application of his efforts.  But in respect of the faculties distinctive of those exceptional men by whom alone ordinary labour can be directed to the best advantage, both these conditions are wanting.  It is impossible to tell that any man of ability possesses any exceptional faculties for directing labour at all, unless he himself chooses to show them; and, indeed, until circumstances supply him with some motive for showing them, he may very well not be aware that he possesses such faculties himself.  Moreover, even if he gives the world some reason to suspect their existence, the world at large will not know what he can do with them, and will consequently be unable to impose on him any definite task.  A pressgang could have forced Columbus to labour as a common seaman; but not all the population of Europe could have forced him to discover a world beyond the Atlantic; for the mass of his contemporaries, until his enterprise proved successful, obstinately refused to believe that there was such a world to discover.

The men, therefore, on the exercise of whose directive ability the productive efficiency of a modern nation depends, would occupy, with regard to any nation organised on socialistic principles, a position fundamentally different from that of the ordinary labourer.  The exercise of their distinctive powers, unlike those of the labourer, could never be secured by coercion; because neither the nation at large, nor any body of representatives, could possibly know that these powers existed until the possessors of them chose to reveal the secret.  They could not be made to reveal it.  They could only be induced to do so; and they could only be induced to do so by a society which was so constituted as to offer for an exceptional performance some exceptional reward, just as a reward is offered for evidence against an unknown murderer.  The reward at present offered them is the possession of some exceptional share of the wealth to the production of which their efforts have exceptionally contributed; and, hence, since it is the object of all socialistic schemes to render the achievement of such a reward impossible, we shall find that the ultimate problem for socialists of the modern school is how to discover another which in practice will be equally efficacious.

But though this is the ultimate problem, it is very far from being the only one which the theory of socialism in its modern form raises.  Directive ability, which is a compound of many faculties, varies greatly in degree and kind.  Its value, if tested by the results of its actual application to labour, would in some cases be immense, in other cases very small, and in others it would be a minus quantity.  Thus, even if we suppose that the exercise of it is so far its own reward that all who believe themselves to possess it—­and these are a very large number—­will, for the mere pleasure of exercising it, be eager to gain the positions which will make its exercise possible,