The reader of this little volume will not expect or desire an excursus upon the multitudinous treatises, critical and apologetical, that have sprung out of the _Wealth of Nations_. The vitality of the book may be measured by the numbers of its detractors and defenders. Among the former the modern historical school of Germany claims notice; for has not its distinguished and erudite leader, Professor Schmoller, placed Adam Smith somewhere below Galiani, Necker, Hoffmann, Thünen, and Rümelin? Perhaps the reason why economists of the modern historical school so often fail as valuers of men and books, is that they are enjoined by the very laws of their existence to be “learned”; and “learning” requires that obscure and deservedly forgotten writers should be rediscovered and magnified at the expense of surviving greatness. Too many modern critics of “Smithianismus,” instead of attending to the author’s own works and so penetrating his philosophy, seek him elsewhere, rummage in the literature of the period, overhaul every book, good, bad, or indifferent, characterise it in the text, and place its title-page and date in a footnote. Such labour, however useful to others, is apt to destroy the perspective and warp the judgment. A man who snares facts is of all men the most likely to be caught in a theoretical trap. Here is an example. In 1759 Adam Smith wrote a book on _moral_ sentiments which he founded on the natural instinct of sympathy. In 1776 he wrote a book on _economic_ sentiments, which he derived from self-love or the desire of man to improve his position. Upon these facts the following theory is built up by the historical school of Germany:— “Smith was an Idealist as long as he lived in England under the influence of Hutcheson and Hume. After living in France for three years, and coming into close touch with the materialism that prevailed there, he returned a Materialist. This is the simple explanation of the contrast between his _Theory_ (1759), written before his journey to France, and his _Wealth of Nations_ (1776), composed after his return.”[33] Most of this nonsense has been blown to the four winds by Mr. Cannan’s publication of the _Lectures_ delivered at Glasgow before Adam Smith went to France; but a vast quantity of similar rubbish is embedded in the economic literature of the last thirty or forty years, and a difficulty which learned investigators have invented and solved has been dignified in Germany by the name of “Das Adam Smith Problem.”