224 ADAM SMITH. 



third subdivision of this subject, and from what is more 

 fully explained in the Appendix. In truth Dr. Smith 

 here, as elsewhere, while he differs with the Econo- 

 mists, falls into some of their most erroneous views. 

 He regards agriculture as wholly different from manu- 

 factures, because nature here works with man, and 

 adds to the amount of his possessions. But the powers 

 of nature are as much required to aid us in a chemical, 

 nay, even in a mechanical process, as in agriculture. 

 The fermentation of grains to distil a beer or a spirit 

 from them is as much an operation of nature as the ger- 

 mination of the seeds to grow the crop ; it is as impos- 

 sible for man to augment the quantity of matter in 

 tilling the ground, as in working up the produce ; all he 

 does in either case is to new-mould, and to fashion ; and 

 the rude produce is as useless before he manufactures 

 it, as the water, the salts, and the gaseous bodies, of 

 which vegetables consist, are useless before the pro- 

 cess of vegetation. The difference in trades which re- 

 place foreign, and those which replace home capitals, 

 is better founded, although the sounder view is to con- 

 sider all nations which interchange each other's com- 

 modities as one great community, and to regard the 

 gain of each, even by the labour which the capital of 

 any other puts in motion, and by the accumulation of 

 profits which thence arises, as the gain more or less 

 directly of that other ; thus extending the doctrine of 

 the division of labour to the whole community of 

 nations, upon which doctrine we have seen depends 

 the refutation of the errors respecting productive and 

 unproductive labour in the case of any one nation. 



III. The different progress of wealth in different 

 nations forms the subject of the third book, which 

 therefore treats in four successive chapters, first, of 

 the national progress of opulence, by the cultivation 

 of the country, and then by the improvement of the 

 towns ; next of foreign commerce, as capital is safer in 

 the first than the second, and in the second than in 



