Chapter 4 Will the Real Adam Smith Please Stand Up?

"So, Dr. Smith," I asked, "what is this urgent message for the world? You want people to know the secrets of wealth? The gains from trade?"

"Of course, of course. Quite essential."

Harold was breathing deeply, emoting now this richer voice of "Smith." The sunlight coming through the half-drawn shades of Julia's living room cast his face in partial shadow.

"But perhaps that's rushing the cart," he continued. "Perhaps people worry about wealth, when they should ask whether wealth is the final goal? Eh?"

"We can assume that most people want wealth."

"Yes, we can assume that," he sighed, "but use logic. If something happens to be an important goal, does that make it the most important?"

"A heavy stone in the garden isn't necessarily the heaviest."

"So, we can stipulate that increasing wealth is highly desirable, even as something else could be more desirable, something even ... intangible?"

"Intangibles can't be measured or counted," I said.

"Ah—you like to count. Then how do you measure a successful life? Bear with me, if you can. How would you determine that?"

I shrugged, "Happiness?"

"Yes. And happiness is the consequence of?" He waited expectantly.

"Dying with the most toys?" I joked.

He rapped his cheek with his knuckles. "No, no, no, think! Something basic."

I thought of my faded eight-year-old station wagon, its sticky transmission needing overhaul. If I had the money, I'd trade it in for a new Saab turbo. Wasn't that basic to my happiness? Then there's the vacation cottage on the Rappahannock River I coveted. The down payment was out of reach, but that cottage would bring real joy: kayaking the river by day and rocking on the porch at night with a cold beer. But getting real basic, winning the Samuelson Prize would provide the career boost I needed, to catapult me to a research university with untold consulting opportunities. I'd have to move, but that was a small price for recognition and status.

Smith threw up his hands. "It's peace of mind."

"Huh?" I woke from my reverie.

"Tranquility of being! That's the basis for happiness."

"It's hardly the driving desire for me or anyone else," I shot back.

"Ah, but it must be cultivated! Humans need to acquire skills in moral development as well as in material development."

I rolled my eyes. "We spout peace and love on Sundays. What does this have to do with economics?"

A welcomed breeze billowed the lace curtains and delivered the scent of magnolias that shaded the neighborhood. I caught the moment and thought how long it's been since I appreciated this wonderful time of year. Now, everything came with a deadline, and here I was at Julia's wasting time when I should have been ... well, almost anywhere else.

Smith paced a patch of rug. After a minute he slowed and drew up in front of one of Julia's paintings: a bumblebee, drawn to huge scale, hovered over a field of clover. Smith raised a hand as if to stroke the tiger belly.

He turned suddenly. "Answer this, are you happy?"

"What's the relevance? Why drag economics over a philosophical abyss?"

He winced and started breathing with difficulty. The thought flashed in my mind that Harold was a weak old man. The lines in his face were a mass of tributaries. Blood vessels bristled, and dark patches of perspiration grew under the armpits of his sweatshirt. He slumped in a chair.

Smith's voice came out a whisper. "How can I justify, in a sentence, ideas I labored over for forty years? My masterwork explains all this."

I was startled. "The Wealth of Nations?" Smith's masterpiece was the cornerstone of my discipline. Although I'd never read it, we all knew this was Smith's epistle to laissez faire economics, to hands-off government. Economics without Smith's "invisible hand" of the market seemed unthinkable.

Smith shook his head. "No, no, no. My Theory of Moral Sentiments. It's the foundation."

I'd never heard of it.

He raised a finger, addressing an imaginary audience. "The danger to freedom is forgetting moral meaning. Before it's too late, I must awaken people to it in this day and age."

"Are you saying," I asked, "that Adam Smith thinks—you think—his most important accomplishment was in moral development, not economic development?"

"Quite. Every man is rich or poor according to the degree to which he can afford the necessities, conveniences, and amusements of life. But that same richness, that same poverty, has no essential corollary with his happiness." He sat back relaxed, as if he thought I finally understood.

In my two years of front-line teaching, it had been a constant struggle to harden the romantic hearts of students to the real-world, to the truth that businesses inexorably pursue profits to the last marginal dollar, that countries relentlessly boost Gross Domestic Product, even to the possible detriment of the environment and future generations. I thought about the Adam Smith I imagined who was the guide and cheerleader for this joyously avaricious, free market scramble for material wealth. It crystallized in my mind that my dissertation sat untended while I listened to the drivel of this untutored, quixotic fossil.

