ADAM SMITH. 279 



way be ranked in the same class, either with capital or with 

 land. Labour is applicable to both land and capital. It 

 is the means of rendering them useful, or of increasing their 

 utility. It is truly the origin and source of wealth ; but is, 

 in no sense of the word, wealth itself unless, indeed, we 

 conceive the pleasure of some kinds of exertion to be a use 

 of labour analogous to the enjoyment of riches. Wealth 

 may be said to be every thing from which man immediately 

 derives the supply of his wants and desires. Its component 

 parts are as various as those wants and desires, though it is, 

 no doubt, susceptible of various general divisions, liable to 

 no just exceptions in point of accuracy. Thus, it may be 

 ranged in the two classes of matter and mind, or property 

 and talents ; and property may be divided into animate and 

 inanimate, or the lifeless and the living, things over which 

 man has dominion. By a combination of those component 

 parts of wealth by the operation of talents on property, 

 and by a combination of the component parts of property 

 by the operation of living powers upon inert matter, man is 

 enabled to increase the whole of his possessions, and to aug- 

 ment the sum of his enjoyments. In by far the greater 

 number of instances, some exertion of labour is necessary 

 to profit by his possessions ; but this is not universally the 

 case, unless we go so far as to term that exertion labour, 

 which consists in the very act of enjoyment, or of use ; for 

 it would scarcely be correct, to consider the eating of wild 

 fruits on the tree as the labour paid for the acquisition of 

 them ; it is rather the enjoyment of them and has nothing 

 in it analogous to the previous exertion required to procure 

 similar fruits by culture, and which must be followed by the 

 same exertion in using them. 



III. 



I have now before me a number of Dr. Smith's Letters, 

 written when at Oxford, between the years 1740 and 1746, 

 to his mother : they are almost all upon mere family and 

 personal matters ; most of them indeed upon his linen and 

 other such necessaries, but all show his strong affection for 

 his parent. Writing 2d July, 1744, he says : 



" I am quite inexcusable for not writing to you oftener. 

 I think of you every day, but always defer writing till the 



