VIII

CONCLUSION

If logic and a deliberate methodology ruled the world, or even the supposedly intellectual part of it, Adam Smith would have been as immediately, if not as intensely, influential upon concrete moral philosophy, or sociology, as he was upon economics. There is a good deal of plausibility in the Marxian version of the reasons why logic did not have its perfect work in the social theories of the century following the publication of The Wealth of Nations. The Marxian explanation, however, falls very far short of the whole psychology of the events. The fact remains that Smith set a new standard of inquiry into the economic section of the conditions of life, while life presented itself to him. as, on the whole, a moral affair, in which the economic process is logically a detail. The

further fact remains that all the consistencies of logic enjoined analysis of the whole process which human experience composes, so that knowledge of all the antecedent conditions and constituent processes of life might become as positive as the knowledge of economic technology which

Smith set a new pace in acquiring. The third fact remains that a suspensive veto, analyze it how we will, held that wider moral science pretty effectually in check for a century. It was in embryo in Adam Smith's moral philosophy. The need of it was encountered in his doctrinizings about social relations which were more than economic. Men's interests in these wider social relations were too weak effectively to divert attention from all that immediately pertained to wealth. This diagnosis applies throughout the century following Adam Smith. Men so focalized the wealth interests that all other interests became relatively invisible.

If rhetoric which confessedly recalls the flickering fame of the late Mr. Joseph Cook may be employed to express the situation, the social sciences were still a metaphysical Bastille which could be destroyed only from within. Mental revolt had pierced a few observation-slots through the inner walls of the prison, and had sapped and mined parts of the outer inclosure. Although we can now see that the structure founded on the Thomasian theology was crumbling, it still effectually immured knowledge. The series of assaults, beginning with Descartes, continued in the line of Locke and Hume in England, of Wolff and Kant in Germany, had widened the

outlook breaches, to be sure, but had also partially filled them with intellectual débris. Psychology was still more speculative than positive. Ethics was metaphysical rather than inductive. Sociology, so far as it had been extemporized by the struggle for liberty, was uncentered and individualistic, with only a faint premonition of the social reality. Not until physical science and psychology and ethics became fully self-conscious could they together develop force enough completely to raze the dogmatic dungeon, and to found in its place a free republic of moral philosophy.

Dropping the figure, we may say literally that it was too much of a task for the interpreters of human experience to develop at once the full logical implications of the progressive principles imbedded in Adam Smith's system. The reconstruction on the physical side that is symbolized by the name of Darwin was an indispensable aid. Psychological analysis, taking a new start with Hegel's Phänomenenologie des Geistes, had to establish intellectual self-confidence and to supply a critical technique. Not least important, perhaps, the little group of Benthamites, even more ignorantly feared and more arrogantly misrepresented as utilitarians than as economists, were needed to break the monopoly of the superstitions

which were estopping real investigation of the origin and standards of our moral valuations. After the way had been prepared, and the critical apparatus had been invented for that program of ethical judgment which I have called telicism,1 the line of march could once more be resumed. The fulness of the times had come for co-ordination of the most matter-of-fact economic technology with a thoroughly objective sociology, within the horizon of a valid moral philosophy. We are entering a period in which judgment of social relations is to operate in full vision of this larger and truer perspective.

It is therefore not fanciful to repeat in substance the proposition with which this inquiry began, viz.: Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing inter-> est in the technique of the production of wealth.. 1 General Sociology, pp. 669-84, et passim.