lone, we are moved not by the hope for greater joy, but by an
enthusiastic belief in the value of progress and development itself.
Does a socialistic order secure a more forceful, a more spontaneous, a
more many-sided, or even a more harmonious growing of new demands and
of new means for fulfilment than the capitalistic system which holds
us all to-day?

The psychologist certainly has no right to ask to be heard first, when
this strictly economic aspect of the great social problem is
emphasized. Industrial specialists, administrators of labour,
politicians, and financiers stand nearest to the issue. But whatever
they testify, they ultimately have to point to mental facts, and the
psychologist is naturally anxious to emphasize them. He has nothing
new to contribute. It is the old story of the stimulating influence
of the spirit of competition. Healthy progress demands unusual
exertion. All psychological conditions for that maximum strain are
unfavourable in a socialistic state with its acknowledged need of
rigid regulation and bureaucracy. We see all around us the flabby
routine work, stale and uninspiring, wherever sharp rivalry has no
chance. It is the great opportunity for mediocrity, while the unusual
talent is made ineffective and wasted. Our present civilization shows
that in every country really decisive achievement is found only in
those fields which draw the strongest minds, and that they are drawn
only where the greatest premiums are tempting them. To-day even the
monopolist stands in the midst of such competition, as he can never
monopolize the money of the land. This spur which the leaders feel is
an incessant stimulus for all those whom they control, and, as soon as
that tension is released at the highest point, a perfunctory
performance with all its well-known side features, the waste and the
idleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks,
must set in and deaden the work.

Nature runs gigantic risks all the time, and throws millions of
blossoms away so as to have its harvest of fruit, and at the same time
nature shows the strictest economy and most perfect adjustment to
ends in the single blossom which comes to fruit. Just this doubleness
is needed in the progressive economic life. The rampant luxuriousness
which is willing to throw away large means for a trial and for a fancy
which may lead to nothing, and yet a scrupulous economy which reaches
its ends with the smallest possible w