Book I: Chapter 2 - Page 2

and shew them that it is for their
own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to
another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I
want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such
offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far
greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. 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 address ourselves,
not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our
own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to
depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar
does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people,
indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though
this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life
which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as
he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are
supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter,
and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food.
The old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other
clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money,
with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion.

As it is by treaty, by barter, and by purchase, that we obtain from one
another the greater part of those mutual good offices which we stand in need
of, so it is this same trucking disposition which originally gives occasion
to the division of labour. In a tribe of hunters or shepherds, a particular
person makes bows and arrows, for example, with more readiness and dexterity
than any other. He frequently exchanges them for cattle or for venison, with
his companions; and he finds at last that he can, in this manner, get more
cattle and venison, than if he himself went to the field to catch them. From
a regard to his own interest, therefore, the making of bows and arrows grows
to be his chief business, and he becomes a sort of armourer. Another excels
in making the frames and covers of their little huts or moveable houses. He
is accustomed to be of use in this way to his neighbours, who reward him in
the same manner with cattle and with venison, till at last he finds it his
interest to dedicate himself entirely to this employment, and to become a
sort of house-carpenter. In the same manner a third becomes a smith or a
brazier; a fourth, a tanner or dresser of hides or skins, the principal part
of the clothing of savages. And thus the