On the Wealth of Nations

by P. J. O'Rourke

  CHAPTER 14

  Adam Smith in Heaven

  To what sort of place was Adam Smith proposing to adjourn? That is, what was this 'pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism', which he and the rest of the wise men wished to see established? Wouldn't its funerals be dull without absurdity? And what kind of wedding ceremony lacks imposture? We know – sometimes in excruciating detail – what Adam Smith thought. What Adam Smith believed is harder to determine.

  Smith is generally lumped in with much of the Enlightenment intelligentsia and called a Deist – someone who thought all God did was wind the universe's clock. Hit the snooze button, please. John Rae called Smith, more precisely, a Theist. The difference being that Theism emphasizes belief in God while Deism emphasizes disbelief in the supernatural aspects of religion, which, broadly considered, are all the aspects religion has. Smith believed in a more actively involved God: 'the very suspicion of a fatherless world, must be the most melancholy of all reflections.'1 Although we all know how actively involved fathers often are in child care.

  Smith frequently depersonalized God by using the word nature. Frequently, but not always. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith, having written that 'the works of nature … seem all intended to promote happiness, and to guard against misery',2 went on to state that when we impede those works of nature, we 'declare ourselves, if I may say so, in some measure the enemies of God'.3

  To what extent Adam Smith was a proper Christian is even harder to determine. And, after all, it's a Christian article of faith that nobody is one. A gossipy contemporary of Smith's, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, called Smith 'ominously reticent' on religious subjects and said he was seen openly smiling during divine service. (Aren't we supposed to?) I can find only one direct mention of Jesus Christ in the works Smith published, and that in passing, '… our Saviour's precept …'4 But it's respectful, and it's capitalized. One-third of the Holy Trinity went unexamined by Adam Smith. (Between nature and the Impartial Spectator, he paid plenty of attention to the other two-thirds.) Yet our Savior also went unattacked. It's possible that Smith thought the importance of Christianity went without saying.

  If so, this wasn't enough for fervent Christians. In the final edition of Moral Sentiments, Smith deleted a long theological paragraph full of Christian justification for divine retribution. This editing, combined with Smith's praise of Hume, caused muscular Christians of the nineteenth century metaphorical steroid rage. Reportedly Smith said the passage that offended by omission was cut because it was 'unnecessary and misplaced'.5 It was. Smith's topic was our personal desire for retribution, a subject that's anything but divine. If Adam Smith were alive he'd still be offending. For example, Smith would almost certainly point out that evolution is intelligent design.

  Smith repeatedly stated his uninterest in metaphysics. But when Smith became a professor at Glasgow University he signed the Westminster Confession of Faith, affirming the creed of the Presbyterian Church. Presumably the signature was still valid when he accepted the title of rector thirty-six years later. Adam Smith wouldn't have been the first person to hold secretly conventional religious opinions – or to have found them boring to think about. 'Nature,' he wrote, 'has not prescribed to us this sublime contemplation as the great business and occupation of our lives.'6

  All that is not to say Smith wasn't a religious skeptic, only that he was so skeptical that it's entirely possible he was skeptical of skepticism, too.

  Smith was possessed of a deeply unconvinced logic. 'Convicted but not convinced' was a phrase he was heard to mutter to himself after losing a debate at one of his clubs in Glasgow.7 If he did not reject religion, he rejected religiosity and protested as foolish that 'the public and private worship of the Deity, have been represented, even by men of virtue and abilities, as the sole virtues which can either entitle to reward or exempt from punishment in the life to come.'8

  Smith did not believe in asceticism and 'those whining and melancholy moralists, who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness'.9 He had his doubts about stoicism and 'the perfect apathy which it prescribes to us, by endeavouring, not merely to moderate, but to eradicate all our private, partial, and selfish affections'.10 He called this 'a stupid insensibility to the events of human life'.11

  Smith respected Hume but wondered about the utilitarian ideas that Hume held. Smith wrote that if we embraced utilitarianism 'we should have no other reason for praising a man than that for which we commend a chest of drawers.'12

