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ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book IV 

 Chapter 2 



What, how- 

 ever, of the 

 fact that the 

 desire of 

 honour makes 

 the soldier 

 work harder 

 than any 

 labourer ? 



Scientific truths, as apprehended by the mere seeker 

 after speculative knowledge, are like powerful spirits 

 secluded in some distant star ; and, for any effect 

 which they have on the processes of economic pro- 

 duction, they might just as well have never been 

 discovered at all. Before they can be applied to 

 practical purposes they have to be mastered and 

 digested by a new class of men altogether, who 

 value them not for themselves, but solely for the 

 use they can be put to. Thus, in order that 

 speculative truths may be connected with productive 

 effort, they must pass out of the hands of the 

 men who first discovered them, and be made over 

 to men whose motive in acquiring them will em- 

 phatically not be desire of the mere pleasure of 

 intellectual acquisition, but the desire of some 

 marketable products with a calculable pecuniary 

 value, in the production of which a knowledge of 

 the truths in question will help them. Thus specu- 

 lative activity, just like artistic creation, in exact 

 proportion as it connects itself with the ordinary 

 processes of wealth -production, ceases to find its 

 motive in the desire of self-realisation, and claims to 

 be rewarded by the possession of the objective 

 results produced by it. 



And now let us turn from the motives which 

 consist in the desire of self-realisation to those 

 which consist in the desire of the approbation or the 

 homage of others. This desire, which exercises a 

 great influence on the artist, and often also on the 

 seeker after speculative truth, concurrently with the 



