ABSTRACT
Economic thought entered a transitional phase in the second half of the seventeenth century. During this phase, thinkers who were adverse to mercantilistic views displaced businessmen as the chief inquirers into economic questions. The methodological approach of deduction and the laissez-faire attitudes that would later characterize the writings of the classical era also began to appear. The newly emerging attitude was one of increasing liberality; people came to believe that greater freedom from governmental restrictions would be advantageous to themselves as well as to the economy. This attitude reflected the gradually evolving idea that the economic system is a self-generating autonomous mechanism that does not require management from above, but functions best when allowed to regulate itself. This proposition was made particularly explicit by the free-thinking David Hume. By committing himself to finding the basis for society and government outside scriptures and the church, he paved the way for separating the theory of economic behavior from moral philosophy. Following the interpretations of the Protestant natural-law theorists, the writers of the transition period tended to deemphasize God’s role in the opera-
tion of worldly affairs. The Scholastic tradition of natural law philosophy had little influence on the English thinkers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
