own life entirely free from avarice, regard the appetite for riches as
man's main motive to existence; though no one was more urgent in his
insistence that "the avidity of acquiring goods and possessions for
ourselves and our nearest friends is ... destructive of society" unless
balanced by considerations of justice. And what he therein intended may
be gathered from the liberal notions of equality he manifested. "Every
person," he wrote in a famous passage, "if possible ought to enjoy the
fruits of his labor in a full possession of all the necessaries, and
many of the conveniences of life. No one can doubt but such an equality
is most suitable to human nature, and diminishes much less the happiness
of the rich than it adds to that of the poor." It is clear that we have
moved far from the narrow confines of the old political arithmetic. The
theory of utility enables Hume to see the scope of economics--the word
itself he did not know--in a more generous perspective than at any
previous time. It would be too much to say that his grasp of its
psychological foundation enabled him entirely to move from the
limitations of the older concept of a national prosperity expressed only
in terms of bullion to the view of economics as a social science. But at
least he saw that economics is rooted in the nature of men and therein
he had the secret of its true understanding. _The Wealth of Nations_
would less easily have made its way had not the insight of Hume prepared
the road for its reception.

What, then, and in general, is his place in the history of political
thought? Clearly enough, he is not the founder of a system; his work is
rather a series of pregnant hints than a consecutive account of
political facts. Nor must we belittle the debt he owes to his
predecessors. Much, certainly, he owed to Locke, and the full radiance
of the Scottish enlightenment emerges into the day with his teaching.
Francis Hutcheson gave him no small inspiration; and Hutcheson means