But, we are told, Political Economy is only the science of selfishness; Adam Smith is the prophet of individualism; grow rich per fas et nefas is its ultimate teaching. Such a judgment is evidence of much levity and little enlightenment. How could the man who conceived the study of human interests on so large a scale, the philosopher who acknowledged Hutcheson as his master and gave his ideas a still more expansive character, be the apostle of egotism; and how can the science which he founded be its gospel? There is here an error of fact and a defect of appreciation. Hutcheson had based moral philosophy on the feeling which, according to him, engendered all the other virtues, on benevolence, which is disinterested, busied with the welfare of others, with the public weal and the general interest. Adam Smith went further, and sought to base it on a still more energetic feeling, on sympathy.

The first sentence of his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, which is a full resumÉ of his theory, is as follows: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” And this is no empty declaration on his part. It is the thought which of all in his book is nearest to his heart; and hence he energetically assails those philosophers who look upon self-love and the refinements of self-love as the universal cause of all our sentiments, and seek to explain sympathy by self-love.

La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville and Helvetius never met with a more determined or energetic adversary. Nowhere have the sweet and amiable virtues, such as ingenuous condescension, indulgent humanity, and the respectable and severe virtues, such as disinterestedness and self-control which subject our movements to the requirements of the dignity of our [pg 043] nature, been better understood or interpreted. Adam Smith is the philosopher of sympathy.46 His theory triumphs over the cowardly and shameful egotism which concentrates the moral life of the individual in himself, and separates it from the life of the human race of the outrÉ stoicism which refuses the aid of sentiment to reason.47 According to him, the law of private morals is sympathy; the law of natural jurisprudence, justice; the law of the production of wealth, free labor. But while he defended this principle with energy, he did not become guilty of a real recantation by worshiping the idol he had just overthrown. He would have been culpable of the strangest of all contradictions if he had made the vice which he had just lacerated the very pivot of another part of his teaching.

We regret that this essay, which has already very much exceeded the limits we assigned it in the beginning, will not permit us to reproduce here Knies' beautiful demonstration, in which he so learnedly and eloquently vindicates Adam Smith from this strange imputation, thereby placing Political Economy on its true basis, the basis of morals, by removing in a decisive way, all pretext of error and all means of subterfuge. This part is one of the best features in his most excellent work on “Political Economy, from the historical Point of View.” We shall return to this matter.