,
through the collection of shells or of picture postcards.

The property instinct is, it happens, one of two instances in which the
classical economists deserted their usual habit of treating all desires
as the result of a calculation of the means of obtaining 'utility' or
'wealth.' The satisfaction of the instinct of absolute property by
peasant proprietorship turned, they said, 'sand to gold,' although it
required a larger expenditure of labour for every unit of income than
was the case in salaried employment. The other instance was the instinct
of family affection. This also still needs a special treatise on its
stimulus, variation, and limitations. But the classical economists
treated it as absolute and unvarying. The 'economic man,' who had no
more concern than a lone wolf with the rest of the human species, was
treated as possessing a perfect and permanent solidarity of feeling with
his 'family.' The family was apparently assumed as consisting of those
persons for whose support a man in Western Europe is legally
responsible, and no attempt was made to estimate whether the instinct
extended in any degree to cousins or great uncles.

A treatise on political impulses which aimed at completeness would
further include at least the fighting instinct (with the part which it
plays, together with affection and loyalty, in the formation of
parties), and the instincts of suspicion, curiosity, and the desire to
excel.

All these primary impulses are greatly increased in immediate
effectiveness when they are 'pure,' that is to say, unaccompanied by
competing or opposing impulses; and this is the main reason why art,
which aims at producing one emotion at a time, acts on most men so much
more easily than does the more varied appeal of real life. I once sat in
a suburban theatre among a number of colonial troopers who had come over
from South Africa for the King's Coronation. The play was 'Our Boys,'
and between the acts my next neighbour gave me, without any sign of
emotion, a hideous account of the scene at Tweefontein after De Wet had
rushed the British camp on the Christmas morning of 1901--the militiamen
slaughtered while drunk, and the Kaffir drivers tied to the blazing
waggons. The curtain rose again, and, five minutes later, I saw that he
was weeping in sympathy with the stage misfortunes of two able-bodied
young men who had to eat 'inferior Dorset' butter. My sympathy with the
militiamen and the Kaffirs was 'pure,'