III. ADAM SMITH AND "THE WEALTH OF NATIONS"
By Professor Charles J. Bullock
FROM 1752 to 1764 the author of "The Wealth of Nations" occupied the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow College, and his writings were the natural outgrowth of the lectures delivered to his college classes. Following an unbroken tradition received from Greek philosophy, Smith conceived the province of moral philosophy to be as broad as the entire range of human conduct, both individual and social. "Wherein," says Smith, "consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as a member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of mankind, was the object which the ancient moral philosophy proposed to investigate." Smith's own lectures followed substantially this plan of treatment.
THE UNDERLYING THEORY OF SMITH'S PHILOSOPHY
At Smith's hands, however, many of the traditional subjects received new treatment and development. In 1759, Smith published his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," a treatise on ethics which immediately won for him international fame as a philosopher. This work presented the doctrine that the moral judgment is, in the last analysis, an expression of impartial sympathy with the motives and result of human action. From sympathy Smith derives the sense of justice, which is "the main pillar of the social structure." Underlying the book is the common eighteenth-century theory of a beneficent natural order, by which it was held that a benevolent Creator had so ordered the universe as to produce the greatest possible human happiness. In this view of the matter the problem of philosophy, including politics and economics, is to discover the natural laws which make for the happiness of God's creatures. Of
337
