340 



ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book IV 

 Chapter 3 



the intellects 

 of some should 

 be stimulated 

 whose efforts 

 fail. 



But those 

 failures that 

 promote pro- 

 gress are fail- 

 ures that 

 partially 

 succeed. 



lives in trying to make perpetual motions. Some fail 

 because, though they accomplish something, others 

 accomplish more ; and the production of what is the 

 best makes the second best valueless. Thus nine 

 inventors might produce nine motor-cars, each of 

 which worked well enough to command a consider- 

 able sale ; but if a tenth inventor was to produce 

 another which was faster, simpler, more durable, and 

 cheaper than any of these, all the rest would drop 

 out of use altogether, and be practically as valueless 

 as the mad aggregation of wheels by which the 

 seeker for the perpetual motion endeavoured to 

 accomplish the impossible. Between the men 

 who fail, however, because they succeed less than 

 others, and the men who fail because they do not 

 succeed at all, there is a great practical difference. 

 The men who fail only because others succeed better 

 than they do, contribute to the very success of the 

 men by whom they are defeated ; for they raise the 

 standard of achievement which these men have to 

 overpass. But the men who fail because they ac- 

 complish nothing waste their own lives without 

 benefiting anybody. In the domain of economic 

 production the truth of this is obvious. It is not 

 less so in the domain of speculative thought. Scien- 

 tific theories are constantly put forward which, though 

 not true, are sufficiently near the truth to have some 

 definite relation to it ; and those who actually reach it 

 find in errors of this kind an indispensable assistance. 

 Nothing gives to truth so keen and clear an outline 

 as the refuted errors of really powerful thinkers. But 