Irritated, I blurted: "You expect me to believe that Adam Smith cared more about morality than markets?"

Julia rose and stood with her arms crossed. "Rich..."

The Smith fellow opened his mouth but I'd worked myself into a warm flush. "Why for a minute should I believe you're the real Adam Smith!"

I picked up my tape recorder and headed for the door. Julia didn't stop me.

"You're supposed to be the academic," he yelled after me, his voice carrying through the open door. "Do your homework! Doesn't anybody read anymore?"

* * *

With agitated steps I walked back to my office at Waller Hall, a Georgian brick building overlooking the town's historic hill. The site was a bloody battlefield during the siege of Fredericksburg in the fall of 1862. General Ambrose Burnside and the Union Blues charged up this hill, and the Confederate Grays under Robert E. Lee mowed them down from behind an impregnable stone wall. Thousands were slaughtered under Burnside's inept command. He wasn't able to react to the day's events, to think on his feet. The Army of the Potomac was crushed for that year, and Burnside's job handed to Fighting Joe Hooker. I felt like one of those Blues, slogging my way up the rise, unable to respond to events.

Walking relaxed me, but not today. I resented the shifting of positions that made me the focus of inquiry. Of course I wasn't content with my life. I assumed that finishing my dissertation and later receiving tenure at a prominent university would bring that feeling, sometime in the future. Having those milestones would bring me money, prestige, even fame. After that, I could worry about other things.

Back at my office I checked my voicemail and downloaded email messages. It was the usual post-graduation surge of students needing advice and letters of recommendation. One student wanted to discuss his final grade. I slipped into the faculty lounge, hoping to avoid colleagues. Fortunately, the room was empty. My mailbox was typically stuffed with paper, the flow slowed only slightly since school let out. There was the dean's report on curriculum reform, a publisher's request to review a textbook, and the registrar's reminder that catalogue revisions had been due a week ago.

A bulky eight by eleven manila envelope jolted me. It had an imprint of the prominent journal where I had sent an article six months ago. I sat on the lounge couch, feeling my breath accelerate. Every publishing opportunity counted, especially now. I ripped open the flap. The referees' comments were extensive and caustic, but the editor's cover letter was encouraging. The paper needed substantial revision, she wrote, but she was willing to accept a resubmission. Thank God! Yes! At a journal that published only one of every ten submissions, a "revise-and-resubmit" was the best news an unknown could expect.

"Yee-haa! Yee-haa!" I yelled to no one but the pigeons, who flapped away from the building eaves at my outburst. I hurried to my office and dialed Julia's number. Before the line connected I cradled the mouthpiece. I rose and stared out the window onto the quadrangle, where summer students in shorts threw Frisbees. Others sauntered by with ice cream cones. My gaze returned to the mass of papers heaped on my desk—my final chapter on privatization. How indeed could anyone find the time to read anymore?

I filed the referees' comments and leaned back in my chair. My encounter with this channeled Smith-voice still troubled me. I could hear his parting words: my supposing to be an academic! Well, it's true I didn't have a Ph.D. yet, making me touchy on the subject of my qualifications. I'd no intention of seeing Harold again, but I wanted to tell Julia what a farce the whole exercise was. What did I know of Smith's writings? I rose wearily before my bookcase.

Where had I put it? There, used as a bookend for my research folders, was Adam Smith's, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. I'd found it at a yard sale, and strange as it sounds, I never cracked it in school. Why should I have? History of economic thought was a dying field during my graduate school days, populated by those who couldn't stomach calculus and matrix algebra. Older historians of thought died off or retired, and their replacements were scholars in the modern fields of game theory, econometrics, and macroeconomic dynamics. With the proliferation of knowledge in the present, who had time to deal with antiques from the past? No, the pithy Adam Smith quoted in textbook blurbs was all the Smith anyone needed today.

I turned to the editor's introduction:

Before proceeding to the economics it may therefore be useful to review the main elements of the other branches of Smith's work, and to elucidate some of their interconnections.... Smith himself taught the elements of economics against a philosophical and historical background ... concerned with much more than economics as that term is now commonly understood....

