Note 3 — THE PRECONCEPTIONS OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE[1]

"Let us not confound the statement that human interests are at one with the statement that class interests are at one. The latter I believe to be as false as the former is true.... But accepting the major premises of the syllogism, that the interests of human beings are fundamentally the same, how as to the minor?—how as to the assumption that people know their interests in the sense in which they are identical with the interests of others, and that they spontaneously follow them in this sense?"—Cairnes, Essays in Political Economy (London, 1873), p. 245. This question cannot consistently be asked by an adherent of the stricter hedonism.