Review Questions How did Thomas Hobbes view human nature? How did John Locke view human nature?

Adam Smith Adam Smith was a significant figure of the Enlightenment. His book, The Wealth of Nations, is the first modern work on economics. He is considered the father of modern economics and his works still influence the modern world.

Key Concepts Laissez faire – Means “let [them] do” in French – Laissez faire is an economic policy in which private entities should be allowed to operate with little or no governmental interference. The Invisible Hand – Smith used the metaphor of an invisible hand to explain the self- regulating behavior of the marketplace.

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper. Every man's interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the disadvantageous employment.

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.