28 ECONOMICS 



vidual. He simply shared in the change of mind that was being 

 operated for British eighteenth century thinking by the slow- 

 working influences of the time, and that found their most definite 

 philosophical expression in the skepticism of David Hume. So that 

 an admirer of Hume might be pardoned for thinking that Hume 

 did for political economy a service somewhat analogous to what he 

 did for philosophy. However that may be 7 an appreciable change 

 was coming over British thinking, characteristic out-croppings of 

 which meet us on every page of Adam Smith. So far as he was hard- 

 headed and factual he was a child of his time; but so far, again, was he 

 also child of his time as he preserved, along with the new habit, the 

 metaphysical bias from which it was not given his century to shake 

 itself free. 



The feature of Adam Smith's thinking that is here under notice as 

 marking an advance in the progress of the science may be viewed in 

 another aspect. There has been not a little discussion as to the 

 method of investigation followed by Adam Smith. Spokesmen for 

 each of the rival methods -- "induction " and "deduction ' : -have 

 claimed Adam Smith on their side. But all that this means is 

 that Adam Smith is in his ways of thinking at a transition. So far as 

 the deductive method goes with the metaphysical way of handling 

 things, the abundant use of it by Adam Smith shows the vitality of 

 the metaphysical animus; and so far as the inductive method is a 

 suitable companion of the more matter-of-fact habit, Adam Smith's 

 frequent resort to it points to the presence of a new item in the 

 conceptual equipment of the science. For this reason it is a matter of 

 some difficulty to define Adam Smith's true attitude in a summary 

 statement. 



Adam Smith, like the Physiocrats, is concerned to find the natural 

 laws of wealth, and his discussion runs almost habitually on the 

 causal sequences of things; and, so far, justifies the title of his book, 

 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. But 

 a closer examination shows that, in his handling of the phenomena of 

 wealth, he is not content to let the inquiry stop with the description 

 of proximate causes. His feeling for reality is not appeased until the 

 causal material situation is resolved or, at any rate, is resolvable, into 

 its ultimate spiritual causes; in other words, for him things must 

 have a meaning beyond what the naked situation yields. For him 

 the causal sequence regularly implies a spiritual sequence, and some- 

 times a spiritual sequence is discernible where the causal sequence 

 is broken. His plan, therefore, like the Physiocrats', demands 

 a scheme that shall be competent to exhibit the significance of the 

 economic processes. But, while this much may be said with con- 

 fidence, it is not so easy to say what that scheme is. It is not put 

 forth with the Physiocrats' naive frankness. Adam Smith is a 



