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09104_Field_TCGG T869.txt
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1996-04-10
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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