Chapter IX

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.