ant and Hegel, for
example--have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to
the material details of their existence. Who can suppose that the
disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these
men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to devote themselves to
the improvement of stoves and saucepans?

Yet again, let us consider the area of the industrial influence of the
motives originating in religious fervour or benevolence. The most
important illustration of this is to be found in the monastic orders.
The monastic orders constructed great buildings; they successfully
practised agriculture and other industrial arts: and those of them who
were faithful to their vows aimed at no personal luxuries. On the
contrary, their superfluous possessions were applied by them to the
relief of indigence. But this industrial asceticism was made possible
only by its association with another asceticism--the renunciation of
women, the private home, the family. Even so, in the days when Christian
piety was at its highest, those who were capable of responding to the
industrial motives of the cloister formed but a fraction of the general
population of Christendom, while even among them these motives
constantly ceased to operate; and, as St. Francis declared with regard
to his own disciples, the desire for personal gain continually insisted
on reasserting itself. What ground have we here for supposing that
motives, whose action hitherto has always been strictly limited to
passionate and seclusive idealists turning their backs on the world,
will ever become general among the monopolists of that business ability,
the object of whom is to fill the world with increasing comforts and
luxuries. One might as well argue that, because the monastic orders were
celibate, and formed at one time a very numerous body, all men will
probably soon turn celibate also, and yet at the same time continue to
reproduce their species.

But the scientific quality of the psychological reasoning of the
socialists is best illustrated by their treatment of another class of
facts--that on which they themselves unanimously lay the greatest
stress--namely, the heroisms of the soldier, and other men of a kindred
type. The soldier, they say, is not only willing but eager to perform
duties of the most painful and dangerous kind, without any thought of
receiving any higher pay than his fellows. If, then, human nature is
such, they contin