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.He describes the circumstances (in times of turbulence and disorder ) under which the two principles tend to mixtogether.But he takes a position, in general, in favor of the man of hu-manity; of moderation, accommodation, fellow-feeling, and respect forother individuals, including for their privileges and prejudices.96Smith s use of the phrase the invisible hand, it was suggested in Chap-ter 5, is the expression of these conflicting inclinations with respect to thespirit of system.On the one hand, the invisible hand is the depiction of something grand and beautiful, or of the beauty of order. On theother hand, it is slightly ridiculous.It is a toy, much like the trinkets and toys of the rich; it corresponds to the beauty of art and contrivance. Itis the sort of thing which is attractive to the man of system, enamored withthe beauty of his own ideal plans.97 It is attractive, too, to the systematicalphilosopher, or to the philosopher who does not yet know how not toknow. Smith s use of the familiar, unsecular image of the invisible hand isthe expression of this ambivalence; of his own uncertainty about whetherhis system is an attempt to connect in the imagination the phenomena of economic life, or the discovery of an immense chain of the most im-portant and sublime truths. 98 It is also the expression of doubt about theimmense superiority of his own judgment, and about the consequences ofhis own plans, or principles.The difficulty, at its most general, is of how to live with insecurity.Forthe system of economic sentiments, or of economic relationships, is one ofprofound insecurity.It is insecure in the metaphysical sense that has justbeen described; it is an imaginary order, and not an eternal truth of na-ture.But it is also insecure in the sense that it is an order, and it is at thesame time a plan, or a policy.It is the description of a principle whichmakes sense out of the chaos of economic life; it is the description of aprinciple of policy, or of politics; and it is also the description of the limitsof this policy, or of the circumstances in which the principle of entire free-dom must be supplemented by the principle of public power.There are institutions which are useful for the general society, which society shouldCopyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy A Fatherless World 239239establish, direct, or oversee, and which are a supplement to what the willof private persons, or the competition of individual interests might not beable to do immediately, Condorcet wrote in the Esquisse des progrès.99There are certain public institutions, in Smith s description in the Wealthof Nations, which are highly advantageous to a great society, and ofwhich the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or smallnumber of individuals. 100The system of economic relationships is insecure, too, because it is sub-ject to continuous reexamination.It is a system of order, and it is also asystem of policy, or a system which is supposed to have good consequencesfor what Smith, in his account of the man of system and the man of hu-manity, described as the welfare of the whole society. 101 It suggests poli-cies (including policies for public institutions) which are supposed to sup-plement the will, or the calculations of profit, of individuals.But the whole society is constituted by a mass or multitude of individuals, whohave opinions about their own interests, about the interests of the society,and about the policies which are likely to promote these interests.It is asystem of people with systems; it is the sort of society in which no party, asin Hume s description of eighteenth-century England, can well supportitself, without a philosophical or speculative system of principles, annexedto its political or practical one. 102The individuals who are depicted in the eighteenth-century economicwritings with which this book has been concerned are occupied in a dis-cursive, uneasy, self-conscious way of life.They are contracting parties,and they are thereby the sort of people who form expectations, and haveideas about principles.The obligation in a contract, Smith says in his lec-tures on jurisprudence, is constituted by the reasonable expectation ofthe person to whom the promise was made.The doctrine of the originalcontract, he also says, following Hume, is unsound because the peoplewho are supposed to have consented to it are not conscious of it, andtherefore cannot be bound by it.They must have some idea howeverconfused of the principle upon which they act. 103 All these contractingparties have ideas, principles, and expectations.They are interested, likethe commercial travelers who were James Anderson s correspondents inThe Bee, in the history of the human mind. 104 They are inquisitive, likethe man of speculation who is disposed, in Smith s description, to enterinto many reasonings about the effects of distant events (an earthquakein China) on the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of theworld in general. 105The world of eighteenth-century commerce was insecure, or risky, inCopyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeExam Copy 240 Economic Sentiments240the sense that it was full of new investments and new economic relation-ships.The rise of commerce, for Turgot, was a revolution which can onlyoperate slowly and by degrees ; it required confidence, experience, rela-tionships with correspondents, and the establishment of means of com-munication of every sort. 106 Commerce and communication, togetherwith the regular execution of justice, was the condition for the great rev-olution which Smith describes in early modern Europe.One means ofcommunication was by the exchange of goods; another was by the circula-tion of money and credit ( the judicious operations of banking, Smithwrote, provide a sort of waggon-way through the air ); yet another wasby the exchange of news.The merchants whom Turgot encountered inAngoulême had opinions about public debt, about rumors of Europeanwar, about the solvency of the king of Spain, about bad weather in the Bal-tic, about the anxieties of Lyon silk traders.People who live in the capitalsof great empires, in Smith s description, enjoy, at their ease, the amuse-ment of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and ar-mies. But they are also wracked by anxiety.The Amsterdam merchant,trading in corn from Königsberg and fruit from Lisbon, who is at the heartof the description of the invisible hand in the Wealth of Nations, likes tohave at least some of his capital always under his own view. He feels un-easiness at being separated so far from it.He likes the home-trade, because he can know better the character and situation of the personswhom he trusts, and the laws of the country from which he must seekredress. 107The new world of commerce was insecure, too, because it was subject tofrequent and often sudden changes in laws, regulations, and the jurispru-dence of property.Napoleon, reflecting in St.Helena on the universal ag-itation which torments us, the furious oscillations of modern times,identified their principal source in a great revolution in property
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