Let us, to go into detail, take the case of the artist.  What reason is there to suppose that the impassioned emotion which stimulates the adoring monk to lavish all his genius on an altar-piece will stimulate another man to devise, and to organise the production of, some new kind of liquid enamel for the decoration of cheap furniture?[13] Or let us turn to an impulse closely allied to the artistic—­namely, the desire for speculative truth, as manifested in the lives of scientific and philosophic thinkers.  These men—­such as Kant and Hegel, for example—­have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to the material details of their existence.  Who can suppose that the disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to devote themselves to the improvement of stoves and saucepans?

Yet again, let us consider the area of the industrial influence of the motives originating in religious fervour or benevolence.  The most important illustration of this is to be found in the monastic orders.  The monastic orders constructed great buildings; they successfully practised agriculture and other industrial arts:  and those of them who were faithful to their vows aimed at no personal luxuries.  On the contrary, their superfluous possessions were applied by them to the relief of indigence.  But this industrial asceticism was made possible only by its association with another asceticism—­the renunciation of women, the private home, the family.  Even so, in the days when Christian piety was at its highest, those who were capable of responding to the industrial motives of the cloister formed but a fraction of the general population of Christendom, while even among them these motives constantly ceased to operate; and, as St. Francis declared with regard to his own disciples, the desire for personal gain continually insisted on reasserting itself.  What ground have we here for supposing that motives, whose action hitherto has always been strictly limited to passionate and seclusive idealists turning their backs on the world, will ever become general among the monopolists of that business ability, the object of whom is to fill the world with increasing comforts and luxuries.  One might as well argue that, because the monastic orders were celibate, and formed at one time a very numerous body, all men will probably soon turn celibate also, and yet at the same time continue to reproduce their species.

But the scientific quality of the psychological reasoning of the socialists is best illustrated by their treatment of another class of facts—­that on which they themselves unanimously lay the greatest stress—­namely, the heroisms of the soldier, and other men of a kindred type.  The soldier, they say, is not only willing but eager to perform duties of the most painful and dangerous kind, without any thought of receiving any higher pay than his fellows.  If, then, human nature