CHAPTER I

THE DEPENDENCE OF EXCEPTIONAL ACTION ON THE ATTAINABILITY OF EXCEPTIONAL REWARD, OR THE NECESSARY CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE MOTIVES TO ACTION AND ITS RESULTS.

Great men differ from ordinary men in degree only, not in kind, • 271

and the use of exceptional powers is conditioned like the use of ordinary powers • 272

Now let us take the most universal powers possessed by man, viz. those used in acquiring the simplest food • 272

Man’s powers in agriculture would be latent unless man wanted food and the earth’s surface were cultivable • 272

Thus the exercise of the simplest faculties depends on the want of some certain object, and the possibility of attaining it • 273

If this is true of the commonest faculties which aim at supplying necessaries, much more is it true of rare faculties which aim at producing superfluities • 273

Society, then, if great men are to work in it, must be so constituted as to make the reward they desire possible • 274

In so doing society makes a contract with its great men; • 274

and this is a contract which is being constantly revised • 275

The great men themselves are the ultimate fixers of their own price • 276

Here is the final proof that living great men, not past conditions, are the causes _practically_ involved in progress • 276

Thus living great men are masters of the situation • 277

because no one can tell that they have exceptional powers till they choose to show them • 277

They cannot, therefore, be coerced from without, like ordinary workers • 278

They must be _induced_ to work by a reward • 278

which they themselves feel to be sufficient • 279

Hence the great man’s character and requirements impress themselves on the structure of society • 279

This is what socialists constantly forget • 280

and they propose to equalise matters by not offering great men any exceptional reward • 281

They forget to ask whether, under these circumstances, great men would exercise or reveal their exceptional powers at all • 281

Exceptional rewards are essential to exceptional action • 282

We must inquire what the required exceptional rewards are • 283