Chapter 9

THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY, CONTINUED. ABILITY AND INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE

The individual motives of the able man as dealt with directly by modern socialists.

They abandon their sociological ineptitudes altogether, and betake themselves to a psychology which they declare to be scientific, but which is based on no analysis of facts, and consists really of loose assumptions and false analogies.

Their treatment of the motives of the artist, the thinker, the religious enthusiast, and the soldier.

Their unscientific treatment of the soldier's motive, and their fantastic proposal based on it to transfer this motive from the domain of war to that of industry.

The socialists as their own critics when they denounce the actual motives of the able man as he is and as they say he always has been. They attack the typically able man of all periods as a monster of congenital selfishness, and it is men of this special type whom they propose to transform suddenly into monsters of self-abnegation.

Their want of faith in the efficacy of their own moral suasion and their proposal to supplement this by the ballot.