280 ARISTOCRACY AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv will thus consist in arranging these conditions and 

 rewards, so that from each potentially great man, 

 whatever degree or kind of potentiality may be his, 

 the community may elicit the highest and most far- 

 reaching efforts of which he is capable. It will, of 

 course, be to the interest of the community to secure 

 this result by offering the great man the smallest 

 and least costly reward, the desire of which will 

 induce him to develop and exert himself to the 

 utmost ; but the ultimate fixer of the great man's 

 price let it once again be said is not the com- 

 munity, but the great man himself. 

 This is what It is this sociological and psychological truth 



socialists con- . . , 111 i i 



stantiy forget, that even the clearest-headed amongst the socialists 

 are continually forgetting. They perceive it at one 

 moment, at the next moment they entirely forget 

 it, and solemnly proceed to build up their visionary 

 polity on foundations which their own arguments 

 had previously condemned. A curious example of 

 this " inability" as Mr. Spencer calls it, " to com- 

 prehend assembled propositions in their totality" is 

 to be found in a remarkable passage by Mr. Sidney 

 Webb. Having observed that "socialists would 

 nationalise both rent and interest by the State becom- 

 ing the sole landowner and capitalist," he goes on to 

 acknowledge that great fundamental fact which it is 

 the main object of the present work to elucidate. 

 "Such an arrangement, however" he says, "would 

 leave untouched the third monopoly the largest of 

 them all the monopoly of business ability" In 

 these last words he appears to be like a Daniel 



