How The Scots Invented The Modern World

By one estimate male literacy stood at around 55 percent by 1720; by 1750 it may have stood as high as 75 percent, compared with only 53 percent in England. It would not be until the 1880s that the English would finally catch up with their northern neighbors.

Literacy stands at the foundation of what empowers people. It creates the notion that one is more than just a factory worker or a shepherd. Rather there’s a possibility to engage in civic duties, become a book printer or a merchant. Once it becomes a community standard, the average person will aspire for its usefulness and status it provides.

Politeness for Shaftesbury encapsulated all the strengths of a sophisticated culture: its keen sense of understanding, its flourishing art and literature, its self-confidence, its regard for truth and the importance of intellectual criticism, and, most important, an appreciation of the humane side of our character.

When his grandfather Alexander died, he had left his house and estate to Francis, his favorite grandchild, bypassing in his will the eldest grandson, Hans. Francis very properly turned it down, although it would have raised his standard of living substantially. When Hans learned what his brother Francis had done for his benefit, then he, too, refused, insisting their grandfather’s original wishes be carried out. The brothers spent the next several months arguing back and forth, each trying to force on the other the good fortune left to them by their grandfather.

“Our law thus comes to be enriched with new thoughts, new discoveries, new arguments, struck out by the invention of our lawyers.” It is not a lifeless chain of tradition and precedent, but a flexible instrument, a means for attaining order and justice, and it must change as society changes, and human beings with it. The law is a means to an end—and what that end is depends on human desires and needs. But somewhere, some basic principles have to stick.”

It’s often forgotten that the law doesn’t instill virtues into societies. Its purpose is most often to preserve one’s individual property, support the engagement in meaningful exchanges of goods, maintain fairness, and punish bad behavior. We form laws that mirror our values, not the other way around.

If Hutcheson was arguing that the most important instinct human beings have in common is their moral sense, Kames was saying that it is their sense of property and desire to own things. “Man is disposed by nature to appropriate”—one reason human beings are perennially adverse to common ownership of goods. It is not enough just to have goods; they must be my goods. Property is more than just material objects—it is a part of my sense of self. Without it, I am missing an important dimension of my personality, projected outward into the world.

capitalism brings an intellectual as well as an economic change. It alters the way we think about ourselves and about others: we become buyers and sellers, customers and suppliers, who strive to improve the quality and quantity of our output, in order to gratify our needs. Eventually, Smith states, the division of labor produces people who do nothing but think about improvements: engineers such as his friends James Watt and Alexander Wilson, scientists such as Joseph Black, and those “whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything”—philosophers, teachers, and professional managers of every sort.

First and foremost, teachers should master the craft of making students experience what it’s like to be a student of history, physics, biology, medicine, etc. People will put in the effort when they like it, gain appreciation of others and it feeds their family. In other words, when a dream becomes a tangible reality.

Through capitalism we gain, but we also lose. The loss, Smith felt, was felt most among the lowest classes—his particular example was employees in a pin factory—whose cramped place in the chain of production leaves no room for the enlargement of the mind and spirit, which the freedom of commercial society should open up.