ms to have had but little suspicion that differences of
wealth might issue in dangerous social consequence. Men, moreover, he
regarded as largely equal in their original powers; and differences of
character he ascribes to the various occupations implied in the
division of labor. Each man, therefore, as he follows his self-interest
promotes the general happiness of society. That principle is inherent in
the social order. "Every man," he wrote in the _Moral Sentiments_, "is
by nature first and principally recommended to his own care" and therein
he is "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of
his intention." The State, that is to say, is the sum of individual
goods; whereby to better ourselves is clearly to its benefit. And that
desire "which comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go
to the grave" is the more efficacious the less it is restrained by
governmental artifice. For we know so well what makes us happy that none
can hope to help us so much as we help ourselves.

Enlightened selfishness is thus the root of prosperity; but we must not
fall into the easy fallacy which makes Smith deaf to the plaint of the
poor. He urged the employer to have regard to the health and welfare of
the worker, a regard which was the voice of reason and humanity. Where
there was conflict between love of the _status quo_ and a social good
which Revolution alone could achieve, he did not, at least in the _Moral
Sentiments_, hesitate to choose the latter. Order was, for the most
part, indispensable; but "the greatest and noblest of all characters" he
made the reformer of the State. Yet he is too impressed by the working
of natural economic laws to belittle their influence. Employers, in his
picture, are little capable of benevolence or charity. Their rule is the
law of supply and demand and not the Sermon on the Mount. They combine
without hesitation to depress wages to the lowest point of subsistence.
They seize every occasion of commercial misfortune to make better terms
for themselves; and the greater the poverty the more submissive do
servants become so that scarcity is naturally regarded as more favorable
to industry.

Obviously enough, the inner hinge of all this argument is Smith's
conception of nature. Nor can there be much doubt of what he thought its
inner substance. Facile distinctions such as the effort of Buckle to
show that while in the _Moral Sentiments_ Adam Smith was dealing with
the u