R. H. Coase Graduate School

20

Selected Papers No. 50

for the means by which alone this end

can be brought about, for their own

sakes, and independent of their tendency

to produce it. Thus self-preservation,

and the propagation of the species, are

the great ends which nature seems to

have proposed in the formation of all

animals. Mankind are endowed with

a desire of those ends, and an aversion

to the contrary. . . . But though we

are. . .

endowed with a very strong

desire of those ends, it has not been

entrusted to the slow and uncertain

determinations of our reason, to find

out the proper means of bringing them

about. Nature has directed us to the

greater part of these by original and

immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the

passion which unites the two sexes, the

love of pleasure, and the dread of pain,

prompt us to apply those means for

their own sakes, a n d   w i t h o u t   a n y

consideration of their tendency to

those  beneficient

 ends which the great

Director of nature intended to produce

by  them.29

This comes very close to a modern attitude.

The “passion by which nature unites the

t w o   sexes”30

or love, was considered by

Adam Smith, a life-long bachelor, as “always

in some measure ridiculous”:  31   “The passion

appears to every body, but the man who

feels it, entirely disproportioned to the value

of the object. . . .  "32  But, of course, the

passion which unites the sexes serves to

secure the propagation of the species and if

rationality impedes this, we can count on

the great Director of nature to make sure

that in this area man is not rational. Similarly,

we care much more for the young than the

o l d .

“Nature, for the wisest purposes, has

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21

rendered in most men, perhaps in all men,

parental tenderness a much stronger affection

than filial piety. The continuance and prop-

agation of the species depend altogether

upon the former, and not upon the  latter."33

“In the eye of nature, it would seem, a child

is a more important object than an old man,

and excites a much more lively, as well as

a much more universal sympathy. It ought

to do so. . . . In ordinary cases an old man

dies without being much regretted by any

body. Scarce a child can die without rending

asunder the heart of  somebody."34

In all these cases nature, as Adam Smith

would say, or natural selection, as we would

say, has made sure that man possesses those

propensities which would secure the propa-

gation of the species. 35

But even if Adam

Smith had been aware of the principle 

of

natural selection, of itself this could not

have given him an explanation of why there

was a natural harmony in man’s psychological

propensities. That the instincts which regu-

late sexual activity and the care of the young

were the result of natural selection poses no

problem. These are, after all, instincts which

man shares with all other mammals and

natural selection has had a very long period

t o   b r i n g   a b o u t   t h i s   r e s u l t .   T h e   s o c i a l

arrangements of the tiger, the wolf or even

the chimpanzee are, however, very different

from those of human beings and unless there

has been a long period during which natural

selection could operate to shape human

nature, we can have no confidence that man’s

psychological propensities are appropriately

adjusted to the conditions of human society.

It was David Hume’s view, and presumably

also Adam Smith’s, that human nature is

revealed as being much the same in all

recorded history :

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Selected Papers No. 50

..  .

Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity,

friendship, generosity, public spirit;

these passions mixed in various degrees,

and distributed through society, have

been from the beginning of the world

and still are the source of all actions

and enterprise which have ever been

observed among mankind. Would you

know the sentiments, inclinations, and

course of life of the Greeks and

Romans? Study well the temper and

actions of the French and English. . . .

Mankind are so much the same in all

times and places that history informs

us of nothing new or strange in this

particular.36

Without being tied down to Bishop Usher’s

chronology, it would still have been difficult

for Adam Smith to use natural selection as

an explanation

o f   w h a t   h e   t h o u g h t   h e

observed, that is, harmony in human nature,

unless recorded history was but a small part

of human history.

T h e r e   h a d   t o   b e   a n

earlier period in which human nature was

not the same as it is now.

Fortunately, we have learnt a great deal

about the antiquity of man in recent years.

We now know, what Adam Smith could

not, that modern man (homo sapiens) had

existed for perhaps 500,000 years, that homo

erectus  came into existence about  one-and-

a-half million years ago, while creatures

which may or may not be classified as men

but from which man almost certainly

evolved, were in existence several millions

y e a r s   ago.37 We are thus able to fill in

the gaps in Adam Smith’s position. We

have the principle of natural selection, a

mechanism of  inheritence, and an extremely

long period during which natural selection

could play its part. Adam Smith’s view of

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