Tuesday, April 3, 2018

meaning in context - Made + Advance and Made + Afford?




I'm flummoxed by how these bolded clauses from The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith should be parsed, structured, and interpreted. I'm not asking about its philosophy.




The produce of the soil maintains at all times nearly that number of inhabitants which it is capable of maintaining. 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 conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours 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.




Is made supposed to be coupled with advance & afford to form a verb clause, so:
"which would have been made .... advance .... and afford ..." ?



If so, could someone please explicate this? These sound aberrant but novel to me (I'm cognisant that this book was published in 1759):
● "which would have been made advance the interest of the society"
● "which would have been made afford means to the multiplication of the species.




Wouldn't it be more natural to write
● "which would have advanced the interest ..., and afforded means ..." ?


Answer



I agree with Mark Thorin. The sentence could be split into two and the punctuation modernised, which might help your difficulties:




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. Thus, and
without intending it, without knowing it, [they] advance the interest of the
society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species.




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