344 ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book iv of passing a scientific judgment on them, they 

 might have played and within limits they have 

 cussed with played a valuable part in eliciting the truth 

 certain circum- opposed to them. But they have become wholly 

 mischievous when, through the agency of indis- 

 criminate education, they have influenced men who, 

 whilst wanting in intellectual judgment, are never- 

 theless endowed with a potential activity of character, 

 and who, when this is developed, at once become 

 powerful agents in disseminating fallacies amongst 

 others even less capable of criticising them than 

 themselves. Thus many of the leaders of the " new 

 unionism " in England are to be credited with 

 energy of a really remarkable kind ; but unfortun- 

 ately the energy is united to such defective 

 intellectual powers, that the more vigorously these 

 are employed, the more mischievous and absurd is 

 the result. The general resolutions that have been 

 passed at Trade Union conferences declaring that 

 no progress is possible till all the means of produc- 

 tion shall have been nationalised, or the doctrine 

 of the "new unionists" that wages control prices, 

 are all results of the exercise of faculties which, 

 though in some respects doubtless superior to 

 those of the average man, had far better have never 

 been developed at all. 



Men like these It is men like these the men with ill-balanced 

 two chief 6 or abortive talents the men with strong wills and 

 2t?S equal- defective intellects, the men whose ambition is 

 isation of developed by the smallest educational stimulus, but 



educational J 



opportunity, w ho have no talents proportionate to it which any 



