spentrails
A father of sorts
On the commoditisation of religion, right and politics:
In opulent and commercial societies, besides, to think or to reason come to be, like every other employment, a particular business, which is carried on by a very few people, who furnish the public with all the thought and reason possessed by the vast multitudes of that labour. Let any ordinary person make a fair review of all the knowledge which he possesses concerning any subject that does not fall within the limits of his particular occupation, and he will find that almost everything he knows has been acquired at second hand, from books... A very small part of it only, he will find, has been the produce of his own observations or reflections. All the rest has been purchased, in the same manner as his shoes or his stockings, from those whose business it is to make up and prepare for the market that particular species of goods. It is in this manner that he has acquired all his general ideas concerning the great subjects of religion, morals, and government, concerning his own happiness or that of his country.
Adam Smith, 'Early Draft' in Lectures in Jurisprudence, p562
As quoted in Capital of the Mind by James Buchan
A father of sorts
On the commoditisation of religion, right and politics:
In opulent and commercial societies, besides, to think or to reason come to be, like every other employment, a particular business, which is carried on by a very few people, who furnish the public with all the thought and reason possessed by the vast multitudes of that labour. Let any ordinary person make a fair review of all the knowledge which he possesses concerning any subject that does not fall within the limits of his particular occupation, and he will find that almost everything he knows has been acquired at second hand, from books... A very small part of it only, he will find, has been the produce of his own observations or reflections. All the rest has been purchased, in the same manner as his shoes or his stockings, from those whose business it is to make up and prepare for the market that particular species of goods. It is in this manner that he has acquired all his general ideas concerning the great subjects of religion, morals, and government, concerning his own happiness or that of his country.
Adam Smith, 'Early Draft' in Lectures in Jurisprudence, p562
As quoted in Capital of the Mind by James Buchan