Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: With a Life of the Author, an Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations
The invention of printing was perhaps necessary to prepare the way for these researches. In those departments of literature and of science, where genius finds within itself the materials of its labours, in poetry, in pure geometry, and in some branches of moral philosophy the ancients have not only laid the foundations on which we are to build, but have left great and finished models for our imitation. But in physics, where our progress depends on an immense collection of facts, and on a combination of the accidental lights daily struck out in the innumerable walks of observation and experiment; and in politics, where the materials of our theories are equally scattered, and are collected and arranged with still greater difficulty, the means Of communication afforded by the press have, In the course of two centuries, accelerated the progress of the human mind far beyond what the most sanguine hopes of our predecessors could have imagined.
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