458 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



The second important advance which Adam Smith 

 made in the treatment of the social problem was that he 

 took a broader view of the real sources of economic 

 prosperity than the French school had done. According 

 to him the moving principle in social life is labour, the 

 land being only one of the objects upon which labour 

 is spent. By this he pushed into the foreground the 

 interests of labour as distinct from those of property, and 

 this foremost position labour has not lost but increas- 

 ingly asserted ever since. 



specially economic problems which 

 he treated attracting, almost ex- 

 clusively, the attention of thinkers 

 and statesmen to his work. Recent 

 historians of political economy have, 

 however, drawn attention to the 

 broader, if not deeper, philosophical 

 setting of Adam Smith's doctrine. 

 This was clearly indicated in a well- 

 known passage at the end of the 

 ' Theory of Moral Sentiments,' in 

 which the author promises to give 

 "in another discourse ... an 

 account of the general principles of 

 law and government and of the 

 different revolutions they have 

 undergone in the different ages and 

 periods of Society, not only in what 

 concerns justice, but in what con- 

 cerns jjolice, revenue, and arms, 

 and whatever else is the object of 

 law." And as J. K. Ingram says : 

 " This shows how little it was 

 Smith's habit to separate (except 

 provisionally) in his conceptions of 

 his reseaiches the economic pheno- 

 mena of Society from all the rest, 

 . . . the words above quoted . . . 

 containing an anticipation, wonder- 

 ful for his period, of general soci- 

 ology, both statical and dynamical, 

 an anticipation which becomes still 

 more remarkable when we learn 

 from his literary executors that he 

 had formed the plan of a connected 



history of the liberal sciences and 

 elegant arts, which must have 

 added to the branches of social 

 study already enumerated, a view 

 of the intellectual progress of 

 society. Though these large de- 

 signs were never carried out in their 

 integrity, as indeed at that period 

 they could not have been ade- 

 quately realised, it has resulted 

 from them that though economic 

 phenomena formed the special sub- 

 ject of the 'Wealth of Nations,' 

 Smith yet incorporated into that 

 work much that relates to the other 

 social aspects, incurring thereby the 

 censure of some of his followers, who 

 insist with pedantic narrowness on 

 the strict isolation of the economic 

 domain." — ('A History of Political 

 Economy,' 1893, p. 89. ) In fact, eco- 

 nomic science fell, for a long time, 

 under — and is only now gradually 

 emerging from — the exclusive sway 

 of the atomising spirit of thought. 

 The peculiar connection of Adam 

 Smith's ethical and economic philo- 

 sophy, centring in his conception of 

 justice as a harmonising tendency 

 towards an equitable state of things 

 not unlike the pleasing spectacle of 

 a " well - arranged mechanism," is 

 interestinglj' brought out by Dr 

 Ludwig Stein in ' Die Soziale Frage ' 

 (2nd ed., p. 369). 



