But the partnership principle is wider than the business firm. In some degree it enters into every bargain. Buyer and seller establish a kind of mutuality. Suppose a customer on coming to my store and putting down his five dollars for a pair of shoes should suddenly bethink himself and say: “I wonder if you are not cheating me. That pair of shoes cost you not more than four dollars and seventy-five cents. By your price you are taking twenty-five cents more from my pocket than you are delivering to me.” Might I not answer: “It seems to me it is you who are cheating me. You need those shoes more than you need five dollars. You would give five dollars and a quarter rather than go without them. Are you not, then, returning to my pocket twenty-five cents less than you are receiving?” In reality neither of us has cheated. We have merely made a legitimate profit from one another. Such mutual profit is involved in all good bargaining. It yields a double gain. I gain from my customer and he from me, and both are left in better condition than before. If he had not cared more for the shoes than for five dollars he would not have come to my store. If I had not counted five dollars of greater worth to me than the shoes I should not have parted with them. A curious situation this, where two persons draw advantage from one another! But every sound commercial transaction proceeds on this assumption. In all honest trade there is a gainful partnership. In my last chapter, after discussing gifts, charity, and the generous soul, I promised to turn to a moral situation higher still, one of purer altruism. Are we then keeping to the order proposed? Can we suppose that a commercial transaction is of a higher order than an act of charity? I believe we can. As we look over the history of civilization we certainly find gifts understood long before trade. The savage is a not ungenerous person. When he takes a fancy to any one he gives pretty freely, not, of course, through any claim or duty but merely in deference to his native feeling. What he cannot conceive is the double gift, a transaction in which each is a gainer. He is ready enough to strip himself of advantage in behalf of one whom he likes and is pleased when he, too, receives a gift; but that one and the same act can yield a mutual gain he apprehends slowly and rudely. Yet on just this condition of mutuality all honest trade is based. It is true I must add the adjective “honest.” One can deceive under the forms of trade as readily as under any other forms. They shelter deception well. In dealing with a customer I may have some special information about the quality of an article which he does not possess. He is therefore at a disadvantage. No one would maintain that all the operations of commerce are of a higher moral order than charity; but it may be said that every _honest_ mercantile transaction shows altruism of a more thoroughgoing kind than a gift does.