or scientific and infallible systems for breaking the bank at a roulette-table.  In so far as they are socialists—­that is to say, in so far as they differ from other reformers—­they are men aiming at something which is in its nature impracticable; and in order to represent it to themselves and others as practicable, they must necessarily ignore or fail to understand something which, in actual life, stands in the way of its being so.  The perpetual-motionist believes that a perpetual motion is practicable, because he fails to see that out of no machine whatever is it possible to get more force than is put into it, and that one pound-weight will not wind up another.  The system-monger sees that if a succession of similar stakes are placed on red or black, or any one of the thirty-six numbers, the bank always has zero in its favour; but by placing a number of stakes simultaneously in intricate combinations, or by graduating them according to results, he imagines that he can invert the situation, when all he can do is to disguise it.  He often disguises it most effectually; but in the long run he does no more.  Like a protuberance in an air cushion, which if pushed down in one place reappears in another, the original advantage of the bank infallibly ends in reasserting itself.  The system-monger fails to see this for one reason only—­that, having disguised, he thinks that he has eliminated, a fundamental fact of the situation.  Socialists, in so far as they are socialists, reason in the same way.  Though most of them now recognise, like the author of “The Gospel for To-day,” that the economic efficiencies of men are in the highest degree unequal, they propose out of an inequality of functions to produce an equality of conditions.  The details of the changes by which they propose to effect this result, or the grounds on which they seek to represent this result as possible, vary like the details of the systems of ingenious gamblers.  But whatever these details may be, whether they are details of scheme or argument, the essential element of each is the omission of some fundamental fact—­or, rather, of one protean fact—­by which socialistic thinkers are often honestly confused, because it assumes, as they shift their positions, any number of different aspects.  This is the fact that out of unequal men it is absolutely impossible to construct a society of equals.

Two illustrations, taken from the history of socialistic thought, will show how socialists hide this fact from themselves, first by a fallacy of one kind, then by a fallacy of another kind; and how, wherever it is located, it is the essential factor in their argument.