the economy applied equally to the things of the mind: “In 
opulent and commercial societies to think or to reason comes 
to be, like every other employment, a particular business, which 
is carried on by a very few people, who furnish the public with 
all the thought and reason possessed by the vast multitudes 
that labor.” (6)

     Adam Smith is always faithful to the fixed visual point of 
view and its consequent separation of faculties and functions. 
But in this passage Smith does seem to sense that the new role 
of the intellectual is to tap the collective consciousness of “the 
vast multitudes that labor.” That is to say, the intellectual is 
no longer to direct individual perception and judgment but to 
explore and to communicate the massive unconsciousness of 
collective man. The intellectual is newly cast in the role of a 
primitive seer, vates , or hero incongruously peddling his