The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (the best motivational books .TXT) 📕

Above, here. ↩

Above, here and here. ↩

L’ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques, 1767, a quarto of 511 pages, seems, as G. Schelle (Du Pont de Nemours et l’école physiocratique, 1888, p. 46, note) remarks, not entitled to be called a “little book,” but Smith may have been thinking of the edition in two vols., 12mo, 1767, nominally printed “à Londres chez Jean Nourse, libraire.” ↩

“Trois grandes inventions principales ont fondé stablement les sociétés, indépendamment de tant d’autres qui les ont ensuite dotées et décorées. Ces trois sont, 1° L’invention de l’écriture, qui seule donne à l’humanité le pouvoir de transmettre, sans altération, ses lois, ses pactes, ses annales et ses découvertes. 2° Celle de la monnaie, qui lie tous les rapports entre les sociétés policées. La troisième enfin, qui est due à notre âge, et dont nos neveux profiteront, est un derivé des deux autres, et les complette également en perfectionnant leur objet: c’est la découverte du Tableau économique, qui devenant désormais le truchement universel, embrasse, et accorde toutes les portions ou quotités correlatives, qui doivent entrer dans tous les calculs généraux de l’ordre économique.” —⁠Philosophie Rurale ou économie générale et politique de l’agriculture, pour servir de suite a l’Ami des Hommes, Amsterdam, 1766, tom. i, pp. 52, 53 ↩

Du Halde, Description Géographique, etc., de la Chine, tom. ii, p. 64. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “Mr. Langlet.” ↩

See the Journal of Mr. De Lange in Bell’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 258, 276 and 293. —⁠Smith

Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to Diverse Parts of Asia, by John Bell of Antermony, Glasgow, 1763. The mandarins requested the Russians to cease “from importuning the council about their beggarly commerce,” p. 293. Smith was a subscriber to this book. The note is not in ed. 1. —⁠Cannan ↩

Ed. 1 reads “sorts.” ↩

Above, here through here. ↩

Quesnay went further than this: “L’historien dit que le commerce qui se fit dans l’intérieur de la Chine est si grand que celui de l’Europe ne peut pas lui être comparé.” —⁠Oeuvres, ed. Oncken, 1888, p. 603 ↩

Ed. 1 reads “as well as all the other.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “and in.” ↩

Ed. 1 does not contain “of.” ↩

Below, here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “from.” ↩

Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, liv. iv, chap. 8. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “that.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “more rich.” ↩

Lectures, p. 231; Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, liv. xv, chap. 8. ↩

Plin. —⁠Smith

Historia Naturalis l. ix c. 39. —⁠Cannan ↩

Plin. —⁠Smith

Historia Naturalis l. viii c. 48. —⁠Smith

Neither this nor the preceding note is in ed. 1. —⁠Cannan ↩

John Arbuthnot, Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights and Measures, 2nd ed., 1754, pp. 142⁠–⁠145. ↩

Above, here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “real value.” ↩

Lectures, p. 14. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “is.” ↩

What Thucydides says (ii, 97) is that no European or Asiatic nation could resist the Scythians if they were united. Ed. 1 reads here and on next page “Thucidides.” ↩

Lectures, pp. 20, 21. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “a good deal of.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “or fifth.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “so short a.” ↩

VII, 27. ↩

Livy, v, 2. ↩

Livy, iv, 59 ad fin. ↩

Above, here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “never can.” ↩

Ed. 1 reads “at whose expense they are employed.” Repeated all but verbatim below, here. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “is acquired.” ↩

As ed. 1 was published at the beginning of March, 1776, this must have been written less than a year after the outbreak of the war, which lasted eight years. ↩

The Seven Years’ War, 1756⁠–⁠1763. Ed. 1 reads “of which in the last war the valour appeared.” ↩

“This” is probably a misprint for “his,” the reading of Eds. 1⁠–⁠3. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “which.” ↩

Almost certainly a misprint for “demonstrate,” the reading of ed. 1. ↩

Lectures, p. 29. “Cromwel,” which is Hume’s spelling, appears first in ed. 4 here, but above, here, it is so spelt in all editions. [S.E. Editor’s note: The spelling has been normalized to “Cromwell” across this entire edition.] ↩

Lectures, p. 263. ↩

Hume, History, ed. of 1773, vol. ii, p. 432, says the “furious engine,” artillery, “though it seemed contrived for the destruction of mankind and the overthrow of empires, has in the issue rendered battles less bloody, and has given greater stability to civil societies,” but his reasons are somewhat different from those in the text above. This part of the chapter is evidently adapted from Part iv “Of Arms” in the Lectures, pp. 260⁠–⁠264, and the dissertation on the rise, progress and fall of militarism in Part i, pp. 26⁠–⁠34. ↩

Ed. 1 reads “or.”