"The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them, but to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But tho', in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish in this manner the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind we are very apt to confound these two different things with one another."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
10 entries in the ESTC (1759, 1761, 1764, 1767, 1774, 1777, 1781, 1790, 1792, 1793, 1797). A revised title with a complicated textual history.<br>
<br>
See <u>The Theory of Moral Sentiments: By Adam Smith</u> (London: Printed for A. Millar; and A. Kincaid and J. Bell, in Edinburgh, 1759). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T141578">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004894986.0001.000">Link to ECCO-TCP</a>&gt;<br>
<br>
Reading Adam Smith, <u>The Theory of Moral Sentiments</u>, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984).