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. 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. CHAPTER X INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE AND DEMOCRACY Exaggerated powers ascribed to democracy by inaccurate thinkers. An example from an essay by a recent philosophic thinker, with special reference to the rewards of exceptional ability. This writer maintains that the money rewards of ability can be determined by the opinion of the majority expressing itself through votes and statutes. The writer's typical error. A governing body might enact any laws, but they would not be obeyed unless consonant with human nature. Laws are obliged to conform to the propensities of human nature which it is their office to regulate. Elaborate but unconscious admission of this fact by the writer here quoted himself. The power of democracy in the economic sphere, its magnitude and its limits. The demands of the minority a counterpart of those of the majority. The demand of the great wealth-producer mainly a demand for power. Testimony of a well-known socialist to the impossibility of altering the character of individual demand by outside influence. CHAPTER XI CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR SECULAR DEMOCRACY The meaning of Christian socialism, as restated to-day by a typical writer.