Economies based on those principles first created levels of sustenance adequate to enable the population to grow and later - far later - to create material conditions of living that fostered an increase in life expectancy. The latter development opened up the possibility that individuals could establish long-term personal goals, a possibility that was remote to all but a sliver of earlier generations.
*** Smith's ideas fell on fertile ground and within a very few decades verged on conventional wisdom. The ancient political power of the landed gentry, the major beneficiaries of the older order, was giving way to a new class of merchants and manufacturers that was a product of the Industrial Revolution, which had begun a quarter-century earlier.