He had once asked many militant members of his party what had led them to Marxism, and nearly all of them had confessed that their original impulse, as in his case, had been moral condemnation of existing society. He had read the biographies of many revolutionaries, and he had never yet discovered anyone who had become a revolutionary out of scientific conviction or economic calculation. The pangs of unrequited love are partially responsible for Peter Stirling’s dedication to success in politics in _The Honorable Peter Stirling_, just as Frances Motherwell’s rejection by Vic Herres, in _The Troubled Air_, causes her to denounce the Communist movement to which he is devoted. Other motivating forces are just as conventional. Such dissimilar characters as Fabrizio del Dongo in _The Charterhouse of Parma_ and Jethro Bass in _Coniston_ are influenced by the career of Napoleon. The will to power as a basic drive is more clearly put by Old Gisors in _Man’s Fate_: “every man dreams of being god.” Mary McCarthy in _The Oasis_ (1949) labels Will Taub’s motivation as basically this when she says that “dreams of power and mastery, far more than its fraternal aspect, were what had attracted him to communism....” In some cases, like those of Silone’s heroes, the motivation is quite complex. Don Nicola, in _A Handful of Blackberries_, says that Rocco de Donatis “was the object of the clearest call from God that I have ever witnessed.” Yet he had become a Communist and left the Church like Pietro Spina in _Bread and Wine_ “because of the profound disgust with which he reacted to the abyss which he perceived between its practical actions and the words it preached.” Even Spina’s name--literally “rock-thorn”--is symbolic of the conflict between these forces within him. The carpenter, merchant, clergyman, or teacher may drift into his vocation through family pressure or pursuit of the line of least resistance. Almost always the politician enters his because of a powerful driving force which is just as likely to be subconscious as conscious. =Moral Problems and Changing Values=