In the last chapter, I examined the concept of passion in the thought of Hume and Adam Smith and suggested that it plays a central role in their analyses of belief–formation processes and human agency in general. This claim, it should be said, is by no means meant to imply that Hume and Smith were in perfect agreement in everything they wrote or that there are no important contrasts to be drawn between the views and positions held by the two friends. Rather, the claim being made is that both shared some fundamental notions about the workings of the human mind, and especially about the ways in which our behaviour and the underlying belief–forming mental habits are affected by sub–rational factors.

In the present chapter I will take up the argument advanced in chapter 6. I shall try to focus more narrowly on the economic psychology put forward by the two leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, in order to spell out how the passions work at the level of the ordinary actions of agents in earning a livelihood and pushing their way in the world.