No Dog Exchanges Bones with Another
How do we get the help of millions of people we don’t know? Only by trade.
1776
How do we get the help of millions of people we don’t know? Only by trade.
1776
For some people, ‘trade’ is synonymous with greed and selfishness but Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) did not think so. However greedy or selfish a businessman may be, if he wants to be successful he must spend at least a little time thinking of others, because no one is going to maintain him in comfort out of pity.
NOBODY ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.
A spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. He will be more likely to prevail if he can show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.