This is repeatedly defined and opposed in later chapters, and here need only be stated as that basic proposition in Political Economy in which it is assumed that man works to gratify wants, and that if his wants are otherwise gratified he will not work. This fundamental theory of economics rests, as will be readily seen, on the foregoing, on the Ego concept and the Pay concept. Part of it, more generally applied, is our general Self-interest theory, usually expressed in solemn tones: “Self-preservation is the first law of Nature.” Men say this as if it were so, and other people believe it simply because it is said to them so solemnly. Our brains, trained for all time to bow to authority, have a treacherous trick of believing whatever is advanced by those in authority or even by the scribes. The present scribe asks no such gulp, but that the reader use his own active thinking power on the propositions here advanced. Now, this self-preservation theory is contradicted on its own doorstep by the fact of the race-preservation instinct, the individual counting for nothing, absolutely nothing, in the unbroken stream of racial life of which he forms so small a part. If we were solemnly taught “Race-preservation is the first law of Nature,” we should be nearer the truth. Even in the purely individual animals the good of the race is paramount to that of the member, and in the collective animals the social instinct is so highly developed that self-preservation is not even thought of. Break an ant-heap, and watch “the first law of Nature”! Immediate, instinctive, unquestioning, they rush to save the eggs and young, to guard the queen, to preserve the group—not the individual. “Nature” develops whatever faculties are required in a given form of life, and if the life-form is collective the collective instincts appear in force. Now “Self-interest” as a motive does act upon the human being, but it does not compare in weight and value with the larger later motives of social interest. We assume that the visibly social processes we see going on about us are best governed by self-interest in the parties concerned; that efficient service is best commanded under this pressure. We are wrong. Social processes were initiated primarily along lines of self-interest, in orderly development, from existing instincts to higher ones, but the further developed are these processes the less useful is the early motive, the more needed is the later motive of social interest. Self-interest, preserved too long in social growth, becomes a deterrent force. The more wide and complex the process, the greater the distance between producer and consumer, the more injurious is the action of that essentially limited force. This is why in small, early societies there is more honest and efficient service under this motive; and in large, modern societies, unless the social instincts of duty, honour, and the like are operative, we find such infinitely ramified dishonesty and inefficiency.