[12] I first made this criticism of Spencer in my work Aristocracy and Evolution.  On that occasion Mr. Spencer wrote to me, complaining with much vehemence that I had misrepresented him; and he repeated the substance of his letter in a subsequent published essay.  My criticism dealt, and could have dealt only, not with what he meant, but what he said; and certainly in his language—­and, as I think, in his own mind—­there was a constant confusion between the two truths in question.  Apart, however, from what he considered to be my own misrepresentation of himself, he declared that he entirely agreed with me; and that “great men” must, for practical purposes, be regarded as the true causes of such changes as they initiate.

CHAPTER IX

THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY, CONTINUED.
ABILITY AND INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE

The fact that the speculative arguments which we have just now been discussing are not only irrelevant to the problem of the able man and his motives, but are tacitly abandoned as being so by the very men who have urged them, when they come to deal specifically with that problem themselves, may suggest to some readers that so long a discussion of them was superfluous.  But though the socialists abandon them at the very moment when, if ever, they ought to be susceptible of some definite application, they abandon them quite unconsciously, and still continue to attach to them some solemn importance.  Such being the case, then, the more futile these arguments are the stronger is the light thrown by them on the peculiar intellectual weakness which distinguishes even the most capable of those who think it worth their while to employ them.  For this reason, therefore, if for no other, our examination of them will have proved useful, for it will have prepared us to encounter a weakness of precisely the same kind in the reasonings of the socialists when they deal with motive directly.

Let us once more state this direct problem of motive, as with perfect accuracy, stated by the socialists themselves.  Under existing conditions the monopolists of business ability are mainly induced to add to the national store of wealth by the prospect, whose fulfilment existing conditions make possible, of retaining shares of it as their own which are proportionate to the amounts produced by them.  The question is, therefore, whether, if this prospect is taken away from them, socialism could provide another which men of this special type would find equally stimulating.  Is human nature in general, and the nature of the monopolists in particular, sufficiently adaptable to admit of such a change as this?  The socialists answer that it is, and in making such an assertion they declare that they have all the facts of scientific sociology at the back of them.  The unscientific thing is, they say, to assume the contrary; and here, they proceed, we have the fundamental error which