an". He is not, happily, the real man. He is
an imaginary being, whose sole principle of action is to buy in the
cheapest and sell in the dearest market: a man, more briefly, who
always prefers a guinea--even a dirty guinea--to a pound of the
cleanest. Economists reply to the remonstrances of those who deny the
existence of such a monster, by adding that they do not for a moment
suppose that men in general, or even tradesmen or stockbrokers, are in
reality such beings,--mere money-making machines, stripped bare of all
generous or altruistic sentiment--but simply that, as a matter of fact,
most people do, _ceteris paribus_, prefer a guinea to a pound; and
that so large a part of our industrial activity is carried on from
motives of this kind, that we may obtain a fair approximation to the
actual course of affairs by considering them as the sole motives. We
shall not go wrong, for example, in financial questions, by assuming
that the sole motive of speculators in the Stock Exchange is the desire
to make money. Now, it is possible, perhaps, to justify this way of
putting the case, by certain qualifications. I think, however, that, if
strictly interpreted, it is apt to cover a serious fallacy. The
"economic man" theory, we may say, assumes too much in one direction,
and too little in another. It assumes too much if it is understood as
implying that the desire for wealth is a purely selfish desire. A man
may desire to make money in order simply to gratify his own sensual
appetites. But he may also desire to be independent; and that may
include a desire to do his part in the work of society, and probably
does include some desire to relieve others of a burden. The wish to be
self-supporting is not necessarily or purely "selfish". And obviously,
too, one great motive in all such occupations is the desire to support
a family, and one main inducement to saving is the desire to support it
after your own death. Remove such motives, and half the impulses to
regular industrial energy of all kinds would be destroyed. We must,
therefore, give our "economic man" credit for motives referring to many
interests besides those which he buttons into his own waistcoat. And
therefore, too, as I have said, the assumption is insufficient. The
very conception of economic science supposes all that is supposed, in
the growth of a settled order of society. The purest type of the
"economic man," as he is sometimes described, would be realised in the
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