But, as science is only progressive, we are never certain of having ascertained the exact manner of the existence of any thing, and, therefore, we must often be mistaken in the ends for which we may conceive that the things we see are formed.The confident assumption, then, that we have exactly ascertained, in any case, the precise end, and the application of this assumed purpose, as a guide to scientific inquiry, has a decided tendency to retard the progress of science.For, the supposition that the actual arrangement is different from what it was conceived to be, is held to be inadmissible, as it would imply some deviation from the design for which we assumed it was devised.It is, as Lord Bacon expresses it, an improper blending of things human and divine, and a mode of reasoning which he, in my opinion, with much propriety repeatedly cautions his followers to avoid.
The reflections, therefore, as to the probable designs of nature, in the constitution of the world as the abode of man, which I have here introduced, would have been excluded, had it not been that Adam Smith, and many other popular writers on these subjects, sometimes indirectly, in their application of terms, sometimes directly, in their reasonings, assume, that the designs of nature are quite opposite to what I have represented, and make their conceptions of her purposes an argument in favor of their particular theoretical views.
The embryo doctrine is to be found in Virgil.
"Nonne vldes, croceos ut Tmolus odores, India mittit ebur, molles sun thura Sabcei?
At Chalybes nudi ferrum, virosaque Pontus Castorea, Ellaalum palmas Epirus equarum?
Contlnuo has leges mternaque faedera certis Imposuit naturn locis, quo tempore primurn Deucalion vacuum lapides jactavit in orbera.""Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crowned;India black eben and white ivory bears;
And soft Idume weeps her odorous Wars.
Then Pontus sends his beaver stones from far, And naked Spaniards temper steel for war:
Epirus for the Elean chariots, breeds (In hopes of palms) a race of running steeds.
This is the original contract; these the laws Imposed by Nature and by Nature's cause On sundry places, when Deucalion hurled His mother, entrails on the desert world." (85)In the same manner as by the poet, the products of different regions are spoken of by political economists, as bestowed on them by nature, are termed natural productions, and the attempt to transfer them to other sites, is held to be a procedure in opposition to the designs of providence, whose intentions, it is asserted, in giving them these productions, were, that the inhabitants of different countries should exchange the products of their several territories with one another.
There are, I conceive, two objections to this view of the subject, the first referring to the term, natural productions; the second to the purposes assumed to be the ends designed by nature.
If by the term, natural productions, we mean things produced without the aid of art, then no civilized country can be said to have any natural productions, for to all that it produces art lends its aid.It were, therefore, I think, better to substitute for the term, natural productions, that of actual productions.
But, because one country alone now produces particular commodities, we are by no means warranted to conclude that nature intended they should be produced only there.On the contrary, if we may judge of a scheme.by the mode in which its parts are arranged, and in which they act, her intentions were, that the variety of materials placed before man should generate the rudiments of arts at different points, but that these arts should be advanced from their first rough simplicity; and carried to greater and greater excellence, by passing from one region and people to another.If, therefore, we find any art confined to a particular region -- the actual production of only particular communities, the presumption is, that it is yet in its infancy, and that it will only be as it is carried to new countries and other men, and generally diffused over the whole globe, that it will advance towards maturity.Time has shown that the supposed laws and decrees of nature, which the poet declared to be of eternal power, are already abrogated by the progress of art, in most of the instances he adduces.The natural productions of Great Britain, serviceable to man, are certainly very few.The catalogue of her actual productions, even of those alone in which she preeminently excels, is greater than that of any region of equal extent.Were Virgil now alive he certainly would not cite Albania for horses, or Spain for iron.These results are entirely the work of art, to the operations of which it is impossible to put any bounds.Who can positively say what fifty years hence will be the productions of any country?
