And it is, as a rule, the latter of these two suppositions which practically represents the truth. Exceptional wealth is desired by the men who produce it not for itself, but for its results; and in proportion as the man who desires it possesses a lofty character, his desire for it, being merged in the thought of the uses to which he desires to put it, will itself become equally lofty also. But none the less will the desire of the material wealth form the physical basis in which his loftier desires inhere, just as the impulse of sex remains the physical basis of the deepest and tenderest love which a man feels for a woman, or as the brain is the physical basis of every thought that a man can think. Thus the arguments of the socialists recoil upon their own heads; and instead of tending to show that the desire of possessing exceptional wealth will ever cease to be indispensable as a motive to exceptional production of it, they have merely succeeded in calling attention to the facts on which the indispensable character of this motive depends. We have not, however, finished with this question yet. There is a further set of objections still {309} remaining to be considered which, whilst based on an admission that wealth-production is motived by the desire of wealth, aims at showing that this fact does not necessarily result in more than a fraction of the consequences which have up to this time flowed from it, but merely shows in reality that those consequences are unalterable, and adds new force to the arguments that have just been urged with regard to them.