Ronald Walter Harris

Reason and Nature in the Eighteenth Century

In Book V, Chapter i of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith surveyed the history of human knowledge, beginning with the Greeks. As soon as men had acquired the technique of language, they began to ask questions about their environment, and thus the first philosophers were natural philosophers. 'The great phenomena of nature—the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, eclipses, comets; thunder, lightning, and other extraordinary meteors; the generation, the life, growth, and dissolution of plants and animals—are objects which, as they necessarily excite the wonder, so they naturally call forth the curiosity, of mankind to enquire into their causes.' Natural philosophers were on firm ground so long as they confined themselves to the observable facts of their environment. It was different for the moral philosophers. Men through long periods of time acquired a knowledge through experience of proper and improper conduct, and moral philosophers sought to arrange these ideas in some sort of order. 'But the arguments by which they supported those different systems, far from being always demonstrations, were frequently at best but very slender probabilities, and sometimes mere sophisms, which had no other foundations but the inaccuracy and ambiguity of common language. Speculative systems have in all ages of the world been adopted for reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgement of any man of common sense in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had the greatest.'

In this way the common experience of mankind in ethics was overlaid by speculative systems; and the same was true of natural philosophy, which became increasingly obscured by metaphysics. In this, Adam Smith argued, men had taken a wrong turning, when they turned away from the study of the natural world, of which they might have learnt much, to concern themselves with speculative and theological systems of which they could know little. 'The proper subject of experiment and observation, a subject in which a careful attention is capable of making so many useful discoveries, was almost entirely neglected. The subject in which, after a few very simple and almost obvious truths, the most careful attention can discover nothing but obscurity and uncertainty, and can consequently produce nothing but subtleties and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.' The early Greek natural philosophers had made progress in discovering the principles of 'the happiness and perfection of human life', but later mataphysicians and theologians diverted attention from the present life to the life to come. 'In the ancient philosophy the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy it was frequently represented as generally, or rather, as almost always, inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and abasement of a monk, not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man.'

Adam Smith was advocating the need for a new course of studies and a new spirit of enquiry in British universities to bring them into line with the progress of thought which had taken place since the seventeenth century. In his own great work, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he was attempting to do in the study of economic relations something of what Newton had done in the study of physics. The parallel is indeed striking, and furnishes the key to the understanding of his thought. Newton had shown that the physical world was governed by laws; men might live through millenia without recognising them, but they were bound by them all the same; they might explain phenomena in other ways, but they were none the less wrong, and Newton was right. The same was true of the world of economics. Certain laws operated whether men recognised them or not, and whether men tried to reverse the process or not. In Adam Smith's book the most important words, and those which recur most frequently, are nature and naturally, and they form the central idea around which his thesis is woven. Thus in Book IV, Chapter ix, he argued that the natural economic forces in every man worked for progress, even when he was hampered by a faulty and restrictive economic system. In the political body the natural effort which every man is continually making to better his own condition is a principle of preservation capable of preventing and correcting, in many respects, the bad effects of a political economy, in some degree, both partial and oppressive. Such a political economy, though it no doubt retards more or less, is not always capable of stopping altogether the natural progress of a nation towards health and prosperity, and still less of making it go backwards. If a nation could not prosper without the enjoyment of perfect liberty and perfect justice, there is not in the world a nation which could ever have prospered. In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man. The laws governing economic relationships were as intelligible as those governing the physical world, but even less generally understood. There was a 'gross ignorance and stupidity which, in a civilised society seem so frequently to benumb the understandings of all the inferior ranks of people', and Adam Smith was in no doubt that it was the duly of the state to educate the people out of this ignorance. The remedy, he urged, was 'the study of science and philosophy, which the state might render almost universal among all people of middling or more than middling rank and fortune', since 'science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition; and where all the superior ranks of people were secured from it, the inferior ranks could not be much exposed to it.' (V, i.)

In economic affairs Adam Smith set out principles so radical in their content and so revolutionary in their implications as to make his book one of the most influential in the whole range of English history. The importance of The Wealth of Nations far transcended the details of economic theory. It did indeed lay the foundations of political economy as an academic discipline, but beyond this it formulated a philosophy of man as a social being which makes the book one of the great products of the age of Enlightenment. For Adam Smith's economic theory rested upon his particular view of the nature of man.

To understand this, we must turn first to his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). 'The happiness of mankind, as well as of all other rational creatures, seems to have been the original purpose intended by the Author of Nature when he brought them into existence. No other end seems worthy of that supreme wisdom and divine benignity which we necessarily ascribe to him; and this opinion, which we are led to by the abstract consideration of his infinite perfections, is still more confirmed by the examination of the works of Nature, which seem all intended to promote happiness, and to guard against misery'. (Part III, Chapter v.) Being primarily concerned with their own happiness, men were fundamentally egocentric. A man, for instance, would be more concerned at the prospect of his losing a little finger than at the news of a catastrophe which had engulfed the entire Chinese nation. (III, iii.) However, this conclusion did not lead Adam Smith to a Hobbesian view of human nature, because he held that the happiness which all men sought could be found only within the moral order. True self-interest therefore did not conflict with a universal benevolence. Nor were the desires of men ever wholly bad: 'Nature, even in the present depraved state of mankind, does not seem to have dealt so unkindly with us, as to have endowed us with any principle which is wholly and in every respect evil or which, in no degree and in no direction, can be the proper object of praise and approbation.' (II, i.)

A man therefore might legitimately seek the gratification of his desires, but always within the limits of the moral order. Those limits imposed the necessity of a just moderation. Too much ambition was as much a sin as too little ambition. Within moral limits, however, a man might pursue his desires to the full extent of his powers: 'In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments, he may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle, in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle, or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end.' (II, ii.) It was this verdict of the spectators, this desire of all men for the approbation of their fellows, which acted as a most powerful force in keeping them within moral bounds. 'Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely....He desires not only praise, but praise-worthiness....The love and admiration which we naturally conceive for those whose character and conduct we approve of, necessarily dispose us to desire to become ourselves the objects of the like agreeable sentiments, and to be as amiable and as admirable as those whom we love and admire the most.' (III, ii.) And if this motive is not sufficient to inculcate morality, there re- mains the fact of nature that true happiness can be obtained in no other way. But morality alone is not sufficient: 'The industrious knave cultivates the soil; the indolent good man leaves it uncultivated. Who ought to reap the harvest? Who starve, and who live in plenty? The natural course of things decides in favour of the knave: the natural sentiments of mankind in favour of the man of virtue.' (III, v.)

In a dilemma of this sort Adam Smith was in no doubt that the voice of nature would prevail. But if this was so, what importance could be attached to feelings of universal benevolence? They arose, he was convinced, from a recognition of the existence of 'that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being, who directs all the movements of nature, and who is determined, by his own unalterable perfections, to maintain in it at all times the greatest possible quantity of happiness.' (IV, iii.) This might indeed be 'the sole principle of action of the Deity.' It is not easy to conceive what other motive an independent and all-perfect Being, who stands in need of nothing external, and whose happiness is complete in himself, can act from.' (VII, ii.) But, however this might be. it was certain to Adam Smith that men must act from many other motives, and that feelings of benevolence were not always among the most important which governed their actions. We return therefore to the starting-point of Adam Smith's moral philosophy. Men were naturally egocentric, motivated by passions which sought their own fulfilment; but 'it is the great fallacy of Dr Mandeville's book [The Fable of the Bees] to represent every passion as wholly vicious' (VII, ii.), for most men were capable of pursuing their own happiness within the bounds of morality.