(Page 19 of 44) - IPE and the Primitive: The Indians, the Scots, and the Economy authored by Inayatullah, Naeem. and Blaney, David.

“[a]ll human behavior, even if it has a ‘local’ character, is explicable because it is governed by

regular springs which have uniform effects.”

However, the evidence still suggested a great variation in forms of human society.

Though these might be explained as the consequence of placing a fixed human nature in varying

physical settings (i.e., variations in climate and fertility of the soil), the Scots resisted the

potentially relativistic implications of such an approach—that the social theorist can say little

beyond that differences in geography produce different forms of society.

For Smith and the

Scots, a moral science produces practical guidance about the direction of human society; about

where, reflecting the Scottish Enlightenment’s teleological moment, human society must

necessarily and appropriately go.

Thus, the Scots add a crucial second element to their thinking—the idea that human

nature itself contains an impetus to progress. Human beings, as distinct from (other) animals,

seek to improve their condition and capabilities—a condition Smith believes “comes with us

from the womb.”

The interaction between a common human nature and varying circumstances

Berry, Social Theory, p. 69.

Montesquieu’s employment of physical causes—climate, geography—might well reduce the clutter of empirical

evidence, identifying and explaining the persistence of a small number of forms of society and government, but they
are thought to be too simplistic to support a fully developed natural philosophy. That is, the Scots believed that
Montesquieu’s scheme failed to provide a basis for making clear enough moral distinctions among forms of society.
On Montesquieu, see Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon, 1951), pp. 210-5. For
the Scots’s reaction, see Fania Oz-Salzberger, “The Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Alexander
Broadie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to The Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), pp. 170-1; Murray G. H. Pittrock, “Historiography,” in Broadie, ed., The Scottish Enlightenment, pp. 260-1;
Andrew Skinner, “Natural History in the Age of Adam Smith,” Political Studies XV:1 (1967), p. 38.

On Smith as moralist and practical commentator, see Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics: An Essay in

Historiographic Revision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Richard E. Teichgraeber, III, ‘Free
Trade’ and Moral Philosophy: Rethinking the Sources of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1986); Jerry A. Muller, Adam Smith, in His Time and Ours (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1993; Charles L. Griswold, Jr., Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999; and Samuel Fleischacker, On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations, edited by Edwin Cannan (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 362 [II.iii]. See Berry, Social Theory, pp. 69-70; Skinner, “Natural History,”
pp. 42-4; Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), p. 63.