What this meant was soon apparent: Smith's questions focused on, "Wherein does virtue consist?" and "How is this character of mind recommended to us?"

"Damn." I slammed the book shut. I wanted easy, quantifiable answers, not complicated intangible ones. An eighteenth century discourse on virtue sounded like a dreary waste of time. But how did Harold Timms know of Smith's interest in moral philosophy? A vague conclusion loomed in my mind. Could this alleged channeling be part of an elaborate joke? There were serious pranksters on campus who wasted their time on such deeds. They concocted satirical, intricate high jinks. Associate Professor "Burgy" Burgess, in my own department, led the pack of jokers; his sharp ears and eyes missed little of notice. These harassers had one thing in common: frustrated in their own careers, they turned on anyone appearing to make progress. Their antics, not limited to paper, could be brutal. One weekend, a few years ago, they stealthily bricked-over the departing dean's door before movers arrived on Monday. Another time they disassembled a colleague's Volkswagen Beetle and reassembled it on the floor of the gymnasium the day of his promotion to full professor. Such fraternity pranks indicated these people had empty time on their hands. Could Harold's channeling be one of their elaborate jokes, a final hazing to ensure I joined the ranks of the academically immobile?

The caper would test their wits against my gullibility. I could hear Burgy's voice reverberating in the faculty lounge. "He bought it! He ... he ... gets stuck on his dissertation, and the first thing he does is have a séance with Adam Smith!" Howls and guffaws would follow. Burgy would elaborate with a louder bray, "Channeling my garage mechanic!" The room would explode with belly laughs.

The tale would spread to the faculty locker room, from where it would amplify in allegorical fashion on email, finding its way inevitably to the provost, the president, and the world beyond. The student newspaper might run a derisive piece. Even faculty spouses would know, and social events would become painful ordeals of heads nodding my way, stifled giggles, and not-so-gentle ribbing by these self-appointed keepers of humility.

It could get worse. What if the Samuelson Committee heard of this? The award was the most prestigious given to young scholars. The recipient earned a $10,000 check and the honor to address the five thousand conference members at the American Economic Association's annual meeting. The paper would be printed in the "bible" of journals, The American Economic Review. It was the opportunity I needed to leapfrog to a better school, with teaching assistants and Ph.D. students writing under me for a change. The award was a guaranteed career boost, if this Smith business didn't dismount me first.

I was wasting time in mental gymnastics when action was needed. I picked up my knapsack and hurried out the door.

* * *

Crossing the central quadrangle I barely avoided colliding with a group of prospective students and their parents on a college tour. I mounted the steps to Lee Library, last remodeled in 1985. A large glass and steel addition now assaulted its Georgian façade. The new wing was hermetically sealed, offering stale re-circulated air, heavy with the fumes of carpets, drapes, and printer's ink. The metal chairs were spindly with ninety-degree angled backs. No architect or college administrator would put up with this sterile, depressing place, yet somehow they imagined students and faculty would.

Entering the marbled foyer of the older structure, I passed the security check area and stopped at a bank of computers. A few clicks of the keyboard and the answer to my search popped up on the screen. Descending circular stairs, I entered the underground collections. The second basement was a mere seven feet high, and books were perched on metal shelves floor-to-ceiling. It was as oppressively claustrophobic as a submarine. Fluorescent lights stuttered; the antiquated ventilation system droned, pinged, and hiccuped, adding to the dreamlike, underwater illusion.

I meandered through this murky confine, looking at call numbers. At the "BJ 1000s" I turned right, down a narrow row. A few moments later my forefinger rested on a thick volume. This was it! The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Its brown leather cover was faded and cracked. I lifted it gently, wiping dust from its binding.

I moved to a library carrel and sat down. Cautiously, I lifted the cover. The lending card showed it had been checked out only once. But the spine was stiff, the pages uncut. This book had never been read by anyone. I fished a penknife from my pocket and began freeing pages. The frontispiece instantly caught my eye. The subtitle was an eighteenth century teaser, "An essay towards an analysis of the principles by which men naturally judge the conduct and character, first of their neighbour, and afterwards of themselves."

I turned to the first chapter, and soon was reading, blinking, and murmuring. My expectation had been of a dull, irrelevant treatise on moral philosophy. I was having trouble reconciling that view with the effervescent insights and sparkling writing that jumped from the pages. I was mesmerized. Unlike the colorless prose and methodological rigidity of my graduate training in economics, this was new and invigorating. After a half hour I set the book aside.

