The Natural History of Humankind and the Natural History of Man

Abstract

In his lectures on jurisprudence and moral philosophy, given in Glasgow between the 1750s and 1760s, Adam Smith proposed a stage scheme for interpreting the historical evolution of legal, social, and political systems. This marked a turning point in the reflection about human diversity in Scottish intellectual circles. Developing and modifying Smith’s formulation, the leading Scottish historians—Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, John Millar, and Henry Home (Lord Kames)—shaped an original conception of history that became a distinctive feature of the Scottish Enlightenment. Rather than examining heroes, kings, and the political events of kingdoms and states, which formed the core of traditional history, they looked at issues of universal scope, such as manners, customs, and feelings. This new approach disregarded chronology, and outlined the path of peoples toward civilization: a “history of civil society.”