And the application of it all is that when Nature’s sole and universal stimulus to progress is the love of self which she has implanted in every soul, it is folly to assume that we can better Nature’s work by substituting for the universal stimulus to effort a more or less fleeting emotion which takes hold of but a very few and persists with but a still smaller number.  Whatever scheme of collectivism we may establish, we know in advance that every member of the collective group will continuously strive to get for himself to the utmost limit regardless, if it could be discovered, of what is rightfully due.  And a plan of Society which each member of Society is striving to subvert is doomed from its birth.

And the fourth count in the indictment of Socialism is that it is contradictory to Nature to such a degree as to make its permanence unthinkable because destructive not only of human comfort and happiness but of human life.

Expressed in briefest form the four counts are as follows[3]: 

I. Public servants produce less for consumption than private workers.  Decrease of consumption means increase of human misery.  Therefore, Socialism, making all of us public servants would increase human misery.

II.  Brains, not Labor, creates the social dividend.  Ability is demonstrated only under strenuous competition inspired by self-interest.  Therefore, Socialism, excluding competition inspired by self-interest would obliterate the social dividend.

III.  The accumulating man inspired by selfishness is essential to any social saving.  Social saving is essential to the support of an increasing population.  Therefore, Socialism by eliminating the Capitalist would make life impossible to many who now live.

IV.  To fight Nature is to die.  Socialism fights Nature.  Therefore, Socialism would destroy the race.

It is a matter of premises, and I have already said that the premises in these syllogisms can neither be proved or disproved.  People, I suppose, will continue to fight over them but I shall not.  No human life is long enough and no human intellect strong enough to demonstrate or disprove any one of them.  Experimentally mankind is always somewhere trying out one or the other of these postulates but success or failure only proves that they did or did not prove true in that particular case.

An underlying fallacy of Socialism is the concept that poverty or at least extreme poverty, can be banished from the world.  It cannot.  It is impossible for the effective to produce and save as fast as the ineffective will waste and destroy if they can get at it.  No truth in the Bible is more profound than the saying:  The poor ye have always with you.”

The concept is based upon an unfounded belief in the competence of the average man.  He is not nearly so competent an animal as he has taught himself to believe.  We read our Nordau and with but the very slightest ability to judge what he says we declare him a libeler.  We read our Le Bon and declare off-hand that it is absurd and wicked to say that the crowd has no more sense than a flock of sheep.  When we hear of an alienist who cites the increase of murder, suicide and insanity as evidence that mankind is losing its mental balance, we declare that the man is crazy himself.