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12 POLITICAL ECONOMY 
Locke, and Petty in the seventeenth century, 
and in the next century from the pens of 
Hume and Steuart, not to speak of Defoe. 
Nobody who desires to become familiar with 
political economy should neglect, if not to 
scan minutely, at least to skim and taste the 
Wealth of Nations. In this great classic an 
intermixture of different aims and points 
of view will be met with, which is only to 
be expected when it is borne in mind that 
Adam Smith’s position was at the beginning 
of modern social philosophy. Divergencies 
in point of view and aim had not then been 
clearly distinguished. So in Adam Smith’s 
stupendous treatise on political economy the 
ethics in the discussion of value, the maxims 
of conduct and the partly metaphysical 
defence of self-interested action kept astir 
by competition—the providential effects of 
which are never established—need not excite 
astonishment. The astonishing thing is that 
the portions of the Wealth of Nations which 
are positive science proper are as good as they 
are. And nothing that is said here must be 
taken to imply that economic studies which 
cannot be classified as positive science are of 
little worth. On the contrary, I should hold 
that the time devoted to the positive science 
of economics is largely justified by the value 
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