WEALTH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 305 



artists and thinkers, with whom this motive was Book iv 

 certainly powerful, have been motived by the desire 

 of pecuniary reward also. It is enough to mention as the desire of 

 the names of Bacon and Shakespeare, Rubens, mixed with 



Turner, and Scott. And with the desire of honour 

 the desire of pecuniary reward is found to mix itself Ru C b e n' Si etc> 

 yet more often and readily than it does with the 

 mere passion for artistic or for speculative work 

 itself. The psychological fact, however, which we 

 must here notice is this that the pecuniary reward, 

 though it seems theoretically to be in contrast to any 

 genuine desire for other men's approbation, or for 

 the pleasure brought to the worker by the work 

 itself, instead of destroying the force of those other 

 motives, increases it, just as the admixture of a certain 

 amount of alloy makes gold and silver more valuable 

 for artistic purposes. And now, having observed 

 this, let us turn back to the consideration of the 

 desire of pecuniary reward as the principal motive 

 of wealth-production, and endeavour to make our 

 analysis of it more complete. 



As the reader will recollect, the doctrine that For in saying 



11 i .. 11 i. that the desire 



all exceptional exertions in wealth -production are O f wealth is 

 motived solely by the desire of exceptional wealth JUS?*? 1 * 

 as such, although it is the doctrine imputed by the we^h-pyoduc- 



* tion we do not 



socialists to their opponents, has been said already meanthedesire 



. . 'of wealth for 



to be a very imperfect rendering of any doctrine as its own sake, 

 to the subject which their opponents would actually 

 maintain ; and the reason why it is imperfect is simply 

 that wealth as such is not the object for which wealth 

 is really sought by most of those men whom the 



