Families have been responsible in all societies, including modern market-oriented societies, for a sizeable part of economic activity―half or more―because they have produced much of the consumption, education, health and other human capital of their members. If I am correct that altruism dominates family behaviour, perhaps to the same extent as selfishness dominates market transactions, then altruism is much more important in economic life than is commonly understood. The pervasiveness of selfish behaviour has been greatly exaggerated by the identification of economic activity with market transactions. Unfortunately, however, we do not have an analysis of the consequences of altruism (particularly in families) that is as sophisticated as the analysis of selfishness in market transactions that developed during the last two centuries.

Altruism in the Family and Selfishness in the Market Place

Teachers or students who attempt to act upon the theory that the most recent treatise is all they need will soon discover that they are making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves. Unless that recent treatise itself presents a minimum of historical aspects, no amount of correctness, originality, rigor, or elegance will prevent a sense of lacking direction and meaning from spreading among the students or at least the majority of students. This is because, whatever the field, the problems and methods that are in use at any given time embody the achievements and carry the scars of work that has been done in the past under entirely different conditions. The significance and validity of both problems and methods cannot be fully grasped without a knowledge of the previous problems and methods to which they are the (tentative) response.

History of Economic Analysis, p. 4

Economists . . . deal with man as he is: not with an abstract or “economic” man; but a man of flesh and blood. They deal with a man who is largely influenced by egoistic motives in his business life to a great extent with reference to them; but who is also neither above vanity and recklessness, nor below delight in doing his work well for its own sake, or in sacrificing himself for the good of his family, his neighbours, or his country; a man who is not below the love of a virtuous life for its own sake. They deal with man as he is: but being concerned chiefly with those aspects of life in which the action of motive is so regular that it can be predicted, and the estimate of the motor-forces can be verified by results, they have established their work on a scientific basis.

Principles of Economics, 8th Edition, p. 26

The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding, by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them: and secondly, self-command, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure or to endure present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future time. In the union of those two qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues that which is most useful to the individual.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments