The outcome of all these national peculiarities of circumstance and culture has been that a different scheme of life has been current in the British community from what has prevailed on the Continent. There has resulted the formation of a different body of habits of thought and a different animus in their handling of facts. The preconception of causal sequence has been allowed larger scope in the correlation of facts for purposes of knowledge; and, where the animistic preconception has been resorted to, as it always has in the profounder reaches of learning, it has commonly been an animism of a tamer kind. Taking Adam Smith as an exponent of this British attitude in theoretical knowledge, it is to be noted that, while he formulates his knowledge in terms of a propensity (natural laws) working teleologically to an end, the end or objective point which controls the formulation has not the same rich content of vital human interest or advantage as is met with in the Physiocratic speculations. There is perceptibly less of an imperious tone in Adam Smith's natural laws than in those of the contemporary French economists. It is true, he sums up the institutions with which he deals in terms of the ends which they should subserve, rather than in terms of the exigencies and habits of life out of which they have arisen; but he does not with the same tone of finality appeal to the end subserved as a final cause through whose coercive guidance the complex of phenomena is kept to its appointed task. Under his hands the restraining, compelling agency retires farther into the background, and appeal is taken to it neither so directly nor on so slight provocation. But Adam Smith is too large a figure to be disposed of in a couple of concluding paragraphs. At the same time his work and the bent which he gave to economic speculation are so intimately bound up with the aims and bias that characterise economics in its next stage of development that he is best dealt with as the point of departure for the Classical School rather than merely as a British counterpart of Physiocracy. Adam Smith will accordingly be considered in immediate connection with the bias of the classical school and the incursion of utilitarianism into economics. FOOTNOTES: [1] Reprinted by permission from _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_, vol. xiii, Jan., 1899. [2] "Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?" _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, July, 1898. [3] "The Future of Economic Theory," _ibid._, October, 1898. [4] See, for instance, Hasbach, _Allgemeine philosophische Grundlagen der von Francois Quesnay und Adam Smith begruendeten politischen Oekonomie_. [5] Quesnay, _Droit Naturel_, ch. v. (Ed. Daire, _Physiocrates_, pp. 52-53). [6] Quesnay, _Droit Naturel_, ch. v (Ed. Daire, _Physiocrates_, p. 53). [7] Dupont de Nemours, _Correspondance avec J.-B. Say_ (Ed. Daire, _Physiocrates_, premiere partie, p. 399).