This last point in the characterisation may seem unwarranted, and may even strike unreflecting persons as derogatory. It is, of course, not so intended; and any degree of reflection will bring out its simple bearing on the facts of business. As is well and obviously known, the sole end of business as such is pecuniary gain, gain in terms of price. It need not be held, as has sometimes been argued, that one businessman’s gain is necessarily another’s loss; although that principle was once taken for granted, as the foundation of the Mercantilist policies of Europe, and is still acted on uncritically by the generality of statesmen. But it is at any rate true, because it is contained in the terms employed, that a successful business negotiation is more successful in proportion as the party of the second part is less competent to take care of his own pecuniary interest, whether through native or acquired incapacity for pecuniary discretion or from pecuniary inability to stand out for such terms as he otherwise might conceivably exact. A shrewd businessman can, notoriously, negotiate advantageous terms with an inexperienced minor or a necessitous customer or employé. Pecuniary gain is a differential gain and business is a negotiation of such differential gains; not necessarily a differential of one businessman as against or at the cost of another; but more commonly, and more typical of the competitive system, it is a differential as between the businessman’s outlay and his returns,--that is to say, as between the businessman and the unbusinesslike generality of persons with whom directly or indirectly he deals as customers, employés, and the like. For the purposes of such a negotiation of differentials the weakness of one party (in the pecuniary respect) is as much to the point as the strength of the other,--the two being substantially the same fact. The discipline of the business occupations should accordingly run to the habitual rating of men, things and affairs in terms of emulative human nature and of precautionary wisdom in respect of pecuniary expediency. Instead of workmanlike or technological insight, this discipline conduces to worldly wisdom.[111]