The claim assumes acquisitiveness exhausts human motivation, ignoring Hutcheson and Hume's evidence that sympathy and fellow-feeling are equally natural and constrain self-interest.

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Acquisitiveness(as used in ethics and human motivation): The human desire to acquire or accumulate things, like money, possessions, or power.
Fellow-feeling(as used in ethics and human nature): A sense of connection and shared emotion with other people; the natural human capacity to care about others' wellbeing.
Hume(as the main philosopher discussed in this statement): David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher who argued that human knowledge comes from experience and observation rather than pure reasoning alone.
Hutcheson(as the philosopher being discussed): Francis Hutcheson was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher who argued that we perceive beauty and morality through an inner sense—kind of like how we see colors with our eyes, we sense goodness with our minds.
self-interest(A motivation that Machiavelli suggests can align with the public good): A person's own personal advantage or benefit, what they want for themselves.
sympathy(Hume's moral psychology): A mechanism by which we enter into the feelings of others, enabled by resemblance between persons, and modulated in strength by associative relations such as resemblance, contiguity, and causation

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