The first is, that the conclusion now before us—the conclusion that certain of the most coveted prizes of life will always be for the few only—is, whatever may be its consequences, true; and that its truth is nowhere more clearly evidenced than in the ideal State, as presented to us by the extremest socialists. For we shall find that whatever in the way of equalised incomes these statesmen of cloud-land promise to their imaginary citizens, they do not even suggest that the most coveted social prizes shall be distributed more equally than they are at {355} the present moment. They, as has been said already, though they consider themselves the apostles of equality, recognise that the prosperity, and, above all, the wealth of the community, will depend on their securing the very ablest of their citizens as members of the bureaucracy by whom all labour will be directed; and they recognise that these able men, like the present race of employers, will not develop their ability without some special inducement. They accordingly propose to reward them, not by allowing them to retain any exceptional portion of the wealth which they are instrumental in producing, but by investing them with exceptional honour; and the desire for such honour, say the socialists, as a motive to exceptional effort, “_will be incalculably more efficacious_” than the desire for wealth. Now if those who make this assertion attribute to it any serious meaning, they must mean that men like honour much better than they like wealth—that they covet it more keenly, that they will struggle more desperately to win it, and are more exasperated at not possessing it. If, however, great wealth is possible for the few only, and if the majority of mankind are for ever destined to be without it, such, with regard to honour, is the case even more evidently. For honour is more essentially confined to the few than wealth is. We can, at all events, conceive a community composed wholly of millionaires, supported in luxury by battalions of labouring automata; but it is impossible to conceive a community wholly composed of men on whom {356} honour is conferred as the choicest prize of life, and all of whom—the exceptional and the ordinary—enjoy it to the same degree. The essence of honour is distinction or differentiation; and it forms a motive for the exceptional actions of the few only because it is withheld from the many whose action is not exceptional. Either, then, in the socialistic State the honour that is to form the reward of exceptionally able men will fail to stimulate their abilities and attract them into the ranks of the bureaucracy because it is not of itself so keenly desired as wealth is; or if, as the socialists say, it is desired even more keenly, and if it consequently does stimulate exceptional men to struggle for it, the socialistic bureaucracy, with its honours, will excite amongst the mass of the citizens incalculably more envy than the rich excite amongst the poor; and