Chapter VIII

THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY.
SPECULATIVE ATTEMPTS TO MINIMISE IT

Mr. Sidney Webb, and most modern socialists of the higher kind,
recognise that this problem of motive underlies all others.

They approach it indirectly by sociological arguments borrowed
from other philosophers, and directly by a psychology peculiar
to themselves.

The sociological arguments by which socialists seek to minimise
the claims of the able man.

These founded on a specific confusion of thought, which vitiated
the evolutionary sociology of that second half of the nineteenth
century. Illustrations from Herbert Spencer, Macaulay, Mr. Kidd,
and recent socialists.

The confusion in question a confusion between speculative truth
and practical.

The individual importance of the able man, untouched by the
speculative conclusions of the sociological evolutionists, as
may be seen by the examples adduced in a contrary sense by
Herbert Spencer. This is partially perceived by Spencer himself.
Illustrations from his works.

Ludicrous attempts, on the part of socialistic writers, to apply
the speculative generalisations of sociology to the practical
position of individual men.

The climax of absurdity reached by Mr. Sidney Webb.