It is invention, which showing how profitable returns may be got from the one, and how subsistence procured from the other, that may most fitly be esteemed the cause of the existence of both; and hence this power has most title to be ranked as the true generator of states and people.It is certainly, therefore, very far from being a self-evident truth, that the legislator, by employing the resources of the country in rousing this principle to activity, necessary retards, instead of advancing, the increase of wealth and the prosperity of the state.
Chapter IIOf the Identity of National and Individual Interests Considered as a Theoretical Principle Though the doctrine of the identity of the interests of individuals and communities cannot be established as a simple and self-evident principle, from the assumption that the objects which individuals designedly pursue, for their private emolument, are precisely those which most promote the progress of the general opulence; and though in this sense, as we have seen, the identity of the ends which they pursue is nominal, not real, yet it follows not from this that the doctrine is necessarily erroneous.
Many doctrines which are far more simple or self-evident are nevertheless true.Many, which at first sight seem even contradictory to experience, are found, by closer examination, to be legitimately deducible from it.
It is manifest that the general opulence, however brought about, results, in some way or another, from the action and reaction on each other of the whole system of persons and things, which constitute communities, or belong to them.It is then at least possible to conceive that it is entirely produced by the efforts of individuals to advance their private fortunes.That, though it is the object of individuals to acquire wealth, and of nations to create it, yet that the series of actions which the former generate, in endeavoring to make the acquisition, are precisely those which are best calculated to forward the creation; and that thus, unconsciously to himself, each member of the community, while seeking merely his own benefit, necessarily adopts the very course which is most for the advantage of the society, and, to use our author's words, "is led in this, as in many other instances, by an invisible hand, to promote an end that was no part of his intention."In this view of the subject the doctrine would put off the shape of a simple principle, and assume that of a theory deduced from an examination of the whole series of actions that are concerned in the production of the wealth of communities; and in this way we may conceive that it might be satisfactorily proved by an extended inquiry into the Nature of the Wealth of Nations.
Such is the theory of this department of human action, which the author gives.If it be found not to be inconsistent with the phenomena, but fairly deduced from them, the truth of the peculiar doctrine, which it is the aim of his work to maintain, would be established by it.
Before endeavoring to explain it, or attempting to show wherein it fails, it is proper to remark that it is blended, throughout the whole work, with that notion of the exact identity of the ends which nations and individuals pursue, the fallacy of which I trust I have, in some measure, exposed in the preceding chapter.I shall afterwards have occasion to show that this arrangement of his materials sometimes renders his arguments illogical.
I am led to notice it at present, because I wish to account for the appearance of this assumption, unremarked by me, in the analysis of the theory I am about to give.
It must be apparent to every one acquainted with the system, that its parts would not in any way hang together, if deprived of the support which this popular notion gives to them.Indeed, I conceive that the truest account that could be given of it, would be to say, that it is altogether founded on the assumption that national and individual wealth and prosperity increase, and must increase, in precisely the same manner; and that the theoretical part of it merely serves to show how the increase of individual wealth does, in reality, produce the events which we see accompanying national wealth; that the former is the cause, and the sole cause, of the latter, and must therefore produce all the phenomena attendant on it, being taken for an undeniable fact, and the author seeming merely to have proposed to show how it may be supposed to produce those phenomena.Thus, were what was once the popular doctrine concerning population still held to be the correct one, and were we to take it for granted as an undeniable truth, that, as the national strength, and revenue, and wealth can only advance as the number of industrious hands that form them is increased, so every augmentation of the population of a nation is an addition to the national funds, and that, therefore, things ought to be allowed to take their natural course, and all restraints on marriage be done away with, the assumption and doctrine might be supported by a theory, showing, or endeavoring to show, how all the phenomena attending the advance of mankind towards prosperity and affluence do, in fact, result from their increasing numbers.
It might, perhaps, in support of such a view of the subject, be said, "that, as necessity is the mother of invention, so, unless pressed by want, or the dread of it, mankind might never have exercised their ingenuity in discovering even the rudiments of the arts; and certainly would not have advanced them beyond the most unformed and imperfect elements.That, while in genial climates the spontaneous fruits of the earth afforded them abundant nourishment, they could have had no motive to tax the labor of either their minds or bodies to produce that for which they had no need.
