WAS ADAM SMITH AN ECONOMIST?

Abstract

The eighteenth century is often termed the `Age of Reason,' and it is correctly so termed if by the phrase is meant that it was the age in which philosophers held that the credibility of all things should be tested by reason. But from the point of view of its prevailing psychological doctrines, it could more properly be called the `Age of the Passions' because of its stress on the emotions and the instincts, the affections and aversions, and its playing down of the role of reason in the behavior of ordinary man.