the case. Not only was this virtually unrecognized at Smith's time, but even when Bagehot wrote a century later, no strong movement had appeared for reconsideration of those statical preconceptions.

Returning from the excursus and reducing the whole matter to its briefest form, this is our theorem:

Political Economy, as viewed by Adam Smith, was the technology of a practical art which was strictly responsible to a moral philosophy that correlated all human activities. Political economy, after Adam Smith, lost its sense of connection with the large moral process, and became the mystery of the craft of the capitalizer. We propose an inspection of Adam Smith's economic system, for the purpose of showing that in his mind there was no antithesis, still less a divorce, between economic technology and sociology; and that the organization of the two in his philosophy rested upon a general conception of the subordinate relationship of all specific activities within an inclusive moral system, to which, in effect, though not in detail, all students of society must ultimately return.

III

THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF LABOR

With the foregoing propositions sufficiently emphasized, we may return to The Wealth of Nations itself, and by a second survey confirm the general theorem already variously stated; viz. The whole treatise was primarily a technological inquiry, with the ways and means of producing national wealth as its objective; it assumed that this interest had a value of its own; at the same time it assumed that this interest in production is tributary to the interest in consumption; it assumes, further, that the wealth interest in general is but a single factor in the total scheme of human and divine purposes, and that, whatever the technique of satisfying the wealth interest may prove to be, the place of that interest in the whole harmony of human relations has to be established by a calculus in whose equations the formulas of economic technique are merely subordinate terms.

All of this was understood by Smith's friend Dugald Stewart, and it was uttered by him with sufficient clearness more than a century ago. It

may assist our own insight to recall some of his words: 1

The foregoing very imperfect hints appear to me to form not only a proper, but in some measure a necessary introduction to the few remarks I have to offer on Mr. Smith's Inquiry: as they tend to illustrate a connection between his system of commercial politics [sic], and those speculations of his earlier years in which he aimed more professedly at the advancement of human improvement and happiness. It is this view of political economy that can alone render it interesting to the moralist, and can dignify calculations of profit and loss in the eye of the philosopher. Mr. Smith has alluded to it in various passages of his work, but he has nowhere explained himself fully on the subject; and the great stress he has laid on the division of labour in increasing its productive powers, seems at first sight, to point to a different and very melancholy conclusion:-that the same causes which promote the progress of the arts, tend to degrade the mind of the artist; and, of consequence, that the growth of national wealth implies a sacrifice of the character of the people.

The fundamental doctrines of Mr. Smith's system are now so generally known, that it would be tedious to offer any recapitulation of them in this place, even if I could hope to do justice to the subject, within the limits which I have prescribed to myself. I shall content myself, therefore, with remarking, in general terms, that the great and leading object of his speculations is, to illustrate the provisions made by nature on the principles of the human mind, and in the circumstances of man's external situation, for a gradual and progressive augmentation in the

means of national wealth; and to demonstrate that the most effectual plan for advancing a people to greatness, is to maintain that order of things which nature has pointed out, by allowing every man, as long as he observes the rules of justice, to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into the freest competition with those of his fellow citizens. Every system of policy which endeavours either by extraordinary encouragements to draw toward a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than what would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraint, to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote.

In other words, what we know of Adam Smith's whole scheme of thinking justifies the interpretation that, as it presented itself to his mind, what we now formulate as the general sociological problem might be explained as follows:

The destiny of mankind is to work out a certain moral achievement. The great intellectual task is to understand the conditions and implications of that destiny. There are certain grand divisions of that task. Not touching upon those which belong within the scope of so-called natural or physical science, the first division of the intellectual problem of discovering the conditions and implications of human destiny-that