The principal reasons for which wealth is sought are not pleasures of the senses, but pleasures of the mind and the imagination; and of these pleasures {307} there are three principal kinds. One of them is the pleasure of power, which in their analysis of human motives the socialists conveniently overlook; and the two others happen to be the very pleasures by the desire of which the socialists themselves declare the exceptional wealth-producers are to be principally marked in the future—namely, the pleasures of self-realisation and the pleasures of social honour. Wealth is coveted by all really great wealth-producers, not in preference to these, but as a means to all or one of them. To many of our great wealth-producers, with their strong practical faculties, wealth would be nothing if it brought to them no accession of influence; to many it would be nothing if it did not bring them the means of indulging their tastes, as distinct from their physical appetites; to nearly all it would be nothing if they did not, or if they did not hope it would, secure for them the approbation and the respectful homage of others. The only alternatives, then, which we have before us are as follows:—If the great wealth-producer is a man of such coarse fibre that none of those desires just mentioned are really his—neither the desire of power, nor the desire of social honour, nor the desire for that larger development of taste and moral activities which is rendered possible by the possession of exceptional wealth—then it is obvious that the sole motive left to him will be the gross or unreasoning desire for the possession of wealth as such; and we are brought back to the original {308} proposition which the socialists set themselves to annihilate. But if, on the other hand, the great wealth-producer is really capable of those higher desires which the socialists assure us will shortly become so strong in him, the desire of exceptional wealth, instead of being superseded by these, will be stronger beyond calculation than it ever could be without them.