Mr. Shaw, in order to prove how fully he understands the question of Ability, quotes the case of a friend of his, who, by his Ability, makes _four thousand pounds_ a year. This, says Mr. Shaw, is just as it should be: but if a man, like his friend, should save _one hundred thousand pounds_, and desire to leave this to his son, invested for him at 3½ per cent, so that the son may receive an income whether he has any of his father’s ability or no—this, says Mr. Shaw, is what Socialism will not permit. The son must earn all he gets; and if he happens to have no exceptional ability, which may probably be the case, he will have to put up with the mere wages of manual labour. He will have to live on some _eighty pounds_ a year instead of _four thousand pounds_. And Mr. Shaw says, that to introduce this arrangement into our social system will have no appreciable effect on the men who are now making, by their ability, their _four thousand pounds_ a year. Let us suggest to him the following reflections. What good, in that case, would the _four thousand pounds_ a year be to the father, unless he were to eat and drink nearly the whole of it himself? For it would be absurd and cruel in him to bring up his children in luxury if the moment he died they would have to become scavengers. Wealth is mainly valuable, and sought for, not for the sake of the pleasures of sense which it secures for a man’s individual nervous system, but for the sake of the _entourage_—of the world—which it creates around him, which it peoples with companions for him brought up and refined in a certain way, and in which alone his mere personal pleasures can be fully enjoyed. Capitalism, as Mr. Shaw truly observes, produces many personal inequalities, which without it could not exist. He fails to understand that it is precisely the prospect of producing such inequalities that constitutes the main motive that urges able men to create Capital. More than ten years ago I published a book called _Social Equality_, devoted to the exposition of these truths. I cannot dwell upon them now. In that book history is appealed to, and biography is appealed to; and the special case of literary and artistic production, of which Mr. Shaw makes so much, is considered in a chapter devoted to the subject, and Mr. Shaw’s precise arguments are disposed of in anticipation. But to a great extent the true doctrine of motive is one which cannot be established by mere formal argument. It must to a great extent be left to the verdict of the jury of general common sense, the judgment of men of experience and knowledge of the world—that knowledge which, of all others, Mr. Shaw and his friends appear to be most lacking in.