"Haaaa!" My discovery brought equal parts unease and chagrin. I re-read the passage that had so upset my equilibrium:

Happiness consists in tranquillity ... What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience? To one in this situation, all accessions of fortune may properly be said to be superfluous ... Do they imagine that their stomach is better, or their sleep sounder in a palace than in a cottage? The contrary has been so often observed, and, indeed, is so very obvious ...

Distinguished looking or not, how in blazes had Harold Timms—a wrench-turning, belt-tightening, Romanian mechanic—known the slightest thing about an obscure treatise by Adam Smith? How had he come to fathom that the world's most revered economist was also a closet anti-materialist, sounding every bit like a romantic, anti-growth zealot? Why had I never heard of this aspect of Smith's reasoning? Did it refute The Wealth of Nations? The laws of economics? More importantly, was any of it relevant for business and society today?

If I could be ignorant of this work, what of my colleagues? Did they know of Smith's Moral Sentiments? If Harold Timms were part of some elaborate hoax, I would have to unmask him. I rose from the carrel and returned to the stacks. There must be a way of distinguishing the real Scotsman—if this voice was his—from some prankster, imposter, or nut. It wasn't long before I found what I needed and wound my way through the labyrinth to the check out counter.

"Mr. Burns," the librarian smiled, "you just missed one of your admirers. Your ears must be burning!"

"Oh?"

"He said he was a former student ... very nice. He asked all about you, what you were researching. I told him about your work on Russia."

I dislike idle gossip. "What did he look like?"

She pondered, lifting a hand to her mouth. "L ... Like most students. You know, sunglasses, blue jeans, blonde hair. Looked a little older than most, though. Said he graduated five years ago."

"Mrs. Peabody, I wasn't teaching here five years ago. How could I possibly have had him as a student?"

She looked flustered. "I'm sorry, I haven't seen you all summer."

"I don't come in much," I replied. I wanted to add that libraries were becoming an anachronism, that on-line databases accessible from my home and office now gave me far more information than the printed tomes stuck in some inaccessible library basement. Aside from being a cruel thing to say, it wouldn't even be true, since I now clutched under my arm Smith's Moral Sentiments, two biographies of Smith, and three history of thought surveys. But my patience was almost to its limit.

Instead, I said, "Thanks for thinking of me, Mrs. Peabody. I've found some jewels here."

* * *

An hour later I phoned Harold. He answered on the fourth ring.

"Sorry I ran out on you this morning, Harold. At the time, nothing you said made sense to me."

He cleared his voice with a lumbering cough.

I went on. "I still don't know who you are. But what you said checks out."

"It's not what I said." Harold drew heavily on a cigarette. "I don't know what you and this Smith talked about, but my shirt was soaked with sweat like I'd p—pulled the motor off a rig. Slept the rest of the morning. You know that voice, going like a radio in the background? Don't bother me as much since you started talking to it."

"Can you turn the voice on now?" I asked.

"Lemme sit down." He grunted and all I heard was nasal breathing. Then, "Hello? Hello?" It wasn't Harold's voice.

"Professor 'Smith'?"

"The same. Still here, ready to proceed. I recall I was in the process of..."

"Excuse me," I interrupted.

"...elaborating the theory of moral sentiments..."

"Excuse me," I repeated louder.

"...without which society..."

"Will you please be quiet!" I shouted.

The other end of the phone fell silent.

"I have a list of ten questions," I said. "You have five seconds to answer each one. Otherwise, I'll mark you a fraud."

"What on earth—questions? You mean a test?"

"A simple test. Pass it and I'll take you seriously. Otherwise, this ruse is history."

"Outlandish!" the voice cried. "Do you know who you're talking to?"

"I know who you claim to be. Now you have a chance to prove it. Decide now." Part of me hoped he would refuse, and the prank would end. I could tell Julia I'd exposed an elaborate, if convincing, hoax.

I silently counted to eight before the voice replied. "Pfff! Waste our precious time with this foolishness. Go ahead then."

I pulled a list of questions from my pocket.

"One. Date and place of your birth."

"Seventeen twenty-three, in Kirkcaldy." The last word was mangled, to my untrained ear, coming out as "Kir-kaw-dee." He continued, "A small fishing village in Scotland, just across the firth—the bay—from Edinburgh."