  And Smith particularly distrusted every form of casuistry and the sly and ugly reasoning it uses to get virtue into the Procrustes' bed of self-justification. Smith wrote that the man who needs to consult the casuists – or as we call them, the lawyers, public relations experts, lobbyists, and campaign spin doctors – 'was the man of equivocation and mental reservation, the man who seriously and deliberately meant to deceive, but who, at the same time, wished to flatter himself that he had really told the truth'.13

  Smith was not very impressed with most philosophers. And he was very unimpressed with some, paraphrasing Cicero in his comment, 'There is nothing so absurd … which has not sometimes been asserted by some philosophers.'14

  'Philosophers,' Smith wrote, 'are apt to cultivate with a peculiar fondness, as the great means of displaying their ingenuity, the propensity to account for all appearances from as few principles as possible.'15 He used Epicurus as his example, but he hardly could have helped thinking about himself. In Smith's opinion there was something conceited about philosophy: 'Men are fond of paradoxes, and of appearing to understand what surpasses the comprehension of ordinary people.'16 And there was something ultimately beside the point about philosophy: 'The reasonings of philosophy … though they may confound and perplex the understanding, can never break down the necessary connection which Nature has established between causes and their effects.'17 Smith considered even reason itself to have a dubious side: 'It is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason.'18

  Adam Smith set out to do a monumental piece of work, to construct something that would help improve every aspect of existence. Skepticism isn't usually considered to be a kit of building tools. Socrates may have been the only other philosopher who attempted to craft a good thing with skepticism, if you consider Plato a good thing. Adam Smith, in fact, did: 'The humane Plato … with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings'.19 But there's nothing in The Wealth of Nations like the Oceana and Utopia absurdities in The Republic, with its 'hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State' (book 10). And although Adam Smith was a skeptic, The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments do not contain any of the gross pessimism that marked such ancient skeptics as Pyrrho of Elis, Arcesilaus, and Aenesidemus (who may have been pessimistic because they rightly supposed nobody would bother to preserve their works or remember their names).

  Skepticism was just Adam Smith's way of not bothering to look at things that can't be seen. He could see that mankind had sympathy, imagination, and a desire to get on in the world. And he could see that all sorts of what he called 'speculative systems' stood in mankind's way. It was on these speculative systems that Smith labored with his tools of skepticism, grinding eyeglass prescriptions for excessively farsighted visionary schemes, erasing too-precise dimensions in blueprints for society, and letting the air out of philosophy with a single well-chosen synonym for metaphysics, 'Pneumatics'.20 Smith wrote:

  Speculative systems have in all ages of the world been adopted for reasons too frivolous to have determined the judgment of any man of common sense, in a matter of the smallest pecuniary interest. Gross sophistry has scarce ever had any influence upon the opinions of mankind, except in matters of philosophy and speculation; and in these it has frequently had the greatest.21

  Take care of the pennies, and the speculative philosop
hers, the utopians, the politicians, the economists, and God will take care of themselves.

  APPENDIX

  An Adam Smith Philosophical Dictionary

  Any consideration of the works of Adam Smith leaves a lot that remains to be considered. There is no room in this small book about Smith's great book for all, or even many, of Smith's adages, aphorisms, epigrams, insights, observations, maxims, axioms, judicious perceptions, and prejudiced opinions.* Voltaire, who in some ways inspired Adam Smith, gathered his brief hortatory writings into something he called the Dictionnaire Philosophique. When Voltaire's literary executors were compiling a complete edition of his works they found themselves confronted with all sorts of literary odds and ends – pamphlets, screeds, short essays, manuscript notes, and so forth. They purloined Voltaire's title and packed these items into the Dictionnaire, creating a hodgepodge that was hardly a dictionary and was philosophical only in the broadest sense. A further crib of the Voltaire notion seems a reasonable (and easy) method for organizing the intellectual leftovers from an attempt to make a meal of Adam Smith's thought.

  *In the following entries a few liberties have been taken with Smith's texts. Independent clauses sometimes have been turned into complete sentences. A number of 'buts' and 'howevers' that refer to preceding material have been removed along with a few other extraneous words. Ellipses have been inserted only where substantive omissions have been made.

  Banking, Islamic

  When the law prohibits interest altogether, it does not prevent it.

  – Wealth, book 11

  Business and Government, the Visionary Link between Them

  Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted.

