An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

are the first objects of human curiosity, so the

science which pretends to explain them must naturally have been

the first branch of philosophy that was cuitivated. The first

philosophers, accordingly, of whom history has preserved any

account, appear to have been natural philosophers.

 

In every age and country of the world, men must have attended to

the characters, designs, and actions of one another; and many

reputable rules and maxims for the conduct of human life must

have been laid down and approved of by common consent. As soon as

writing came into fashion, wise men, or those who fancied

themselves such, would naturally endeavour to increase the number

of those established and respected maxims, and to express their

own sense of what was either proper or improper conduct,

sometimes in the more artificial form of apologues, like what are

called the fables of Aesop; and sometimes in the more simple one

of apophthegms or wise sayings, like the proverbs of Solmnon, the

verses of Theognis and Phocyllides, and some part of the works of

Hesiod. They might continue in this manner, for a long time,

merely to multiply the number of those maxims of prudence and

morality, without even attempting to arrange them in any very

distinct or methodical order, much less to connect them together

by one or more general principles, from which they were all

deducible, like effects from their natural causes. The beauty of

a systematical arrangement of different observations, connected

by a few common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of

those ancient times towards a system of natural philosophy.

Something of the same kind was afterwards attempted in morals.

The maxims of common life were arranged in some methodical order,

and connected together by a few common principles, in the same

manner as they had attempted to arrange and connect the phenomena

of nature. The science which pretends to investigate and

explain those connecting principles, is what is properly called

Moral Philosophy.

 

Different authors gave different systems, both of natural and

moral philosophy. 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 foundation 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 judgment 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. The patrons of each system of

natural and moral philosophy, naturally endeavoured to expose the

weakness of the arguments adduced to support the systems which

were opposite to their own. In examining those arguments, they

were necessarily led to consider the difference between a

probable and a demonstrative argument, between a fallacious and a

conclusive one; and logic, or the science of the general

principles of good and bad reasoning, necessarily arose out of

the observations which a scrutiny of this kind gave occasion to ;

though, in its origin, posterior both to physics and to ethics,

it was commonly taught, not indeed in all, but in the greater

part of the ancient schools of philosophy, previously to either

of those sciences. The student, it seems to have been thought,

ought to understand well the difference between good and bad

reasoning, before he was led to reason upon subjects of so great

importance.

 

This ancient division of philosophy into three parts was, in the

greater part of the universities of Europe, changed for another

into five.

 

In the ancient philosophy, whatever was taught concerning the

nature either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of

the system of physics. Those beings, in whatever their

essence might be supposed to consist, were parts of the great

system of the universe, and parts, too, productive of the most

important effects. Whatever human reason could either

conclude or conjecture concerning them, made, as it were, two

chapters, though no doubt two very important ones, of the science

which pretended to give an account of the origin and revolutions

of the great system of the universe. But in the universities of

Europe, where philosophy was taught only as subservient to

theology, it was natural to dwell longer upon these two chapters

than upon any other of the science. They were gradually more and

more extended, and were divided into many inferior chapters; till

at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so little can be known,

came to take up as much room in the system of philosophy as the

doctrine of bodies, of which so much can be known. The doctrines

concerning those two subjects were considered as making two

distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or

pnemnatics, were set in opposition to physics, and were

cultivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of

a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two.

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 very few simple and almost obvious truths, the

most careful attention can discover nothing but obscurity and

uncertainty, and can consequently produce nothing but subtlelies

and sophisms, was greatly cultivated.

 

When those two sciences had thus been set in opposition to one

another, the comparison between them naturally gave birth to a

third, to what was called ontology, or the science which treated

of the qualities and attributes which were common to both the

subjects of the other two sciences. But if subtleties and

sophisms composed the greater part of the metaphysics or

pneumatics of the schools, they composed the whole of this cobweb

science of ontology, which was likewise sometimes called

metaphysics.

 

Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man,

considered not only as an individual, but as the 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. In that philosophy, the duties of human life were

treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection of

human life, But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came

to be taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human

life were treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a

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. Casuistry, and an ascetic morality, made up, in most cases,

the greater part of the moral philosophy of the schools. By far

the most important of all the different branches of philosophy

became in this manner by far the most corrupted.

 

Such, therefore, was the common course of philosophical education

in the greater part of the universities in Europe. Logic was

taught first; ontology came in the second place; pneumatology,

comprehending the doctrine concerning the nature of the human

soul and of the Deity, in the third; in the fourth followed a

debased system of moral philosophy, which was considered as

immediately connected with the doctrines of pneumatology, with

the immortality of the human soul, and with the rewards and

punishments which, from the justice of the Deity, were to be

expected in a life to come: a short and superficial system of

physics usually concluded the course.

 

The alterations which the universities of Europe thus introduced

into the ancient course of philosophy were all meant for the

education of ecclesiastics, and to render it a more proper

introduction to the study of theology But the additional quantity

of subtlety and sophistry, the casuistry and ascetic morality

which those alterations introduced into it, certainly did not

render it more for the education of gentlemen or men of the

world, or more likely either to improve the understanding or to

mend the heart.

 

This course of philosophy is what still continues to be taught in

the greater part of the universities of Europe, with more or less

diligence, according as the constitution of each particular

university happens to render diligence more or less necessary to

the teachers. In some of the richest and best endowed

universities, the tutors content themselves with teaching a few

unconnected shreds and parcels of this corrupted course ; and

even these they commonly teach very negligently and

superficially.

 

The improvements which, in modern times have been made in several

different branches of philosophy, have not, the greater part of

them, been made in universities, though some, no doubt, have. The

greater part of universities have not even been very forward to

adopt those improvements after they were made; and several of

those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time,

the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices

found shelter and protection, after they had been hunted out of

every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and best

endowed universities have been slowest in adopting those

improvements, and the most averse to permit any considerable

change in the established plan of education. Those improvements

were more easily introduced into some of the poorer universities,

in which the teachers, depending upon their reputation for the

greater part of their subsistence, were obliged to pay more

attention to the current opinions of the world.

 

But though the public schools and universities of Europe were

originally intended only for the education of a particular

profession, that of churchmen ; and though they were not always

very diligent in instructing their pupils, even in the sciences

which were supposed neccessary for that profession; yet they

gradually drew to themselves the education of almost all other

people, particularly of almost all gentlemen and men of fortune.

No better method, it seems, could be fallen upon, of spending,

with any advantage, the long interval between infancy and that

period of life at which men begin to apply in good earnest to the

real business of the world, the business which is to employ them

during the remainder of their days. The greater part of what is

taught in schools and universities, however, does not seem to be

the most proper preparation for that business.

 

In England, it becomes every day more and more the custom to send

young people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon

their leaving school, and without sending them to any university.

Our young people, it is said, generally return home much improved

by their travels. A young man, who goes abroad at seventeen or

eighteen, and returns home at one-and-twenty, returns three or

four years older than he was when he went abroad ; and at that

age it is very difficult not to improve a good deal in three or

four years. In the course of his travels, he generally acquires

some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge,

however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak

or write them with propriety. In other respects, he commonly

returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated,

and more incapable of my serious application, either to study or

to business, than he could well have become in so short a time

had he lived at home. By travelling so very young, by spending in

the most frivolous dissipation the most previous years of