Nature & Animals Quote by A. C. Benson

Benson’s line lands like a scalpel: it reduces all our lofty self-mythology to a single, slightly shabby skill. Not reason, not art, not faith - bargains. The phrasing is doing quiet work. “Man” is offered in the old, universalizing sense, then immediately demoted to “an animal,” a reminder that whatever separates us from other creatures is a variation inside nature, not an escape from it. The kicker is “makes bargains,” a verb that sounds practical, even mercenary. It’s not “seeks truth” or “builds civilizations.” It’s deal-making.

The intent feels less like misanthropy than diagnosis. Benson, writing in late Victorian/Edwardian England, lived amid the expanding machinery of institutions: empire, civil service, universities, the Anglican establishment. Those systems run on negotiation disguised as principle. “Bargains” names the real engine: compromises between ambition and morality, desire and duty, public virtue and private advantage. It also hints at the psychological bargain each person strikes to get through the day: what we trade for belonging, status, comfort, or love.

The subtext is that human identity isn’t just shaped by ideals but by transactions - explicit contracts and unspoken ones. Even altruism can be a bargain with the self: I give so I can believe I’m good; I obey so I can feel safe. Benson’s economy of language is the point: in five words he punctures romantic human exceptionalism and replaces it with a cooler, modern picture of society as negotiated reality, where civilization is less cathedral than marketplace.