Adam Smith says that self-deceit is "the source of half the disorders of human life." The remark has a hyperbolic sound, but Smith's great concern with seeing ourselves as an impartial spectator would see us suggests that he may have meant it quite literally - that on his view of morality, self-deceit is the moral danger to be overcome, and clarity about oneself, by contrast, the most important moral achievement. I propose to read the remark this way, to use it as a clue to Smith's entire account of morality: and of the self.