  – Wealth, book 32

  Business, Government Regulation of

  To be merely useless is perhaps the highest eulogy which can ever justly be bestowed upon a regulated company.

  – Wealth, book 53

  Career Counseling, Futility of

  The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune, has been less taken notice of … The contempt of risk and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young people chuse their professions.

  – Wealth, book 14

  'Caring'

  Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe … would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life … And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened … If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but … he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 35

  Celebrity, Allure of Being a

  The man of rank and distinction is observed by all the world. Every body is eager to look at him, and to conceive, at least by sympathy, that joy and exultation with which his circumstances naturally inspire him … Scarce a word, scarce a gesture, can fall from him that is altogether neglected … He has, every moment, an opportunity of interesting mankind, and of rendering himself the object of the observation and fellow-feeling of every body about him. It is this, which … notwithstanding the loss of liberty with which it is attended, renders greatness the object of envy.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 16

  Celebrity, How a Fading One Is Compelled to Act Up

  For though to be overlooked, and to be disapproved of, are things entirely different, yet as obscurity covers us from the daylight of honour and approbation, to feel that we are taken no notice of, necessarily … disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 17

  Celebrity, Last Word upon

  This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition … is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 18

  Clothes, Advice to Work-Shy Young Layabouts Wearing Silly

  As it is ridiculous not to dress, so is it not to be employed, like other people.

  – Wealth, book 19

  Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, Louis XIV's Finance Minister, His Misapprehension about the Similarity of Business to Government, Which Was Opposite to – Yet Identical with – Donald Rumsfeld's

  The industry and commerce of a great country he endeavoured to regulate upon the same model as the departments of a public office.

  – Wealth, book 410

  Confession

  No man applies to his confessor for absolution, because he did not perform the most generous, the most friendly, or the most magnanimous action which, in his circumstances, it was possible to perform.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 711

  Consumer Rights, First Known Statement of

  The interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

  – Wealth, book 412

  Corporations, Governance of

  The trade of a joint stock company is always managed by a court of directors … subject, in many respects, to the control of a general court of proprietors. But the greater part of these proprietors seldom pretend to understand any thing of the business of the company; and … give themselves no trouble about it, but receive contentedly such half yearly or yearly dividend, as the directors think proper to make to them … The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private co-partnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less.

  – Wealth, book 513

  Credit Cards, Complaints about Interest Payments on

  As something can every-where be made by the use of money, something ought every-where to be paid for the use of it.

  – Wealth, book 214

  Culture, Popular

  Music and dancing are the great amusements of almost all barbarous nations.

  – Wealth, book 515

  Culture, Popular, Continued

  All savages are too much occupied with their own wants and necessities, to give much attention to those of another person.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 516

  Culture, Popular, Further Thoughts upon

  Drowsy stupidity, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people.

  – Wealth, book 517

  Drugs, Why Laws Against Them Don't Work (and Why I'm So Late Getting Home)

  It is not the multitude of ale-houses … that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition arising from other causes necessarily gives employment to a multitude of ale-houses.

  – Wealth, book 218

  EU

  The policy of Europe, no-where leaves things at perfect liberty.

  – Wealth, book 119

  Economics, the Two Reasons for Its Existence, Italics Added

  Political conomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provi
de a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.

  – Wealth, book 420

  Economics, the Other Two Reasons for Its Existence, Italics Unnecessary

  The cheapness of consumption and the encouragement given to production, precisely the two effects which it is the great business of political conomy to promote.

  – Wealth, book 521

  Effectual Demand

  A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; … but his demand is not an effectual demand.

  – Wealth, book 122

  Enemies, Primitive Indigenous, Plus ça Change …

  Nothing can be more contemptible than an Indian war in North America.

  – Wealth, book 523

  Famine

  Whoever examines, with attention, the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of Europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries … will find … that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniencies of a dearth.

  – Wealth, book 424

  Famine, Avoidance of

  After the trade of the farmer, no trade contribut[es] so much to the growing of corn as that of the corn merchant.

  – Wealth, book 425

  Fart Jokes

  It is often more mortifying to appear in public under small disasters, than under great misfortunes.

  – Moral Sentiments, part 126

  Fashion Victims

  In every civilized society … there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people: the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion.