nt for its progress,
pointing out, doubtless from his abundant French experience, that an
absolute government gives to the commercial class an insufficient status
of honor. He pointed out, doubtless with France again in his mind, the
evils of an arbitrary system of taxation. "They are commonly converted,"
he says with unwonted severity, "into punishments on industry; and also,
by their unavoidable inequality, are more grievous, than by the real
burden which they impose." And he emphasizes his belief that the best
taxes are those which, like taxes upon luxury, press least upon the
poor.

Such insight is extraordinary enough in the pre-Adamite epoch; but even
more remarkable are his psychological foundations. The wealth of the
State, he says, is the labor of its subjects, and they work because the
wants of man are not a stated sum, but "multiply every moment upon
him." The desire for wealth comes from the idea of pleasure; and in the
_Treatise on Human Nature_ he discusses with superb clarity the way in
which the idea of pleasure is related at once to individual satisfaction
and to that sympathy for others which is one of the roots of social
existence. He points out the need for happiness in work. "The mind," he
writes, "acquires new vigor, enlarges its powers and faculties, and by
an assiduity in honest industry both satisfies its own appetites and
prevents growth of unnatural ones"; though, like his predecessor,
Francis Hutcheson, he overemphasizes the delights opened by civilization
to the humbler class of men. He gives large space in his discussion to
the power of will; and, indeed, one of the main advantages he ascribed
to government was the compulsion it puts upon us to allow the categories
of time and space a part in our calculations. He does not, being in his
own life entirely free from avarice, regard the appetite for riches as
man's main motive to existence; though no one was more urgent in his
insistence that "the avidity of acquiring goods and possessions for
ourselves and our nearest friends is ... destructive of society" unless
balanced by considerations of justice. And what he therein intended may
be gathered from the liberal notions of equality he manifested. "Every
person," he wrote in a famous passage, "if possible ought to enjoy the
fruits of his labor in a full possession of all the necessaries, and
many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt but such an equality
is most suitable to human nature