasure is bound to end in disappointment and that that is just as well. For it is through the failure of the search that we come to a realisation both of the essential vanity of the life we have been living and also of the need to turn to God and to virtue. For many, the fact of suffering is the strongest argument there is against the existence of God. Blair on the contrary holds that our suffering provides us with a context within which we can discover that our true nature is best realised by the adoption of a life-plan whose overarching principle is religious.