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Eric Schliesser wrote: 
 
"This is entirely compatible with and, in fact, I am inclined to say it is  
explained by the picture that Smith presents in his (published) essay on The  
First Formation of Languages, where the capacity for abstraction/reason and  
language, themselves, are slow cultural/societal achievements and not fixed  
givens of human nature". 
 
With Smith, don’t we always need to read his comments against the backdrop of  
the Scottish enlightenment philosophy and his own moral philosophy?  Andrew  
Skinner has a fine but brief summary of this in his introduction to the  
Penguin edition of WN. In it he writes: 
 
"(Third) the philosophy of the (Scottish) school maintains that while observation,
introspection and reason enable us to establish the characteristics or ‘propensities’ of
human nature, these propensities exist independently of our knowledge of them. The school
in fact generally adopted the position that certain characteristics are implanted in man
by the Author of Nature, thus providing the means by which a Rational (Divine) Plan, whose
purposes are not always known to man, is unfolded" (1999, 12).
 
According to Skinner, Smith believed that man is endowed by the (Author of Nature) with
certain faculties (such as reason and imagination) together with particular propensities
(such as self-love and fellow feeling) Hugo Cerqueira pointed out in an earlier post,
"Smith thinks (against the opinion of some of his contemporaries) that self-love may be
the motive for virtuous actions". That is the balancing act in which Smith seems to be
engaged in WN, whereby the pursuit of self-love yields the greater good of economic
growth. In TMS it is rules of justice and morality observed by members of society that
will bring about harmony. In WN, the laws of the government must maintain order, albeit
based on inequality, as Michael Perelman has written.
 
Best, 
 
Sumitra Shah 
 
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