Note (return) — INTRODUCTION

The only form of study which a political thinker of one or two hundred years ago would now note as missing is any attempt to deal with politics in its relation to the nature of man. The thinkers of the past, from Plato to Bentham and Mill, had each his own view of human nature, and they made those views the basis of their speculations on government. But no modern treatise on political science, whether dealing with institutions or finance, now begins with anything corresponding to the opening words of Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation—'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure'; or to the 'first general proposition' of Nassau Senior's Political Economy, 'Every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible.'[1] In most cases one cannot even discover whether the writer is conscious of possessing any conception of human nature at all.