Spontaneity and beneficence were intimately connected for Smith. In the eighteenth century anything natural or spontaneous was immediately voted good, and the terms “natural,” “just,” and “advantageous” were often used as synonymous. Smith did not escape the confusion of ideas. Having shown the natural origin of economic institutions, he imagined that at the same time he had demonstrated their useful and beneficent character.[159] The confusion is no longer permissible. To give a scientific demonstration of the origin of social institutions and to gauge their value from the point of view of the general interest are two equally legitimate but very different intellectual pursuits. We may agree with Smith that our economic organisations, both in their origin and functions, participate of the spontaneity of natural organisms, but we may at the same time reserve judgment as to their real worth. Pessimism no less than optimism may be engendered by contemplation of the spontaneous character of economic institutions. While this conception of the spontaneity of economic institutions seems to us just and fruitful, the demonstration given of their beneficent character appears insufficient and doubtful. The former conception is a commonplace with all the greatest economists; the latter is rejected by the majority of them. These two ideas which have played such an important part in the history of economic doctrines must be separately examined. The conception of spontaneity is the one to which Smith refers most frequently. _Il mondo va da se._ Here at any rate he and the Physiocrats were entirely at one. There is no need for organisation, no call for the intervention of any general will, however far-seeing or reasonable, and no necessity for any preliminary understanding between men. Such are the reflections that the study of the economic world suggests ever anew to our author. The present aspect of the economic world is the result of the spontaneous action of millions of individuals, each of whom follows his own sweet will, taking no heed of others, but never doubting the ultimate result. The noble outlines of the economic world as we know it have been traced, not by following a plan issuing complete from the brain of an organiser and deliberately carried out by an intelligent society, but by the accumulation of numberless deeds designed by a crowd of individuals in obedience to an instinctive force wholly unconscious of the work which it was encompassing.