Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/113

Rh land, and his optimistic conclusions are illusory; but none the less is his criticism exceedingly instructive, especially in the way he develops a doctrine of demand as determining supply. He gives far more scope to the idea of reciprocity than is found in most writers of his day.

9. Whatever may be thought of the worth of this contemporary criticism, it is of the first importance, since it helps us to understand the precise nature of Adam Smith's contribution to science. By isolating wealth as a subject for study he introduced an immense simplification. The investigation of economic phenomena was more definite, and just because he achieved this result his work rendered it possible to ask new questions, and so to make a real advance in every direction of social study. Not till we isolate wealth and examine how it is procured and how it may be used, can we really set about investigating how material goods may be made to subserve the highest ends of human life. National rivalries and national power are but mean things after all; but till the study of wealth was dissociated from these lower aims, it was hardly possible to investigate empirically how we could make the most of the resources of the world as a whole, and how material goods might be best applied for the service of man. It is owing to Adam Smith and the manner in which he severed economics from politics that we can raise and dismiss, even if we cannot solve, such problems to-day.

Similarly, we find the clearest testimony to his greatness in the new form which the old inquiries assumed. He severed economic science from politics; he dealt with it as concerned with physical objects and natural laws. To his English predecessors it had been a department of politics or morals; while many of his English successors recognized that in his hands it had become more analogous to physics and delighted to treat it by the methods of mechanical science. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he gave the turn to economic problems which has brought about the development of modern economic theory.

The progress that has been made in this direction amply justifies the line which Adam Smith took in isolating the study of material wealth; but however complete our analysis may be, it is well to remember that we have merely analysed a group of phenomena which we have first isolated as a matter of convenience.