304 



ARISTOCRACY AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv 



sun more will 

 wealth-pro- 



There is there 



fore nothing 



to show that 



wealth. 



what they 



weaitn f0 and 



shop doors. If, then, the mere honour of being 

 a great conqueror is insufficient to stimulate the 

 activities by which great conquests are achieved, a 

 man is hardly likely to consecrate his entire faculties 

 to wealth -production merely that he may enjoy the 

 honour of being known as the proud producer of so 

 many miles of calico, or millions of pots of jam. 



There is, therefore, in the present operations of 



, . r i i i i 



those motives, for which the socialists attempt to 

 claim a universal efficiency, as little to suggest that as 

 mot: i ves to exceptional wealth-production they will 

 ever supersede the desire of exceptional possession, 

 as there is in the present operations of the desire of 

 exceptional wealth-possession to show that it is 

 losing its power, or is at all likely to be superseded. 

 The final demonstration of this truth, however, yet 

 remains to be given. 



The socialists, in dealing with this question of 

 motive, have been led into the curious blunders 

 which have just now been exposed by their singu- 

 tarty childish conception of what men's actual 

 motives are. They divide motives into various well- 

 known classes, and, so far as it goes, their procedure 

 is here correct. Their error is that they conceive of 

 man as a being on whom these motives, as a rule, 

 act separately ; whereas in reality the very reverse is 

 the case. Acts which are due to any single motive 

 are not the rule, but the exception. For instance, 

 even though artistic creation and the pursuit of truth 

 are motived in the case of many men by the pleasure 

 which the work brings them, some of the greatest 



