Journal of the History of Philosophy

232 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY a glowing appreciation of the completeness and imaginative beauty of Descartes's account of the Vortex, and he laid the text aside. But something happened in 1758 which forced him to change his mind. The return of Halley's comet in that year, as Sir Isaac Newton had predicted, forced him to add the following words to his essay: Even we, while we have been endeavouring to represent all philosophical systems as mere inventions of the imagination.., have insensibly been drawn in, to make use of language expressing the connecting principles of this system, as if they were the real chains which Nature makes use of.... Can we wonder, then, that it should have gained the general and complete approbation of mankind. (P. 34) Foley concludes that there is a note of disappointment here, as well as a hesitation to publish. But I am inclined to think that Adam Smith's devotion to vortex theory is exaggerated, to say the least. The real excitement in Adam Smith is the famous passage about systems and machines (given on p. 30), which reveals his realization that the astronomy of the solar system has become a genuine science, and that the solar system behaves like a machine. And it suggests to him that his own social physics may be a genuine science, not mere political, economic theory, confirming the faith that Gassendi gave him. His brief, early essay on Greek physics, which ends abruptly, also suggests that his ambitious plans to survey all the branches of human learning had become pointless. The study of what Foley calls "Greek Anthropology," the conceptual "history" of mankind's evolution, turned out to be not a "veiled inheritance" but a practical asset for Adam Asmith in his intense discussions of the subject with his Scottish friends. The fact that some of his use of the psychology of sympathy in shaping his Theory of Moral Sentiments can be found in Polybius is worth noting. The quotation on this subject by the Scottish classicist John Gillie is certainly an exaggerated statement, but by no means unreasonable. The shift from Hutcheson's emphasis on "disinterested benevolence" to "the impartial spectator in the human breast," though it is developed in a way that reflects the Glasgow background, is nevertheless the result of an independent psychology. There are a few moralists in Adam Smith's background who, better than Polybius, could throw light on this emphasis. As for other sections of the book, the chapter on Quesnay, blood-letting, and physiocracy, is a delightful story, well told. The attempt to link the "invisible chains in things" with "the hidden hand" and other references in The Wealth of Nations seems to me far-fetched. And as for "the division of labor," it seems to me that this is related by Adam Smith primarily to the advantages in machine production rather than to anything in Greek metaphysics. "The beauty of utility" to which both Smith and Hume sing praises, needs further discussion. The book is full of good points to argue about and to speculate with. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont Graduate School Quentin Lauer, S. J. A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Fordham University Press, 1976. Pp. vii + 303. $20.00, cloth; $8.50, paper. Until the present, comparatively few intensive studies in English of Hegel's Phiinomenologie des Geistes had been available. There was the J. B. Baillie translation, Loewenberg's commentary , Heidegger's short expatiation on the introduction, Koj6ve's eclectic Lectures--and not much more.1 But in the last few years, as if to begin to make up for a serious void, a veritable outpour- ~The Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); Jacob Loewenberg, Hegel's "Phenomenology": Dialogues on the Life of Mind (La Salle, I11.:Open Court, 1965); Martin Heidegger, Hegel's Concept of Experience (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Alexandre Koj~ve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the "'Phenomenologyof Spirit" Assembled by Raymond Oueneau, trans. James Nichols (New York: Basic Books, 1969). BOOK REVIEWS 233 ing of work on the Phiinomenologie has taken place, In addition to Lauer's Reading, we now have...