ABSTRACT
It is a truism to suggest that every social and political theory is rooted in a conception of human nature. Hobson was no exception to that rule, but his interpretation of human nature was novel and wide-ranging. It did not merely refer to an abstract model, artificiallyeven cunningly-employed to explain or justify this or that social practice. Rather, it was grounded on concrete, common-sense and empirical observations; it encompassed a broad openness to different aspects of human behaviour; and it attempted to incorporate insights from new developments in philosophy, psychology, sociology and physiology as well as relate to older moral conventions. Most significantly-on closer inspection-it served to underpin many of the better-known theories that Hobson had developed in his critiques of economics and imperialism and in his reconstruction of liberal ideology. As with so much of his work, his scattered writings on human nature exhibit both a derivative and often sketchy approach to highly complex problems, and an ability to cut through existing traditions in order to arrive at clear and bold statements of a highly innovative character.