"Two. Your mother's name and birthplace?"

"My dear mother was Margaret. Of Strathenry Estate."

"Maiden name, I mean."

"Douglas. She was Margaret Douglas." His voice trailed off.

"Three. Your father's name and birthplace?"

"Adam Smith, of Seaton."

"How old was he when he died?"

"How old? Well, I never knew him; he died before I was born. Mother was an expectant widow. Let me see."

"Time," I said.

"He was born in sixteen seventy-nine, so that would have made him..."

"Your time's up."

"He was forty-three!"

"Let's go on. Four: did you have siblings?" I asked.

"That's question five!"

"All right, five then. Answer it."

"A half-brother, Hugh. From my father's first marriage. He was sickly like me, I'm afraid. He passed on when I was a boy."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "Six. Where did you study?"

"My grammar school was on Hill Street. Then on to Glasgow University. My advanced degree was from Balliol College, at Oxford. What a miserably calcified place that was!"

I made the seventh question appear innocuous. "When did you marry?"

"Trick question! You know perfectly well I'm a bachelor." The voice sounded wounded and slightly wistful, but I didn't slow down to ponder this. I was getting to the make-or-break questions.

"Eight. Who called you 'ugly as the devil' and the most 'absent-minded creature' she'd ever met?"

"Ah, that would be ... that would be Madame Riccoboni." His voice softened. "I was her pet in Paris. How she adored me. I'm no Casanova, mind you, a little too bookish I've been told, but that's not to say I didn't have my moments."

"Never mind. Nine. Whose paranoia caused an international incident, aligning you with Turgot, the French economic reformer?"

He didn't hesitate. "You're referring to that rascal Jean Jacques Rousseau! He set into my dearest friend, David Hume, quite unprovoked. We tried to keep it out of the press. Spilled over eventually, nothing Turgot or I could do about it. An all-around unpleasant affair."

I'd saved the stickler for last. "Ten. What do you know of gypsies?"

"Gypsies?" There was silence, then a youthful exclamation. "The Romany wanderers? Ha! Of course, my kidnapping! I was three, playing in the field behind Strathendry Castle—"

"That's good enough."

"I was fooling around, throwing rocks, catching crickets, studying the clouds. A band of migrants was encamped on a hill nearby. I was intrigued and probably made a pest of myself. The next morning they came in their troupe past the castle, and before I knew it an old hag scooped me up and threw me in a wagon. A heavy wool blanket landed on top. I howled, but there wasn't enough air under there to make much noise. They scampered off with me up the north road."

He sucked in more air, and I let him finish.

"It was a good three hours before I heard galloping and shouting from behind. I found myself flung onto the side of the road. Smacked my head on a rock, but good, I did. The gypsies fled into the woods, the old woman hurling insults and threats back at my uncle who came to rescue me. Quite an adventure, I should say, quite an adventure."

There was an awkward silence as I sat musing, a silence which he finally broke.

"Well, did I pass? Did I pass? Oh, confound it, why would I even ask!"

* * *

I pondered these bits of trivia as I sipped a Drambuie that evening on my porch. What if those gypsies had gotten away with their theft? If, in place of his doting, scholarly mum, Adam Smith had been raised by a band of illiterate wanderers, his pens and books replaced with rocks and rags? Would the pragmatic world of business have evolved differently without Smith's injunctions against government meddling, his admonitions about the unanticipated consequences of do-goodism, his railings against special interests and monopolies?

I was woefully lost in thought, for my collie, Rex, licked my hand to remind me my job was to scratch his ears. I yawned and did so. My mind, however, continued toying with the day's discoveries. Among these was the cruel irony that Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes shared the same birthday, June 5, which just happened to be tomorrow. Keynes, the brilliant architect of government intervention to pull the economy out of the Great Depression, proposed policies diametrically opposed to Smith's ideal for limited government. Later in life, Keynes even abandoned support for free trade.

It was Keynes' conviction that, "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." I considered myself a practical man, and I wondered if I was now slipping into the role of eavesdropper on some defunct economist from the eighteenth century. I slumped in my chair. What indeed would this Adam Smith think of my dissertation?

The jangle of the phone startled me.

It was Julia, inviting me to dinner the following evening.