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Adam Smith’s social theory analyzes and interprets both the unfolding and accumulative structures of human nature and society, while considering the foundation of human instinct. My reinterpretation makes it possible to achieve a coherent understanding of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, and to recognize the commonalities among Smith, Hume, and Darwin with respect to the viewpoint of evolutionary point of view. Smith’s concept of “instinct” is distinctly biological; it differs obviously from Locke’s philosophical concept and Hume’s psychological one. There is no doubt that Smith followed Locke and Hume in terms of his empirical understanding of human knowledge and ways of thinking; nonetheless, Smith remained convinced that animals had instincts-that is, they are born with innate programs. As shown in his detailed descriptions in “Of the External Senses”-including those of instinctual perception among the young of the partridge, the goose, and suckling animals, as well as worms that have no head but yet search for food-Smith came to this idea through elaborate direct observations and indirect observations via the work of Linnaeus. For Smith, the human species incorporates the instincts of self-interest (self-preservation) and mutual altruism (sociability, the propensity to exchange). This understanding is maintained without any change from that outlined in the “Letter to Authors of the Edinburgh Review” to that in the sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. JEL classification numbers: B 10, B 31, B 41. * Part of this paper was read at First ESHET-JSHET Meeting, Sophia-Antipolis, 2006 and at Smith in Glasgow ’09, University of Glasgow, 2009. I would like to thank attendants of these meetings and two anonymous referees of this journal for their helpful comments. Any remaining errors are mines alone. The History of Economic Thought, Vol. 53, No. 2, 2011. C The Japanese Society for the History of Economic Though. The purpose of this essay is to suggest, on the basis of a precise examination of Adam Smith’s conception of “instinct” -mainly scrutinized in his posthumous article “Of the External Senses” (ES hereafter) -that his social theory analyzes and interprets both the unfolding and accumulative structures of human nature and society, while considering the foundation of human instinct in a biological sense. This approach has, therefore, some bearing on recent works that focus on the importance of a biological ap-

Instinct as a Foundational Concept in Adam Smithʼs Social Theory