Editing Invisible hand (section)

=== ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' ===
Smith's first use of the invisible hand metaphor occurs in ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' (1759) in Part IV, Chapter 1, where he describes a selfish landlord being led by an invisible hand to distribute his harvest to those who work for him. This passage concerns the distribution of wealth: the poor receive the "necessities of life" after the rich have gratified "their own vain and insatiable desires". It has been noted that in this passage Smith seems to equate the invisible hand to "[[Divine providence|Providence]]", implying a divine plan.<ref>Smith, A., 1976, ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'', vol. 1, p. 184 in: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vol., Oxford University Press</ref>
{{quote|The proud and unfeeling landlord views his extensive fields, and without a thought for the wants of his brethren, in imagination consumes himself the whole harvest ... [Yet] the capacity of his stomach bears no proportion to the immensity of his desires... the rest he will be obliged to distribute among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, that little which he himself makes use of, among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness; all of whom thus derive from his luxury and caprice, that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice...The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own convenience, though the sole end which they propose from the labors of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements... They are '''led by an invisible hand''' to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition.}}

Although this passage concerns an economic topic in a broad sense, it does not concern "the invisible hand" of the free market as understood by twentieth century economists, but is instead about income distribution. There is no repeat of this argumentation in Smith's comprehensive work on economics in his later ''Wealth of Nations'', and income distribution is not a central concern of modern neoclassical market theory. As Blaug noted in the ''New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'' this passage "dispels the belief that Smith meant one thing and one thing only by the metaphor of 'the invisible hand'."{{sfn|Blaug|2008}} Grampp has claimed that if there is any connection between this passage and Smith's other one, "it has not been demonstrated with evidence from what Smith actually wrote".{{sfn|Grampp|2000|p=464}}