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

circumstances which render them more or less

independent of their success and reputation in their particular

professions. Their salaries, too, put the private teacher, who

would pretend to come into competition with them, in the same

state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty, in

competition with those who trade with a considerable one. If he

sells his goods at nearly the same price, he cannot have the same

profit ; and poverty and beggary at least, if not bankruptcy and

ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he attempts to sell

them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers, that his

circumstances will not be much mended. The privileges of

graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or at least

extremely convenient, to most men of learned professions, that

is, to the far greater part of those who have occasion for a

learned education. But those privileges can be obtained only by

attending the lectures of the public teachers. The most careful

attendance upon the ablest instructions of any private teacher

cannot always give any title to demand them. It is from these

different causes that the private teacher of any of the sciences,

which are commonly taught in universities, is, in modern times,

generally considered as in the very lowest order of men of

letters. A man of real abilities can scarce find out a more

humiliating or a more unprofitable employment to turn them to.

The endowments of schools and colleges have in this manner not

only corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but have

rendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones.

 

Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no

science, would be taught, for which there was not some demand, or

which the circumstances of the times did not render it either

necessary or convenient, or at least fashionable to learn. A

private teacher could never find his account in teaching either

an exploded and antiquated system of a science acknowledged to be

useful, or a science universally believed to be a mere useless

and pedantic heap of sophistry and nonsense. Such systems,

such sciences, can subsist nowhere but in those incorporated

societies for education, whose prosperity and revenue are in a

great measure independent of their industry. Were there no public

institutions for education, a gentleman, after going through,

with application and abilities, the most complete course of

education which the circumstances of the times were supposed to

afford, could not come into the world completely ignorant of

everything which is the common subject of conversation among

gentlemen and men of the world.

 

There are no public institutions for the education of women, and

there is accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantastical, in

the common course of their education. They are taught what their

parents or guardians judge it necessary or useful for them to

learn, and they are taught nothing else. Every part of their

education tends evidently to some useful purpose ; either to

improve the natural attractions of their person, or to form their

mind to reserve, to modesty, to chastity, and to economy ; to

render them both likely to became the mistresses of a family, and

to behave properly when they have become such. In every part of

her life, a woman feels some conveniency or advantage from every

part of her education. It seldom happens that a man, in any

part of his life, derives any conveniency or advantage from some

of the most laborious and troublesome parts of his education.

 

Ought the public, therefore, to give no attention, it may be

asked, to the education of the people ? Or, if it ought to give

any, what are the different parts of education which it ought to

attend to in the different orders of the people? and in what

manner ought it to attend to them ?

 

In some cases, the state of society necessarily places the

greater part of individuals in such situations as naturally form

in them, without any attention of government, almost all the

abilities and virtues which that state requires, or perhaps can

admit of. In other cases, the state of the society does not place

the greater part of individuals in such situations; and some

attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the

almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the

people.

 

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the

far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the

great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very

simple operations; frequently to one or two. But the

understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed

by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent

in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects, too,

are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no

occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his

invention, in finding out expedients for removing difficulties

which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of

such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it

is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his

mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a

part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any

generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming

any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of

private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country

he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular

pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally

incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his

stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and

makes him regard, with abhorrence, the irregular, uncertain, and

adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity

of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength

with vigour and perseverance in any other employment, than that

to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular

trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his

intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved

and civilized society, this is the state into which the labouring

poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily

fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.

 

It is otherwise in the barbarous societies, as they are commonly

called, of hunters, of shepherds, and even of husbandmen in that

rude state of husbandry which precedes the improvement of

manufactures, and the extension of foreign commerce. In such

societies, the varied occupations of every man oblige every man

to exert his capacity, and to invent expedients for removing

difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is

kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy

stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the

understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In

those barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has

already been observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some

measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable judgment concerning

the interest of the society, and the conduct of those who govern

it. How far their chiefs are good judges in peace, or good

leaders in war, is obvious to the observation of almost every

single man among them. In such a society, indeed, no man can well

acquire that improved and refined understanding which a few men

sometimes possess in a more civilized state. Though in a rude

society there is a good deal of variety in the occupations of

every individual, there is not a great deal in those of the whole

society. Every man does, or is capable of doing, almost every

thing which any other man does, or is capable of being. Every man

has a considerable degree of knowledge, ingenuity, and invention

but scarce any man has a great degree. The degree, however, which

is commonly possessed, is generally sufficient for conducting the

whole simple business of the society. In a civilized state, on

the contrary, though there is little variety in the occupations

of the greater part of individuals, there is an almost infinite

variety in those of the whole society These varied occupations

present an almost infinite variety of objects to the

contemplation of those few, who, being attached to no particular

occupation themselves, have leisure and inclination to examine

the occupations of other people. The contemplation of so great a

variety of objects necessarily exercises their minds in endless

comparisons and combinations, and renders their understandings,

in an extraordinary degree, both acute anti comprehensive. Unless

those few, however, happen to be placed in some very particular

situations, their great abilities, though honourable to

themselves, may contribute very little to the good government or

happiness of their society. Notwithstanding the great abilities

of those few, all the nobler parts of the human character may be,

in a great measure, obliterated and extinguished in the great

body of the people.

 

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a

civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public,

more than that of people of some rank and fortune. People of some

rank and fortune are generally eighteen or nineteen years of age

before they enter upon that particular business, profession, or

trade, by which they propose to distinguish themselves in the

world. They have, before that, full time to acquire, or at least

to fit themselves for afterwards acquiring, every accomplishment

which can recommend them to the public esteem, or render them

worthy of it. Their parents or guardians are generally

sufficiently anxious that they should be so accomplished, and are

in most cases, willing enough to lay out the expense which is

necessary for that purpose. If they are not always properly

educated, it is seldom from the want of expense laid out upon

their education, but from the improper application of that

expense. It is seldom from the want of masters, but from the

negligence and incapacity of the masters who are to be had, and

from the difficulty, or rather from the impossibility, which

there is, in the present state of things, of finding any better.

The employments, too, in which people of some rank or fortune

spend the greater part of their lives, are not, like those of the

common people, simple and uniform. They are almost all of them

extremely complicated, and such as exercise the head more than

the hands. The understandings of those who are engaged in such

employments, can seldom grow torpid for want of exercise. The

employments of people of some rank and fortune, besides, are

seldom such as harass them from morning to night. They generally

have a good deal of leisure, during which they may perfect

themselves in every branch, either of useful or ornamental

knowledge, of which they may have laid the foundation, or for

which they may have acquired some taste in the earlier part of

life.

 

It is otherwise with the common people. They have little time to

spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain

them, even in infancy. As soon as they are able to work, they

must apply to some trade, by which they can earn their

subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so simple and uniform,

as to give little exercise to the understanding; while, at the

same time, their labour is both so constant and so severe, that

it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to,

or even to think of any thing else.

 

But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be

so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune; the most

essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and

account, can be acquired at so early