e adequate
motive or stimulus. Accordingly, since he maintains that no scheme of
society would be socialistic in any practical sense which did not
completely, or at least approximately, eliminate the motive mainly
operative among such men at present--namely, that supplied by the
possibility of exceptional economic gain--he fairly faces the fact that
some motive of a different kind will have to be discovered by socialists
which shall take the place of this.

I mention Mr. Webb in particular merely because he represents the views
which all intellectual socialists are coming to hold likewise. This
specific problem of how to provide the natural monopolists of business
ability with all adequate motive to develop and exercise their talents
is engaging more and more the attention of the higher socialistic
thinkers; and if we take together the passages in their writings which
deal with it, it has by this time a voluminous literature of its own.

We shall find that the arguments brought forward by them in this
connection divide themselves broadly into two classes, one of which
deals with the problem of motive directly, while the other class aims at
preparing the way to its solution by showing in advance that its
difficulties are far less formidable than they appear to be. Without
insisting on the manner in which they are urged by individual writers,
we will take these two classes of argument in the logical order which
they assume when we consider their general character.

These preparatory arguments, with which we will accordingly begin, while
admitting that some men are undoubtedly more able than others, aim at
showing that the superiority of such men to their fellows is not so
great as it seems to be, and that any claims made by them to exceptional
reward on account of it consequently tend to reduce themselves to very
modest proportions.

These arguments possess a peculiar interest owing to the fact that they
have not originated with socialistic thinkers at all, but have been
drawn by them from the evolutionary philosophy of the nineteenth century
generally, in so far as it was applied to historical and sociological
questions. The dominant idea which distinguished this school of thought
was the insignificance of the individual as compared with society past
and present. Thus Herbert Spencer, who was its most systematic exponent,
opens his work on the _Study of Sociology_ with an elaborate attack on
what he calls "The Great