The swimmer who had plunged into the sea to save a woman from drowning would not take a second plunge to rescue her silk petticoat.

The socialists, in short, when dealing with military and other cognate heroisms, ignore both of the causes which alone make such heroisms possible.

They ignore the fact that the internal motive is essentially isolated and exceptional.

They ignore the further fact that the circumstances which alone give this motive play are essentially exceptional also, and could never be reproduced in social life at large, except at the cost of making all human life intolerable.
I have called special attention to this particular socialistic argument, partly because socialists, and other sentimental thinkers, like Ruskin, attach such extreme importance to it; but mainly because it affords us an exceptionally striking illustration of the manner in which they are accustomed to reason about matters with regard to which they ostentatiously profess themselves to be the pioneers of accurate science.

One of the principal grounds--to repeat what has been said already--on which they attack what they call the Economics of Capitalism, is that it deals exclusively with the actions of "the economic man," or the man whose one motive is the appropriation of wealth.