FACULTIES ACTUALISED BY MOTIVE 273 



happened to be cast-iron, and if tillage were conse- Book iv 



quently impossible, and there were no seeds to sow. 



In other words, the very commonest and very 



simplest faculties which human beings possess have 



a practical and a universal existence in those beings, 



only because, in the first place, they minister to Thus the 



universal wants, and because, in the second place, simplest 



the earth is so constituted as to supply the materials 



on which these faculties can operate. Or, to put the f some ce |" tain 



object, and on 



matter in more general terms, the very commonest the possibility 



j i r i 11 ir of attaining it. 



and simplest faculties are not practically sell-existent, 

 except as mere barren potentialities ; and as practical 

 forces they exist only in the degree to which they 

 are evoked by external things and circumstances 

 by some external object, such as food, which excites 

 and will satisfy desire, and by external circumstances 

 which make the object obtainable. 



Now if this be true of those faculties of the com- if this is true 

 monest kind, ministering to the needs which all men 

 inevitably feel alike, and which they always must 

 feel so long as they remain alive, it is yet more 



obviously true of those higher and rarer faculties il true of rare 



. . ; faculties, which 



ministering to needs which are so far from being aim at pro- 

 inevitable, that whole races have existed and do aSf. ^ 

 exist without any conscious knowledge of them. The 

 great inventor, the great director of industry, will not 

 develop or use his exceptional latent faculties unless 

 by the use of them he can achieve some object which 

 he desires ; and this must be something which the 

 community has to give, or the possession of which it 

 will secure to him if it be something which he himself 



18 



