Note 5 — LETTER XXVIII.

The most remarkable feature of the evening was the attack made by Mr. Ruskin on this view of the subject. Replying to Mr. Dering, who had said that whenever it was possible “men would seek their own interests even at the expense of other classes,” he observed5 that many students of political economy “looked upon man as a predatory animal, while man on the contrary was an affectionate animal, and until the mutual interest of classes was based upon affection, difficulties must continue between those classes.” There are, as it appears to us, several weak points in this statement. One obvious one is that most animals are both predatory and affectionate. Wolves will play together, herd together, hunt together, kill sheep together; and yet, if one wolf is wounded, the rest will eat him up. Animals, too, which as between each other are highly affectionate, are predatory to the last degree as against creatures of a different species or creatures of their own species who have got something which they want. Hence, if men are actuated to some extent at some times, and towards some persons, by their affections, and to a different extent at other times towards the same or other persons by their predatory instincts, they would resemble other animals. Mr. Ruskin’s opposition between the predatory and affectionate animal is thus merely imaginary. Apart from this, the description of man as “an affectionate animal” appears to us not merely incomplete but misleading. Of course the affections are a most important branch of human nature, but they are by no means the whole of it. A very large department of human nature is primarily self-regarding. A man eats and drinks because he is hungry or thirsty, and he buys and sells because he wants to get gain. These are and always will be his leading motives, but they are no doubt to a certain extent counteracted in civilized life by motives of a different kind. No man is altogether destitute of regard for the interests and wishes of his neighbours, and almost every one will sacrifice something more or less for the gratification of others. Still, self-interest of the most direct unmistakable kind is the great leading active principle in many departments of life, and in particular in the trading department: to deny this is to shut one’s eyes to the sun at noonday. To try to change is like trying to stop the revolution of the earth. To call it a “predatory” instinct is to talk at random. To take from a man by force what he possesses is an essentially different thing from driving the hardest of hard bargains with him. Every bargain is regarded as an advantage by both parties at the time when it is made, otherwise it would not be made at all. If I save a drowning man’s life on condition that he will convey to me his whole estate, he is better off than if I leave him to drown. My act is certainly not affectionate, but neither is it predatory. It improves the condition of both parties, and the same is true of all trade.